I Am Loudly Pushing The Batdad Agenda I Am Loudly Pushing The DPxDC Prompt

I am loudly pushing the batdad agenda i am loudly pushing the— DPxDC Prompt

“Woah. You look like shit."

Granted, that’s probably not the first thing Danny should be saying to the guy that just bit the curb, but in his defense; he’s not running on 100% right now either.

The man -- tall, towering, and broader than Danny is tall -- whips around on his heel, black frayed cape flaring out impressively. Danny would've whistled in appreciation, but he takes the time instead to wipe the back of his hand across his mouth, smearing the blood running from his nose across his cheek.

"Sorry." He blinks widely, not even flinching as the man with the horns zeroes in on him. "That was rude of me. I have a really bad brain-to-mouth filter; Sam says its what always gets me into trouble."

And she's not wrong either, per say. His smart mouth is what landed him in this situation -- with blood blossom extract running through his veins and cannibalizing the ectoplasm in his bloodstream. Thanks Vlad.

The man grunts at him; a short, curt "hm" that shouldn't make Danny smile, but he does because he's somewhat delirious and probably concussed. The man keeps some kind of distance, sinking towards the shadows of Gotham's alleyway like he dares to melt right into it.

If it's supposed to scare Danny, it doesn't work. Danny's never been afraid of the dark; he's always been able to hide himself in it. He blinks slowly at the mass of shadows.

"You look hurt." The shadows says, blurring together around the edges. Danny squints, and licks his lips to get the blood dripping down his chin off. Ugh, he hates the taste of blood.

"I am." He says, "My godfather poisoned me. M'dying." The agony of the blood blossom eating him from the inside out looped back around to numbing a while ago, so all he feels is half-awake and dazed.

"Hey," Danny stumbles forward towards the man, a bloodied hand reaching out to him. "You-- you're a hero, right? You're not attacking me; which is more than I can say for most costumed people I've met." Maybe it's a poor bar to judge someone at, but he's already established that Danny's not in his right mind.

The man makes no change in expression, but Danny realizes blearily that it's hard to tell with the shadows on his face. He stays still long enough for Danny to latch onto the cape -- stretchy, but almost soft under his fingers.

He looks up blearily into the whites of the man's eyes. "Can you help me? I don't-- I don't wanna die." Again. He doesn't wanna die again. He blinks slow and lizard-like. "I mean- I'll probably get to see mom and dad again, but I told them I'd at least try and make it to adulthood."

There's a clatter down the street, and Danny's ghost sense chills up his spine and leaves a bitter, ashy taste in his mouth. He immediately knows who it belongs to even before the deceptively gentle; "Daniel?" echoes down the way.

"Daniel? Quit your games, badger, Gotham is dangerous for children."

Danny's mouth pulls back, and blood spills against his tongue. "Please." He rasps, and grabs onto the shadow's cape with both hands. "Please. He's going to kill me. Please--"

"Daniel? Is that you?"

His lips part, dragging in air to plead with the darkness again. He doesn't need to, the whites of his eyes narrow, and the cape whirls around him before Danny can blink. Soon swaddled in shadows, the Night lifts him up, and steals him away.

Dc x dp prompt #45

Danny is no stranger to curses, he’d been on the receiving end of many.

Being cursed into a doll and thrown through a natural portal was new though, and very much not enjoyable.

When he was thrown out of the portal and into a dark attic, he thought he’d finally be able to calm down from the initial shock and get home to fix this.

And he might have, if not for his powers not working.

And there were a lot of footsteps coming too close for comfort, so he decided to take a page from Toy Story, stay as still as possible and hope these people didn’t visit the attic regularly enough to notice a random porcelain doll the size of a toddler. Yep, totally an easy thing to miss.

—

The Wayne Manor’s attic was a disaster.

With as many kids that have lived there, it was filled to the brim with old keepsakes, toys, and weapons.

