Wandixx Writes - Tumblr Posts
Ghost of fries and Hero of cookies
All work words count: 14 593
Words in this part: 2 224
Summary of whole work: Duke wasn't expecting to wake up from his quick rooftop nap to some meta kid with fries. He also wasn't expecting kid to stay Or Danny asked Dani to stay safe while she was in Gotham. Where would she be safer than under the wing of local hero? And he looked like he needed bad day combo anyway
This part summary: First meeting and training discussions Beta read by @audhumla-sailor though English is second language for both of us, so proceed with this in mind. I also know all of the charaters through fics alone, so probably ooc. Stay catious if it's something you don't like
Duke was running out of fumes to run on. Last few days would be exhausting if it was just vigilante or just civilian stuff but no, he had to have it both. Because of Arkham break out he had been called in three nights in a row, not for a whole patrol but he couldn't exactly sleep it of during the day like others did, especially not in a week when every teacher decided they need to have test or quiz or what not. Naps meant he wasn't as sleep deprived as he could be but he needed far more. But he couldn't because crime in Gotham never sleeps so he had normal patrol to finish and there were about two ours left.
Would something bad happen if he just stopped for a moment and laid on a roof? Ten up to fifteen minutes. It was a slow day too...
Yeah, no, he deserved a moment to rest and if something disastrous was to happen in the meantime he would shame other Bats for not giving him enough time to sleep.
It certainly said something that he found gravel covering this roof to be quite comfortable. He set a timer for ten minutes and let himself close his eyes.
When loud screech of timer jolted him awake, he was suddenly fully aware that he wasn't alone anymore. He sat up a little too quickly.
"Oh, you're awake," white haired girl around Damian's age chimed, sitting cross legged just few feets away from him. She wore something that could only be described as an unholy mix of lab safety hazmat and skintight workout jumpsuit, white and black. When had Gotham gotten a new vigilante? "Good, I just returned from snack hunt," she added, gesturing at a big textile bag lying next to her. Duke didn't have enough brainpower to do anything more than ask.
"What?"
Girl shrugged, take out from BatBurger in her hand.
"You look like you have a bad day if not few days, so I've got you my cousin's bad day combo or at least closest thing I could. BatBurger burger isn't as good as NastyBurger but you certainly have better fries," as she spoke, second take out bag, 1 quart bottle of energy drink, juice bottle of same size and pack of convenience store brownies joined greasy paper bag sealed with a sticker.
"Is your cousin a speedster?" Excuse Duke, it was a totally valid question, he saw with his bare eyes both Wally West and Bart Allen when they visited Manor. Noone else would be able to stomach the amount of food they inhaled during their stays.
"Nah, we're not that fast or that hungry. Though I think I may get closer to speed of sound," So, clearly a meta if white hair and weir aura that let his eyes rest weren't enough indication "My cousin when he has bad few days he often forgets to eat so this combo has to help with there too. But I'll steal your fries of course."
Duke was not going to look gift horse in teeth, so he grabbed one bag and tore it open. There was classic combo with bigger fries and NightWings inside.
"Thank you..." he trailed off, hoping that girl would take a clue and introduce herself but she didn't. She just drowned her fries in ketchup and started munching. She had her own juice.
"My cousin always said that each part of this combo has different purpose," she explained instead, slightly muffled because of fries in her mouth, "This" she gestured towards fast food meal "is to sooth your stomach. This "she tapped energy drink "is to sooth your brain and kick it back online. This "she raised bottle of juice, "is to sooth your taste buds because energy drinks are war crime against them and this "she nudged brownies "is to sooth your heart because Ancients damn it, this day is awful and you deserve it. At least that's what he told me when I had day bad enough to deserve that," she shrugged, licking ketchup of her finger. Suddenly she froze "You aren't allergic, are you?
"No, I'm not," he confessed bewildered.
"Good"
For a long moment they sat in silence, devouring food the little girl brought. Duke distantly wondered if this was how night shift spent their snack breaks. It felt nice.
He was finishing his part of brownies when girl spoke up again.
"Do you feel better now?"
"Yeah" he was a little surprised to realize that it was true. He'll have to note down what she put in this 'bad day combo'. "Thank you"
"Don't mention it," she shrugged with general gesture of dismissal, "You're one of my cousin's favorite heroes because you're vaguely his age and handle Gotham alone during the day and I quote, "she did honest to God air quotes at that" 'As only hero in Amity-' which is a lie by the way, Val is doing great and even if he suddenly got problem with how she feels about his alter ego, he still has Sam and Tuck even if they're usually more of moral support. And I helped when I visited, so no, he isn't only one. Anyway as he said 'As only hero in Amity, my heart goes out for anyone who deals with this type of bullshit so Dani if you absolutely have to prank heroes, leave them out of it, especially Signal, he can't be older than Jazz, he doesn't need any more mess to handle.' All aliens and lanterns are also off limits because he is a space nerd. But you aren't space related so I'm like 80% percent sure he has celebrity crush on you," she slurped more juice, unbothered.
Duke was thankful he wasn't swallowing anything because for sure she would choke. He took split second to consider addressing... this whole situation and choose not to. He was not ready to be anyone's celebrity crush.
"Your name is Danny?" he asked instead.
"Dani" she corrected" with an I"
"Ok. It's nice to meet you Dani-with-an-I," She giggled, nodding her head slightly.
"It's nice to meet you too Signal"
Duke stood up, stretching a little. Dani joined him after hastily putting all the trash in her bag. She was a little higher than expected.
"I have to get back to my patrol"
"Cool," she drifted back a bit, making him realize that she was floating a few inches above the ground. She fixed her bag on her arm.
"Hey, can I hang out a little bit more? My cousin will go green out of jealousy when I tell him," she added with a mischievous smirk but Duke could tell there was more to it. He took a moment to consider it, which apparently made girl nervous "I can be invisible the whole time, like before," she offered, disappearing in the meantime. He could still tell where she was, because of her heat signature and other waves she excluded but for regular people she would be no different than surrounding air.
"Yeah, you can hang around and you don't have to be invisible. Just don't get in my way when I have to actually do some fighting."
She popped back to visible spectrum and pouted like Damian whenever he got benched.
"I can fight, y'know? I stopped mugging on a snack run."
It was ten god damn minutes, how could she get so much food and stop mugging in such a short time?!
Oh, right, superspeed. Still, impressive.
"I haven't seen it-" he started, channeling all Dick-trying-to-wrangle-Damian-into-socially-acceptable-activity energy he could muster "-so I don't know how you fight or even what powers do you have. If we tried to fight together we would trip over each other" It was a bare faced lie, Bat training made sure of that but he knew for fact that if he said anything else, the girl would be mad and probably did her own thing.
Was that what Bruce thought about all of them?
Oh no.
Dani still looked displeased but after a moment of consideration she nodded with a defeated sigh.
Suddenly she straightened like she got struck by lightning and whipped around.
"Wha-"
She just shushed, raising finger to her mouth. Duke did indeed quietened.
"I have enhanced hearing," she whispered "There is a mugging somewhere this way."
"Let's go then," he shot his grapple, waving his other hand at Dani to come with him before he jumped off the roof. He heard the girl giggle as she flew right after him.
"After this you'll show me the coolest gargoyles, okay? Sam asked for photos"
"Okay"
It seemed that the end of this patrol wouldn't be as bad as the start was. Hopefully.
And afterwards he was going to lock himself in his room until sky falls down or he was well rested.
Yeah, that was a good plan.
********
"Hey kid," Signal started, dropping from fire escape to cuff weirdo in clown mask who Dani just fought. He did it deliberately slowly to show her how to do it like he always did. She choose to not be to annoyed at being called kid again and noted to herself to come up with good codename later. All her previous ideas apparently weren't cutting it and she couldn't keep going by Dani because reasons.
"Yes?"
"Who gave you a combat training?" he asked getting up from a crouch and gesturing towards roof. So it's going to be longer talk, okay.
"My cousin," well, Flashes in Central taught her some stuff but it was more rescue and reassure type of deal not punch and kick, Sam tried to get her through basics of psychological warfare in activism, Tucker sweared he would teach her some programming and hacking but never got around to it, Jazz did some emotional training and Val offered to teach her Red Huntress skills when she got back, but yeah, all in all, Danny was the one to show her how to punch people. Even though it was more of 'shit we have to fight, observe maybe, idk' most of the time. She picked some tricks from Vlad too now that she thought about it, not that she planned to give him any credit for it, like, ever. "Why?"
"I have a bone to pick with him," vigilante announced, melting with the shadows. Dani sped as much as she could to beat him to the roof. She was competitive spirit like that.
Unfortunately he was first. She made another note to herself (she was so going to forget them in next five to ten minutes) to train her speed a bit more. She got tips from the guy with the title of The Fastest Man Alive for crying out loud, she shouldn't loose with the person who technically doesn't even have superspeed!
Signal sat cross legged on the gravel and tossed her a healthy granola bar. He kept doing it for some reason.
"I'm sorry to break it to you, but almost everything in your fighting technique is horrible. Your cousin did shitty job as a teacher" he started in warm slightly teasing tone. Dani felt attacked anyway.
"It's not like he has any sort of training either," she started, trying to sound nonchalant, rolling her eyes. "Cut him some slack," She bit a snack in attempt to cover her furry. It had chocolate and raspberries, was quite tasty and she was kinda hungry anyway. She wasn't sure she wanted to know how Signal knew it though "Everything he learned is from the trial and error by crashing through a few walls. Quite hard to care about 'technique'. I at least got his mistakes to learn from so don't you dare to speak about him like that!" alright, she lost it, she can admit it. But, Signal might be cool and Danny may or may not like him (she hoped he didn't, Val was much better option) but Gotham's hero had no right to say anything bad about her template. He didn't know anything. He didn't understand.
Signal looked like he was going to say something so she put her ghostly vocal cords to use and growled.
Don't-harm-family/will-fight/ protect-mine/don't-you-dare
She didn't stop to consider how unlikely it was for him to understand her. She crossed her hands on her chest, glaring.
Turned out, growl was enough of the warning. He carefully picked his next words.
"Sorry, it's not the way I should've phrase it," he started, his mouth doing the thing it did when people were embarrassed with themselves but in an uncomfortable, a bit angry way. He understood his mistake, good. She calmed her glare a bit. "I wasn't aware of you circumstances. If you want, I can show you some tricks, Batman is very throughout with his training"
"No, thank you, I'm good" she was still mad. So mad. And she was not pouting.
"Of course you're good but you can be better, more efficient."
"No." Whatever Signal would propose to her, she wouldn't agree. He said mean things about Danny not even a minute before. She couldn't let him have it on a principle!
"I'll give you a cookie after every training," he pleaded "The homemade, tasty one"
Well, that changed things. A lot of things.
"Yes please!"
He apologized anyway.
********************
Second part
I know democratic winner in poll for now is "publish all at once" and believe me, I respect democracy, especially now that I finally have rights to do things, but Tumblr wouldn't let me. Too long or something. So, it'll be in parts, sorry guys. I'll try to post all of the parts this weekend though (or one each day, I'll see).
Yes, I didn't have a name for this fic until five minutes ago, how did you know? It's quite alright though, I think. If you have better idea I may reconsider
Ghost of fries and Hero of cookies part 2
All work words count: 14 593
Words in this part: 1 794
Summary of whole work: Duke wasn't expecting to wake up from his quick rooftop nap to some meta kid with fries. He also wasn't expecting kid to stay Or Danny asked Dani to stay safe while she was in Gotham. Where would she be safer than under the wing of local hero? And he looked like he needed bad day combo anyway
This part summary: Of new names and teasing
Beta read by @audhumla-sailor though English is second language for both of us, so proceed with this in mind. I also know all of the charaters through fics alone, so probably ooc. Stay catious if it's something you don't like
First part
Duke knew that Dani was in their agreed meeting point, he even vaguely knew where she was floating but not much more. She used her invisibility, which was weird since she knew it didn't work correctly on him. It was fifth time they met, of course they knew.
"Hey Signal, remember how you said that I need a codename if we're going to hang out in future and that all my previous ideas were horrible names?" a disembodied girly voice asked. Duke smiled. Ever since he raised the idea, the girl would come up with ridiculous names to be called, proposing them with absolutely straight face. It was expected from someone who thought Dani Phantom was a good alias. It didn't make her ideas any less amusing.
"Of course I do. Whatcha got for me today?"
"Alright, since you don't let me be a name stealer, I decided to take a sheet from local nightlife's notebook–"
"You mean take a leaf from their book?" He was sure she was rolling her eyes on him, but it didn't stop him. No one could maim English language like that with him around.
"Whatever. I chose to steal their idea and became a bird. It's only fair since I can actually fly!"
"Can't exactly disagree. So, what did you get this time?"
"You'll like that, I promise. But now, I introduce to you…"
Duke got ready to shut down every Robin iteration and all Birdgirls he could think of.
"HOOPOE!" Dani yelled, popping back to the visible spectrum. She was covered in bright orange cape with weirdly shaped hood and flimsy mask "I even did some costume changes to fit the name better–" in all honesty, one, yeah, he wasn't blind he realized, two, he needed a moment to remember how these birds looked (his first thought was 'wait it's a thing?!'). But then he got it and yeah, those were funny little creatures, just like Dani. It fitted her "–so even if you don't like it, it doesn't matter," she added, sticking her tongue out.
Duke patted her on the head. He was there, he knew it mattered.
"It's a great name Hoopoe"
Dani visibly though probably unconsciously, relaxed. Her mouth curved into a proud grin and her aura brightened. Normal auras didn't do that. He got used to Dani surprising him like that sometimes.
"Of course it's great, I made it."
Duke chose to not remind her about almost two dozen times she came up with absolutely not great names or about the fact that technically she didn't quite make this one either. He wasn't in such a petty mood. Maybe in future if he needed blackmail.
Oh, it was such a Bat thing, wasn't it? He needed to spend some more time with his civilian to get it out of himself, he liked his ability to interact with normal people in a healthy way.
*
"Wait, is your mask a paper?"
"What else could it be, titanium?"
"If you stop three muggings on the next three patrols each I'll get you a better one, okay?"
"Hey, my mask is perfectly fine"
"Yeah, but it can tear too easily. I can get you a mask that is more sturdy."
"Aha."
"It's the same material every Robin and Nightwing wear…"
"Don't care, my mask is flawless"
"..."
"Okay, better mask would be cool"
***
On the third patrol Dani joined, about a week and a half ago, they exchanged numbers. Duke knew how hard it was to come to terms with new powers on one's own and God strike him with a lightning or something if he ever lets anyone go through similar bullshit. Especially since she didn't seem to have anyone taking care of her. Girl her age shouldn't be able to hang out or respond to messages within ten minutes at any given time. Only twice she didn't do that, because she was on a celebrity hunt for autographs as she later explained. He would be teased endlessly if any Wayne or their associate learned about it, but he considered introducing Dani to Bruce. She needed help, okay?! He didn't inherit adoption tendencies.
But he hadn't done that, partially because he didn't want to scare Dani off and partially because of fear of teasing. And bet. Because of course in the meantime somehow there happened a bet.
He smirked at the video Dani sent as a response to the hydration check. She was tossing a coin and playing an elimination game to pick one juice from eight drinks she had. Steph jumped over the back of the couch to join him. At the start she was in front of him so to do that she had to run around the furniture but such minor inconveniences couldn't even wish to stop her dramatics.
"You're smiling at your phone ergo you either text your secret girlfriend/boyfriend/enbyfriend or watch memes. Show me the memes," she demanded, nudging him in the arm. Duke chuckled.
