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Chapter Text

The ballroom in Phantom’s Keep is alive with voices for the first time in centuries. 

Danny breathes deeply from behind the curtains that separate the outer Keep with the more homely inside of the castle. He can hear the music, a waltz full of swaying strings and eerie vocals, and the sound does nothing to calm his nerves.

“Your highness?” 

Danny exhales sharply. Being addressed as royalty still sits uncomfortably, but he’s trying to get used to it. He shakes his head and turns to meet the gaze of Clockwork. 

The Master of Time’s appearance is different from usual: his usually plain cloak now has a myriad of tiny clocks, displaying different times at different rhythms. They dangle from the edges or drag soundlessly behind him over the polished obsidian floor. Clockwork now looks like a man nearing his sixties, long white hair spilling out from underneath his hood in a complicated-looking collection of braids.

“I’m fine, ” Danny says, stepping away from the curtains. 

His mentor looks like he doubts that, which stings more since Clockwork now looks like a very-fancily dressed eight-year-old, complicated hairdo and all. Getting sass from a little kid is the ultimate emotional hit.

Within one blink and the next, the time ghost now looks like he’s in his early twenties. He gently lays a hand on Danny’s shoulder. 

“Seriously, I’m fine!” Danny exclaims, praying that his nervousness isn’t slipping into the cracks of his voice. “I just have to go and meet a few ghosts, yeah? Just talking to a couple hundred new people, no big deal!” 

“Phantom,” his mentor says, his voice gentle, the constant ticking of the grandfather clock in his chest a comforting sound. “If this is troubling you so much, we can reschedule this ball–”

“No!” Danny exclaims, quickly composing himself again and ignoring how his ears have flushed bright green. “No. I can do this. I will do this.”

Danny’s determination brings a smile to Clockwork’s face. “Well said, your highness.”

“Let’s go,” Danny says, shooting his mentor one of his signature troublemaker grins. “We can’t arrive late, that would ruin your whole reputation!”

Clockwork smiles enigmatically. “You’ll find, Danny Phantom, that we are precisely on time.”

As if on cue, the ballroom quiets, the music drifting off peacefully. 

“In peace may he reign, Crown Prince Phantom!” chorus the Observants as one.

Clockwork steps back, assuming his position as Danny’s watchful shadow. Danny has a second where his nerves take advantage of him before the curtains open and all of the Realm’s nobility have their eyes on him.

He faces the room, head held high. It’s always been in adversity that Danny has found his courage, and it’s only in this moment when the fear flees and he can face the crowd.

The ballroom is a star-filled place, no floors or ceiling to speak of, just the vast expanse of space painted with nebulas and galaxies. Balconies, daises and tables float peacefully around the room, all made from delicately carved marble and silver detailings, trailing glass stars that dissolve slowly in their path. Not all of them face upwards, but in the Realms, where ‘up’ is subjective and gravity is optional, eating a banquet on an intricate table while upside-down is nothing more than a good time. The boundaries of the ballroom are marked by a lattice of silver and glass panes, giving the impression of watching the night sky through the roof of a greenhouse no matter where one looks, be it up or down. 

Ghosts of all eras, cultures and species are greeting him with respect, be it the polite curtsies of medieval royalty, the neat bows of the Chinese empire, the gentle mental brushes from the Martians or the open palms of the Kryptonians. All of them have shaped their ectoplasm, their deathblood bodies, into the most intricate of appearances fitting for meeting the future King.

Danny can’t do that yet, his body always wants to return to his normal self, but Pandora advised him to use that to his advantage. Make it a statement that he’s not trying to show off his power or prowess, just show who he truly is. 

Ever since he accepted that he’d died that day, his ghostly traits had started surfacing. Now, his skin is the light blue-purple of a frozen corpse, little white freckles glowing over his nose. His death scar, the Lichtenberg figure going up his hand and climbing over his neck and through his eye, now glows softly white and shows up even in his eye, shattering through his pupil. His hazmat suit got a few upgrades, armored sections over his joints and on his chest, when he finally accepted that he was the town’s superhero and not just a kid pretending to be one. Though… his suit has always been a bit big on him, not like the skin-tight ones his parents wear, because he was supposed to grow into it. But now, two and a half years later and six inches taller, it’s still just as loose. He died in that suit and he thinks it’ll stay with him for the rest of his half-life.

It’s still nerve wracking to stand there in his regular Phantom appearance, surrounded by veritable works of eldritch, eerie art, but Danny gathers himself and bows back to the crowd.

The music starts again at a quieter volume and groups of ghosts begin approaching him to talk. Okay, now’s the important part. He’s just gotta be himself, right? Just gotta talk.

The hours blur by. He has a few wonderful conversations with the Tamaranean representatives and gets an invitation for him and his friends to a friendship festival. The Martian delegation notices his trepidation around mind control (curse ghost-speak for being so emotion-focused) and offer him mind-shielding lessons. Youngblood prances up, followed by his cohort of pirates, and promises a few playdates in his ship, followed by the Pirate Queen jokingly challenging him to a future sharp-shooting contest.

This is the ball’s true purpose. Letting the nobility meet him and ingratiate themselves by giving the sorts of gifts that truly matter for ghosts: permission to enter another’s Haunt, the opportunity to be taught new skills or the promise of aid. 

Danny’s finishing up a conversation with the Inca delegation, as a ghost with hair made out of colorful knotted chords cheerfully offering their skills as the next royal accountant, when hushed whispers bloom around the ballroom.

He turns. 

Arriving fashionably late is a ghost wreathed in shadows. Her skin is porcelain, white and delicate, cracks marring the surface where she bleeds wisps of darkness. A wide-brimmed hat sits on her head, a veil dragging behind her from its brim and enshrouding her completely. The only feature that breaks through the dark are her eyes, a glowing, solid white in an odd shape.

The dress itself is a simple gothic dress in a wine red so dark it’s almost purple, but as the skirt flows down it becomes a patchwork, the pieces ranging from blood-stained bandages, to ratty felt, to imported silk, to crushed velvet and everything in between. It’s almost as if it had been torn and then repaired time and time again with what was at hand. The patches are joined by embroidery the same color as the dress, creating the illusion of a stained glass window made of cloth. Dark tendrils of shadow peek from her torn sleeves and the ragged edges of her dress. 

The low neckline and off-the-shoulder sleeves draw attention to a striking red necklace that looks as if her porcelain neck had been slashed open and the wound had been left to bleed red pearls.

Danny leans back, whispering to Clockwork as quietly as he can, “Who is she?”

“That is Lady Gotham, your highness,” he answers, a knowing smile on his face.

“No fucking way,” Danny breathes, turning back to watch her so fast he gets whiplash. Now that he knows it’s so obvious that she has Batman’s eyes, just in a different, clearly inhuman shape, almost like the eyes are two halves of a bat symbol.

It’s also obvious that it’s a duplicate created by the true Lady Gotham and not the original; the emotional aura around her is a bit too faint. Sending a duplicate to a royal ball would be rude, if it wasn’t for what Pariah Dark did in his own coronation ball. Half the attendees are duplicates and Danny can’t blame them. 

Is she coming this way??? Oh fuck, act cool.

“Greetings, Prince Phantom. I am Lady Gotham, but of that you are already aware,” she says, doing an elegant curtsy. She shoots an amused glance towards Clockwork. She absolutely heard Danny’s ‘no fucking way’.

“Crime Capital, USA, huh?” Danny’s voice says without his permission. His already bright blush turns a few shades greener when he realizes what he said. “No offence meant! Every city has its charm! ”

“You are correct in what you said, young prince,” she answers. Every time she talks, cigarette smoke rises from her mouth. It smells like smog. “My city may be dangerous and chaotic, a fighter through and through. And yet, it is home. My city will welcome you with open arms.”

Surprise echoes through the Cores of the ghosts pretending not to eavesdrop. He echoes it too - Lady Gotham is famously territorial, even by ghost standards. 

“I wanna clear up right away that I’m not rejecting your offer or anything, but… why? Why me?” Danny says, looking up at her. His ghost-speak echoes with hesitance-surprise-awe.

“I think we’re similar, you and I,” she begins, gesturing with sharp porcelain claws. “Both far too young for the level of power we possess, never using it to its full extent for the sake of the people we protect. From guardian spirit to guardian spirit, I trust you will not abuse my trust.”

Danny can feel the sincerity in every word and he smiles wide. “Thank you so much. I won’t let you down, I promise!”

Lady Gotham smiles, the barest hint of anglerfish teeth glinting through the shadows obscuring her face when–

“Phantom!”

Silence descends on the ballroom like a wake of vultures.

He knows that voice. Fear and anger twine over his spine and into his heart. 

“What the hell are you doing here, Fruitloop?” Danny snarls, his fangs and claws growing sharper and longer on instinct.

“Is that the way to talk to your elders, child?” Vlad Plasmius answers, fanged grin on display and posture loose and confident. 

He’s changed his appearance for the occasion: the usually white cape is now a deep black. Over his usual white ensemble now sits intricate-looking black armor with silver and red accents that give away the fact that it is just as much made out of ectoplasm as it is one of Dalv.Co’s ghost-proof materials. Danny would bet his entire mini-motorcycle collection that it is a top-of-the line, best-that-money-can-buy, custom-made-for-and-by-Vlad ghost hunting armor.

“What. Do. You. Want.”

Plasmius grins, sharp teeth on display.

“I want the crown.”

Murmurs spread through the crowd. 

“Are you challenging me?” Danny growls, but he relaxes. Fighting is fine. Fighting is something he can do, something he understands, and he’s learned enough that he can consistently beat the older halfa by now. It’s never easy and never painless, but he can do it. 

“Why yes, Daniel,” Vlad Masters says, floating over to the dais Danny is standing on. He smirks as he is forced to look up at Vlad and he hates that it underscores the fact that Danny’s a child. “I, Vlad Plasmius, challenge Crown Prince Danny Phantom for the crown by right of conquest!”

Danny freezes. A bit literally too: his Core radiates a layer of frost over his skin in instinctive defense. 

If Vlad had challenged him by right of duel, things would have been easy. Just one little fight and it would have been over. But he didn’t. 

Right of conquest means doing what he did to win the crown from Pariah Dark: all-out war, with both of them as the generals of their own armies. A battle where the strength of their followers matters just as much as their own strength and Vlad never, ever, plays fair. 

“Three months, Little Badger!” Plasmius gloats, shrouding himself in fire. “Three months, and the crown will be mine!”

Plasmius disappears in a flurry of embers.

There is a second of silence. And then ghosts start excusing themselves from the ball left and right, those who are duplicates simply dissolving into the air. The ballroom empties on record time. 

“You knew this was going to happen, didn’t you?” says Danny, whirling to face Clockwork. 

“Yes,” his mentor says, face unreadable. “As I said, we are precisely on time. You already have the key to your kingdom close, all you need to do is seize it.” 

“Very helpful,” Danny snarks, raking his hands through his hair hard enough to hurt. “Right, because I wanted to wage a war! Of course! I–” He lets out a strangled yell into his palms. 

“Great One!” 

Danny’s head snaps up. 

“Great One, are you alright?!?” 

Frostbite floats over to Danny in a flurry of snow. He lays his oversized paws on top of Danny’s shoulders and he can’t stop himself from sinking his face into the soft fur. Frostbite might be a ten-foot tall yeti that looks like a cross between a polar bear and a bison but his hugs are the best. The yeti rumbles, a comforting purr that resonates through his chest. Danny answers with a purr of his own, slowly letting his frustration drift off.

When he doesn’t feel like tearing his hair out anymore he steps back, breathing deeply.

“I suggest you call the royal Fraid, your highness,” Clockwork says, snapping Danny’s attention towards him. “I’ll call the rest of the Inner Council. Ellie is already on her way.”

“Okay,” Danny breathes. Having a clear thing to do helps with the anger. 

He fishes out his Fenton Phone from where he nestled it below his ribs. Now, to call his friends and his sister at nearly three in the morning on a Saturday. 

Jazz really loves her brother. She really does. Her little brother is her joy and life and–

She yawns wide enough to make her jaw crack as she carefully decreases altitude on the Speeder. The clunky silver-and-green vehicle is a mix between submarine and minivan, difficult to control on a good day. Her parking this time is abysmal, but she’s had six hours of sleep in the past two days; she can cut herself some slack over some scratches on the outside plating. She’s also having words with her brother about communicating what type of ‘emergency’ this is, because she doesn’t know if she should bring the Boo-zooka or a tub of ice cream.

As soon as the Speeder stops, Sam jumps out of the vehicle carrying a mace. She’s wearing her pajamas, one of those ‘just killed my third husband’ robes in black that were a gag gift from Tucker that she ended up loving anyways, but she hastily threw her chestplate overtop. The effect would be funny if they weren’t so tense.

“I don’t see any fighting,” she notes, violet eyes glaring suspiciously around the entrance of Phantom’s Keep. 

Phantom’s Keep is now very different from when it was Pariah’s squat fortress. Now, its delicate spires occasionally have streaks of green-blue-white light running through them, and smooth silver metal framing wide windows. The stone island, once a barren and jagged thing, is now full of vegetation, a river flowing around it and spilling out to the abyss of the Realms, where the ‘water’ mists back into ectoplasm to cycle anew. If she had to describe it to someone else, she’d say it’s as if someone had crossed a fairytale castle with a Victorian greenhouse and then made it sci-fi.

“There aren’t any guests either,” points out Tucker. He’s wearing his hot-dog patterned pajamas, PDA in one hand and an Egyptian amulet in the other. A few braids have escaped his orange bonnet but he doesn’t pause to stuff them back in.

“The party can’t be over this soon, can it?” asks Jazz. She flares out her empathy-sense and sees threads of emotion leaving the doors, even if they are too old to tell what emotions exactly. “No, something happened.”

She steps out of the vehicle. She’s in her pajamas herself– an old pair of teal sweatpants and a black shirt– but she paused long enough to tie her headband around her head and stuff her feet into hiking boots. Her wrist-rays, one on each arm, are fully loaded and the specter-deflector belt is snug around her waist. 

“Guys!” 

Ellie is a streak of white-and-black over the radioactive green of the Zone that skids to a stop in front of them. The Neverborn’s hair is out of her signature ponytail, fanning around her face like a cloud.

“C’mon, get inside! Everyone’s waiting for you!” she yells before gesturing to the river and making a glob of water rise. Wow, her water-core training must be coming along– wait, is she going to stick them in the water bubble and tug them along that way? Does she remember that living people need to breathe?!?

“Ellie, wait–!” Too late, all three of them are sunk into the bubble and are off. They fly through the open castle doors and past the curtains and through the corridors, keeping their breath as best they can. 

Ellie finally bursts through the doors of the Council Room and disperses the bubble. 

Jazz immediately starts gasping, while Tucker does the dramatic thing and lays down on the floor. 

“ELLIE, ASK FIRST!” Sam shrieks between great gulps of air. “YOU DON’T JUST DROWN PEOPLE OUT OF NOWHERE!”

“Uh, oops?” Ellie says, smiling sheepishly and rubbing the back of her head. In times like this it’s very clear that Ellie is Danny’s clone, her expression and reaction is identical to his. 

Jazz takes a second to smooth out her red hair, thankful that Ellie has enough control over her powers to not leave them all wet, before she looks around the room. 

The Council Room is an eclectic mix of modern and old; there’s a big round table in the middle, ornately carved, with a big circular screen inlaid in it. The chairs around it are all different and relate to their owners, from Pandora’s extra-large marble stool to Dorathea’s wooden, golden-filigree covered chair. Many bean bags dot the corners of the room and the walls are full of scribbles where people have used them as whiteboards. 

Jazz sinks into her plush high-backed chair soundlessly. Tucker sinks into his orange cat-themed gamer chair with a sound of satisfaction and Sam plops herself down in her gothic velvet chair.

“Vlad Plasmius has issued a challenge for the throne,” Clockwork begins, not even saying hello. That sends a shiver down Jazz’s spine. The old time ghost usually finds the time for pleasantries or makes it with his ability. If he’s saving his strength, it means he’s going to need it later. “It is a challenge by conquest and as is tradition both sides will have three months to gather their armies.”

“There is no way Fruitloop doesn’t have something up his sleeves,” snarls Ellie, eyes flashing. “He knows that you have the support of the Far Frozen, Medieval Kingdom and Olympian Greece. If he wants to beat you he needs to do better than that. ”

“That is true, Princess Ellie,” Pandora says, folding one set of her hands in front of her face, while the other interacts with the screen on the table. Her plume of magenta fire presses closer to the helmet it comes from, the flames growing more focused as she thinks. Their files on every major ghost haunt pop up on the screen, filling every inch of it. “However, we are only three haunts out of thousands in the Realms. If Plasmius manages to curry favor with enough of them we could find ourselves at a disadvantage.”