Every year or so, the family would all make a game of sorts out of it, cleaning the attic. They’d keep what they didn’t want to part with, restore weapons they had renewed interest in, and donate most of the old toys.

This just so happened to be Duke’s first time doing it, and Dick and Tim already warned him about some of the stuff in here, like Damian’s weapons and Jason’s book collection that didn’t fit in the library. No one told him about the glowing marionette puppet looking doll though.

Well, technically it wasn’t glowing, but it was glowing to him, and considering it was coming from some creepy doll?.

It only took his siblings to agree that they’ve never seen it before for him to decide that, no, he was not cleaning the attic today. He’d rather never see that doll again, thank you.

So why on earth is Damian carrying it with him to dinner like it’s an actual child.

—

(Pose ref. used is by mellon_soup on TikTok and Patreon)

Everyone is saying that the professor is grinding the Pokémon into candy, but consider the following:

• The professor frantically running around with assistants, inspecting hundreds of thousands of pidgeys a day, getting bitten and screeched at while they try to figure out if this pidgey has been tagged yet so they release them back to track their migration

• Panicked interns trying to scoop the ekanses back into their tank because theyre freaking out the rattatas

• Three caterpies climbed into a vent and evolved into metapods that are too far in to reach so six underpaid college students are trying to dismantle ductwork

• Theres a big door marked “KEEP OUT” because a dozen oddish evolved into a squad of Vileplumes and until they stop releasing stun spores the entire room is just off limits

• Hundreds of researchers running on red bull and determination trying to tag and examine all the Pokemon but having to turn off the machine every once in a while to the discontent of trainers who are all getting a “Sorry, the servers are currently down” message at LEAST twice a day

• “GPS not found” flashes while returning a big group and suddenly Florida has been gifted 6,000 mankeys right in the middle of Epcot

• Someone in the back room up to their waist in stale dog treats with a bunch of little stamps. They sigh deeply at how gullible Pokemon trainers are that they think these things actually do anything other than excite the Pokemon so much they evolve

• Actual science professor surrounded by chaos and interns and a budget just too small

New Sibling Just Dropped

Or Danny gets willingly isekai'd into the DCU and gets a twin out of it.

I know I disappeared from the face of the earth for a bit there, and there's stuff I should probably be updating, but I come baring different stuff this time :D

Just started this for fun, and I have at least one other chapter of it done, but idk how long this bout of inspiration will last, so I'm just rolling with it for now.

@flamingpudding look! i pulled a jason todd and rose from the grave!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Danny was tired. The kind of tired you felt behind your eyes and in your bones, and weighed heavy with achievement. He was perched on the edge of a building in his ghost form looking over Amity Park with a soft smile as he watched Youngblood run through the park with human children, Cujo playfully on their heels. His galaxy cloak (which had been a coronation gift) billowed around his lap like a gas with stars twinkling inside. 

It had been a few years now since he took up the Crown of Fire and became High King of the Infinite Realms, and while he had accomplished many things since then, graduating from high school wasn't something on that list. It sucked that he wouldn't get to walk across the stage with Sam and Tucker, but in the face of all he'd been able to do for both Amity and the Infinite Realms, it was worth it. They coexisted now. There was still trouble every now and then, but Danny had helped the ghosts who insisted on staying in Amity Park find a place in their city where they could thrive.

Youngblood watched over the children of the city, Box Ghost started a box recycling center, Lunch Lady started a program to get food to families that couldn't afford it, and Pointdexter started reporting bullying at the school since he was already there. 

On the Realms' side, Danny shut down Walker's prison. Since it was his lair, he couldn't take it away from him completely, but it no longer housed the many ghosts the warden had considered "rule breakers." He'd given Walker a new set of rules to enforce and essentially took him under his wing as a royal soldier, kept under the close watch of Fight Knight, who'd defected from Pariah Dark so fast after his defeat that it was laughable. 

