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nanenna · 5 days ago

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DCxDP Prompt: Green Light Special

Batman's comm gave a single faint tone, the warning to let him know someone had just switched to his channel. "Batman," Oracle's modulated voice came over the line, "sighting of a giant, glowing, green, translucent bat symbol over Manny's Grocer, on the east end."

"A glowing, green bat symbol?"

"I don't have any eyes on it, but from the description it sounds like a Green Lantern is trying to get your attention."

Bruce hummed his agreement, though he can't figure out why. All of Earth's Green lanterns could easily contact him through the Justice League comms, and no other Green Lanterns should need Batman specifically. "I'm on my way."

"Red Robin is closest, I'm putting him on stand by."

Bruce grunted, the situation was strange enough to warrant keeping back up nearby in case this turned out to be a trap.

Bruce soon found himself standing on the roof of an apartment building just across the street from Manny's grocer, the height of the apartment putting him basically at eye level with the construct. He had to admit, it did look like a Green Lantern construct. Below the construct was a glowing figure floating just above the roof, wearing what appeared to be a black suit with a few white accents and hair. Bruce didn't know any Green Lanterns with white hair, but he supposed that didn't mean much. He landed on the grocer's roof, barely making a sound.

The figure turned and locked eyes with him.

The figure relaxed when they spotted Batman, a relieved smile spreading across their face as they turned the rest of the way around. They had glowing green eyes and a young face, around Damian's age if Bruce had to guess. Cradled in one arm was a blanket wrapped bundle, the other gave a quick wave before their hand fell to brush the dark head of a small child clinging to their leg. He hadn't noticed the child until just then; partly because the child was so very small, they looked barely old enough to walk, and partly because unlike teen they weren't glowing.

Above them the construct dimmed and faded out of existence.

"Detective," the teen said quietly.

Bruce tensed, very few people ever called him that. "And you are?"

"Oh! I'm uh…" The teen suddenly looked sheepish, but he drifted closer. "Hello Father," he said in the LoA's dialect. "I'm sorry to be meeting you like this, but I didn't know who else to go to." He brought his hand up to steady the bundle as he carefully held it out to Bruce.

A baby.

A tiny baby, a few weeks old at best.

"I need your help," the teen said a little desperately, switching back to English.

Bruce stepped forward and took the baby, careful to support their head as his own swam with everything this complete stranger had just dumped on him.

While Bruce settled the soundly sleeping baby into his hold the teen leaned down and picked up the toddler, then held them out to Bruce too. Running on pure instinct he wrapped an arm around the toddler.

"Dani, this is your baba," the teen said gently as he smiled down at the child. "Be good for your baba, alright Starlight? He'll keep you safe until I get back."

The toddler whined as tears started running down their face, they leaned towards the teen with outstretched arms. "Daddy!"

Bruce struggled to keep the squirming toddler from falling, he shifted and tried to pull the small child closer to his center of mass.

"I'm trusting you with them," the teen said seriously, eyes locked with Bruce's.

"Wait," Bruce called.

The teen was already flying up and away, vanishing from sight long before he should have.

"Damnit," Bruce murmured to himself.

The small child in his arms (Danny?) started crying louder, screaming their upset to the heavens. Bruce hefted the toddler a little higher on his hip and pressed them to his chest, rubbing their back as best he could while holding them one handed.

"I'm almost there," Tim reported.

"I've got the batmobile en route on auto," Oracle added. "Hopefully the emergency car seats you keep in its storage will be enough." Even through the modulation, Bruce could hear the teasing in her voice.

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spacedace · 3 months ago

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dpxdc story snippet:

(references to blood & gore below the cut)

Clark wasn't sure why they bothered.

Elle Constantine looked, if anything, even less repentant about her actions during the mission after the long, thorough lecturing she’d received.

Zantanna had warned them that the girl was her father’s daughter in most ways. That young Elle was crass, messy, prone to con artistry and outright theft and lying when it suited her even when on her best behavior.

Even still, no one could say she didn’t have a good heart. Not even Bruce had doubted that her intentions in all things - while at times self-serving - were ultimately meant to help and protect people. She was, though not the shining ideal that some strove to present to the world, still every bit a hero at the end of the day.