"Wrong guess. I'm texting my sidekick," they agreed it would be a funny way to introduce Dani to people who asked. Duke tried his best at this whole having sidekick thing anyway. As well as he could without help from other Bats because of this damn bet.
Steph froze for a moment.
"Your what–"
"And the lucky winner is… an apple with mint juice! Damn I really hoped it would be lemonade," Dani from the video announced cheerfully before opening the bottle" Shame it didn't make it past semi-finals. Happy hydration break. I'm going on an autograph hunt so I may not respond for the next two hours or so. Wish me luck, bye~"
Duke paused the video before it replayed. He glanced at Steph who finally rebooted.
"How come you got a kid and I learned about it just now?"
“In my defense I'm like 60% sure you're the second person in the family to learn about her. Depends if Tim got his ‘I have to know everything, gotta check body cams’ paranoid spree in the last two weeks or not. There was no teasing from Babs or anyone else if I'm being honest and no lecture from B, so they have no idea.”
“First was Alfred?”
“First was Alfred. I still don't know how.”
“That's our grandtler for you. You are forgiven but you have to tell me everything about her,” Steph demanded excitedly. “And show me the photos''
Duke snorted.
“She goes by Hoopoe and is about Damian's age. She can tell you her real name when B inevitably finds out and tries to interrogate her.”
“What if Spoiler drops by during the day?”
“You can try but give it another week and a day, okay?”
“Why?”
“We have bet that I'll hide her from B for three weeks. Tomorrow is the end of the second week. We both know how he is, he'll have questions if you randomly show up during the day."
"Stakes?"
"Speedster worth of winners favorite Batburger meal, 2 quarts of chosen drink and cookies"
"Valid. I ain't snitch, but I want to know more. Is she a meta?”
"Yeah. Powers I know of are invisibility, intangibility, superspeed, enhanced hearing and flight. Probably more. I think she already had some training with it because she has quite amazing control over this stuff. Like, it comes naturally to her. But her hand to hand is atrocious."
"Are you jealous?"
"No."
"Omg, you totally are! Don't be, she is just a baby with a better idea of what's going on with her powers than you have with yours. There is nothing to be mad about Duke, it's okay Duke–"
"Keep going and I won't tell you anything about her," he dared, trying not to snort.
"Sorry, sorry, you're doing great, please continue," she nudged his arm again "Don't be such softie, dude" He stared at her at the comment, disbelief clear on his face. Steph at least then looked a little ashamed "Okay, sorry. You're honestly doing far better than any of us would. Excluding Cass and Alfred."
"Excluding Cass and Alfred," he agreed easily enough.
"So, you think your kid has some training with her powers," she recalled eagerly.
"Yeah, probably from when she was helping her cousin. He is a hero in Amity Park, Illinois, his name is Phantom. It took very little digging even though Hoopoe does her best to stay mysterious. I swear this kid has no brain-mouth filter. But! I got my second shovel talk from her cousin!”
“The what?”
“After a week of hanging out with her, I got message on Signal’s twitter from Phantom that basically read as ‘I have nothing against you, really dude I’m a fan but here is list of my most powerful enemies, and let me tell you, there were some scarily powerful guys there, I won with all of them, if something bad happens to Hoopoe I can and will destroy you.’ After some research, yes, I think he could try and have considerable chance of success. Even if he didn’t fight would be painful enough to be a lesson. He and Hoopoe have the same powers and she worked with him for some time. She most likely learned then. She was called Dani Phantom, boy went by Danny Phantom then”
“Dear gods, their aliases were so horrible, who even let them go with it?! Are those their first names?!” Steph sounded genuinely offended by it.
“I don’t know,” Yeah, he knew, but he preferred to keep at least this secret to himself ”In boy's defense, because Hoopoe came much later, he was fourteen and Amity went to shit really fast, so alias was probably not his first concern. And it’s much better than Invioso-bill, name he was given by the press. And he uses some intense gaslighting to make people believe it’s just Phantom now. And allegedly they’re both ghosts. Apparently ghosts don’t exactly have secret identity”
“You doubt it”
“You would too. She eats, she breathes and she is tangible by default. From what I know, ghosts don’t do that”
“They don’t, I checked. I went on a research spree when I first learned about Deadman. I just thought it was so cool you know. Ghosts being real and all,” Steph leaned towards him, almost vibrating with anticipation.
“Really?” he asked, knowing what he was getting into.
“Yeah, you see…”
And on she went, releasing expected infodump as if she waited for this opportunity ever since she first read about it.
********
Some additional name getting shenanigans
Signal: I won't call you Dani in the field
Dani: Why?
Signal: Ever heard of secret identity? Name is, like, half of it. Disguise is other half but it can be exchanged with lore. Superman made it work. Just make up enough lore for people to not question it.
Dani: Oh, okay *gremlin^2 mode activated*
Random they just rescued: And who are you little one?
Dani: *looking them dead in the eyes* I am clone of dead child hero, travelling around the world to find identity separated from my template befre mistakes made during my creation make me turn into puddle of primordal liquid and my conciousness fades forever
Random: *petrified* What?
Signal: *internally* I have miscalculated
Dani: Kid Signal
Signal: No.
Dani: It works in Central
Signal: We're not in Central
Dani: Signalgirl
Dani: I mean, Batgirl exists
Signal: No.
Dani: Monochromatic Signal. Y'know, Red Robin route?
Signal: ...
Signal: Just no. Don't make my name part of your name
Next part
Do you want to see some Hoopoe doodles I made? There were redesigns!!!
Ghost of fries and Hero of cookies part 3
All work words count: 14 643
Words in this part: 3 056
Summary of whole work: Duke wasn't expecting to wake up from his quick rooftop nap to some meta kid with fries. He also wasn't expecting kid to stay
Or
Danny asked Dani to stay safe while she was in Gotham. Where would she be safer than under the wing of local hero? And he looked like he needed bad day combo anyway
This part summary: Joker goons are in for an orange surprise and Duke does not like it in the slightest
Beta read by @audhumla-sailor though English is second language for both of us, so proceed with this in mind. I also know all of the charaters through fics alone, so probably ooc. Stay catious if it's something you don't like
First part, Previous part
trigger warnings: gun violence, panic attacks, dissociation, mentions of Joker gas and what it doeas to people (tell me if i missed something, I'll add it)
Duke was having quite a good day. His schoolwork finally got lighter and up until now nothing notable happen on his patrol. Obviously, couldn’t have Gotham without at least one mugging and bank and corner shop robbery. About the last thing, if it was chain store he would conveniently arrive too late to stop it and just follow up to make sure cashier didn’t get fired. He used to be intimately close with hardships of getting necessary supplies like food or gas masks while corporate assholes were trying to suck people dry. But it was family business so he actually had to step in. He did mention secure way of getting resources to would be robbers though. All in all, not so bad, pretty good day. As for now, he was swinging on grapple to meet with Dani, armed with healthy snack Alfred demanded he took for her when he got texted on his Signal-work-phoneTM. It meant important business 90% of the time, so he stopped to check it out. Other 10% were memes from Dani that usually were worth it anyway.
Got it in one, Hoopoe texted. He opened chat expecting funny video or something instead to be greeted by:
Dani: Hey Signal
Dani: Peple aint spossedf t get out f Arkham
Dani: Amirite?
His stomach dropped. He wished it was hypothetical question but he knew better than to believe such fantasies. Things didn’t go so well in Gotham, especially not with Hoopoe.
You: Yeah, your right. What’s up?
You: You’re*
Dani: Nerd
Dani: Whatre you’re thots on clowns
Dani: ?
His stomach officially landed at his feet and decided it wasn’t enough dropping and ended up on a street below. Even if Joker was still locked up, his goons being active were bad news.
You: Where are you?
You: Hoopoe, where are you?
Dani: Clm dow I ned to chek
Dani: I have ni ieda
Dani: The box building rod
Dani: roof*
Dani: Warehouse?
Dani: That the wors
Dani: I think
You: There are over 1000 warehouses in Gotham
Dani: Idk wht yu want me totll yu
Dani: Therere other warehous arond?
You: Okay
You: Check corners for symbol and number
Back in the day everyone other than Bruce decided to take part in a challenge to count all of the warehouses in Gotham manually. They each got their sector and graffiti spray to mark counted buildings. Later it kinda turned into a way of identifying them.
Dani: Red blb with too wite dots
Dani: #83
Okay, he wasn’t too far. He risked roof hopping and checking texts to make sure she didn’t try anything stu-
Dani: Im goin in
You: No!
You: Stay where you are!
You: Hoopoe!
You: Hoopoe!
Dani: Calm down worrywart
Dani: Jus wante ti get ab look
Dani: Invisible
Dani: M not dump
I doubt it
You entered building with Joker’s goons with no back-up or plan. It’s extremely dangerous
Dani: Yeah, yeah don care
Dani: 5 goons in clown masks
Dani: Maks idk wat of
Dani: Not northern hemisphere of sky for sure
Dani: Weird containter s
Dani: Ari smells funny
Dani: Giggly i guess
Dani: U prbl know better
You: Get out of there
You: NOW!
You: Try not breathing it in
Dani: K
Dani: Ill stop brething then
You: GET OUT!
Dani: K
Dani: Why so agressive
Because Duke knew what Joker gas could do to person. He knew how it took wonderful people (like his parents) and left shells wand shadows of who they used to be. Because every gas release left him with panic attack. Because he knew it was more dangerous than even some vigilantes thought it was.
You: Wait until I get there
Dani: K
He almost tripped with how much he tried to speed up.
Dani was actually vibrating when he arrived but stayed quiet. Good. If she breathed in some Joker gas it wasn’t working dose yet. Duke had deep feeling not even Alfred’s cookies would be enough to deter her from entering. Offering her a granola bar he sat at the edge of the roof with bone deep sigh. Girl took snack eagerly, bouncing around like puppy high on caffeine.
“How about we take a note of this happening and get going? Other Bats are better equipped to deal with this,” They weren’t but he didn’t want Dani anywhere near this mess. He himself didn’t want to be anywhere near it either.
Kid got deadly still, staring at him as if she could read his deepest secrets if she looked hard enough.
“They’re scaring you” she whispered with strong feeling but Duke had trouble reading what feeling was it. He put his face in his hands for a moment. How was he even supposed to answer that?
“Joker is one of the most dangerous people in Gotham and these guys are working for him. They have guns. Of course I’m a little scared”
Judging by the face Dani made, she wanted to call him out on his bullshit but thought better of it. She floated to sit next to him, swallowing granola in few bites.
“My friend Johnny mentioned him,” she started between chewing ”he said ‘bastard murdered my baby bro Jay and Jay knew his way in fight, stay away from him Dani’. Normally Johnny isn’t so careful”
“All more reasons to leave it for others!” Duke almost shouted, hope growing in his chest. Maybe he could steer her away from it!
“He also told me to hit him if I happen to meet him. He would owe me ‘big one’ then. Do you think I could get ‘small one’ for couple of goons?!”
“Hoopoe no!”
Girl looked thoughtful and after over two weeks of working together he learned to fear this expression.
“Whatever you’re thinking, no. I’ll buy you biggest fries, just leave this–” he waved vaguely at the warehouse hoping it would get message across “–whole mess alone” There was lump in his throat.
Dani haven’t abandon whatever thought got her like that and nodded to herself few time. She drifted around a bit, shifted under her way too long cloak and finally settled with a soft smile.
“You’re scared… Terrified. You’re terrified of them,” she started calmly, like she would talk to a victim if she actually knew how to do it ”It’s okay. It’s great. Fear is what keeps humans alive,” she nodded as if she recounted something from textbook properly in front of the class “But I’m not scared and I fought people much stronger than them and I’m even better now thanks to you. If you’re so terrified, it means they need to be dealt with and it needs to be done fast. It’s okay,” her grin from soft turned devilish “I was itching for some fun fight anyway”
“Dani-”
“It’ll be quick, I promise,” she said, serious again “Don’t worry,” she stood up, saluted and fell through the roof, all too fast to react or not miss it with a blink. Frankly, it caught Duke so off guard he couldn’t even move for a few seconds after the whole ordeal anyway. He threw himself down to the nearest window as soon as he regained control over his body. His heart was stuck in his throat.
Dani tackled first goon with delighted giggle right when he crashed inside. He checked if his mask was secure on reflexes he plummeted towards the ground, moving his body to land safely on top of the shelf. Warehouses were weird place to fight. Easy to get vantage point like Duke just did but was also hard in a way. Little space made it hard to use wider streaks, easy get backed into corner. Annoying more than anything.
Dani’s wrestling match was so attention grabbing that nobody even looked at Duke, despite his far from subtle arrival. He threw himself forward when he caught telltale shine of the gun in one of goons hands. It was dumb move when Dani was so close to his ally, but who he was to criticize Joker goon’s live choices. It didn’t take Signal long to understand he wouldn’t make it on time. He had to but there was no-
Two gunshots rang in rapid succession split second before Duke got to the goon and, with swiftness granted only by adrenaline and fury people got when someone their got hurt, knocked man out cold. Before body could hit the ground he spun around to see the damage because Dani still refused to wear any armor and from this close goon would have to be Storm Trooper to miss her. Because she was most likely bleeding heavily. What if they hit something instantly lethal?
He faced a fight right in time to see Dani jumping at another goon also openly wielding a gun. He wanted to yell at her but bullets were fired before he got a chance. He looked for blood dripping from her torso while dodging another man barely taking his eyes off Dani.
“That wasn’t nice,” she sounded like she pouted! At being shot! “If I was anyone else I would be seriously hurt right now, you know?” her voice was somewhat off. Like it wasn’t quite made by her vocal cords but some awkward voice generator.
Before the appalled man could react, he got technically not too good right hook to the jaw. It was strong enough to make him unconscious and get quite loud creak out of his neck. Duke hoped Dani didn’t mess up the guy's spine. He was criminal but he didn’t deserve this type of treatment.
Duke focused back on his own fight when he made sure that girl wasn’t in immediate danger of dying. He dodged running goon again, who literally ran himself into the shelf because of that. Signal used his short confusion to hit him in the side of his neck, rendering the opponent unconscious. Okay, they made it, this was the last-
Another gunshot made his sped-up heart skip a beat. Lump in his throat suffocated him.
No, no, no, no, no-
“I shot you in the face!”
He looked her way ready to see unmoving body and red decorating concrete floor.
“There was a good quip for- oh right” she started cheerfully, entirely unharmed, before her face twisted into something actually demonic.
“Y̶o̸u̵r̵ ̶p̵e̶s̴k̶y̵ ̴l̷i̷t̶t̸l̶e̸ ̵b̷u̸l̴l̴e̶t̷s̵ ̴w̸o̴n̵'̸t̵ ̵h̶u̵r̶t̸ ̸m̷e̶, ₥ØⱤ₮₳Ⱡ₴”
She laughed in distinctly Dani way, all bright and joyful while also so not like herself, distorted and echoey it mage hairs at the back of his neck stand.
Duke froze when goon fired again and there was no way she dodged it. There was not enough space. She had to get shot. She got shot and he did nothing to stop it. A child got hurt because of him-
He looked at but hadn’t quite seen how Dani knocked out last goon and flew up to him. He heard her voice but words were impossible to understand over rush of blood in his ears. He could tell she was laughing. They should get out. Dani mentioned giggly smell in the air. It had to mean Joker gas. They needed to be out yesterday.
He stumbled a bit, forcing his leg to cooperate, half caring, half dragging girl to the nearest exit point. Fact that he could touch her and didn’t feel any blood was grounding a bit.