“Who is likely to side with Vlad?” asks Tucker. He has that tone of voice he gets whenever he’s deep in a hackathon.

“Unfortunately, quite a few haunts,” answers Dorathea, beginning to sort through and categorize haunts at a speed that leaves Jazz dizzy. “After the reign of Queen Persephone, having a halfa monarch is seen as a desirable thing, but his highness and Plasmius share that particular advantage. Most of ghost society is concerned over how young the prince is and how it seems that he doesn’t truly wish to hold the crown. While being twenty years dead is not much to a ghost, it’s still better than being only three years dead, and Plasmius most definitely wishes to hold the crown.”

Jazz looks over at her brother. His knuckles are white from how tight his fists are and he’s glaring helplessly at the table. 

She knows her brother; being a king terrifies him, though she’s never been able to get exactly why it does. 

“But didn’t we have enough people on our side to fight off Pariah last time?” Danny asks, with the kind of tightness in his voice that speaks of hope expecting to be crushed. 

“Pariah was an immensely unpopular ruler that barely lasted a century,” Pandora explains matter-of-factly. “The fact that he gathered as big of an army as he did is nothing short of miraculous, and by comparison to past wars it was minuscule.”

“The fact you managed to match it speaks of your prowess, Great One,” placates Frostbite, sending a sharp look at Pandora. “It was a small army for a Royal ghost to command. For a year-old practically unknown ghost? It was impressive.”

“Right, right,” Danny says, roughly running his hands through his hair. Both Tucker and Sam notice and grab one of his hands each, holding them, both keeping Danny from hurting himself and reassuring him. “So what do we have to do?”

“Forge alliances,” says Dorathea.

“Train for battle,” continues Pandora.

“Find out what Plasmius is planning,” finishes Frostbite.

“Focus on making alliances first,” instructs Clockwork. He offers no explanation as to why, not that Jazz expected him to offer one.

All of them watch as Dorathea finishes sorting the files. “I’ve separated into three groups: likely to ally with us, likely to stand against us and undecided. From the ‘likely ally’, the most important one is the Egyptian delegation. We already have quite the advantage since Prince-Pharaoh Tucker has such a stark connection with–”

Jazz catches the second that Danny’s attention wavers. She internally sighs. She’s very aware her brother is not good at sitting still, he needs to be doing, so of course chatting around a table is not going to keep his attention for long. Already thinking of a few ways to make this easier for Danny to pay attention to, she reaches towards his shoulder and–

“Why is Lady Gotham in the undecided pile?” Danny asks, curiously sliding the file out. 

“Lady Gotham doesn’t get involved in wider conflicts,” explains Dorathea, still focused on the ‘ally’ files. “Gotham City is almost as close to the Realms as Amity Park, but the myriad curses placed on its soil has guaranteed that it is as toxic to ghosts as it is to humans. The sheer suffering inside its borders has curdled nearly all of the deathblood, what you all know as ‘ectoplasm’, into death rot. The Lady of Shadows has her hands full keeping rotting ghosts from ending each other or attacking the living.”

“Huh…” Danny says, his eyes flickering across the picture of the Lady on the files. “What if we solved that for her? We could clean up the city a little and that’d leave her free to help us. Maybe we could even break a few of the curses too!”

“It’s not very likely,” Dorathea continues, fiddling a little with her dragonheart necklace. “She’s famously territorial over her city, trying to go into will be met with–”

“She already gave me permission to enter. She even gave me permission to stay.”

Pandora’s plume of fire flares in surprise. Frostbite’s fur puffs up like a furball. Dorathea gapes in a very unladylike manner. 

“Is Gotham that really big of a deal?” asks Tucker, looking from one person to the other. 

“Yes!” Pandora says, throwing both her sets of arms into the air. “Lady Gotham is already powerful. If the toxicity of the deathblood in her city could be lessened, she wouldn’t have to use so much of her power in curing her own rot! Having her as a fighter would be invaluable and that’s without mentioning all of the powerful ghosts under her command!” 

“She could even further help us gain allies,” remarks Dorathea, frantically pulling up other files. “She famously has very good relations with the Kryptonian haunts, since her Knights have kept the last Children of Krypton alive so many times. And just having her open support would do wonders for your reputation!” 

“I’m going to a Wayne gala in a week,” says Sam, tapping her black nails on the table. “I could go there and slip away for a while to do some recon.”

“You just want an excuse to not go to a boring rich people party,” says Danny, grinning impishly.

Sam hits him in the shoulder. Danny laughs.

In her streets, her veins, shadows flow. She is the flickering darkness of a dying lightbulb and the curl of the shade cast upon an alleyway. Her heartbeat is the murmur of a mother shushing her child and the weeping of a man bleeding out in a forgotten warehouse. She is Gotham. Her Identity, her Obsession, and her Haunt, all in one. 

She spares a drop of her power, the little shadow breaking off from the whole to flit between old brick and forgotten litter. It takes the silhouette of a robin, wiggling underneath the crack of a window and into a shadowed apartment. 

The apartment is old and small, but the inside betrays the fact that it is well-cared for. Neatly laid-out and framed weapons line the walls, and an old bookshelf stands proudly in the corner full of alphabetized books. The bed is made, dishes are laid out to dry in the sink. 

Yet, there is a plate of pasta long gone cold on the coffee table beside an open can of soda, gone flat. The television is on but shows only static. A mess of paper covers the table and the floor. There are old bloody bandages bundled up in a corner.

Jason Todd lies on the floor, eyes open but unseeing. 

The little shadow of a bird lands on his open palm. His heartbeat is so faint it’s almost non-existent and his fingers twitch as if he was reaching for something and didn’t have the energy to grasp it. Jason doesn’t react at all.

The bird flies over to Jason’s chest, softly laying its head on his sternum. The hum of his half-formed Core is quieter than it should be. Rage rises from its depths to try and patch the misshapen parts but it’s not enough. It’s no longer enough. 

In a flurry of wings, the bird flies towards Jason’s cheek. A tear, green and bright, drips from where the bird’s eye would be and lands on Jason’s half-open mouth. A spasm of movement goes through his entire body and he blinks multiple times. He starts shaking his head and getting up slowly.

The bird dissolves into shadow before he can notice it.

Wait just a little longer, my child. Wait. Survive. The Phantom is on his way. 

Chapter Text

“Samantha! It’s been so long since we’ve seen you dear!” 

“Yeah, likewise Mrs Donovan,” Sam responds. Her smile is probably closer to a grimace but she doesn’t care to try harder. 

Mrs. Donovan launches on a spiel about her last vacation that just so happens to mention her darling son Sebastian quite a lot and how he’s such a handsome young man, did you know he’s the president of the Gotham Academy debate club? I’m sure both of you would have so much in common! Why, I’m planning a brunch in a few weeks and it would be a pleasure if you could join us–

Sam chugs the rest of her ginger ale as if it was alcoholic and smiles woodenly. The old harpy keeps on trying to matchmake ‘perfect’ Sebastian with her as if her son doesn’t keep getting caught drinking vodka at school. 

Laughter rises in the background. Sam lets her eyes follow the noise, welcoming the distraction. 

Richard “Dick” Grayson, the eldest of the Waynes, is good-naturedly bullying his father into wearing a ‘happy 40th birthday, Bruce!’ banner as a cape. Bruce keeps making ridiculous excuses not to, the guests listening to them laughing as they enjoy the spectacle.

She screws up her face as if she was biting a lemon, but keeps watching them anyway. She’s never liked the Waynes, there’s something that strikes her as fake from every single one of them, but even she has to admit that they play the society game well. Which is another reason she doesn’t like them. The only Wayne she liked was Jason and that was after he almost punched a few racist rich assholes and then taught her the basics of pickpocketing. But he’s dead and Sam’s not so now she has to attend galas. Lucky him. Maybe she should punch a rich asshole in his memory. 

Two warcries break the calm as Timothy Drake– wait, no he’s a Wayne now, right?– Timothy Wayne and a blonde girl she doesn’t recognize come running and throw white chalk powder into Bruce’s hair before they vanish into the crowd once again. Then, Cassandra Wayne pops out of nowhere, draws crows feet on her father with face-paint and then spirits away. 

“Are you little brats calling me old?!?” Bruce yells, looking as baffled as a puppy seeing its own reflection for the first time.

Dick is doubled over in hysterics, face so red he looks like a tomato. Considering his tan skin, that's an achievement.

“Excuse me, I’m going to go to the bathroom,” Sam says and walks off. She doesn’t go to the bathroom, instead she snatches off another ginger ale off a waiter’s tray and wanders off to one of the side-rooms open to the party. It’s quieter here and Sam takes a second to herself.

Her dress is far too tight, her heels too high, the shade of purple is too bright but her parents wouldn’t let her come if she ‘looked like she’d come for a funeral.’ First time in almost five years she agrees to go to a gala and all her parents do is critique every choice she makes. It’s not like the dress she had chosen was inappropriate, she’s seen five other people wearing similar dresses.

She notices a few of the plants in the room shake and grow darker. Gritting her teeth, she spins around and hurriedly walks out of the room. She needs a place alone, where she can breathe, where she can calm down before she accidentally changes the theme of the party to jungle jamboree. 

She ducks underneath the velvet ropes sectioning off the public wing of the Manor and ducks into the first open door she finds. The room is clearly meant to be another side-room to entertain smaller groups of guests, but the furniture is covered in dust sheets. She paces in the empty room, her ectoplasm vibrating with the need to growl. But she’s just Liminal, she has no Core to make the ghost sound with and the urge does nothing but buzz inside her skull like a cicada.

“Who are you and what are you doing here?” 

Sam whirls around to see a kid. His green eyes glaring at her as if they could cut her just by thinking about it. 

She’s dealt with enough ghosts to know that just because someone looks young doesn’t mean that they are harmless. His eyes are too keen, dissecting her like Pandora does when they spar together, and she could swear they are almost glowing. He is dressed in a neatly-pressed suit, clay-brown skin flawless except for a small scar cutting the very edge of his eyebrow– wait he’s Damian Wayne!

“I’m Sam Manson and I was just looking for somewhere away from all the noise. And the people,” Sam says evenly. She's not bowing down to the whims of a twelve-year old, even when she is technically trespassing.

Damian narrows his eyes and the kid looks to be gearing up for a tirade when:

“Oh, mood.”

Sam jumps. A second Wayne suddenly appears out of nowhere. She has two years of spatial awareness trained into her by ghost fights, and two civilians still manage to sneak up on her? Seriously, what is wrong with her today? 

The Wayne melting out of the shadows is Duke Thomas-Wayne, the most recently adopted one.

“Nice eyeliner,” Sam says. “Absolutely nailed the color.”

“Thanks”, Duke answers. The golden makeup over his dark skin creates a wonderful contrast that make his chocolate eyes pop. “Dick convinced me to wear it.”

“Well, he was right, it suits you,” Sam says. The newest Wayne smiles brighter but ducks his head bashfully.

That seems to make the tiny Wayne scowl harder. “What do you want, you–”

“C’mon Damian, let’s leave her be,” Duke says, putting a hand on his shoulder and steering him out of the room. “Sam, just go back to the party once you’re done, okay? If Alfred finds out I left a guest unsupervised he’s never going to let me hear the end of it.”

“Promise,” she says and waves goodbye as both of them exit out, Damian spitting words in a language Sam can’t understand. 

As soon as they’re gone, she sinks to sit on the floor in the middle of the room. At least those two distracted her enough to get a hold of her emotions. That’s it, she’s done with this gala. Time to do what she came to Gotham for. 

Entering the city of Gotham as a Liminal is pretty easy. Liminals are too alive to count as trespassing into another ghost’s haunt, but she’s not here as a random Liminal. She’s here as part of the Royal Fraid and in place of the Prince, so she needs to follow the Rites.

She sits down on the ground, digging in her purse to fish out a skirt. It’s the first article of clothing she ever made: a dark magenta pleated skirt. She runs her fingers over the stitches, smiling softly at the places where she messed with the tension of the bobbin too much and the thread bunched up. 

Humming, breathing deeply, she lays the skirt on the floor. 

Most living mages would be drawing runes on the ground, chanting words, but her magic is wilder than that. Hers is the kind of magic wielded naturally by the dead, that which comes from the soul. Her humming takes on a layered quality, her violet eyes glowing underneath her eyelids. She tastes sweet berries and rotting petals on her tongue and she smiles. 

“Lady of the Shadowed Streets, I ask for passage into your city in the name of the Prince,” she intones. Her voice holds the whispers of crow’s wings. “We hope to heal wounds that have festered for long. I bring this offering to you as a gesture of goodwill and as a toll for entrance.”

The shadows in the room darken and creep closer to the center of the room. A hand, bone-thin and tipped with needle-like nails, reaches out from the shadows. A little mouse made of shadows scurries down from the outstretched palm. The mouse glides over to her skirt and carefully nibbles on a corner of it.

The dead can’t eat, or at least not how the living can; they can consume the emotions layered on objects. Lady Gotham will taste the anxiety of trying a skill for the first time, the excitement she felt when she wore the skirt for the first time, the quiet pride she felt when she saw it hanging in her closet even after she grew too big to fit in it. 

The mouse latches its little teeth on the fabric and tugs it into the darkness, dissolving into the gloom. The shadows retreat, leaving behind the sound of wrought iron gates creaking open.

Sam breathes a sigh of relief. Her offering has been accepted. Good. On to phase two.

She stands up and enters the ballroom. The lights blind her after the shadowed little corner, but she just blinks a few times and expertly dodges the people in the ballroom. Her parents are chatting animatedly with people she doesn’t recognize and she waits until the conversation is over to approach them.

“I’m going to the hotel,” Sam says.

Just as she expected, her parents’ smiles grow tight. “Sammy-kins,” her mother starts, talking as if she was explaining something obvious to a five-year-old. “We can’t leave the party just yet.”

“I know, I’m saying I’m leaving,” she says. That was the deal she'd made with her parents: she would go to the gala but she would be the one to decide when she left. Her parents had agreed to it multiple times, but she knew better than to expect them to keep their promises.

“Samantha, we are staying at the party, okay sweetie?” her father says, his perfectly whitened smile curling like overheated plastic. “Go chat a bit with the Wayne kids, it’d do well to build connections for your future.”

“I’m going, I’ll walk if I have to," she doubles down.

“Well then, get going,” her mother says, tittering as if Sam had told an amusing joke.

Sam grits her teeth and turns away. They’ve done this before, her parents refusing to call her a cab to escape a rich people party and her having to walk the entire way home in heels. It’s not like they don’t have the money! And she hoped that they’d think that letting their teenage daughter walk alone at night in Gotham would be a bad idea. It’s fine, she planned for this too.

She picks up the backpack she smuggled behind her parent’s backs, ducks into the nearest bathroom, and changes into more sensible clothing. The gala dress is swapped out for a black hoodie and army pants, her heels for combat boots. She shoves seed baggies into her pockets, the underbush seeds ready for her to command. Nobody can accuse her of being unprepared; she’s got a taser, a pocket knife, a fake wallet for if she gets robbed, and a gas mask; all Gotham staples. 

The last thing she carefully slides out of a hidden pocket, glances around and then gently plucks out from a modified ring box. It looks like a marble, just a little larger than what kids would play with. A single scarlet Blood Blossom bud rests inside its glass prison. It’s kind of like those old mercury thermometers; as long as the glass is unbroken she’s fine. But if the glass broke, the pollen from the flower would burst forward, roots clinging and burrowing into her skin, spreading until they reached the ectoplasm in her veins and drained it dry, killing her in the process. 

The little marble is the best ambient ectoplasm sensor they have; the bud opens and reveals darker and darker petals the more ectoplasm is in the air. It’s a five-hundred year old design and it's better than anything the Fentons could make.

And then she looks at the blossom and finds it partially open. She blinks. She can see burgundy petals, which means there’s probably a pool of deathrot pretty close. Huh. Lucky her.

She walks out the front door, giving the frowning butler a reassuring smile before she sets out in the night. She's walking alone down a dark road, holding a little marble like a compass while watching million-dollar acres of land pass her by. Yeah, that’s about how she expected her night to go.

It’s cold outside. It’s the very beginning of February and her breath condenses in front of her face. The little flower keeps opening further, and further, revealing wine red petals. She can finally see Drake Manor in the distance, monolithic and empty, when the flower starts closing up again. She takes a step closer to the fence of the Manor. The flower opens up a little bit more. Welp! Looks like she’s going to do some minor breaking and entering today.

She jumps the fence, waits a second to make sure she’s tripping no alarms, and then starts walking further. It doesn’t take long until she arrives at a tree, the kind of gnarled and twisted oak that she would have challenged Danny to climb when they were younger. She places a hand on the trunk and she hears… echoes. A whisper of wind coming from below.

