bask in my cringe

I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT DC CANON. I DO NOT OWN ANYTHING I POST ABOUT NOR DO I MAKE MONEY. main is @lazurian My prompts are free to use with credit and a tag :3 Do not post my prompts on TikTok. I can get into legal trouble if you're making money off it. If I have blocked you, message me on tiktok @batpham.kills and I'll unblock you.

[batpham-kills]

Blocking policy

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I've had a lot of problems with TikTokers stealing my prompts and reposting them for money. This severe use of blocking has stopped a lot of people who may or may not have been trying to steal my writing, or the writing of the amazing people who add onto my posts.

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[hacvek]

reminder to worldbuilders: don't get caught up in things that aren't important to the story you're writing, like plot and characters! instead, try to focus on what readers actually care about: detailed plate tectonics

[olyia-stories]

@dragonpyre any chance you could elaborate on this

[dragonpyre]

I grew up learning about land formations. Seeing fictional maps that don’t follow the logic and science of them makes me upset

[serinos-kitt]

What are the most common sins you’ve seen relating to this? I wanna know

[dragonpyre]

Mordor.

Why is the mountain range square. How did the mountain range form. Why is there one singular volcano in the center. Why does it act like a composite volcano but have magma that acts like it’s from a shield. If it’s hotspot based volcanic activity why is there only one volcano.

And then the misty mountains!!!! Why isn’t there a rain shadow!! And why is there a FOREST where the rain shadow should be!!!!!!!!

[serinos-kitt]

So what is a rain shadow?

[lethalbutterfly]

Wind blows clouds in from the sea, but mountains are so tall the clouds can't get past 'em, so you get deserts on the windward side of mountain ranges because clouds can't get there to water the land, or do so only very rarely.

[roach-works]

this is because, as clouds are forced upwards by rising land, they cool and dump their rain. so the side of the mountain facing the ocean (or an inland sea, or a great lake) gets all the rain as the clouds are squeezed out, and the opposite side gets nothing.

my favorite thing is the american great lake snowbelts! so, the 'flow' of weather across north america, in very general terms, blows from the northwest on down south and east to the gulf of mexico.

so the wind is blowing from west to east, and in the winter it's a dryer wind than in the summer because it's colder. but after blowing across a great lake for a hundred miles, the wind is wet again. and that wet turns into snow. so for all of these lakes, the big cities are on the west side, not the east sides, because the east sides absolutely suck to live on.

the sole exception is buffalo, NY, which literally has to be there because, unfortunately, that's where all the important canal stuff between lake ontario and lake erie is happening.

also this always strikes me as cool, check out where cleveland is:

it's right at the edge of that snowbelt. and you see way more cities west of it than east, too.

[beatrice-otter]

#but again. mordor looks like that becaue sauron made it#and he's an ass

On a Watsonian level, sure.

On a Doylistic level, Mordor looks like that because plate tectonics was a fringe, ludicrous, laughable theory that nobody outside serious geology nerds had ever heard of until scientists proved seafloor spreading in the early 1960s. The first edition of the LotR trilogy was published in 54-55. We literally did not know that plate tectonics was real until almost a decade after the book was published, so obviously, it was not something Tolkien could have been considering as he made his maps.

I don't know enough meteorological history to know when white people figured out about rain shadows and added it to geology classes, or what would have been taught about volcanoes and such. But any education Tolkien got on the subject would have been in childhood/adolescence; his college education focused on the liberal arts, not the sciences, and his professional study was linguistics and the middle ages. So anything Medieval and earlier European authors wrote about he had a pretty good chance of knowing about. But not much exposure to modern science. So his science knowledge was probably limited to "what English schools taught at the turn of the 20th Century."

[whetstonefires]

I mean, it's true he didn't know about plate tectonics, but he did know what mountains look like, and that it's not normally That. And it wasn't his style to break that kind of norm without cause.

LotR has recurring themes of the reckless imposition of one's will on the natural world creating ugliness, an order you thought was inherently an improvement that in fact is inferior to what you have displaced. (Typified by reckless tree-felling; a reflection of the despoiling of the English countryside and the world by Progress.)

Mordor is a rectangle because Sauron is an asshole.

[beatrice-otter]

#the rain shadow thing otoh was undoubtedly total ignorance#but those mountains were made as the fortress of a demigod#too steeped in evil to understand beauty#it's *supposed* to look like something that Shouldn't Exist#like quite often this is something that happens in worldbuilding yes#things are arranged Wrong because a person doesn't grasp the underlying logic#but mordor is a bad example for the same reason it's an obvious one#it's So Very Wrong because it was designed to be wrong#to give you a bad feeling with how much it shouldn't look like that#if he just wanted it unapproachable on all sides it could've been in a caldera formation it didn't *need* corners#the corners were a choice#tolkien's job involved lots of looking at maps and things okay#meanwhile people whose lives revolved around the weather generally knew where the rain happened#long before it was formalized into 'rain shadow effect'#people not having The Science doesn't mean they don't have eyes and brains

[maryellencarter]

I wrote an entire paper in college analyzing the geology of the Misty Mountains and to a lesser extent the White Mountains (the Misty Mountains are easier because we get a cross-section via Moria). One thing I discovered that still knocks me for a loop when I think about it is:

Moria is the only place in Middle-Earth where mithril is found, right? That's kind of a big deal. So, why? What makes that location so special? Is it just random?

I found a paper that had just been published *that year*, 2011 or 2012 as I was writing it, that studied the locations of precious-metals mines in the Pyrenees, the similarly long skinny mountain chain that divides Spain and France. This paper discovered that where there was a bend in the mountain chain, from one of the continental plates having an awkward corner in it that got subducted under the other plate, that had dug deeper into the mantle and caused precious-metal-bearing ores to flow up to the surface in ways they didn't do anywhere else in the Pyrenees.

There's a conversation in The Fellowship of the Ring where one of the hobbits -- I don't have my copy handy or I'd get the direct quote -- asks why they can see the Misty Mountains ahead of them at one point if they're still heading south from Rivendell, and it's explained that south of Caradhras (which you may recall is the surface mountain under which Moria runs) the mountain chain bends and runs southwest instead of due south for a while.

Tolkien had absolutely no way to know *why* this particular feature of a mountain range was associated with intrusions of rare and unique metal ores, but he had gone backpacking in mountains enough to know How Things Should Look.

(And as prev excellently points out, when Jirt made screwed-up geology it was very much on purpose. Mordor shouldn't be square! Mount Doom shouldn't be doing any of the things it does! A composite volcano shouldn't even have especially hot lava! Even the Gulf of Udun, the circular feature at the upper left corner of the square, shouldn't be like that -- perfectly round features should be impact craters or calderas, not The Mountains Just Do This In A Suspiciously Convenient Way. These are all the way they are because Sauron forced them to be, in defiance of the laws of nature. Remember, he's akin to Balrogs and was a Maia of Aulë -- he's a volcano spirit in many ways.)

[sunflowergardens-world]

Amazing work by the LoTR fandom, as always.

[mysteryteacup]

This also serves as an excellent example of why worldbuilding needs - more than realism - to be cohesive and work with the themes of your story.

[reiben18]

Clones, friends, Siblings, twins? (does it really matter?)

Okay so I was writing a dpxdc prompt (?), but I have noticed that is getting a bit too long so I want to left some sort of evidence of me starting it, sooo here you have a General framework of my idea (it is still way too long):

Danny was running away from the GIW and his parents after a bad reveal (or something like that, I don't know if the reveal occurred before or after he was caught).

He has been on the run for so long that he doesn't eve now were he is now but he hasn't seen any of them in a little while until earlier that night and now they are hot on his heels, no matter were he ran or how many corners he turned they just keep appearing.

....

After a while of that going on Danny finally managed to create some distance between them, but he needed to leave (temporarily) the back alleys and go trough the main street to a difference area of the city (and maybe leave the city itself) if he wants to lose them for real, even if just for the moment. But when he was just about to leave the back alley he was in, a figure appear right in front of him, blocking his path, Danny have turned invisible to avoid being seen so the figure didn't notice him but Danny certainly noticed that they were too close for him to avoid colliding with them without turning intangible or slowing down, and that wasn't an option right now, so he squishes a bit more of energy from his already stained core to turn intangible on top of being invisible, anyway it would only be a second so it should be all right... Right?...

(It was in fact not all right.)

Just when he was passing trough the person he feels a tug in his core and everything turns white, next thing he knows, he is stumbling forwards, looking in a completely different direction than before. While trying to regain his balance he looks down only to see his own body just laying there, he stares at it for what feels like forever, but couldn't been more than an instant when he hears the GIW and his parents the Fentons come in his direction and he starts running again, the more he ran the more he felt his core settling down in this  body.

This didn't felt like overshadowing someone at all, it feels more a kind to possessing an object but not quite... Which didn't make any sense! This was clearly a person, not an object! And what else could this be if not an overshadowing or possession!? (A transmigration or transference.)

His original body was damaged beyond what his healing factor could hope to repair, and the stress of keeping it in working conditions on top of everything else was starting to damage his core, if he continued overstraining it like that his core would break, making him reach his true death...

So when he passed trough a body that met all the requirements for a transference: a living soulless body without any trace of it ever having one to begin with and a constitution sufficiently similar to the original to fit his own soul within it? His core instinctively latched on to the body like a starving man to a piece of bread, bring the rest of his being with it.

A true halfa needs a living half to survive it doesn't matter if it's the original one or not... Yes, both parts can (technically) exist without the other but a ghost half without the living one is just waiting for it's time to run out, and a living half without the ghost one is only a soulless shellf.

Not that Danny knew any of that...

Anyway! He does not have time to think about it right now, he needs to run, he needs to hide, he needs a secure place to lie down and figure out what to do now!

━━━━━ ◦ 💚𖤐🖤 ◦ ━━━━━

Somewhere else, a little bit earlier that same night...

Damian was running after the last one remaining clone of the latest batch send after him by his mother.

He has been running after it for the past 2 hours, (admittedly he lost sight of it at least twice in that time) not that it matters, he was about to catch the clone anyway.

'Was' being the key word. Because just when he was going to strike his shot, Birdarang in hand, a body- a corpse (it couldn't be anything but a corpse with the state it was in) appear out of thin air and fall through- Through the clone, making it stumble forward... What exactly was going on here?...

He views what must be own his confusion reflect on the clone's, and that confused expression didn't fit its face at all, neither did the one full of terror that followed soon after, and the way that it moves...Yes, it did show signs of combat experience and some sort of training but it was nothing like the league, so unlike any of his other clones...

It didn't seem a farce either. He wasn't sure as to why, but Damian could just feel that it wasn't an act...

Though if the group of oddly dressed people (possibly a new gang) that appear almost simultaneously with the clone's scape yelling about ghost running away, ecto-scum(?), putting someone to rest in peace, lost ecto-signatures and possessed bodies being left behind, give him any clue...

He was going to have to let the clone go for now and stay to investigate this at least until Oracle send someone else to take over it so he can go and catch the clone, or to be more precise ghost/meta with ghost like powers that was possesing his clone now; whoever they were and whateve they are, they seem to be a victim and they need help and it is his duty as a vigilante help, especially with them being inside his clone they are his problem to solve.

[zealouswitchwerewolf]

Dpxdc prompt/idea

Most people in Amity know Danny is Phantom, especially the teenagers. More importantly, they've realized that everyone in Amity is liminal enough to be summoned with the correct runes. And so a system has been devised so when they want to hang out somewhere, one person goes in, draws a big summoning circle, and just summons everyone else. It saves a lot on transportation and it's just practical.

Now that they're all old enough to go to college, most have spread all around the country. Staying in contact is not a problem, however, they can just summon each other, get together for a while, then break the circle and send them back to wherever they were before. Perfect solution. It doesn't even register as weird, they've been doing it for years and no one even bats an eye anymore. No one in Amity that is.

It'd be fine except they've caught the attention of the Justice League. On the heroes perspective, they have just discovered a cult that formed seemingly out of nowhere and keeps leaving neon green summoning circles with ominous runes traced along the edges in random places all over the country. They have not found any sign that people are getting hurt but that only means the cult is thorough at covering their tracks. Where did so many well-organized, clearly trained people come from? What are their bigger plans? Who are they targeting? They're clearly a big threat and they need to be a priority in investigating.

[silicon-puppy-pudding]

Dpxdc prompt

So, we all know Danny is pretty young for a ghost. Like, yeah he's 20 now and in college and living with his friends in Gotham but his core is like 6 years old.

Non of the ghost around him really gave his core 'caring parent' vibes (except maybe Clockwork and Frostbite but they feel more like grandfathers or mentors to him) so he never ended up forming a parental bond like most young ghosts do

In comes Jason from stage left

You see, Jason isn't much older than Danny really, just a year or so

BUT

The PIT is

The pit that's infected him and basically made his core how it is today.

So from an outside perspective, he feels like a much older ghost.