“-gnal, Signal are you okay? Your heart is beating weird,” Dani asked, sounding a bit scared for the first time today. Duke’s brain felt too fuzzy to care “Signal, you’re freaking out, calm down, please”
Light assaulted their eyes the moment they were out. Before he got fully used to it, he set girl in front of him and detached her cape. She may have squawked at this action but he didn’t care. She was shot, he needed to check her for injuries.
She got shot, she got shot, she got shot-
“Signal what-” he was clearly freaking her out “Oh. You think I’m hurt. I told you I could handle it. I’m fine. Signal I’m really fine. I have intangibility, bullets can’t hurt me. I’m fine Signal”
Duke wanted to make sure. Adrenaline or simple wish to not worry him could make her ignore something. He couldn’t let her. He made her turn maybe a little to roughly.
He wouldn’t be able to forgive himself if she bled out.
She was actually fine.
Relief hit him so strong he crumbled against the wall, his mind finally succumbing to the haze. It was fine. It was all actually fine.
He may have heard some yelling.
Next thing he registered was something tad too warm, almost burning his palms. His gloves did their job of protection well though. There was a herbal smell. Melissa, he registered after a moment. It took him some more time to realize that the source of the smell was in his hands. He had scathingly hot cup of melissa in his hands. He stared at a little bit squashed paper again trying to get used to the light. He didn’t even realize he closed his eyes. Sound of the paper bag made him look up where Dani, still without her cape, crouched few feet away from him.
“You back?” she asked cautiously. Duke wasn’t sure how to answer. He was and he wasn’t. His mouth didn’t work anyway. He shrugged, mindful of the cup in his hands. Blanket, he didn’t even know he was wrapped in, fell from one of his shoulders.
“I don’t know what happened but Jazz likes this tea when she needs to calm down. Though she usually needs to drink it to make it work,” Dani rambled, gesturing widely “You’re still breathing kinda funny, can you slow down? It’s not good for humans to breathe so fast. It doesn’t let good stuff from air get in your blood and travel around your body and it’s not healthy. I know, Jazz told me and she is really smart. She wants to be this doctor who stabs brain back into working. She had this smart word for it… Neurosurgeon, I think it’s this one. She said breathing like that is not good for brain so slow down? In for four, out for four? I don’t know, Signal, just calm down?”
Right, he still was hyperventilating. Duke focused on his lungs, forcing them to expand, trying to match up Dani’s slightly gasping breaths.
He really was freaking her out, wasn’t he?
Melissa was almost lukewarm by the time he was back in his body enough to drink it. It was sweet, a bit too much for his taste.
“You good now?” Dani asked and Duke nodded. He was as good as he could at the moment “Great, I didn’t want to leave you for too long so I don’t have BatBurger. I got cookies though. And I can go get it now”
“Don’t,” he caught her arm and squeezed, not sure why he did it himself.
“Huh?”
“Don’t go anywhere”
“Sure. Wanna cookie? I have chocolate chips and healthy, wheat ones”
“Chocolate”
“Okay” she nodded and fixed blanket on his arms. It was comfy. If Duke was firing on all cylinders, he would wonder where she got it.
“Don’t ever do it again”
“What is it though?”
“Jumping into danger like that”
“Oh, really? It wasn’t that dangerous, they were normal humans”
“They had Joker gas and guns”
“Intangibility means I can ignore bullets Signal, don’t be such worrywart. It’s bad for your health. What’s Joker gas?”
Question and the whole statement felt so surreal that Duke couldn’t help but laugh, choked and hysterical as it was. She didn’t know what Joker gas was. Worrying about her getting shot was bad for his health. He just had a panic attack and was comforted by a ten years old girl with cookies and melissa. What the fuck?
“Hey!” Dani pouted “Don’t laugh like that! Jazz always says that you shouldn’t laugh when someone doesn’t know something, just explain it to them! Signal!” she whined but the damn broke he couldn’t rear his hysteria back in “Alright, I’m Googling it”
She did as Duke’s laughter winded down. He was almost calm when she deemed her research enough.
“Alright, this is some nasty shit”
This sentence startled him into full silence. Dani was ten, swearing wasn’t something she did, like, ever. He must’ve scared her a lot.
“I’m fine though. I didn’t breathe it in. Did you? This laughter sounded a bit worrying to be honest”
“I’m okay, I had gas mask. People sometime laugh to release tension”
“Oh”
“Yeah. But you were in the building with it and didn’t have gas mask”
“I wasn’t breathing”
“You were talking”
“Our fucked up biology, as Danny likes to put it, means that one doesn’t mean another. I just don’t use it often because humans find it uncanny and my throat gets itchy after some time”
Something in Duke wanted to argue more but it was squashed but utter exhaustion that crashed him.
“Alright”
They sat for a long moment.
“Are you ready to patrol now?”
Duke would laugh again if he had any energy left.
“I think we should end for today. I would be useless like that”
“Okay, valid. You go home I’ll fly around a bit”
“No. You’re going home too. I don’t have enough emotional energy to worry about you getting into some mess like this again”
They stared at each other for a long moment before Dani looked away with angry huff.
“Okay. You’re worse than Danny, you know?”
“I don’t care. Go home and stay safe”
“You sure you will be alright if I go now? I can walk or fly you somewhere, not home if you don't want me to but maybe somewhere closer?”
“I’ll be fine. I can call my brother. Just go please”
“Sure. See you tomorrow, Signal. You were really brave today”
“Thank you, Hoopoe” If she answered, he didn’t hear her. He fumbled with his comm to turn it on with still shaky hands. Finally he managed and called a pick up in the form of Jason. It was great to have older brother who always had time like that. Even if it meant a lot of unnecessary questions about what happened Duke wasn’t up to answering it yet and threats of serious violence on his enemies.
Duke couldn't force himself to let go of the orange blanket. It was grounding.
Though Alfred made him hot chocolate with marshmallows. He wouldn’t repeat today for that, but it certainly was nice accent.
*********
"Humouristic" summary of this part
Dani: Yo, there are goons here. Gonna investigate.
Duke: *quietly freaks out*
Random Joker's goons: *do normal goon things*
Dani: *attacks them* HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Duke: Is this what minor heart attack feels like?
Goons: *start shooting*
Duke: Is this what major heart attack feels like?
Dani: Dude, you good? Here, get some tea, cookies and blanket
*
Dani, few hours later, texting: Hey Signal, remeber to bring back my cape tmrw
Duke, internally: Wait, this is her cape?
Duke, also texting: Wanna better one? Like Spoiler has?
Dani, somehow conveing Ghost Speak via text: Don't you dare
Thank you for reading this <3
Next part
Ghost of fries and Hero of cookies part 4
All work words count: 14 643
Words in this part: 2999
Summary of whole work: Duke wasn't expecting to wake up from his quick rooftop nap to some meta kid with fries. He also wasn't expecting kid to stay
Or
Danny asked Dani to stay safe while she was in Gotham. Where would she be safer than under the wing of local hero? And he looked like he needed bad day combo anyway
This part summary: Dani haven't considered how hard it can be to save people from house fire
Beta read by @audhumla-sailor though English is second language for both of us, so proceed with this in mind. I also know all of the charaters through fics alone, so probably ooc. Stay catious if it's something you don't like
First part, Previous part
Trigger warnings: house fire, panic attacks, temporary character death (am I over dramatic to say this if background child character's heart stops for a long moment and Dani hears it?) slight dissociation (tell me if I missed something, I'll fix it)
Dani proved to be useful addition to Duke’s patrol routine even though she couldn’t always join him, had very little actual training and was a certified mess most of the time. It was nice to banter with her in the free time, she did help when needed and her enhanced hearing was great in finding trouble he would otherwise overlook. She also often brought snacks (he did too, because girl had no idea what was healthy and in the love of god, if he didn’t try to get her in better habits).
“Fire on seven. Some people are stuck inside,” Dani blurted out and flew faster than baseline person should be able to withstand. Duke run and grappled after orange blur she became. It was less than perfect that she couldn’t tell more specifically where things were going down, but it wasn’t anything she couldn’t train.
They rarely intervened with fires, unlike Gotham’s police and CPS, firefighters here worked pretty great. Dani knew this, so her going there in the first place meant something was up.
On a fly he grabbed his gas mask. It was made to withstand Scarecrow and Joker when they released their toxins and not smoke so it should do its job. He hoped that Dani would stop before entering so he could give her spare mask and well, coordinate. But she didn’t, of course. What did he expect from kid who body tackled Joker’s goon without second thought about idk, four other goons with guns being in the same room! He only saw end of her cape in between flames when he swung to the right street. Duke made sure his mask was secure when he stopped on a nearest save rooftop to assess the situation. Fire was too big to be put out with personal means like fire extinguishers so all they could do was to evacuate.
“Hoopoe, you reckless idiot, don’t die in here,” he muttered, sure she would hear him before grappling inside too.
***
About five seconds after entering building, Dani decided that she didn’t like fires. It probably came from her time in Amity but she was far more comfortable when she could beat the root of the problem into submission. Also, it was surprisingly loud, like need-to-cover-her-ears-for-a-hot-moment type of loud. Not louder than a rogue attack, it would be really hard to beat that level of noise but fire was worse in some way. It was somewhat similar to nails on a blackboard. Not in a sound per se but in a vibe she got from it. How she couldn’t tune it out like she usually did.
She straightened herself and dove ahead to the nearest person she heard. Smoke rendered her eyes nearly absolutely useless. Though she saw, heard and felt enough to find safe routes. Of course she could go intangible and in theory wouldn’t be affected by anything from physical realm but even when intangible fire kept burning for some reason and she would prefer to stay raw to being crispy. Rescued people should stay unfried too.
She didn’t quite remember first few rescues, just that it went smoothly, she took a leaf from Danny’s book, throwing some puns and references she didn’t quite knew but from context thought they would fit. Then once outside, she kept telling them to wait for paramedics and went back inside. She was more and more on edge for some reason.
She was really glad she didn’t need to breathe as much.
Middle-aged man grabbed her arm and shook her violently, asking to save his children.
“Fourth floor, fifth window to the left. Please save them!” man cried. Dani felt kinda like snapping but took deep breath to stop herself from it. Signal would be disappointed if she yelled at panicking civilian. She could kinda relate to the man anyway. She was probably also panicking.
“I’ll save them, I promise,” she said instead, phasing out of his grip.
She heard them, little boy weakly whispering to his sister that everything would be alright as soon as the heroes would get to them. His voice was hoarse, choked, interrupted by shallow breaths while the girl sobbed. Dani darted their way. Fire unit and medics were finally getting closer.
Girl yelled when caped hero appeared in room full of smoke. They both were sitting, older boy slightly swaying.
“It’s okay, I’m here to get you out to your dad,” she soothed, grabbing them both into a hug like carry. She barely jumped away from under the crushed lamp that fell where they were half a second before. Girl yelped.
“It’s okay, I got you, it’s okay,” she muttered, hoisting kids into more comfortable position. She flew nearest way out of the rom, looking for a clear spot on an outer wall. Her stomach dropped and core spasmed when she realized that boy stopped breathing, going limp in her arms. She was panicking throughout whole of this fire rescuing mess but only then she became frantic.
Maybe it was because of the smoke that kept cluging in her throat. She didn’t need to breathe as often but now she felt like she was suffocating and was suddenly all too aware of each bit of air she managed to swallow in her lungs.
She almost dropped when they finally got out. It took less than a second for her to fly to the kids’ father. She put girl down a little to hastily before gently laying boy n the pavement. Adult was beginning to hyperventilate and honestly Dani wasn’t too far behind him. She wished Signal was there. He would know what to do. Dani only had been on one first-aid course and she spent the better part of it on reviewing memes.
She had to remember something!
Breaths! She had to make absolutely sure if he was breathing!
She remembered practicing this one, so she did as instructed, counting to fifteen instedad of ten for a good measure. Then to twenty just to be safe. She knew she was counting too fast anyway.
Boy wasn’t breathing.
He wasn’t breathing!
She wished her ears were deceiving her but there was no heartbeat too!
What was she supposed to do now?!
Oh, right, she remembered chest compression thing from movies. She could do it.
Someone yanked her back, so hard she almost hit her head.
“You’re doing it wrong. I’m nurse, I’ll do it,” young woman declared, already kneeling were Dani was mere seconds ago, unzipped boy’s hoodie and got to work. Only then halfa realized that they got circled by small crowd of people rescued from building. Two of them were calming boy’s family down. She would use some comforting too.
She scrambled to her feet, racing out the crowd. Nobody even glanced her way.
She turned around and flew back inside the burning building.
Why did it feel like running away?
*
First ambulance arrived three rescues after the boy. Dani was so relieved she had to stop for a moment because her knees buckled and flight betrayed her for a hot second. She heard only four other people inside and Signal. They would finish soon enough.
Good.
Her head was spinning slightly.
“Congratulations, you are being rescued, please do not resist” she announced with forced confidence, appearing next to the man who probably was in a gang. Thankfully he didn’t fight her. When she was back in Central City one of the Flashes told her to make sure that people know she was trying to help them especially if they seemed like the type to choose fight over other crisis responses. This man certainly did. He almost punched her anyway.
Next was boy who was far too little to be left alone. She gave him her cape. She assumed he could use the comfort it gave her. There was a reason she choose comfiest blanket to this role.
She heard Signal making his way to the last victim but for some reason it was slow going. She flew up there after the last reassuring words to the boy.
She learned why Signal got stuck about three seconds after appearing on the right floor. It was a literal epicenter or whatever it was called. The root of the problem. The literal Hell on earth. Dani stopped for a moment, downed by the coughing fit and tears making her sight absolutely useless.
Signal was talking to someone. Asking them to calm down. She wasn’t sure. Dani forced herself to stand up and go see what was happening. She was probably swaying a little.
There was young woman in the middle of the fire. There was no scent of burning skin or hair so Dani assumed there were some powers involved. Thankfully most likely she wasn't a ghost. Dani wasn’t in the right headspace to fight a ghost and as cool and competent as Signal was, he couldn’t fight ghosts either.
Woman was visibly terrified. She kept screaming, begging Signal to go away because she was too dangerous to be so close. Hero tried to talk her down. She yelled that it was all her fault and she shouldn’t be saved.
Oh.
Woman had to just learn about her ability and lost control over it. Go big or go home, right? She didn’t exactly have home anymore so…
Dani barely kept herself from hysterical laughter.
Ghost fights were so, so much easier, she just had to beat the cause of the problem into submission and trap it in the thermos. No persuade it into stopping.
It was all too hot, too loud, too suffocating.
Dani could barely think.
Creaking of the ceiling boomed through her brain, somehow getting over the overwhelming cackle of fire that made her just want to hide in the corner and cry, even ignoring absolute onslaught to her other senses.
Ceiling was going to fall down and crush all of them.
Dani could barely think, so she didn’t.
She forgot to turn intangible when she crushed through window, meta woman held tightly in her arms. Thank Ancients she was durable enough to not break her head for that. Signal could handle himself. Hopefully.
Dani gasped on fresh air. She felt lightheaded, barely cognizant from instinctual relief to be out. She was free falling, her body limp, eyes half-closed, wind rushing in her ears and on her face. It was paralyzing but not in a bad way.
It felt good.
It felt like freedom.
It felt like something she could do for the rest of eternity.
It felt-
“HOOPOE!” panicked yell cut through her haze.
Right.
She was plummeting to the ground. She held someone. They would die when they crushed.
She should stop falling.
Could she do it?
She had to.
She dropped off the blue haired woman with the nearest medic squad and ran. Or flew. She wasn’t quite sure. Her brain still didn’t feel right. But she knew she had to leave.
Next thing she knew was the pain from practically collapsing on a wall and dumpster she hid behind. From what, she had no idea. She had no idea about anything.
