Chapter Text
It had been a slow news week in Gotham, as they say. Batman was on an extended mission to Andromeda and due to come back the next week, having left the care of his city to his gaggle of bat children to divide between them.
Nightwing was currently operating mostly from Gotham anyway and even Spoiler and Red Hood had been seen patrolling in tandem with one of the more visible Batclan members, while the big guy was away.
There’d been some skirmishes by the docks with low-level Black Mask thugs and a couple of high-end burglaries that had a very distinct feline signature to them, but beyond that, the villains seemed to be taking a very undeserved sabbatical. Joker, Riddler, and Two-Face were still in Arkham and even Penguin was laying pretty low.
All in all, enough to drive a Bruce ‘Paranoia Can Be A Fashion Statement’ Wayne-raised child up the wall.
The lack of anything beyond routine patrol in the last couple of days had taken a toll on all of them, most spectacularly on the youngest of the Wayne brood, Damian. The 12 years-old boy, formerly known in certain circles as the Heir to the Demon Head of the Assassins’ League, could be seen brooding and sharpening his sword on an even more frequent basis, although anyone and their mother could see he was valiantly resisting the urge to demand his Father’s return at every occasion possible.
This also translated into a return of pointed barbs directed pretty indiscriminately during patrols and an executive decision by the oldest of them, Dick Grayson, to avoid sending Robin and Red Robin on patrol together for a while.
Timothy Wayne-Drake, 17 years-old heir-extraordinaire of Wayne Enterprise by day and aforementioned black and red bird-themed vigilante by night was no exception.
Groaning to himself as he resisted flopping face first onto his office desk, Tim scrubbed a hand over his slightly hypersensitive skin. Even having had a full 8 hours of sleep the previous night had not prepared him for the absolute frustration that his daytime occupation would bring.
A misplaced couple of lines of code in the back-end of their Wayne Enterprise email servers had mixed several high-level executive email IDs between each other and now Tim had a couple of hours to contend with floods of emails destined to their R&D head of dept. as well as others to their operations & locations head managers (thankfully CEO and COO emails were still received by the correct recipient, but the logistical nightmare of everything else was still very much headache-inducing).
The young man ached to just crack his knuckles and deal with this himself, but he’d promised Duke AND Dick he would try not to take on more work onto himself and he had a lunch-date with Bernard at 12 that he was sure to miss if he started dealing with this now.
Sighing, Tim’s eyes skimmed through the emails he’d received so far today, hoping to see something that’d actually be for him , only for his eyes to be drawn to an email titled “2022 Ectobiology Symposium : live demonstration - security measures”. Curious as to whether this was indeed to do with what it appeared to be (the study of ectoplasmic entities and properties was on the cryptid-side of fringe sciences still, even in their pretty wild world), he opened the email and read it through. He had not known W.E. had had any interest in these fields…
It was only when his phone started buzzing with his lunch-date reminder that he realized that he’d gone down an ecto-rabbit hole for a full 2 hours and it still felt like he had not reached the bottom yet. Gathering the original email, some of the links to research he found and the “2022 Ectobiology Symposium” pamphlet he’d found online, he sent everything to Dick with the note “thoughts?” before rushing out to meet up with his boyfriend in a small café close to the Gotham U campus.
The return from his date saw the email situation resolved in the office and his email account devoid of any further intrusions. He then spent another 5 hours on shareholder calls or meetings with Lucius and Luke Fox regarding an upcoming line of smartwatches and the annual Martha Wayne Foundation gala that would take place in the fall. All in all putting the weird fringe science convention that had requested to use the Thomas Wayne amphitheater and convention hall near Park Row, out of his mind for a while.
It was only after clocking out and having donned his other identity as the Red Robin, that he went back to the drawing board regarding the science convention and all it entailed.
Apparently this was an event that Bruce had flagged up to be investigated in situ, but the symposium had also been carried forward by a couple of weeks on the request of the main attraction of the event, the FentonWorks workshop aka Drs Jack and Madeline Fenton, a pair of ecto-biologists and ghost hunters. So it was due to start on Friday with the showcase event on Saturday.
“You really find us the weirdest shit, lil’ bird.” Dick piped up as he joined him in front of the batcomputer, also in full Nightwing regalia.
“Why thank you.” Tim snorted ruefully. “So B. flagged the whole thing for ground investigation, but he won’t be back until after it’s concluded.”
“Welp, I asked Orphan and Robin to case the diamond seller who’s lined up to be Catwoman’s next heist this weekend; Spoiler is joining them and Signal’s on duty during the day. Red Hood is not answering my calls right now. I guess it’s up to you and me then. We can probably go incognito.”
