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Stifling a yawn as he walked, Danny pulled his backpack straps back into place and paused in his walking to lean against the wall of the building beside him. Glancing up and down the street, checking that all the windows he could see were empty and no one was looking; Danny darted into the alley beside him, dashing to be behind and between the two dumpsters before anyone could see him.
Stooped low, Danny paused again to listen to the noises around him, letting his super hearing listen as far as the end of the street for anything that shouldn’t be there.
No hurried footsteps of someone following him.
No heartbeats spiking in stress at his dash out of sight.
No slamming van doors of government agents trying to hunt him down as he fled for his life.
Shoulders relaxing again, Danny sighed as he let his human body go, transforming into his ghost self and shifting to be invisible as he flew up into the air over the city.
Danny, Danial James Fenton, Danny Phantom, King of the Infinite Realms, King of the Dead, God of Space, God of Balance, High King of the Kings of Gods, member of the Justice League, hero, high school student, only son of two mad scientists… and exhausted kid.
Like most kids on their last few days of high school, Danny was some combination of stressed and relieved. But also like any other almost high school graduate; he was absolutely exhausted. His last few weeks had been a mad dash of college enrollments and scholarship applications and job applications and internship applications and apartment applications and dormitory enrollment forms and extra credit assignments to try and raise his grades and working to turn in his end of year projects and working to turn in his late assignments. And on top of the ‘normal’ things Danny had been dealing with a spike in being hunted.
Danny, being a half dead half living ghost kid, had something called ectoplasm in his body. Ectoplasm is one of the terms used to describe the energy, whether gaseous and invisible or concentrated into a visible liquid or solid substance, that is the base of all living and dead entities holding a semi-conscious state. This energy is present in all living and formerly living entities in every universe where ‘life’ exists. This energy is also compounding, so areas and individuals who have a lot of life generation, like hotel beds and Danny’s neighbors outside picnic table (Gross), or death generations, like war zones and hospitals and retirement homes and that one crosswalk by the pond where frogs keep hopping on the road and keep getting squished (Sad)… these areas pull this energy from the realm where souls are made and return to.
Phantom, Danny’s secret hero identity and the name he goes by when in his ghost form, having been killed by the opening of a portal to that realm where he was promptly revived just to die again over and over until he became fundamentally bonded to that realm and actually MADE ectoplasm instead of just filtering it from the air and condensing it like every other entity in the know multiverse, was very much of interest to those looking to study it.
Danny, being the child of the two top scientists of the field, knew that his parents had no idea their son was the ghost they had been hunting for the past few years. He also knew that they had no idea exactly how powerful and unique his abilities were.
He only knew because he had access to the Infinite Library; a library that housed all books and eBooks and audiobooks and shows and movies and podcasts and short video clips from every universe that had ever existed and ever would exist because time is only linear for the individual….
Danny still struggled with the ‘time is only linear for the individual’ concept of him having somehow become the baby god that would one day go back in time and create the universe he was born in.
Shaking his head free of the crowding thoughts of his life and the absolute nonsense he was having to deal with, Danny flew out over the city.
The lights in the houses below him weren’t on yet, the sun only just preparing to set on the horizon. Pausing to smile up at the first stars lighting the night sky, Danny flew through his own opened bedroom window.
He had started leaving it open, in an attempt to avoid his parents and their drama.
The kissing sounds coming through his closed bedroom door informed him that he had been right to skip the front door.
Rolling his eyes and changing back to his human form, Danny quietly set his backpack on his bed. His backpack was filled to the brim, stuffed with every piece of clothing he owned, now all refreshingly clean. He had needed to take his laundry to the cleaner across town seeing as his inventor parents had dismantled their laundry machines to make some new invention. Again.
Upending the clothing onto the bed, Danny set to work folding and hanging and tucking it away. Most everything went into his luggage tote bags; something he had started after his sister had moved out and he had started having nightmares of being captured by his parents… or the U.S. government agency that was hunting all ecto entities with higher levels of contaminations to experiment on.
