Danny goes to Gotham City and provokes the Joker as himself, not Phantom. He puts down the man and turns himself in. When the trial comes, his defence is that, as someone who is ecto-contaminated, he is not sentient and can therefore not be prosecuted. He cites the Anti-Ecto Acts, which brings the Bats' attention to the laws. When the GIW try to take him into custody, the citizens of Gotham City riot against them, and refuse to let them go until the Acts are repealed.
Danny, jaded after rough years fighting the government and with his loved ones now all ghosts, only planned to have his human form prove a point and disappear into the Ghost Zone after going out with a bang. He didn't actually expect anyone to care.
Dick: Hey guys. This is my friend Danny, the kid I'm mentoring in gymnastics. Danny, these are my siblings. Jason, Cass, Tim, Steph, Duke, and Damian.
Danny: Nice to meet you all
Duke: You too!
Damian: How old are you? What is your last name?
Danny: I'm fifteen and it's Fenton.
Damian: hmmmm.
Dick: Let's head over to the Manor's private gym. I want to work on your form some more
Damian, as soon as they leave: that's my future husband.
Duke teasing: Is he now?
Damian: Yes, our engagement was made between Grandfather and Clockwork - his spiritual grandfather-ten years ago. I believe Daniel is unaware of it, seeing as he is not wearing the symbolic necklace and did not react to my name, but that was him.
Tim: Every time I learn something new of your upbringing, I become more alarmed.
Steph: You aren't planning on marrying him are you?
Damian: Of course. We have a contract to fulfill. It's beneficial that he has a lovely physique and gets along with Richard. I do not mind calling him mine.
Steph: I was afraid of that.
Cass: Do you realize what this means? One of us got to tell Bruce, and worse, Dick.
There has been a series of murders across the country. Each death was varied and self-inflicted. At first, they all seemed like suicide but each had a strange range of symptoms before death.
Sudden paranoia, incoherent mumbling, screaming or yelling, going in and out of their homes sporadically, random fixations, and finally self-harm.
The victims were teachers, parents, businessmen, truckers, and even a crime novelist. All unrelated and in different states.
Each victim didn't seem to have a connection until an investigation discovered that each one had been an active serial killer. The body counts ranged from as little as 5 to as much as 23. The killer was named the Serial Serial Killer which wasn't creative but it was catchy. Some called them the Angel of Vengeance but most thought it was cringy and overdramatic. Many people didn't want them to be caught but others hotly debated letting a killer dispense justice when their crusade could easily turn into them killing people for innocuous things.
The police were still questioning whether this killer even existed. One thing was clear, there was a trail and it led straight to Gotham. A goldmine for them. Naturally, Batman had gotten a hold on the case and began an investigation.
The biggest question was how the killer found their victims and how they knew that they were killers.
The answer was obvious. They didn't need to figure it out. They just needed to wait. Why just in the effort to investigate when a serial killer tries to convince you to leave with them? So bars are the obvious place. But that's shaky at best since there is a period of torment that takes place that allows the victims to return home. The killer doesn't care if the victims could call the police, perhaps because they know their victim won't.
Bruce started to build a profile. He saw a pattern here. Each of the victims had a preference for their victims as well. They targeted young people, mainly boys. Odds are the Serial Serial Killer matched that description or age range. So bars weren't the hunting ground. So parks were more likely to go unnoticed and boys tended to hang out there longer after dark.
The killer was more than likely a victim himself so he may have a few scars but probably not noticeable enough that his would-be assailants would be turned off. There is no ignoring the predatory nature of the victims. Each killed children for gratification in some form. It's not that the boy is attractive but he probably has traits that the victims found attractive in children. So babyfaced, short, native, and polite.
There was much else Bruce could get. There was nothing concrete and he still didn't understand the method that was used. So far this was guesswork.
It wasn't until a few weeks later while he tracking another killer that he found his answer.
Dr.Kinder a Biologist by day and a killer who experiments on his victims at night had picked up a promising new lab rat a week ago. He had intended to slowly dissect the boy. He had gotten so used to the screams he stopped using anesthetics besides he wanted to see how the fear response caused the organs to shift.
To his surprise the boy didn't fight, in fact he seemed to jump to the table and say he didn't need restraints. Disturbing. But he was restrained anyways.
As the doctor cut him open the boy didn't react, only humming to himself as he watched the doctor.
"What are you hoping to find?" He asked. "I'm getting bored and this bearly hurts."
The boy annoyingly never stopped talking and never missed a chance to ruin the moment. There were never any screams or cries but incessant talking.
Dr.Kinder found the boy disturbing so he simply took an axe and chopped the boy into pieces. Not once did he make a sound. The doctor thought it was over but the next day the boy was back. He sat on the autopsy table kicking his feet in nothing but his bare skin.
"What the hell are you?" The doctor gasped in horror.
"I'm bored. Play with me again." The boy purred.
Bile crawled up his throat as the doctor restained this...thing again.
This time the boy spoke differently.
"You cut me up last time. Did you do that to the last boy. After you...you know." A sick grin spread across his cheeks.
The doctor cut open his neck this time and let him bleed out.
Everyday he came back and every day the doctor killed him until the time between his death got shorter and shorter. The days began to blur and he had no idea how long he had been doing this. But that thing kept talkimg to him.
Dr.Kinder stared down at his desk at the papers trying to think of anything but-
"I wonder what people would think about what you've done. You're a disgusting and depraved man doctor. Look at what you've done to me." The sing-song voice of that demon called out.
He could feel those blood-soaked arms wrapped around his neck.
He flinch as he pushed the thing away.
"Oh, are you going to beat me or stab me this time? Ooo, or are you going to put me through the woodchipper again?" The demon asked as the doctor wrapped his hands around his throat.
He just kept squeezing until the boy went limp. It never ends. The blood never goes away. It covered every surface of the room. Dripping, conjugating, and spreading into every corner. Whenever he turned his head he could see body parts spread across the room in the pools of blood he could they the faces of the others that he had killed. Each face wretched in agony.
"You hold on better than the others. I've been eaten, torched, and disemboweled before but after coming back a few times they usually end it after a few words. But every time they don't feel guilt. They just don't want to face consequences." The boy said. "Do you even remember my name? The one I told you when you picked me up on the side of the road or was I just another body to use and discard? I used the name of your first victim. I hoped you'd notice."