Well, neither of them know that. So they start hanging out, become friends and on both ends they each think they may be developing feelings for each other but something's not right.

For Jason, he knows he cares for Danny very much. He loves to see him smile and laugh and enjoys cooking for him and exchanging gifts but when Dickie bird asks if he's "down bad" all he can think is "Ew no"

But why? They're about the same age, Danny is cute and fit and has a great personality but....

Thinking of him like that gives him the ick. Danny's like his sweet baby boy! He could never think of him like that.

Wait..

On Danny's side, his bff's are on him about how obviously he has feelings for Jay! They spend so much time together, and he's hot af!

And Danny cuts them off like, "Guys, I get it but please don't call him hot. Yall saying that feels the same as when Vlad calls my mom hot, it's gross" and Sam and Tuck are both like huh?!?!? WTF DO YOU MEAN?!?!? And Danny has to stop and think, wait, what do I mean?!?

So Danny ends up going to ask Frostbite about it and Frosties all "Ah! It seems the two of you may have formed a type of parent/child bond! Congratulations on finally finding someone who you feel comfortable enough to do so with!"

...

.......

WHAT!?

Danny is flabbergasted

"But..but he's like, my age!? How does that even work!?"

Now Danny has to somehow explain to his new dad friend that they somehow "ghost parent bonded" or something without sounding like some kinda weirdo freak

Oh goodie

[atomicsheepscientist]

Dp x Dc fic idea that wouldn't let me sleep:

"No, you don't understand! I need my powers. I'll die without them!" Danny pleaded with the officer in front of him.

"Sure, kid, and I need a burger. You'll be just fine without your flight or superstrength or whatever. Look, I see kids like you all the time nowadays. You think just because you have a few powers, you can become some kind of hero. You run away from home, cause trouble in the name of 'justice' or whatever. Then reality hits. You start stealing. What's a few stolen bucks or candy bars in the name of the greater good, right? It's a downward spiral from there. Seems you were pretty far down the spiral. Beating up government agents? Kid, there is no way in hell I'm letting you out of here without the meta power suppressant collar. You're lucky Mr. Wayne was so generous and decided to foster you until we find your parents. I would've sent your troublesome ass back to juvie."

I was thinking this was a bad timeline where the Fenton parents died and Danny ran away. The power suppressing collar does work on him somehow, and cuts him off from his ghost half, which stops the ectoplasm that was keeping him alive since the accident.

I pictured Bruce as the foster parent that decided to help the troubled teen, but it could be anyone. Imagine if Lex Luthor decided he wanted to "help" (read: manipulate the young meta into doing his bidding) Danny instead. Extra angst.

[ailithnight]

These tags from @therandomartmaker have passed peer review.

Also @atiyasnake because their au was mentioned in those tags.

Now then, Danny probably doesn't mentally clock out immediately. It, like the rest of his deterioration, is a steady decay over time. And for like a week while he's still present enough, while he still has the energy for more than a noncommittal hum; he tries, over and over and over again, he tries to tell them what's wrong. They just don't believe him. Even when he tells them the truth about the government agent he was fighting, the truth about the GIW and the Anti-Ecto acts and they look it up and verify all that for themselves, they still won't trust him about the collar.

A week in and he's too exhausted to keep arguing. They won't take his word for it. It's too much a contradiction to their understanding of how the world works. Just like the rest of him. His whole existence is a contradiction to the immutable laws of life and death. Fine. It's fine. If they won't listen, there's no point in spending his precious energy trying to make them.

2 weeks and he can feel the early stages of rot setting in to his internal organs. It hurts, but less than he thought it would. Mostly it's these growing spots of numbness that kinda burn at the edges where his body is trying valiantly to beat the necrosis back. The Justice League hosts a press conference that week. All of the founding members, including the one and only Batman; delivers a very passionate speech informing the public of, and denouncing, the Anti-Ecto acts and all those associated with it's passing and enforcement. It stirs a thought in Danny's sluggish mind. Maybe Bruce Wayne really does have some kind of ties to Batman.

3 weeks and he can tell the Waynes can tell he's genuinely sick by now. His coordination is failing, his muscles are atrophying (decaying, their decaying, rotting away inside his skin and leaving this disgusting slimy feeling behind), and his temperature is jumping between a "low grade" (for a normal human) fever and borderline hypothermia. He spends most of his time sleeping now, and most of the rest of it in a delirious dissociative haze. In one of his rare moments of lucidity, he wonders if they'll finally accept that he's right about the suppressor. But no, of course not. He can hear them talk around him, wondering and worrying at the mysterious illness. What could be causing it, how do they treat it? That one dashed hope, which was hardly a hope at all and more an errant thought, shouldn't hurt worse than his body literally dying and decomposing from the inside out. It shouldn't hurt worse than that. Somehow, it does anyway.

4 weeks in and Danny has accepted his fate. Resigned himself to this slow second death. He can't decide whether it's better or worse than his first. Idly, he wonders if he'll become a full ghost next. Or if the suppressor will prevent that too. If it does, will his soul be able to move on? Or will it be trapped in his body until the flesh rots away entirely and all that's left is bones? And some day in the far distant future even those bones crumble to dust and what then? Will he be able to move on then? Or will he still be here, bound to the dust that used to be him, torn apart and scattered across the world until the world ceases to be. Such big questions.

Danny doesn't have the energy to ponder too much. He guesses he'll figure it out when it happens and that will have to be enough. At least it's safe to think he'll be given a grave this time. Surely the Waynes care enough to give him that much. They must. They care enough at least that there's always someone sitting with him whenever he wakes up. Even when he's only semi-lucid, they're there, murmuring to him all the news from current events in the world (the Anti-Ecto acts have been repealed and the GIW disbanded, that's nice) to what new animals Damian is trying to sneak into the manor to what Alfred has cooked most recently. The rotating cast of gentle voices is nice. Not quite a consolation for them refusing to believe him, but nice nonetheless. And maybe having a grave this time will make up for the rest. A place to rest sounds heavenly right now.

Danny doesn't know how long it's been anymore. All he knows is that something is wrong. For the first time since that cop locked a collar around his neck; Danny's core is awake, active, and screeching at him to do something. Something has his protection instinct riled up and it is so very very bad that his core is generating enough ectoplasm to just barely override the collar's suppression capacity.

Danny's eyes snap open, burning vibrant, toxic green. He jolts upwards, startling the half dozen weirdly dressed people sitting around him in some kind of medical room with a strange, rough stone ceiling. There's a lot of sudden commotion, several sets of hands reaching, out trying to stop him as Danny slings his legs off the hospital cot and stands on weak and trembling legs. He's grateful for the reaching hands that catch him before he collapses onto a rough stone floor. The tiny amounts of ectoplasm his core is able to generate around the suppressor's effects isn't nearly enough to heal him. But it's enough to give him energy. Energy he hasn't had since that first week. Energy to talk. Energy to argue.

"Please! You have to. Take it off. Please, just take it off. Something is. Something bad. I need. Have to. Fight. Protect. Protect! Take it off. Take it off! Take It Off! TAKE IT OFF!"

[babbling-babull]

I was thinking about what could have set off his Protection Obsession and it occurred to me. What if one of the Bats made a remark about having to bury Bruce alongside Danny?

Also, which Bat takes off the collar? (Ob Boy are they all gonna Spiral once they learn that he wasn't kidding)

[atomicsheepscientist]

I love all these additions! OK, here's my take on the incident that has them taking off his collar: The Joker bombed the manor.

It was Bruce's turn to watch over Danny for the night, so he was forced to stay in when the news of an Arkham breakout arrived. Dick suited up as Batman for the night, and it was all hands on deck rounding up all the escapees. Two hours in, and everyone was caught and put back in a cell... everyone except the Joker. Then, Joker appeared on every local radio and entertainment channel. He had a game for the Bats! Find the bombs he placed all around the city, or watch as the most important people of Gotham all blow up!

The first few were easy: The mayor's house, Jim Gordon's house, some other important figures. They found and disarmed 6 bombs, then found and arrested the Joker himself. They thought they were done, that they had won. But when cuffing Joker, one of the stopwatches lining his arms starts beeping, and he's laughing maniacally and singing "lucky number 7!"

Meanwhile, Bruce is with Danny. His coms and computers were confiscated by Alfred so he would focus on taking care of the sick boy. All of a sudden, Bruce hears a timer go off and the recorded sound of Jokers laugh echoing through the halls. He barely has time to cover Danny’s prone body when the room explodes all around them.

Alfred in batcave when it happened. He was helping Oracle coordinate the search over comms. When it was apparent the Joker was still loose, he was also tasked with keeping Jason in the cave. Jason was not happy with this decision, and was arguing loudly against it when the explosion happened. The entire cave shook with the force of it.

After a moment of silence, Jason quickly runs upstairs into the manor (in civilian clothes because his Red Hood gear was hidden by Alfred). The whole house is ablaze, wooden support pillers falling over and the roof looking like it will collapse in on itself any minute now.

Jason runs to Danny’s room, finding Bruce unconscious over the seemingly unharmed Danny (it's hard to tell if there are any new injuries under all the sores and skin decay). Jason can't carry them both, so he makes a split second decision. He moves Bruce's prone and bleeding body onto the floor, then picks up Danny (who's equally unconcious and bleeding, but again, he was like that before the explosion) and jumps out the window. Secondary blasts from inside the manor can be heard as Jason runs Danny to the front of the house. The Wayne manor is completely on fire, walls and roof can be seen caving in at some places.

Alfred joins Jason in the front yard, a safe distance back to watch the family home burn to the ground.

One minute later, Dick (as Batman), Damian (as Robin), and Tim (as Red Robin) arrive at the manor in the Batmobile. Three minutes later, the paramedics, firefighters, and police arrive, along with the rest of the bats and birds.

Jason places Danny gently on a stretcher as Dick storms up to him.

"Where's Bruce?" Dick asks in his best Batman impression, the worry in his voice hidden from anyone who wasn't trained by Batman.

Jason (in shock but not about to admit to that), just points back to the burning manor.

The fire can still be seen going strong, but the firefighters seem to be doing their job as several stream of water are fighting against the blaze.

"You left him in there? Why didn't you save him?!"

"What, you wanted me to run back into that burning building for a man who failed to do the same for me? I got Danny out! Was that not good enough for you?"

Red Robin steps between the two before the yelling can escalate into a full on fight. "Well, we're here now and we better get a game plan if we want any chance of not having to bury Bruce or anyone else tonight!"

At that, suddenly Danny stirs on the stretcher. He jolts up as though he was electrocuted, shakily standing up and opening his eyes. Dick and Tim hurriedly help him stand while also trying to convince him to lay back down. Jason notes those eyes are not the same blue color as before, but instead are green. Lazarous water green.

"Please, you have to... take it off! Please! I. I need. To protect. Someone. Needs help. Take it off!" Danny somehow managed to gasp out, in the closest thing to a moment of consciousness he's had in over a week.

"OK, fine. I'll take that stupid collar off you." Jason says, pulling out his lockpicks.

"What?" "No, stop!" Tim and Dick say at the same time.

"Screw you both, I've never liked that fucking thing anyway! Look at the kid, this might be his last request." Jason yells back, shoving their hands out of the way to get to the suppressant collar around the kids neck. He never said anything, but seeing Danny in that collar always felt wrong. In the few times he wasn't avoiding the manor, it was like he could feel the despair and inevitability of death radiating off the kid.

"He's a flight risk and dangerous criminal, Todd! Leave him be so we can go and save father!" Damian angrily stomps over, joining the conversation.

"Go and save B yourself if you're so worried! He was in Danny’s room last I saw. To your points about Danny; First off, I'm a dangerous criminal. Second, he's a dying kid! Maybe this will help him get some peace, at least. I'm doing this no matter what you say, so go fuck off for all i care." Jason worked on the lock even while arguing with his siblings. Seconds after saying that, the lock clicks open, and the collar falls to the ground. Dick and Tim had managed to get Danny sitting back on the stretcher. They back off as Danny slumps into Jason.

Danny feels like his whole body is on fire. Every nerve in his body floods with power. He feels amazing and horrible all at once as the ectoplasm rushes out to heal him. Like someone who was starving suddenly gorged themselves on a feast, the first thing he does is throw up. The second thing he does is change into his Phantom form. It's like a lizard shedding its old skin.

The Bat siblings watch in awe as their dying foster brother goes disturbingly still, then gasps and starts spasming as his wounds heal themselves with a green glow. Then, in a flash of white light, his form is replaced by a color-swapped version of the same boy. This white-haired Danny's whole body glows, but his green eyes glow the most. Danny flies out of Jason’s hold, and those glowing green eyes start sweeping the area, taking in everything going on. Then, he flies off. Before anyone can stop him, Danny flies directly into the burning mansion.