With his older sister Jasmin, Jazz, gone off to study abroad Danny had felt less secure about his safety staying with his parents. With his childhood friends having slowly drifted from his life after his hero and king stuff got in the way too much Danny had realized… no one would notice if he was captured.
No one would be coming to save him.
So, Danny started preparing. He started working on his own inventions, selling the safe ones to the more reputable companies and keeping the more dangerous designs in his own pockets as self defense. He got a bank account, started cashing his royalty checks, and started saving money to move. He got himself emancipated, something he had thought would be much harder than it actually had been.
--
Danny: age 15
Standing in the kitchen doorway and clutching the booklet of paperwork and pen to his chest, Danny tried to project an air of confidence and happiness. He did not need his parents asking about the paperwork, so he tried to just be… unobtrusively happy about the whole thing. “Hey Dad? Hey Mom? I need you to sign these.”
His parents stopped their conversation, both turning to him as his dad kept eating his fudge and his mom kept her finger on the schematics they had been going over. Maddie, his mum, smiled. “Sure honey. Whatever you need.”
Danny held the forms for her as she signed with one hand, and kept her other finger on the schematics. He pointed as he flipped through the pages. “Here. And here. Initial here. Print your name here, and sign underneath.”
She hummed, eating the bite of fudge his dad fed to her and not looking up from where she was tracing the power cable across the schematics to a new ray gun. Danny plucked the pen from her with a quick “Thanks, mom,” and turned to his dad. Jack, his dad, took the pen mutely and started signing, much more sloppily than his mom had, as Danny flipped through the pages.
When he was done, Danny smiled and took the pen back. “Thanks, dad. Mom? If you use the 46mm wire, it will fix the problem with the spacing you are struggling with.” And make it impossible to aim as the shots are pushed in random directions, and it overheats almost instantly, and maybe even melt the mother board and destroy itself after too many shots… but he kept that part to himself.
Maddie smiled, brightening. “Oh! You are right! Thank you, Danny!”
Jack slapped Danny on the back as he stood from his chair, setting the plate of fudge on top of Danny’s stack of papers and cheering. “GOOD JOB DANNO! HERE! YOU FINISH THESE AND I’LL MAKE ANOTHER BATCH TO CELEBRATE!”
Danny smiled, nodding his head as he headed out of the kitchen, flipping the now officially signed document booklet closed and enjoying his snack. Dropping the empty plate off on one of the end tables by the couch, Danny headed for the door, and for city hall to register his paperwork.
--
The beep from the small earpiece he always kept in drew his attention back from the past and Danny blinked. Shoving the pile of socks, they all matched so he didn’t have to pair them, into his luggage bag Danny finished with his laundry as he tapped his ear communicator.
He clicked the comm in his ear two times, signaling that he could hear but not talk. His parents were still making… noises… in the room next to his and Danny didn’t want to deal with them. He grabbed his wallet and a granola bar from his desk, shoving them and his current homework into his backpack as the line connected.
Hawk Girl, one of the members of the Justice League , spoke over the comm in his hear, voice calm and smooth, if a little hurried. “Phantom? This is the watch tower. There is a fire in your area, forest fire about 350 miles south of you in a strait line. Can you assist on site?”
Danny clicked the comm one time, signaling an affirmative as he rumpled his bedding to make it look like he was in bed, cracked his door open, left a book open and upside down on his pillow, and turned on his string lights.
It was how he always slept, and how he staged his bed whenever he didn’t sleep at home. In the morning light it would look like he left in a hurry. In the middle of the night it would look like he was asleep.
Tapping and clicking filled the comm in his ear as he dashed around, getting ready. “Superman and Batman are inbound, Flash is on site. It is South-South-East of you, 350 miles, near that corn field we did flight practice over a few months back. Get there, and you will see the lights. Got it, kiddo?”