Her hand starts glowing a soft violet, power lining her fingers. The tree creaks, groans, and then splits, revealing a hollow interior and the mouth of a cave that goes down, down, down. 

Wasn’t Gotham built on a large cave system? It would make sense if the deathrot ended up pooling under the city and then bubbling upwards or flowing into the water supply.

She fishes one of her seed sacks and stabs it through one of the branches. Pushing her power into them, she makes thick underbush vines sprout and hang downwards, using them as a rope to descend into the dark. The air is strangely warmer the deeper she goes, the sounds of the underground warping more and more into something unrecognizable.

She lands, pulls out a flashlight. A narrow tunnel greets her, lined with stalactites and stalagmites and the dripping of water. She starts walking, following the flower through the twists and turns. After the third time she sees a glowing rock that is very much not solidified ecto, she puts on her gas mask. Like hell she’s risking radiation poisoning and whatever random fumes fill the tunnels. 

The blossom opens more, she almost trips into a bright red mass of spiders.

She turns, the blossom opens more, a rat the size of a yorkshire terrier startles her bad enough to almost drop the marble.

The last few petals open, she turns a corner, a stream of bats shriek and gush out of the mouth of the cave. She shrieks and drops to the floor, bats flying like arrows over her head until… silence. 

She raises her head slowly. A green glowing pool greets her eyes. 

A gasp leaves her mouth. Staggering to her feet she looks at the roiling pit of rotting ectoplasm. It whispers screams of agony, nails-on-chalkboard refrains of pain and the smothering murmurs of grief. She gags. 

And once she blinks through the film of nauseous tears she realizes–

“It’s tiny, fuck!” 

They talked about it with a few priests of Osiris, back in the Realms. Either Gotham has one big deathrot lake, or it has dozens of puddles sprinkled everywhere. So, now they have to find all of them and purify them one by one and they’re probably going to be inside the cursed cave system underneath Gotham. Great.

She groans but digs out a notebook and an ecto-proof vial. She takes a sample, labels it as ‘Drake Manor’ and scribbles the directions to get there. 

That’s when she notices the sound of running water. She frowns, follows it and finds a small river running a few ways below… which means that there’s probably deathrot slipping through the cracks of the rock and flowing into the water, only to pool again somewhere down the line. Another of her seed pouches gets sacrificed to lower herself closer to the river and walk alongside it.

And then she starts hearing voices. 

“...armed… Hamil Avenue… there’s three attackers… those cameras are broken, I can't turn them…”

Sam holds her breath as she gets closer to the sounds, light coming from ahead. The river dips underneath a rock overhang, barely any space between the water and the stone, but there’s a space between the rock and the water just big enough for her to squeeze through if she uses her vines to suspend herself above the river. 

Another seed pouch bursts open to cradle her in vines, slowly using them to crawl forward like a spider on a ceiling, as the river below her sprinkles her with drops. And then… light. Not much, but compared to only her flashlight it’s blinding. 

A cave opens up to her, the biggest one she’s ever seen in her life. The chattering of bats fills the space, swooping and dancing between stalactites hanging over a computer that looks like it would make Tucker faint from excitement. A young redheaded woman in a wheelchair sits in front of it, giving directions into a headset. There’s a giant penny and a dinosaur standing proudly on a rock platform further below.

What? Did Sam just accidentally break into a villain's lair? 

And then her eyes fall further down and land on a car that she recognizes in an instant. 

No. There is absolutely no way.

There is a case on the far wall that holds a very familiar uniform.

This is the Batcave. She just found the Batcave. It’s real.

She thought that 'Batcave' was just a name, not that it was a literal cave, what the hell. And Batman’s just using the caves underneath Drake Manor?!? Did the Drakes know?!? Wait, did the Drakes accidentally find the Cave too and that’s why they died in mysterious circumstances? No, that doesn’t make sense, Batman doesn’t kill ...But would he get someone else to kill them?

Sam is absolutely panicking. What the hell is she supposed to do?!? 

Her emotions fuel her ectoplasm. Her ectoplasm fuels her vines. She’s panicking, her vines are growing and she has a split second to think ‘oh shit’  before the vines grow too large and the water-weakened rock she’s clinging to crumbles down with a loud splash. It’s sheer battle-reflexes that allow her to latch to the side of the wall, vines digging into the rock. She still ends up waist-deep in the river, hanging on by pure willpower and vines.

The redheaded woman is staring straight at her. 

Shit, shit, shit, shit!

Sam immediately makes her vines yank her out so fast the rocks shred her back on the way out. Once she’s out of the narrow passage she runs along the river. She keeps running until her throat feels as if she’d swallowed glass and she keeps on running still, desperately trying to avoid loose rocks with her shitty flashlight while wearing a gas mask that keeps fogging up.

She doesn’t stop even as she fishes out a Fenton Phone from her backpack and hits the emergency button. Danny can get to Gotham fast using the Realms, but it’s not instant and he has to use the portal without his parents noticing. Sam has to hang on in the meantime. 

It takes a second to slow down and dig the marble out again and she feels like screaming when she realizes the flower is showing much brighter reds than it should be. Either she’s severely underestimating the distance to the deathrot lake or she ran past it. She’s lost. She’s lost in one of the biggest cave systems in the country. 

A little mouse, a shadow mouse, jumps on her palm. It looks at her. 

“Run,” the mouse whispers. 

The sound of bat wings echoes from behind her. 

Sam breaks out in a sprint. 

A batarang cuts off one of her backpack’s straps and she strangles a yell, the sudden swinging weight almost forcing her to fall. She wildly looks over her shoulder to see the glint of a metal blade in the darkness, a hint of white eyes, the flash of yellow-red-green. Robin is after her. 

Fuck it.

Sam takes her seed pouches, all of them, and throws them behind her like grenades. All of the adrenaline running like lightning in her veins, the terror choking her, the panic making her hands shake, all of her emotions she shoves them into those little seeds, drawing on the will of the dead until the sacks burst. Layers of thorny vines and bushes block the way behind her.

A frustrated shout rings through the living wall she made and Sam barks out a laugh and keeps running. 

She swerves into a side-path away from the river, into a small passage that slowly angles upward and upward and then she steps out into an abandoned subway station. She doesn’t stop, barrelling through debris and jumping the rusted turnstiles until she climbs her way up and out. 

Sam staggers her way to the alley beside a ‘Club Nocturne’, barely registering a couple getting a bit too affectionate deeper in. She pulls her backpack to her front and groans in frustration when she notices the batarang didn’t just cut the strap, it also cut the backpack itself. It’s a miracle that nothing fell out.

Thinking about it, it was probably what Robin was hoping would happen, that something important would fall out and she’d slow down on instinct to grab it or she’d leave it and it would lead them to her identity. She shudders as she digs out her water bottle. If her messily bunched-up gala dress had fallen out she would have been identified in a second. That thing was custom-made.

Pushing up her gas mask a little, she takes a sip of water.

One-handed she googles ‘Club Nocturne’ and then chokes on her water. That’s in Amusement Mile, how the hell did she run all the way here? … Maybe the caves underneath Gotham are weird like Amity Park, where distances and exits change every other Tuesday and full moon.

“Nice night, gentlemen.”

Sam shoves her gas mask back on her face. 

A tall man wearing a red helmet stands in the mouth of the alley. Leather jacket, body armor, blood red symbol on his chest… This is the Red Hood. 

The two lovers panic and fumble into a side-door into the club that Sam hadn’t noticed, closing it behind them. 

Sam turns to watch Red Hood, bristling like a cornered street cat. The vigilante isn’t being outright hostile, there is no gun in his hands, but he’s also staring at her and slowly advancing.

“Everything alright?” he asks. 

That makes her pause. It’s common knowledge that the Bats and Red Hood have a sort of deal: Bats stay out Park Row and Hood stays out of their way. But nobody knows for sure if Red Hood is a Bat or if he just occasionally works with them. Maybe he doesn’t work with them and he’s here for something unrelated…

“Yeah, I’m fine…” Sam answers, capping her water bottle and putting both her phone and it into her bag.

“You sure? ‘Cuz wearing a gas mask usually means either Scarecrow or Joker’s on the loose and last I know both are behind bars,” he says, posture loose and casual. "Those things are stuffy as hell. And uncomfortable."

He’s trying to get her to take off the gas mask, she realizes. Trying to get her to reveal her face. She feels so stupid, in what world would the Red Hood be in Amusement Mile just because? The Bats called favors. She needs to go now.

“Look, nothing’s happening, so get out of–”

A growl so low she feels it more than hears it startles her. Something in Hood has changed. She can’t see it or hear it, can’t explain it, but she knows his whole attention is on her now. It almost feels like… like her ghost sense going off. But it doesn’t make sense, as weak and limited as a Liminal’s ghost sense is, it works. Red Hood isn’t a ghost, what the hell is going on?!?

“What… is that,” Red Hood growls, stepping closer.

“What?” Sam says. She follows his gaze to her backpack. Peeking from the hole in the fabric is the vial of deathrot she took, glowing in the dark. 

He draws a gun and points it to her head. 

“Who are you working for?” Is she going insane or are the eyes of his helmet glowing?

“Back off!” she snarls. She only has her taser, she’s run out of seed bags and she’s against someone who can go toe to toe with the Bat. 

The safety of Red Hood’s gun clicks off. 

“BACK OFF!”

Bang!

A green shield springs to life between them, the bullet pinging off the surface.

“Wow, shooting first, asking questions later? What are you, a cop?” Danny taunts, toxic green eyes glowing in the dark. He's wearing a gas mask too, but from his voice she knows he's grinning, fangs bared.

Red Hood snarls, the voice modifier in his helmet distorting the sound into a demonic scream, and starts firing.

“RUN! I’LL DISTRACT HIM!” 

Sam runs.

Chapter Text

Danny would die for Sam. 

He knows this like how he knows his name.

Sam, Tucker, Jazz, and Ellie. For any of them he would slit his own throat without hesitation. 

Fighting the Red Hood, the crime lord with enough blood on his hands to paint Gotham red, is stupid. Fighting Red Hood with the entire Bat Clan inbound is suicidally stupid. Even if he wins this fight, the Bats will not rest until his name is in their hands. With the Ecto-Acts still in place, they could do anything to him and Danny doesn’t want to find out if his heroes would shove him in a lab.

But he has no other option, so he will fight. Distract Red Hood long enough for Tucker to guide Sam to safety and then run like a bat out of hell. (Heh. Bat out of hell.)

Red Hood shouts, the voice modifier in his helmet distorting the sound into a demonic scream, and starts firing.

The bullets ping off Danny’s shield, ricocheting into the alley. 

“RUN! I’LL DISTRACT HIM!” 

Danny unleashes a shockwave towards Red Hood, sending him flying out of the alley. Sam takes the opportunity to run down the street, Fenton Phone pressed to her ear as Tucker begins to give directions. 

Hood lands on his feet and leaps back towards Danny. 

It takes focus to stay tangible, but the more human he appears, the better. He even had the foresight to snag a gas mask and put it on, since living people worry they’ll get found by facial recognition software.

The ‘remaining tangible’ thing also means that Red Hood’s kick hits him square in the stomach and knocks the air out of his lungs. He doesn’t need air, but that still hurts. He coughs, ducks the next hit on instinct, and fires an ectoblast point-blank. 

Hood rears back, cursing and clutching the shoulder where he hit. Danny can smell the pain in the air. What? That was a low-power ectoblast, it should have just singed him!

The vigilante lashes out with a punch that Danny summons an ecto-shield for. Hood snarls, punches again and again and– 

The shield cracks. That shouldn’t happen! Unless–

A breath of freezing air leaves Danny’s mouth, curling into the air; his ghost sense is going off.

Danny freezes and stops concentrating on the shield, which means that Hood’s next hit shatters it. Faster than he can process, a hand curls around Danny’s neck and starts choking. Panicking, Danny fires an ectoblast at Hood, but all the man does is knock Danny’s arm aside, making the bolt fly wide and hit the wall of the alley. He makes himself intangible, only to still be trapped by Hood’s hand. 

In a second that stretches out into infinity, Danny realizes three things in quick succession:

One, the Red Hood is the one that set off Danny’s ghost sense, but Hood doesn’t have that discordant hum that comes from overshadowing.

Realization number two: the Red Hood is a halfa. That’s the only explanation for why he’s being choked by a hand that has a pulse, even while intangible. But he should have been able to recognize Hood as a halfa much, much earlier. Which leads to:

Alarming thought number three: there is something deeply wrong with the Red Hood. The hum of his Core is so faint that only at arm’s length is Danny close enough to perceive it. And even then, what little he feels makes him gag. It’s like… like passing by someone at the mall, only to be hit with the stench of decay and turn around to see that someone walking with their intestines hanging out of their body and leaking blood all over the linoleum. 

How the fuck is Hood still moving? He has to help them. He has to, but needs to get Hood to stop fighting and listen first.

Danny starts flying, just floating a few feet over the ground. He’s hoping the threat of being taken for a flying rollercoaster ride would make Hood let go. 

That doesn’t happen, Hood is like a dog with a bone and tries to squeeze harder. The sheer rage wafting off of him spikes and he screams something incoherent.

Okay, plan B.

Like a wild horse, Danny stars flying wildly in stops and starts to get Hood to let go. He might not need air to survive as a ghost, but he sure as hell needs it to speak. So he does a few barrel rolls, spins in place as fast as he can. He hangs upside down and swings like he’s a trapeze and Hood’s an acrobat.

Finally, finally, Hood’s grip slackens and he lets go, landing in a perfect roll, but when he tries to get to his feet his knees buckle. Hood falls to the ground and twitches, like he’s trying to get up but his body won’t respond. Wait, shit, is he having a seizure?!?

Danny panics for a second before he bursts into action. He sinks to his knees beside the vigilante, who tenses like he’s trying to get away but barely moves an inch. 

Good news: Danny’s like 80% sure this isn’t a seizure. Bad news: he has no idea what’s happening. Better news: he thinks he can fix it? Like, if Hood’s a halfa he should have more ectoplasmic presence than this, so the easy solution is just to give him more ectoplasm. Right? Right?!?

He wishes he had more time or somebody to ask, but he can feel Hood fading fast, and it’s not like he can make things worse. He doesn’t have an ectoshot with him, they’re back at home in his after-fight kit, and like hell is he going to give Hood whatever deathrot-infested ecto is in the air. 

So Danny removes the gas mask covering the lower half of his face, brings his wrist to his mouth, and bites. His fangs shred the delicate skin over where his veins would be and sink into his ‘flesh’, and he begins to bleed ecto.

“C’mon, c’mon,” Danny mutters, before taking the bright helmet on his other hand and phasing it out through Red Hood’s skull, letting it fall on the ground. And then he places his wrist over Hood’s lips, gently keeping his mouth open as Danny’s blood-like ecto drips steadily down. 

It only takes a few drops before Hood’s heartbeat starts growing steadier (holy shit, he hadn’t even noticed how faint it was), a few more until his breaths grow deeper and a few more until this Core’s humming grows enough that Danny can pick out anger-rage-scared-help-me .  

And then Hood kicks Danny in the stomach, again. Ow.

The kick is strong enough to throw Danny off and he groans in pain as he crouches while holding his stomach. 

Finely honed instincts tell Danny to go invisible, so he does, just in time for Black Bat to drop into the alley as if she’d coalesced from the shadows. She’s in an armored suit, matte black except for a few yellow lines. 

He watches her make what he thinks is a medical check on a barely conscious Red Hood, before she takes a sweeping glance over the alleyway.

She pauses on where Danny’s still crouched, head tilting to the side in curiosity. Her full-face helmet has a stiched-shut smile. Danny has seen literal ghosts less creepy than this. 

But then she turns back towards the Red Hood, picking him up in a fireman’s carry (holy crap she’s strong for a human), and leaves. 

That’s Danny’s cue to leave too. He digs his Fenton Phone out of his ribcage and calls his friends. 

“Guys, emergency meeting, now. You’re not going to believe what just happened.”

“THE RED HOOD IS A WHAT?!?” Sam screams, her chair clattering to the ground behind her.

They’re all in Danny’s kitchen; Jazz, Danny, Sam, and Tucker in the kitchen table’s seats (or at least, they were) while Ellie’s sitting on the counter. Jazz’s hair has poofed up like a startled cat’s and Ellie inhaled chocolate sauce and is coughing her lungs out.

Tucker doesn’t blame them. He is frozen, fingers hovering over his PDA’s buttons while his brain does a hard reset because what. 

“I swear to the Ancients that he is,” Danny says, pacing the length of the kitchen. “He felt like Vlad, but roadkill version. I gave him enough ecto that a regular human would have just up and died, but he got better! He had a Core! What the hell are we supposed to do now?!?”