It was the main reason that despite her reputation for mischief and mayhem, that she’d been allowed to join the Titans. Along with a heavy dosage of hope that the other teens would be a good influence on the girl. That a friendship would blossom and there’d be a change for the better as a result - even her father seemed hopeful she’d lose at least some of the rougher edges she’d picked up from him over the years.

If their hopes had any merit, Clark still wasn’t sure. Jon spoke highly of the girl and even seemed to have developed as serious a crush on her as the one he had for Damian. Reports from the team of young heroes seemed to indicate that she gelled well with the rest of the Titans offering some glimmer of hope that things were working but…

Well.

“So can I go get hosed off now, or what?” The young magician asked, flicking one hand towards the dirt and blessedly away from where Clark and Bruce were standing before her.

Blood splattered on the ground in a rolling drumbeat of heavy droplets, so drenched that her arms still dripped unsettling red even after the attempt at flicking the worst of it off. It oozed sickeningly down her wrist as she lifted one hand to examine her nails boredly, already darkening and conjealing where it puddled around her on the ground.

She was absolutely soaking in blood. Arms covered in dripping red and clotted bits of vicera all the way up to her elbows. Entire front spattered and stained so completely with offal that even the black fabric took on an uneasy sheen of red. She had an ugly smear if ichor across one cheek. A few of her unfortunate dark curls plastered to her temple thanks to sticky ichor swiped across her brow. Her mouth a gruesome, nightmarish mess of gore from where she’d sunk her teeth into flesh and torn pieces away during her vicious, feral attack.

She looked like the final girl in a horror movie.

One that had surrendered to the madness and become just as monstrous as her foe by the end.

They’d reveiwed the footage from the camera in Damian’s mask on the way over. Watching, trapped in a nauseating first person perspective, as the girl seemed to forget she had magic entirely and decended on the main demonic enemy the Titans had been dealing with like a rabid dog.

Clark, not for the first time, wished that Diana was there. The Amazon would have likely only encouraged the behavior - it was a toss up on if it was Diana or Bobo who had taught the girl how to tear into a person like that, and disturbingly likely to have been a combination of the two. But if Wonder Woman had been present at least Elle might have given him and Bruce some semblence of actual attention while they talked to her - even if it was only second hand.

From everything he knew, the Amazon was one of the very - very - small handful of authority figures that the girl truly respected. They might have had half a chance of some of the disaproval they were trying to impart sinking in if Diana was there with them. Even if all Elle took from it was a comment on her fighting style lacking in some way rather than anything of true concern. It would have at least been something. At least until Diana inevitably broke out into a proud smile and patted the girl’s head and commented about her having a warrior’s heart or some such.

That the girl wasn’t more of a terror than she already was with JL Dark’s motely crew as her main influences and John Constantine as a father was a miracle Clark perhaps wasn’t nearly thankful enough for.

“Menace!”

Speak of the devil.

Clark watched as the girl’s unimpressed expression brightened into excitement at the sound of her father’s voice rising up over the general din of the scene. Batman and Superman and their lecturing solidly forgotten as she spun on her heel to see the trenchcoat clad man striding over to them. “Dad-saster!”

In half a dozen steps and a flourish of magic the girl was leaping at the older magician and being swept up in John’s arms with a bright, excited laugh.

Constantine’s eyes were always a little sharp, even when he was in a headonistic stupor, but his gaze cut as deep as a razor as he finally released the girl from the tight hug and swayed back to look her over. The lines of his face warning all that dared to look that if he found so much as a scratch on the teenager before him that he’d bring down a fury upon the world that would make even the devil tremble in fear.

The fact that a not insignificant amount of the blood his daughter was soaked in had transfered to him during the hug didn’t help the image. His rumpled white button-up shirt suddenly a gruesome Rorscharch, and his famous trench not much better. His hands were already red from the bare few seconds of contact.

Elle perhaps was right in her assessment that she’d needed a hose to be ride of the grizzley remains of the villian she had - quite literally - torn into. Clark was definitely right in thinking that she took after her father.

Even still, despite the macabre scene they made, Clark couldn’t deny that his heart softened at least a little at the obvious love and care the usual bitterly cynical and callous magician showed his adopted daughter. The fact that the girl, even as a teenager when children so often became antagonistic and rebellious with their parents, so openly adored her father in turn didn’t hurt. If there was one thing Clark and everyone else who had ever met the girl could agree on it was this: Elle Constantine, when she loved, did so openly and with every inch of who she was.

