Across time and space, across the multiverse, strange cards began appearing beside select targets - or where they would be found. These were no normal cards (the fact they were dimension hopping was a pretty big clue) and indeed, they held a surprise for their unlucky victims...
It was an unusually quiet night in Gotham City, and the current Robin, Damian Wayne, was patrolling on his lonesome. It seemed all the rogues gallery not in Arkham had decided to take a night off, and the ones that were all apparently wanted to stay in for Taco Tuesday again. Still, Wednesday should have some excitement then. Though woe betide anyone attempting what Dick "Nightwing"Grayson called The Shawshank Redemption escape method...
'Perhaps Father had the right idea staying back at the cave checking those samples at the lab,' the costumed vigilante thought to himself.
Not one mugging, not one break-in, not even a cat stuck up a tree... And if there was, Catwoman probably got there first. Hopping over the rooftops with his immense acrobatic skills was all well and good, but after a while it just got boring when nothing else was happening.
However, as he hopped onto a roof overlooking a bank, he did spot something. A small purple card caught in a crevice.
'Some calling card? A sign for a drop-off? A marker for someone to watch over the bank later? Or probably just a playing card the wind blew up here....'
Imagination running wild or not, Robin did have to eventually concede to dull reality in the end. Still, he'd take a careful look...
And found it did seem to be a playing card, but rather puzzlingly, it was blank, apart from the profile picture of what seemed to be an entirely mummified person, a serial number, and a '©ANUBIS CORP' mark at the bottom left and right respectively. A box for presumably a name, the mummy picture, and then... the description? Stats? Damian had played a few collectable card games over the years, and knew Jon apparently played something called MTG.
And then, the section probably for a name began to glow, as did the stats. Little symbols began appearing. 'LIMITED EDITION' appeared above the stats. The symbols looked like... a ball with wings? But the real surprise was the rest of the text that appeared: 'ROBIN - Bound Baby Bird' '[Vigilante/Mummy]...'
Almost dropping the card, Damian was about to call in this odd find when bandages shot out, wrapping around his hand and leg.
"What the..."
Grabbing a batarang from his belt, he tried to cut the bandages that seemingly poured out of the card, but sighed as even the sharp-edged tool did nothing.
"Tch... I hate magic," He grumbled, reaching to activate a communicator, only for the bandages to target his other hand as it went.
"...I really hate magic!"
The bandages wrapped and wrapped, coating both arms and pinning them to his sides. Each leg was wrapped, then the legs were bound together, making the current Boy Wonder topple over as he lost balance.
'And now it wraps up my mouth or something,' he thought, fully expecting the infernal thing to read minds.
What seemed to be duct tape then shot over his mouth, and with a muffled sigh, Damian once more hated magic, and being right. Any method of escape he could think of was useless. He'd even jumped to trying to dislocate a shoulder and somehow the bandages prevented that - He'd been able to do that with ease AND relocate it since he was five! It was almost painless at this point. Though in hindsight was probably going to play merry hell with his long term bone structural health.
Wondering if he could maybe roll away, Damian was then completely unsurprising when the card glowed and began sucking him in.
'Figures, it's capturing me...'
He was a little surprised when it apparently teleported away to goodness knows where, but not even he was completely beyond surprise after all....
Sneaking into a poorly-defended bank vault, Sly Cooper was in his element. This vault held many a sealed deposit box belonging to many a major criminal, and was so easy to break into Bentley was probably falling asleep outside!
The vigilante gentleman thief raccoon found even the boxes were child's play.
"All this money from illegal gains and they can't even invest in locks costing more than five dollars? How do they even hold onto this cash. Oh wait, they won't!" He laughed at his own joke, but did not laugh at what was in the deposit box.
"Huh? A card? I mean, I guess they can go for a lot of money but..."
Pulling it out, Sly was confused by the sight... much as, in another dimension, a human vigilante had been.
He was outright startled by the bandages though.
"Uh oh, Bentley! May have underestimated something, there's -"
He was annoyed by the tape suddenly shooting out, muffing him, and then a bandage wrapping around to seal the deal. Even more annoyed by a bandage knocking his headset out, meaning he couldn't hear if Bentley had replied.
The thieving raccoon was soon bound up, tail and toes to shoulder, and sucked into the card also.
Takato Matsuki was sorting through his Digimon cards when he came across a strange purple one - not a Digimon card at all. Frowning, the goggle-wearing tamer inspected it.
"Weird... What's this even from? Oh hey, there's two?"
His digimon partner, Guilmon, looked at the cards too.
"Where did they come from, Takatomon?"
"I dunno, buddy. Never seen anything like them," He said.
And then bandages shot forth from each, one set wrapping around Guilmon's snout, the other Takato's mouth. The protesting pair, silenced, began clawing at the bandages, but soon had their arms and claws sealed at their sides. Squirming and thrashing, they had their legs bound up too, Guilmon's tail bound up and unable to move.
The pair exchanged panicked glances as they saw the cards glowing, and a moment later, were gone.
Boruto Uzumaki was taking his frustrations out on a hapless log, kicking and punching it. The training tool was crumbling away from repeated blows, and with a kick, the son of the Hokage destroyed it, splitting it in two.
"...I better get another one," He huffed, still feeling angry at... whatever had annoyed him today.
Honestly, he kinda forgot now. But he still felt mad, so, logs would be smashed!
However, amongst the splinters, Boruto was confused to see a small purple card. He reached for it... then frowned.
"...Why was it inside a log? Could it be a trap?"
Deciding to play it safe, he opted to back off for a second and check it from a distance, only for the bandage to shoot out.
Having expected a trap, and with good reflexes, he managed to dodge the first one, and even a second strand, but the bandages were homing in. One grabbed his ankle, making him trip. Landing face-first, the wind was knocked from him as he had been about to shout for help. A little dazed, he felt the bandages keep wrapping him, slowly but surely mummifying him.
Oh.
He remembered what he'd been mad about now. His dad kept having ANBU watch him secretly. And they'd argued about it.
And he'd actually won, but was still mad his dad was so paranoid. What was going to happen, he'd get kidnapped in the middle of Konoha?! Pfft, as if!
Oops...
In fairness to the young Uzumaki ninja, no one had really saw 'cards from another dimension' as a major threat.... Especially since the versions of his father these cards captured were A) mostly from before his birth and B) in different timelines entirely, since, well, those Narutos were part of the collection now.
Five cards arrived back home on the desk at Anubis Corp. From within, five bound, gagged, and very confused captured males were staring out, protesting silently, fighting their restraints.
ROBIN - Bound Baby Bird, SLY - Raccoon Hood, TAKATO - Tamer Tamed, GUILMON, Digimon in Distress, and BORUTO - Just Like Dad.
Yes, five fine new additions to the roster. They watched as a hand reached down, grabbed their cards, and began placing them away in a folder. It was merely page fifteen, with about twenty-five card slots. And the binder had many more sheets to go... and there were many more binders on the shelf.