He'd done something similar with Skulker, though he was a harder case to crack. Unlike Walker, who was happy as long as he had a set of rules to enforce, Skulker wanted to keep hunting. He'd been recruited forcefully by Walker and Fright Knight after they caught him on his way to fight Danny again.

All in all, everything had begun to run smoothly now. The fatigue weighing on him reminded him that it had been hard to accomplish, and continuing to lead his double life hadn't made it any less exhausting. A cold breath rushed through his chest as he felt a familiar presence slide up next to him. 

"You didn't time out," Danny pointed out without looking to face the ghost beside him. Clockwork hummed in acknowledgment.

"Sometimes it's pleasant to watch time flow in person." It was Danny's turn to hum at him. 

"How are you feeling?" The Ancient asked thoughtfully. The younger ghost tilted his head pensively. 

"It's hard to say. I'm tired, but I'm happy. And also sad..." he paused to gather his thoughts. "I feel like I've done everything I needed to."

But not everything he wanted to do. 

"Go on," Clockwork pressed. The teenager did turn his head now to make a face at his mentor. If the guy knew how he felt and what he was going to say, why would he say it out loud? But the other just arched a brow at him and waited.

"Fine," he pouted. "I've spent so much time and energy finding places for everyone here. The GIW are gone, my parents stopped hunting ghosts, Jazz got into the psychology program at Stanford, Sam and Tucker are graduating today... I helped make that happen, I know I did! But they're moving on without me. They're growing up and I don't feel like I am."  

'I don't feel like I'm ready.'

Danny stopped to take a breath and wipe away the icy tears gathering in his eyes. He felt stupid for crying over it. He was 17 for Ancients' sake! Jazz would have told him he grew up too fast, but he still felt like a child. He had no idea what he was doing! And yet! And yet... he felt...

"But you also feel ancient, right? Like you've been around too long and seen too much?" Clockwork said as though he were reading from a script. Danny sulked. Stupid time ghost with his dumb Time Stream TV or whatever. 

"Yeah..."

"All Ancients feel that way. Though you may be feeling unbalanced in more ways than one because of how young you died and the fact you are half human."

"What do you mean?" Danny turned his whole body to face him now, tucking his knees under his chin and circling his arms around them. His cloak moved with him in inky black wisps and settled around him again like clouds of galaxies. 

Clockworks form shifted to that of a child.

"You feel young because you died young. However, it is the nature of humans to grow and change. While you may have died at 14, your childhood died before that. You yearn to grow and learn, while also being an incredibly powerful Ancient."

He supposed that made sense. He recalled all the years cleaning the lab before the portal had even been built, and the fighting and neglect (Jazz's words, not his) that spawned his disdain of Christmas even longer before. He wanted to go back to school. He wanted a reason to love Christmas. He wanted pets and family dinners that didn't come alive. He wanted to grow up properly.

"But you still want to help people," the ghost said as though Danny had been talking out loud or having his mind read. 

"I hate it when you do that," Danny complained. Clockwork just smiled smugly.

"I know." He laughed at the glare Danny threw him. 

"I have a proposition for you," the older ghost began. Danny perked up in intrigue. "I know of another earth dimension with some problems that need to be addressed. Your role as High King puts you in a position to be helpful."

"Their problem has to do with the Realms?"

"In a manner of speaking, yes. Ectoplasm from the Realms is pooling into what are referred to on their planet as Lazarus Pits. They are both helpful and harmful as they do not dissipate into the air so they continually collect and concentrate emotion, but they do sometimes revive the dead."

Danny grimaced in disgust at the thought of dunking a person into a stagnant pool of contaminated ectoplasm. "That sounds disgusting."

"Quite," Clockwork agreed. 

"So what's your proposition?"

"Well, if it is agreeable to you, I would like to de-age your physical form and place you with a family that's had dealings with the Pits firsthand. I've found them to be quite charming." 