“The first thing we always need to do is breathe deeply and calm down, okay?” says Jazz, tone bright and gentle even though her hair is still poofed-up Ghibli style. “Why don’t we do some breathing exercises?”

“I’ll do them if you do the thing,” says Ellie, taking another gulp of chocolate sauce straight out of the bottle. 

“... Fine,” Jazz sighs deeply, before clearing her throat. “We will follow a count of four seconds in, seven seconds hold, eight seconds out, alright? Ready? Then 1… 2…–”

Tucker idly follows the breathing exercise, which to be fair does help him quiet down after how disastrous their first recon mission to Gotham went, but he’s waiting for… 

A sudden wave of calm sweeps away all of the buzzing in his head. His shoulders fall, loose and unburdened, and each breath is deeper and more centering than he thought possible. 

He smiles softly. Jazz’s emotional manipulation ability is such a lifesaver sometimes and she’s been getting better about using it casually. He remembers how she was when she first got it, one second elated about the possibilities her ability could have on psychiatric treatment and the next stressing out over ethical concerns about its use, and after that having a panic attack over the possibility that she could shatter someone’s mind on accident. It was in that moment that Tucker realized how similar the Fenton siblings were.

Jazz trails off on her instructions, letting them bask a little in their contentment before she claps her hands once. “So, what’s the plan?”

“We can’t afford to stay out of Gotham,” Tucker begins, pulling up the enemy-ally-undecided list that they update daily. “There are a lot of undecided or neutral Haunts that would side with us if we get Lady Gotham’s allegiance.”

“But the Bats are hunting for us now,” Sam emphasizes. “If we keep going back we’re going to get caught.”

“We don’t have another choice,” sighs Danny. “We’ll just go in groups with either Ellie or me so we can run like hell if things get hairy.”

“Why don’t we just… tell the Bats what we’re doing? Y’know, broker a truce?” suggests Jazz, but even if she was the one to pose the idea she sounds unsure about it.

“What, and it’ll go better than any other time adults got involved?” snipes Ellie, floating over the kitchen table, unconsciously flashing her eyes.

“Yeah, no, Red Hood almost shot me over nothing,” Sam snarls. “Telling them would be as bad as telling the police.”

“I want to hope they’d help us,” says Danny, his fists tightening. “That the reason they’ve done nothing is because they didn’t know, not because they didn’t care.”

There’s a tense silence.

Two in favor, two against, Tucker is the tiebreaker. Ancients, Tucker wishes this wasn’t his life, where the fate of the Realm of the Dead rests on the shoulders of five teenagers. If he makes the wrong choice they’re going to end up with Vlad as King. He’s been having nightmares of an army of ghosts invading Amity to kidnap the Fentons and he tries to fight back while getting quizzed by Mr.Lancer.

He takes off his glasses to rub at his eyes. To trust or not to trust? 

“I think… I think we should try to contact them,” Tucker says. “We don’t have to trust them with everything right away and at least it’ll set a precedent that we are friendlies. But if things are going south? Cut and run.”

“And… and Red Hood?” Danny says hesitantly.

“We’ll try,” says Sam firmly. “But if he refuses to be helped then that’s it.”

Danny nods, but he curls up into a little ball on his chair. Tucker seeks Danny’s hand on instinct, tangling his perpetually cold fingers with his. 

“We’ll try,” Tucker echoes. “That’s all we can do.”

“Okay, does anyone have an explanation to what just happened?” Barbara says. “Anyone?”

The answer is just a chorus of exhausted groans. 

Dick isn’t much better. He’s still wearing the same navy suit from Bruce’s birthday gala, but now it’s rumpled and it has a wine stain. The make-up covering the few facial scars he has needs of a retouch. He wants to go take a shower and sleep after schmoozing with so many rich pricks, but this clusterfuck won’t let him.

Only Cass, Damian, and Steph had been able to get out of the party. Damian because they’d used the ‘baby is tired’ excuse, Steph because she’s not legally part of the family so it wasn’t weird if she left early, and Cass because she’s so stealthy people never realize she’s gone. 

Once they got Jason into the medbay, Dick had managed to get out for a moment by spilling wine over himself and going ‘upstairs to change.’ He’ll have to go back to the party in a bit so people don’t get suspicious. 

Bruce, Tim, Alfred and Duke are still upstairs, listening in through their disguised comms (most of the family disguised theirs as earrings, Alfred disguised his as hearing aids.)

Jason stumbles into the Cave from medbay, Steph doing her best impression of a limpet as she hangs from one of his legs.

"GET BACK ON YOUR COT OR I WILL TELL ALFRED! JUST TRY ME BITCH!" she shrieks. She's still in her gala dress, the lavender fabric gathering dust from the cave’s floor. She loses one of her heels and no one makes an effort to get it. 

“Wait, what? Jason’s conscious?” whispers Tim through the comms before seamlessly continuing a conversation with Mrs.Donovan. 

“Jason, you should be resting,” snaps Bruce. Dick winces at his father’s tone. It must be hell on Bruce to stay at the party and play the Brucie persona when someone has their secret identities and could be unmasking them this very second but at the same time, can Bruce not unintentionally antagonize Jason for five fucking seconds?

“I’m fine,” snaps back Jason, hackles rising, but he drops heavily into one of the chairs. He scowls at the table and grits his teeth.

“Jason–”

“ Shut it, Bruce. Listen for once in your goddam life,” he snipes back, knee bouncing under the table. Dick hasn’t seen his brother so wired in a long, long time. “I’m fine and that’s the fucking problem!” 

“Hood, you are not making sense,” snaps Damian. The little squirt is currently inside the hole the unknown person used to get into the cave, seeing if he can get any DNA samples. It’s not going well. “Perhaps you should be resting in the infirmary until you are capable of using speech.”

“All of you will shut up until I’m done saying my shit, okay?” Jason says through his teeth, his shoulders only dropping once everyone has said their reluctant agreement. ”How much did you see from the cameras, Babs?”

“You cornered our unknown in the alley and started deescalating the situation. Then you suddenly flipped and started being agressive, before all the cameras and your comm suddenly fritzed. When they came back online, you were laying on the ground unresponsive and without your helmet,” she answers, her voice clinical and to-the-point. 

Their training is the only thing that allowed them to compartmentalize the panic that they had gone through when they’d suddenly lost contact with Jason. Their comms are one of the most advanced pieces of technology they have for a reason; bad things happen when they go out. Dick is still dealing with the adrenaline crash from the whole thing.

“So you didn’t get a clear shot of what was inside her bag?” Jason says, running his hands over his face. Barbara shakes her head.

“Right, so. Our unknown is around five foot four, likely female, doesn’t have a Gotham accent and if they’re older than me I’ll jump naked into Gotham Harbor,” says Jason, scowling even harder. “They also had a glass bottle full of Lazarus water in their backpack.”

Dick suddenly wishes he was upstairs so he could take a swig of something alcoholic. 

“Todd, are you sure?” says Damian, grunting as he crawls out of the hole and starts speedwalking his way back to the group. His spine is now ram-rod straight, the way it was the first few months living in the Manor.

“Very sure, demon brat,” he answers. “Lazarus shit has a pretty fucking distinct feeling.”

Cass silently leans against Jason. He doesn’t acknowledge it, but he doesn’t shove her off either. Progress.

“So, I saw the water and flipped the fuck out. After that things get… murky. I think someone else appeared and started fighting me, distracted me while our unknown ran,” he says, frowning as he attempts to untangle his memory. “I’m pretty sure the someone else was also a meta. I remember being so mad that this half-trained nobody wasn’t going down no matter how hard I hit. And before you say anything, Replacement, yes it was a Pit Rage kind of flipping the fuck out.”

“You’ve… not had many of those lately,” says Bruce, gently. Or, well, Bruce’s gentle, which usually reads as awkward for most people.

“...Okay, this is the part where all of you shut up, alright?” Jason says, glaring at everyone present. When nobody speaks, Jason sighs and starts glaring at the ceiling of the cave. “Ever since I came back from the dead I’ve been having these… fainting spells.”

They all freeze. 

“They’re not actually fainting spells, I don’t know what the hell they are but they remind me of the hunger fainting spells I had when I was on the streets, so I just call them that,” Jason continues and Dick holds back the urge to smother his brother in a hug. “It’s like… one moment I’m alright and the next I don’t have any energy. Everything turns heavy and slow and tired, and that’s when I drop. I don’t lose consciousness, but I sort of… lose the will to try to understand what’s around me. And they’ve been getting worse.”

“Jaylad–”

“I’m not stupid Bruce,” cuts off Jason. “Yes, I know I should have told you about that, followed protocol and all that sanctimonious bullshit but it’s none of your business alright? I told Leslie about it.” 

‘Bruce was about to ask you if you were alright, you asshole,’ Dick wants to yell at Jason, but he bites back his temper with practiced efficiency. 

“And what did she say about it?” prods Duke, even though he sounds hesitant about speaking up.

“The Doc found nothing wrong with me aside from the shit that we already knew,” Jason says casually, in that way of his where he uses nonchalance to cover up deep, ingrained fear. “Too-slow heartbeat isn’t the reason this shit is happening.”

“Little Wing, why didn’t you tell us?” says Dick, reaching out to hold his brother’s shoulder. Jason slaps it away.

“Because of that,” Jason spits, his eyes flashing for the barest of seconds. “If this whole resurrection bullshit is only temporary, I wanted to make the best of it, not spend every second of my day smothered by your unwanted pity.”

Dick’s hands curl into fists but his eyes sting with tears. He wants to shake Jason and yell at him until he understands how much he is loved, that losing him had broken them and it will break them again. He wants to punch his brother until he listens, until it gets through his thick skull that it isn’t pity. It will never be pity.

“We’re getting off topic. Jason, what does this have to do with the Lazarus Water?” interrupts Tim, tone curt, talking into a glass (probably of champagne that he should definitely not be drinking) to disguise his words. From anyone else, the interruption would be callous and cold, even cruel, as if he didn't care that his brother might be dying. But Tim… Tim tends to approach emotional problems exactly the same as he would a case. So, he’s trying to gather all of the necessary data before he can throw himself into finding a solution. Dick is intentionally reminding himself of that so he doesn’t snap at Tim for being insensitive.

“The only way I had for snapping myself out of a fainting spell was Pit Rage,” Jason admits, sounding glad for the change of topic. “I made myself mad on purpose and that seemed to do the trick. It’s also the reason why I didn’t notice the spells at first, I was just so hopped up on Rage that if I had them I got out so fast I never noticed.”

“But you’ve been trying to not give in to the Rage,” Tim says, humming consideringly. “If Pit Rage is what you need, then maybe we could design a system for it? Checks and balances? Me recording a few taunting voice mails about how unavenged you are?”

“Did you forget that the last time I used Pit Rage like that, I almost slit your throat open?” Jason says and then mouths ‘is he serious?’ at Dick

“But you didn’t!” says Tim, and Dick despairs over his little brother’s survival instincts. “I can deal with a few homicide attempts a week if it keeps you alive. I’ve done it before.”

“Glossing over the fact that Timbuktu over there is obviously insane,” Jason snarks. “It wouldn’t work anyway. Pit Rage’s not enough anymore. It’s been harder and harder to make myself angry enough to break free. I… I thought that was it for me, back in that alley.”

Jason’s confession hangs in the air.

“But?” prods Duke. Dick can’t help the surge of affection for his newest sibling. Kid’s fearless to do what needs to be done, no matter how emotionally fraught. No wonder he ended up being the leader of the We Are Robin movement.

“...I might be misremembering; I was high on Rage before the fainting spell got me, but… the someone’s eyes were glowing like mine, and you said my helmet was off and unexploded but my domino was still in place and I feel better than I have in months, I didn’t realize how exhausted and cold I was until I wasn’t…” Dick lets his brother talk, seemingly trying to convince himself of what he remembers.

“I… I know this might sound insane, ” Jason says, curling his fists so tight the knuckles go white. “But I think that the ‘someone’ fed me Pit Water… that came from a self-inflicted wound. They bleed Lazarus green .”

Chapter Text

Tucker nervously readjusts his beanie and the gas mask on his face as he steps out of the swirling portal. Ellie cheers as she races ahead, twirling in the air like a sea snake in water. Wulf steps out last and closes the portal, sinking them in darkness without its green glow.

The three of them are on the outside of Gotham City, the skyline of Tricorner Yard shining in the distance over the water. Tucker shivers, drawing his thick coat closer to him and rechecking that his heavy backpack is still in place. Three days between last being chased by Red Hood doesn’t seem like enough time to let things cool down, but they don’t have the luxury of waiting any longer. Jazz, Sam and Danny are somewhere in the outskirts of Burnside, ready to go searching for their own deathrot pools.

Wulf nudges him with one of his paws. Tucker turns to see the werewolf-looking ghost tilting his head curiously at him. 

“I’m alright, Wulf. Scared out of my mind, but alright.”

In response, Wulf pats his head in that ‘excited husky trying to be gentle’ way of his and then runs off to catch Ellie by the scruff and bring her back like a wayward puppy. 

“Alright!” says Tucker, clapping his hands to get Wulf’s and Ellie’s attention. He presses a button on the side of his gas mask and the lenses light up with his McGuyvered night-vision mode, mostly to make-up the fact that he’s the only one in their little group without the ability to see in the dark. “There should be a lot of cave entrances along the shoreline, we just have to find ones that stink of deathrot.”

“Lemme go,” Ellie says, pouting. She then wiggles free of Wulf’s maw and starts to head towards the cliffs.

“Wulf, wait here. I’ll signal you with this when we need you to pull us out, okay?” Tucker says, waving a whistle made out of bone carved with a few hieroglyphs. 

He nods his affirmative and starts circling the rocky ground before laying down in a little ball, going invisible and settling in to snooze.

“Hurry up slowpoke!” Ellie says, snagging him by the collar and flying off to the jagged cliffs, completely ignoring his terrified screams, what a brat. She unceremoniously drops him at the mouth of a damp seaside cave.

“DON’T DO THAT ELLIE!” 

“Then don’t be slow!” she yells and flies off into the cave with a cackle. 

Tucker starts running after her, stumbling over rocks and puddles of water. Are they here at high or low tide? Ancients, Tucker doesn’t want to find out in an hour or two by getting drowned by a wave. A drop of water lands on the back of his neck and sneaks down his shirt. He hates this. Less than ten minutes into this expedition and Tucker’s starting to wish they could have brought Wulf along. He knows exposing a ghost to the miasma that is Gotham is just cruel, but having a werewolf as a steed would have been so much better. 

He and Ellie, a Liminal and a Neverborn respectively, should be alright, but man, he’s been in Gotham less than an hour and he already wants to go home. There is a reason he’s Team Phantom’s guy in the chair and not a main fighter. Urgh.

He still keeps walking, and walking, and walking, Ellie’s taunting words coming from further ahead from the tunnel. He leans against a wall for a second to catch his breath. 

“Yo! What’s taking so long?” Ellie says, pouting. But then she frowns, floating a bit closer to him. “Are you okay?”

“Living people get tired, remember?” Tucker says, sighing. Yes, he’s annoyed, but Ellie’s literally less than a year old and was never alive to begin with.

“Oh, sorry,” she says, her glow dimming a bit. She then perks up. “Wait, I have an idea!”

Her glow flares and the condensation on the walls gets pulled into a ball of water that she then shapes into a beanbag. She grins toothily. “Hop on!”

Tucker laughs and settles into the watery beanbag, making himself comfortable. Ellie starts pulling the water beanbag behind her, acting like a tour guide as she makes comments on the ‘fascinating ruins’ and the ‘beautiful fish skeletons embedded in the wall.’

Both of them shiver the moment they pass the invisible boundary that defines Gotham. Everyone in Team Phantom has already made their offerings and asked for permission to enter, just in case they need reinforcements quickly. So, Tucker and Ellie simply mutter greetings to the Lady, one in English the other in Ghost-speak, and relax once they feel her approval. 

They smile at each other then keep walking, but this time Ellie speaks quieter, Tucker leans forward in preparation to jump if he needs to. Minutes blur as they pass, walking through tunnels of damp stone and more damp stone.

Ellie stops in her tracks.

“Someone’s coming,” she whispers.

Tucker hisses a curse under his breath and fumbles to retrieve his wrist-ray and his amulet from his bag. Heavy steps start vibrating through the ground, the taste of rot blooming on his tongue and he gags. The smell of rotting flesh comes later and the figure finally steps into view.

Tall enough that his head drags across the ceiling even when hunching over, a man stands blocking their path forward. His skin is an ashen cyan, clinging and stretching over bloated flesh. Holes in the tattered and filthy suit he is wearing reveal holes in the muscle, deep enough to show bone. There’s even one hole where a rat is curled up, it’s beady eyes staring out in the darkness. 

Shit, that’s Solomon Grundy. 