The doctor knew he couldn't kill the boy but he could end himself. He had tried it once but just like the kid he came back without a scratch.
"Not yet. This is your life now. Come on, let's taste death together. Again and again and again and again and-" he repeated over and over.
This was hell. This was his hell.
But it came to an end eventually. Dr.Kinder put an end to himself in a gruesome display.
Batman had only caught the tail end as he faced a young boy standing an a pool of blood.
****
"Yeah, that thing is like a worse version of a revenant. Doesn't really have a name yet to describe it. It's undead for sure. You kill it and it just comes back." Constantine said "Why did you bring it here?"
After a long bath and some new clothes, the kid looked normal as played on a phone given to him.
"Look, I didn't know what else to do." Bruce explained.
"You leave it alone!" Constantine said exasperated "Look they are harmless to anything they don't bear a grudge towards. Think of it as a force of nature." Constantine said.
"I just want to know how to stop him." Bruce said.
"Well you can't kill it but you can't bring him back entirely. You can just soothe it 'till it stops targeting its victims. It must have died pretty gruesomely to go to these lengths. You need to find where it died and lay it to rest. Properly." Constantine sighed knowing that appeasing this soul would be more than just difficult.
"Danny, come on. Let's go." Bruced said putting a hand on the boy's head as Danny stood up to leave.
Vlad has always been able to do nasty things to satiate his obsessions and wants, he tried kidnapping and trapping Danny and Maddie. Hell, he cloned Danny and tortured him in the process! It is canon that he willingly risked earth in the finale in order to get what he wants. And he wants Maddie more than anything.
But he can't have her...not in the traditional way... but then here comes Danny.
Danny, who grows to look like his mom more and more everyday. He gets her height, her lithe form, her sarcasm, her smarts. Sometimes, Vlad thinks that with a few tweaks, Danny would be the spitting image of his mother. And Vlad gets more obsessed, fixated on that point. He reasons that it technically is Maddie since Danny has her DNA, then those tweaks come to mind again. What if he just did this, a slight hair cut and a dye job, and he'd have Maddie's hair! Then it escalates. It escalates until there is little left of Danny.
ok when you mentioned Vlad an idea came to me but not at all the same as yours:
Vlad cloned Danny again but this time the clone is screwed up in a new way: his body is functional, he clearly lives/ n It's not an empty envelope (like what will be given to Dan) but his personality.... is problematic. But Vlad doesn't care about that, no the problem for Vlad is that his new Danny can't seem to transform into a ghost form, even though they have access to these powers without much problem, he is stuck in human form.
Vlad tries to correct this. with scalpels and other unethical experiments but continues to call the clone by sweet name as well as Danny
thus the Danny clone assimilated that: Vlad behavior is normal behavior to have.
when the real Danny saves him by punching Vlad and giving poorly worded advice then letting him go explore the world like he did for Dani...
New Danny then integrates that it is normal to take revenge if he is harmed and that as Danny he must in some way save people... but his sense of normality is more than messed up and the absence of guidance he ended up being the killer killer who relaxes in Gotham, enjoying the latter's atmosphere and its ghostly nature so as not to have eaten.
ho and he apparently got the Fenton luck as a bonus which means he doesn't really hunt, he just waits for trouble by vibrating quietly in his corners
Little guy has probably never been on his own and trying to do what feels natural to him. Which would be waiting for someone like Vlad to tell him what to do.
In a twisted way, he loves Vlad but only because Vald is all he knows. He unintentionally attracts adults like Vlad who hurt kids because he feels at home there. When bad people lure him in they call him with sweet words and praise that remind him of his creator. He plays with them until they are all used up and dead because he's a child who doesn't really understand what he's doing.
He likely followed Bruce because he smelled like dead children (Jason and Damian) and thought he found someone new to play with. But Bruce doesn't try to kill him, or hurt him. He didn't even try to physically touch him. All of this is new and weird.
Now all I can imagine is him doing all those weird poses that kids do when they're playing with their iPads. I don't want him to be one of those gross smelly sticky kids that smear everything they have on their hands on the screens đ
Also what are the reactions of the batkids to Davey?! Like are they weirded out? Some of them are definitely concerned and curious. But what about Damian and Jason(the aforementioned dead children) are they hostile, ready to brawl like the other ghosts with Danny, or are they just wary of him being another loa spy?
Kinda wanna see Dani and Danny's reaction to Davey tho. Like Danny fully thought that he's just going to travel around the world like Dani and he did travel but with the additional adventure of tormenting child murderers/abusers/rapists(I love Davey for that! Good for him!!).
Would Danny blame himself for leaving Davey and letting him go and assuming that he'll be like Dani and then Dani finds out that she got another clone brother but this one is a little more unhinged and wouldn't hesitate on tormenting criminals to their deaths. What would their meeting be like? Is it angsty, fluffy, a perfect mix of both or just a plain mess? Idk...
Bringing back another black-haired and blue-eyed boy was met with a round of sighs but acceptance.
Little Davey looked only a few years younger than Damian. 12 years old at the most. The boy was pale, slightly gaunt, with large eyes and matted black hair.
Davey was strange. He didn't understand social cues or how to exist in public. He knew next to nothing about how the world works or how to stay safe. Cars were familiar enough but only because he would be dragged into them or put in the trunk. He was very excited when he was allowed to touch the buttons.
Damian wasn't ready to be an older brother especially not to something like that thing. Davey felt wrong to Damian. Something that shouldn't exist.
Damian was proved right when the boy looked him right in the eyes and said.
"Play with me." He pulled Damian's drawn sword to his neck. "Cut me open!"
Bruce snatched Davey back from the blade and told Damian to put it away. Davey was forbidden from entering the Batcave and any dangerous items.
Damian was freaked out. Davey was too mentally disturbed to be here. However, the revenant is fond of his older brother and follows him around and begs him to play. Damian has to try pawning him off on the others but Davey is like glue.
Then there was food.
Davey didn't understand food. He had been fed a mostly liquid diet for his short life by Vlad. The liquid was made from nutrients and ectoplasm. After escaping Davey didn't know what food looked like. When strangers came up to him offering candy he took it. So he learned that candy was also food. But that wasn't enough to make him full, so he resorted to the closest form of ectoplasm he could find. Human blood. He learned that he could drink it for sustenance.