So she did only thing she still could.
Dani cried.
***
Duke was getting frantic in his search for Dani after that room collapsed. He knew she made it out, he saw her falling head first to the ground. He was trying to catch her but he knew he couldn’t do it on time. And then she caught herself, left Abigail with medics and flew away in a blur. And Duke couldn’t go right after her because some cop had questions. Duke did his best to wrap it up quickly but still by the time he could look Hoopoe was nowhere to be seen. He was straining his eyes trying to see any sign of her but other than the boy with her cape as a blanket there was nothing. He was tempted to ask Babs for help.
Scratch that, he didn’t have time to do this on his own. Pride and this stupid bet be damned. He turned on his comm, not bothering to go off the main channel.
“Oracle, I need you to search for white-haired preteen girl dressed in white and black. Somewhere near Rossaire street. Probably there will be no clear footage”
“Need help in search?” Steph chimed in gently “Spoiler can be there five minutes flat”
Duke considered it for a moment. Steph knew how Dani looked (as much as anyone who saw her only in photos could know how she looked) and wanted to meet girl anyway. She could be useful help. On the other hand, she mentioned before she had some important stuff. And he wasn’t sure how Dani would react to someone unknown finding her in this state. Last thing he wanted was scaring girl even more. He searched road for Dani’s past light, again.
“No, don’t worry. She just got a little overwhelmed”
“Alright, good luck with finding your kid then”
“She is not my kid!”
“Signal who-” Bruce grunted but got interrupted by Babs.
“Turn right, she entered blind zone but I can lead you there”
“Thanks O”
“No invisibility?” Steph mused.
“Thank God for that,” Duke answered, while grappling to the left. He shoot forward as fast as he could ”Or maybe not. She has to be quite out of it”
“Left again”
“Signal, who are you looking for?” Bruce asked again.
“Next alley to the right. It’s the last place I can see her”
“Thanks O.”
“Signal-”
“Later B.”
Duke landed in the alley, turning his comm off. He knew that sooner rather than later he would have to explain himself and would probably get endless teasing but it wasn’t important at the time. He searched again for past light. He run after glimpses. He stopped when he heard sniffle from behind a dumpster. He slowed down, approaching loudly. It wouldn’t do any good to scare her.
“Hoopoe?”
Her breath hitched. Duke sat down next to her far enough to not invide her personal space but close enough to make her feel not alone.
Her face was black from ashes and smoke other than where her mask was and cleaner tracks her tears were making.
Her mask was laying on a ground (clearly forcefully thorn off which ouch), cape obviously nowhere in sight. When she calmed down, he would ask what happened with it. It would probably be a good distraction. But not now.
“Hey kid. Can you try breathing a little slower for me?”
She mumbled something, inaudible between loud wheezing.
“I know it’s hard but I’m sure you can do it. Who if not you?”
Girl visibly tried, shifting around as if she tried to find some much needed comfort. Clearly, the lack of pressure her cape was giving her wasn’t helping.
“How about you try putting hand on my chest and matching my breathing? It often helps”
She moved her hand and he led it to his chest. Dani shuddered.
Slowly, telegraphing his movements Duke extended his arm and put it across Dani’s shoulders. Girl leaned into it with choked sobs.
“I know it was scary,” he muttered as she shook silently “You did so well, Dani”
Girl let out quiet, high-pitched whine that didn’t sound quite human, trapping him in the hug much stronger than child her age should manage. He rubbed her back gently.
They sat in silence, as girl relaxed a bit.
“I officially despise fires. Just not my vibes, y'know,” was the first thing she managed to say. Duke smiled, still trying to comfort her. He knew far too well what she was trying to do. He let her. Every hero needed to retreat to humor every once in a while. Majority of his family and associated vigilantes did it constantly.
“Right here with you”
She looked at him, searching for something on what little she could see on his face.
“You see more, don’t you?” she asked but didn’t wait for an answer “It was too much even with normal eyes. How can you be so calm?”
“I have normal ears and after fifth or tenth time it loses its charm”
“Yeah, okay,” she wheezed out “I didn’t expect the fire to be so loud. And smoke was a bit much in terms of texture and smell and everything”
“I would give you a mask if you waited, you know?”
He felt more than saw how she shrugged. It seemed like she wasn’t exactly listening to him anymore.
“But since you didn’t, we should get you looked up by some professional. You breathed in some nasty stuff”
Dani didn’t respond. Then she sprung up with gasp, a little out of his grasp, not standing but sitting straighter. She grinned, wide, eased thing gracing her lips as fresh tears began to create new paths on her dirty cheeks. She let out a choked laugh, more sign of relief or release of tension than actual happiness. It sounded rougher than usual, probably because of smoke and ashes aggravating her throat.
He wanted to ask what was up but it felt like the wrong time for it.
“He is breathing again” Dani cheered gently, as if unsure before repeating loudly, letting herself believe “THE BOY IS BREATHING AGAIN!”
Girl was shaking again, no bothering with drying tears this time.
Duke could guess what happened. He didn’t want to think about it too hard.
“It’s great to hear”
“Yup!” she grinned between fat tears.
They sat in silence as Dani gradually calmed down again. He knew she didn’t feel all that well yet, she couldn’t but she was probably calm enough to not break down in the middle of the BatBurger.
“I think this day counts as quite bad one,” girl said, wheezing a bit. Duke smiled, knowing where this was going. He ruffled her hair.
“Yeah, I think so too”
None of them said anything for a long moment.
“You’re up for a ‘bad day combo’ Gotham style, Hoopoe?”
“Yup” she smiled.
********
Apartment building: *is on fire*
Dani: It can't be that bad
Narrator voice: It was in fact, much worse
Kid, whose heart stopped thankfully didn't have too many issues tied to it and nothing life treatening long term. Every person who was in the building during fire left relatively unscathed. This fic is supposed to be mostly fluff I'm not killing anyone
Kid who got Dani's cape-blanket refused to phisically let go of it for solid two weeks. Later it still had to be in his sight. Understandable since his life went of the rails and did it hard. Kids ripe age of seven shouldn't be home alone. Especially not for whole day...
Dani: *still clearly shaken* Does your bad day combo include fries?
Duke, on his way to The "I had mental breakdown and need calories" Waffle Foodtrack: No, but we can change it!
Underpayed BatBurger employee: ...
Duke&Dani looking like they've just returned from war:...
Underpayed BatBurger employee: ...
Duke&Dani:...
Underpayed BatBurger employee: *deciding they don't have enough mental energy to care* Welcome to the BatBurger, can I take your bat-order?
Duke: One kids meal, please
Employee at The "I just had mental breakdown and need calories" Waffle Foodtrack, used to seeing Bats crying: *sees Hoopoe munching on her fries but in a sad way* Ah, babiest one got christened by fire already?
Employee: *takes out notebook to note down crazy combo this kid will come up with**they have every Gotham vigilante in here*
Dani: I haven't had a waffle ever before so maybe nuttella and whipped cream? I don't know, sweet?
Employee, offended: Let me surprise you.
It was great waffle, sweet enough to give sugar rush quite big group of preschoolers. It had marshmallows, sprinkles, whipped cream, jellybeans, whatever else this person on the mission found and could mix. Dani absolutely loved and devoured it.
I finally didn't forget to add read more!!!
I really want to draw Dani and Duke togheter but I can't find any pose references that satisfied me. Do you have any good ones? Can be chibi though preferably not
Next part
Ghost of fries and hero of cookies part 5
All work words count: 14 643
Words in this part: 1 685
Summary of whole work: Duke wasn't expecting to wake up from his quick rooftop nap to some meta kid with fries. He also wasn't expecting kid to stay
Or
Danny asked Dani to stay safe while she was in Gotham. Where would she be safer than under the wing of local hero? And he looked like he needed bad day combo anyway
This part summary: Steph finally gets to meet Duke's kid. And she comes bearing gifts!
Beta read by @audhumla-sailor though English is second language for both of us, so proceed with this in mind. I also know all of the charaters through fics alone, so probably ooc. Stay catious if it's something you don't like
First part, Previous part
Duke was really glad that Bruce was busy whole previous evening and couldn’t give him The TalkTM Vigilante edition. Maybe he shouldn’t because B being busy spoke trouble but he couldn’t feel too sad about it. He didn’t want to have The TalkTM though.
For now, Dani was running next to him, with a serious look on her face that was kinda uncanny. She wasn’t supposed to not be happy and some weird instincts were screaming at him to fix it and fix it now. But he didn’t know how!
Though some of his jokes caused a little smile, so it was good.
It turned potentially less good when she stopped without warning, lowering herself to the fighting stance (finally proper, which made him so immensely proud by the way). He stopped too, wishing they wouldn’t have to fight but he knew better than to latch on this hope.
“What’s up, Hoopoe?” he whispered.
“Someone is coming. Light, use grapple” Most likely one of the Bats then, they were due to a visit anyway. However better to not lower his guard in case he was mistaken or it was a prank/test. His expectations were proven right though, when purple blur flipped over the edge of the roof. He relaxed and put hand on Dani’s shoulder so she wouldn’t tackle Steph before they could explain anything. She seemed on edge like that whole day.
“Hey Spoiler” he greeted to further show that the blonde was a friend.
“Sup Signal! Heard I can finally meet your little friend!”
Dani straightened herself and tried to float a few inches up to seem higher probably.
“I’m considerably higher than most kids my age” she deadpanned. She really wasn’t though. He was still trying to learn whether her size was caused more by genetics or malnourishment. Her only family member Duke knew of was also small, so maybe it was a family thing though.
Steph shrugged, waving her palm a few inches below her shoulder, approximately where Damian reached, quite few inches over Dani’s head.
“Robin is the family’s smol violent bean and you’re shorter than him. You’re small bean, deal with this”
Little girl pouted, crossing her arms. Steph cooed.
“Oh, you even get angry like he does!”
Young meta looked like she was asking ‘Should I use violence?’ and inch towards the answer ‘Yes’. Duke decided he should step in before she acted on these thoughts. Teasing was the opposite of what girl needed at the moment. Some good fight might not be bad but maybe not with Steph.
“Cut it Spoiler”
She rolled her eyes so dramatically he could tell she did so despite her mask. He still thought it was impressive “Don’t be boring dude”
Dani growled in a way that couldn’t be fully human, just like she did when they talked about her training for the first time. Duke squeezed her arm. Girl glanced at him before sagging so much he was scared she would fall for a hot second. He exchanged concerned looks with Steph over her lowered head. It was not normal nor was it good.
“Alright, you’re not smol,” Steph agreed lightly “Officially at least. What’s in my head stays there. Does it work for you?”
Duke almost hit her in the arm. Not strongly, in a friendly manner but still. He didn’t only because it seemed to somehow work. He let his hands drop.
“Your mind is sacred,” Dani started seriously “what leaves your mouth is not. Can’t diss you on your thoughts but I’ll on your words” she shared like it was some important truth of life. Or folklore proverb though Duke wasn’t sure about the latter. Afterall he was Gothamite born and breed, he knew countryside from movies “And actions. Actions are kinda important,” meta girl added in lighter tone after moment of thinking.
“Yeah, actions are the best” Steph agreed easily “Hey, can I get it on a T-shirt? I’ll love and cherish it”
“First you laugh at my height and then you want my intellectual property for free? For shame, Spoiler, for shame?”
Steph looked thoughtful, theatrically over exaggerating her body language.
“Valid” she nodded.
Duke decided he would just watch whatever was going to happen and did damage control if needed. He didn’t feel up to anything else anyway.
“Heard your cape went in an adventure,” the purple vigilante admitted after moment of silence. Dani shrugged rubbing her arms awkwardly. Duke knew she normally would fix said cape. It was her way of fidgeting.
“Yup, it’s good way to put it,” girl nodded. “Somebody needed it more, I hope it enjoys its travel. I should get a replacement soon”
“Well, I can’t let fellow caped crusader, who understands necessity of hood, run capeless”
Younger girl waved her hands in a flurry motion of dismissal.
“Don’t-” she stopped when her eyes locked on orange bundle Steph took from somewhere under her cloak. Opportunity to pull tricks like that had made Duke consider adding some sort of cape to his Signal suit back when he had been working on it back in a day but dismissed it. He still wasn’t looking forward to learning curve of fighting with such additional liability. He couldn’t turn it intangible when it was in a way like certain white haired cheater did.
Speaking of Dani, girl stared at Steph’s gift like she couldn’t quite believe it was real. She held her hands close to her chest but her fingers flexed in grabby motion. Her eyes were hidden behind black lenses of her mask but everything else about her face further proved how awestruck she was. Even her muted aura brightened a bit in a way that he learned to recognize as excitement.
It was still kind of weird, by the way. Normal auras haven’t changed, it was kinda their thing.
Steph wiggled her gift a bit. Dani finally took it but had yet to put it on.
“It’s for me?” she whispered so utterly shocked and small that Duke mentally did a double take.
“Yeah, like I said, can’t let you run around without it”
“Oh”
Dani’s hand was gnawing at the edge of the material as if it was some sort of squashmellow.
“Try it on,” Steph encouraged gently.
“We need to check if Spoiler haven’t messed up something”
“Signal!”
Dani snorted, which was all Duke tried to achieve.
She put it on and after a moment of shuffling she once again became orange cloak with feet. She grinned widely looking far more relaxed and settled than she did moments before. She moved around a bit like she was in model show or at least what ten years old thought it could look like.
“You like it?”
“Yup, it’s amazing, thank you Spoiler… Though it’s heavier than I expected”
“Well, I don’t know what your first one was made out of but this is material I use, I found it the best balance between durability, weight and comfiness. Still, it’s quite dense and a bit heavy. Also, I added pockets because you can never have too many of them. Plus there are few glitter bombs inside. You know, ‘welcome to the team’ gifts,” Steph explained eagerly and judging by Dani’s smile, she loved her gifts. Duke would be a little worried on a Gotham crime’s behalf if it wasn’t well, crime and if he wasn’t all there to watch chaos these two would unfold from sidelines with bat-popcorn in hand (though it wasn’t really a thing yet, he would have to mention it to Tim or Jason). For now though, they really should continue on the patrol.
“Now that introductions are over, let’s get going. Crime never sleeps or something,” It was really weird to be the organized one. Before Dani showed up, on a day shift he was a sailor, a captain and a ship (or maybe Gotham was a ship-), We Are Robins days were chaos in purest form and shape and when he was called out for a night he usually was too tired to behave and was just additional mess to organize (on purpose, let him have his goddamn sleep, he wasn’t Tim).
“Okay,” Dani agreed cheerfully “There is a robbery at the greek diner we visited last Thursday. ‘s been going for five minutes or so,” she added unbothered.
“HOOPOE!”
“What?”
***
Spoiler jumped through the open window of the diner with a graceful roll, glitter bombs at hand. Hoopoe and Signal came inside right after her.
“Spoiler alert!” purple girl yelled, throwing two bombs at robbers heads and kicking third one in the ribs.
Dani decided that she liked Spoiler right then and there as she threw her own brand new, orange(!) glitter bombs at remaining criminal.
***
Three of them were running through the city mostly uninterrupted after diner mishap. Steph tried to engage Dani in quip battle but younger girl for once wasn’t jumping on occasion. She kept close to Duke and his only reaction was smug smile in Spoiler’s direction. That’s what she got for trying to steal his sidekick.
“Oh!” Dani exclaimed delighted, stopping abruptly, a smile that spoke trouble gracing her face.
“No, we’re not busting Joker’s scheme by jumping into the meeting to beat them all up without proper back up, again, Hoopoe. They had guns, Hoopoe.”