“Hi!” Ellie says cheerfully and flies towards the very dangerous Rogue. Yup. This is it for Tucker. Eternity as a ghost, here he comes! “I’m Ellie! What’s your name?”

Grundy doesn’t answer and instead grabs Ellie like she’s a weird doll he found on the ground, going as far as to shake her upside down. She just laughs. 

“Please, uh, please put her down,” Tucker stutters, hands shaking, putting the whistle closer to his lips. 

And then Grundy does. He was not expecting that to work. What does he do now???

“Hi, uhm, hi. I’m Tucker. How’s it going?” he stammers. Of course the first thing out of his mouth to the notorious criminal is Midwestern politeness. Well, at least he’s not like, insulting someone when first meeting them cough Danny and Sam cough. 

“Solomon Grundy, buried on a Sunday,” he answers, his voice both gravelly and wet, but quieter than Tucker expected. 

Didn’t the rhyme go ‘Solomon Grundy, born on a Monday’? No way he’d mess up his own rhyme. Wait, no, he’s answering Tucker’s question!

“So you’re just hanging around in these buried tunnels, huh?” Tucker says conversationally, his smile widening when Grundy nods.

“Fell ill on Thursday?” Grundy asks, eyes narrowing.

“Uuuuh...” Tucker has no idea what that means.

“Are you saying like, ‘what's your damage?’” babbles Ellie, floating upside-down. “Or, ‘what is wrong with you two for you to be here?’”

Grundy nods again.

“We’re searching for this,” Ellie says, drawing out the vial of pure ecto (aka ecto-shot) they’ve all begun to carry with them in case they find Red Hood again. 

This time Solomon Grundy only grunts, turns around and starts going deeper into the tunnels. Ellie and Tucker exchange a look before she shoots off in pursuit. Tucker groans and follows.

Sure enough, after a few twists and turns and climbing up three separate cave walls (Sam may have had a point with him needing more exercise. Ugh) they find the glow in the distance.

He has to stop to take a deep breath, fighting not to throw up. It’s bad, so bad. The deathrot in the air he can sense brings up memories of those awful kale smoothies of Sam’s and the time he was dared to eat a spoonful of rotting egg salad by one of his cousins. 

When his eyes stop watering, he looks up. Sam had found a deathrot puddle, but this was closer to a deathrot pool. It’s a little smaller than an olympic pool and a lot of it is water coming from the ceiling, diluting the actual rot, but it’s still a pretty big find.

And the first thing Ellie does is take a handful of it and drink it. 

“Ewww,” Tucker says. Even Grundy makes a face. 

“It’s tasty!” she says, grinning with green-stained teeth.

“It’s nasty,” he grimaces, but leaves Ellie to her disgusting meal. It’s not like it’s gonna hurt her. “Don’t get near me until you’ve washed your teeth.”

She replies something vaguely affirmative with a mouth full of liquid and keeps drinking. 

“Grew worse on Friday!” Grundy says, pointing at Ellie insistently, body tense.

“Are you… worried about her?” Tucker says. Grundy grunts affirmatively, not taking his eyes off of her. “It’s fine, she’s a Neverborn. This is the kind of thing she eats.”

He turns to Tucker with a confused frown. 

Explaining ghost stuff to outsiders always makes Tucker nervous, but… he’s starting to understand why he trusted Grundy so easily and followed a known Rogue into a dark cavern. He’d thought that the whole ‘Grundy is a zombie’ bit was an exaggeration from the press, like with Killer Croc who’s actually not a crocodile but has meta mutations that make him look like one. He was wrong. Grundy is of the Realms, somehow. He has no idea what Grundy is, but even with Tucker’s extremely limited ectoplasm sense, he can tell that Grundy is curious and wary, but not violent. 

He can’t shake the nervousness anyways, so he starts setting up the equipment they have to purify the rot. He speaks better when he’s not thinking about what to say.

“Neverborns are beings made out of ectoplasm, or uh, deathblood. Basically, they’re made of the pure version of the goop over there,” Tucker says, gesturing to the pool. He pulls out his modified PDA and engages the GPSpook, which will give him coordinates in the Realms and then translate them to Living World ones, so they can find this place again even with the weirdness in the caves. They’re apparently underneath Slaughter Swamp. Huh. Fitting. “Ectoplasm naturally absorbs emotions, but too many emotions and it gets heavy and sluggish, makes it all nasty. We… don’t know exactly how Neverborns are created, but we do know that they eat all those emotions out of the ectoplasm– sorry, deathblood, which purifies it and makes it light and good again.”

Tucker begins walking around the border of the pool and places inactive little shield-generators along the edges. “Ellie is a special case. The thing that makes Neverborn and ghosts different is that ghosts have a Core, which kind of functions like a brain and a heart. Neverborn don’t have a brain, so they’re kind of like jellyfish? In the sense that they just float around and eat emotions.” 

He takes a sample of the pool, labels it ‘Slaughter Swamp’ and puts it in his backpack. “What makes Ellie different is that she is a Neverborn with a Core. First of her kind! Don’t ask how that happened, it’s a touchy subject.”

Tucker finishes setting the last shield-generator, this one far enough away from the edge of the pool that all three of them could sit down without touching the rot. “I’m gonna turn on the shield and passing through it stings a little, so you can go outside or stay inside with me. I’m gonna release a couple of Neverborn inside, in case you want to meet ‘em.”

Grundy doesn’t move to get out, so Tucker assumes that’s a yes and presses the button on his PDA. A glowing shield springs to life, encasing the entire pool in a spherical, rippling boundary. 

“TUCKER!” Ellie shouts, jumping from where she was drinking. The tips of her feet are singed from the shield. “WARN ME NEXT TIME!”

“Ope, sorry about that,” he says, answering Ellie’s indignant huff with a sheepish smile, before rooting inside his backpack. He pulls out a Fenton Thermos™ and lays his finger on the release button. He then grins in Grundy’s direction. “Watch this.”

A soft click and the thermos bursts into a meteor shower of lights, bright green blobs flying along the cave like schools of fish. They circle like a galaxy before diving into the rot like a whirlpool. They chow down with happy trills, splashing in the rot like puppies.

“Whooo! Look at that!” he says, cheering like he’s a spectator at a football game. Grundy’s awed expression makes him laugh delightedly. “These are blobs! Well, we used to call ‘em ‘blob ghosts’ before we knew they were Neverborn and not ghosts. They’re as intelligent as a five-year old. We needed the shield to keep ‘em contained so they wouldn’t wander and we could catch them easily once the rot runs out and don’t leave them here to starve.”

Grundy’s face turns thoughtful. Tucker lets him collect his thoughts, instead watching as a blob rises from the rot. It used to be the size of a baseball but now it’s closer to the size of a car tire. It vibrates happily before bursting into four smaller blobs, who sink back down into the rot. 

“Died on a Saturday?” he quietly asks, looking at Tucker.

“Uuuh, kinda? I’m Liminal, which, uuh, the easiest way to explain it is that I’m death-touched. Living, but got a bit too close to death to remain the same,” Tucker explains. He sheepishly lifts his beanie a few inches to show his slightly pointed ears, smiling with all his teeth to show his wolf-like (well, technically jackal-like) teeth. 

“Solomon Grundy, christened on a Tuesday?” he answers, his voice thick, gaze firmly held on his water-bloated hands. 

Okay, Tucker has no idea what that one means and Ellie is currently swimming in an all-you-can-eat lime jello buffet, so he has to figure it out on his own. Okay, christening means to give name to something. Does he want Tucker to give him a different name? That doesn’t sound right. He’s clearly attached to Solomon Grundy. So maybe…

“Do you… want to know what you are?” Tucker gently asks. Grundy slowly nods.

“I can find that out, but I’d need to cast a spell. You okay with that?” He nods again.

With that, Tucker slips a stick of chalk and an ivory curved wand out of his bag’s pockets, and gets to work. The hieroglyphs for an identification spell come easily to him and he draws them with chalk. Technically, drawing the symbols with chalk isn’t necessary, but with sorcery doing the symbols wrong can have disastrous consequences. Better to mark it down first in something that you can correct mistakes on and then commit, even if it takes longer. (And it’s also better than the mess of intention-emotion-will that is soul magic. Suck it Sam! Sorcery is clearly superior!)

“Okay, can you hold your hand over the circle?” Tucker asks and Grundy complies. He takes a deep breath, channels magic into his wand and breathes out. 

The symbols light up in a radiant golden orange, like a sunset distilled. The spell highlights threads of magic in his mind’s eye, curling around Solomon Grundy like a cat tangled in yarn.

That gives him pause. The threads of magic are wrapped tightly around Grundy’s body and form a frayed spell, one that is sewed into… holy shit is that a Core?

“You’re a ghost?!?” Tucker exclaims. 

“What,” Ellie says.

It takes all of Tucker’s magic knowledge, painstakingly acquired over a year and a half, to keep the absolute jumpscare that Ellie just gave him from destabilizing the spell.

“But how can he be a ghost if he has, you know, the whole body situation?” Ellie continues, oblivious to his racing heart. “Isn’t he a zombie?”

Tucker deadpans at her. Both of them know that zombies are just as non-sentient as the Ectoweenies the Fentons keep accidentally creating, since they’re basically the same thing; reanimated meatsacks. They just had a conversation with Grundy, he is clearly sentient. Hell, he’s clearly sapient.

“That was a dumb question, wasn’t it,” she groans. 

Tucker ignores her, instead diving deeper into the identification spell. He follows the threads of magic, seemingly stitching together Grundy’s malformed Core to his body. It’s weird. The spell is basically tying Grundy’s soul to his body so tightly that if you hurt the body you hurt the soul, but why would any sorcerer want that? Why would anyone want to make body and soul one thing–?

Tucker gasps. 

“What? What’s wrong?” Ellie asks, frantic. Even Grundy seems to be a bit alarmed, his eyes growing wider.

“It’s nothing wrong! It’s just–” Tucker stops and constructs his words carefully. “I think… I think someone tried to artificially create a halfa using magic and it didn’t work. Grundy is the result.”

He can understand how that sorcerer arrived to that solution: from the outside, a halfa looks like a ghost possessing their own dead body so fast that the body doesn’t have time to rot, but halfas are a lot more complicated than that. So now there’s just Grundy, chained to his rotting carcass, shambling about the supernatural toxic wasteland that is Gotham, his soul so tightly bound in magic that if anyone were to cut the spell, they’d end Grundy too.

“You’re like me?” Ellie breathes in an awed whisper.

Grundy watches Ellie in a whole new light, eyes wide as he slowly extends a hand to her. She takes it, her fingers looking so, so small against his.

“I mean, we’re not exactly the same,” Ellie hurries to clarify. “I was a failed attempt to create a halfa through science, not magic. And you’re the middle point between a ghost and a Liminal, not the middle point between a ghost and a Neverborn but… I’ve never met someone like me.”

Grundy looks at Ellie the same way Tucker looked at his cousin Jamal when he was first born. He can’t help the small smile on his lips.

“Why don’t you come with us after we’re done here?” suggests Tucker, placing a hand on Grundy’s shoulder. “We can go to the Infinite Realms. They have the best ghost doctors and magicians, I’m sure they can figure out how to make it so you’re not hurting all the time.”

He nods. He looks like he’d be crying if his tearducts hadn’t rotted away.

The three of them sit down on the uneven stone floor, watching as little by little, the rot is eaten away.

Bruce is staring at the phone on his desk like it’s going to bite him. 

The phone itself is nothing special. It’s a burner phone with exactly one number in it.

The grandfather clock ticks forward, each tick calling him a coward for stalling. 

He looks at the picture on his desk. It’s the latest family picture, the ‘official’ one at least, with only the legal members of the family smiling but otherwise being upstanding members of society. He reaches over to a small button on the picture frame disguised as a carved flower petal and the picture changes into the real one, the one with the whole family.

In this one Jason gives a noogie to Dick, taunting the fact that he’s a good three inches taller than him, making his older brother’s dark brown hair turn into a bird’s nest. Damian’s leg is reared back in preparation to kick Jason in the shin, ready to come to Dick’s defense. Duke’s smiling in a strained ‘why did I join this family?’ way, but he’s still taking a video of Damian being a brat, gathering ammunition for the long-held Bat tradition of blackmail wars.

A month before they took the picture, a gossip rag published the speculation that Tim and Cass were twins and the result of a torrid affair between Bruce and Janet Drake. Cass was ‘supposedly’ given away since the Drakes didn’t want more than one heir, much less a female one. ‘Allegedly’, Janet Drake told the truth to Bruce at some point and he went and brought her home, which explains why he adopted both of them. Their features are similar, both dark-haired, dark-eyed and very pale with Asian features, and that was enough for the article to gain traction. When Tim and Cass got wind of it, they took the idea and ran with it, to the point where they hacked into government records to change Cass’ birth date to Tim’s (making her two years younger ) and designed a complex system of nonverbal cues that allowed them to have ‘twin telepathy’. 

Tim and Cass are in the middle of a phrase, talking in perfect unison with identical expressions. Steph is doing her best to fluster her girlfriend into breaking the ‘twin’ act. It’s not working. 

Babs is filming them. She later posted the video and now most of Gotham believes that the existence of the ‘Drake-Wayne’ twins is the city’s biggest open secret.

Bruce himself looks so done with his children’s antics, but anyone who knows him would realize that the twitch of his mouth means he’s trying very hard not to laugh since it would encourage them to do even crazier things. Alfred stands behind him, hand on his shoulder, wearing a small amused smile at the fact that all of the shenanigans Bruce put him through are now being repaid with interest. 

Now, he takes a second to look at the picture to rest his eyes on each of the people in his family, tracing their features. He takes one final deep breath, clicks the button again to hide the picture, and picks up the phone. 

He dials the number. Talia al Ghul picks up on the second ring.

“Hello, Beloved,” Talia’s lightly accented voice answers. 

“I need sensitive information about the Lazarus Pits.”

“... Are you alright?” Talia asks.

Bruce flinches. Even after all these years, Talia is one of the few people who can read him so easily, and it sends a stab of longing and terror through his heart every time.

“Are you in a place where you can divulge information on the Lazarus Pits?” Bruce bites, his knuckles tightening on the phone.

Talia doesn’t answer and Bruce knows it’s because she’s making sure she’s in a safe place, and he hates that he knows that instinctively.

“What is it you need, my love?” she softly says.

“Are there any side-effects to the Pit related to bouts of dissociation and lethargy, similar to an absence seizure?”

A soft gasp comes from the phone.

“Talia,” Bruce– no, Batman growls. “What do you know.”

She releases a shaky breath. “If my father knew I was giving you this information he’d execute me. I am committing treason at this very moment,” she whispers into the receiver.

Bruce’s spine straightens.

“The Lazarus Pits heal the sick and dying, yes, but at a price,” she explains, her voice lightly echoing through the line. “There is a limit to using the Waters, and once that threshold is passed you become dependent on them to survive.”

“And the ‘seizures’ are symptoms of withdrawal,” Bruce says, gritting his teeth. It explains why Ra is so reluctant to head into the field despite being one of the most skilled warriors on the planet; being away from the Pits would be one of his greatest weaknesses.

“Jason’s the one suffering, isn’t he,” she says and her voice is tight and trembling. “I... The only reason I was allowed to let Jason and Damian return to you is because they both had passed that threshold. My father thought that Jason would eventually succumb to the emptiness or crawl back to the League. With Damian, the plan had been to allow him to learn under you, but when he would fall ill, you would have begged and bowed to Ra’s for a cure. But for reasons unknown, neither of them presented symptoms until now. With his unprecedented Pit Rage, Jason should have developed symptoms years ago.”

The pieces click into place in his mind, events unraveling as clear as if they were happening in the same instant.

He sees Jason suddenly dropping dead, himself wracked with grief as he loses his child a second time, their family cracking under the strain. He sees Damian slowly succumbing to the same ‘illness’, the family tearing itself apart trying to find a cure, only to beg Ra’s to use the Pit as a last resort.

Ra’s would have asked Bruce to kill someone. One person. Would have gone as far as to capture the Joker and present him in chains. Would have made a parody of the choice Jason presented to him so long ago: his son’s life or the Joker’s, and this time there would have been no chance to save them both. 

Bruce wants to think that he’d find another way to keep both his morals and his children, but he’s not in the business of lying to himself. If the time after Jason’s death was any indication, without anyone to stop his hand Bruce would choose to kill for his children. And he knows himself, once he starts killing, he’d never stop. 

If Bruce wasn’t sitting his knees would have buckled. His chest is tight, but he doesn’t know if it’s rage or fear until: 

“Talia, if you allow Ra’s to kill my children to manipulate me–”

“I never wanted this!” Talia says, her voice breaking with the effort to keep her anguish quiet. “I wanted to give our children a chance to live good lives, to be given a childhood by their father. But the Demon’s Head would have never let such perfect hostages go if I hadn’t fed poisonous words to Jason to turn him against you, if I hadn’t convinced Father to use Damian’s life as a bargaining chip. I did what I had to do to keep them safe!”