Danny put his packed backpack on and transformed into Phantom. The backpack, phone, wallet and everything else vanished with Danny’s form. Black hair changed to ethereal white, blue eyes shifted to glowing green, tanned healthy skin changed to pale as snow sparkeling skin that more resembled a corpse frozen in the snow than a healthy teenage boy. His clothes shifted from his hole filled and stain covered t shirt and jeans to a black body suit with a white utility belt and chest sash of pouches, black cape that faded to white at the bottom, and a crown of frost sparkled with the lights of distant stars as it floated just above his head. The red ring on his finger, shaped like a skull and hot to the touch, was the only color to him except his eyes.
With a thought the Crown and Ring left, returned to their pedestals in his keep. He shouldn’t need to use galaxy crushing levels of power tonight, and having the ring and crown on would ruin his Justice League alias as a ‘Random Kid With Powers.’ He didn’t need the drama that came with him being a king involved with the Justice League.
They had weekly ‘Ruler and Royal’ information reviews. Not a support group, a open admittance of all royal decisions they had made in the last week. Phantom’s realm dealt with time dilation. One of Danny’s weeks could include months in different universes and weeks doing paperwork and hours of council meetings-
No. The crown stayed home, and Danny went as just Phantom, random kid with powers.
Phantom reached for the comm in his ear, clicked a confirmation back at the woman, and the line when dead.
This was how many of his ‘call in’s’ went. As a younger hero it was understood, and encouraged, that Phantom not talk out loud when responding to a call for help from the comms. According to the rule book, it was to be sure that no one overheard them and risked the hero’s identity being discovered.
For Danny, it was just a nice excuse for not having to notify his family that he was here AND about to sneak out.
Turning invisible and intangible, Danny flew out of his window, not minding his speed as he passed harmlessly through the narrow space. He turned as he rose above the sky, getting his bearings and digging back through his memories on exactly where the fire would be and trying to decide on the best form of approach.
He could save his energy and fly there like any other hero would: visible and solid. He could spend a bit or a bit more energy and fly faster as he was invisible and intangible, reducing his wind resistance to nothing and letting him go as fast as possible. Or he could use quite a bit more energy than his other abilities and open a portal directly above the field the flight practice had happened over…
With a fire in that area, an area surrounded by nature reserves and family farms and fields of cows and bunnies hopping and in the spring there had been so many pretty flowers…
Danny closed his eyes, pretending that he was floating above that air, standing on a solid platform made of the green lantern’s ring… he pictured himself, remembered what the world had looked like as his name was called, raising his hand as he remembered startling and looking up. He curled his fingers into scratching claws and pulled them down, eyes staying closed and focusing on what the world, the field, had looked like as he locked eyes with Superman and the man beckoned him forward.
The birds had been singing in the trees at the edge of the field. The smell of fresh turned soil had filled the air, sun baking against the ground and his back and a cow bell clanging in the distance as the herd in next paddock meandered closer to watch the group.
Danny had taken a step back then, walking off the edge and floating into the air to practice his dodging in arial combat against superman. The older hero’s hands had been covered in glitter paint to show if he caught Danny, and Danny had grinned in joy of the challenge….
Danny pictured it, pulled to his mind the way the grass and plants and distant trees and fence posts had all changed angles as he moved… and stepped forward.
The sounds of the city below him disappeared in an instant, replaced with an owl hooting in the distant and loud sirens and screams and the crashing and roaring and popping of the fire.
Danny opened his eyes, tears already gathering at the PAIN/PAIN/HELP/DYING/NO! that filled the air and took over his emotions.
His teeth ached with the effort to not scream in pain like the dying creatures in that distant fire. Sweat broke out across his body, freezing into a frost across his skin instantly and chilling him to the bone in an instant. His hearing, acute enough to hear the sizzling flesh on the creatures and the woman in labor screaming in the other direction from the fire, was overwhelmed.
He could feel the ectoplasm, his blood in this form, drip from one of his ears and gather in his nose and drip like bloody tears from his eyes.
Ectoplasm was generated by life and death, and it amplified and carried emotions. Beings made of ectoplasm were able to communicate purely with feelings, like empathy but… more.
Phantom hated fires. Not because they were painful for him.
