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Ellie's POV
The Ghost Zone stretched endlessly before her. An ever-shifting maze of swirling green mist and floating islands, eerie castles, and long-forgotten doorways. But none of it scared Ellie anymore. Not when she was flying beside him.
The Ghost King.
Her brother.
Danny
They soared together in a shared silent companionship, their ghost trails twisting behind them like the tails of comets. Danny flew just ahead, his posture steady, and confident. His cape flowed behind him like smoke, swirling and snapping with the shifting currents of the Zone. The crown above his head shimmered with an ethereal blue-green fire, not entirely solid, as if made from the core of a star.
His eyes, once bright and full of mischief, now glowed a steady, tired neon.
Even from the side, Ellie could see the faint bags beneath them. His once-black jumpsuit had transformed along with him. He now wore a regal dark armor, trimmed in silver and stitched with ghost sigils that pulsed with power. He was the Ghost King now, and he looked like it.
But even kings grew tired.
Ellie drifted a little closer, her own ghost form flickering gently in the low light of the Zone. “You okay?” she asked, knowing the answer.
Danny didn’t look at her. He didn’t have to. “I’m fine.”
It was a lie. He’d gotten better at lying.
Ever since he'd taken the crown—ever since the Infi-map had dragged him into the ancient throne room and the Realms had chosen him—Danny had changed. Not just in power. Sure, his strength had skyrocketed, his aura enough to quiet the most unruly specters with a glance. But more than that... he’d become distant.
Lonely.
She’d seen it happen over time. Slowly. Painfully. Helplessly.
The moment his parents found out—really found out—who he was, it all fell apart. Maddie and Jack had taken one look at Phantom standing in the kitchen and screamed bloody murder. They didn’t see their son. They saw a ghost that had murdered him. No amount of explaining helped. Danny had tried. God, he’d tried. But the look on their faces—pure horror, and betrayal—had been the final nail on the coffin of their relationship.
They’d chased him out of the house that night.
And he hadn’t looked back.
Ellie clenched her fists, wishing there was more she could do. She hated how he hid it now. How Danny acted like he didn’t care. But she saw the way he stared too long at old pictures floating in their lair. How he flinched when she talked about human stuff, TV shows, pizza, even school.
He missed it. He missed them. And he missed being a brother, a son, a friend. Danny might be more powerful than he'd ever been before now, but he’d also never been more alone.
“We’re almost there,” he said, finally breaking the silence.
Ahead, a jagged tear pulsed between two floating cliffs. The rift shimmered violently, like a wound in space, threads of unstable ectoplasm arcing around it like lightning. Ellie hovered beside him as they approached, her arms crossed, eyes narrowing.
“That thing looks worse than last time,” she muttered.
“Yeah. It’s destabilizing faster than I expected.” Danny raised one hand, his fingers glowing with green energy. “I think it’s being fed from the other side. Something’s pulling at the barrier.”
Ellie floated in a lazy circle around it. “Could it be connected to the Human Realm? Maybe another lab breach?”
“Maybe,” he said, but his voice was distracted. “Whatever it is, we need to close it before it spreads.”
He moved closer, raising both hands now. Runes sparked around his fingers, ancient words etched into the air as he began his incantation. Ellie backed off, sensing the power shift. She knew better than to get too close when Danny tapped into his king-level energy. It was like standing next to a live wire soaked in napalm.
But the rift wasn’t having it.
With a sudden crack, a violent pulse shot outward.
“Danny—!”
She turned, eyes wide, as a shockwave erupted. Danny spun midair, arms outstretched, reaching for her.
She barely saw his face before the blast hit.
Blinding lights exploded around them. Ellie screamed as the force sent them both spiraling backward. Danny tried to shield her with his body, but the rift had already collapsed inward, dragging everything—air, ectoplasm, them—into itself.
“Danny!” she cried truly afraid now, but her voice was sucked into the storm.
The world twisted.
The Ghost Zone rumbled.
Where they had once been, there was nothing left but green.
Green and falling.
Her powers sparked uselessly, a flickering light beneath her skin. She tried to turn intangible—nothing. Her ghost tail flickered into legs, back to a tail, then vanished altogether. Danny tumbled beside her, arms limp, his eyes closed.
The portal pulled harder, a relentless spiral down, down, down…
Ellie couldn’t even scream.
And then—
They were gone.
~
Damian’s POV
Gotham breathed in shadows. It always had. But tonight, something in the air was wrong. Shadows didn’t feel like the only thing that was in the air.