And this… this is the woman that Bruce fell in love with so many years ago. This sharp, cunning, kind woman who helped him pass Ra’s trials without killing anyone despite the fact that she’d get whipped if she was found out. The person who treasured their whispered conversations where the two bared their souls in shadowed corners, drunk on freedom the way only those barely out of adolescence are. 

But… back then Bruce had forgotten that above all, Talia had been loyal to the League of Shadows. How, when Bruce refused to stay with the League, she had been ordered to seduce him, to acquire what was needed to produce an heir at a later date. 

Talia had been his first. 

The realization that he could never be sure of her intentions crushed him. Had she loved him at all? Did she love him, but slept with him out of obligation? Had she loved him, but less than she loved the Shadows?

He wants to believe that Talia has grown and changed enough to have clawed her way out of her father’s shadow, that he can trust her word now. That even if their romance had been doomed to fail, they could still be those two souls cloaking little embers of kindness in darkness to keep them safe. 

“Help me overthrow my father,” Talia says, snapping Bruce out of his reminiscing. 

So this is her angle. But… does she want to overthrow her father to keep her children safe or is she using their lives as bargaining chips to manipulate him too? … It doesn’t matter, the facts won’t change and his feelings are irrelevant. His answer is the same.

“What do you need?”

“I will be leaving critical information at a dead drop in Milan, have someone unconnected to you retrieve it,” she whispers furiously. “My father has been worryingly interested in forging alliances. So far, I know he’s been in regular meetings with Lex Luthor and Amanda Waller, though there are a couple of third parties I have not been able to identify.”

Isolationist Ra’s al Ghul, reaching out? The League of Shadows is bad enough, but a concerted alliance of Rogues and corrupt government branches could be catastrophic. 

“I have to go,” she says hurriedly. The line cuts off.

Chapter Text

“Aaaaand done!” Jazz says, yanking one last cable before the gadget sparks and starts smoking with a loud pop!

Danny only has a half-hearted smile to give her and ignores her worried look. There is a moment where only the blips and bloops of the basement lab are heard and he distracts himself from the various sabotaged inventions on the table as he finishes cleaning the lab. 

He hates being here. Guilt crawls up his throat every time he and Jazz sabotage something their parents made, but at the same time the thought of another ghost or a blob getting caught in the Ecto-scorcher makes him want to vomit. 

He throws his gloves into the biohazard trash. Danny flees the lab as fast as he can, climbing the stairs two at a time, gripping his arms in a self-hug so hard his nails prickle into his skin. It takes concentration to not let his nails become claws. Last thing he needs is his parent’s smothering attempts at first-aid for some tiny little scratches.

“Cleaning the lab is far too damaging for your psyche,” Jazz says as she emerges from the stairs to the basement and falls into step beside him on the way to the kitchen. “You should let me do it, being surrounded by ghost-hunting equipment made by our parents is not healthy–”

“Jazz, I’m fine, I can handle it.” Danny grumbles. “Besides, if they notice you’ve been doing my chores they’re going to make me take lab-cleaning duty more often.”

She doesn’t answer. This argument of theirs is one they’ve repeated again and again. They know how it ends. So, with Danny busy learning to fight, securing alliances and stressing out over what Vlad is planning he doesn’t have enough energy to argue.

Both of them finally get to the kitchen to find a note on the table. ‘We ran to get some Nasty Burger for family dinner. Hang tight, kiddos!’

Danny lets out what feels like the longest, deepest sigh in his life. Their parents get like this every once in a while when they get too deep into a project. It’s like they suddenly remember that they have children and decide it’s a game night or time for a family roadtrip or a million other ‘bonding activities’ that inevitably get derailed into ghost ranting sessions or become disasters. 

It’s even worse this time, since his parents just realized his birthday was two weeks ago. His parents usually forget birthdays, but they remember two or three days later. Danny’s not surprised, since his parents just got a a couple of big contracts. 

“Looks like mom botched a casserole again,” Jazz idly states, brushing a lock of hair behind her shoulder. “Well! At least we won’t have to eat reanimated chicken meat!”

“Uh-huh,” distractedly answers Danny. 

There’s a second of silence before Jazz pulls two chairs out from the table and sets one facing the other.

“This is an intervention!” she declares and even though she sits down with a concerned look on her face, her tone makes sure that the intervention thing is a joke, an attempt to lighten the situation.

“I don’t need you to psycho-analyze me, Jazz,” Danny snaps. 

“I’m not here as a psychologist, Danny,” she says gently but her shoulders draw up with hurt at his comment. “I’m here as your sister.”

He crosses his arms defensively, looking away. But his ectoplasm-sense doesn’t let him stew in his anger; his sister’s genuine worry is infused into the air like the smell of dew in the morning. He sits down on the chair, looking at the floor.

“I… I’ve wanted to ask you something for a while now,” she says, crossing her hands and gnawing on her lip for a second before continuing: “Why don’t you want to be king?”

“It’s just so much responsibility,” Danny says, dramatically putting a hand to his forehead. “Have you seen the paperwork? I’d rather play Doomed for ten hours straight and eat cold pizza–”

“Okay, that wasn’t the correct question,” Jazz interrupted. “Why are you scared of becoming king?”

This time Danny takes a while to answer, looking at the floor and gripping the sides of the chair so hard his knuckles go white. 

“...Did you know that Clockwork took me to an alternate timeline once?” 

She blinks at the change in topic, but keeps listening intently while she shakes her head.

“Yeah, uh. It was cool until the Nasty Burger explosion.”

“I’m sorry the what?” she says, her expression a merry-go-round between confusion, amusement and fond exasperation.

“Yeah. We were all in there; alternate-me, you, mom, dad. Tucker and Sam, too. Valerie was working the register. One second I was seeing everyone having a good time and the next the entire building was in flames. Alternate-me was too dead to be killed by regular fire. No one else survived and because of those stupid anti-ambient ectoplasm forcefield belts that mom and dad wear, not even your ghosts were left behind.”

Danny didn’t look at his sister’s face. This was the first time he was telling anyone and even with the memories bubbling up in his mind, it was difficult to shape them into words. If he stopped talking now, he never would talk again. Before his sister speaks, he blurts out: “The other me went insane.”

“What do you mean?” she says, softly.

“He– I— Apparently, halfas are able to change their main Obsession if something drastic happens and makes it not… worth it? Well, no, not exactly, more like it’s something that makes their Obsession something not worth staying for,” Danny rambles, his knee bouncing in place. “And without his Fraid my other self threw away the whole ‘keeping my people safe and healthy’ aspect of my Obsession and went pretty hard into the ‘eliminating threats’ aspect of a guardian spirit and … started hunting down anyone who could pose a threat to Amity? Like, even if the person never wanted to attack Amity, he’d still… kill them?”

“That’s why you’re so scared of being king,” Jazz says, eyes wide as the pieces slowly click in her head. Danny glances away so he can’t read what she’s thinking on her face. It won’t matter, eventually those feelings will seep into the ambient ectoplasm and he’ll know … but he wants a few more seconds before…. Before.

“Yeah. My other self was strong enough to wipe out the Justice League, and that was without an army of ghosts at his command,” Danny says, his hand creeping into his hair and gripping. “If something happens to all of you and I go crazy … I can’t sleep from thinking about it. It's gotten worse ever since we started fighting the Bats. What if this is the start of a downward spiral? What if the Bats get to all of you and I hurt someone trying to get you back? If I do end up becoming king, anything I do can start a war with the living world– I don’t - I don’t–”

“Danny, breathe,” she says, gently laying her hands on his shoulders. It’s enough for him to claw himself out from the panic, laying his head on her shoulder. Calm begins to suffuse into his bones. He clocks it as Jazz’s ability, the calm different from his own emotions like how chewing mint is different from drinking something actually cold. It’s faint enough that he could shrug it off, but he doesn’t, leans into it instead. With that little gesture of permission, Jazz takes his fear from him, making him melt into the hug.

“I need you to be honest with me, okay?” she murmurs against his shoulder. “If there was no chance of you going crazy, would you want to be king?”

Danny lets the question sit in his mind. Truth is, he’s never minded responsibility. He wanted to be an astronaut, for Ancients’ sake! An astronaut has billion-dollar machinery under their care, trusted to do their tasks perfectly with the understanding that messing up could mean their death and the death of their entire crew.

He’s always been the kind of person to go out of his way to make sure people are alright, to help even when it hurts him. Being the King of the Infinite Realms is just that, but at a larger scale. The Realms are pretty self-sufficient, the King was mostly a figure that dealt with conflicts where ghosts were involved, both in the Realms and on the Living World. 

He can see himself going from Haunt to Haunt, making sure that things are okay, mediating fights between ghosts. He can see himself travel into the Living World, helping Shades and Ghosts alike.

(He even has one second where he can see himself in Amity, ghosts and living people living their lives side-by-side. Ghostwriter would be delighted to talk with Lancer, they’d probably open a book club together. Or even a creative writing course. Poindexter would make sure no bullies grace the halls of Casper High ever again. Lunch Lady would be happy to lend a hand to the permanently understaffed cafeteria. It’s a nice dream)

“I…”

The hum of the portal in the basement suddenly grows, going from idle to actively open.

Danny and Jazz exchange a look and sprint to the basement, arriving just in time to see the Fright Knight step out from the swirling portal.

His armor doesn’t reflect the light, the dark metal cutting an intimidating figure against the vibrant plume of fuchsia fire trailing from his helmet. He towers over both the siblings, the glowing pinpricks of his eyes resting on them.

“Frighty? What are you doing here?!?” Jazz shouts, eyes darting to the sensors posted around the room that are no doubt blaring alarms through their parent’s phones. 

The Spirit of Fear moves further into the room like the ground is quicksand and he has to fight every step to move forward. Still, his head is held high as he drops to one knee in front of Danny.

“Prince Phantom,” the ghostly knight says in the tongue of the dead. “I cannot swear fealty to thee, for mine Obsession forbids it. Mine own service is for royalty and royalty alone, and none but the strongest shall suffice. I cannot fight at thine side, when either heir presumptive could be the next monarch.”

Danny’s heart drops to his stomach, even though he already expected this. “It’s okay, Frighty. I–”

“However.”

Both siblings freeze before exchanging looks.

The Fright Knight removes his helmet, revealing the ghostly outline of his skull where his head should be. His severed neck smolders with bright magenta veins, the sparks from the embers rising through the faint skull and igniting into his plume of hair. The fire frames the green pinpricks of light that make his eyes like a halo.

“I hope this gesture will say to which King I would rather serve,” the knight says.

With the haunting note of steel leaving its scabbard, the Knight of Samhain offers his sword, resting it on his open palms.

The sword is a polished metal longsword with a woven leather handle, the pommel shaped almost like a pumpkin without a stem. The only hint that it was anything more than a well-made, simple weapon are the veins of pure fear-laced deathblood running all over the metal, as if the sword had been shattered and fused back together by terror itself.

Danny’s breath catches in his throat. He stares wide-eyed at Fright Knight, receiving only a nod in return. Slowly, giving the knight time to change his mind, Danny grabs the sword by the handle. He gasps as the sword changes from a longsword to a xiphos in his palms. It is perfectly balanced.

“Use it well, your highness,” the Knight says, before rising from his kneeling bow. He turns around, his cape flaring behind him, before setting his helmet back on his head and stepping into the glowing green vortex. 

Jazz moves to set the portal back into its ‘sleeping’ mode, the humming of energy dying down to a whisper. Danny doesn’t move, still holding the sword in both his hands and staring where the portal had been. His sister sets a hand on his shoulder. He barely registers it.

His eyes drop back to the blade. Fear made weapon. The emotion vibrates underneath his fingertips like the trembling of a string instrument and little shocks of static spark whenever he moves. He wants to drop it. Instead, he tightens his grips.

“I will,” he says, his voice wavering and barely a whisper.

“STAY RIGHT THERE, SPOOK!”

Danny fumbles the sword and then phases into his torso in a panic, careful not to cut himself with it, just in time for his parents to burst into the lab guns blazing.

“DARING TO ATTACK THE FENTON HOUSEHOLD WILL WIN YOU THE PRIZE OF ATOMIZATION–”

“Dear, there’s nothing here anymore,” Madeline Fenton says, interrupting her husband as she prowls the lab in her ghost-hunting gear.

“HAHA!” Jack Fenton says, waving his gun around in total lack of trigger discipline. “IT FLED ONCE WE APPROACHED, AS IS NATURAL WHEN FACED WITH THE BEST ECTO-SCIENTISTS THE WORLD–”

“Dad, mom, did you get the food?” Jazz says.

Both their parents freeze, before scrambling out of the lab. “Love you kids, be right back!” their mom shouts and then the front door slams shut.

Danny turns and hugs his sister tightly.

“Thank you,” he says, burying his face into her shoulder, her hair draping over him like a blanket. He doesn’t know what he’d do without her.

“Anything for you, starshine.”

He snorts into his sister’s shirt. “That’s so corny.”

“What, starshine?” she says, her smile coloring her words vibrantly. “Should I call you Space Cadet?”

“That’s worse!”

“Little bear?” she giggles, ruffling his hair. “You know, like the constellation?”

“Too close to ‘little badger’. Eugh,” he sticks his tongue out like he’s tasted rotten lemons.

“Major Tom!” she triumphantly declares.

“Like the song?” She nods. Danny places a hand under his chin and pretends to consider it. “Sure, but only if I can call you Deputy Dork.”

Both of them dissolve into giggles. The joke isn’t even that funny, but the past weeks have been stressful and laughing with his sister lifts a weight from his shoulders he hadn’t even noticed was there. 

The ghostbusters theme starts blaring from his Fenton Phone, while the Phantom of the Opera blares from hers. They look at each other before answering.

“Tucker? What’s going on?” A bunch of other voices come from the background of the call. It’s a conference call with everybody on Team Phantom. Oh shit.

“You know how I was looking into Grundy’s whole deal? I mighta found out that the spell that’s tying Grundy to his own body needed a pretty specific, pretty powerful focus in order to cast it. And I think I found it, but you’re not gonna like what it is!” Tucker says, and just from the creaks and squeaks coming from his end, Danny knows Tucker is spinning on his rolling chair. 

“Spit it out!” Ellie exclaims, ever the impatient kid.

“Uh, you ever heard of the Hope Diamond?” 

“The ‘haunted’ blue diamond?” Jazz says, blinking. “The multi-million dollar blue diamond?!? ”

“Yeaaaaaah,” Tucker says, sounding like he’s three seconds from sliding off from his gamer chair and just laying on the floor. “It’s being held in the Smithsonian in DC right now, under tons of security. But leaving it there is not really an option because the second that Vlad realizes what it can do, those metric fucktons of security will do nothing at all.”

“Can it do more than the binding?” Danny says, scuffing his shoe against the basement concrete, already dreading the answer.

“It’s a focus. Foci amplify a specific kind of magic, in this case necromancy. In the hands of a regular ghost, no spellcasting needed, it can give whoever has it a gigantic boost. Well, it would shatter afterwards, but as a one-time use it’s bad enough. Nevermind a necromancer who can use it again and again without breaking it.”

“Right, great, so what do you suggest doing about it?”

“I don’t know! And trying to steal it would be an absolutely, immensely, what-the-hell-were-we-thinking, monumentally stupid idea–”

“This is a monumentally stupid idea.” Tucker grits out as he pockets the pair of binoculars he was just using and leans towards the edge of the building he’s on. 

“Oh come on, Tuck,” Danny says, grinning a smile too wide for the situation. “Cheer up!”

“No! This is crazy!” he shoots back. 

“Is this really the craziest thing we’ve ever done?” Danny says and by his smug grin he knows he’s won this one. 

“We’ve already destroyed multiple government military bases and punched the head of the Gotham Mob,” says Sam, taking Tucker’s usual spot as the ‘Guy in the Chair’. Gal in the Chair? “What’s a little bit of grand larceny compared to that?”

“The GIW is a government agency on a technicality,” Tucker grumbles, but his lips twitch into a smile when he hears his… friends' (?)  laughter.

He looks at Danny where he’s still floating midair, eyes scrunched in mirth and white hair framing his face like a halo. He hears Sam’s laughter through the earpiece they’ve made, her voice somehow reminding him of both birdsong and the crash of thunder. 

They’ve gone through so much together that the word ‘friends’ seems so… small to describe what they are to each other. ‘Best friends’ doesn’t taste right in his mouth either. They’re more than friends, but more than friends usually means in a romantic relationship but that doesn’t taste right either. 