“Wha- Wasn’t last time enough? Anyway, I heard there is fan meeting with Martian Manhunter in Los Angeles tomorrow,” Great, so no giving him heart attack right now. Thank God for that.
“Shame he won’t make it, huh?” Steph mussed “He is in Illinois right now, isn’t he? It would take him two days driving to even get there”
Dani’s expression looked thoughtful “It’s quite far”
“Yeah, around… 2,500 miles from here”
“Huh”
“What got you thinking kid?” she inquired, ruffling her hair.
“Not a kid and I thought- there is kidnapping at three!” Dani darted in that direction before finishing sentence. Duke jumped right after her slightly scared. She was not ready to handle stuff like that without back up and she would try if he let her run of like that.
********
Steph: I'm meeting my almost niece tomorrow what should I- *gives a gremlin child an ultimate weapon of chaos*
Sometime before this part:
Steph: So, how is your kid?
Duke: She is not my kid!
Duke: By the way, wanna see video I saved of her doing proper side kick for the first time?
Danielle "looks like 10 years old is 10 months max" Phantom: I am in fact much higher than most kids my age
Duke "whoever is feeding this tiny child does bad job at it" Thomas & Stephanie "it's just a lil baby" Brown: Yeah... sure...
Next part
"Tag list" (i haven't expected to ever make it)
@pickleking8
Ghost of fries and hero of cookies part 6
All work words count: 14 643
Words in this part: 2 686
Summary of whole work: Duke wasn't expecting to wake up from his quick rooftop nap to some meta kid with fries. He also wasn't expecting kid to stay
Or
Danny asked Dani to stay safe while she was in Gotham. Where would she be safer than under the wing of local hero? And he looked like he needed bad day combo anyway
This part summary: Batman wants an explanation. His kids however, wouldn't be themselves if they did add some chaos
Beta read by @audhumla-sailor though English is second language for both of us, so proceed with this in mind. I also know all of the charaters through fics alone, so probably ooc. Stay catious if it's something you don't like
First part, Previous part
“Signal.”
Duke bit back a sigh as his last hope to leave Cave undiscovered disappeared. He shot Steph message of:
Having The Talk. Come as moral support
and turned around to face Bruce.
“Yes?”
B grunted in disapproving and ‘Signal report’ way but Duke decided to buy some time and answer only questions that were actually asked. He slowly sat at the briefing table and looked at the man expectantly.
Lift chimed and moments later Tim and Cass went to Batcomputer and training mats respectively. Duke was, like, 80% sure they were there to eavesdrop. He knew them well enough. He knew them well enough.
“The girl”
“Izzy?” Was Duke annoying on purpose? Yes. He really didn’t want to have this talk. Like, at all. Psychological warfare it was “I mean, I know she is civilian and you don’t approve but at least she isn’t doing anything illegal, right? Like, you know, robbing museums or killing people?”
Bruce looked repulsed and Tim snorted.
“Low blow Narrows, low blow” Jason announced through speakers. He was slightly winded as if he just finished a fight “Good job kid”
“So you’re listening too, great” Duke muttered under his breath before louder he added “Is everyone who wants in on a show, here already?”
“Give me a sec- here Dick you’re going live now”
“Thanks Babs, you’re the best”
“I know. Donuts, you know which one”
“Of course. Glad we’re finally going to talk about Duke’s kid”
“Shut up, she is not my kid!”
“Steph ETA 2 minutes” Cass interrupted.
At least Damian didn’t show up- as if summoned by this thought Damian stomped down the stares, Alfred the Cat curled in his arms. Maybe others had a point, calling him Demon kid and stuff.
“What is an emergency?” he demanded and Duke decided to take what little relief he could from the fact that Bruce seemed equally defeated by sheer number of people around for this talk.
“It seems like… oh, literally everyone lost an adoption bet” Babs explained. Huh, so Steph didn’t change her stance.
Damian looked genuinely terrified as he muttered “No” eyes darting between everyone present in silent calculation.
“Oh, shut up” Duke whined knowing all too well his stalling had to come to the end. Maybe it was wishful thinking but he almost heard roar of engine of Steph’s motorcycle. Her presence would be double edged sword but she would help him advocate for Dani and that was more important.
“Thomas, what have you done?!” if it was anyone other than Damian, Duke would call sound he made a whine. As it was, he preferred his entrails to stay inside and since the boy showed up, called by thought, the older boy preferred not to take risks.
“Nothing, Babs is overreacting”
“Don’t deny it. She went about it kinda Tim Lite style but it worked”
“I don’t even know her surname, where she stays or really, anything about her life outside of our patrols, how do you expect me to go about adoption?!”
“B knew even less about me when he decided, yes this tire thief is my new son!” Jason chimed in and Duke knew he was grinning despite voice modulator.
“What from my origin story was lost to make Lite version?”
“Identities weren't breached as far as we're aware. Just ‘came one day and refuses to leave’ part and some light stalking. She was smart about it, invisible, keeping out of sight and to the hot spots. Wouldn't find her if I didn't know she was there”
“She could still just not tell, I mean I knew for years before telling anyone…”
“There is no way. Believe me, she has no brain-mouth filter, I swear”
“But-”
“She introduced herself by her first name,” Duke deadpanned ”She told me civilian names of heroes from her hometown, in context that didn't require me to do any actual research to clue me. I did anyway. I don't think she even realized she did it. If she knew our identities we would know already”
There was a moment of silence as everyone digested the thought of just how gigantic breach Dani accidentally caused.
“Well, it's as good of a proof as we can get for now,” Babs bristled.
“Who let her in on such secrets then?!” Damian sounded genuinely appalled and Duke wasn't too surprised.
Like on a cue, Steph stormed inside on her Spoiler in civies. Bruce looked about ready to get aneurysm. Duke was a bit glad that everyone was doing such good job in distraction department.
“IT’S OKAY, WHY? BECAUSE I AM HERE!” Steph yelled, jumping from before her vehicle fully stopped. She threw something small in general direction of Batcomputer “Timmy plug it in, I made a PowerPoint!”
Duke felt blood leave his face. He wasn't sure if he wanted to know what Steph put together but he probably didn't. Tim opened it anyways.
WHY HOOPOE IS ADORABLE&CHAOTIC BEAN AND SHOULD BE PART OF THE TEAM
The title slide said, one of the clearest photos of Dani from before she started wearing mask in the background. It was close-up of girl smiling, bits of brownie on her cheeks.
“Was this photo taken with a goddamn calculator?” Tim asked with disgust so clear Duke could taste it. Metaphorically of course.
“Nah, just body-cam. Her powers mess with technology a bit”
Tim still looked displeased at the craftsmanship.
“Don't worry, it's not a bad photo. Baby Bird is just being perfectionist,” Dick placated.
Duke didn't realize that Damian froze until he unfroze and made his way to the screen, stopping less than one foot away from it. His movements were rigid, his face scrunched with distress. Alfred the Cat escaped its master probably due to hoe tense he was. Everyone in Cave quietened as soon as boy took first step and expecting mood had to run through microphones because nobody from the on-line crowd quipped in.
“This is the green of Lazarus” he whispered finally, sounding actually scared. Jason swore. Bruce and Cass visibly stiffened. Tim choked and he wasn't even drinking. Dick did his whinny breezy name saying thing when he wanted explanation and felt lightly betrayed.
It was Duke's turn to freeze because… it wasn't. Of course he wasn't all that well versed in the Pit, less alone its color but he did bust quite a few trafficking rings with Jason and he saw his eyes afterwards all raging, toxic, neon green glory and it wasn't the same as Dani’s. As much as he liked English and how good he was at it, it failed him at simple task of describing the obvious difference between each other. He'd have more luck describing tastes with set of color samples from IKEA or something. And really, even if he tried he would lose the fight of competence with Damian. Who wouldn't. But-
“There is no way she has any connection with LOA”
“Why is that?” Damian seemed to misinterpret it as challenge like he always did when emotions were running high. Duke took a deep breath. Well, it was a moment to use all of his diplomatic skills and speak in the language of the demons.
“I've seen her fight. She would be utter disgrace”
“It does not prove-”
“It does” Duke interrupted with the tone and mimic of person who saw too much because he did ”None of you have any say until you watch a tiny and I mean tiny ten year old tackle five Joker goons like it's a joke, by sheer virtue of super strength and intangibility-means-I-can-ignore-bullets-Signal-don’t-be-such-worrywart. She should get shot, like, three times at least. And she kept laughing!” he was low key wheezing at the end because even after all this time (a week) it was fucking horrifying. Bruce made a huff that meant he was laughing and put a hand on his shoulder as a sign of support. Dick's lighthearted laugh sang from the speakers.
“Don't worry Duke, it never gets better” B said with mirth.
He refused to elaborate whether he meant ‘kids keep jumping into danger like there is no tomorrow‘ or ‘it's equally terrifying every time’ and Duke decided to reflect on that sentiment later. It put some things into perspective. A lot of things if he was being honest.
Also, he was not ready for stuff like that to become even semi-normal occurrence. He was ready to give her all of his Alfred cookies if it could change anything. He knew it wouldn't.
“Do you have any other evidence that your new acquaintance does not just fake being less experienced to make you lower your guard?” Damian asked warily.
“I had to teach her out of putting her thumb in her fist,” he deadpanned. Several people hissed in empathetic pain. Steph coughed to bring attention to where she stood in front of Batcomputer, other slide of her Power Point open. Duke recognised video from his body-cam.
“Exhibit A” she announced. She played a video with Dani’s first mugging attempt he witnessed. Let it be said, it was a disaster.
“Exhibit B '' One of Dani’s most epic fails at side-kick that ended with her falling face first to the ground.
“Exhibit C” Dani fumbled with zip-ties, looking at him utterly at loss.
“Exhibit D” the talk about her prior training.
“What’s was that sound?” Dick obviously on the verge of cooing when girl on video growled. Steph stopped video.
“Very angry kitten” Tim stated with soft smile.
“Honestly, furious girl” Cass corrected “She was really mad at you”
“Yeah, I know but promise of Alfred’s cookies was enough to placate her”
“You gave her Alfred’s cookies?!”
“She started by giving me a lot of food on a really shitty patrol, had to repay somehow”
“Was it from your share or-” Dick asked like it was most important thing in the world.
“Miss Hoopoe was added to my plans after she picked her new name” Alfred explained and shit, Duke really should get used to how man just appeared sometimes. Jumpscare the original.
“Alfred, you knew?” Bruce sounded so utterly betrayed.
“I have yet to meet her but I was informed about her presence about two weeks ago”
“He caught me printing mask for her”
“About that” Steph clapped and skipped her slide show “Look at thi clueless child with such horrible disguises and codename ideas” There was whole list of every name Dani wanted to try out and photo of her bare face. Duke kinda repressed his memories of it. It was worse than he remembered.
“Did she really tried kenting that?”
“Got it after her cousin. He used his first name as part of his alias for almost half a year” Duke admitted in carefree tone, knowing it would cause a mess.
“Cousin?!” several people yelled in surprise.
“Caped cousin?!”
“Yup. Small time hero from Illinois. As far as I’m aware she’s alone in Gotham but they’re in regular contact and she has strong believe that he can and will help her if she used her panic button”
“Who in their right mind let’s kid alone in Gotham?!” Jason sounded about ready to strangle Phantom.
“He seems to be fifteen himself. And has anti-meta parents if I’m picking things up correctly. She didn’t mention them much. I highly doubt she has present parents at all, so…”
“What the hell Narrows.”
“I don’t know, it’s just a wild guess”
“Does it call for the rescue?” Steph asked eagerly.
“We’re not going to Illinois to rescue Phantom if he doesn’t ask for it. He has means to it” Bruce interrupted with bone deep sigh.
“How do you know I meant Phantom?” Duke perked up because he never mentioned this name.
“He is from Illinois, looks almost the same as far as I can tell from the photos and they share a lot of powers”
“I didn’t know you knew about random kid hero from other state?”
“He dropped by on few Justice League’s mission. There is still dispute whether we should approach him in his city or not. He was very clear on his opinion that we should stay away. I think we really shouldn’t”
“How you haven’t gone or sent anyone there yet?” Tim teased.
Bruce just stared at him then gestured at mountain of cases they were currently working on. Yes, they were printed. Apparently for man it made it easier to work on them like that.
“Can we focus back on untrained child you let join you on patrol, Duke?”
“You act like I could stop her from doing her own thing if I didn’t let her. Plus, even though she doesn’t have combat training, she can handle herself well enough. And has this damn intangibility that makes her really hard to punch”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t tell anyone other than Alfred and Steph and I wanted to wait a bit before leaving her to the wolfs”
“The bet”
“Shut up Steph”
“When did you plan on letting us know?” Bruce ignored what blonde insinuated. Duke was utterly grateful for that, he knew he would get lecture for that later but he was more than happy to leave it be for now.
“Somewhen next week. I hoped to introduce her gradually but apparently everyone knew already?”
“Kids tell me things. Hoopoe made a good impression on them” Jason explained.
“Hero sightings on Twitter” Dick admitted without a shadow of shame.
“What he said” Tim agreed “This person from crochet dolls made one for your kid too, so in public eyes she’s our already”
“For the last time, she isn’t my kid!” Duke groaned but as always went ignored.
“Nobody expected old man’s tendencies to rub on you so fast, Narrows”
“Shut up and this is half a reason I didn’t let you meet her. All of you”
“With all due respect Duke” Babs started teasingly “You gave us ammo yourself. You improved her diet, you brought her to The Food Track Of Mental Breakdowns, you teach her stuff, you check in on her almost as often as her cousin and their friends do…”
“How did you hack her pho- No, wrong question, why?!”
“We’re all paranoid bastards, I needed to check out the newest bird. She legally doesn’t exist btw so I suspect some shady stuff with her birth but otherwise nothing sus about her. Comms and trackers for her are waiting in drawer C19. You will give it to her tomorrow”
“Aye, aye captain Oracle ma’am” he joked.
“Wait, you showed her The Food Track?”
“She deserved it” he gritted out.
Before this could turn into a fight or something, Alfred demanded:
“Since we are all on the same page now, I would like to extend an invitation for family dinner to miss Hoopoe”
“We’ll eat it down here in full costumes”
“As you wish master Bruce. Master Duke make sure to let her know”
“Of course Alfred”
And he planned to do that but Dani didn’t show up. He hadn’t thought much of it because she was unpredictable like that. She tended to disappear from the face of the Earth for a day or two and return with tales of her “autograph hunting trips”
But then she didn’t show up on the next patrol too. It was unprecedented. And she hadn’t responded to the check in. Three times in the row. He was getting kinda sick from the stress.
He knew Dani well enough, she wouldn’t ghost him like that and in Gotham disappearing meant three things: getting kidnapped, trafficked or six feet under. To their knowledge, Dani didn’t have anyone who would pay ransom for her other than Signal and no demands were made so the first option was out.
Bats launched full fledged search.
Duke himself found and busted two trafficking rings in three weeks which was around how much he did in two months on a daily basis.
Thanks to Oracle, they found Dani’s utterly crashed phone in the dead end in the Narrows. It didn’t look any better.
Duke really hoped they wouldn’t be too late.
With each day it seemed more likely.
********
Bruce: *wants to have private conversation with his son about unknown child he's been working with*
All of the Batfam: Hello there
Duke: I managed to keep Dani secret my family of detectives!