"Ah, so you want me to go in undercover?" Danny couldn't help but roll his eyes a little. It wasn't a half bad idea. He could try his hand at childhood again and still get to handle his duties as King Phantom. Leading a double life again would be easy enough, it was just stepping from one role into another. 

"Not at all." Clockwork smiled knowingly. Danny was officially suspicious of his ghost guardian. "This planet has had all kinds of dealings with the occult, and even humans with superpowers isn't that unusual. While I would advise against telling anyone you are a king right away, you are in fact just that: a king. You may do what you wish." 

For an ancient and wise time ghost, Danny thought Clockwork was really shit at hiding his expressions. Though he tried to keep the grin off his face, Danny could clearly see the twitching of his lips and gleam in his eyes that promised the old man was scheming. 

But to get his childhood back. Or, at least a semblance of one... it deserved consideration. Danny looked back out at the cityscape again. Sam and Tucker... they were down there graduating from high school without him. He'd been the one to encourage them to pull away from Team Phantom activities to zero in on their studies, but he didn't regret it. Sam wanted to major in environmental science and Tucker wanted to go to MIT and he just didn't fit into those plans. After Jazz left for Stanford, his parents often forgot he was still there. He'd managed to convince them to study ghosts properly instead of hunting them, and with a little help from the "friendly ghost King Phantom" they were given a place to start. They dove into their research with the same excitement and fervor they'd had all their lives. Which of course meant he went days, sometimes weeks, without seeing them emerge from the lab. It was easy enough to slip past them to the portal while they were distracted. 

The point was that he'd started to feel his anchor to this city, to this realm, start to dissipate as the people who kept him there started to break away from him. He still loved them, wanted to protect them, but they were safe and happy now. He felt fulfilled in his task of protecting them, but there was a buzzing beneath his skin to do more. 

Danny took a deep and controlled breath. He didn't need it in his ghost form, but it felt good to feel his lungs stretch to fullness. 

"When would I start?" He asked finally. The straight face Clockwork had been trying to keep, and he really was so bad at it, finally broke into a wide grin. 

"Right now. Everything is already in place and your duties in the Realms will be taken care of in your absence." 

Danny smiled softly at his guardian. Clockwork sure had a funny way of showing it, but he cared so deeply for the boy next to him that when Danny responded with a bad pun, he couldn't even be annoyed. 

"Well, no time like the present!" He winked.

Clockwork chuckled, and with a flash of light, he sent Danny on his way. 

The more time the older ghost spent with his young ward, the more he appreciated him. The Danny he’d come to know was nothing like the Danny’s from other worlds he’d encountered while trying to prevent Dan from existing. His Danny was now truly one of a kind. None of the others, not even the ones that eventually turned into Dan, had been Ancients. There would never be another Danny like him, and every universe was adjusting to include him should he ever decide to visit them. He had a place in any world, should he choose, but Clockwork knew he was needed most in the one he’d sent him to. It would be truly entertaining to watch the young Ancient settle into his role there, and Clockwork was actually finding himself looking forward to it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was dark and quiet a long while before Danny opened his eyes. And when he did open them it got really loud and really bright really fast. It belatedly occurred to him that he should have asked like a billion more questions before agreeing to be iseaki’d into a different dimension to join a family he knew literally nothing about. 

There was shouting before someone in what looked like a ninja cult uniform shoved a knife into his hand and pushed him in the path of a person in a different uniform. The man in front of him was dressed in blue and black and wearing a mask that covered his eyes, but Danny could see the surprised shape of his mouth before it morphed into something like anger. And then he was being lunged at.

He shrieked as he dodged out of the way. Not his most graceful save, but whatever. His voice was a bit shrill and his center of gravity felt way off. He must have actually been de-aged! He wondered how old he was now. He still felt light on his feet thanks to his ghost half which felt blessedly intact. But the other guy was fast and he ducked into a roll just in time to dodge whatever weapon he was holding. This guy meant business, but he had no idea why he was trying to kill him. 