[undercookedcatgut]

Danny's human form was never quite the same after that. Decay doesn't simply go away, rot doesn't just disappear. Even with ectoplasmic assistance it was unlikely his other half would ever fully heal. It was safer to remain as Phantom nowadays. If it made him tense and flighty then that was nobody's business but his own. Sometimes he could still find himself looking over his shoulder, fearing his parents walking in or the GIW there to get him. Logically, he knew that wouldn't happen. His parents were dead and the GIW were never that quiet. They were disbanded too, Danny had to keep reminding himself about that. However even knowing that, he still couldn't quite help the flinches nor stop the sudden and overpowering dread, that he'd just been found out whenever a person called his name. Things were fine. He'd always had a knack for adapting in the moment after all. It was just taking a bit longer this time around.

[darkmodepls]

Their newest brother is

dead

Dead

DEAD

And they were the ones who killed him

His echo floats aimlessly around the manor. Still exhibiting the semi conscious state of his final days.

His only reactions are when he quails in terror, shying away from their hands with a faint but haunting wail before fading into nothingness

Jason is the only one he'll stay in the same room with, otherwise he vanishes into thin air the moment they cross the threshold.

The final reports about the GIW and Amity Park have come in.

There are clips of Danny Phantom in action.

Its hard to reconcile the vibrant and witty hero with the ghost of their sins

[alculai]

[menolly5600]

After Danny's human identity was accidentally revealed when he was exploding the GIW bases, the GIW knew who he was and were hunting him in both forms. Danny had been attacking the bases to force people outside Amity to investigate the GIW, and also making sure to free any captive ghosts. But with the GIW knowing that he's got a human form, they modified standard (criminal) meta suppression collars to suppress Ectoplasm circulation and energy activation (based off stolen Fenton tech). Then the GIW distributed the collars to federal and local authorities that were assisting in the manhunt for the meta terrorist. As a large metropolis with high ambient ectoplasm, Gotham received a collar.

Danny was hiding homeless in Gotham and maybe got onto the Bats' radar as a homeless kid. He ended up getting picked up by child services and doesn't want to reveal his powers while waiting for an opportunity to vanish. But someone at the office had clocked this homeless kid as the terrorist and called the cops to pick him up. When the cops took him into custody, he thought he could ghost them because he didn't want to hurt anyone. But they brought the collar and locked it on him when he was distracted. He didn't realize at first it was more than a typical meta gene suppressor.

But the Bats had already been on the lookout for the meta terrorist and were alerted he'd been captured in Gotham. But when they looked into it, they found out that the terrorist is a kid, and is the homeless kid some of them had met before. The cops planned to put him in Arkham until the GIW arrived to collect him.

But Bruce was able to arrange to foster him temporarily because he's a minor and hasn't actually been convicted of any crimes yet. In the national manhunt he's been a suspect and a person of interest, but he legally has rights still and there's been no trial even scheduled yet. Bruce got emergency custody and paid his bail on condition of keeping the collar on to prevent flight risk and to make sure he comes to interrogations and cooperates with the investigation. If he runs or the collar is removed, or he doesn't show for the investigation efforts, then custody will be revoked and he'll be handed over to the GIW to contain.

Danny did try to run at first, but the Bats brought him back. And once Bruce explained that if Danny keeps trying to run or the collar is removed, then the police will have to hand him to the GIW. Bruce explains he's trying to keep him safe while the investigation looks into the GIW and the explosions, because it's suspicious.

Danny doesn't actually know what long term power suppression will do to him. He knows even just the temporary Plasmius Maximus makes him feel weak and exhausted. But he doesn't know that permanently suppressing ectoplasm energy activation will kill him.

The longer he has the collar on, the more exhaustion drags at him. He tries telling the Waynes he needs it off because his powers are a part of him, and he's not actually a meta. He tries to explain he's half ghost, but the Waynes, and the child counselor and therapist they got him, are convinced it's delusions brought on by his victimization at the hands of his parents upbringing and the GIW persecution of him for having meta powers. Basically, everyone believes he's been conditioned to believe he's half inhuman and a monster.

The investigation is revealing that the GIW are violating the Meta Protection Acts and hunting and persecuting metas and nonhuman sentients (aliens) by labeling them as non-sentient ghosts. The attacks were born of his traumatic conditioning, fear for his life, and self-defense against violations of his rights and body. The fact that the GIW does intend to vivisect him as a specimen and are planning his eventual destruction only proves Danny was fighting and attacking them in self defense. Even the Justice League is getting involved in exposing the Anti-Ecto Control Acts as violations of Meta and Alien rights. They're well on the way to being repealed. The GIW is already being shut down and under scrutiny for human and alien rights violations, Geneva Convention violations, misappropriation of government resources, etc.

This guarantees Danny won't be handed to the GIW. But if Bruce can't keep custody then he'll be put in Arkham because of the delusions brought on by his conditioning. So the collar has to stay on. He's still a flight risk, and the child therapist believes him delusional still. Because while ghosts are real, they're not like the GIW reports claim or how Danny claims he's part ghost.

And this whole time, Danny gets weaker and more exhausted. Not even eating more is helping much. He's been trying to hide it, though. He's afraid of showing weakness.

It's bad enough nobody believes him about being a halfa, but it's understandable. Being Schrodinger's boy is hard to wrap your mind around, let alone being a sorta unliving undead being, like some eldritch thing Lovecraft dreamed up. His parents didn't understand. Not even Jazz and his friends really understood completely how his accident changed him on a fundamental level. Even Danny doesn't think too hard about it most of the time. It's easier to just think of himself as a boy with powers, sometimes.

So he hides how weak he's becoming, how ill he's starting to feel all the time. At first he thinks it's because he's adjusting to being without his powers and away from Amity Park, his haunt. He thinks it's feeling ill like he's going through withdrawals. He doesn't want the Waynes to decide he's too weird, too difficult, too creepy, too inhuman. Because he's getting attached, and he kind of thinks maybe they mean it that he's family now, that he's safe. He's kind of hoping they might actually be able to learn to love each other like a family.

But then he starts collapsing. He can't hide it anymore. Like a sickly fainting Victorian damsel, he keeps collapsing at random, fainting and blacking out. They already knew his vitals were off, lower heart rate and temperature. But now he's got arrhythmia and heart murmurs. He's starting to get fluid buildup in his lungs. He's unable to go ghost form, his human half still needs to breathe and have a pulse. His immune system is failing, he gets a cold that becomes pneumonia. Even after rigorous antibiotics and immuno boosters, even after he recovers from the pneumonia, he's still declining.

They did take him to the hospital, but the doctors couldn't find out what was wrong exactly. They did detect a buildup of strange chemicals all throughout his body cells. The chemicals had similarities to many of the chemicals found in GIW facilities. Also the Bats recognized some of the chemical markers Ra's used with his Lazarus water experiments. The best theory from the doctors is that exposure to the chemicals, from his parents' lab and the GIW facilities he attacked, was causing cellular poisoning. There was nothing they could do for him because it was so widespread and systemic.

Bruce insisted on taking Danny home. Even if all they could do was keep him comfortable, Bruce wanted his boy home. And maybe the Bats could find something from off world or esoteric that could save him. Besides, Danny was afraid every time he woke up in the hospital after blacking out again. If Danny had less than a year left to live, he wanted him to be comfortable, safe, and surrounded with family that had grown to love him.

The Waynes had always hated having to leave the collar on Danny. Especially Tim, because he was familiar with Impulse's dark future of control collars. But to keep him at home, even while he's slowly dying, they had to leave it on and being actively tracked as working by the federal government. Otherwise he'd be moved to Arkham for treatment and containment. They didn't want his last months to be in Arkham. The care there might just kill him faster.

Danny was in the manor at first. He was still mobile for a bit after coming back from the hospital. But then his legs started failing as his muscles atrophied and deteriorated. He was blacking out more, his short term memory failing. They helped him move around with a wheelchair for a bit, taking him to meals and to hang out around the manor with the family.

He was confused and sinking into a mental fog more often. He begged sometimes to take off the collar, or to let him go. Sometimes he begged them not to hurt him, begged them to understand that he's still Danny, still human. Sometimes he didn't know where he was and begged his parents not to tear him apart molecule by molecule.

As his digestive organs started failing, he couldn't eat so had to be hooked up to machines and IVs for fluids and nutrients. He was bed bound in his room, trying to make him comfortable. Someone was with him almost constantly, talking to him, taking care of him, comforting him as best they could.

But his mind wandered away more often, dissociating and catatonic. Soon he was rarely aware or lucid. As he wasted away, his organs began failing more and they moved him to the Batcave onto life support. They tried even more esoteric things to save him but nothing was working.

But waking up briefly lucid in the Batcave infirmary gave Danny a panic attack that nearly killed him before he passed out again. They reluctantly conceded having him in his room in the manor was safer. It took a bit of doing, but they got him set back up in his room with all the fancy cutting edge life support equipment. But it was a real chance Danny might die at any time. Despite all the life support equipment, necrosis was slowly setting in across his body, tissue dying while his body was forced to keep living.

After his skin started rotting in places, Bruce and the others could barely tear themselves away, out of fear he'd be gone by the time they came back. But then there was an Arkham breakout. They decided Bruce would stay with Danny so he wouldn't be alone, just in case he woke, just in case he died.

The Joker couldn't directly plant bombs in Wayne manor. Bruce's security system is too good to miss goons sneaking in to plant explosives. Instead he strapped explosives and Joker toxin canisters to house mice and released them onto Wayne property. And just in case they didn't find ways into the manor, he had a goon with a rocket launcher set up in the empty Drake manor next door.

The scattered explosions across Wayne manor were mice detonating in the walls. Some fires started, but the toxin was the most dangerous. The rocket launcher hit the upstairs and blew up Danny's bathroom and part of his bedroom and the hallway, and the room next to his. The concussive blast knocked Bruce unconscious. But he'd been shielding Danny already since the mice started exploding before the rocket hit.

When Jason rushed upstairs to the manor, he tried to rescue them both. But Bruce is a huge guy and Danny is fragile. He tried to drag Bruce half on his back while carrying Danny downstairs, but the toxin laced colored smoke and fire was too dangerous to expose them directly to. Bruce woke enough to slur at Jason to take Danny and save themselves. Obviously concussed, he told Jason not to die again. Jason went out the window with Danny.

He intended to go back for Bruce. Because he's determined to be better than Batman, so he's not going to leave him to die in an exploding building. And he's not going to give the Joker the satisfaction of killing another of them. And he's not going to lose Bruce just when they were starting to get somewhere better between them. But the outer wall under Danny's room is unstable and on fire after the rocket explosion. The fires and gas are so random throughout the building he can't find a safe route back to Bruce without his heavy vigilante gear.

He returned to Alfred who was watching over Danny. They couldn't take most of the life support equipment with Danny, but Alfred has portable oxygen and a defibrillator in case his heart stopped. The other Bats start arriving ahead of emergency services. Most of them split off as soon as they hear Bruce is trapped inside and concussed. Spreading out, they try to find a safe route to extract him. DickBats and Tim check on Jason, Alfred and especially Danny.

Red Robin asks if there are any routes from the Cave clear of toxin and fire. He mentions he doesn't know if the family can handle burying two family members at the same time. Danny's obviously doing worse away from the medical equipment.

Jason snaps that Danny's not going to die, Bruce told them to survive. And they're not going to give the clown the satisfaction.

DickBats determinedly declares Bruce isn't going to die.

This is when Danny's protection obsession is triggered and he jerkily sits up, scrabbling at his collar. He's begging to get it off, he needs to protect.

Jason snarls and goes to get the damned thing off.

Red Robin stops Jason Todd-Wayne. Says if he does it, Danny could be taken away from the Waynes. But if Red Robin does it... The Waynes can't be held liable for vigilante actions. And it might be Danny's last request, the stress might be too much for him, and Tim isn't going to let his little brother die in a suppression collar.

It takes a moment after the collar comes off before power washes over Danny and he's changed. He flies into the manor and saves Bruce, ice putting out most of the fires.

But when he returns with Bruce, he changes back and collapses again. His human half is still suffering organ failure from cumulative damage. His regenerative healing isn't instant. His body had been devouring his energy reserves to survive and he had almost nothing left to devote to healing. He was starting to regenerate but it will take time he may not have.

Emergency services is arriving by then. Danny and Bruce are taken to the hospital for overnight observation. Bruce, Dick, and the Wayne lawyers have to argue down child services and get permission from the police commissioner to justify removing the collar. Red Robin adds in that the collar was restricting the boy's breathing so had to be removed on site. The doctors verify that the boy is dying and all that can be done is make him comfortable while he passes. He's slipped into a coma and the doctors doubt he'll wake. Arkham, and the hospital, aren't the best places for keeping him comfortable. Bruce, still concussed, pleads to let him take his foster son home so he can be with family when he goes. By late morning they're allowed to take Danny home to die in comfort, without the collar.

Danny's human half has been struggling to heal, but a lot of his tissues are dead and decomposed. He can't heal the dead tissue, even though he can replace the cells in time with his regeneration. He's in a healing coma state as his core gathers ambient ectoplasm and absorbs the strong emotions around him to convert to ectoplasm. His ghost side is storing up energy in preparation for massive regeneration.