No, he hated how much they hurt EVERYTHING. He could feel the trees screaming. He could feel the mice cooking in the leaves. He could feel the seeds from the grasses and ferns screaming.
Everything was screaming in pain.
Phantom was filled with their pain, the pain seeping into his ectoplasm and suffusing it.
But this wasn’t his first fire. Phantom knew how to do this. He took a deep breath, and back through the ectoplasmic waves of pain he sent the calm night air he was in, overriding the dying thoughts of the other beings with PEACE/CALM/BEAUTIFUL/REST.
It wouldn’t save those already dying. It wouldn’t stop the fleeing animals from feeling the fear around them. All it would do was help make the dying not be so scared.
Phantom squared his shoulders, wiping his face and flying towards the flashing lights and red blur. He pushed his attention away from the sirens and the screaming and focused on Flash’s heartbeat, his breathing, his footsteps… He pushed everything else away, filtering it out the way some people filtered out cars and trains by their houses: that isn’t a relevant sound, so just ignore it.
Giving a sharp whistle, Phantom landed a little away from where Flash was talking to one of the fire fighters, jogging the last few feet so he didn’t just land next to him.
One black eye from startling the man was all Phantom ever needed to learn: do not jump-scare Flash.
The fire fighter nodded to them both, and jogged away. Flash turned to Danny. “Hey, Phantom. Thanks for coming.”
Danny nodded, smiling up at the man. “Sorry to be needed, happy to help. Where do you want me?”
Flash nodded. “I get that. Ok, so we are having some service problems with the comms. So you and I are on our own until Daddy Batsy and Big Blue get here. I couldn’t get their eta before the line shorted. According to the fire crews that usually sweep the fire road, the comm towers and cell towers for the area are in the fire.”
Danny frowned. “That isn’t good. Do we know if anyone was in the fire zone before service dropped?”
Flash nodded. “Nature reserve, all official parties are accounted for, and I just checked with the locals that all kids and teens are accounted for. As far as we can guess; everyone is out of the fire zone.”
Danny tried to not let the screams of the animals and plants burning to death transform into anger at that comment. “So, humans and humanoids have been cleared. Where do you want me?”
Flash flinched at Phantom’s harsh tone. “Ok. Sorry. You are on fire-break. You have ice powers, right? So, make walls of ice to seal in the fire and keep it from spreading!”
Danny frowned. “That will seal in the animals, too. What about I coat the trees and plants in frost, so the fire has no fuel to spread and animals that are suffering from burns have relief and evacuation options. Then you can come in, scoop the burned animals from the frost and relocate them to rescue personnel.”
Flash grinned, head tipping back and hands on his hip. “Wow! That is a great idea. Ok, we will do that! I’ll go spread the word, if you want to get started!” And the man was gone.
Phantom snorted. Flash was one of the smartest people on the planet, but still a bit of an air-head at times.
Floating into the air and pushing himself towards the fire, Phantom called down to the rescue crews as he flew bye. “I’m going to freeze the area around the fire, the trees that have frost are secured in place and won’t fall or burn. Mobilize to secure the injured animals. Grab towels and cages and shovels. Underground burrows will have glowing green lights to match the size and shape of the animals above the burrow entrances and burrow roofs will be solid so you can dig inside to retrieve them. Give me 90 seconds, then it will be safe and you can advance!”
Leaving the now scrambling crews to disperse the information and start preparing, Danny flew into the fire.
The heat was like a physical wall, pressing in on all sides of him. Red and yellow and orange flashed before his eyes, leaving black afterimages that blinded him almost instantly.
But Danny didn’t need his eyes, not right now at least.
Reaching a hand out Danny advanced until he finally bumped into a tree. With less than a thought ice and frost spread across the tree, covering the bark and branches and encompassing the roots under the earth.
Through the screaming and the sirens and the shouting of the work crews and the helicopter blades chopping as they approached and Flash’s constant pat-pat of hurried steps, through all of that Danny couldn’t hear the sizzle as the fire vanished with a woosh and the area around the tree transformed into a polaroid of a winter wonderland, but he felt as the rabbits in the roots of the burrow underground calmed.