Feeding Davey for the first time was...sad. He was like a toddler learning what different flavors were. Sour, salty, and savory. All so new a wonderful.
Tim let him him have a sip of soda and Davey was hooked.
Tim is also banned from giving food to Davey after letting him try coffee and making him sick.
Stephanie is also banned after giving him spicy chips. Mostly because of Davey's need to harm himself caused him to eat himself sick.
Davey's issues are more than concerning. Dick was supposed to watch him while Bruce was investigating the last suicide linked to Davey. Davey didn't know how to talk to someone not trying to kill him. But Dick felt like him. The blood on his hands was the same as his. But the lingering scent of another pulled Davey elsewhere.
The other revenant.
One that felt a similar drive.
Bruce debated if Jason should meet Davey. It could help them both but it could easily make them worse. Davey was impressionable, to say the least, and Jason didn't need to bring someone else on his crusade.
Jason wouldn't use Davey like that but Davey would surely agree to it.
But Davey wasn't like Jason. He didn't kill. He gets killed. He lets himself be tortured until he drives others insane. Jason could never use him to kill the Joker. In fact, the clown must never know of Davey's powers or Davey might find his eternal playmate.
But it doesn't change that Jason and Davey will meet.
"Yeah, he's coming with me," Jason said picking up the boy under one arm.
"You can't just take him!" Dick yelled
"Do you guys think you can control him? That he'll stop wandering around looking for more targets. He can't and he won't. It's a part of him. At least I can get to his targets before they can kill him first. If he can sniff out any predator then he can use his powers for good." Jason said .
"He's not like us. He's a child and mentally he isn't ready for the outside world yet. I love you but I can't let you drag him into your mess." Dick said.
"And what? Fix him? He is a revenant and he's going to seek out his obsession. In a place like Gotham, he will find another target. He needs it." Jason barked.
There is no clear answer. They could try to preserve any innocence Davey had left but that same innocence led him to being tortured. They could also tell him what he's actually doing and he'll then do it on purpose knowingly killing others. What was better for him mentally because they all knew by this point Davey would strike again? It's his nature.
The only answer they had right now was finding where Davey died originally and calming his spirit. If they could find his original killer or make a grave for him then he'd settle.
Constantine was firm that Davey couldn't leave even if they calmed his soul. His life and death were too traumatic for him to disappear.
On the other side of the country, Danny had a bad feeling. He knew he should leave his clones to themselves and wait for them to come home on their own but his most recent clone brother bothered him. He wasn't like Elle at all. He was...odd. Danny decided not to worry too much since the clone was stable.
But then Vlad talked non-stop about losing his "precious boy". The word made him feel sick. Then there was the first death. Some offender that lived on the outskirts of town ended their life. The only reason anyone talked about it was the state he was found in. Blood was everywhere more blood than a single human body had and unknown chunks of meat scattered the ground.
Danny brushed it off but more started happening and they led a bloody trail.
Of course, Danny knew something was up. This all lined up perfectly with the clone's escape. But at the same time, all the victims were serial child murderers. It was hard to feel bad about it. He had found his obsession and it was such a bad one.
But Danny was still worried. A bit of investigation wouldn't hurt.
ok, several ideas that I don't yet know how to organize:
*Danny can't really leave his town but on the other hand Dani is already traveling. Dani takes finding the new clone/cousin as a part of "Where's Waldo?" life size
*Davey is a sort of lightning rod for getting kidnapped (literally next to a Wayne in public, at a gala etc) or other crime (found by chance in the middle of a shootout when lost at the mall, random assault, wandering by chance in a place trapped by bombs while walking, hostage situation ect)
*he's also incredibly easy to lose, even with all the bat concentration . This ultimately adds to his supernatural abilities
*luckily for the batfam it is also ok to wear trackers H24 (Davey doesn't know what a tracker is but doesn't care enough to ask)
*Davey releases interference when he uses his ghost abilities, usually his regeneration. The batfam quickly learns to rush to its location when it happens
* The first time Davey sees dialysis he seems to become extremely happy then jealous: Davey associates dialysis= "game" with Vlad or just after a session. He thinks they "played" without him >:( not fair
*Dani finally shows up and checks on Davey quickly and thanks his adoptive family and plans to leave as well. The batfam interrupts her in her lightning thanks to ask her who she is, she replies: uh, sister or cousin I guess? then turns to Davey waiting for his opinion
*giving a name to a supernatural entity seals a sort of contract between the entity and the person who gives this name if the entity accepts this name (fae rule). By giving him the name Davey the Wayne family tied Davey into a bond that neither party is aware of and therefore defined. Constantine groaned upon hearing this.
*Davey can see the weak but vengeful ghosts of children, that's how he knew the name of the first victim in the first post. Mayba Danny/Dani/Vlad can not do that
*Davey gets along surprisingly well with street children. Subconsciously the children know that they are safe with him because if anything bad happens it will ALWAYS fall on Davey
When Ellie visits they sense she is also a ghost (probbaly showed up in Phantom form.) and they ask about her relation to Davey (I say he never told the Bats his name which is why they named him Davey. Or even a scene where he starts to say his name, gets as far as âIâm Da-! HmmmâŠ.I forgot! :Dâ so they call him Davey.) Anyways, they find out his relation to Ellie and the bats are digging for some more information about their past and home life to see if they can find out what happened to them, and while asking about more family either Davey or Elli could mention Danny. About how they still had one other brother. The bats ask where he is and if they could meet him but Ellie makes a strange face and says that heâs a little busy. And it comes out that heâs currently dealing with Vlad. (Or they could use code names like Plasmius or the Fruitloop)
Whoâs theâŠfruitloop?
Davey: Heâs the first person who played with me! He played with Ellie too. Dannyâs so lucky because Mr still wants to play with him!
So now the bats think that all three are siblings and two of them were murdered by this Fruitloop guy (technically true?) and their last brother (who is still alive) is now this guyâs next target. Cue panicking.
As a current college student I refuse to believe Danny as Ghost King doesnât answer summons. As soon as people start summoning him he starts demanding home cooked meals and fat wads of unmarked cash.