‘Great, thanks Grandfather Clock for throwing me right back into the good ol’ days,’ he thought sarcastically. Nobody had attacked him for no good reason like that since Walker and Fright caught Skulker mid hunt for the very last time. 

What he now saw was a baton swung down from overhead and Danny knew he wouldn't dodge it in time, so he caught it with the flat of the blade that had been shoved into his hands.

“Wait! Why are we fighting?” Danny yelled, panicked as the guy pushed more force into it. The man's face twisted into something like confusion for a moment and he backed off just the tiniest bit before the scuffing of shoes to his right had him looking over just in time to see another guy in a mask, this time in red, rushing at him. He threw his hands up in surrender. 

“Wait!” He shrieked before he was absolutely bodied sideways into the ground. 

Why was he doing this? He was half ghost, he could have just gone intangible and disappeared. He didn't have to be body slammed into the ground. Wasn't he a child now? Did that guy in red actually just slam a whole child into the ground? 

“Red, hold on! This one's different!” 

“What do you mean?” The guy Red asked. He was still pinning Danny to the ground.

“Yeah, what do you mean?” Danny asked breathlessly, then whimpered, “Someone please tell me what's going on!” 

The one hovering over him must have seen something on his face that convinced him to not try and kill him anymore, because he grabbed him by the collar and started dragging him along. 

“We'll take him in for questioning. Don't let Robin see him.”

“Who's Robin?!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It had been a long, arduous, and confusing journey from wherever they were to… well, wherever they were now. They'd blindfolded him for the transport so he still had no idea what was going on. He had learned that the guy with batons was Nightwing, and Red was actually Red Robin. The one they called Robin was a feral looking thing with swords, he was very small and stabby. Then there was Batman, and he totally threw off the whole bird theme but was easily the most intimidating. And that was all he knew so far. He'd been restrained at an interrogation table. 

Danny groaned and knocked his forehead onto the table. He really, really wished he'd asked Clockwork more questions. He'd at least been able to catch a glimpse of himself in the glass behind Batman. He looked like he was eleven or twelve again, which was not as young as he'd been expecting, but much more preferable than being a literal toddler. The group of people he’d been brought in by seemed to be heroes. They were all incredibly weary of him, but hadn’t gone out of their way to harm him since his capture. Though it was hard to call it a capture when there wasn’t a chase involved. 

“How old are you?” Batman asked suddenly. His voice was low and rough and somehow Danny could tell it didn't sound like that naturally. 

“Um, maybe eleven or twelve?” Danny replied carefully, picking up his head from the table and having the decency to look a little embarrassed. 

“And what's your name?” He looked like he was expecting something.

“My name is Danny, sir.” 

“Hmm…” 

It was quiet and awkward for a long moment.

“Why are you different from the other clones?” 

“Yeeeaaah, I'm not a clone.” Danny absolutely did not jump when the brute slammed the file folder shut in front of him. 

“We'll see what your DNA results have to say about that,” he said confidently before turning to leave, his cape dramatically flaring out behind him.

Sheesh, and he thought he’d had a flair for the dramatics.

‘Okay, time for some assessment,’ Danny thought to himself as he looked around the small closed room. It was soundproofed incredibly well. While he didn’t have super crazy hearing, it was enhanced by his ghost half, and combined with his other sharp senses, it tended to help him gather more information than others could. The most he could hear outside the room was a quiet hum of activity and nothing discernible. Still, he needed to decide how much he would say to these people. How much truth did he want to weave into his tale? These people clearly already had their own assumptions about him in mind, and while there was absolutely nothing wrong with being a clone, he knew he didn’t have what it took to keep up an act like that for long, which would just end up being awkward for everyone. 

He also would not be telling them about his status as Ghost King, per Clockwork’s suggestion. His captors seemed like the uptight sort, and revealing that he was a big, scary ghost monarch didn’t seem like it’d go over well. Telling them he was a halfa would probably get them off his back over the clone thing, at least. He went over the list in his head.

