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“Will the Justice League be serving the same menu as last year’s gala?”

Nightwing snorted. “No, we’re not serving drinks or food at all. Gala attendees will be allowed to bring food and drinks, as long as food is precooked and eaten cold and drinks stored in resealable containers. All food and drink must be clearly labeled with their owners’ names and all potentially hazardous ingredients and left sealed when not in use. Pens and blank labels will be provided for free at the entrance, and attendees who refuse to label their food will have their food confiscated.”

“Why?”

Nightwing pulls out a pointer and clicks it. A video is projected on the wall behind him.

“I prepared this series of explanatory videos to show you why.” Nightwing hit play and walked off-screen.

The first video is recorded on a smartphone. Impulse is sitting at a marble counter in what looks like a modern kitchen, with an empty plastic cup in front of him. 

The person filming reaches out a hand and pours a can of Coca-Cola into the cup.

“What’s this?” Impulse asks.

“Soda. I just wanted to see if you’d like it.” the person filming says.

“Why are you recording, then?”

“So that I can show your grandparents.”

Impulse shrugs, and takes a sip. The expression on his face is wide-eyed and disgusted.

“Ew! I’m getting a better drink.” Impulse races out of the room with the cup of Coca-Cola and comes back with an empty cup and a jug of antifreeze.

“What- no!” The person filming turns their camera to the person standing beside them, which turns out to be Central Flash, holding a plastic cup full of blue liquid. “Aren’t you going to stop them?”

Central Flash gives the person filming an unimpressed look. “You know as well as I do that one cup of antifreeze isn’t enough to get a speedster even mildly tipsy.”

The person filming sighs, and grabs the bottle of antifreeze from Impulse, setting the phone on its side to show the whole room. The person filming turns out to be Keystone Flash, sans gloves.

“You don’t get refills until you’re an adult.” Keystone Flash chides. “You had one cup. Leave some for everybody else.”

Impulse pouts and flicks their empty cup out the open window. Keystone Flash ignores them, grabs a third plastic cup and pours antifreeze into it. The antifreeze is the exact same shade of blue that was in Central Flash’s cup.

Keystone Flash and Central Flash clink their cups together and take a sip at the same time. “Hah! You can’t show the footage to my grandparents now, because it shows you getting drunk!” Impulse crows.

Keystone Flash blinks. “Papa let me into the antifreeze when I was like…twelve? And he filmed it and sent it to Mom and Dad.”

Central Flash sighs in fond remembrance. “I remember that. At least he listened when I told him not to let you have gasoline or sugar because you were already hyper enough without an energy boost.”

The second video is a silent security camera recording. The timestamp reads 3:43 AM.

The two Superboys are standing in an empty room with ten folding chairs set up in a triangle at the other end and three folded plastic tables stacked next to a whiteboard on wheels.

The older Superboy writes two names on the whiteboard which are blocked out by black censor bars.

They then take turns throwing tables at the chairs to knock them over and tallying up their scores for about a minute until Red Robin comes in, yelling at them until he spots the score chart.

Red Robin lectures both Superboys while erasing their tallies and replacing them with a proper bowling score sheet, this time with a third name added.

Red Robin then picks up one of the folding tables, spins around in place while holding it, and releases it when it’s pointing at the pins like he’s an Olympic hammer thrower. 

All ten pins go flying, and splinter apart into their component pieces.

The third video is Red Hood’s helmet-cam footage of a patrol with Red Robin. They pass a dead cat in an alleyway, and Red Robin stops to hack a piece off with a birdarang.

“Don’t eat that!” Red Hood yells.

Red Robin blinks. “But I’m hungry?”

“It’s rotting and it’ll taste horrible. Remember that time you ate three-week-old chicken?”

“Yep. It was tolerable.”

“You still had to wash it down with an entire bottle of hand soap.”

“I hadn’t slept for forty-three hours and it was the last food in the house!”

“Sleep more! Get groceries more! Bring snacks more! Just don’t eat rotting roadkill!”

The fourth video is a recorded feed from a Justice League sparring room’s observation cameras

Green Arrow, Green Lantern, Central Flash, Superman and Batman are standing across from Nightwing, Red Hood, Red Robin, Superboy I and Impulse, separated by two racks of training weapons. Keystone Flash stands behind the Plexiglass screen, three fingers raised in front of him.

“Three, two, one…” Keystone Flash counts down. “GO!”

All ten heroes burst into action, rushing forward to grab training weapons from the racks and hurl them at the opposing team.

It’s basically a regular game of dodgeball from that point onwards. Except that the balls are bladed weapons and polearms of various lengths, and all of the combatants are using superhuman powers and highly-trained acrobatic maneuvers to dodge and block.

Eventually, only Superman and Red Hood are left.

Red Hood stares at Superman unblinkingly, then grabs something from his jacket pocket and tosses it at his opponent.

Superman tries to dodge, but ends up getting hit by the hilt of a kryptonite-pommeled punching dagger. Batman grabs the dagger and folds it into a pocket in his suit.

Keystone Flash stares in disbelief. “Uh…”

“Who won?” Batman demands.

Keystone Flash zips away to collect an encyclopedia-sized book titled “Collected Rules and Regulations of Competitive Dodgeweapon” and flips through it at superhuman speed.

“Well, there’s nothing in the rulebook that says you can’t do that.” Keystone Flash admits after a few seconds. “Hood, it’s been in your pocket since the beginning of the match?”

Red Hood nods. “Yep.”

“And you didn’t leave the court at any point?”

“Nope.”

“And the blade wasn’t kryptonite, only the pommel?”

“Yep.”

“And the blade was dulled until it cannot draw blood from a baseline human?”

“I’m not an idiot.”

“Then…I guess it’s legal. Team Sidekicks wins, I guess?”

Both teams line up, bow, and file out of the room through the exit on their side of the room.

The final video is simply a long scrolling list of all of the costs incurred at the last Justice League gala. 

It starts out relatively normally, with things like catering, venue rental and floral arrangement.

Then it moves on to replacements for most of the furniture and decorations, various “intensive cleaning fees” and $435,753 in hospital bills.

The final item is $1200 simply listed as “apology money”.

Nightwing turns off the video. “The Justice League will not be serving food or drinks at the March gala because of the fact that half of its members will insist on their own personal preferences being served. And no matter how much we tell them to label the food poisonous to normal humans, someone will still forget, and a guest ends up in the hospital. It’s happened at least once every previous gala, and as such we are taking all reasonable precautions to prevent a recurrence.”