Poor Danny is just trying to do well at his job at WE! But annoyingly, they frown on him working late. Sent home, once again by well meaning security and still caught up in design thoughts, Danny gets hit by cuddle pollen.
Suddenly he must keep all the little liminals safe! They're so bitty! They don't even have full cores! He has to protect them! Goes eldritch horror and stuffs them in his plumage to carry around like those water birds.
Poor Batman is just so done.
Jason and Damian keep trying to escape. It does not work. Eventually they get this thing to the Cave and make it a nest to keep it there. Tim asleep before they mange, followed by Duke (look, it's late for him, okay?) and Steph.
When they wake up in the morning, in one big cuddle pile, there's a strange man among them and from the way it looks, and Damian isn't sure if he's got a new pet or if Father has a date.
My personal take on Phantom. I love the idea of him being absolutely terrifying and in turn making it harder for amity park to trust his good intentions due to his gross visage. I like to think he looks like a charred corpse from being toasted in the Portal and of course lots of electric ectoplasm seeping through him. He hobbles around a bit stiffly when not in fighting monster mode. He’ll fly like a bat out of hell to clash with the ghosts that have not so good intentions, he prefers to attack first and ask questions later once he figures out if the entity is a boon or bane on Amity Park. And this does not help his case within the public eye.
Around fellow Amity Parkers, he tends to slouch and make himself smaller and to try and not scare the fellow residents. He also loves to be goofy and try to get the humans of Amity to like him. He just wants to be liked and loved for the sacrifices he makes for his home town (which are way too damn many)
In my version of this, no one knows he’s phantom (Which is the juiciest of AU’s i love me some existential crisis)
Anyway if you read this far I super duper appreciate it ;w; I just love taking Danny and transforming him into my little OC lmao. I might write up a story soon based on this version of him!
(probs Eldritch and or Ghost King! Danny. whatever suits your taste)
Danny goes on vacation to the dc universe, only to vibe and do nothing else. He'll let the heroes in this universe deal with whatever. He doesn't plan on doing any hero work or getting involved in any of their nonsense. Every magic user however is scrambling and panicking over the overwhelming amount of death magic that just entered their universe and is just sitting there menacingly.
okay, so can we all agree that @zillychu's fire core au is spectacularly zetsy? it's now in my brain rent-free. I have so many thoughts. so many questions. I am going to be normal about it for so long
danny died in the 1920's... so so many thoughts. little crechure is such a gentleman !!!
Other Part, (set further after this when they get to the Watchtower)
WC: 1263
Synonymous:
Captured by the GWI, Phantom was a mere shadow of the thing (no, person, he had to remember he was a person) that he used to be. He thought he would never be freed from the bright white room. Not until what seemed like a mass of living shadow swept into the lab and Phantom suddenly, for the first time in a very long time, felt safe.
When Batman swept back out of the seemingly empty lab, he was none the wiser for the eldritch Phantom stowed away in his shadow.
At least not at first.
-----
For Batman, it started when he caught Nightwing off guard.
As Batman, Bruce was used to startling people. It was a tool he used ruthlessly. Startling his children, however, was a rare occurrence. As the oldest, Dick was immune to the tricks of the trade even at his most relaxed; it’s what made him so good with Damian and Cassandra. When Dick was started on the job as Nightwing, something was truly off kilter.
Bruce’s initial assumption was that that Dick was under the weather or had a case from work on his mind. That was quickly disproved; Nightwing performed exceptionally as always while they took down the joint drug ring operating across the Gotham and Blüdhaven boarder.
So Bruce started to pay attention. He paid attention to the way that the shadows seemed to cling a little closer to him, that the element of surprises always on his side, that the criminals seemed more afraid than normal.
It was all circumstantial, of course. But circumstances could turn dangerous in an instant, and so Bruce started to pay attention to the darkness surrounding him.
It was always little things, things that couldn’t be conclusive on their own but started to build a pattern. A henchman would stumble on nothing and the shot would go wide. A punch on an attacker would land harder than expected, knocking them out of the fight. Perusers would run right past whoever he was trying to protect. And in the cave, whatever he needed seemed always nearby.
Something— someone— was watching over him.
-
For the bat brood, it started with things being just a step off normal.
Dick was startled when Bruce actually got the drop on him. From that night on, Batman seemed to blend deeper into the shadows.
Jason noticed when he got the feeling around Batman that the other was hurt. He dropped some subtle questions to his siblings, even reached out to Oracle, but none of them brought up Bruce being injured. The feeling didn’t go away. Something still… called to him; though it slowly got less intense. But it still bothered him.