Everyone other than Bruce: I knew for past two weeks, but goood job kid
Random o Twitter: I'm sooo disappointed with Signal for letting Hoopoe fight crime. She is just a little child, she shouldn't have to witness Gotham's worst
Other Random: Have you heard about Robin????? Have you seen teories that Signal is teenager???? With proofs????? Are you mad at child for not taking proper care of the other child????? That's messed up my dude/gal
Yell at Batman
Signal: You act like she isn't personification of feral cat I try to coax home so I can prevent her from getting in trouble. I dare you to try and stop her
Phantom: I do too, 100$ if you manage. It would save me from so much stress
Random: Now, who the f*ck are you?!
(Guess who never touched Twitter with 20 meters stick in her life)
Next part
Tag list: @pickleking8 @mynameisnotlaura
Ghost of fries and hero of cookies final part
All work words count: 14 643 Words in this part: 244 Summary of whole work: Duke wasn't expecting to wake up from his quick rooftop nap to some meta kid with fries. He also wasn't expecting kid to stay Or Danny asked Dani to stay safe while she was in Gotham. Where would she be safer than under the wing of local hero? And he looked like he needed bad day combo anyway This part summary: What happened to Dani (author needs a certificate for being little shit) Beta read by @audhumla-sailor though English is second language for both of us, so proceed with this in mind. I also know all of the charaters through fics alone, so probably ooc. Stay catious if it's something you don't like
First part, Previous part
Dani packed her stuff as soon as she got back from patrol. While doing it, she called Tuck and Sam to coordinate travel plan with them and to make sure she heard where and when correctly. Danny’s birthday were coming, an alien’s autograph would be a good present. Unfortunately she wouldn’t have time to get any of his merch on her way so the sky map she printed in Gotham’s Public Library would have to make it. Because of Sam’s demand she stocked herself in protein bars, other high calorie snacks and tons of drinks. Guy at the register looked disturbed but correctly guessed it wasn’t his business. Thanks for physics meets magic mess that made her backpack lighter. It worked like thermos in a way, though she didn’t even try to understand it.
This flight was going to be challenge not only to her speed but also, mostly, her stamina.
Ancients let her survive.
*
Turns out, phones couldn’t survive falling from over a hundred feet at around 60 miles per hour. Well she had all important numbers (Jazz, Val, Tuck, Sam non- and yes-emergency Danny) on paper phased inside her hip. From Sam’s money she could buy one in Los Angeles and explain the change of number then. She would have to come up with an excuse though.
She wasn’t going to admit she got distracted and bumped into a bunch of pigeons, got startled and dropped her phone like a silly child.
********
I know I could and should post it with previous part but I wanted to build the tension.
Batfam: We will finally meet our almost niece! Dani: Oh, look, plot convienient reason to leave city fast! Dani was setting up most intense and insane work-out playlist known to mankind to get her through her journey when she bumped with these pigeons face first
Starting notes are longer than this part.
Shit, I really should put it with previous part but the tension and potential for drama aaaa I couldn't resist
and @audhumla-sailor is an enabler
Tag list: @pickleking8 @mynameisnotlaura
# 17
The Justice League try to threaten Danny saying that if he dose not start talking then they will have to hand him over to thr GIW when Danny does not talk they tell him that there going to connect the GIW when they leave his cell and go to the camera they had there heart drop when they see Danny pull out a little vile and what look like a red flower be eaten when they run un they hear him say " I would rather die a second death then go back to the table." before pasting out
DC X DP Prompt #4
It turns out that one of the things Danny inherited from Bruce was his need to make contingency plans.
Or: Danny's family finds out that he has contingency plans for all of them, including if Danny turns evil and how to permanently stop him
Bruce feels a certain way when he finds out his son has a plan to basically commit suicide.
Unknown, the Wandering Hero
So! We all know the typical Vivisection AU, right? Danny is revealed to his parents and they take it in all the wrong ways. They capture him, Vivisect him, and eventually he manages to escape with the help of his friends.
But what about his Rouges?
Sure, we all like to think of some of the more friendly ones like Ember, or Sydney, or Johnny 13 and Kitty, but he has WAY more Evil Rouges than good ones.
Without Danny there to reign them in, the Rouges spread out across the world to fulfill their obsessions, unhampered by the Heroes and Villains of the world that have no means to fight them.
And Danny? He feels responsible. He was the one to open the Gate, he was the Sacrifice, the one to let them through. And when the going got tough he just up and left? No, that won't do.
His Obsession is Protection for a reason, and nothing has changed. All he needs to do is expand his area of focus a little.
Danny, after healing up, starts wandering the world in search of the Ghosts who have escaped into the Mortal Realm. He battles all of his old foes, as well as many new ones who he hadn't met before.
His travels take him far and wide.
He defeats Skulker in Metropolis, as he is trying to hunt down the Super Family for their pelts. They are the last of their race after all, so he is inclined to try and hunt them. Honestly dealing with Skulker was easy, dealing with the Rich Asshole who was funding him was a nightmare.
He chases down Spectra in Gotham as she tries to feed on the misery of an entire City. (Thanks to @impyssadobsessions for the idea, this Prompt specifically). She is actually a very tough fight, especially powered by both the Misery of an Entire City as well as his Own Misery, but he manages.
He defeats Technus is Central City, as he tries to Raid Star Labs for their advanced Tech. It actually took a while to beat him after he amped himself with all that Power, and he did need help from the Local Hero to deal with him. He's just thankful Technus is one of the more "Harmless" ones.
After every Victory, he sends them back to the Realms using the Banishing Spell that Sam taught him a while back (the only bit of magic he ever really managed to master).
He knows they'll eventually find their way back out, but it's all he can do anymore. It's his eternal Punishment for unleashing them out into the World in the first place. He was the Catalyst for this Situation, now he was tasked with Fixing it, no matter how long it took.
...
The Justice League is caught in a tricky situation a the moment.
In the past few months, they have been encountering more and more of these Extra Dimensional Beings known as Realms Ghosts across the World.
Justice League Dark has had some success in battling them, but even they are getting tired of having to deal with every single incident alone.
They did get approached by a Government Agency known as the Ghostly Investigation Ward that seemed to want to help, but it didn't take long to realize that their main Aim was to Genocide the entire Race. The JLA had quickly cut ties after realizing that, and took what little Tech and Information they had been able to gather.
Still, it wasn't easy to deal with these Entities.
Thankfully, they have had some outside help. An Unknown Being has been routinely showing up whenever a Realms Ghost appears and defeating them, before using a (as described by Constantine) "Rudimentary Banishing Spell held together by willpower and luck" to send them back to their home Dimension. There's honestly no way it should be functional, but he did make it work either way.
They don't know much about this Unknown, aside from the fact that he seems to be the only one able to consistently damage the Realms Ghosts. His Powerset leads them to belive he may be from the same Dimension, or at least drawing his power from the same Source, but as he actively avoids the League and takes every opportunity to not talk to them, they know they aren't getting any answers any time soon.
Over the past few months, they had affectionately started referring to him as Unknown, creative they know, because they could never get his Real Name. Sure, some of the Realms Ghosts seemed to recognize him, but they always called him stuff like "Whelp" and "Punk" and "Usurper", which were not very good names to use when referring to him. Although the last one was a bit concerning.
They had only managed to trade a few quick words with Unknown in the past few months, but it was enough to get the Gist of it. He was just doing his job, sending the Realms Ghosts back where they belonged. There was apparently a Tear in Reality letting them through, but he seemed hesitant to reveal what he knew about it.
After a few months of sparse interactions, they eventually managed to convince him to at least take an Emergency Communicator. Just in case. They even let him take it apart to look for any Tracking Devices, which earned them a small bit of trust. They took whatever wins they could.
Fortunately, it seemed he never did need it. In fact he was getting more and more efficient with every battle, defeating his foes in half the time it would have taken before.
Unfortunately, it didn't last forever. One day, the Communicator went off, a distorted voice quickly saying, "Need backup, some of them decide to Team Up" before cutting out.
They quickly rushed to his location, finding an active battlefield with no less that a dozen Ghosts battling Unknown. And he seemed to be on the ropes.
With their arrival, the combined force of the Justice League and Unknown eventually managed to defeat the Group of Ghosts. Justice League Dark volunteered to work on the Banishing Spells while the others cleaned up the damage from the Battle.
One of them approached Unknown to make sure he was ok, and froze.
During the battle, Unknown's Mask had been Torn off, and they could finally see the face of the Hero they had been working with for the past few months.
And he was a Child.
Danny, the Young Justice member snippet nr 1
these snippets aren't connected in anyway but just some little scenes I came up with, everyone is welcome to build up on them if they want to
unrelated snippet nr 2, unrelated snippet nr 3(?)
“Thank you, young man,” elderly man, a civilian, said to Phantom, squeezing his shoulder when the boy transported him away from the battle into an established safe zone. Hero froze for a moment, blinking rapidly.
“You’re… welcome?” he squeaked and flew back to fight the first chance he got, still dazed.
He was lost in thought the whole time he worked after that, rescuing some teen girls too curious, brave and stupid to run away on their own when they still had a chance. If Kid Flash didn’t warn him, one of the goons would land a really nasty hit, which should not have happened. Phantom had one of the best combat spatial awareness out of all of them. He couldn’t always react in time, but it almost never escaped him that an attack was coming.
Something was wrong. Really wrong.
That was why, as soon as the fight was over, Kaldur approached his teammate. He saw Robin doing the same.
Phantom, to give him credit where credit is due, didn’t fly away from the scene first given chance like always. Instead he sat in the space where they were transporting civilians, hand on his right shoulder, unseeing eyes locked on some cracks in the pavement. His mouth was moving without making a sound. He was covered in dust, like all of them.
“Phantom,” Kaldur asked through Mindlink “are you injured?”
Ghost flinched and turned his head, giving the leader a shaky smile. His eyes were still distant.
“Yeah, no, I’m alright. Sorry I was so out of it. Thanks for the rescue Wally, "the boy replied but his eyes slowly turned back to where he was staring before. Other than that, he hadn't moved.
“Phantom, what’s wrong?” Robin tried, both out loud and through Mindlink. Now the whole Team was concerned.
“It's nothing, really,” Phantom answered with a distant tone.“ Just… something weird happen and I need a moment to wrap my head around it”
“What was it?” Artemis asked bluntly before Conner did the Mindlink equivalent of smack on the back of a head. It was a bit weird to see Conner as the sensitive one. Black Canary was doing a great job with helping him over his anger.
“Let him process it on his own before you demand answers,” he growled.
“Adult civilian thanked me,” the ghost mumbled with awe at the same time. For a moment everyone froze in muted shock.
This explained so much while being so confusing. Yes, civilians tended to do it. It felt great. It didn’t warrant such an intense reaction.
“That's nice,” M’gann sent carefully after a long moment.
“Mhm… Really nice”
Kaldur slowly put a hand on the arm Phantom wasn’t holding, to help ground him a bit. Despite his efforts, the ghost flinched under his touch.
“We need to go to a bioship and back to the Mountain. You should probably come with us”
He expected a fight, he had various ideas how to convince younger boy but instead he heard quiet, small “Sure”
Ghost didn’t move for a long moment.
“Phantom?” Robin asked and again, the response was a violent flinch.
“Sorry, sorry. I know it’s dumb I’m just-” he transmitted some sort of lowering melody that Kaldur didn’t know “-right now”
“Did you just send Windows XP shutting down noise?!” Wally yelled, exasperated.
“He did,” Robin snorted. Artemis laughed from one of the surrounding rooftops.
Phantom’s lips twitched with a minimal smile but it disappeared before it fully set. His brows furrowed as he stood up, shrugging Kaldur’s hand off in the process.
“Is this publicly known that I’m a ghost? Like, outside Amity? Or do people just assume I’m a meta?”
“Around 3% of discourse about you is ‘alive or not’-”Robin stated after few seconds of searching n his wrist computer “-with people saying stuff like ‘I’ve seen him breathe’ but everyone else responds with some variation of ‘Are you really going to tell kid how he’s supposed to cope with being dead? Really Jared?’ and the general consensus is that you are in fact a ghost. More people wonder what pronounce you use. Why?”
Phantom said nothing. Kaldur exchanged worried glances with Robin and called everyone else to meet by the bioship. It was a successful but tiring mission and they all wanted nothing more than to relax. After debrief because of course Batman would find things that could’ve gone better.
M’gann and Wally were already waiting by the time they got there. Martian was stiff and looked like she was focusing on some really hard task. She almost shut down the Mindlink.
“Phantom, your thoughts are really loud” she whispered out loud “Louder than normal ghost thoughts. I’m trying not to listen or to transmit it on Mindlink but it’s pretty hard. What’s wrong?”
Kaldur remembered the conversation they all had almost right after Phantom joined the Team. As it turned out, ghosts as ‘the beings of emotions’ had thoughts that Martians could read but on different frequencies than living, whatever that meant, and they were really loud. Like they were screaming on the top of their lungs.
Asphalt creaked ominously when Conner jumped down to join them.
“Sorry”
M’gann relaxed minutely before she got visibly angry.
“I don’t mean ‘shield everything’ Phantom, it’s extremely unhealthy, explain what’s wrong?!”
“Seriously guys, you’re all overreacting. It’s not that deep. I'm just weirded out a bit”
“Your brain was screaming ‘It doesn’t make sense!’ on repeat” M’gann pointed out dryly, ending the Mindlink and motioned them inside the bioship right after Artemis scrambled down a fire escape and joined them.
Phantom skillfully ignored the concerned gazes of every member of the Team other than M’gann who at least pretended to focus on flying. He looked like he was trying to figure out some really complicated puzzle.
“What did this civilian say, exactly?” Robin asked, breaking the silence with a surprising amount of caution in his voice.
“He said ‘Thank you, young man’ and squeezed my shoulder,“ the ghost explained with a wistful and a bit hazy smile. It still didn't justify such an intense reaction “I can still feel it. T’was nice. Not strong enough to hurt but… sure? I didn’t do anything, really, and he most likely knows I'm a ghost, but he thanked me anyway. No sense”
Halfway through Robin seemed to get an idea and once again started typing away on his computer. Phantom sunk into his seat more comfortably, but he quickly returned to distressed overthinking.
“People rarely make sense,” Conner pointed out.
“Nah, you just can't people yet” Wally grinned between bites of his granola bar.
“Nah, you're just an extrovert with superpowers. People make no sense,” Artemis decided in a way that ended all arguments “But gratitude after rescue is pretty typical…”
“Not for Phantom“
“What do you mean, Robin?”
“He means, I'm a ghost, Kaldur,” Phantom started “Of course they're not thanking me. I'm an ‘odd, manipulative and evil manifestation of post-living consciousness on ectoplasm‘ and ‘always hostile towards living but lack the sentience to comprehend moral aspects of my behavior‘ and ‘should be eradicated for betterment of the living realm’.” he recited almost cheerfully and it made something in Kaldur’s stomach twist. Judging by their faces, his teammates felt the same way.
“You don’t actually believe that, do you?” M’gann asked carefully.
“It doesn’t matter if I believe this or not. They do. Why would anyone thank me? Especially an adult. Teens apparently decided I'm hot so they support me, which is also weird, and kids think I'm cool because of the ectoblasts and can fly. They usually gush about being saved like ‘omg it’s Phantom’ which is still weird but not as surreal as anyone actually thanking. But that dude was probably on retirement. He wasn’t someone I would expect to have any positive interaction with. Most people his age would try to exorcize me or something”
“That certainly isn’t an aster”
“Eh, I’m fine. Most are just yelling. Problems start when anti-ghost weapons, especially guns, get on the table but I can’t blame them for that one too”
“Dude, I cannot express how far from fine this is”
“You deserve gratitude Phantom” Kaldur added “You’re doing a lot of great work”
“If you say so”
“Also, can we go back to the guns? How often do the people you’re saving try to shoot you?” Artemis asked, raising her head from inspecting her arrows.