That they started off summoning him with the blood of virgins was a bit distasteful, but once he told them to knock it off (threatened to take whatever harm they do to innocents out on their skin, tenfold) they seemed to get the message and started giving him offering of home decor and kitchen appliances instead.
All things being equal, they donât even ask for much in return. For most of them, just the confirmation that he exists and is ââwatching outââ for them is enough. Although lately heâs started giving his cultists random junk (a nice rock he found, a handful of marbles, a piece of scrap metal from his parents lab) and telling them theyâre sacred artifacts of great power, as a joke.
âYour eminence! We have offered you the blood of virgins! We honor your presence with our offerings! Please, descend!â
In the thundering roar of âHigh Kingâ being chanted throughout the dank basement, the floor opens up with a screaming split of the earth. The awe-
"Ew, no. I want enchiladas, not blood. I'm not a vampire, weirdos."
"... Pardon?"
"Not a vampire," Danny repeated, frown as prominent as the ice crown around his temple. He lazily floated about the summoning circle, puttering here and there to check the sub-par offerings. "I don't drink blood or whatever. Knock it off."
Danny glared, eyes glowing toxic green and pointed slowly at every member of the cult. "You ever spill blood again, innocent and/or unwilling, I will make sure every wound you inflict will be returned tenfold on your loved ones."
"Yes, your majesty." They trembled. Danny nodded.
"Then... what would be an acceptable offering, your majesty?"
"I literally just told you. Enchiladas and make it spicy." Danny looked around, understanding that an enchilada for payment would make him an underpaid Ghost King. "And... cash." Danny nodded decisively, turning sharply to the leader of the cult in order to make his kingly cape billow out dramatically. "Yes. Cash. I want a lot."
Hopefully this'll deter them from summoning him too much. There's only so many excuses he could give to his parents about his disappearance before they caught on. Then again... it was his parents, the Drs. Fenton, so they're never gonna catch on.
The cultists remained silent, until a young voice tentatively piped up. "There's a really good food truck two streets down. I can go get something...?"
"Good thinking, Initiative! Keep it up and you'll be a Sworn Member in no time!" The woman on the left of the cult leader praised and shooed the brightly smiling Initiative away.
"...How much money do you require, your majesty?"
Danny held up his hand in a claw shape, gloves sparkling with the cosmos themselves. "This much. No, yeah, this much."
"Is it me or does the King have a midwestern acce-ow!" Another initiative hissed as his friend elbowed him in the gut.
The leader cleared his throat. "Yes, well. I shall promptly retrieve it."
Danny dismissed the leader, patting himself for a trick well played. If they didn't want to get scammed, maybe they should have thought of that before spilling people's blood. He turned to the woman, the second in command. "So... why have you summoned me?"
The second in command began to give him a well-practiced speech. She was quite convincing, if only she wasn't advocating for the end of the world. When the two people came back, Danny made grabby hands at the foil covered plate keeping him away from his (free!) dinner. He shoved the wad of money into his chest (and enjoyed the cultists gaping at the storage he had, that's right, be jealous) and took a giant bite out of the enchilada. Delicious.
"Yew know wha' I thin'?" Danny mumbled around his mouthful of enchilada. "I'm the king o' the dead. Why make the world end faster if you're all gonna come to me anyway?"
"But- but we gave you the sacrifice!"
"You think a plate of enchiladas. a wad of cash, and some blood is worth the end of the world? This is the consulting fee. I happen to like living food. I kill living people; ergo, no more living food. Comprende?"
"But-!"
"You paid the consulting fee. I'm giving you the wise council of maybe rub your two braincells together and stop being stupid. And you-" Danny pointed at the second in command. "Maybe consider being a lawyer. Or a politician. Thanks for the food!"
With that, Danny disrupted the circle and go the hell out of dodge, cackling all the while as he took another bite of his enchilada.
----
Word got around- cultists are notorious yappers- and suddenly Danny got bombarded with summonings that ranged from murder to test materials.
"If you cheat, your afterlife is going to suck."
The high-schooler sighed. "Life sucks now, though."
"Valid. Tell you what. I'll help you study-" Danny crammed a handful of M&M's into his mouth, a twenty dollar bill tucked securely into the savings jar he's kept to carrying around in his ghost chest. "And if you pass, I'll let you see your deceased dog..." Dany squinted. "Uh, your dog...Potato Man..? again."
The teen straightened. "Fucking deal."
"Why Potato Man?"
"If I pass, I'll show you."
----
"You summoned me on Thanksgiving. Seriously?"
"You celebrate Thanksgiving, your majesty?"
"More like I celebrate the food." Danny mumbled. "Your consulting fee is that."
"What? But we just made that!" The family screeched in despair as he floated closer to the fresh mac & cheese.
"Too bad, so sad. Now, what did you want?" Danny asked as he pulled the foil pan closer and began munching. Delicious. And it wasn't becoming sentient to attack him!
"My mac and cheeeeese," the dad sobbed. "Why is death so cruel?"
Danny shoveled another serving spoonful into his maw. Delicious
----
"I- uh, brought this as an offering?" The person held up their box full of neatly organized cat toys. "Cuz... someone said you mentioned something about a demon cat?"
Danny twitched but gratefully took the box. "Thanks. It's my sister's cat. What can I do for you?"
"Uh. So. Is it like," the person waved their hand around, gesturing to themselves hopelessly. "Is it okay if I'm... you know..."
"Having no fashion sense isn't actually a crime."
"Hah! No, I meant. That I'm not cis?"
"Yeah. Why wouldn't it be?"
"So I'm not going to hell?"
"That depends. It depends on a lot of things, like murder or which religion you subscribe to, but it never depends on what gender you identify as. The gender dysphoria goes away when you're dead, by the way, because you're reverted back to your soul. Your identity is tied to your soul. Denying it is like denying your soul. Humans love to do that for some reason." Danny shrugged, idly playing with a toy bee.
"Oh." They look relieved. 'Thanks. For answering."
"You paid the consultant fee, right?" Danny shook the box, grinning as the box shook ominously with bells. The hell cat was going to hate him even more but Danny didn't give a fuck. "Any other life questions?"
"What's the meaning of life?"
"A different meaning than the meaning of death, duh." Danny grinned at their scowl.
"That's cheating!"
"Says the one who summoned the Ghost King to ask about the mysterious afterlife."