Once his core has gathered energy, his human body starts sloughing off the dead tissue. His core forces a self-preservation shift to ghost form and drops all the dead and decaying flesh and organs from his human half. He doesn't need the tissue and organs in ghost form, and can focus all his energy on regenerating his human half while maintaining ghost form.

But during this state, his human brain is offline. It takes a lot of energy to have his brain operational. With his brain comatose and his core acting as a secondary brain and emotional center, it's like he's sleepwalking. He reacts to emotional stimuli rather than logic or reasoning in this state.

Meanwhile, the Waynes had set him up in the Batcave with more equipment. There was some desperate hope he might get better without the collar suppressing his meta powers. He'd been a little better and strong enough to save Bruce right after removing it. But he still hadn't woken up after hanging on for a few more days.

Then his vitals crashed as his brain activity flatlined. Then he changed again, like he had when he saved Bruce. Except this time when the strange energy form floated up above the bed, it left behind a rotting slurry of flesh, organs and crumbling bone.

The floating, translucent, color reversed version of him still looked like Danny. But they couldn't touch him. He didn't respond to their calls. Even when he opened his glowing green eyes, he was unresponsive to them. It was as if he wasn't registering seeing or hearing them. It was as if Danny had died, leaving behind a rotted body and an echo, a shade of a ghost that wasn't a ghost like Deadman is a ghost.

Danny was dead.

Danny's shade haunted the Cave, and later the manor once it was repaired. He haunted them, his gaze distant and unresponsive. The only times he seemed to respond to something was when someone was angry, distraught and grieving, or experiencing an intense emotion. Sometimes his shade would flee the area, sometimes vanishing completely for a while. Other times he'd be drawn to the person, hovering around them as if concerned, but without quite seeing them.

It usually made the grieving worse.

Danny's human mind was catatonic and unconscious. His ghost-brain core was dissociating and running on instincts. He fled from dangerous 'fight-anger' emotions to protect his human half while so weak and regenerating. He was drawn to his family-fraid being happy or (more often) sad. He wanted to soak up the happy emotions, though there wasn't much happiness in the manor these days after their newest brother died. And he wanted to comfort his family-fraid when sad and upset. Instinctively he used as little energy as possible so everything else could go towards healing his human half. So he barely glowed, didn't become tangible and was barely visible most of the time.

But Danny was slowly healing and his tissues and organs slowly being reconstructed while in his ghost form. His ghost form is entirely ectoplasm so it's easier to rebuild the organs and muscles out of ectoplasmic cells. When he's ready to transform back to human form and wake up his brain, the ectoplasmic cells will shift to living tissue cells along with the rest of his body.

But until then, Danny's mentally checked out. And the Waynes think he died, gruesomely decomposing rapidly, and is now haunting them for failing him.

[darkmodepls]

[roseverdict]

Now I'm imagining some time after The Sloughening, it's been pretty grim around the manor with Danny's ghost hovering around, the works…

…and then Danny's ghost stops all of a sudden, maybe near a wall or something, and for a moment anybody nearby is just looking at him like 👁️👁️

and then he transforms back to his human self, his feet hit the floor, he meets somebody's eyes, and he manages a "whuh…? I was not here a second ago" before passing tf out.

Normal passing out this time, as opposed to "clinging to death's doorjamb by his fingernails" passing out lmao.

Let there be chaos.

[eternal-watcher]

Really should’ve listened when he said he’s half ghost rather than a meta. But nope they just assumed he was delusional.

Anyway now that his human side is back online I guess they will have no choice but to believe him. (I wouldn’t be surprised if his ghost side needed a rest though, after having to regenerate his human half)

[liketolaugh-writes]

Nearly a year after Danny first arrived at the manor, he was back in a hospital bed. Hooked up to IV fluids, a whole host of monitors, and someone next to him every time he woke up, but without the life support equipment he'd been surrounded by toward the end. (Well, it wasn't attached to him anymore. He could still see it nearby.)

From what he understood later, there was around a week and a half between when he collapsed back into his human form and when he was finally lucid again. What Danny knew, though, was that he opened his eyes and Bruce was there, a hand resting on Danny's forehead.

"Hey, chum," Bruce said, voice painfully soft. There was a storm of emotion in his eyes - Danny could sense it in the air around them too, though he was too disoriented to try and untangle it. "How are you feeling?"

Danny blinked at him, opened his mouth, and closed it, making a face at the dryness of his mouth. Bruce chuckled.

"Think you can sit up?"

Actually... yeah. For the first time in longer than Danny could easily remember, there was strength in his body. Not much - he ached with exhaustion, shaky and weak - but he didn't feel like his limbs were filled with slick, oozing slime anymore, and his chest and abdomen felt almost... normal. He nodded, and Bruce helped him sit up, taking most of his weight with ease, and then gave him a cup of water. Danny drank a few mouthfuls before he managed to speak.

"What happened?" he rasped. Bruce's half-smile fell.

"What's the last thing you remember?" Bruce asked, voice roughening with guilt that Danny could taste, literally.

Danny shook his head, making a face as the motion made him aware of his headache, the fuzziness of his thoughts. "'S all blurry," he muttered. "The collar came off?" That was almost too unbelievable to be true, and he lifted a hand to his neck to check. But it was bare. He smiled. "There's... some before and some after. An explosion. Heat. And a lot of quiet. Was I ghosting you? Sorry."

He managed a grin at Bruce's flash of exasperation, but Bruce's grip on him stayed steady. Danny drank a little more, then pressed Bruce's arm pointedly, a signal that for months had been a silent request to lay back down. Bruce took the cup back and set him down carefully.

"Yes," Bruce said, quiet. "The Joker managed to blow up the manor while you and I were inside. Jason was only able to get you out, but you... demanded the collar be taken off. Tim was afraid it would be your last request. When he did, you went back in to get me, and then collapsed." He cleared his throat. "We thought that you were too far gone. After a few days, you... sloughed off your human form, and then you were a ghost. Half-aware. It's been a few months since then."

Danny nodded, letting his eyes fall shut as exhaustion threatened to pull him back under already. "Sorry. Never regenerated anything this intense before. Good to know that ghost rules apply to my human form, I guess."

"We didn't believe you."

"I know."

"I'm sorry."

That was enough to get Danny to pry his eyes back open, and he reached up to grab Bruce's hand where it rested on his shoulder. It was good to have that much strength again. He gave Bruce a crooked smile.

"I get it," he admitted. He couldn't say it was okay - it really wasn't - but he'd always kind of understood. (Like he'd understood his parents, and Valerie, and even the officer who had originally snapped the collar onto him.) "Freak of nature and all. Who'd believe in something like that? It's almost as bad as believing in ghosts."

Bruce didn't roll his eyes, but Danny could feel that he wanted to, and it made Danny grin again.

"We'll talk more when you wake up again," Bruce said, softer. "Everyone has been looking forward to it. Even Jason hasn't left the manor since you returned to this form."

"Really?" That was hard for Danny to believe. He didn't think he'd ever seen Jason sleep in the manor, even when he spent the day - though he supposed he hadn't exactly been aware enough to tell when he'd been passing in and out toward the end.

Bruce nodded, though. "We... weren't sure if you'd reach the point of lucidity," he admitted haltingly. "There were concerns that you would remain comatose."

"Not doing that," Danny promised, though his eyes were slipping shut again already, the pull of sleep now too much to resist. "I'm okay."

Bruce nodded. "Sleep. Someone will be here when you wake up."

---

The next time Danny opened his eyes, it was Dick that was sitting with him. He was flipping through a sky atlas, a strained smile on his face. There were two more astronomy books on the nightstand next to him, along with a game that Danny vaguely remembered talking about, plus Danny's phone - his real one, the one that had been phased into a wall in his room since he'd been permanently moved to the infirmary. Dick's eyes flitted up to meet his as Danny shifted, and Dick positively beamed.

"You're awake!" Dick exclaimed, closing the sky atlas and setting it carefully on top of the others. "Need something? Water? Bruce said that you were pretty coherent the last time you woke up, you'll be getting bored soon, I bet, so I got you some stuff to keep you entertained. It took a while to find your phone, but the security on it is impressive, we ended up deciding to leave it alone, but all your friends know you're alright. Are you hungry yet? I need to call Alfred to check-"

Danny shifted again, trying to get Dick to stop his nervous ramble, and Dick shut his mouth to help Danny sit up. Danny considered him for a moment, and then leaned over to hug him tightly, ignoring the pull of the IV in his arm.

"You didn't know," Danny rasped. He sounded worse this time, scratchy and dry, but he focused on Dick for now.

Dick took a deep breath and hugged him back.

"We didn't believe you," Dick whispered, wracked with months of guilt. "All we had to do was believe you."

Well... yeah. That was the long and short of it, wasn't it? Danny tucked his face against Dick's neck, and all of a sudden Dick's arms tightened around him. Danny was too exhausted and weak still to really sob, but tears slipped down his face and into Dick's shirt, and his breath hitched around whimpers, over and over.

God, he'd come so close to dying again. And it had been so much worse this time.

He'd just needed someone to listen to him.

"It's alright, spook," Dick soothed him, shifting gears easily into the more familiar role. His hand landed on Danny's back and rubbed there, slow and calming. "You're gonna be alright. We've got you now. We're not gonna let you go again. Not again."

They stayed like that for a while, until Danny got too shaky and slipped back with a groan. Dick eased him back against his pillows, sitting him up in a way that had become very familiar. Danny accepted the water that Dick shoved into his hands and drank the whole thing this time, and then half of another when Dick went to refill it.

"Master Danny, I can't say what a relief it is to see you awake."

Danny looked up to give Alfred a weary smile. Alfred's eyes were warm, and Danny could see the truth of his affection in his expression even if he hadn't been able to sense it in the air itself. Dick scooted back to give Alfred room, and Alfred came to look over Danny's monitors before taking Danny's hands.

"Squeeze my hands, please," Alfred requested, focused at once on checking Danny over, and Danny did. "Thank goodness. Thank goodness. We weren't sure how much your body would be able to restore itself, even once..."

"I'm okay," Danny promised him, letting Alfred check the strength of his hands, then the nerve function, and his reflexes. "My ghost and human halves are dependent on each other, but they also reinforce each other. The solidity of my human body helps my ghost half hold together, and my ghost half can regenerate any part of my human body. Nerves, bones, damaged organs, anything."

"Thank goodness," Alfred repeated softly, with aching sincerity. "I'm only sorry that it took so much to save you from our foolishness."

"You didn't know," Danny said again, stronger this time. "How is everyone? Bruce said it's been... a while. I'm sure it was really hard on everyone, especially if you didn't know what was happening."

Dick let out a slightly broken laugh, and Alfred smiled painfully without looking up from his work.

"God, you're such a good kid," Dick mumbled, tipping his head back to stare at the ceiling.

"The last two weeks have been a breath of air in comparison," Alfred said honestly. He was checking other things now - Danny's atrophied muscles, the IV in his arm, the sound of his lungs and his eyes' tracking. "Everyone has been eating and sleeping, which is as much as we can hope for during times like this. Master Bruce has been waging war against the current standards for metahuman treatment in the criminal justice system, as well as funding further research into medical studies seeking to enfold the broader potential needs of alien and metahuman patients."

Danny hummed with appreciation and some amusement. Yeah, that sounded like Bruce. "And... no follow-up from the GIW?"

"They've found the Justice League to be particularly unsympathetic these days," Alfred said dryly. Dick chuckled.

"Bruce has been upset, which means things have been a little tense up there," he explained to Danny. "And everyone knows it's the GIW's fault. Their appeal hits a desk and goes in the garbage without being read." Danny chuckled, pleased by the image.

"But everything's okay, right?" Danny checked, unable to curb his worry. "I don't want anyone to get hurt because I'm..." He trailed off.

"Clark and Diana have stepped up in the meantime," Dick promised. "It's not unusual. Sometimes one of them needs to take a step back for a while, they're used to it. All three of them have lives of their own, after all. They'll be happy to hear you're alright."

Danny managed a smile, although he could feel himself wearing out already, his eyelids getting heavy and his body slumping into the pillows keeping him upright. "That's good..." he murmured.

Alfred finished checking him over and reached out to help him lie down again. "Rest, Master Danny. I'll let everyone know you're doing well."

Danny mumbled something, then fell asleep.

----

The third time Danny woke, he heard the tapping of a keyboard before he even opened his eyes. The tapping stopped, and by the time Danny looked over, Tim was already looking at him, frozen in place.

A moment later, he unfroze.

"Danny's awake!" Tim shouted over his shoulder, and then, to Danny, "They got tired of missing you."

Danny laughed, hearing a rush of motion from both the training rooms nearby and, only a moment later, upstairs. Within minutes, people were pouring inside, filling the room with an intoxicating flurry of love and worry and relief. That was one thing Danny had never been able to bring himself to doubt, how much the Waynes loved him. Even when they gently told him that he was alive, that he was just a meta, that he'd be alright and they'd find out what was making him sick- he'd known that they cared about him.