“Amity Park is to ghost hunters what Gotham is to crime rates in the USA. Should not be counted if you want something actually similar to reality. Of course they have guns to shoot ghosts. And, let me remind you, I am a ghost-”
“I think we can talk about it another time. How do you feel, Phantom?” M’gann interrupted from her seat, intensly not looking back at them. She once again was tense.
“Still weird as hell to be honest”
“Good weird or bad weird” she pressed on. Kaldur kinda wanted to know what made her do that.
“Good… I think? I know a lot of emotions because I hang out with Jazz Fenton and she pshychoanalizes everyone but I have no idea what to call this. I’m happy that he said this, ecstatic even. But I’m still confused and cautious. Some part of me keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop, for this man to come back, after realizing I’m evil ghost and call hunters and call me manipulative ecto-scum while looking me in the eyes and smile when I’m shot at”
“Did this happen? It’s a bit too specific to believe it didn’t” Wally announced.
“As if only once!” Phantom laughed in an almost hysterical way.
“Don’t think about it right now,” M’gann demanded “Do you want to tell us more about the thanks you got?”
Next words Phantom whispered as if he was sharing some important, sacred secret.
“When he squeezed my arm, it was such a gentle gesture. Such a gentle touch” he sounded on the verge of tears.
“Was it?”
“Yeah... Sorry I’m such a mess over it” ghost muttered after a moment, trying to dry his face with his sleeve. It couldn’t be too helpful nor pleasant, considering his uniform was made mostly out of rubber.
“That’s alright”
“He was so kind and like… cautious too, y’know? Like he cared to not hurt me. When my dad pats me on the back, I’m left out of breath and have to do a few steps to not fall face first on the ground and he thinks I’m normal,” it was always a bit disturbing to hear Phantom talk about his family in present tense. They never mentioned it because they knew when it was bad idea to say something but it didn’t make these instances any less unnerving“And this random civilian seen me as Phantom, almost invulnerable and powerful ghost and chose to be gentle”
Nobody mentioned tears dropping from Phantom’s eyes and down his chin.
“That sounds nice”
“It was. And I, like an idiot, stuttered ‘you're welcome’ and escaped as soon as I could” ghost grumbled, bringing himself back from the memory. Robin actually laughed, honest and open instead of the creepy giggle he used on all sorts of villains. Everyone else soon joined and between breaths someone choked out:
“I did this so many times. So many. I could probably buy a lollipop if I got a cent every time I did it. Maybe even two”
As soon as they weren’t at immediate risk of laughing to death Robin decided to risk it again by starting a captivating tale of clueless Batman holding a baby, getting pie as a present, getting pie in his face and few others.
When he finished, the comfortable type of silence stretched through the Bioship. Everyone was just contently resting, maybe even taking a nap before the ordeal of listening to Batman's ‘Every mistake you made today with sub and sub-sub categories’ lecture while keeping themselves from laughing after all the stories Robin just shared. Kaldur himself was almost asleep when Phantom whispered:
“Is it this nice the second time too?”
“Yeah. It’s even better when you start believing it”
Danny, the Young Justice member snippet nr 3 GIW made a lot of mistakes and the biggest one was going against Young Justice part 1
As you can see by the title (I need better ideas, you're all welcome to share yours), this is kinda part of "Danny, the Youg Justice member" but as something I have more of actual idea about. So while I encourage people adding their stuff to other snippets, please let this one be. I will be adding to it. It's even partially written :D
unrelated snippet nr 1, unrelated snippet nr 2
"Hey guys" Danny greeted clearly winded, phasing through the wall. Whole Team turned towards him, some giving him a side eye “Sorry I’m late”
“You’re good, my dude” Wally answered, patting him on the back as soon as halfa landed, turning into his human form. They gave him a moment to catch his breath(just how fast he tried to fly there?) before grabbing their bags. Dick jumped and threw himself over the speedster's and halfa’s shoulders.
“Happy Harbour, we’re coming!” he yelled.
He fixed his grip when he caught Danny’s quick wince under the pressure as they left the headquarters. Judging by look on his face, Kaldur caught it too.
“So what’s on the agenda?”
“There is an amusement park in city, so we’re going to enjoy our free time there” M’gann explained with excited smile “I can’t wait to see it, I heard it’s fun”
Artemis nodded with a grin.
“I bet I can win more plushies than all of you. No powers,” she demanded after a moment, slamming her hand n a random tree for better dramatic effect.
“Stakes?” he asked, competitive like always. While blonde shared her idea of ‘no locker room duties for a month’, Danny explained all the questions M’gann asked about what even bet was and what stakes meant. Dick was sure she knew the answers to all of them but he didn’t say anything. He was trained well enough to catch Conner listening intently, despite his clear effort to hide it.
It turned into a whole Team competition.
It was going to be an aster.
***
M’gann was having a blast. Everyone already had two to four plushies, stomach full of unhealthy food and manageable nausea from the roller coaster. Wally and Danny were throwing popcorn to each other's mouths, Robin challenged Conner and Artemis to the next game. It really was fun just like she was told!
It was much less fun when literal blast shot a few feets away from them. Ground where it hit was burned. Halfa squealed, projecting a strong wave of distress. Without second thought he threw his hood on and changed his posture, frantically looking for a hiding spot.
Few children started crying, their families scrambling to get away before attackers started shooting again and hurt them. Workers, already used to working in less than ideal circumstances, quickly, but without panic warranted by recognised villains or outright invasion, shut down reinforced blinds and probably walked out to inform someone. At least they didn’t have to worry about potential civilian casualties.
“Do you know who they are?” M’gann asked, quickly establishing the Mindlink.
“Don’t worry about it” he answered, putting on crazy big sunglasses that Wally won some time before.
“My dude, we just got shot at. We have every right to worry”
“Calm down, Wally. I got shot at, you’re just close by. I’ll handle it” With a ruffle of his hair and a piece of popcorn thrown in his mouth,he turned around, just moment after the next blast almost caught his arm. He plastered a smile on his face.
“Hey, I’ve seen guns like these in laser tag! But I’ve never found them cheap enough to get without selling my kidney!” he yelled enthusiastically.
When the rest of them turned around, M’gann saw ten people in sunglasses and pristine white, holding guns straight from the mad scientist’s lab. THey stood still, projecting surprise bordering on shock. She could also feel hunter's happiness underneath it, intense enough that she considered breaking the ‘don’t mess with people’s brains’ rule. As a treat.
“Don’t worry guys, they won’t harm you. Act like you don’t believe you’re in danger. Like they're a bunch of LARPers or something” It was easier said than done, especially when Danny, who nearly always underestimated the danger, was so terrified.
“Who are they?!”
“Wally throw me a bit of popcorn, please” Halfa asked, ignoring Artemis almost yelling in their minds. In turn, he was ignored by the speedster. Three of the men turned to check something on weird sort of scanner. Danny's false smile went from cheerful to embarrassed.
“Dang me and my poor communication skills” he said, loud enough for men to hear but not enough to sound like he was talking to them, before asking louder “I meant to ask, where have you brought it and how much does it cost?”
This seemed to actually shake men out of their shock. They got furious.
“You won't trick us this time, ghost scum” one of the guys with a scanner snarled. Danny pursed his lips in childish gesture of displeasure.
“Rude much” he muttered as if he wasn’t shining with terror like a lighthouse. Robin perked up as if something got him curious.
“Wait, ghost? What do–”
“What are you cosplaying?” Artemis blurted out. Men got visibly angry but Danny smirked.
“Don't antagonize them,” Kaldur commended.
“If shit goes south I'll get you out of there, half a second flat” Wally offered.
“Thanks dude. Good job Artemis, they hate to be treated like a joke they are” halfa praised but out loud asking:
“Ghostbusters? No, they had different uniforms. But who else got a thing for ghosts?”
“Quit joking around, we caught you Phantom! You ran far from Amity Park but-”
“Who is Phantom?” Robin interrupted rudely (they deserved to be rude to them).
“Where is Amity Park, Utah? Cali?” Conner asked, adding fuel to the fire of chaos with barely contained glee. He liked messing with anyone even slightly resembling Kadmus staff and these guys marked almost all of the boxes.
“Illinois” provided chubby man who looked and felt like he didn't want to be there almost as much as they teens did. Danny relaxed slightly.
“Agent W you have no clearance to share this information“
“You were in Illinois and didn't tell me, Tommy?” M’gann finally spoke, jokingly punching his arm.
“I wasn't, I swear! I've never set a foot outside of this state in my life!”
“Quit messing around, you freak!!!” the guy, with the biggest ego and probably the leader, screamed.
“Can I please mess their heads up?” M’gann asked, pushing hope through Mindlink as hard as she could.
“Again, rude. What did I even do to deserve that?”
“Like you–”
“Operative K, I think they really don't know anything “ Agent W, the nicest out of the batch, interrupted “Maybe it left some ectoplasm on this boy to throw us off?”
“They called you it, Danny” Conner seethed, looking like only Kaldur’s hand on his shoulder was stopping him from punching all of them straight to the sun. M’gann was already reaching for their minds.
“We need to run a scan to be sure. Come here boy”
“Now, who are you?!” Robin got defensive, sliding to shield Danny from asiliants. Conner and Artemis joined him, so clearly furious that M’gann almost retreated from Mindlink. She wasn’t any calmer, it just felt overwhelming to be backed up by five other people.
“It’s classified”
Kaldur took a photo with an obnoxiously loud sound effect. Wally appeared right behind Danny, ready to evacuate him. Artemis barely kept herself from tackling the nearest ‘agent’ to the ground.
“What are you doing, boy?” Operative K splurted, absolutely flabbergasted.
“Calling the police”
“Why?”
“Robin, throw some laws, please”
“Oh, that’s easy,” the boy jumped in gleefully “You assaulted our friend and refused to state why you would have credentials to do so or even who are you. You carry modified weaponry openly in public and I doubt you have a permit, carelessly use it against minors, endangering innocent bystanders while we’re at it. You disturb public peace. I think that’s enough to get you arrested. Wait you know what, call ‘Supervillain emergency hotline’ instead, this is serious attack”
“Right ahead of you, already calling them”
It wasn’t that big of a problem even if someone tried to qualify this as spam. Young Justice Team was first to respond to all threats in Happy Harbour anyway.
Danny let out a low ‘uuuu’ with a smirk. Someone powered up a gun. Wally slightly raised halfa of the ground, ready to bolt.
“It’s okay young man,” the nice agent started, raising his hands in a placating gesture “We’re searching for a dangerous supernatural entity and may have overreacted. In our defense, Phantom is known to be tricky and we wouldn’t be surprised if it used human disguise to hide from us. Your friend gives off the same type of energy like what we use to track it so we assumed they’re the same. We’re sorry”
“Agent W you don’t have clearance to disclose that to-”
“Operative K, after the last few incidents we have to be more throughout before jumping to assumptions. Agent Gamma wouldn’t be pleased if your temper caused the next scandal,” Agent W look at them again, with a forced ‘warm’ smile “We’re really sorry for bothering you. We have reasons to believe Phantom is somewhere around but don’t worry about it, we will be on the lookout. If you see it, please contact us and we will take care of it” M’gann grabbed the ‘WANTED’ poster from man’s outstretched hand. She barely restrained herself from doing something irresponsible, like turning every man in white into a brainless vegetable.
“Later M'gann”
“But Robin…” she whined before sending a small laugh so they knew she wasn’t serious. She knew that Conner and Danny were anxious about this use of her powers.
Agent’s left and everyone relaxed. Wally put Danny back down and leaned back, jokingly rolling back his arms as if he got tired. Halfa stopped with a loud thump to sit on the ground. He was paler than usual.
Artemis shouted, alarmed.
“That was way too close” he started, aiming for a cheerful tone but missing by a mile “I’m fine, just need a moment to cool down. Sorry for that, guys. I thought I lost them over Ohio”
“That’s fine, personally I don’t care, we knew better than to expect a whole day without something going wrong, but who were they?” Wally asked, already back to eating popcorn.
Danny sighed, so deeply M’gann felt it in her bones even though she didn’t try to read him.
“I think this is the talk we should have in the Mountain”
I'm not much for naming things but: Danny's associated with green and M'gann's a White Martian, so... Spearmint (like the green and white mint candies)? Just a thought.
Prompt: Magic removed Amity Park from the map. JL didn't notice, but in an Alderaan type moment (Star Wars ref. yay!) The martian on Watchtower monitoring duty heard the residents get silent unanimously.
Of course they need to be investigated! So M'gann gets her watch partner to take over and flies there, discovering an odd green rift of death energy doing a black hole effect and it sucks her in. Danny gets landed on/ flown into when she tumbles through the rift. She tried getting a message through to JL when she felt herself getting sucked in, but the message was not received due to ectoplasmic interference.
So Danny has to figure out how to get her AND Amity Park back home!
(Just a thought. I'm curious how you flesh it out if you do!)
This is such an interesting idea, and it definitely deserves much more story than I can write in single prompt, so this here is just a beginning and I will continue. I hope it's up to your expectations
Also, I really love the Spearmint idea
*****
M’gann understood the importance of monitor duty in Watchtower, she really did. She also understood why they were taught it while still in this gray area between fully dependent sidekicks and fully independent heroes, that was the main reason the Young Justice Team even existed.
It didn’t make it any less boring. Even when she had a decent duty partner. Don't get her wrong, Green Arrow was a much better option than Batman or Superman, it was just awkward. At least he seemed equally done with it and didn't scold her for jumping between satellite cameras just a bit too fast to actually ‘monitor’ anything.
And it was only twenty minutes into the two hour shift.
One of the sixty (or so) screens, the one directly in front of her, blinked to the view of the American Midwest. She was about to skip further, when a sudden movement caught her attention. She clicked a few keys to review the footage and asked, still unsure if her eyes weren't deceiving her.
“Did the entire city… just disappear?“
Green Arrow nodded, equally stunned.
“I'm going to check this out” she spluttered, already flying out of the room and doing her best to get Zeta to send her as close as possible. It was a bit tricky when she couldn't see the keyboard. She managed though, so before the adult hero even finished yelling that it was above her skill level, she was out.
From there, getting to the disappeared city was a piece of cake.
She stopped right in tracks when the thing came in view. M'gann had no idea how to describe it. It was a green and white and black storm but not, glass, see-through dome but not, deep space but also decidedly not. It made her want to run away but also come closer, almost like it was tugging at her. Like some pseudo, mental in nature, gravitation.
Oh, wait, no. It was an actual, physical force that after a quick test turned out to be inescapable for her.
Green Arrow, perhaps, maybe probably was kinda right. It was so high above her skill level that a balled napkin from this height would cause serious damage. Thank Batman for comms that she could use to call a backup!
The comms, that, of course, didn't work the one time she needed them.
She sent the message anyway, describing everything to the best of her ability, even though it was only a tip of the iceberg. Just in case, if the magical storm thing just made her comm one way communication only. It was highly unlikely, but who was she, if not an optimist.
She barely closed her mouth, when she was jerked sideways before the whole world became blurred.
She later would have a hard time telling anyone how it felt, to be inside the thing. She was basically powerless, thrown around randomly despite clearly keeping all of her abilities. She couldn't see, couldn't tell which way was up and down, couldn't change direction even a little bit. The rumble of the thing was so loud she couldn't hear her thoughts, throwing her brain so off the loop she forgot what her name was. She was crying probably, almost puking, her limbs hitting any and every part of her body.
At first, she didn't even realize she was out, so dazed from the ride. She didn't even see the flying boy until a while after she crashed into him, throwing them both off the sky. Neither of them caught them before they slammed into the ground. Somehow she ended up cushioning the boy's fall. M’gann couldn’t breathe for a moment. She kinda deserved it for ramming into him in the first place though.