They flushed. "I had questions!"
"So do a lot of people, but you don't see them summoning the Ghost King about it, do you?"
"Okay, so I've got a bit of a dramatic flair..."
Danny pointedly looked down at the summoning circle drawn in glitter pen.
"...Just go."
"Yeah, I'm going, I'm going."
----
Danny was summoned into a pho shop. A good one. He knew, because there was a quiet kid doing homework in the booths and one manning the till.
"I want a train bowl, please. Extra lemons and coriander."
A bowl is silently handed to him.
"Thank you." He relished the soup.67 The summonings have been scarce lately, and he wanted to enjoy this giant ass bowl with no shame. "So, what's up?"
"Do you know Buddha?"
"Yes?"
"Does he watch over us?"
"Yes?"
The girl in the corner booth started praying. "Hi, Buddha. Could you make sure aunt Kathy minds her own business? I know you're all about virtue but-"
The presence of Buddha chuckled at the halfhearted plea.
Danny Fenton gets the surprise of his life when the Justice League accepts a mission in Amity Park.
No, they were there for ghost issues. lt turns out that if people aren't exposed to shock waves of Ectoplasm radiation, they don't get fun side effects like seeing the dead. That's why the town people had called his parents loons up until the portal was open.
There hadn't been enough death energy to make them visible, let alone corporeal enough to touch the human world. Even Danny had thought his parents were chasing an unrealistic dream until that fateful day when Sam convinced him to walk through the portal.
What the Justice League was there to do was stop this company that had been kidnapping meta children all over the country. They had hidden them a little outside Amity Park, where people rarely drove by. Danny had only gone through those back roads twice, and he's lived in Amity Park all his life.
No one had the slightest idea that a secret lab was operating underground, forcing experimentation on children. Danny felt horrible he had missed this, as the self-proclaimed hero of the area, but his expertise was in ghosts. They were pretty straightforward and loud in their evil plots.
Something like this required resources, training, and detective skills that Danny didn't have. What made him feel a little bit better about all this was that Danny had found the children before the Justice League.
He just won't tell them that because it made his own kidnapping rather embarrassing. Somehow, the scientists- if that can even be called that- had detected Danny's hidden powers. While he was busy crawling out of a dumpster- Dash had thrown him in there- a van had pulled up and thrown a collar onto his neck.
Danny was so stunned by the action that he could not stop a taser to the neck in time. His entire body had cramped up, but not before he had sent a burst of energy to the broken security camera, tuning it on and broadcasting the video to Tucker's laptop.
He got a bit better at controlling technology using ectoplasm, especially after the many fights with Technus, and his friend had set up a laptop in a close circuit that could tap into Danny's frequency.
The kidnappers probably thought that they were in the clear when making grabs at meta children since most came from areas that didn't have surveillance. Tucker had gotten home to a three-hour-long video from Danny, clicking it open and spitting out the ramen he was eating when the first few minutes of it was Danny getting educated.
He panicked and called Jazz to ask if his friend had gotten home. When she denied seeing her brother, Tucker contacted Sam and informed her what was happening.
The pair had immediately mobilized, tearing through the city on the hunt for the van. Jazz had joined them after letting her parents know Danny was missing. They had gone straight to the police station to report that their son was gone.
Tucker had sent them the video, claiming it was from a Panic App. The pair had been in the beta stages, which was why no one had such a helpful app, but it was enough for the Fentons to make their case. The police had placed an Amber Alert and had practically locked down the city.
In a small town like Amity Park, getting the people to band together to help each other was relatively easy. Even Flash, the last person to have seen Danny, had called his football friends to get in a car and help them find the youngest Fenton.
Sadly, by then, the scientists had taken Danny well out of the city, even with multiple people calling to place tips on the black van. Four days passed, and with each passing hour, the likelihood of Danny returning home alive grew dimmer.
No one thinks they have ever seen Jazz Fenton cry that much before. Jack and Maddie were on a rampage, tearing through the city for hints of their son. They had even ignored a ghost attacking the mall, too busy stopping every black Sprinter van they could find for clues of their son.
The video was somehow leaked to the public - Tucker and Sam had allowed it to slip into public domains with a scrambled VPN, hoping to get someone to report anything- and this video had made its way to a certain billionaire in Gotham.
Batman had been working the case for months, looking for a pair of twins that had vanished from Daminan's class. They had gotten the boys back, now able to see in the dark as their meta genes had been forcefully unlocked, and realized they were rescued before they were able to get to the primary base.
The only clue the Bats had was a symbol of a two-headed snack on the collars found around the twin's necks. The same collar that had been forced upon Danny Fenton when he was taken in the video.
Bruce had called his co-workers the second he noticed the mark. They had geared up and gone to Amity Park to investigate. Clark, Diana, Billy, and Bruce had arrived at Amity Park in their civilian personas. They came separately to avoid suspicion, hoping to use Billy as bait.
The Justice League was still coming to terms with Captain Marvel being a fourteen-year-old kid, but none could call into question the good work Billy did.
The three had different stories about why they were in the middle of nowhere in Amity Park.
Bruce had been in town to set up a new outreach for the Wayne Foundation. Clark, a news reporter investigating the missing child case of Danny and Diana, had chosen to tour the most haunted cities in the United States for her museum curator.
Like a charm, Billy had gotten the attention of the kidnappers, and only three days after arriving in Amity as a homeless kid, he had been taken. The moment Billy pressed the button on his bracelet, the three were notified that he had been kidnapped.
Clark kept an ear of the van, listening to the bracelet's beeping that no human could pick up. Just in case, the Leauge had embedded a tracker into Billy's left arm, and Bruce had followed it to the secret Lab.
A message to the Watch Tower had backup zapping down in seconds. They waited until nightfall before springing a rescue mission. Flash, Black Canary, Red Tornado, and Vigilanete had been sent in to find and bring the children home while Bruce, Clack, and Diana worked on taking out the guards.
Danny had woken in a test tube with multiple needles and wires digging into his skin, facing a group of superheroes that stared back at him in horror. The last thing he remembered had been the passing cells of meta children before he was taken to a room with a glass tube.
After being shoved into it, Danny was put to sleep with a gas. He had not been conscious for the entire time he was taken. That means he was not awake when the scientists had accidentally caused his heart to flatline.