"It seems like your vital signs are stabilizing, but there's a disgusting lack of reliable information about ghosts," Tim scowled, returning his attention to his laptop to scroll through something. "Your parents' old college friend, Vlad Masters, he has some promising data in his private files, but that's all I could find-"

"Hey, now that these idiots are finally listening, there something else you need that we don't know about?" Jason demanded, elbowing his way to a place right next to Danny with a chair that wasn't there a second ago. "We gave you what we could find, but there wasn't much."

Cass sat on the edge of Danny's bed and slipped her hand into his, and when he looked up at her, she smiled at him, her eyes peering intently into his. Whatever she found there must have satisfied her, because after a moment she scooted away, seemingly content to sit with him and listen.

"We debated giving you Lazarus Water," Damian said quietly, and Danny found him at the foot of his bed, sitting very still. He looked at Danny like he'd disappear. "But we weren't sure if it would... interact poorly."

"No one's giving anyone Lazarus Water!" Jason snapped.

And for the first time, Danny realized a couple of things. First, that there was ectoplasm in his IV, tinting the fluids inside a glowing neon green. Second, that there was more on the shelves, sealed bottles of unmistakable ectoplasm. Third, that the room was as cold as a meat locker, soothing to his cold core. Everyone else was wearing light jackets to compensate for the chill, but Danny felt comfortable.

Danny struggled to push himself upright, and Dick, Jason, and Cass all rushed to help, which made him laugh a little. Jason was the one to shove water into his hands again, and Danny drank while he was trying to figure out what to say.

"The information about ghosts is inconsistent," Bruce scowled, further back than the others to give them room despite his crossed arms and focused look. "Their composition, what sustains them, what environments they thrive in. We need to know-"

"Bruce, chill," Jason ordered him. "Give him some room to breathe, would ya?"

"He just woke up, he doesn't need to be interrogated right now," Dick agreed. "He's doing okay for now. Everything else can wait."

Danny smiled into his glass, then set it on his lap. Dick took it from him and put it on the table, and Danny exhaled.

"Thanks," he said softly, voice tight, because nothing else came to mind. He reached up and wiped his eyes while everyone fell silent. "You guys... are really trying, huh?"

It was a lot to deal with, the contradiction between how much harm they had done and how sincerely, how completely they loved him. But it wasn't anything new - it wasn't any different from getting shot down by his parents and then coming home to his mom surprising him with an astronomy book that he'd been pining after. It wasn't that much different from his parents being so desperate to save him from himself, aching with grief over his 'death' while they chased his ghost half down for his apparent murder.

"...Of course we are," Dick said, when no one else did. His voice was soft and full of pain. "Your room is still made up and ready for you, you know. Alfred's coming down soon, by the way, he's just making you something to eat."

"You'll never wear that stupid fucking collar again," Jason added roughly.

"If you still want us, everything is in place for Bruce to take full custody," Tim added, without taking his eyes off his laptop. "There'll be no more talk about juvie, Arkham, any of it. You'd just have to sign the papers."

If he still wanted them? Danny looked around and wondered how they could possibly think he wouldn't - that he had ever stopped wanting them. That they thought he could give this up, the fact that he always woke up with someone beside him, their eyes on him while he was still blinking awake - not a thousand miles away, thinking about an experiment, but right here with him, asking what he needed. The fact that they cared so damn much all the time.

Sure, it had really sucked not to be believed. It had hurt, and it would take time to move past. But it took more than one (really long, really bad) mistake to ruin something like that.

"If you can dig up a portal to the Ghost Zone," he rasped, his voice only a little dry this time, "I can go to the Far Frozen and get a check-up from someone that actually knows my biology."

"Consider it done," Bruce said instantly, dead serious. Danny smiled softly.

"You love me in a way my parents never could have," he said quietly. "Give me the damn papers."

[sakuravalenp]

No memory - DC x DP prompt

Danny is trying to lay low in the DCU. Then he gets kidnapped for his own summoning, along with a bunch of other people, and volunteers himself as a sacrifice to avoid anyone actually dying. His bad luck means the summoning was legit. He doesn’t really transform, but his eyes glow bright green, his hair has white glowing spots, and there is a spark around him. That's when people he has by now identified as this universe’s heroes/vigilantes finally arrive.

Now, Danny really doesn’t want to deal with questions in either form, but he is also basically homeless. So he figures out a way to maybe fall under these heroes’/vigilantes’ jurisdiction for a while without having to answer any questions:

He pretends to have complete amnesia.

Phantom goes back and forth with the heroes/vigilantes for about five sentences before pretending to get bored with them. Then he lets his ghostly traits mostly fade and lets Danny “fall unconscious” to the floor. The heroes/vigilantes are quick to check for injuries and his well-being, and when he “wakes up,” he acts confused and lost. He then proceeds to pretend he doesn’t remember anything other than his name, because he really would prefer to be called that. He is doing a damn good job with his acting, at least if the concerned faces are anything to go by.

Just to add some spice, and to make sure he is not handed over to whatever “looking out for people who have been in rogue attacks” system they have going on, Danny occasionally lets his ghostliness and powers bleed through.

[luzdart]

I wanted to do a fairy AU drawing. I low-key see the infinite realms as the Feywild and love reading any fey or fairy Danny fan writing. So, here is my take.

[alien-slushie]

Ghost in the Attic

DcxDp Idea!

When Danny had his accident, it still turned him half ghost, but it didn't open the portal. Danny's powers started to come in, and because Danny was scared of the reactions of everyone around him, he fled.

Danny figured he'd stand out the least in Gotham, given the Vine Lady, Penguin Man, and Rampent Clowns. As a teenager with no work experience, Danny decided to temporarily squat in the Wayne Mansion attic, only temporarily until he can figure out how to rent his own appartment or something.

Danny eventually wrangles a job at Bat Burger, and goes to the library to try and find an appartment. But, despite the rapent crime driving down rent, Danny couldn't find anyone that would rent to him fairly. Everyone tried to upcharge him because he young and desprate, and the only person who didn't do that had a weird look in his eye when he looked at Danny, one that made Danny's skin crawl, so that was an immediate no.

With nothing else to do, Danny stayed in the Wayne Attic, but he started paying rent. Keeping only $100 per check himself for food, granted it wasn't much food but it was all Danny could take to keep a 'fair' rent so he would make due. Danny left everything else on Mr. Wayne's desk, sat nicely next to his computer, Danny was sure rich people left money laying around all the time, so hopefully Mr. Wayne would wave off randomly finding money in his office.

Bruce, did not in fact, shake off the $500+ dollars that ended up on his desk twice a month. He knew it was from none of his children, nor Alfred. None of his children 'borrowed', or needed to 'give back' any money he gave them, and though Alfred constantly turned down raise offers, Alfred would never return his raises like this, no he would sooner slap Bruce in the face with the money itself, just to send a message. Besides, looking through finances, nothing was out of place. Which meant, the money was probably from their little guest.

Oh yes the Wayne's were well aware of the yiung man taking up their attic. At first they were wary, how did this child get into the attic and why?, but as they sat back and watched, it became apprent how. The boy was obviously a meta, and was still learning how to control is abilities. He was also obviously hiding, likely because of aforementioned meta abilities. It didn't take long to narrow down who the boy was, Daniel "Danny" Fenton from Amity Park, Illinois, his Missing Poster was easy to find, and it was painfully easy to get into the police report, and something seemed fishy about the Fenton parents, and their "research".

Regardless, everyone, surprisingly even Damian, agreed to leave Danny alone until he came to them. Despite never interacting with him personally, they learned a lot about Danny. Like, regardless of his legs randomly going through things, he was clumsy and seemed to trip on air, and how he was very anxious, and how he loved sitting on the roof to stargaze, and how, despite obviously having no clue how to really interact with them, Danny obviously loved the animals, especially the dogs, and how everytime Danny 'stole' the leftovers from the fridge he'd always leave Alfred a 'thank you' note, even if he did sign it as one of the other kids. Honestly, as each day passed the Wayne's fell more and more platonically in love the kid.

So, Bruce couldn't help but frown at the money he was being given. Danny looked his age, if not a bit younger, so he could probably only get a fast food or retail job, and probably only worked the minimum hours, again because of his age, meaning, with what money Bruce was counting, this was probably the majority of Danny's paycheck, and considering Alfred reported that Danny had stopped getting food from the fridge and pantry- and that really didn't paint a pretty picture.

Looks like it was finally time to confront the ghost in the attic.

[fanonjibbering]

DC x DP Midnight Ramble #1

What if Danny's ghost form is very small when he gets to Gotham- he's hurt and his core is healing so his ghost form wants to be as small as possible to save on ecto/energy. This is unusual but he went thought a lot and is a halfa so his form behaves differently than the average ghost or denizen of the realm. Gotham has ecto so it's the best place he could be right now, but its nothing like the levels in the zone or even Amity.

So he ends up being a little fearie sized cryptid creature who is a little glowy and a little too pointy in all the wrong ways but seems relatively harmless...i mean he's still got fangs and weird glowing eyes and a crown of fire and makes your hair stand on end a bit when you see him... but he's just a little guy....right?

But no it's High King Phantom so he's still got the power of a god, the guy is just 3 inches tall when he goes ghost (In my head this is for a few months, he slowly recovers in size as he heals and shrinking does end up being a power he takes on as a result of this whole mess).

This is extra hilarious to his fraid when they find out, since Danny definitely got his dad's genes and is a solid 6'3" in his human form. It does mean that Danny can hide in some interesting places for a while, and it gets him out of some sticky situations a few times. He also uses it to pull pranks and cause harmless chaos on occasion, as he should!

Of course he tries so hard to lay low and just heal up but it's gotham, and it's Danny's cursed Fenton luck (and maybe a little bit of Lady Gothams nudging) so it's just a matter of time until he crosses paths with the bats and the birds

[nerdpoe]

Danny puts up with a lot of stress, okay. His coping mechanism is....okay, it's a little weird, he's not gonna lie.

It is widely known that he has a human form and a ghost form; it is not widely known that his ghost form can do pretty much whatever he wants it to.

This includes making it smaller. Changing the ghost tail to a fish one. Making the suit be scales instead of a suit.

He does it so many times he now officially has three forms, and one of them is purely for himself and no one else.

His stress relief is to go to the aquarium, switch to the tiny merman form, and hide in the rocks of his favorite exhibit; the shark exhibit.

He stays in the back, away from the people visiting it's sight, and just vibes. He's even made a small cave the sharks can't fit into a tiny little nest.

No one would expect him there. No one would be looking for him there. He was free to just...take a moment.

Well, so he thought.

Because the humans visiting did see him. Multiple times.

They took pictures.

Now the Amity Park Aquarium is in some deep shit with Atlantis, because there's documented proof that they're keeping a literal baby mer in there as a spectacle.

[ailithnight]

Consider: Perhaps mers naturally grow to the size befitting their environment. They don't really have distinct species, they simply adapt to the space and food availability around them. The same mer that only gets to about humanoid size in a river could grow massive if moved to a lake or ocean with abundant food.

So when Aquaman catches these pictures and discovers they date back several months and the supposed-to-be-fast-growing mer baby isn't so much as an inch bigger, he concludes that the Aquarium is keeping the baby underfed and confined to a tiny area to keep it small and "cute".

Realizing the infant is in a tank with sharks, predators that would gladly eat something the size of a baby mer, only stokes his rage.

[noxcheshire]

I’m just imagining the idea that Danny himself has NO IDEA that Aquaman and his entourage are even coming fast into Amity Park because he’s just so focused on everything else in his (unfortunate) teenage life.

Aquaman? Yeah he knows WHO the guy is, who wouldn’t know who the Justice League members are, but is he keeping up with that news? No.

He’s barely even awake in school to process the news from other teenagers and teachers. He’s deliberately blocking out all the chatter just to take standy-uppy cat naps. He doesn’t have the time or brain capacity to handle you.

Going little baby man mer is his time to really relax. To unwind, laze about, and curl in his little nest with all his little possessions like a fish dragon and just rest.

So of course after a treacherous day AND night, Danny simply slips his way into the Aquarium and into his favorite water tank with the sharks where he has to avoid their curious nipping so he can unwind in his little enclosure.

It’s only going to be a little while after all.

Just a little moment to stretch out, rake his claws across the walls to make some doodles; maybe even watch the cold night outside before a short decided nap.

Just… a little… nap.

Sleep takes Danny fast and swift, and Danny stays at the Aquarium far longer than anticipated.

But Danny is so tired, and it isn’t like it’s the first time he’s overslept to the gentle sound of shark fins swimming through the artificial currents and was rocked to sleep by the gentle waves in the tank.

So what if he sleeps there longer than intended?