By the time she could use her lungs and behave like a social creature again, the boy scrambled off her and just crouched, intensely staring, anxious and awestruck at the same time. She sat up and gave him once over herself.
He was around her physical age, but much skinnier than her or anybofnher teammates, build like a twig. He had fluffy, white, almost glowing hair, caucasian complexion, and wore a black and white jumpsuit with a tool belt. Big ‘P’ on his chest indicated he was someone from a hero/villain scene, and from general vibes she got, M’gann was leaning towards a hero. He was kinda cute. She coughed awkwardly when she realized how long they just sat in silence.
“Hi?”
Apparently it was enough to release an incoherent babbling from the boy.
“Hi, um… Miss Martian, ma'am? I'm Phantom. What are you doing here? Is the rest of your Team going to fall off the sky too? Justice League?”
“Not right now probably”
She was ignored. Phantom just kept panicking.
“Is this some of your villain's schemes? Are you alright? You crashed pretty hard, sorry I landed on top of you by the way, do you–?”
“I'm fine, don't worry I got worse”
“Sure…”
“Sorry I threw you off the sky”
“Not your fault, really, it's fi–”
“You asked what I'm doing here. I went on my own to investigate when I saw the city blink out of existence and got sucked in. I'm not sure if my report from site made it through, but they know where I went, so they'll soon come to help, don't worry”
Phantom did not stop worrying.
“Alright, cool, cool” he ran his hand through his hair, tugging at them “The Justice League knows you mysteriously disappeared along with an entire city. This is fine, totally fine, absolutely–”
“You're panicking”
“No shit Sherlock. Someone kidnapped my city again and I have no idea how to fix it because my usual tactic is ‘punch the cause of the problem into submission’ and this time I can't punch the storm. Now you're here so if something happens, I’ll have pissed of Justice League to worry about because, of course, it will be my fault. You could be overshadowed and I have no clue what's going on but I have to fix it as soon as–”
“Breathe Phantom“ she interrupted again, projecting what the Team called ‘calming vibes’. Since it didn't involve outright entering someone's brain and humans almost didn't react to it, it was an okay thing to do without asking even on non-villains. “Remember, I'm a hero, not a damsel in the distress you have to protect non stop”
“Of course, you're not. You're Miss Martian. You're amazing, but it doesn't give me any more of an idea on what's going on nor what to do with Justice League when they come, obviously furious because everyone in Amity and their mother will testify that it was somehow my fault, especially if–”
“Hey, hey, none of that. I know you're a good guy and they’ll too. I will vouch for you if for some reason they get misled”
Phantom looked her in the eyes as if he was trying to read her mind himself without even an ounce of psychic powers. She could tell if he used it.
“I could be a bad guy,” he said seriously after a moment of silence.
“I know you're not”
“You don't know me”
“You spent almost all of our interaction agonizing over how to save your city. It's not typical bad guy behavior”
“I could be acting”
M’gann didn't even dignify it with her response other than an incredulous stare.
“ Alright, if I've been acting, I would be a lot cooler but still… I could be acting!”
“I'm a literal psychic, remember? I didn't read your thoughts, don't worry, I know it's invasive for humans. But I got a general overview of who you are, and your vibes matched pretty well with the vibes of good guys”
“Sure, of course, why not,” he muttered, taking a moment to reboot “Why is this my life now?”
M’gann decided it wasn't to her and well… Phantom wasn't wrong, she didn't know him, so however she'd try to answer it was pretty much hit or miss. But from what she'd seen of him, she was curious to learn more.
“Nevermind, let's get you a Specter Deflector before anyone tries to use you as a meatsuit” he said, catching her wrist to drag her somewhere.
She let him lead her. He still didn’t have any nefarious reasoning, and hey! Maybe she'll finish this adventure with a new teammate!
[Sure M’gann. Just a teammate. Don't worry, Danny won't be a panicked mess all of the time here]
Prompt For Dc-x-Dp With M’gann and Danny M’gann didn't expect to be dealing with Random Lazurus Green Portals forming around mars, but since she's Nearby mars she gets to deal with it... and their's An Alien with snow white hair Fighting A Glowing Vampire who's raving about Fathers and mothers?? Danny Is in such a Mood, He's on mars, which is a plus, but He's Fighting Vlad On Another 'Join me! Let me remove Jack from this plain of Reality!' and Honestly The Portals are throwing him off, Just... Bad memories, And Then, becuase of fucking course Something else happened, Vlad Gets Decked in the face and sent flying. "hey, So im going to guess that The Vampire is The Evil one here?" The Green woman asked, while Looking at Danny. While Vlad is growling and about to Throw A Red Ecto-blast at M’gann Danny gets in the way with a shield and responds. "yeah, arch nemisis and all, how are you even out here? or breathing?" M’gann Just Shrugged and said, "Well Home is home and all." Before flying to go Deck the Vampire and all. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ hope this is enough for you to Work some magic and all. and as for some extra stuff you could use, maybe danny has a Space obsesion, and His Protective stuff is Becuase of the Type of spirit he is half of? And maybe An Ice core Could be fun to go with? Ghost prince territory? with danny not wanting to be ghost king just yet. ideas for ya to use.
It's such a cool concept! I didn’t fit Ghost Prince in, but I hope you'll like what I did
*****
Danny was going to strangle Vlad, all subtleties of ghost powers no withstanding. He needed the brutal power that just wasn't fully there even when using more offensive abilities, like ecto-blasts.
He had been having a good day. Okay, maybe not a good day, it's been a long time since he had an actually good one, but a decent day. One, that seemed to start out calm, with all of his typical rogues stuck in Zone recent enough they shouldn't get out today specifically. It was Saturday, so no school, and for once his homework wasn't swallowing him, so he had a bit of time to breathe. And prepare college applications, because his grades got to an appropriate level again and he actually got a shot in academic career. No chance for scholarship like Jazz, but he could go if he played his cards right.
And then, of course, Vlad had to come into his room to harass him again. This time with the added flair of a portal gun he made for some freaking reason.
This time Danny wasn't even trying to piss Vlad off, in the love of Ancients, he tried to ignore the other halfa even when he showed up in his room, raving about removing Jack Fenton from this plane of reality. Craving to deck the guy right then and there was enormous but Jazz was on him about controlling his ✨️displaced aggression✨️ and his anger in general, so he was trying to tune Vlad out. He carefully didn't even think about transforming into Phantom. Especially since both of his parents were safe, a few states away on some ghost hunting convention that Danny managed to skip by the power of ‘I can't take more days off school, sorry I messed up my attendance early in the year’.
Well, they would be, if Vlad, being the obsessed creep he was, didn't try to follow them with a portal gun.
Danny was still willing to ignore it all, because Vlad was a loser and chances that he made something so complicated work properly were only slightly above chances his parents had. And both of them were tripping hazards in hell.
But then Vlad started blasting around his room to egg him on and hit his Curiosity rover model.
Phantom tackled him before the bastard had time to smirk. They phased through the wall, because otherwise Vlad’s back would smash into Lego Saturn V and boy was not looking forward to even more damage. His white gloved hands pressed Plasmius against the cold floor. It looked promising. Over the years he got to a relatively similar level as Vlad with his fighting abilities so getting advantage so early could in theory mean it would be over soon and he would get back to his applications.
He forgot how to breathe for a moment when he was pushed through a portal. Some most instinctual part of him, deep in his core, fell to the mindless panic because He died this way! He died this way, was he able to survive it again?! Without thinking he lashed out, trying to scratch and bite and blast because he needed to get out, he needed to get away but danger was in front of him and he needed to get rid of the danger before he could escape to safety. And Vlad kept teasing him, like he didn't know fully well what portals did to Phantom, to Danny, like he wasn't breaking the most basic rules of the anarchist ghost society.
So Phantom kept trying to punch and kick and scream, trying to get away from green ovals that just kept appearing around them leading to who knows where.
Powerful blast to the chest sent him flying back, through the portal and down to the ground, which at some point became asphalt instead of wheat field. He was too frazzled to even try stopping his fall, just half heartedly tensed waiting for an impact.
It never came, because he was caught by static. Men in red (Flash he'd realize second too late, Flash) send him a concerned smile and asked about something but Plasmius was trying to duplicate, no doubt to overshadow actual hero and it wasn't the way Phantom wanted to be introduced to the Justice League so he jumped forward, sending both halfas through another portal.
It was easier this time, when he expected it but his hands were still shaking when he put them in fists. He could handle it though. He fought in much worse circumstances.
They spawned through a few more portals, almost threw worried looking Superman off the sky and barely not killed some of Aquaman's dolphins before something changed. Phantom didn't realize it at first, too focused on rapid fire from Plasmius and on the constant lookout for new portals, but something changed.
His next blast hit the target and left charcoal black burn and almost fire in its wake. It wasn't something that happened normally. It wasn't something that happened normally unless Danny's obsessions were being served. He wasn't protecting anyone but himself, which didn't fill the protection obsession, so that left…
Space.
Oh.
He was on Mars. Or well, a bit above.
It was mesmerizing. It was breathtaking. It was everything he wished for ever since he learned about other planets in kindergarten.
Sky was a pinkish red color that on Earth meant a beautiful clear sunset but here was just the middle of the day. He didn't see the sun itself, apparently lucky enough to have his back to it. It wouldn't be brighter than at home, obviously, but it was always nice to not be blinded when admiring the view.
The landscape below them seemed familiar. He probably saw it in some photo, but he couldn't remember which one. He couldn't help but try to remember. He wanted to know where was he, what he'd seen, what he'd touched, later when he was in his room, longing to get out here again.
In his almost trance he just about ignored the blast that flew past his ear like an annoying pest.
He had the name of this rock formation on the tip of his tongue! C'mon, brain, you could do it, you could remem-
Even he couldn't ignore the burning pain of the ecto blast straight to the shoulder.
“Listen to me, Little Badger!” Plasmius yelled before dodging ice javelin. Phantom made sure it evaporated before hitting the ground. He was not letting other planet become collateral damage in whatever mess Vlad wanted to stir this time.
He carefully didn't look around when they teleported next time, aware just enough to know they were still on Mars. It wasn't a good moment to sooth his neglected obsession.
Being mad that this was probably the only chance he got out there helped. It definitely reignited the absolute fury, before muted by the panic and then obsession trance.
Phantom wasn't sure what he was yelling back as Plasmius went on and on about killing Danny's dad and marrying his mom and adopting Danny and how ‘look Little Badger, you and I both see how much better off you'd be if you just joined me and let me teach you’. He just knew there was little other than obscenities, and it was paired with an array of blasts and ice and straight up punches when he got close, which was good enough.
Oh, how he wished he could strangle the pathetic vampire lookalike bastard.
Something green and indigo sent Plasmius crashing into the ground.
“Hey, so I'm going to guess that the vampire is The Evil one here?” Feminine voice asked in clear English. Danny took a moment to just stare, blinking rapidly to make sure he saw what he thought he saw.
Yup, that was certainly The Miss Martian, an alien heroine, whose action figure he displayed at the most honorable place of his room. The Miss Martian he tried to learn everything about when she debuted. The Miss Martian whose powers were so similar he used footage from her fights to learn himself. His biggest inspiration.
Dope.
Wait, she asked him a question, didn't she? It was not the time to be a fanboy, probably.
Yeah, no it was definitely not a time to be a fanboy, he decided, right when he threw a shield in front of her, because Vlad didn't take kindly to being interrupted. It really was the least he deserved.
“Yeah, arch nemesis and all that. If I may ask, what are you doing here, Miss Martian, ma'am? I thought you lived full time on Earth?”
“Well, home is home and all” she just said wistfully and telepathically threw a rock to Vlad's stomach, making it follow until it hit the mark, right before another stone hit him in the unprotected back.
And here Danny thought he got over his celebrity crush back when he was sixteen.
Good thing though, another person in the fight made his protection obsession rear back to life, the fact that she was an alien only helping as his space side zeroed on her too. It was useful to not get distracted by glimpses of the world around them.
Of course Vlad just duplicated to make the chances ‘equal’ once again, so the fight dragged on.
Miss Martian just kept being graceful like a supernova, beautiful and destructive.
Danny hoped he didn’t look as embarrassingly pathetic as he thought he did. What were the chances she didn’t see when he took the blast to the arm because he got distracted by pretty rocks?
Plasmius kept taunting, calling him Daniel because of course secret identities or prefered names don't matter when you have to harass the teenager.
Phantom decked him extra hard for that.
At least he didn’t try to use his portal gun again, too busy with fighting off both of them.
Kick, dodge blast, ice, shield for Miss Martian, ice because how dare he attack an alien, dodge, intangibility.
Was it or was it not a good idea to use Ghost Wail and be done with that.
“I've got an idea, cover for me for a minute, okay?”
“Sure” Did he sound too eager? He wanted to keep it cool at least outwardly, not mess up his first and perhaps last impression.
Wait, shit, Martians can read minds! Miss Martian probably already knows how big of a mess he was.
Shit, shit, shit.
Phantom dutifully shielded heroine as she levitated with her eyes closed, at the same time keeping constant assault on Vlad. It was getting exhausting. At least he could go home fast when the fight ended.
“Do you want me to make him indefinitely indisposed or is it too much for you?” Miss Martian suddenly asked. Danny froze for almost a minute before he choked out.
“What do you mean?”
“I can rip his mind apart, leave his body alive but useless without any thought to lead it, but I know some people find it uncomfortable even when it happens to villains”
For a moment, in the midst of fanboying, he forgot how terrifying set of powers she had.
“Please don't” After all, ghosts are their minds, and despite how despicable things Vlad did, no one deserved fate of completely not existing.
“Alright. Is enhancing his experience of pain okay with your moral code?”
“Yeah, I think”
“Done,” she said with a smile, and despite how terrifying he was of her just a few seconds ago, he had to admit, this smile was gorgeous.
After that, it took, like, three punches before Vlad bailed. Which was good.
What was less good, was the fact that the portal he used to escape closed before Danny could go through it. He just stared for a long moment, blinking quickly. He wanted to scream. Or cry. Or both. Both was good.
“So, Daniel…?”
Danny winced and looked back at Miss Martian.
“Danny. Or Phantom. Nobody calls me Daniel”
She nodded with a friendly smile. Good thing they were flying, because his knees got weak for a hot second.
“Alright. I'm M’gann”
“Should you tell me this?”
“I know your name,” she shrugged. “It's only fair that you know mine. It's not a name I use on Earth anyway”
“Um, sure, okay. It's nice to meet you M’gann” Was this too stiff? He had no idea how he was supposed to interact with heroes who just shared their identity. For no reason too, because c'mon, she didn't know him. Why would she do it?!
“Are you from Earth? You speak English”
“Yeah, USA, Illinois. That bastard teleported us around and of course left me stranded”
“It's your lucky day then, I was about to head back, I can take you with me”
There was no universe in which he wouldn’t agree.
Summary:
M'gann was having an amazing day. She met with her civilian friends, drank an amazing smoothie, saw a cute dog. For a few hours, she didn't have to think about problems that took more than 20 minutes to solve. For a few hours, she could just be Megan.
And then there was a scream of a woman, mother, who thought too loud and faded too fast and M'gann wasn't enough to save her and it made her whole world come crashing down
And then Danny found her, with a soft smile and patient voice. He kneeled beside her to pick up the pieces.
And shards cut them both in the process.
Enormous thanks to @clockworkclownart for amazing art and @dpxdcbigbang for organizing this event. I don't think I'd have the courage to actually write it if it wasn't for them