“You alright?” Constantine had his hands on the girl’s slim shoulders, holding her out just far enough to look her up and down. “Heard you and the band had a spot of trouble.”

His face was stoney as he took in the blood, and Clark could have sworn he saw a spark of gold pop warningly at the magician’s fingertips. It was something he’d noted happened with Elle whenever she was experiencing some kind of heightened emotion. Her magic burning an acidic neon green in place of the deceptive warm glimmer of her father’s powers, making her look strangely like the more dangerous of the two.

Elle gave a small laugh, reaching out to pat one of his arms and leaving a smeared, red handprint behind. The utter disregard either had for the Gallo film levels of blood soaking the both of them made Clark feel a little queasy. It also made him think that perhaps they should have been looking into just what missions - exactly - Elle Constantine had been tagging along on over the years with Justice League Dark.

Even Bruce with his mess of unruly, defiante children he was only just barely able to keep in line was able to - mostly - shield them from the ugliest of crime scenes until they were older. That the fifteen year old girl he was watching now was so completely disensitised to so much blood was cause for a lot of alarm.

“All good. None of it’s mine.” Elle waved her other hand towards the red she was still - quite literally - dripping in. “Minor demon. Barely more than an imp.”

Clark watched as she paused, her cheerful smile flattening as something deeper and darker crept into her expression. A bleak, ravenous darkness gilding the girl’s edges in a way that made an incomprehensible cold sink deep into Clark’s bones just to glimpse. He watched, unable to look away as her already eeire white-blue eyes bled that dizzying neon green. “It went after Big Bird.”

Jon.

Clark had seen it on Damian’s footage. His son slammed hard to the ground and gasping. Horrifically vulnerable to the magic of the creature looming over him. Damian - relatively unharmed thankfully - had been pinned in place by a heavy slab of concrete, entirely unable to reach the other boy. Lian and Connor had been stuck fending off the wave of smaller, vicious creatures the demon had summoned to attack the city. Clark’s son had been at the demonic creature’s mercy and unable to do anything about it until -

“And you went and forgot all your good sense.”

Constantine - to Clark’s surprse - gave the girl a worried, disapproving frown. He sounded…well, he sounded like Clark and Bruce had just moments before the magician had arrived. Though where their lecturing had been utterly ignored, the girl did look appropriately apologetic and chastized at her father’s words.

Constantine didn’t let go of her, though his hands did move to settle on her upper arms. Not a painful, cruel grip but the hold of a man trying very hard to not let his desperation bruise the precious figure before him. Love for one’s child bred the deepest fear Clark had ever known, and it seemed that not even Constantine was immune to such things.

“I know. I just…” Elle’s eyes, now back to their unnerving original color, dropped to stare at the sloppy knot of her father’s tie, not meeting his gaze in the way guilty children were prone to. “I didn’t even think I just saw him there and the thing was going on, talking about carving out his heart and -”

Clark hadn’t heard that part.

Damian had been too far away for the mic on him to pick up the demon’s words, only the low gutteral hissing noises that rattled throughout the monsteroys entity’s voice. Clark felt that same uncomfortable mix of unease and thankfulness towards Elle for what she’d done to protect his son that seemed to be a staple of dealing with the Constantines.

“And you’re lucky your brothers had the sense you didn’t.” Constantine jumped in. Giving the petite girl in his hold a small, gentle shake. “If they’d been as wound up as you were all four of you could have been in the shit in a serious way.”

Clark glanced towards Bruce at the mention of Elle’s brothers, trying to gage his partner’s reaction to the mention of them. It was still unclear the situation surrounding Elle’s “brothers” and who - or what - they were. Elle’s file only said the girl shared a link with her three older brothers and that they were always with her. Whether the entities mentioned were actually the girl’s brothers or if it was merely what she had come to call them was…unclear. Plenty of magic users could create bonds with supernatural entities, and some even refered to them as companions or friends.