They had thrown his body into an unmarked grave, intending to bury him with the three other nameless victims. Danny had not been awake when his survival instincts had triggered his shift to Phantom and floated out of the grave.
Like a balloon with helium, Danny had drifted far from the grave, flouting in the wind unconscious due to the gas.
He had awakened for only a few seconds, floating above the road that led to Amity, confused about how he got there. Sadly, the very same van that had just finished burying him had driven down the street, spotting him in the air and choosing to capture the famous Phantom.
They had stolen some Fenton Tech on a stakeout while waiting to take the Fenton Boy and were happy to see it had knocked out the ghost. The men had taken Phantom back to the lab, setting him up in a tube so their scientist could pull out his green blood for tests.
The Justice League had broken in that night. After the raid, Bruce hacked the computers, looking for clues about the missing children. His heart fell to his feet when he read the reports.
The children had died in the experiments. Danny Fenton was on the list of failed experiments, his time of death marked in the conclusion section of a report like he wasn't a young boy who had just finished his first year of high school.
Bruce had only been able to pull himself together long enough to find information about Phantom being held in a deeper part of the lab. Clark, Barry, and Bruce had gone to the lower levels, intending to set the ghost free.
What they found was Phantom in his most basic form. A young ghost with his jumpsuit cut open, showing the same markings the other rescued children bore.
Lichtenberg scars around the neck, torso, and arms.
Phantom had been a new ghost. Bruce and Clark had verified that in their investigations. They had never thought to question what had created him, only that he had appeared a few months ago wearing a hazmat jumpsuit and seemingly unable to leave Amity Park.
The same jumpsuit the other meta children were forced to wear to contain their experiments.
Phantom had been a meta child that had been killed by these people. He was recaptured and placed in a strange ghost coma, leaving the Justice League baffled about how to help him.
Besides blinking, his eyes opened for only a few seconds when he was rescued; he had remained unconscious after muttering, "There are more. Fifty-seven kids....help them, please."
The League had taken him back to their headquarters while working through the labs and digging up the bodies of the other victims. The people involved with this heinous crime had all taken their lives, having snuck a cyanide tablet into their teeth.
None of them faced justice properly, not for the deaths they caused or the angst that Phantom had been dragged into. The ghost had been unable to move on, sticking around even after everything they had done to him.
He had likely been attempting to get help for the remaining prisoners because every place he had attacked had been involved with this lab.
The Justice League would later reveal this information to the horrified townspeople.
Valerie Gray would be throwing up in the bathroom after watching the news. Her father's previous employers had been half on staff with the people who had killed Phantom.
They made a list of potential children to test for the meta gene. She had been on there, and had Phantom not gotten her dad fired when he did, she would have been kidnapped. He saved her life, and she had shot at him in return.
Dash Baxter would be found drinking and sobbing in the school parking lot. He had been drowning in guilt for dragging Fenton behind the mall, where he had thrown him in the dumpster. He had nothing to do with the kidnapping, but he blamed himself nonetheless.
Those people had been attempting to take Fenton for weeks, and he created the perfect opening. Now Danny Fenton was dead by the same people who made his hero. Dash vowed never to bully anyone again, even as Kawn took him home and helped nurse him through his hangover.
Sam Madison and Tucker Foley moved about like zombies. They kept sending messages to someone who would never answer, searching the sky for Phantom's glow, or had their phones on just in case they found Danny. With each uncovered grave, the pair grew hopeful as Danny had not been among the recovered bodies.
People were slightly heartbroken for them. They would wait on a best friend that was never coming home.
Not to mention the Fenton's reaction to Danny's fate. The funeral had been one of the hardest ones any of them had ever attended. The cries of the three remaining Fentons had echoed in their nightmares.
Worse, they had closed their portal. The Fentons had sealed everything to do with ghosts away, no longer able to stand the research now that they knew Phantom had been attempting to prevent Danny's death.
Maybe if they had stopped to try and communicate with him, they might have been able to save their son.
Jack and Maddie were still certified geniuses and were able to fall back on working for Wayne Enterprises as engineers. They moved away, with Jazz looking lifeless without her brother.
People in Amity Park passed by the old Fenton Works sign, never to see it glow again. They also realized that Phantom had vanished, many assuming that now he was at rest due to his murder being solved.
They were unaware he was floating above them in the Watch Tower's medical wing, locked away in slumber.
John Constantine had noticed his ectoplasm levels had not moved since his rescue. For some reason, Phantom's body was not producing it properly like other ghosts- most likely due to experiments they had forced him through.
This caused a coma, with every Justice League Dark member scratching their heads. In every way, Phantom seemed fine, but his core did not react correctly.
It was almost as if it had never been adequately formed, as if Phantom was still alive somehow.
After months of trying to figure out how to stabilize the ghost's core, John contacted a ghost doctor from the Infinite Realms. It took calling in a few favors to get the information, let alone the actual communication with the ghost doctor, but he could do it.
He was a magic expert, not a medic. This was the only chance Phantom had to ever wake.
Thankfully, Frostbite seemed to know exactly what to do when his large eyes landed on the floating figure in the medical incubator the League had placed him in.
He had assured them he could help Phantom but needed to take him back to his hospital to properly treat the ghost. After the Yeti agreed to an Oath Vow stating he would not allow any harm to fall upon Phantom while under his care.
Another agreement of having John present for Phantom's treatment had solidified Justice League into letting the being move Phantom into the Far Frozen.
A year after Danny Fenton's death, Phantom's eyes snapped open to the relieved Frostbite and the beaming trench coat man.
He had never been so confused when the first thing his doctor said was, "Great One, I am sorry to say the humans believed Daniel Fenton has passed while you were in a coma."
Jason startles as a stranger on the streets of Gotham takes one look at him, looks at him in absolute horror, and then runs to the closest dumpster and vomits into it.
Jason is mildly offended. He doesnât look that bad does he?
â
Danny glances back to look at the undead staring at him on the sidewalk and nearly vomits again. His soul is shattered. Itâs like looking at a human after being hit by a car at 60mph whoâs acting like theyâre perfectly fine as they walk towards you.
â
Jason approaches the stranger, one hand hovering over the shoulder of the guy and asks; âHey man whatâs your problem? What's the deal w-â
The once retching passerby moves imperceptibly quick. His hands go through Jasonâs chest and before he can even react he feels something snap back into place.