“Sure, I checked the email exchanges with the W.E. location managers, they set up a pretty snug security around the event, with governmental funding even. I dunno why this is giving me weird vibes.” The younger vigilante frowned pensively as his eyes flitted from file to file back to the pamphlet displayed in the middle of the screen.
“I mean, we know ghosts exist, but yeah this is a bit much. I’m more interested in the live showcase on Saturday. I know Gotham’s weird, but live dissection for the masses? That’s gotta be breaking some kind of an ethics code or even a law?”
“Educational purpose yadda yadda. And with the anti-ghost laws passed at Federal level and only paying attendees are going to be allowed…” Tim winced, the callousness of the wording of some of the anti-ecto laws passed surreptitiously by some asshole from Wisconsin was a scary open door to some fucked up behavior. “I do wonder where they got the test subject and if it is a sentient one or one of the ectoplasmic manifestations the Fentons’ talk about in their research. The sentience of a blob of floating goop is murky water at best but a fully sentient ghost would be troubling. ”
Tim mulled over the information as he printed out copies of some of the Fentons’ research papers for further reading.
Finally having an actual mission (if a weird one) to occupy his nocturnal work time seemed to at least cure Tim of some of his boredom, if only to replace it with utter frustration at the lack of net footprint from anybody and anything from Amity Park, where the Fentons were based.
The internet and most of the backroom channels that he’d been able to hustle had nothing on it, despite its sister city, Penbrooke, still having the expected footprint of a middling town in Illinois (social media traffic, research traffic etc.). Penbrooke actually had more news about Amity Park than Amity Park had about anything… and what news… ghosts attacks overrunning the town, it disappearing for a while, and the recurring figure of a white-haired silhouette in grainy videos, often tagged “Phantom” standing against the flood. It seemed the city had a protector at least… although there was a certain lack of news on this Phantom in the last couple of months.
So when Friday came with the promise of some action and maybe some answers, it was definitely a relief.
He and Dick had forwent elaborate costumes and just donned simple scuffed jeans and t-shirt combos, with sunglasses and baseball caps; they looked different enough from the tailored and manicured images of Richie Grayson and Tim Wayne-Drake for this to pass muster anyway.
The sunglasses had integrated cameras and they each had their discreet earpiece, with Oracle monitoring the lines.
The vendor hall of the convention center was lined up with booths from different companies, Tim held back a wince upon seeing the LexCorp. logo behind one of the sleek, modern-looking display booths. Bruce was going to have a kitten when they told him, but hopefully these assholes wouldn’t do shit outside of displaying their weird-ass ghost-theme merch.
The two brothers meandered through the vendor alleys, first intrigued and then increasingly alarmed by the amount of actual weaponry on display.
“Ecto-guns” this, “Ghost-beam” that, even with the fine print (and often very small) mention of “not dangerous to human” on those, the arms laid out around the hall were clearly just that, weapons . Right there in the middle of green-lined, ghost-themed, and ghost-hunting paraphernalia from mugs and keyboard pads, to infra-red surveillance cameras to “catch the ghost green-handed!!”.
“O., please take note of the vendors' names, we might need to do some follow-up investigation.” Dick muttered under his breath while pretending to check out some very pushy vendor’s display of electro-whips (How was THAT not dangerous to humans???)
“On it, god, it’s too bad Hood isn’t with you, he’d have loved this thing.” Their eye in the sky responded with a light if strained laugh as Dick eyed the red and black handgun with … was that a cracked skull logo on the grip? What the hell.
“Oh yeah, no, I'm not giving Jay another type of lethal weapon to play with, he’s got enough for now.” The original Robin snorted derisively as he moved after Tim who was already closer to the closed amphitheater’s main door.
“Aw, you’re a spoilsport, dickhead.” A different, graver voice with a Park Row drawl piped up in his ear.
“Wait, so I don’t rate an answer or a callback, but you’ll just pop on my line like th–”
“‘Wing, the line.” Tim hissed from further ahead, glaring at him over his lowered sunglasses and stopping his lowkey whining halfway through.
Dick jutted his lower lip and frowned at his younger brother, in a full displayed pout. He snickered quietly along with Oracle’s giggle in his ear when Tim, in a very mature show of his 17 years of age, rolled his eyes back at him and turned his back on him to continue meandering down the alley of tables.