A few absent comments from Justice League Dark implied that there was something else going on. Though attempts to get more information were usually shut down. Responses ranging from polite but firm statements that it wasn’t a story for anyone but Elle herself to share, to outright hostile shut downs of the subject. Seeing Detective Bobo so uncharacteristicly furious when it had been brought up with him had been…unsettling, to say the least. The chimpanzee was usually a calm, level headed sort. That much emotion was startling and - to those familiar with him - more than enough to know to leave the subject alone.

“I know.” Elle said, voice soft and terribly young sounding. The stubborn expression edged with contrition that settled onto her face a moment later was all John Constantine. Adopted or no, she was truly her father’s daughter.

As terrifying a thought as that was.

Lifting her eyes to meet her father’s stern expression levely, Elle titled her chin at a stubborn - annoyingly familiar - angle. “I’m not going to say sorry for it.”

Constantine for his part, only sighed in the face of his own mulishness being turned on him. Clark couldn’t blame the man. He’d lost count of the number of times he’d found himself staring down at his own tightly held sense of justice or Lois’s unshakable determination while talking with Jon. It was hard enough when you had a kid that took so much after his hellcat of a mother, Clark couldn’t imagine what it might be like to have one that took after Constantine.

The magician closed his eyes for a moment, clearly debating with himself, before opening them again to fondly roll them at his stubborn, crass daughter. Shifting them around so she was tucked against his side under one arm he cast his gaze over the ugly remains of the battlefield. The way his stern disapproval had melted into an impressed expression did not bode well for the girl getting any more lecturing on her decision making in the feild that day.

“Not gonna ask you to be.” He said, tone of his voice strange and fond all at once. “But it’s something we’re gonna have to work on. Especially if your going to be crashing with these Titans of yours now too.”

Oh.

Oh no.

Elle was going to be staying at the Tower with the rest of the kids on weekends and over stretches of their vacations from school.

Clark had forgotten about that part of their little Elle Constantine Domestication plan.

He watched, feeling a bit ill, as Jon and the rest of the Titans - sensing that the book had been firmly shut on the discussion between Elle and the League members - swept in to swarm the girl. The gaggle of teens fussing and fawning over their team mate in celebration of her (brutally vicious) victory. Constantine patting his daughter on the back hardily and giving a smoke filled laugh as Jon scooped the younger magician up and spun her in a grateful hug, dropping her down on the ground just so Cheshire Cat could tackle the smaller girl in anther fierce embrace.

Blood was smeared across the Crest of El emblazoned upon Jon’s chest, darkening the blue of his sleeves, a line of red swept along his collarbone and neck where blood-soaked curls had been tucked a moment ago . A gruesome impression of the girl that had just been in his arms, staining his suit with Elle’s silhouetted after image. An ugly reality of what the girl was capable of that Clark’s son seemed entirely indifferent to.

Clark tried not to think of it as some kind of omen.

---

Info on the AU:

This is a "Danny doesn't know he was cloned" AU where Elle and the other clones realized things were Not Good (TM) and escaped while they could, eventually ending up crossing paths with Constantine and eventually getting adopted by him (it's a toss up on who is more surprised by that: Elle and her brothers, the world at large or Constantine himself).

In this au the escape escape from Vlad didn't quite go to plan and Elle was the only one that made it out largely in tact (read: wasn't turned to goo by Vlad). She was so desperate not to loose her brothers that she managed to grab onto their Cores before they total destabilized and fused them with her own, to uh...complicated results.

Effectively, Elle's Core is keeping all of them going which leaves Elle pretty weak in the ghost power department, since her Core is basically an overloaded fusebox one bad day from blowing completely. Her brothers end up behaving more like how Deadman does in DC, where they can only be seen/heard by magic users and the like, only with the added limitation that they can't go too far away from Elle or all of them will end up having issues from it.

All to say Elle relies more on the magic John and Zantanna teach her than her ghost powers. Oh and the teeny-tiny issue that if Elle destabilized it wouldn't just be her End, it'd be the End for all of her brothers to.

Good thing Vlad doesn't know that she survived :) It'd be a shame if he found out and tried to do something to use her against Danny :) If anything happened to her and her brothers that sure would be bad :) Especially with Constantine in the mix :)

#dpxdc #dani phantom #danielle phantom #elle phantom #clark kent #john constantine #constantine adopts elle au #jon kent #clark is not emotionally prepared for elle to be running around Titan's tower unsupervised #super serious chaos #pre super serious chaos

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