Tim dismissed it, at first, as needing more sleep. He’d shown up to a board meeting at Wayne enterprises and, for a moment, Bruce’s shadow and seemed off. It had seemed smaller than it should have been. The problem was, Tim kept noticing things from with the shadow. A moment where there were too many arms, where the tips were missing from the cowl, where the cape flared in shadow but not in reality…
Steph wasn’t around as much. She might have not caught onto anything if it wasn’t for Cass. Cass who had started humming (softly, soothingly) when it was too quiet in the Cave while researching a case. Steph swore the shadows sometimes rippled in response. She didn’t ask Cass, and Cass didn’t offer any explanation either. She didn’t think asking would get more than enigmatic smile.
Damian felt the hair on the nape of his neck stand on end whenever he got too close to Bruce. There was a ripple of energy around his father now that there hadn’t been before. It was the same feeling that the Lazarus Pits had given off, just softer (kinder).
Duke swore that sometimes Batman’s shadow seemed to glow green. On double take, it never was, not even to his powers.
Alfred was on edge because his family was on edge, though he hid it behind his unflappable demeanor.
Something had changed about Bruce.
Something that made them alert.
Tim was the one to finally broach the subject in their group chat. He needed to know if he was going crazy or not.
-
For the Justice League, it started when Batman sent the founding seven, plus Constantine, an encoded message. He stated that there was an entity of some sort that had attached itself to him. So far it was not only non-hostile, but seemed to be actively helping, on occasion. Batman was clear to remind them all that meant no grantee the entity would remain an ally.
He disclosed that none of the instruments in the Cave had been able to pick up on the entity— not in any distinct way. The closest factual data was the occasional cold spot drifting near Batman or around the cave and the resonate vibration that sometimes echoed the song that Black Bat was humming.
Batman was confident that the entity was around, though, as were the rest of his people, and so Batman was purposing to bring the entity to the Watchtower. There it could be analyzed with other types of passive technology as well as the powers of members such as J’onn and Constantine.
Based on the timing and the being’s nature, the hypothesis was that it had come from the lab.
None of the League had to ask what lab. For those who had been on the mission, it wasn’t someplace they would soon forget. Even those spared the mission hadn’t been able to avoid hearing about the horrors that the GIW lab had held.
The organization had gone to ground after the bills protecting metahumans had passed, taking the unethical Anti-Ecto Acts off the table with it. Operating on the other side of legality didn’t seem to have slowed down their work any. Batman suspected it made them all the more fevered— all the more dedicated to prove that they had been right about ghosts.
All the more willing to cross unspeakable lines.
There were obvious signs of imprisonment, torture, and dissection. There were remains— all carefully labeled and stored— to corroborate that. Later, from the tapes, they would learn that vivisection was far more accurate a term.
The only living— as much as the term could even be used— entities found in the lab were three green blob like creatures.
The entity with Batman gave them hope that maybe they had least gotten there in time to save one soul. Despite the risks, that hope made them start to plan the visit to the Watchtower.
-
For Phantom, it started weeks earlier when he felt a presence in the bowels of the GIW facility.
He barely felt anything any more.
There was barely any of him left to feel things, not after the scientists had pulled him apart again and again and again.
But when what seemed like a mass of living shadow had swept into the lab he was kept in, a wave of safety had washed over him. Safety was, perhaps, the wrong word for the feeling. Most people wouldn’t feel safe around the wave of emotions. It was a swirl of all encompassing rage. But under that rage was an aching sorrow and the driving chant of protect protect protect—
For Phantom it sang of safety. This being— person?— was enraged by the lab. It threatened to consume them. They were everything the cold scientists weren’t. This being felt things.
Phantom felt things too.
Or he thought he used to.
He wanted to remember what that was like, to feel something other than numb terror.
So when the seal of his containment was cracked open, Phantom seeped free of the box he had been kept in and towards the being. The shadows shrouding them made space for him, welcomed him. It was like slipping into a hug. He was too weak to talk to them, to talk to the being that was robed in them; he couldn’t let them know he was there with them. He could only curl up in the cocoon of the feelings.
He was safe.
-----
AN: I debated posting more of this or not since I’ll prob stick the finished thing up next week on ao3, but I’m a ball of pain and agony today (fuck you weather!) so have a little treat for me. I’m not sure if we’ll go into the horrors of the lab more than what I’ve already written- this may get a little darker but I’m still feeling out the mood as this is more, er, experimental(?) than I usually write as Danny tries to remember what it’s like to be a person and not just a test subject.
Oh, and Jason, Tim, Cass, and Damian are more sensitive to Danny’s presence because of their exposure to the Lazarus Pits, was my thinking. Bruce is a bit oblivious at first, because how often does one pay attention to their own shadow?