Trying to keep things light was getting harder and harder as they continued to mingle and listen in on various attendees’ conversations. They were all hyping each other up on the upcoming dissection the next day. The general consensus amongst the convention-goers was that it was going to be a sentient ghost. Some thought it was a volunteer as they cited Fenton research sources regarding the lack of pain reception in ectoplasmic entities, others thought it was going to be a collection of several of the floating goop ectoplasmic manifestations. But overall they mostly thought the Fentons’ would make it a memorable one. And wasn’t that sending alarm bells through all the vigilantes’ minds.
Deciding a look behind the curtain was the best way forward, the two waited for the best moment and slipped through an employee access door they’d cased on the convention center blueprints before coming. The hallway they found led to a large backstage area to the podium.
Two voices could be heard faintly, talking excitedly from an adjacent green room/waiting area and besides a collection of papers and a couple of laptops on a metal table resting against the wall of the green room’s door, the only thing in the area was a large 4ft by 4ft cube covered with a teal blue satin drape near the ramp to the podium.
Exchanging a solemn glance with his older brother who took point behind his back, Tim crouched down and took off his glasses, hanging them from his shirt's neck to ensure continued footage as he carefully lifted a corner of the drape.
His breath caught in his throat as his eyes caught bright green eyes with faintly red tinted sclera.
He could hear the peanut gallery in his ear swearing up a storm, but his attention did not stray from the huddled form of the white-haired teen (probably/most likely meta) sitting as small as they could against furthest the corner of the metal cage, looking back at him with wide, panicked eyes.
A quick visual assessment made his teeth grind as he realized the other teen was wearing a straightjacket with large blood stains on their torso and their arms, and a muzzle with a metal grill in front of his mouth, leaving it partially visible. They were also huddled precariously, close to the bars of their cage without touching them. Probably electrified or otherwise trapped. Shit…
Red Robin turned to his brother who had taken one look inside the cage and stood back up to his full height with a snarl, turning towards it, just as the door to the green room opened, letting out a couple in respective orange and teal blue (same color as the satin drapes uh) hazmat suits, sans hood.
“Oh hi there! Wanted to see the attraction before the show, uh?” The frankly too-tall man (Dr. Jack Fenton, it seemed) in the orange suit beamed with a jovial chuckle as they approached.
“Oh sweetie, be careful. It’s been behaving these days but it’s tried to escape before!” The petite red-haired woman (Dr. Madeline Fenton, most likely) tittered with a huff. “We’ve had to put a migrating chip in it so it’d stop trying to dig it out and run.”
“What do you think you’re doing ?” Dick glared back with a snarl that seemed to take the couple aback more than anything before they simply laughed it off.
“Ah don’t worry about it, buddy. It’s contained and we’ve gotten the handle on how to avoid losing Phantom now. We caught it a few months back, and we’ve been studying it pretty thoroughly since.” The brick-wall of a man gave Nightwing a reassuring smile, completely misinterpreting the situation.
Dick felt close to bursting in anger and the repeated threats he could hear from Jason were not helping keep his emotions in check. Still he tried to keep a lid on it and gritted his teeth.
“That’s a kid, a moving, living kid. Vivisections are outlawed under the Geneva convention and the intergalactic treaty.” The vigilante ignored his hissing brother in his ear, all the more aware of his other sibling still crouching at his back.
The mountain man just laughed some more and leaned forward to be at Dick’s eye level.
“Vivisection is coined when the subject is alive. Trust me, Phantom’s a ghost, it’s dead.” He claimed with a kind smile.
”It’s just the leftover consciousness of the dead.” The smaller Fenton intoned with a lightning-fast hate-filled glance at the form still huddled behind bars and drapes. “And this particular one was parading in our son’s skin for a long time. It had to be put in its place.”
The sheer venom in her voice made Dick’s hackles rise, but still he remained as outwardly placid as possible.
Tim wanted to throw up. This was very much the worst case scenario they’d expected, they’d have to mix up some contingency plans to be able to get out with the young meta. And there was no fucking way either vigilante would leave that kid to be fucking VIVISECTED LIVE for a fucking crazies’ ghost convention. And he was going to have the head of whoever greenlit the whole thing to take place in one of their premises in the first fucking place.
He was busy screaming internally and trying to block out whatever the fuck the two crazy scientists were saying behind him, by continuing to observe the white-haired teen who seemed to have calmed down enough to look back at him with wariness rather than fear. A step, if tiny, in the right direction.
He was looking right back at them, when the ghost/meta/KID opened cracked lips and mouthed a quiet and barely audible “ please-” with a rough, broken voice… Fuck..
“RR, Hood has taken off, I couldn’t stop him. I think you can expect an
explosive
diversion to come your way.” Barbara’s dry voice in his ear had him blink slightly, uh okay. Okay. Cool. Cool. He could work with that. Sure.