He started moving, shifting to each closest lifeform. The animals he could reach on the surface were covered in little ice nets, like the little domes that covered food at a picnic but in the reverse. Each dome had an animal or burrow. Each dome had lights glowing above them, filling the slowly darkening forest with haunting magical lights instead of destructive fire.
But with each burst of magic, each pulse of ectoplasm, each tap of his bleeding and burnt hands against the nearly destroyed trees… Phantom got weaker. He got more tired.
Flying through the forest became more than he could manage, and when his feet touched the ground he felt bare skin meet first hot earth, then snow. His eyes were still nothing but blackness, but he could hear and feel with both his body and his soul where the trees and the creatures were, so he kept moving.
Walking made it easier for Phantom to cover the ground in frost and snow, and the constant of being surrounded by the cold helped numb the burning pain in his feet and lower legs. But smoke still filled his lungs and liquid dripped from his eyes and nose and mouth as he tried to cough and instinctively gasp for clean air.
The air he left behind was being cleaned by softly gathering snow, Phantom using the science of the fire to help dampen the damage and spread. Fire takes in air from its front and sides, and as the air heats it rises. But Phantom’s snow won’t melt or heat until he wants it to, so the fire’s heat was sucking in the snow and the snow was gathering the ash on the way in and the heavy snow/ash was settling on the ground and putting out the fire.
What felt like a lifetime later Phantom realized that the roaring of the fire and the panic of the plants and animals were all … gone. Animals still sang with calls for help and cries of pain, and the plants and trees were still suffering from the effects of the fire, but nowhere near what it had been.
In the distance Phantom heard a familiar sound. It was a very distinct wa-woosh-swish that brought a smile to his dry and bleeding lips and a wave of relief washing over his body.
Danny turned his face up, twisting his head this way and that until he could pin-point where the sound was. When he had his bearings, Danny started walking. Unlike his earlier meandering through the forest as he zigzagged between trees this was a strait line, and considering he had made a circle of his fire suppression, he only had to walk a few hundred feet before that familiar sound came again.
Danny walked forward, feeling as he left the tree line behind and exited into the grassland between the fire and the emergency station set up. He could hear the murmuring of the crews and the chittering, whining, squeaking, and in a few cases purring of the creatures they still had to load into the emergency transportation. Phantom didn’t pause, keeping his ears trained on that oh so distinguishable swish.
He could hear Flash’s pat-pat behind him in the forest, and he could hear Superman with him as Flash explained their plan and got the alien to help with some of the more… grumpy animals.
Flash’s words for a raging and terrified badger. More. Grumpy.
But Danny kept walking until his outstretched hand met fabric. Flinching back from the pain of the unexpected contact, Phantom stumbled, feet tangling and hands tucking into his stomach to try and protect them as his back hit a stack of plastic boxes or something, knocking them to the ground around him in a cacophony of sound as he fell.
Shouts broke out around him, and as hands and voices bombarded him, people pulling the plastic crates off him and someone shouting “MEDIC!” Phantom couldn’t take it.
He went intangible, letting the boxes fall through him and the hands stop touching him and the painful rocks and sticks and grass under him pass through his body so he would stop Hurting as much.
There was another chorus of shouts, saying he had disappeared or something, but that was cut off by-
‘wa-woosh-swish.’ “Ahem. The situation is under control, now. Back away!”
The crowd cleared, and a soft tap-tap came closer, a kind old voice, so achingly familiar, filling the confused not silence but as close as nosey and noisy people can get as the people dispersed. “Phantom? It is Agent A. Come now, dear one. You must be visible for me to tend you.”
Danny tried to relax, tried to focus on being solid. He pushed himself up into a float above the ground, and became tangible. Wind, cool and calm, brushed his burns and had them twinging and stinging more. But being solid let him have some help. With one hurting hand Phantom traced his palm through the grass and leave detritus in the direction of Agent A, the blackness of his vision not offering any help.
