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The Demon hunt wasn't going as planned. It's been a month and Danny has managed to reseal all of the mythical realms. But hundreds of demons had already managed to escape their realms. At first they hid, only weaker demons daring to appear. They were quickly dealt with by Fright Night and his team.
Demons were ranked based on their intelligence and strength. Low grade, Mid Grade, High Grade, Knight Grade, Demon King Grade, and Kaijus. The lower their grade the less sentient they were. Low and Mid Grades relied solely on animal like instincts, Mid grades tended to form packs of 10+ but Low grades were more like a flock of feral cats.
Fright Knight organized the royal Knights in large groups so it only took a few days to hunt down the weaker demons. The stronger High Grade and Knight Grades scattered in smaller groups of 3-4 one High Grade being as strong as 10 Mid grades on average, and one Knight Grade being as Strong as 2 High Grades. Fright Knight had his work cut out for him dealing with these groups. He opted to use smaller groups of stronger Knights to deal with these after damaging too much property and scaring locals with large numbers of ghost knights.
High Grades were capable of speech but no more than a few words and broken sentences. Knight Grades were on par with normal beings in terms of intelligence. Hunting these down took a while but ultimately they were all accounted for.
Thanks to Ghost writer's book keeping they had a mostly accurate list of who was still missing and where everyone belonged.
Demon King Grade were hyper intelligent and could easily take on any League member. The real danger of the Demon Kings was their control of the Kaiju, what the Kaiju lacked in brains they made up for in pure size and power. They were loyal to the Kings even if their king was in another realm. They single mindedly destroyed whatever was in their way.
Most of the demons are humanoid, often with colored skin, tails, horn, wings, and some looked like Furrys. But the Kaiju are like a mash up of different animals and creatures.
Danny had hoped the seals he hastily placed on his home realm would hold against the Kings and Kaiju, however they seemed to take this as a challenge and made it their goal to invade his home realm.
Danny could tell the JL was getting frustrated with all the demons showing up and his men taking care of the problem and disappearing before they could ask questions. But Danny didn't trust the JL to not hand over his people to the GIW.
When Danny had to deal with a Kaiju in front of The Batman and Superman he half expected to fight them. They seemed genuinely confused when the GIW showed up, even going as far as to try and stop them (half heartedly he might add) from shooting at him while he dealt with the Kaiju. And then when an electrified net sent him into a dissociative episode Batman had freed him and seemed to be taking him away from the shouting Agents, he was too disoriented to hear what was being said.
Yeah he was going to have nightmares for a while after that, but you can't have nightmares if you don't sleep right? Right!
Danny had ordered Fright Knight to leave any Demons on Earth to him (much to Fright Knight's disapproval) after that. It was too dangerous to let his people be around the GIW and the JL. These were his Demons to bare after all!
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Phantom has been seen at every Demon fight since Batman's reported first sighting and the League had no more information on him then before. He didn't always show up right away leaving the League to distract the demons until he showed up. He never said anything except that he was sorry he was late.
Today was one of those days, Nightwing laid in the soft dirt where he had been thrown only moments ago. He and the Titans (Teen Titans) were dealing with this rather destructive Demon, it had taken nearly 3 hours for Raven to finish a binding spell strong enough to hold it and nearly another hour to get the creature into the circle! Now Raven was putting all of her focus into keeping it there.
Finally the black portal opened up and a very exhausted looking Phantom stumbled out holding a hand over his left side where neon green blood seeped through his fingers. He mumbled something no one could hear as he walked on air over to where Raven was, she took that as her cue to release her spell allowing it to charge at Phantom who opened a portal in its path so it threw itself into the portal.
"Well that was anticlimactic" Nightwing sighed as the portal snapped shut.
Phantom gave him an incredulous look "Yeah well that was the 4th one today and I haven't slept in a week. I doubt I could keep the Portal open long enough to make it back to the keep at this point"
Phantom sank to the ground until he was sitting cross legged in the dirt. This open display of vulnerability drew the attention of the Titans, they all crept closer wanting to get a closer look at the new potential ally.
"Dude you're bleeding? Is that green stuff actually your blood?" Beast Boy blurts out being the most brazen of the team.
"An astute observation green man" Phantom says dryly as he examines his wound "looks like I need to stitch it" he says to himself.