He admits he’s spent a little too much looking at Danny’s sharp fangs and the curve of Sam’s thin, elvish ears. But when he thinks of the three of them and candlelit dinners and valentine’s day chocolate, it doesn’t fit.  

They’re rumpled blankets and sleepy midnight conversations, the taste of dirt and soot as they bare their teeth and their deathblood sings with fight, fight, fight . Soft hands cradling each other’s faces, gentle fingers curing each other’s wounds. It’s the warmth of their bodies pressing against his. It’s the mesmerizing flash of their eyes and the adoration that tastes like honey when he sees them standing beside him. 

If that’s romantic or platonic or something else he doesn’t know. He just knows he’s theirs and they are his, in life and in death. 

He’s tasted glimpses of that same sentiment from Danny and Sam, but they haven’t sat down and thought about what it means. Haven’t thought about what they are to each other. It doesn’t surprise him: both of them run on instinct and emotion, which is why ghost stuff comes so naturally to them. But Tucker? He’s always been a thinker, has to calculate his landing before jumping, and he hasn’t been able to stop thinking about them for a long time now. 

Bringing it up right now, in the middle of preparing for a war seems so silly. If they lose, it won’t matter. Vlad will probably keep Danny captive, while he and Sam would get shunted towards the Guys In White. But if they win… Tucker knows that whatever the answer to his question is, they’ll stand together. 

“Tuuuucker,” Danny says, staring at him while upside-down, so close to him that the frost coming from Danny’s skin is fogging up Tucker’s glasses. “You ready to go?”

Tucker slowly releases a breath. He does one last check: jackal mask? Check. All-black outfit that obscures his figure? Check. Boots that make him look taller? Check. Gloves? Check. Earpiece? Check. Tool case? Check. Not a single inch of skin is shown, no hair, no distinguishing features, the mask is even equipped with a voice modulator. They are taking no chances with being identified now that the Bats are on their trail. It’s even why Tucker’s the one doing this instead of Danny or Sam. The Bats would get even worse about finding them if they could connect them to crimes outside of Gotham. Rogues that leave their native ‘cities’ are usually the most dangerous.

(He kinda wishes it was Jazz doing this but she’s one of their best diplomats along with Ellie, so they’re trying to convince the Mongols to side with them instead of Vlad.)

“Yeah. Let’s go.”

“Cameras looping, sensors disabled,” Sam informs.

“Distraction inbound,” says Sam.

Now, Tucker knows that museum heists don’t work like the movies. Sensors get tripped for no reason all the time, so they’ve figured out a strategy. Sam trips the alarm, a museum guard groaning in annoyance before leaving their post to see what the fuss is about. 

Danny goes invisible, curling his hands around Tucker’s waist. Meanwhile, Tucker takes aim with his ‘grapple’ at the side of the Smithsonian. The ‘grapple’ he’s using is technically fully functional, just something he’d managed to make with Poindexter, but turns out the most difficult part of grappling is not making the grapple, but using it without going splat on the pavement on wrenching your arm out of its socket. 

The solution? The grapple shoots out the hook normally but once it sticks, instead of reeling in full-force it reels in if the rope is slack, kind of like those retractable dog leashes. Then, Danny takes flight and imitates the path Tucker would take if the grapple was real.

This time, the path ends by Danny briefly making him intangible and swinging him through the walls. They land in the central monitor room

Tucker takes a second to do a full-body shake, excitement pumping through his veins. They’ve been practicing that move for so long, with only blurry videos of the Bat Clan and one video of Catwoman grappling as a guide.

“Good job guys,” Sam says, and he can imagine her sharp smile framed by black lips.  

This part is all Tucker, now. Danny can’t help him here because the distortion he causes in cameras is too distinctive. 

He breathes deeply and connects to the museum’s computer system, looping cameras and erasing footage. He even gets the movement sensors in the building to be inactive for just enough time to get to the diamond and then get out.

After that, he sprints out of the monitor room, following the directions that the Shades they talked with gave them. The Hope Diamond rests in its case, a circular light shining above it. The case has an alarm that would trip if he removed the glass, so complicated that it would take dismantling it entirely to make it stop ringing. But regular alarms haven’t yet learned how to code against technomancy, so it’s the work of a few seconds to disable it. 

Grasping the diamond without any alarms blaring makes him breathe a sigh of relief before pocketing hastily, pulling out the fake–

“My, my, my, what do we have here?”

Tucker almost, almost, drops the fake diamond. He wrenches his head upwards to see the Catwoman stretched across the neighboring jewelry display case, casually slipping a few necklaces into her pocket.

“Holy shit, I’m a such a big fan!” he blurts out, mouth hanging open. It doesn’t matter that the mask is coded to make his voice sound all cool and growly, the words reveal him as a huge dork and Tucker wants to stuff the diamond in his mouth just to keep himself from blurting out something else equally stupid. 

“A fan, hm?” she practically purrs. She looks delighted, but the emotions diffused around her tell another story, one of intense scrutiny. The dissonance between what she’s showing and what she’s feeling gives Tucker a headache. Man, this is why he doesn’t like using his ecto-sense with humans around. 

“In that case, I’ll give you a bit of a freebie,” she says, easily readjusting herself on the case to extend an arm, tapping her fingers on the diamond still held in Tucker’s hand. “There’s a tracker stuck to the diamond.”

Shit. 

Now that she says it, Tucker can see it. It looks like a bit of scotch tape stuck to the underside of the jewel. He almost goes to rip it off, but he stops himself at the last second. He also has to stop himself from using his technopathy. Technology this small and delicate can be completely fried by too much ecto. 

Instead he breathes out, slowly. Opens his eyes.

The tracker is incredibly small and not entirely transparent. In order to make it as undetectable as possible whoever designed it sacrificed precision of location. Even if he’s already moved the diamond, it’s been moved so little that the tracker shouldn’t notice a difference. There are pressure sensors on the underside of the tape, meant to signal if someone ripped it off. It’s a genius bit of technology that Tucker would love to disassemble and learn inside and out. 

He grabs one of his screwdrivers from his toolbelt, carefully lifting the edge of the clear tape and slipping the flat head of the screwdriver beneath it. He has to keep even pressure, trick the sensors into thinking they’re still pressed against the diamond. It is tricky. His hands threaten to shake. But he goes slowly. Carefully. 

And now he has the tracker stuck to the screwdriver. 

He digs into his backpack, pulling out a perfect copy of the diamond. It wasn’t hard getting a geologist ghost to calculate how exactly to make a perfect replica and an earth Core ghost to make it. It’s a perfect copy in every sense of the word; he could sell it to make millions, but instead he’s going to carefully, slowly, stick the tracker to the fake diamond. The point of this mission is to steal the thing without anyone knowing, because if Vlad were to find out that the Hope Diamond is a casting focus, he’d go on a grand larceny world tour and steal every casting focus he could get his hands on.

Hell no.

He places the diamond back in, closes the case. 

Breathes a sigh of relief.

“Not bad.”

Tucker jumps out of his skin. He completely forgot she was there. He looks back at her, and he’s surprised when her expression is genuine. Before, she had a degree of showmanship in her actions, but now the stage lights are off. 

“Let’s get out of here,” she says, climbing back up the rope in a blink.

Tucker follows her much more slowly, eventually heaving himself over the edge of the skylight. He’s proud he’s not melting into a puddle of exhaustion this time. He’s been getting stronger with the training, even if it’s against his will.

“You got a name?” Catwoman says, idly playing with– Hey! That’s the diamond!

“Give that back!” Tucker says, letting the smallest hint of a growl enter his voice.

“Relax, I’ll give it back once you tell me your name,” she says.

“Want me to cut her off if she tries to run with the thing?” Danny whispers into Tucker’s ear, still invisible.

“Sure,” he says, rolling his shoulders, answering both of them at the same time. He has to think a second. He can’t call himself TFaraoh, he already uses that alias as a hacker, so he goes with– “The name’s Jackal.”

“So, Jackie,” she says, grinning like she can see the annoyance hidden by Tucker’s mask. “From what I can tell, you haven’t been doing this for long. You got some skill, yes, but it’s not related to stealing. Why in the world would you go for the Hope Diamond as one of your first heists? Do you even have a trustworthy seller for this beauty?”

“I’m not gonna sell it,” Tucker says, following the Diamond where it goes over her hand, thrown to her other hand, balanced on her finger–

“It’s one hell of a lot of work for a trophy,” she says, throwing up the diamond in the air and catching it with a decisive thump. 

“I don’t–! Ugh,” he says, rubbing his forehead (or well, his masks’ forehead). “Look, Catwoman. I really, really admire you. The work you do stealing and repatriating stolen artworks and artifacts from museums is amazing. The theft of the Hotep Ra statue? That was amazing! That thing was heavier than a car and you still managed to get it out without triggering alarms!”

Tucker looks at her. He’s only ever seen her coy and smiling from the few shots of museum cameras she’s allowed to happen. Now, she’s stopped playing with the diamond, head tilted and eyes attentive, no trace of a smile in her face.

“But, trust me when I say that doing this was important. I’m not going to sell the diamond, no one is making me do this, and I thought this whole thing through,” he says, head held high. “This is a victimless crime and it needed to happen.”

The rumble of cars and sounds of DC fill the quiet. A gust of early March air carries a cold breeze to circle Tucker. He feels Danny’s hand on his shoulder in a comforting grip.

“You have guts, Jackie,” she says, smiling.. “Send me a message and I’ll show you the ropes, yeah? Thief’s honor.”

She then throws the diamond at Tucker. He catches it and when he looks back up at her, she’s swinging away on her grapple. Scribbled on the diamond in what looks like permanent marker, is an email address. 

Catwoman drops into a back alley, quickly unfolding a set of thickly-packed clothes and slipping them on. She pulls off her mask, takes off her gloves and voila! She’s back to being Selina Kyle, out for a nighttime stroll in the streets of Washington DC.

She struts out of the alleyway, pulling out her phone at the same time. The phone picks up after the second ring:

“Selina? Weren’t you on a girl’s night out?” Bruce's voice comes from the phone, as charmingly direct as ever.

“I was, darling, until I found a little puppy running around with something very pricey in its paws,” she says, picturing the baffled look on Bruce’s face with a smirk. 

“A… puppy?”

“Yes darling, keep up.” She gives a wave to the doorman of the Four Seasons as she heads inside. “Could you do me a favor and tell your group of very colorful goody-two-shoes that if they ever catch a thief going by Jackal to give me a call? I think I could work some wonders to keep them out of trouble.”

Bruce sighs, before saying with exasperated fondness: “Anything for you, Selina.”

“Good boy,” she says, exiting the elevator and walking over to her room. “I’ll leave you to your brooding, o’ Dark Knight.”

“Have fun,” Bruce answers, a smile in his voice, before hanging up.

Selina cradles the phone to her chest absently, smiling like a lovesick fool. 

She then unlocks the door and bangs it open, strutting into the suite like it's the Met Gala.

“There ya are, ya slippery bitch!” says Harley, holding a margarita and wearing a face mask. “We started without ya’!”

“You better not have ditched us for ‘work’,” Ivy says, intently painting her nails red.

“It was all pro-bono I assure you,” Selina says, snatching another Margarita and taking a sip. “Let me get changed and I’ll tell you aaaaaaall about why Dent and Nygma are at each other’s throats.”

“Nu-uh! You arrived late, you deserve a punishment!” Harley yells, jumping on the table and pointing at Selina dramatically. “I propose a makeover made by yours truly!”

… Selina’s going to end up wearing six clashing colors, isn’t she? 

Oh, well. If that’s the price to pay for her friends? She’ll rock the outfit anyways.

“God, I fucking hate coffee,” Tim mutters, setting the empty coffee cup down on the desk in front of the Batcomputer. The desk is covered in files, transcripts, photos and even more empty coffee cups.  

He doesn’t like torturing himself with the bitter taste of black coffee, but he needs the caffeine and it’s easier to swipe extra bags of beans from the pantry than smuggle in his usual energy drinks. Hell, he doesn’t even drink many energy drinks either , he already has a fucked up sleep schedule from his childhood of batstalking and insomnia, he doesn’t need help to stay awake thank you very much.

But right now, that’s not an option. It’s almost been a month since the Intruder Incident and they still haven’t found anything. 

Tim looks at the hundreds of hours of footage of all the entrances to the abandoned subway system their Intruder used to escape. The facial recognition system is still sweeping through them. No matches yet.

He hasn’t been able to clean up the corruption on the video footage on all the cameras, even Red Hood’s helmet cam. It’s either alien tech or magic, and none of the Lanterns recognize it so he’s leaning towards magic, which is bad news since Zatanna and Constantine have been dealing with a surge of dangerous necromancy and unable to be contacted. At this rate they’ll have to ask Captain Marvel–

“Master Timothy. I was wondering where all the mugs had gone,” says Alfred, carrying a plate of– oh, no. It’s the shortbread cookies of disapproval. 

“Shit, Alfie, I’m so sorry,” Tim says, hurrying to get up and fill his arms with mugs.

“Do be mindful of it in the future,” Alfred says, revealing a thermos full of tea and placing it beside the cookies. From the smell, it’s raspberry tea, one of Tim’s favorites. Good, that means he hasn’t messed up too badly. “And consider retiring to your bed soon.”

“I wish I could Alfie, but we need to get this figured out,” Tim says, gesturing to the mess on the table as well as he can with his arms full of colorful porcelain. 

“It will be here for you tomorrow,” Alfred states, but his tone isn’t demanding. He knows this is important to him. He glances at the mess on the table, probably thinking of tidying it up a bit, before he does a double-take and his gaze fixates on a specific photograph.

“Master Timothy, who is this photo of?” Alfred says, brow furrowed.

“That’s a photo of our Intruder, why?” Tim asks, hooking a mug with his foot before sending it up in an arc that makes it perfectly land on his head.

“I recognize her. That’s Samantha Mason.”

Tim drops five mugs before he recovers. “What?”

“She came to Bruce’s fortieth party. I was quite worried for her when she went out on her own after a row with her parents, dressed in those exact clothes,” he said, eyes narrowed at the picture.

“I have to call everyone,” Tim breathes.

“I will share this development,” Alfred parries, a note of steel in his voice. “You will get a dustpan to sweep the shards and then go to bed. You will resume your work tomorrow, Master Timothy.”

Tim doesn’t argue. He nods, racing for the stairs with thoughts just as fast. 

They have a lead.

Chapter Text

Trying to pay attention to the Book Thief while planning a war in the background is one of the most surreal things Danny’s ever done, which is saying something with how his life has gone. It’s agony, the hours ticking away. He could be learning battle tactics or with the council or on diplomatic missions or anything , but instead he’s discussing the thematic significance of Death being the narrator and it all feels so pointless.  

He’s never going to be an astronaut, with his grades it’ll be a wonder if he gets into university at all, and even a high school education would be useless if Vlad becomes King because he’ll just stick Danny inside his castle and never let him out–

The bell for the end of the school day rings. Danny, Sam and Tucker get out of their seats at just the right speed to get out the fastest without drawing Lancer’s attention and being asked to stay behind. Dash looks like he wants to follow Danny, so Sam “accidentally” bumps into Dash’s backpack so everything in it goes tumbling out. In those seconds, the three of them slip away to shove their stuff into their lockers and speedwalk out the doors. 

Duck into a corner, transform into Phantom, go invisible, fly towards home and the portal, check for people around—

There’s a guy waiting in front of his house. Damn it.

He flies a little bit away and touches down, goes back to being alive. The three of them walk towards his home, pretending like they walked the whole way here.

The guy’s a bit on the short side, bleach blonde hair tied into a short ponytail and grey eyes flickering about. Black cargo pants, a grey open button-up over a t-shirt with a logo he doesn’t recognize. Danny can describe him in two words; wannabe e-boy. 

“Yo! You waiting for the Fentons?” Tucker says, hands tucked into his pockets.

“Yeah, I am,” the guy answers with a thick southern accent, flashing them a perfect smile. “I’m tryin’a start a ghost hunting channel on Youtube, and the Fentons are the only folk who sell good quality stuff without charging an arm and a leg. Channel’s name is Haunted Histories Hunters, handle is HHH_GHOST on both TikTok and–”

Danny ignores him while the guy talks, unlocking the door and shouting “CLIENT’S HERE!” full volume. The guy cuts off from his rambling. Thunderous crashes and footsteps rise from the basement like a stampede, both Fenton doctors burst out from the front door, beginning long impassioned rambles and heaping weapon after weapon in his arms. 

The three of them slip past Danny’s oblivious parents. At least they didn’t have to make up a distraction to get them to leave the portal–

“DANN-O!” his dad yells from upstairs. 

“YEAH?”

“COME SHOW THIS FUTURE HUNTER THE MOST HAUNTED SPOTS IN TOWN!”

Danny bangs his head against the portal frame. 