A hand covered over Phantoms, medical glove covered fingers wrapping around his own in a gentle hold. “There you are, my boy.” Agent A stood slowly, and Danny floated with him like a little ghost balloon, trailing the man as they started moving.
The older British man moved them through the camp, and eventually turned to pull Phantom a different way. There was a change in temperature and air pressure and noise, and Phantom had to assume that they were in a tent now. His eyes were doing a little better now, red and gray lights from the bright tent showing through the complete darkness that had been his vision moments before. Another heartbeat was in the tent, a familiar thum-thump-thump that let Phantom know who was opening medical supplies better than the “Hrm,” that came from the man.
Agent A hummed, pulling Phantom to float higher in the air for a small moment before stopping walking and pulling him downward. “Phantom? Dear one? You are safe now. Come back to the visible realm, if you can.”
Phantom tried, focusing as much of his attention away from his burns and towards the defensive anxiety that was keeping his powers active. In his mind, he had to tell himself over and over ‘Batman is here, I am safe. Batman is here, I am safe.’
The gasp from Agent A and the heart stutter from Batman suggested that Phantom had succeeded.
A gentle hand cupped his cheek, raising Phantom’s chin up a bit. “My dear one. Your eyes…”
Phantom tried to smile, voice coming out raspy and choked as he tried to speak. “I- huh aham- I’ll heal.”
Batman’s heartbeat moved to Phantom’s other side, and Agent A’s hand on his chin turned Phantom where he floated so the Dark Knight could see his face. If Phantom had only heard the fury in his voice, he probably would have been scared of the man being mad at him. “What. Happened.”
But behind those words was a wall of caring so deep Phantom hadn’t felt someone more kind in all of his travels. Batman’s heart was stuttering in sadness and his soul was aching in pain for how hurt Phantom was. The Dark Knight’s gruff voice masked the utter fretting and protectiveness the man was struggling to control enough to not just hug Phantom.
Phantom tried to answer, tried to reply, but as he took a deep breath to talk his lungs seized in protest and he was left curled and coughing, his floating vanishing as he collapsed onto the-
Medical cot below him. Gentle hands helped him turn on his side, and a plastic cup- a face mask- was pressed over his mouth and stale air pushed against his face and nose and lungs.
It made breathing out a little weird, but after a bit all breathing got easier. While he lay panting, Phantom could feel as cold scissors cut away his shirt and pants and the clasps of his cape were undone. His boots and gloves were already gone, having burned away long ago.
A warm cloth began wiping across his face, washing the ash and ectoplasmic blood that caked his eyelashes and cheeks and nose away. Danny blinked his eyes hard. His vision was still coming back, but now that exhaustion was setting in Danny was feeling sleep pull at him.
Danny coughed, curling tighter for a moment. Gentle hands pulled his chin up and straitened the mask.
Danny blinked, and a dark gray-almost-blue-but-still-murky blob was leaning over him, holding his arm down as someone put some kind of cream on that stung.
Danny blinked, and a red blob was attaching an I.V. into the crook of his arm. From the fast pumping of the heart beside him Danny guessed it was Flash. Danny looked around, finding he could see more. A shape that had little pointy protrusions on it’s top, probably Batman, was rummaging through a box or crate of some kind. A blue and red blob was stepping out of the tent while talking about checking some files. Maybe that was Superman? At Danny’s side was a white and black and peach blob. That blob stretched forward, patting Danny’s shoulder where he was still curled on his side.
Agent A spoke, pressing the hand he had harder against Danny’s shoulder to keep him down. “Easy, dear one. You are safe. Just sleep, now.”
Danny nodded, letting his head fall back as the cold tingle from the I.V. washed in a pain relieving wave up his arm. He closed his eyes again, feeling a familiar change happen as rings of light spread from his middle and returned him to his human body.
Sleep. That sounded nice…
--
For a moment, Bruce Wayne couldn’t understand what he was seeing. Through all of his training to be a C.E.O. and lead a company, to be a vigilante and protect people, to be Batman the Dark Knight of Gotham, to be an adoptive parent and take in his children, to be a foster parent and take in even more children… none of that could have prepared him for this.