Robin crouched atop a rooftop ledge, gaze sweeping the alleyways below. He caught the faintest flicker of green out of the corner of his eye. It was an unnatural shade, and bright. Not neon like potential car headlights, no this was definitely something else.
Damian narrowed his eyes, adjusting the lens on his mask.
That was definitely Lazarus energy. He had seen it enough times before, had experienced firsthand the devastating effects it could have on the human psyche, and knew its otherworldly signature well enough to recognize it on sight.
Now he just had to figure out why it was here in Gotham, pulsing steadily in a back alley just off of Finger and Kane.
He dropped from the roof tops without a sound.
The alley below smelled heavily of old oil and rotting garbage. A familiar scent in Gotham. What wasn’t familiar were the two children huddled at the center of the narrow street. Barefoot, faintly glowing, and surrounded by five very moronic looking thugs.
The kids were small.
The older one—a boy who couldn’t be more than five—was standing protectively in front of a toddler, arms spread, and legs shaking visibly. He had inky black hair that hung in a messy fringe, and glowing blue eyes that burned with unchildlike intensity. His skin was pale to the point of translucence, a faint shimmer clinging to it like frost in the moonlight.
'They look like ghosts' an invasive thought entered his mind.
The girl behind him looked barely older than two, clinging to his tattered shirt with chubby, glowing fingers. Her blue eyes were wide and terrified, her lower lip wobbling.
Both of their filthy and ragged clothes hung off of them. As if they were several sizes too big.
Their features were... not entirely human. Pointed ears peeked out from under their messy hair. Their teeth—though still baby-sized—were just a little too sharp when the boy bared them in a defensive hiss.
Damian's mind raced at lighting speed to comprehend what he was seeing. Were they metas? They looked far too young to be your run of the mill Gotham homeless child, and how were they connected with the league of Assassins? He refused to believe he was wrong and there was no affiliation. Damien could never mistake that energy.
It didn't matter. Right now it was clear that they were scared out of their minds, and needed help.
So, Robin would help.
One of the thugs took a step closer, brandishing a stun baton. “Look at these little freaks,” he sneered. “Bet they glow real pretty in a cage.”
“Think they even speak English?” another jeered. “Maybe they’re aliens. That one’s just a baby. She’ll fetch a nice price!”
The toddler whimpered and ducked harder into the boy’s back.
“Leave El’lie 'lone!” the boy shouted, voice high-pitched and shaking. “Go 'way!”
He tried to snarl but it came out more like a whine. Still, he stood tall. Or tried to at least. He didn’t quite manage as his knees buckled, and he swayed slightly.
Robin moved.
The first thug didn’t even see him coming. A blow to the temple. A twist of the baton wrist. A hard shove into the dumpster. The others shouted, startled, but it was already too late.
Damian danced through them like a blade through paper brutal, and swift. One man dropped to the ground groaning, another tried to run but was taken out with a precise throw of a batarang. When the final thug hit the bricks, unconscious, the alley was silent again.
Damian turned.
The boy’s small fists were balled at his sides, chest rising and falling quickly. His glow flickered—bright, then dim, then bright again—as he tried to stay standing.
“They’re gone?” he asked, voice trembling and slightly slurred.
“The threat has been neutralized,” Damian said, lowering himself to the boy’s eye level with deliberate slowness.
The boy took one shuffling step backward, shielding the toddler again.
“Not gonna hurt,” he said defensively. “I pr'tect El’lie.”
Damian didn’t respond immediately. He observed the boy, with his thin, and trembling frame, still giving off a faintly glowing energy.
Then, suddenly, he dimmed. His eyelids fluttered shut and he swayed forward.
“D-Dan-ii?” the toddler whispered, voice tiny and thick with panic. “Danny up!”
But the boy’s body refused to obey, crumpling like a doll whose strings had finally been cut.
“Danny!” the girl shrieked. Her little hands pawed at his shoulders, her knees slipping on the dirty ground as she tried to wake him. “No no no no—’Da-ny, up!” a hiccupping sob. “‘way up!”
She collapsed over him in a heap, the rest of her words becoming incoherent baby babble, face buried in his shirt. The glow around her pulsed in time with her wails, illuminating the alley in broken bursts.
Damian froze. He had dealt with hostages, injured civilians, even adult metas out of control. But a sobbing toddler meta-child throwing a tantrum over her unconscious meta-brother? That was... new.
Slowly, he stepped closer.
“Calm yourself,” he said, lowering his voice. “He is merely unconscious. I shall render aid.”
The girl didn’t answer. Just let out another hiccupping wail and curled tighter around the boy’s limp body.