No one has ever seen him before, and Danny has never minded the light of the rising sun when it brings the sharks to wakefulness, or the building noise of a slowly waking Aquarium building.

It is all familiar noise to sleep to.

He only slightly minds it when he hears static — electricity — zapping outside, making his sleepy little self jerk and whine before he curls himself deeper into his tail.

It’s silent.

It’s so blissfully silent for a very long time that Danny’s tension flows right out of him.

An ear fin twitches at the sudden change in the waters currents, something bigger having entered, but nothing the sharks seemed to be worrying over. Danny thus pays little mind as he drifts away to sleep once more.

But maybe he should have tried being a little more awake, a little more alert. Surely then he would have noticed the sharks gurgling, would have noticed the tip of a sharks nose pressing against the hidden opening of his nest. Surely Danny would have noticed a very human-like hand reaching through the entrance to fish him out.

[mutable-manifestation]

Okay but imagine he wakes up. Just imagine the sheer hilarity of it. The king of Atlantis just chewed out you, your whole staff, and all of your ancestors with the Batman, Wonder Woman, Superman - in person - and the world - thank you local news station at least someone is enjoying the accidental international incident - watching on.

And he finally goes in the tank to get the mysterious baby mer that you truly Do Not Know how it got there.

And the second he gets it out of its hidey hole this tiny, absolute speck of a mer's eyes shoot open with all the energy of a bomb going off, takes 0.0001 seconds to register the hand holding it, and - in front of God and everyone - bites the ever living fuck out of his finger, escaping the moment the guy flinches (and oof if the cloud of color is any indication bro might need a stitch. The baby has some TEETH).

Baby mer dives back into the hidey hole, Aquaman tries to soothe it into coming back out, he's here to help, blah blah. Baby Mer just hisses like an angry cat.

Aquaman tries to grab the baby again and manages to get a grip on it, but the baby latches his little claws onto either side of his hidey hole and won't let go for anything (and Aquaman could just tug harder but it's a baby he doesn't want to hurt it :(((( [and Danny could just phase out except he doesn't want to do that with people watching him when they seem to think he's a mer {he doesn't know they think he's a baby mer, he just thinks that they think he's, like, some runaway or something} rather than a ghost and is that Batman???])

[spacessomethingxdcsideblog]

They finally manage to get Danny out.

(Batman has experience with bitey children. He shoved his armored hand in, and when Danny bit him he pulled him out. Like those videos of people catching fish bare handed)

Danny obviously doesn't stick around. He disappears as soon as everyone looks away. This, of course, leads to the Justice League panicking because "We lost the baby!"

From there it could be either shenanigans cracky or misunderstood angst cracky.

Shenanigans: The Justice League gets a call from the aquarium that Danny's back and it devolves into them trying to keep him contained and out of the aquarium yet he somehow always ends up back in his little nest. Like an octopus determined to escape its tank.

Angsty crack: He gets spotted flying back to Amity Park, and, since this is Amity Park, people realize he's a ghost. So now the Justice League is angsting over Danny being a dead child while Danny is whining about his nap getting interrupted to an unsympathetic Sam and Tucker.

Bonus points for this one would be having Danny's mer form look like one of Aquaman's dead relatives.

[ailithnight]

Amity Parker's of course realize that's a ghost...

The ghost of a baby mer!

That was likely kept in that tank ill cared for until it died or was eaten by one of the sharks.

And now, even in death, it keeps going back to the only place it knows. Back to the little hidey hole that was likely the only place it ever felt safe.

[somestorythoughts]

#Perhaps to curb some of Aquaman's ire#We could say the Aquarium has had a few different owners.#Some were sleazier than others.#The current owner has genuinely been working very hard#To make this a reputable place#Accredited?#Do aquariums get accreditations like zoos?#Anyway#Knowing now that the baby is a ghost#And not knowing when it died#Which owner killed it#Arthur is a bit more open to hearing the current owner and staff out

Excuse me while I obsess over this a bit.

You know those dpxdc headcanons where the reason the Justice League never got involved in Amity Park was cause of a media blackout? Or someone specifically blocking them from the Justice League helpline?

Who's social media are we talking about here? Cause we're assuming this is Amity Park's aquarium right? Cause I interpreted this as their aquarium, or close enough that plenty of the people there can recognize a ghost. Meaning? The aquarium is NOT about to make an official announcement about a baby ghost in the shark tank. No way. They don't go past "yes we know he's there we don't know why" if asked about it by a guest and that onlly because they have to say something (this may have backfired when they didn't realize they weren't talking to a local. Whoops)

Look, if they make an official announcement, they have to deal with the GIW and the Fentons. And you cannot simply REPLACE THE SHARK TANK EASY PEASY! Or the sharks! No one's about to invite that kind of infrastructure damage! And look, he's just a little guy. Literally! The most aggression anyone's seen from him is him swatting at the sharks after lights out when they get too close and that is very clearly baby-shooing-people-away.

And look, public opinion on ghosts is kinda mixed alright? There's a lot of talk about evil and nonsentient ghosts and some people buy it, but a lot of people have kinda regulated them to the nuisance category. Sometimes affectionate nuisances! Like the way people sometimes see geese or pigeons or thunderstorms. Yes, they might leave lumps of shit all over the sidewalk or your car or bring down branches, but it's just how it is, and the birds are fun to watch and thunder sounds wonderful. And by the time Danny's started doing this regularly, enough people have seen Phantom BANTERING with the other ghosts, not to mention the occasional ghost who's just hanging out, that most people they don't buy the "nonsentient" part, and that's not including the Phans or the ones who like ghosts in general.

There may or may not be a lot of "damn kids get off my lawn" sentiments from some people. Like, could you please have your brawls somewhere other than the school? Please? There's a park three blocks over there.

Plus you know what aquariums have? SCIENTISTS. A lot of aquariums do conservation work. The previous owners wouldn't have any conservationists and may or may not have a vet on staff or on call because maintenance is (I'm pretty sure) cheaper than regular replacement, but if the owner is trying to do better they're absolutely going to have "start conservation/research work" on his list of priorities once he can afford to hire someone. I don't know if it's required for aquariums or what any accreditation would be like, but it'd go a long way towards improving the aquarium's reputation both locally and among other aquariums. It may even be something they personally care about.

That means there's at least some scientists of the type that read scientific research papers. Cause most people either don't want to deal with that or have trouble with the jargon. And sure, ectobiology isn't their jargon and that does matter, but they're also far more likely to be like "hey, these scientists have papers about the creatures attacking our city on a regular basis! Let's see what they're research says" and then be able to understand it. They'll figure out the jargon. (scientists being scientists they're also probably "new creature? new creature!!"). Meaning they might be more likely to look at the provided science and go "wait this doesn't make sense" and be able to argue it IN SCIENTIFIC TERMS which goes a long way towards being able to argue against it in an official and published capacity.

The point is the entire aquarium's a little leery of the "evil non sentient creatures" claims and some people are working on the best way to do a scientific rebuttable and this is a long way of saying like FUCK does the aquarium say jack shit about the baby ghost they know full well likes to hang out in the shark tank. And the local visitors? Are they going to say something and risk bringing the Fentons and the GIW down on them?

They might. On social media, if they're pretty sure that isn't being checked. Cause this is part of their lives now, and look, it's so cute, how could something that cute be evil? It's a baby! A non aggressive baby that likes to sleep on coins like a little fish dragon! Look at the cute baby and sympathies with its trials!

There may or may not be a bit of deliberate attempts to sway people going on. But if you see the A-Listers scheming? No you didn't.

But for some reason? The way I imagine the Justice League hearing about this is the out of towners on social media. People being people the posts probably range from "look a baby mermaid!" to "wtf is this??!?" to "guys is this aquarium supposed to have a baby mermaid in the shark tank????"

Cause if they were looking at Amity Park's social media? And looking thoroughly to get as much info as possible before they go? They probably would have seen at least something about ghosts, whether or not they believe it.

I put way too much thought into this the thoughts started and then they snowballed and you know what actually i'm not done -

Cause if they do this around visitors? Which they very well might? There's a good chance most of the people there are locals, especially at a small aquarium. There might even be a school group or two!

Locals who are NOT going to be happy about the Justice League coming to Amity Park and OF ALL THINGS trying to interfere with the baby ghost getting a nap.

I'm sure the misunderstandings will be explained eventually. I'm just also sure there'd be shenanigans and yelling first.

I also think it'd be funny if the way Sam and Tucker found out about Danny's mermaid rest time was if they were there one day (Sam heard the new conservation announcement and got curious/suspicious) and saw him - or saw a strange ghost, told Danny, and then he had to explain.

Unfortunately for Danny he did not get significantly better at hiding after that fact. In his defense, he its easy to forget there's people out there. The water is very soothing and the sharks tend to take up his attention when he is concerned.

[currentfandomkick]

Adding to this, when JL—especially aquaman—rock on up and try to grab baby Danny mid-nap, why wouldn’t he just sleep phase through the hand asa baseline defense mechanism?

And when confronted about it, do we not think at least one enployee wouldn’t awkwardly drag a JL member to the side and go ‘look, that is a ghost baby mer. He shows up as he pleases, and we’re pretty sure he’s in the Ghost Zone the rest of the time or hiding in vents and causing mild issues as ghosts as a species and electronics don’t mix the best. He meeds ectoplasm to live, and if the Fenton’s research is right, the little guy is shark watching to make his own like dopamine and doom-scrolling. We have no clue how far from the portal in the Fenton’s basement the kid can go, but we do know if they find out a ghost is here they will destroy every tank and kill every sea creature living here in the process to dissect him. If you have ant clue how to manage the ghost zone denizens that doesnt cause them harm, great. If not, leave the kid and our strange ghost population alone—its like getting mad at deer or bears in the forest. Not worth it. Kid glows when we do star simulations and plops himself there, okay? Just, he already died as a baby who knows when? Just let him be happy, and if he’s decided thats watching sharks, let him

[dissociativehyperfixating]

DPxDC Prompt

The bats have been working closely with the GIW to catch the villain Phantom, the problem?

Everytime they turn Phantom over the the GIW, he escapes. Sometimes enroute to the GIW facility, sometimes during the transfer, sometimes at the facility itself. Nothing they do can keep the villain contained.

And Phantom won't stop mocking them for it!

[meowmeowmeowmeow4x]

Damian slumped against an ac unit on the roof of the batburger, sighing. Three break-ins, a whole plot foiled at the last minute, and the untimely and unwelcome intervention of the super-nuisance Phantom. Well, at least he was being carted off to prison.

“Whatcha eatin’? Can I have some? Breaking out of jail really gets the calories burning you know?”

God

DAMMIT

[alien-slushie]

DpxDc Idea/Prompt

After his parents, Jazz, Sam, and Tucker died in the Nasty Burger explosion, Danny found himself in the Foster Care system. CPS couldn't locate Alicia because she was too far off grid, and Danny had rather bluntly, and brokenly, told his Social Worker that if he was placed with Vlad Masters, that Daniel Fenton would be dead by the end of the week, and well, if thats not a red flag, they weren't sure what was, and they weren't going to take that chance, so Danny was placed with a foster family.

To give Danny something to focus on, Clockwork became Danny's mentor. With the portal now shut down, and Danny being with unfamiliar people, and being unable to make portals yet, Clockwork taught Danny stuff in his dreams, this had the added benefit of keeping nightmares away.

But as Danny learned more and more, he started having flashes of visions of the future. It started with random nonsense, what they were having for dinner, or surprise pop quizzes at school, but then it was a car accident, or someone getting injured, or Danny being moved to a new home because he "freaked his foster family out again". He had no control over these visions, and he wouldn't for a long time. His eyes would just go a hazey, glowing green, his body would suddenly still, and his face would go blank, while he would mumble whatever vision he saw, before slowly coming back into himself and going back to doing whatever it was he was doing.

After yet another Foster family backed out, his Social Worker was at the end of their rope. It was obvious the kid was a meta of some kind, his powers likely activated due to the trauma of losing his entire support system, and his abilities were making it hard for him to stay in a solid environment after something so horrible had already happened. He needed stability, someone, at least one person, who would stay regardless of whatever meta powers he had. So, the Social Worker called in some favors, reaching out to some freinds, of friends, of freinds, of freinds with Danny's situation and brief explaination of his powers.

Unbeknownst to the Social Worker, information of Danny's abilities reached the Justice League, and from the description it sounded as if his ability to see the future would only get stronger. If word of that got out, not only would Danny be hunted down by unsavory groups, but if someone did get their hands on him, his powers could be used for horrible things. Theres also the concern of his mental state after everything that happened, as Danny could start lashing out, blaming his ability for not coming in sooner for him to save his family, and how that might cause him to go rogue, or worse. So, Batman holds a meeting to decide who in the Justice League should Foster Danny so they can help him, and keep himself, and themselves safe.