Batman and Phantom had bee working together for a while now. Phantom had been on earthquake body recovery missions, and helped with erupting volcanos. Phantom and Bruce had gone up against armies of robots, and faced down many a scheming deranged evil dooer. They had sat in the cafeteria and eaten sandwiches together. True… Bruce wasn’t good at talking out loud. He found words very hard, and outside of his pretend act of ‘Brucie Wayne, bimbo playboy philanthropist with a heart of gold and the intelligence of a penny’ Bruce could rarely talk. But Phantom always seemed to understand Bruce. Phantom did much of the talking, but it was so nice to have someone to talk with.
Phantom was a younger hero. Bruce had known that. The young man had only been on his radar for a little over two years, after all. But there were files, offered by the more magically inclined and dimensionally traveled members of the Justice League, as well as historical sightings noted throughout many of the larger Earth events, of Phantom and his many good deeds. According to some reports, the hero had been offering help during the plagues in Egypt. A cave drawing showed someone that looked remarkably similar to Phantom, dated from just after the end of the ice-age and potentially the oldest carbon dating of human to date. There was a picture of him, white hair and a similar but different black suit, soot covered and muddy, sitting on the top of a tank while drinking coffee with American and English troops; location, Berlin, date; unknown. The title of the picture; A Moment Of Relief.
They had asked the young hero about the instances. It was when they were trying to decide if he could work with them. But the young man hadn’t known about the pictures. “Oh. I haven’t been there yet. I do a lot of jobs for… Cronos? That is the name you should know, right? Yeah, I do stuff for him, and he sends me back to where he needs me. See? In this one, the army one? I have a tattoo on my shoulder. Yeah, cool symbol and all, but I’m not old enough to get a tattoo yet. See?-”
Their search and conversations had turned up many interesting things, but none so important as that last one. His age. Phantom had agreed on telling them what country and state he lived in, as part of figuring out what support he might be able to offer. Later, that had been expanded on when he admitted he could teleport anywhere he could picture. But, when they had found out where Phantom lived, Bruce had taken some time to find out the local laws around age restrictions for getting tattoos.
Illinois law says no one under the age of 18 can get tattoos, even with parent/guardian permission.
So… Phantom was still a minor. But that had been two years ago. And Phantom was tall, only an inch or so shorter than Alfred. Bruce had been sure that Phantom was an adult by now, young still but surly a legal adult by now.
But looking at him now (thankfully somehow uninjured if a bit scuffed and soot stained), with rosy cheeks filled with a child’s youth, with his hands clutching the blankets to his chest, wearing convers shoes that weren’t tied but had little pencil doodles drawn on the rubber sides of little star and ghost shapes….
Bruce felt his heart squeeze. He felt his lungs seize and his body tense and his brain kick into overdrive.
He knew this kid. He had seen this kid in pictures. Danial James Fenton, son of Madeline and Jackson Fenton who were renowned Ghost Hunters and Doctors in Ecto-Biology. Bruce had looked into them when Phantom had been joining the Justice League, and again when the name Fenton had been attached to a few inventions that his company, Wayne Enterprises, had purchased the rights to. Some of the inventions had been under the names of Jackson and Madeline, but the majority of them had come for one Danial J. Fenton.
Who was here. Laying asleep on the medical cot, being tucked in by Alfred as Flash dimmed the lights in the room.
Bruce, other than assuring himself when this all started that the two Fenton children were safe and healthy two years ago, hadn’t kept up on the family. He didn’t know much about Danial that hadn’t been publicly available back then.
Looking at him now though…
There seemed to be some research Bruce would have to get done. And he was doing it back at his home, and taking Danial home with him.
What kind of law-breaking vigilante would he be if he didn’t kidnap a child being actively hunted for sport by his own parents?
And… Danial DID have black hair and blue eyes… and Bruce’s chin… he would fit in with Bruce’s other children like it was nothing…
Maybe no one would notice?