The Justice League was mid-meeting when it started. Barry was rambling, as usual.
“…like that time we stopped Starro in Metropolis. You remember? He got so big he was stomping cars like Legos—”
Hal snorted. “That wasn’t in Metropolis, that was in Coast City. I was there.”
Barry blinked. “Uh, no? Superman threw him into the harbor, I was the one pulling civilians out of the wreckage.”
Clark frowned. “Barry… that happened in Metropolis. I remember it clearly.”
Voices rose around the table, half the team swearing one version of events, the other half swearing the opposite. Someone even pulled up mission logs—conflicting reports, both equally convincing.
In the corner, Danny sat slouched in his chair, chin propped on his hand, glowing eyes half-lidded. He hadn’t spoken once during the meeting, radiating the kind of exhaustion that only came from cleaning up after cosmic disasters at three in the morning.
Finally, Diana turned toward him. “Phantom,” she said evenly, “you were there as well. What do you recall?”
Danny blinked, sat up a little. “Huh? Oh. Yeah, that happened.”
Everyone relaxed—until Hal pressed, “Which one?”
Danny squinted at him. “Uh. Both.”
“Both?” Batman’s voice cut sharp across the silence.
“Yeah,” Danny said slowly, looking around at their baffled expressions. “You’re talking about Starro, right? He trashed Metropolis… and also Coast City.”
“No,” Clark said carefully. “It can’t be both. We would have known.”
Danny tilted his head, still confused by their confusion. “But it was both. I remember both.”
The silence stretched. Dozens of the most powerful beings on the planet, staring at the youngest-looking (but supposedly ancient) member of their ranks.
Then, realization flickered in Danny’s eyes. His shoulders slumped. “…Oh.”
The Infinite Realms are a strange thing. They stretch beyond dimensions, binding every universe together in a way no mortal mind was meant to comprehend. If the multiverse is a bowl of jello, the universes are its fruit—each separate, yet held in place by the same trembling, otherworldly foundation.
Danny Phantom, Ghost King, sits at the center of it all. Ruler, caretaker, janitor. His job is simple in concept, impossible in practice: keep the jello from collapsing.
But universes do collapse. They rot from within, fall apart at the seams, and bleed into others. If left unchecked, the infection spreads. Sometimes, the only cure is destruction—wiping the entire universe away before it drags its neighbors with it.
Danny is kind. He is softhearted in ways his predecessor was not. He cannot bring himself to condemn the lives still fighting to survive inside those dying worlds, even if most time they do not know their universe is about to end. So instead, he does the impossible. He relocates them.
He finds a reality compatible enough to accept them, moves them over, and patches the cracks before anyone can notice. With Clockwork freezing time to help, the process is seamless. One second, people live in a doomed reality. The next, they breathe in a new one—never realizing they are somewhere else.
But “compatible” does not mean “identical.” The details never line up perfectly. A city might stand where it once fell. A victory might occur in Coast City instead of Metropolis. A name, a date, an outcome—it all shifts in tiny, maddening ways.
And those tiny ways ripple. People argue. Records clash. Whole crowds remember things that never happened in this reality, but did happen in another. It has happened so many time people have even given it a name.
Danny gestured vaguely with one hand. “Clockwork stops time, I shuffle everyone over, and if I do it right, nobody notices. Life goes on. Same people, same world—almost.”
“Almost?” Diana prompted.
Danny gave her a tired half-smile. “Some small details may not line up. Different events, different memories. Small things. But enough to make people stop and say, ‘Hey, wasn’t it like this before?’”
He shrugged. “That’s what you call the Mandela Effect, right? Two different realities, same people. Just… stitched together.”
The silence afterward was absolute. Even Batman didn’t speak.
Danny leaned back in his chair, yawning. “Don’t look at me like that. I didn’t invent it. I just clean up the mess so you guys can keep having a reality to argue about.”