“Dammit, you guys should go ahead,” Danny says, groaning. 

“No, we should go with you,” Sam says, her eyes narrowing towards the stairs. “There’s something about that guy that feels… off.” 

Sam’s instincts have never failed them before. 

“I’m telling Jazz that we’ll be there a little late,” Tucker says, using his powers to make the Fenton Phone draft up the message and send it by flicking the screen.

The three of them traipse back up the stairs, Danny groaning the whole time.

“Follow me, dude,” Danny says, not really waiting for the dude to catch up. The guy scrambles to fall into step beside Danny, ignoring the unfriendly looks Sam is shooting at bootleg k-pop idol.

“Where are we going?” the guy says, juggling the many, many ecto-weapons his parents heaped on him. 

“North Mercy hospital,” Tucker answers distractedly, typing away at his PDA. He’s been making a side-project of trying to hunt down necromantic artifacts that could help Vlad, so they’ll probably have another museum heist soon. 

Getting to the hospital is pretty fast because Amity Park seems bigger than it is (mostly because the road out of Amity Park sometimes disappears, so their ancestors made sure that Amity could be self-sufficient at all times, which is why they have an arena with more seats than town residents.)

“Can we sit there for a bit?” the BTS reject says, huffing and puffing, gesturing to the dilapidated picnic tables of the small park beside the hospital. 

“Ugh, fine,” Sam grouches, heading to one of the tables and sitting on it. She digs out a stick of her eco-friendly, gross-tasting gum and pops bubbles with it.

Tucker keeps fiddling with his PDA as he sits down, while Danny puts both elbows on the table and drums his fingers on the table in the most annoying rhythm he can muster.

The guy starts laying out all the weapons on the table in a neat manner, taking pictures of all of them with his phone. 

“What was your name again?” Sam says rudely, underscoring her words with a pop of her gum. Danny wants to laugh at how much she’s leaning into the mean goth stereotype.

“It’s not relevant,” the guy says, putting his phone away. He then digs his fingers into his hairline and whips off his blonde wig, his other hand setting a domino mask on his face. He then digs his fingers to the sides of his face, pulling off the makeup prosthetics altering his face shape. “But you can call me Red Robin.”

Danny’s heart stops beating. 

Sam whips out a taser, pointing it at the hero. Tucker screams and falls ass backwards onto the dirt.

“Smooth, Tuck,” Danny says, laughing at his friend.

Tucker looks back at him with wide eyes, so Danny thinks fast. He sends a curlicue of emotion into the ecto-rich air, the giddy feeling of play-pretend and the taste of stolen cookies while lying about where they are, praying his friends get the message of ‘play dumb’.

Sam is the first one to sense the emotion in the air, gripping her taser tighter and narrowing her eyes. “I don’t believe you. What would Red Robin be doing in middle-of-nowhere, Illinois instead of Gotham?”

Finally, Tucker catches on, getting up and dusting himself off. "Dude, for real? Do you think you could get me Oracle's number?"

"She already has yours," Red Robin says, the southern accent replaced by a Gotham one, pulling off the shirts he has on to reveal his uniform, clicking his signature yellow bandolier into place across his chest. "That's enough proof for you?"

Sam grits her teeth. It's almost impossible to replicate the Bats' uniforms, especially up close. She reluctantly stuffs the taser back into her purse. 

Danny watches Tucker magically send another text by tapping the phone once. It looks like Red Robin doesn’t notice. Good. It means they’ll have backup if things go south, Ellie and Jazz ready to jump in if they need to run.

He shoves the static that chants protect-protect-protect as far down into his mind as he possibly can. He doesn’t want to run away from this. Amity Park is his home, his Haunt, he fights against the riptide of nonexistence so he can make sure everyone he loves is safe. Leaving Amity Park won’t end him, but it’ll gauge out his own heart.

He wants to trust that heroes are good. 

He doesn’t know if he can.

Red Robin scans the three teenagers with sharp eyes. They're a closed front, protective of each other by the way their bodies tilt as if ready to shield the others at a moment's notice. Foley nervously fidgets with his phone; if this was an interrogation he would have insisted he put it away. 

"They’re pretending they’re calm and don’t know what’s going on ," Cass' soft voice floats through the hidden earpiece he's wearing, almost eclipsed by the static plaguing the line. She’s on the roof of Fentonworks, photographing the weaponry mounted on it, but she's keeping an eye through Tim’s mask cam.

He stifles the urge to frown. Ever since he'd stepped foot into the town, the quality of the signal being sent to the Batcave has been steadily degrading. He hopes the signal of the video camera in his domino is faring better.

"Proceeding with plan A, then? " comments Dick, his tone too light to be believably cheerful.

There's a small group watching this live from the Batcave, including Babs, Dick, Bruce and Damian. However, the rest of the Bat Clan is listening; even Alfred is making lunch upstairs with an earpiece on.

"I have a few questions for you three. About the Doctors Fenton," Tim says.

That throws them for a loop. Good. They’re too busy figuring out what his angle is to truly watch their words.

“About my parents?” Fenton asks, glancing at his friends and silently asking for explanations.

“There has been a recent uptick in energy weapons on the black market, and we couldn’t find the source,” he continues, pulling out a multitool and beginning to dismantle one of the guns. “We hit a dead end until we ran across a rejected patent filed close to two decades ago by Madeline Nightingale neé Fenton that looks almost identical to a few models here.”

Manson relaxes marginally. Her not being the center of attention is enough to drop her guard, even slightly. If she thinks they’re not here for her, she might slip up earlier. And it’s not like the energy weapons’ dealing is a lie, just a much lower priority than he made it seem.

Fenton grimaces, as if his parents being caught dealing weapons is an annoyance instead of an infraction that could land them in Belle Reve. But considering the kids’ parents just gave him enough firepower for him to start a gang and nobody batted an eye, he might not realize that’s something out of the ordinary.

“Okay, so. First up, my parents aren’t the ones dealing those weapons. Their weapons only work on ghosts and at most they’ll do as much damage as a trick buzzer on a living person,” he starts, picking up one of the smaller guns before turning and firing it point-blank at his friend. 

Red Robin is out of his seat faster than he can process, but the energy beam hits his friend on the shoulder and– the guy yelps? 

“Dude!” Tucker says, rubbing his shoulder before lightly cuffing his friend over the head.

“You sounded like a puppy,” Mason says, her lips black-painted curling into a smirk. 

“Can I check?” Tim says, trying to get his body to come down from fight mode. “Even if it’s a prank, I’d rather be sure that shooting your friend point-blank did nothing.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Duke says, thoroughly distracted from the homework he’s supposed to be doing. “That’s what that noise was???”

“Sure?” Tucker answers, taking off his sweater and pulling down his collar until he can see the skin. 

Tim stands up and goes around the table. Their eyes follow him like he’s a lion on the prowl, but they don’t run. The possibility of clearing both Doctor Fenton’s names is keeping Manson in place better than any restraint ever could.

True to their words, even up close the only evidence he can find from the shot is a faint redness on Foley’s dark skin that’s already on its way to fading. Tim absently nods, as if satisfied, but he’s truly watching Manson from the corner of his eye. 

She has a few scars, ones that would not look out of place in a Gothamite, but catch his attention in a sleepy town like Amity Park. In fact, Foley also has them, little pockmarks high-speed debris has left on his face, his hands, his arms. Fenton doesn’t have them; he has the least amount of scars he has seen in his time in Amity. The only thing he has is a faint lightning-like scar peeking up from the cuff of his shirt. He keeps going around to the fact that they remind him of Gothamites. Their battle readiness is undercut by a clear half-trained fake relaxed stance. The instinctive distrust for outsiders, the quick glances all around. 

But those are characteristics of any group of people living in uncertain and dangerous environments. There is something else that is making his brain scream Gothamite, but he can’t place it. That’s… that’s not normal. His brain is Tim’s most powerful weapon and he makes sure to know it inside and out. Even his ‘instincts’ have a basis in facts that he can pull up from his memory and analyze. It’s a recurring joke that Gothamites can sniff each other out from any crowd, but he knows that fact is rooted in reality; the one-of-a-kind pollution in the city clings to anyone that spends enough time in the island, and the smell is subtle enough that only another Gothamite can pick it out. But the three of them smell like forest and a strange undercurrent of ozone, nothing like the sweet rot of his city’s streets.

Something is up here.

“You’re right, they don’t seem to hurt, but…” Tim looks back at the weapons. He takes out his multitool, quickly disassembling the nearest weapon, spreading the components on the table. “The weapons we confiscated are almost identical, except for the muzzle here.”

He frowns at the crystal array. Usually he’d expect this type of laser to have a ruby gain medium. However, this crystal  reminds him of Kryptonite, except the crystalline structure is wrong, monoclinic compared to Kryptonite’s trigonal structure. Static begins to climb up his fingers as he grips it, even through his thick armored gloves. He gets lost in his head for a second, trying to find out why the glowing is making his heart race.

“Uh, you might wanna put that back,” says Foley, leaning away from the crystal. 

“Why–?” 

The crystal explosively shatters in his hand. 

He flinches instinctively, covering his face far too late for it to matter. The burning scratches from the crystal shards make themselves known and he raises his hand to his face expecting to find bleeding and shredded kevlar. He touches a perfectly intact domino mask. What. 

The shards of crystal are popping like popcorn kernels around him, shattering further and further with each jump until there’s nothing left but dust, and even that seems to be vanishing. 

“Red Robin, status report,” Bruce intones, his voice not quite his Batman growl but getting there.

The three teenagers slowly peek up from under the table where they dove for cover. 

“Yeaaaah, those things do that,” Fenton sheepishly explains. “You okay dude?”

“Some scratches, nothing major. But want to explain why the scratches are under my armored gloves without having shredded them at all?” Red Robin says, taking off his gloves so he can show his mask’s camera the wounds while expectantly looking at the three teenagers.

“... Is it just me or are everyone’s ‘weird shit incoming’ senses tingling?” Dick grouches. “I’m going to call Zatanna. Again. Let’s see if she picks up this time!”

“It involves a lot of thanato-physics mumbo jumbo, don’t worry about it,” Fenton waves it away casually. Casually. You do not taunt a Bat with incomplete information. “The main thing is that ectoranium is seriously unstable and explodes for no reason.”

Tim takes a measured breath. “Taking this… ectoranium into account–” (“Robin, start a search for–” “Already on it, Father.” ) “–the most likely scenario is that the traffickers likely replaced the crystal with a regular gain medium using the rest of the gun to power the arrangement. Has there been a greater than normal demand for your parents' weapons?”

“Oh, yeah,” says Danny, sheepishly rubbing the back of his neck. “They’ve been down in the lab almost every day.”

“I’ll search for the lab,” whispers Cass from the comms, the sound of a window opening barely coming through the line. The static has grown worse, Tim notes. He’s on a timer, then.

“There is nothing useful on thanato-physics or ectoranium,” Robin grits through his teeth. 

“What exactly is ectoranium?” Tim asks. He probably should have asked that sooner considering he still has a couple of Fenton weapons hidden on him and it would have been nice to know if they were going to spontaneously explode. 

“What do you know about ghosts?” asks Manson with the tone of an underpaid haunted house employee, but her unblinking stare tells a different story.

“The basics. Justice League Dark are the ones specialized in the supernatural,” Tim answers. 

The trio of teenagers let the nonanswer pass undetected. Good, because the Bats as a whole only know enough to spot illogical happenings and then call the experts. Ghosts. Why did it have to be ghosts?

“Well, uh, at least that’s better than nothing?” Foley nervously says. “I mean, most people start with ‘they don’t exist.’”

“So ectoplasm is basically what ghosts are made of,” Fenton starts, reaching for one of the guns. Foley, without being asked, fishes a set of tools from his bag and gives a screwdriver to Fenton. “It’s weird stuff. Anyway, ectoplasm kind of goes through states of matter on a whim? It usually behaves like a gas, but there are ways to turn it into a liquid or a solid.”

The static on the comms rises with each screw removed and grainy white pixels start to cover the video feed. The teenager opens the casing and removes the battery. Or what should have been the battery. It’s a clunky-looking silver thing, green accents attempting to make it look sleek but only highlighting the ramshackle nature of the battery. All the guns they confiscated in Gotham had regular-looking batteries: another thing to watch out for.

“So uh. Ectoranium is the name my parents gave to the solid form of ectoplasm,” the kid continues, carefully disassembling the battery and extracting a crystal at least the size of a fist from it. The graininess in his camera gets worse, but the sensors installed into his suit detect no radioactivity that could be messing with his equipment. What the hell– “They called it that because it’s suuuuper unstable and glows like uranium under a blacklight.”

“He is not saying something important,” whispers Cass through the mic, obscured by so much static that Tim almost doesn’t hear her. “Also, computer data sent to Batcave.”

“Computer data received,” answers Oracle.

“Is it dangerous?” Tim has to ask. Mostly because he’s getting worried about potential exposure to this thing.

“Uh, no?” Fenton says.

Red Robin doesn’t respond, simply waiting for him to elaborate.

“With some states of ecto you pretty much have to treat them like they are radioactive,” he explains, closing the battery back up. “But ectoranium is the safest form for living people and as long as you don’t move it too much or do something dumb like eat it, you’ll be fine.” 

The glow of the crystals, a more dangerous liquid form, even the green – there was no way–

“Do you have samples of the other forms?” Red Robin asks, already preparing for the worst. 

“Kinda difficult to give you the gas sample, ‘cuz, uuuuh,” Fenton says, looking for the words.

“It’s like asking for a sample of radiation,” Foley jumps in to explain. “You can get samples of something radioactive , but capturing the radiation itself? Yeah. Not really a thing.”

“Yeah, that!” Fenton says brightly. “I think I have s–”

Fenton cuts himself off. 

Manson looks very tense.

“I mean, uh, my parents are pretty busy with their orders right now? I think I could manage to get them to spare a bit of ecto once the orders have died down–”

“Red Robin! ” Black Bat shouts, fighting to be heard over the static. “The lab is full of Lazarus Water! ”

“Right. And where do they get it? The liquid ectoplasm, I mean,” Red Robin says, keeping his tone as carefully neutral as he can.

“They figured out a way to make it crash out of gas form, but it takes a looooong while dude,” Fenton says, his rambling betraying nerves. Hunched posture, shifty eyes; instinctual fear response is run and hide. “Like a crap-ton of time and–”

“And your parents have been doing this for years, haven’t they?” interrupts Red Robin conversationally, even though he’s reeling on the inside. This middle-of-nowhere scientists stumbled on a method for creating Lazarus Water completely by accident because they wanted to hunt ghosts. “I’m sure they’ll have some to spare if the Justice League asks for it?”

“No,” Manson spits, standing from the picnic bench, her violet eyes sharp. “No, absolutely not. Your League doesn’t get to ignore us asking for help for years and then start demanding things once we’ve dealt with the problem!”

“There are no calls from Amity except for two prank calls,” shoots back Oracle, her lightning-fast typing making a backing track to her words.

“Look, it seems like there’s been a misunderstanding. We’ve never received calls from Amity–” 

“DON’T LIE TO ME!” she shrieks, her eyes flashing green for a second. 

The air gets knocked out of Tim’s lungs. 

There is a knife pressed against his neck, the bones of his broken ribs grate against each other as he heaves. Green, glowing eyes watch with a smile as his blood spills on the floor– What did he do wrong? Why does his hero hate him–

He bites the side of his cheek so hard it draws blood, but it does the job to keep him centered.

“FentonWorks has been selling weaponry to both the GIW, a government agency that I can’t find anything on, and Lexcorp,” Oracle hisses.

“No,” whispers Tim. Tanks of half-grown experiments, glowing green, screaming soundless bubbles as their own bodies fail but the Lazarus keeps them alive, and growing, and enraged . 

“No to what,” Manson practically snarls. Both Foley and Fenton look ready to bolt.

“Samantha Manson, you were seen holding a vial of dangerous ‘ectoplasm’ and coming out of the underground of Gotham City. What were you doing there? Why were you there in the first place?” 

Manson’s face goes from aggressive to horrified in a split second. 

“None of your business,” she tries to spit, but now her snarl is closer to that of a cornered dog. “Come back with a warrant and then we’ll talk.”

“...We are vigilantes, Miss Manson,” Tim informs her, hoping his voice doesn’t sound so tense as he feels. “We don’t require warrants–”

A black and white blur tackles the three teenagers. With instincts honed on fighting speedsters, Red Robin’s staff is swinging at the blur before his mind can process what he’s doing, but the weapon goes harmlessly through. 

The blur turns out to be a young girl with white hair, dressed in a black-and-white hazmat suit. She sticks out her tongue, the three teenagers clinging to her, before she turns around and flies away faster than he can pursue.

“Jason, Cass, we’ve found your mystery gas mask person,” Tim says dazedly into the comm.