He was a halfa from another dimension, so he couldn’t be a clone.

He had no plans of fighting with anyone unless absolutely necessary. 

He did not have a way back to his other dimension. 

His name was Danny, and he didn’t have a family anymore.

He did not know why he was in the middle of whatever fight he woke up in. 

No, he didn’t know those people.

Danny must’ve been lost in thought for quite a while because his thoughts were interrupted by Batman bursting back through the door. The man’s demeanor had changed completely and he whipped off his cowl to reveal disheveled dark hair, blue eyes, and an expression of absolute heartbreak that accompanied his shuddering breaths. With the mask off, he reminded Danny a lot of his father. 

Batman searched his face and, much like Red Robin had before, seemed to notice something there. 

“She did it twice,” he muttered to himself. “Two of them this whole time and she didn’t tell me about either of them,” he said through gritted teeth. His frown deepened. Danny copied his frown. 

“Hey, are you okay?”

He still had no idea what was going on.

Au where one day Daniel Thomas Fenton, 16 years old, retired ghost vigilante finally decides to tell his parents about the Accident when he was fourteen.

It… doesn’t end well. To say the least. Physically? Danny’s fine. But it blows up into a huge argument that ends with Danny getting disowned. And Danny, sick and tired of the years of neglect and fear and hate that’s radiated his house for years. Well, he just leaves. He doesn’t want to be part of the Fenton Family, he wants nothing to do with it.

He changes his name. Daniel Thomas Fenton to Thomas Nightingale. Before he was born, his parents asked Jazz what she thought her brother’s name would be. Two years old, she said Tommy. So when Danny was born, he was named Daniel Thomas Fenton.

Danny might not wanted to have been connected to the Fenton family, but he still wanted to be connected to his sister. He leaves town, but they keep in contact. And he stays in touch with Sam and Tucker too. They, along with Jazz, helped him change his name.

For the sake of continuity, I’ll keep calling him Danny.

A few months after Danny leaves Amity Park, he catches news from Eli. His little sisterdaughterclone contacting him to let him know that she snuck into Vlad’s to cause some mischief, and discovered that he was at it again.

He’d cloned Danny again. And this time it looked like it might be a successful boy. He was a baby. Danny rushed over to Vlad’s as fast as possible.

It wasn’t hard to break into the lab. Vlad was as cocky as he was stupid, and Danny had long since learned his tricks. The baby was being cared for by the vulture henchmen that Vlad used. Who were about as competent at taking care of a baby as the three fairies were in Maleficent.

Danny stole all information about the clone — how he was made, what Vlad did. Everything.

Turns out, the baby was more Danny’s son than he was a clone. Vlad had somehow rubbed two braincells together hard enough to have an epiphany of some sort. Rather than use Danny’s unstable DNA to make a clone from scratch, he used Danny’s DNA and an unnamed girl his age to make him.

(Safe to say, Danny was seriously creeped out.)

He also, somehow, figured out why Eli came out as Danielle rather than Daniel. It was the same reason that Danny’s suit went from white to black and his hair black to white when he went ghost. It was the ectoplasm’s weird inverting properties. Vlad had tried to make a male clone, but the ectoplasm he used inverted to make a girl. So, he tried the same thing, and instead tried to make a girl. The ectoplasm made the baby girl into a baby boy.

He had also, Danny seriously bet it was unintentional, somehow made the baby completely, utterly human. Well, almost completely human. The little boy was liminal in the same way Jazz was, with the minuscule changes to match. Sharper canines, a small ghostly sense, and eery eyes.

All in all, the baby was useless to Vlad. He didn’t have the powers Vlad wanted. Which Danny bet dollar to dollar was the biggest drawback to the egomaniac.

Well, what one crazed maniac found useless, Danny found he adored. It didn’t take long to dispatch the vultures, and Danny found himself hovering over the baby’s crib, unsure of what to do as the little boy’s bright blue eyes stared up at him with innocent wonder. He didn’t even know to fear strangers yet.