As for who I think should Foster Danny, in no particular order, but pick whoever if you have a better idea:

-Diana Prince

-John Constantine

-Bruce Wayne

-Raven(but more in a Foster Sister type way)

-Barry Allen

-Jason Blood

-Dinah Lance

*Note: when Danny said "Daniel Fenton will be dead in a week" he meant he was goubg to fake his death and run to the ghost zone. Obviously to an unknowing social worker thats not what it sounds like, but I wanted to clear that up.

[alien-slushie]

For a while now I've wanted to make a DpxDc prompt where Danny is part of the JL/JLD/YJ/TT in some compasity, and hes been there for a while, but now its the Infinite Realms' mating season. However, because Danny is an underaged ghost, hes not the usual broody, and fight hungry that most unmated Ghosts tend to be, instead hes super whiny, sleepy, and cuddley. Danny is kinda seen as a baby, or at least very young in ghost terms, and as a result his instincts make him cling to all the JL/JLD/YJ/TT members. As much as everyone doesnt wants to admit it, Phantom is kinda adorable like this. Hes such a tank when in a crisis, that seeing him so docile, and honestly a bit cry babyish, is so oddly endearing, so nobody minds letting Phantom curling around them, or plopping himself in their arms and lap, purring up a storm all the while.

But there is no real logical reason that Ghosts/Realms Beings would have or need a mating season, so my thoughts on it kinda stopped there.

[sakuravalenp]

I grew up in a cult - DC X DP prompt

Danny had to escape his home dimension due to the GIW hurting him too badly during one of their little hunts, causing the ancients to deem Danny’s dimension too dangerous for him. Clockwork gave him a hand making up an identity in another dimension (DC), but he failed to tell Danny that this dimension was nothing like his, and Danny, so focused on getting himself back to his feet and going unnoticed, doesn’t notice that’s the case on his own. 

He’s overwhelmed by how much more advanced technology is in this dimension, and with much reason, they’re like XX years over his dimension, but at least he doesn't have to worry about sustainance, since Clockwork placed him on Gotham's academy Scholarship list, and the school is providing for all the basics. He would cry if he had to figure out a job in a place so much more advanced than his own dimension.

Now, Danny knows better than to just repress his powers, he doesn't want a repeat of the freezing incident. Less now that he's alone. Solution: casual use of his powers within his house. But maybe he got a little too used to that, because he kept slipping when having people over. But that's okay, he'll just play dumb and gaslight everyone into believing it didn't happen or Danny has nothing to do with it. After all, powers are not normal, and Danny is a completely normal human boy. 

Or at least Danny thought he was playing normal pretty well until his friend from school just created a shadow sphere out of nowhere and started talking about metas and Danny doesn't really hear what else, because his blood is rising in his ear. Is this normal to humans here? Has he been playing human wrong? Shit, how does he ask about what his friend clearly sees to be normal information without giving out he’s from another dimension?

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

Duke knows his friend from school is a meta, he’s seen Danny slip with his powers multiple times, and honestly the excuses Danny gives him are getting a little ridiculous at this point. He wants to be able to bond with his friend over the meta experience. So after much thought, he decides to reveal his meta status without revealing the whole extent of his powers. Just to give Bruce some peace about his decision. 

But instead of the opening up he had been hoping for, Danny looks completely lost. Did he come on too strong?

"Um, Duke, can everyone just… do that?" Danny asks confused.

"What?"

"I mean, I know growing up in a cult kinda cuts you off from some basic information, but I would have thought we would have at least been told if humans develop the ability to do… that."

"You what?"

Now, learning that Danny grew up in a cult was not how he envisioned this going, but what worries Duke more is that after explaining what meta were, Danny didn’t immediately jump to identify himself as one. So now Duke is worried. Does Danny not know he has powers? Does he actually believe all those excuses he had been giving Duke in the past when he slipped up.

[moralityandmusings]

Full credit to the OG prompt by @sakuravalenp, I got inspired and expanded on this just a bit *********************

It’s not like Danny did any research before landing in Gotham. It had been a pretty dire and desperate situation by the time he’d gotten to Sam’s house.

He knew his parents had been quieter lately, working on something at all hours and barely even trying to keep up the appearance of contributing to the upbringing their kids. He thought maybe they were just going on one of their incredibly biased research binges or maybe working on a contract for the GIW’s equipment. He’d been meaning to sneak into the basement to check any new blueprints or builds to tweak the settings or design, if they were making something new, to make whatever it was less effective or potentially destructive.

Unfortunately, he’d not gotten around to it before they decided it was ready for testing.

All it took was one shot in his direction and Danny knew this would be the night everything changed. It wasn’t something simpler to avoid like the Fenton Ghost Fisher or even a more challenging one like the Jack O’ Nine Tails he’d dealt with a few times. It seemed like his parents and the GIW had grown tired of low powered machinery designed to subdue to allow for containment. They had swapped gears and were now dealing with enough energy to exterminate with one blow, or at least that is what the crumbling remains of the warehouse he’d been standing near gave him the impression of.

He’d done his best to evade and escape, but he wasn’t prepared for his parents to have already produced multiple of the model and dispersed them to the GIW as well. All it took was one dodge in the wrong direction and he was blasted through the air by what felt like a cannonball ripping through his side as a GIW agent managed to get a clean shot from the opposite direction.

Danny went down hard, cracking the cement sidewalk that had rushed far too quickly to meet him. With the wind knocked out of him, he had struggled to reorient himself to the danger that was quickly closing in. All he could feel was the consuming and obliterating pain eating his torso and radiating through his whole body.  But he knew that if he stopped moving now there would be no hope of escaping this time.

He was dizzy and nauseous and barely breathing when he pushed himself to stand, clawing at the ground to get traction to push himself upright. He poured all the energy he had left into maintaining his ghost form, knowing the amount of damage he would be facing in his human form would likely knock him out or worse if he didn’t heal some first.

With blood and ectoplasm seeping from what was left of his side, Danny staggered around to face his parents with the understanding that this time would be the last. That his parents had finally gone too far. That the GIW had finally crossed one line too many. That the last resort contingency plans that he and his friends had made during their sleepovers or after other near-disastrous encounters or when they whispered their what ifs about their dreams for the future would finally be enacted tonight.

With this knowledge, Danny looked into the eyes of the parents he loved even though they hurt him, who he trusted even though they tore his existence apart, and forced himself to use what remaining shreds of strength he had to whisper, “I love you,” before vanishing from their sight.

Danny had flown as fast as he could to Sam’s, knowing that his pre-packed go bag was tucked into the back of her closet. He hadn’t stopped moving until he flew through her open window into her bedroom, his form flickering into visibility with the erratic beating of his heart, all he could hear was blood rushing through his head. He felt hands on him as he collapsed to her bedroom floor and then the world dissolved into silence and nothing.

When he woke up he was in Frostbite’s hut, sore and disoriented but with the immediate knowledge and sadness that came with his location of safety. He stayed with Frostbite until the majority of his wounds had healed before Clockwork had appeared and asked if he was ready to start over. Danny knew what this meant, leaving behind his friends, his sister, and Amity Park, but he knew that if he went back his parents and the GIW would never stop hunting him to finish the job, so he just nodded and followed Clockwork back to his tower.

Clockwork explained the basics: a new dimension, a new identity, a home, decades worth of technological advancements beyond what he was familiar with, a scholarship to help cover his academics as well as get him on his feet financially, a reminder of the need to use his powers to avoid overloading himself, and an explanation to use if somebody questions his delays or lack of adjustment. Danny thought it would be hard to convince anybody that he was raised in a cult that lacked access to all modern technology and media but he trusted Clockwork to know what was necessary to get him to safety.

And that was it. Clockwork opened a portal directly into the apartment he had set up for Danny somehow. Danny Fenton no longer existed, and Danny Nightengale was the newest student to walk the halls of Gotham Academy. He did his best to adjust quickly to the advancements in the world, but he was still playing catch up with a lot of things. He’d fallen into a pretty decent rhythm with his studies as well as his own personal pursuits outside of school. He’d even managed to make some friends. He’d also gotten used to using his powers in the safety of his personal apartment.

One of the first things he had done when he settled into Gotham was start researching the city. Knowing the community around oneself is vital to blending in, after all. It was in these searches that he came across Batman and the Robins, regular humans with technological advancements to aid them as they pursued the roster of rogues plaguing the town. He hadn’t bumped into any of them, mostly because he kept to himself and only went to school and the grocery store if he could help it.

From what he could tell, nobody else he had been around had powers. He’d monitored everybody he could from his classrooms and when walking the streets of Gotham. He’d checked out as many of the rogues as he could and they all seemed to have chemically enhanced themselves or used technology to enact their plans.

So, Danny hid his powers publicly, but, in private, he used them as often as he could so that he could avoid building up too much energy and losing control.  It had been a few months of this: walking through doors in his apartment rather than opening them, cooling down his food with his cryokinesis, telekinesis to grab things just out of reach, or duplication to work on homework while he finished cooking his dinner. At first, it was difficult, he’d worry about somebody walking in or his parents finding out. That especially had been a harsh pill to swallow, acknowledging that he had been unable to fully be himself in his own home out of fear. But over time, he got used to doing it in his own space.

He had gotten so used to it, in fact, that he’d started slipping up and using powers in front of his friends once he felt secure enough to start having them come over.

The first time he’d messed up, it had been Tim Drake over to work on a school project. Tim had been sitting at the table, back to the kitchen working on building their scale model when he asked Danny to give him a hand holding a piece down. Danny had been quickly making the two of them something to eat when Tim had made his request and had, without thinking, duplicated himself so the duplicate could keep making dinner while he went to assist Tim. When Tim asked a question while Danny 1 was holding the paper and Danny 2’s voice answered from not right beside Tim, Tim had startled vocally. Danny immediately realized and pulled the duplicate back into himself before Tim could turn around and see double. Danny had said the acoustics in the apartment could be weird sometimes and had acted nonchalantly enough that Tim seemed to drop it.

Another time, he had been playing video games with his neighbor Jason, a nicer college-aged guy who lived in the apartment down the hall and had started checking on Danny when he realized he was living alone. Danny had been a little put off at first, but over time Jason had been good for odd things, like knowing how to fix the leaky pipe under the bathroom sink and how to hook up a generator for heating up food when the power grid goes down from a rogue attack.

Danny and Jason had been playing video games when Danny had gotten cold. He’d stood up, walked to his bedroom to retrieve a jacket, and walked straight through the bedroom door instead of opening it. Jason was focused on his phone and only saw it happen out of the corner of his eye, but Danny had quickly just said the door was cracked and it no longer squeaked since Jason had fixed the hinges so he didn’t hear him push it open. Danny wasn’t sure if Jason believed him but he went back to playing video games with no argument so Danny thought it was a victory.

There had been a few other close calls, but Danny had explained them away as best he could when he caught them and they seemed to believe him.

It was the times he hadn’t been catching what he was doing that were the problem.

It was Duke who confirmed it first that Danny definitely had some type of powers. He had really liked hanging out with Danny at school when he started halfway through the semester, and they had quickly gotten pretty close. Not close enough for Duke to reveal his vigilante alter-ego, but close enough that they hung out multiple days a week on average. What was easily explained by Danny as tricks of the light or acoustics had been a little believable at first, but over time the excuses became flimsy and then outright laughable.

Duke wanted Danny to be comfortable though, he didn’t want him to feel forced to talk about his powers or to feel shamed about them. Duke knew the stress of being a meta and how it could paint a target on your back. He didn’t want Danny to think that having powers would change their friendship, and, more importantly, he didn’t want Danny to feel alone.

He’d spent several weeks thinking about how he would bring up the subject with Danny when, one weekend as they were working on homework at Danny’s place, Duke had knocked a pencil off the table on accident. Before he could even begin to lean over and grab it, the pencil floated back up onto the table and set itself down by his elbow. When Duke looked at Danny, he hadn’t even seemed to have broken concentration on the math problem he was doing. Duke was excited, maybe this meant that Danny was comfortable enough with Duke to start using his powers openly around him. Maybe this was the right time for him to bring it up.

Once they’d finished their worksheets and Danny had started making lunch for them, Duke pulled from the shadows making a ball the size of a baseball that he could manipulate. He started tossing it back and forth between his hands, essentially giving himself a fidget toy, as he started talking about how cool some of the meta’s he had seen on the news lately were. He was so absorbed in catching the shadow ball that he missed the way Danny had turned around, question on his lips (he was going to ask what a meta was), and froze.

Duke had continued talking for a couple of minutes, tossing the ball up in to the air and catching it in rhythm. When he paused to wait for feedback on the question he had asked: “Who’s your favorite hero?”, he finally glanced over to Danny and quickly the shadow ball disappeared from the air where he’d just tossed it.

Danny was staring at him, mouth hanging open. He looked like he’d seen a ghost.

“Danny, you okay?” Duke was starting to get nervous. He hadn’t meant to come on so fast with the topic and scare Danny. He thought the pencil thing earlier meant that Danny was ready to be more open about his powers. He really hated the thought that he may have just scared one of his friends away.