"We have a first-aid kit with sutures" Nightwing offers.
"Normal stuff won't work on me" Phantom says as we pulls a backpack out of nowhere "besides I have my own"
"Where did you pull that out of" Nightwing and Beast Boy say simultaneously
Phantom snickers at them as he pulls out his kit rummaging through it until he finds the Sutures "you probably don't want to know, also if you're squeamish look away"
They all watched as Phantom cleaned and stitched his own wound with practiced ease. Once he was done he flopped onto his back with a sigh "I know you have questions so feel free to ask while I'm stuck here"
"Why are you stuck here" Raven asked first
"Opening Portals to other dimensions takes a lot of energy, that paired with lack of sleep and Demon hunting tends to wear a guy out" he's not going to mention keeping up a duplicate 24-7 so his Human life doesn't fall apart and making seals strong enough to hold said demons.
"I thought Ghosts couldn't be hurt" Nightwing pointed to Phantom's side.
"Most of the time we can't because we have intangibility but some things can negate that, or a moment stupidity" Phantom shrugs
"Okay what about the demons? Why are they all over the place and why are you guys catching them?" Raven jumping to more pressing matters.
Phantom eyed her from his position on the ground before sitting up and crossing his legs again "if you're worried about us 'deporting' you, don't, you are claimed by this dimension and you aren't causing any harm being here. That and you're only half so you wouldn't be safe with full bloods" he shrugged again "as for why they are here… let's just say the new Kings advisors 'forgot' to mention there were seals he needed to remake. Thankfully only the Demon races decided to be a pain. It not just this realm that's been invaded so don't go thinking you're special"
"What are you doing with them when you send them through the portals?" Nightwing
"Our Portals have permissions from the king to open back in the home realms of the demons, so basically we just drop them back where they came from with renewed seals"
"Wait home realms, like plural?" Beast Boy
"Yep, there are hundreds of realms with Demons, most didn't get this far, only the stronger ones managed. The ones you keep seeing are called Kaiju, they are some of the strongest but they lack much intelligence. They are under the command of the Demon Kings" Phantom gestures to Raven's head where the sealed Trigon sits in his ruby like prison "Trigon is a Demon King as well, albeit a weaker one, he was crafty enough to find a way through the previous Ghost king's seals"
"Are there more still on the loose?" Nightwing
Phantom pulls out a notepad from his hoodie pocket and starts scratching off a few things then looking up "there are still 5 Demon Kings unaccounted for and 12 Kaiju, though I'll have to check the listings when I get back to confirm those numbers"
"Have we seen these Demon Kings?" Starfire hovers closer
"No, this realm has been lucky not to have one pop up, and now that I said something…" Phantom sighs and flops back down on his back " Ancients I need to keep my mouth shut!"
"What about those teams of other Ghosts what happened to them?" Starfire
"One of the teams almost got nabbed by the GIW so they were ordered to keep away from this realm. Since this is my home realm and I have experience avoiding them I've been tasked with its care. Also if those asshats show up I'm not sticking around"
"Can you tell us about the GIW?" Nightwing
"They are a branch of the government called the Ghost investigation ward, I like to call them the Gut in White, they are out to trap, torture, and exterminate all Ghosts"
"But doesn't that go against the Meta protection acts?" Nightwing
"Not with the Ant-Ecto acts, they label us non sentient and incapable of feeling pain. There are humans who would fall under those laws as well just because they are Ecto contaminated"
Before he can elaborate further a green Portal opens up and Wulf emerges. Seeing the group of heros standing in a semicircle around a sprawled out Phantom, Wulf growled before lunging at the group.
"Wulf no! I'm fine! They didn't do anything!" Phantom bolts up, putting himself between the heros and Wulf.
Wulf eyes the heros before checking Phantom over, with a nod he starts pushing Phantom towards the portal.
"Oh yeah, if Trigon gets loose again you won't be allowed you keep him as fancy jewelry, or if you get tired of wearing him you can always find me and I can send him back with much better seals"
And with one more push the Portal and the two Ghosts are gone.
"So that happened" cyborg comments
"Let's head back to the tower and report our findings. It sounds like we have some laws to admonish" Nightwing taking charge and leading the team back to their plane.