“Hello,” he said softly, and lowered his feet to the floor, changing back from ghost to human. “I’m Thomas.” He’d developed a weariness to his original name after Dan, and after his disownment, disliked it entirely.

The baby latched onto Danny’s finger with a gurgle, and that was it. Close the book, the end. Danny’s heart squeezed itself in his chest, a low coo trapped itself in his throat. And with hands that had never held something so small before, he picked him up.

“I bet he was gonna name you Daniel, wasn’t he?” He asked, trying to remember what the safest way to hold a baby that couldn’t keep its head up was. He cradled the baby to his chest. “He’s crazy. Don’t worry, I’ll take you with me.”

The baby just stared up at him, one chubby hand crushing his shirt. Danny couldn’t help but smile, now he knew why people always got so mushy around babies. There was so much to love about them. “I’ll come up with a better name.” He said, and walked away from the crib — there was probably something in Vlad’s lab that helped the baby. Some kinda diaper bag or something?

As he looked, he wracked his head for names. As well as that, he tried to think about what to do moving forward. The baby wasn’t like Eli, who was independent enough that she traveled the world and did whatever she wanted. He was a baby. Tiny, vulnerable, dependent. And legally, he didn’t exist.

“Why don’t I call you Bruce?” He said aloud, looking back down to the baby. Bruce. He liked the name. Bruce just looked up at him, and then tried to eat his shirt.

Danny didn’t think it was possible to fall in love so fast. “Okay, Bruce it is then.” He was smiling ear to ear. “Hi, Bruce.”

He found a diaper bag soon enough, it was near Bruce’s crib, tucked on it’s side under a chair. Danny slung it over his shoulder, switched forms, and flew out of the mansion

…

First thing to know about taking care of babies; it was hard. Danny flew miles from Vlad’s house, intangible and invisible, before he finally stopped at a gas station. He switched back, and then called Jazz

Who… immediately tore into him for making such a reckless, impulsive choice to go willingly into Vlad’s house

(Eli was a snitch)

(But not a big enough snitch apparently, she left the surprise baby to Danny to talk about)

And after the subsequent tearing into, Danny told her about Bruce

“What are you gonna do with him?”

“I’m not sure. I can’t just *leave* him. He’s so small Jazz.”

“Are you gonna keep him with you little brother?”

“…”

“…Just until I can figure something out.”

“I’ll send you some articles about taking care of babies then.”

Danny undeniably gets attached

He swore he’d figure something out by the end of the week. One week stretched into two. Two stretched to a month. And then a few months. And then Bruce was learning how to crawl, and he was babbling.

And he was just as attached to Danny as Danny was to Bruce.

Danny was all the way northeast by then, finding himself in Gotham. He was seventeen now, almost an adult in the eyes of the law. He was going to stay a week, if even that long, in Gotham.

And then he saved an eccentric elderly couple from being mugged. And by the end of the week he was staying in the elusive Wayne Family Manor as a special guest.

The Waynes were childless. They’d had tried for years to get a son, until eventually they gave up on it. But if you looked at their younger portraits, you’d think Danny was theirs by birth.

Days turned to weeks to months to nearly a year. And then more. Bruce was walking now, and he called Danny ‘daddy’ and he was still just as clingy as he was when he was on bottles.

Danny adored him.

And the Wayne couple were so kind to him. Danny had waited for weeks for the other shoe to drop. Nobody this rich was this kind, at least not anyone that Danny had encountered besides Sam, and Sam’s family were guppies in a pond compared to the behemoths that were the Waynes.

There was no other shoe drop. The Waynes never expected anything from Danny other than he ate well and slept well and that he stay as long as he like. They didn’t force him into attending anything, not their rich people parties or events, nothing. They bought him clothes and let him decorate his room, and spoiled Bruce positively rotten.

Danny quietly, where no one but his thoughts could hear, started to think they were better parents than the ones who gave birth to him. It changed things.