Jason can barely remember screaming as he near instantly blacks out from the pain.
Danny panics as the man whose soul he just snapped the main fragments together is lying unconscious on the dirty alley ground.
Shit. Shit. Why the fuck did he do that?
It was impulsive and instinctual, everything in his core screamed at him to help this man.
His soul is still shattered, looking at him now itâs like seeing a man in the process of being treated by EMTs after getting hit by a car at 60mph.
Hundreds of tiny shards of fragmented soul still carefully swirl around the newly healed pieces like a malformed planet and its many warped moons.
Danny can see the shards gravitate closer together. Good. He managed to stabilize the core and its now going to start the long arduous process of healing itself. With the amount of damage that was done, he canât even imagine the pain that he was already in much less the pain he will feel as the shards stitch themselves back together.
Movement shocks him out of his thoughts.
The man is starting to wake.
Shit. He needs to get out of here but he canât just leave this man be.
Danny grabs a piece of cardboard out of the recycling bin that he thankfully didnât throw up in. With shaking hands he snatched one of the barely concealed knives from the man he knocked unconscious because of his stupid stupid actions, and scratched âif you need answersâ and his phone number into the mildly stained cardboard.
Danny placed the note on top of the guy and bolted, turning into the nearest alley and vanished, flying back to his apartment as fast as possible.
All he wanted to do was life a (semi) normal life here. Guess that all changes now.
(#danny mends jason's shattered soul and shit goes down.#bones writes#and the thick plotens#can you imagine how fucking painful it would be for each tiny piece of your soul to mend back together?#and how much more coherent and clear everything would be?#consider: Jason running to Tim or Dick thinking he got poisoned but whenever a part of his soul clicks into place#his eyes glow a bright toxic green. not Lazarus green. itâs less murky and muddy colored. itâs purer almost#the first few nights are rough. his brother watches as he screams and howls in pain as his soul hungrily fits itself back together.#each piece clicking into place feeling both like a chronic pain youâve felt for years is finally gone#and that same pain hitting you all at once increasing forever in magnitude. itâs hell. itâs the best thing heâs ever felt. itâs torture.#itâs like a weight has been lifted off his shoulders and he can finally breathe. itâs pure agony.#heâsâ never felt better but the process couldnât hurt worse#what happens when his soul fully mends? he did die previously so does that unlock any abilities? thatâs for yâall to write ;)#bones writes in the tags)
With each piece that clicks into place, he gets a new sensation that hits and feels differently than the last. Some are more intense than others, and some just make him feel winded for a few seconds.
Signal finds Jason writhing in pain on the outskirts of Crime Alley. He immediately calls for backup, and they get him back to the caves medical unit.
They do everything they can to ease Jason's pain. Tox screen came back negative for any poison that might have caused his condition, and painkillers have seemingly no effect. A second tox screen indicates that he is burning through the pain medication at almost speedster levels. So they get him on a heavy morphine drip and an epidural for good measure. Which seemed to help short-term during the worst of the pain bouts but made him loopy and incoherent in between.
While that is going on, the Bats have all hands on deck looking for clues on who hurt one of their own. They find the cardboard message and phone number close to where Jason was found and traced it to an apartment a few blocks away. When night falls, they will have their answers, one way or another.
Jason's soul shattered when Superboy punched reality. It simultaneously brought him back to life and irreparably broke him. The reason he stumbled around as a zombie was because of his shattered core, working on pure instinct because that's what the biggest central 'shard' had. The Lazarus pit acted as a glue that helped a few of the pieces stick together to give Jason consciousness again, but none of those pieces were supposed to 'go together l' so to speak. Like sticking a puzzle piece in the wrong spot, it left Jason/Hood unable to fully reform as some of his soul pieces will never be able to fit back together properly.
Here's the thing about mending souls. It is HARD! Danny as the Ghost King has a small bit of instinctual knowledge that allows him to break and mend a tiny part of the mess that is Jason's soul, but he's only started the process of healing. Here's the other thing. Souls aren't meant to shatter. They're a whole piece. Shattering would normally straight up kill you. The fact that Jason didn't die is because he was already dead when it happened.
Healing a soul is nigh unheard of. Only a few people have done it, and it was ALWAYS immediately after the soul had been broken. The fact that Jason has lived so long with that train wreck of a soul is nothing short of a miracle. And Danny healing it? Even more impossible than that. And infinitely more complicated. Jason has lived with his soul patched together for years at this point. Things have grown. Sharp Edges have smoothed. Tiny, disparate pieces have clumped together and fused into knobbly, frankenstein bigger pieces. His soul will never be exactly as it was before he died. It will be a horror show of scars and cobbled together parts. But by the end it will be better than it WAS.
Not that the Batfam have any idea of this. They just know that half the time Jason is screaming in pain, while the other half he cycles through grief stricken tears, homicidal rage at Bruce, Dick, and every other member(even Alfred, although this always devolves into Jason sobbing that he doesn't mean it), and giddy euphoria when the pain finally abates for a moment and he feels better than he has since that fateful night. The euphoria is always the worst for them because Jason always acts so like his former self. He ACCEPTS HUGS and laughs and talks about the magic of Robin, and it never lasts. Dick is ready to kill whoever did this to Jason. Yes, they've all watched the footage from the alley. Yes, they've cleaned up the video enough to see the blank horror on the young man's face right before he plunges his hand into Jason's chest(obviously some sort of meta). They all can tell this wasn't planned. The boy just wanted to help. But that doesn't change the fact that he's not dealing with the fallout of Jason swinging through every emotion as his soul pieces itself together piece by agonizing piece. Every single one of them wants to put the fear of GOD(Or just the Batman) into him.
Do the Bats call in a magic user to take a look at Jason when all the toxicology comes back negative? If they do, do any of them realize that Jason's soul is finally healing? Does Danny ever try to check up on Jason? Sure, the initial intervention was instinctual, but he'd want to check up on his 'patient' eventually. Maybe Danny can even help speed up his recovery! Yeah! That's what he'll do!
It isn't until Nightwing almost decapitated him that he remembers he's being hunted by the Batfam.