“You’re scaring me a little, man. What’s going on?” Duke questioned, pushing Danny to just say something, anything.

Danny closed his mouth and took a couple of deep breaths before slowly walking over and sitting down on the couch next to Duke, leaving as much space as he could between the two.

“Um, Duke, can everyone just… do that?” Danny finally whispered, fear and wonder glinting in his eyes when he finally looked over to Duke directly.

“What do you mean? Do what?” Duke wasn’t sure he understood what Danny meant.

“I mean, I know I grew up in a cult and was cut off from a lot of basic information and all. But I just mean, like, wouldn’t I have known if humans had the ability to just do all that?” Danny slumped back into the cushions looking up at the ceiling.

Now it was Duke’s turn to gape at his friend. A cult? Danny had never mentioned that before, at least not to Duke or Tim, who had already been running his theories of Danny being a meta by him and Jason pretty regularly. He feels like Tim would have mentioned a cult to him if Danny had said something before.

“Danny, literally how have you never mentioned growing up in a cult before?” Duke was trying not to sound accusatory; he really was. But he could feel the puzzle pieces falling into place about how behind Danny was about a lot of things: tech, slang, celebrities, history, and media being just the tip of the iceberg.

“Oh, yeah. I guess I don’t really talk about it much, or I try not to. I didn’t… have access to a lot of information outside of the cult’s teachings, but I just felt like there was more out there than what they were telling us. And, like, you just had a ball made of shadows in your hand, dude. And you were fidgeting with it like you weren’t even thinking about it?” Danny twisted on the couch to face his friend. He no longer looked timid, he looked intrigued.

“Yeah, shadow manipulation is part of my powers. I’m a meta who can, long story short, manipulate light and dark. It’s pretty neat, and it’s gotten a lot stronger as I’ve worked on it and gotten older.”

“What’s a meta?” Danny asked, head tilted but with a gleam of wonder and curiosity in his gaze.

“What’s a-? You don’t?” Duke rubbed his palms over his face, leaning his weight down to where his elbows rested on his knees where he sat.

Danny stayed silent, waiting for Duke to pull his thoughts together. It took a minute.

“Danny, I have a serious question here. You don’t have to tell me, but I need to know how much you do or don’t know to know where to start explaining stuff to you, okay?” Duke glanced over at Danny, who immediately nodded. “What did the cult teach you about powers? Better yet, what did the cult teach you in general?”

Danny looked a little sheepish at that. He drew his hand up, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Well… It’s… I mean, it’s kind of hard to explain. We didn’t really talk about powers on a human level? Like, conceptually, I guess, the cult taught that we were more powerful in death than in life and that those who lived successfully would be rewarded after death with the opportunity to walk the earth again as ectoplasmic entities. Those entities would be rewarded with powers, but the abilities were equated to their interests in life. So, like, if you lead a good and successful life where you gain a lot of power or influence you are more likely to become an ectoplasmic entity that has significant power or influence… does… does that make sense?” Danny looked embarrassed.

Meanwhile Duke was trying so incredibly hard to not let his absolute incredulity show on his face because what Danny just said was difficult to comprehend. In his time as a vigilante, Duke had come across quite a few cults with very questionable belief systems, but… ectoplasmic entities?

“I know it’s weird and hard to believe. The cult was small and got raided right after I managed to leave so I don’t think they even exist anymore. But I never even thought about the possibility that power wasn’t just for after death and yet you are sitting in my house manipulating shadows? What else have I missed?” Danny pressed on, anxious over his friend’s silence.

“Okay,” Duke sighed, “we have to go over several things here. One, thanks for telling me about that, I know it probably isn’t the easiest thing to talk about.”

Danny blushed and shrugged.

“Two, meta’s are everywhere, man. Most of us don’t show our powers publicly in, like, big displays. Meta’s have the metagene that once activated provides the person with abilities, which is like the most basic explanation I can pull together for you right this second.”

Danny looked like he was hanging onto every word.

“Three, I don’t know how you’ve been in Gotham for this many months and not at least heard about a meta from the news or just people at school gossiping. I feel like I can’t go a day without hearing about a new person’s powers, so I don’t know whether to be impressed or astounded to be completely honest.”

Danny chuckled a little bit.

“It’s hard to believe. I mean… that’s just amazing that people, meta’s, can do all of that. I guess I just never got around to digging that far into it when doing my crash course on what a normal life looked like.”

Duke laughed lightly with Danny at that. Then a thought hit him, and his stomach plummeted. Danny was still talking about other people having powers, but hasn’t mentioned himself at all in relation to what Duke was telling him.

Duke resisted the urge to start fidgeting with the shadows again.

Tentatively, Duke said, “Danny, I want you to know that I trust you and I hope you trust me. I don’t showcase my powers a ton because I do still want to keep them pretty private, which is a perfectly fine thing to do, but that doesn’t mean you can’t.”

Danny just looked confused.

“Okay?”

“Danny, I don’t want you to talk about it if you aren’t ready to. I totally understand and respect if you aren’t, but you don’t have to pretend you don’t have powers with me if you don’t want to.”

“What?” Danny seemed a little bit shocked and he finished twisting around so he was facing Duke head on.

“I’ve seen you use some of your powers around your apartment. You excuse them away sometimes and those excuses were believable at first but you literally levitated a pencil from the ground back up to the table while we were doing homework earlier. Last week when you answered the door to let me into your apartment, I saw a clone of you standing at the kitchen sink drying dishes over your shoulder and they were gone by the time I had finished taking my shoes off by the door. You couldn’t find your keys the other day when we were heading to the library to study and I watched you push your hand through the couch cushion, not between them, and pull out your keys. I’m just saying, you haven’t been the most subtle about them around me, and want you to know that I don’t mind if you use your abilities around me if you want to.”

Duke was being so earnest. He was trying so hard to get Danny to understand that he was accepting and wouldn't be judging whatever abilities Danny had, which from Duke’s count seemed to be numerous at this point.

Danny looked lost in thought for a few minutes after Duke finished. Duke remained quiet, letting him. He’d laid out all of his cards on the table, it would be up to Danny to decide what to do at this point.

After a few minutes of the silence, Danny spoke.

“Duke. I am not a meta.”

Duke wanted to scream. Not at Danny, exactly, but he wanted to scream at whatever closed-minded but influential person had convinced Danny’s parents that it was more believable for powers to only be obtained after death than to be granted in life even when the world was constantly sprouting new meta’s left and right these days. He wanted to yell at whoever made Danny so blind to his own abilities, his own truth, that he was fully in the belief that he was not in possession of powers even when he used them daily. He also wanted to scream at Bruce a little too, because it was due to Bruce’s training that he knew how to tell when somebody was lying, and he could tell with absolute certainty that Danny was telling Duke what he thought was the truth.

Duke was absolutely lost on what to do with Danny from here. Did he push to try and convince Danny that he was using powers or was a meta? Did he let it go and hope Danny did research on his own and figured it out without help? Did he call in reinforcements to help him try and explain it all to Danny?

How was Duke supposed to look a person in the eye and tell them that their reality was no longer the truth?

[clockwayswrites]

Damian's Pet Pit Demon, ch2.p2

masterpost please no editing or concrit, gardening killed me.

“I am tired of maths,” Damian complained with a frankly adorable little pout.

Danny bopped him on the nose. “Then the sooner that you start, the sooner you can be done.”

Damian sighed dramatically, but he hopped down from Danny’s desk and moved over to his own (even if he dragged his feet about it). Despite his complaints, Damian was more than decent at Math for as young as he was. He was also a fair fit at the sciences that Danny had started him on. According to the other priests that taught Damian, he was doing excellent in all courses. Also according to them, it was clear that Damian’s true skill and passion was for his art class.

This thought was carefully not expressed to his mother or grandfather.

Danny had only ever seen the Demon Lord at a distance and in passing. Which for the best, in Danny's opinion, if he was going to manage to avoid killing the man. Even ignoring (as if Danny could) the way that the man treated Damian, this Demon Lord set of every one of Danny’s alarm bells. Whatever the Demon Lord was, he was an abomination.

Danny shoved the thoughts aside and focused on his unexpected job of teaching Damian. It was hardly hard, there was a structured system that was being followed for the sciences and math. Danny, in fact, found it… refreshing. It was good to remember what made up the underlying framework of the mortal world. It was grounding.

Lunch was brought to them and they paused in their examination of the hierarchy of life to eat. Danny made them finish the lesson after, much to Damian’s complaints, before they left to see to this ‘bird’.

“He does not see us?” Damian asked as he waved a hand in front of the child’s face.

Danny hummed and stepped forward. He stopped Damian from waving and moved his own hand, single finger up, slowly in front of the child’s face. The child did follow it, though too late and too slowly.

“You said he died?” Danny asked.

“Yes. Mother said he had been dead for half a year.”

“That is a very long time. He simply may not be all the way healed,” Danny said.

“You do not think that,” Damian pointed out.

It made Danny smile. “Oh?”

“Your eyes are showing.”

Danny laughed at that and pressed a kiss to the top of Damian’s head. “That is a good hypothesis.”

Damian pouted and crossed his arms. “This is not a lesson!”

“Ah, everything is a lesson, little one,” Danny said. “And you’re right, I don’t think that, not exactly. Coming back from death or even near death is not a normal thing. The long it has been, the harder it is to manage. It is very difficult to manage, no mater what…”

“Danny?”

“Sorry,” Danny said, putting on a smile. “What I mean by that, is that something very powerful brought him back, but even something powerful would have left a gap in what was gained. I believe that much of his… center has been left behind in death.”

Damian nodded, slowly, as if that was something normal to consider. “But you are a pit demon, so you are able to access the realm of death. You can go and find what is missing.”

“It’s not that simple, Dami. Death is a vast, endless space. His soul may be anywhere in it.”

“Gotham,” Damian said. “My father and his birds protect Gotham. It is an old city of great darkness but great hope… or that is what Mother says. His soul would want to go home. You have to be able to find it, right?”

“I… can look,” Danny said. He didn’t want to promise anything that he could not see through. He didn’t want to break a promise to Damian. “But if I go looking, I cannot also be here. No… I can… leave something here, but it will be more like this child is. I will not be here to protect either of you.”

With a sever frown, Damian looked from the child to Danny and back again. With a stubborn jut of his chin, Damian said, “Then I will protect us.”

It made Danny want to scoop Damian up in a hug, so he did so. “Tomorrow night then, I will start my search.”

[clockwayswrites]

Damian's Pet Pit Demon, ch2.p1

masterpost no editing or concrit please, tis a bad body day

“Danny! Danny,” Damian called he skittered into Danny’s classroom.

Danny was human more than not those days, sustained by the close proximity to ‘the pit’. It was effort, more than was perhaps wise to expend, but it was worth it to watch over Damian. It was worth it to see these rare moments of Damian acting like the child he was.

“Yes, Damian?” Danny asked. He didn’t try to hide his amusement as he turned to look at the little lord.

“Danny,” Damian said again before gulping in a huge breath. “There is another child here!”

Danny blinked. There were, maybe, a few extra eyes who also blinked. Danny might be much better at being human these days, but that was positively shocking news. “A what?”

“Another child! He is older than me,” Damian said, now hesitating. “I don’t… I don’t know how to tell how much older? Three times as old?”

“Well, we can see about that. I think that I still remember how to tell,” Danny said. “A child. How odd.”

“Mother brought him home,” Damian explained as he scrambled up onto Danny’s desk. “She says that he is one of Father’s birds.”

“His birds?” Danny repeated.

Damian nodded. “I am the son of the Bat. He is a mighty warrior. He trains these birds under him. That is why I am not allowed to go yet, because I must be skilled enough to fight these birds for my place.”

“Damian, you should not have to fight to have your father’s acceptance,” Danny said, gently.

Damian just shrugged. “If the Bird is here, then I may not have to and maybe Mother will let me go sooner.”

Danny took a breath and let it out slowly. It wasn’t Damian’s fault that he didn’t understand. Danny would keep being there for Damian and insisting that he was unconditionally loved. “Is your mother not sending this bird back?”

“He’s broken,” Damian said. “Mother wants to see if he’ll heal or if he should just be dis… discarded.”

Danny breathed in and out again. “And what does your Father think?”

“Mother says he thinks this bird is dead. The bird was dead,” Damian said, “but he’s back now. But he’s broken. Maybe some of him got left being dead? Mother says that he doesn’t see the world around him.”

“Well, I will have to check,” Danny said. It might mean going back to the realm, which he hadn’t visited in… a long time, but Danny wasn’t going to let a child be discarded. “Do you know his name?”

“Maybe? They are all the bird called a robin.”

“Robin. Shall we go check on him now? Is he alone?”

“No. Mother is seeing him to the doctor and the priests.”

“After lunch then,” Danny said, “and we will do your morning lessons for now.”

“I am tired of maths,” Damian complained with a frankly adorable little pout.

Danny bopped him on the nose. “Then the sooner that you start, the sooner you can be done.”