On Danny’s eighteenth birthday, the Waynes gifted him adoption papers. Danny couldn’t have grabbed his pen faster.

Danny Fenton became Thomas Nightingale, and Thomas Nightingale because Thomas and Bruce Nightingale.

Then, finally, Thomas and Bruce Nightingale became Thomas and Bruce Wayne.

DPxDC Summoning Failed Successfully

Imagine a warehouse. Imagine a bunch of cultists in dark robes with all the candles, daggers, ancient books, and chanting. Now add Danny.

Only not as the summoned being, no. As a sacrifice.

He is sitting down, tied to a chair, in the middle of the summoning circle, looking as bored and deadpan as he can possibly be. The cultists are chanting, and he frowns, listening to their chants for a moment.

"Hey, is that Latin?" He questions, but to no avail, "You know you're not actually using those words correctly, right?"

"Keep quiet, child!" One of the cultists snaps. Danny leans back in his chair and shrugs.

"I'm just saying, you ain't summoning shit with wrong grammar," he huffs, seemingly absolutely nonchalant about the whole thing. Oracle, who is watching the whole ordeal through the surveillance cameras, raises her eyebrows. Red Robin and Robin are already en route to the building the cultists chose for their extracurricular activities, but now she almost wants to watch this a bit longer.

Gothamites are pretty used to all kinds of shitshows, but this boy is from out of town. She checked him through facial recognition. Daniel Fenton, a transfer student from Amity Park, Illinois.

A few more cultists stop chanting and turn to Danny.

"Do you know Latin?" One of them asks, and the boy makes a half-nod, making a thoughtful face.

"Not fluently, but, like, it's a dead language, I felt kinda obligated to learn it. Just for the meme, you know?" He chuckles.

The cultists, judging by their confused silence, don't know. Barbara doesn't know what he's talking about, either. But she is almost curious now, so she taps Robin's and RR's comm lines:

"RR, Robin, when you arrive, don't jump into the scene," she asks.

"Understood," Tim answers immediately, but Damian, of course, demands explanations:

"Is there an obstacle?"

"Not really," Barbara humms, "The sacrifice is in the process of de-escalating the situation."

She can almost hear the questioning silence over the comm, but, thankfully, no one argues. Meanwhile, one of the cultists pipes up, voice full of doubt:

"So, you can... like, proofread our incantation?"

"Yeah, sure," Danny nods, apparently fine with being sacrificed, "Who you're trying to summon anyway?"

"Satan," that same cultist answers, and Danny laughs approvingly.

"Classic," he nods and smiles, "I'll give you this. The circle is mostly alright, so you don't need an incantation to summon the fucker, I have him on speed dial." And with that, he leans forward, screaming towards the floor: "Ey, Satan!"

Barbara must say the act was actually convincing, but he went a little overboard with it now. She reaches to tell both Robins to get in, but suddenly, a loud, booming voice reverberates through the building.

"The fuck do you want, kid?"

Cultists fall to their knees - it doesn't seem like an act of worship, more like their knees bucking. The whole circle dimly lights up in red, smoke raising from it.

"Do you see this shit, Oracle?" Red Robin questions, and she mhm's at him, not sure what else to say. If this is still an act or a trick, she must say it's a very good one. Although somehow she suspects it's not a trick. She's seen enough magic in her life to tell the difference.

"Do you want to come to Earth, be gay and do crimes?" Danny asks, almost mockingly.

"Fuck off."

The red light flickers and disappears, and Danny looks back up to cultists, grinning cheerfully.

"Welp, looks like he doesn't wanna," the kid concludes and stands up from his chair. Barbara hadn't seen when or how he got out of his bindings.

The cultists just watch him walk out of the circle in bewilderment.

"Pursue?" Robin's voice comes over the comms, and Barbara thinks for a moment.

"I get a feeling like that's a bad idea," Tim mutters over his line.

Barbara agrees.