“Tt.” Damian sighed through his teeth. Where was Todd when you needed him? He was good with children. Just about one of his only uses.
Carefully, he knelt and picked up the boy—Danny, apparently— in his arms. He weighed almost nothing, body cool to the touch like stone in moonlight. The girl looked up at him with bleary eyes, hiccupping again.
“'helll-lp” she mumbled, reaching for his cape with her stubby fingers.
“Very well,” he muttered, adjusting his grip and lifting her with equal care. She clung to his chest immediately, face tucked against his armor.
They didn’t feel like normal kids. But they didn’t feel like monsters either.
With both arms full of softly glowing children, Damian stepped back into the shadows, and disappeared into the night.
~
Bruce was waiting for him, when he arrived home.
Arms crossed, jaw set, full Batglare engaged. The kind of look that could silence an entire boardroom, send would-be criminals sprinting for their lives, or make even the most hardened member of the Justice League reconsider their choices.
Damian didn’t even flinch.
He stepped off the Batmobile with his chin held high and posture straight. One hand still cradling the glowing toddler practically glued to his side, and the other supporting her unconscious sibling like a sack of potatoes.
“Before you speak—I have an explanation.” Damian spoke quickly, before the Bat-lecture could begin.
Bruce’s eyes narrowed.
Damian continued, words tumbling out in one long breath. “I was conducting patrol, as instructed, when I detected a surge of energy-discharge. My suit was recording the whole time, and the footage can be analyzed at a later date. I engaged only after confirming the presence of five hostile individuals—human traffickers, from what I could deduce—attempting to abduct two glowing minors of apparent metahuman origin. I intervened. Neutralized the threat. And brought the children here. What precisely was I meant to do otherwise—abandon them to a trafficking ring?”
Bruce seemed to lose interest in his explanation about half way through his ramblings. As Damien spoke, he walked forward silently and plucked the sobbing toddler from his arms.
He lifted the now half-sniffling girl onto his hip like it was second nature, then he reached down and scooped up the boy from Damian’s other arm. He now held one child in each hand. They were still small enough that the older man showed no signs of discomfort at their additional weight, with his peak human strength.
Just the faintest… softening. The Batglare had evaporated.
Damian blinked. “Father?”
A pause.
“You appear... unbothered?”
Bruce hummed. Hummed. Like a man who had just been handed his grandchildren on Christmas morning.
Damian recoiled like he’d been slapped. “Surely, you cannot be serious.”
Bruce didn’t respond.
Damian went on, his horror compounding.
“We’ve taken in strays before, yes—but this is categorically different. These are unidentified dangerous metahumans of unknown origin. Their abilities, their affiliations—everything about them is entirely unclear!”
Bruce was now slowly turning in place like a proud, but slightly confused statue. Inspecting the small creatures in his arms as if trying to determine if they came with an instruction manual.
“They are not puppies, Father! You’ve no proof they even comprehend English!”
The toddler hiccupped. “D-Dan-Daddy?”
“—For all we know, they could belong to a larger collective alien species– or be rogue hostile experiments! Or maybe it's worse, maybe they’re foreign spies! Are you even listening to me, Father?!”
Bruce smiled.
Damian’s brain short-circuited.
With a strangled noise of pure exasperation, he threw his hands in the air. “Enough of this, I am getting Alfred. Maybe then you will see reason!”
He turned and stomped up the stairs, muttering under his breath. “I knew it. I should have turned back the moment I saw their coloring. Black hair. Blue eyes. How could I have been so foolish?”
He could practically hear Richard’s voice in his head.
“You know, that look you get whenever you see a puppy by the side of the road? That’s the same look Bruce gets whenever he sees a black-haired, blue-eyed little orphan.”
Damian had bristled at the time. Something angry and biting about being a trained assassin not some stray mutt. Richard had just laughed and clapped him on the shoulder like it was a compliment.
And then said that one thing. That final, damning prediction:
“Bruce has always regretted not getting to raise one of us from the time we were a baby. If a stray black-haired, blue-eyed orphan baby ever does stumble onto his doorstep, he’d probably scoop ‘em up faster than you can say ‘Daddy Bats.’”
Damian grimaced as he reached the top of the stairs. He could hear Bruce actually cooing—cooing—soft nonsense down in the Cave.
“Why didn’t I listen to Richard...” Damian muttered, rubbing the bridge of his nose.
“Master Damian,” Alfred greeted at the landing, arching one eyebrow with polite confusion. “I take it that the evening…did not go as planned?”
Damian sighed, dramatically and with maximum suffering. “Alfred. Father is kidnapping children again.”