Jason's current situation will fix itself naturally, but it will take time, unavailable resources (ectoplasm) and there's a chance something will stick worse than it wasâŠ
Jason needs more interventions from Danny, not only will it speed up the sticking, it will also keep him as aligned as possible, and above all it will give a lot of ectoâŠ
and the Bats will only realize they need Danny after more assassination attempts and the Halfa goes undergroundâŠ
⊠what's more, the vigilantes aren't even sure he's still in the city.
Danny wouldn't leave Red Hood. Sure, the thought might cross his mind. But at the end of the day, Danny's senses of compassion and responsibility are just too strong. He won't leave the poor guy when he could help.
He will, however, be a lot more cautious.
Invisible, intangible, not even breathing. Tight hold on his core so as not to trigger any alarms with big cold spots. Mostly just hovering nearby so Hood can leech ecto from him; only reaching in to realign for very brief moments when Hood is asleep and the attending Bat is focused on something else.
Danny won't leave, but he can't afford to get caught again.
Danny only becomes more resolved to not reveal himself the longer he stays in the manor. Every Bat member is furious with him(and holy shit Brice Wayne is BATMAN Wes would never shut up about this if he found out). Being in close quarters with people who are actively hunting him is doing bad things for his own mental health and giving him flashbacks to living in his parents' house; but Jason needs help more than he needs his sanity. Maybe if he can heal him enough, they'll go easy on him? He knows they won't. After all his parents didn't and he was their son, what would these people do to a complete stranger that hurt one of their own? He has to believe they'll treat him fairly, or he'll have a breakdown, and then who would patch up Jason?
It takes weeks. Danny's sure he's flunked out of all his classes, which he hates to do after Sam and Tucker worked so hard to make him a fake ID and get him funds, but making sure this guy heals properly is more important.
His soul looks grisly. It's warped and so misshapen it barely looks like a soul at all. The surface is pockmarked with fissures and cracks where pieces no longer fit together, and the whole thing is held together with ectoplasm(the pure kind, not that rank sewage that had been there previously), giving it a sickly green tint. It looks like bad reconstructive surgery on a fourth degree burn patient, but it's finally in one piece. Danny adds a bit of his own ectoplasm to the mix, to help keep the patches in place until the soul finishes healing, and finally goes to leave.
Only he can't. The entire mansion is locked down by a powerful binding ritual. Danny had been so focused on healing Jason, he'd stopped paying attention to what the Wayne's had been doing. (It worked with his parents) So Danny missed when they had figured out that "Daniel Nightengale" had disappeared from his college dorm, and eventually deduced that he was still by his 'victim'. A quick call to Constantine and there was an airtight seal around Wayne Manor preventing any supernatural being from entering or leaving.
Danny hates being a ghost for mainly one reason right now.
He's been working on Jasons soul and figuring out how to heal this little ghostlings shattered soul for at least three weeks now. While he can tell that the worst of it is now over, and Danny can relax a little, he can already tell that this man (who looks to be around 5-10 years older than he is) is far younger developmentally for a ghost than Danny is.
Ghosts by nature want to protect any young ghosts purely due to how any young existence is precious and needs to be guided. The instinct and situation is like if a mother bear had super powers strong enough to kill superman in one shot.
Add in the fact that the ghostling had a shattered soul that required Danny to feed enough ectoplasm to turn any human being liminal in one shot into the soul to help fix it?
To Dannys instincts, this is His Ghostling now, and aside for Jason wanting a different ghostly parent, nothing would be able to change that. Not even their actual ages basically stating that they should be siblings rather than father and son.
And now that Jasons soul only needs some time to smooth out any last jagged edges, Danny can finally go and leave for a moment to go back to his apartment and get some food- Thud.
As Danny began to leave The Wayne Manor grounds, he ran into what should have not been a wall. He should have been able to fly through it easily.
After a quick thought, his mind stopped dead. He knows for a fact that the Waynes haven't been in touch with The GIW, so this means one thing; a magician is here.
Danny practically flew at mach 20 from the edges of the grounds back down to His Ghostling, only to be stopped by another wall that surrounds the infirmary where Jason is sleeping. They're trying to keep Danny away from His Ghostling...
~~~~~
The Bat Clan has been searching for Daniel Fenton after he caused Jason to collapse in pure agony for weeks now, and after so much research, they think that they finally found a way to get answers from the boy. After reaching out to Constantine and getting the mans help in making it so that the spirit(?) could no longer leave the grounds, but not get back into the med bay after he leaves it next, all they had to do was wait until Daniel left the med bay that night.
They waited for no less than five hours, until they finally got to hear an inhuman snarl rip through the cave. The snarl was chilling, and seemed to have frozen the entire Bat Clan, as well as Constantine who was far more used to such noises coming from unearthly beings.
What they saw next was truly terrifying.
They watched as a young boy, seeming to be at first in his early teens was suddenly in view, only to shift in some way to become... something more. It had fangs bared from thousands of mouths, claws held at the ready by what feels like an innumerable amount of limbs, tendrils reaching past, stars being born on it's skin, black holes that you could see eating anything and everything, brand new life being born from a stars death-
"Let Me See My Ghostling, Now!" The millions of mouths screeched, and yet whispered, the sound of crashing icebergs and a stars explosion held within such a never ending sound, and it all culminated to one truth. The fact of Life And Death being that this beings- No. This Gods Ghostling is being kept from them, and they will cause the downfall of the entire balance of Life And Death if this Ghostling is not given back-!
Constantine suddenly started swearing, an amulet around his neck swinging as he hurriedly removes the spells from around the med bay, and the rest of the Bat Clan could only barely glimpse The Truth of how The Gods form suddenly pulled back in until the same young teenage boy was there, and soon enough the boy was back in the med bay, hovering over His Ghostling to check if Jason was still okay.
When the boy turned back around, they could just now notice the (galaxies, nebula, formation of life and it turning back into dust-) ...The Truth of the boys being still held within the boys eyes.
No one spoke for a moment.
"You dare try and keep me from My Ghostling?" The boys voice was quiet and absolute. "Should you attempt it again, I will be the cause of all the pain and suffering you would have for the rest of your lives, until you dare to die. Then, and only then, will the rest of your afterlives become forfeit. I Will Cause You To Wish Your Existences Stopped When Your Body Will. This Is Your Only Warning."
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