#The Fentons know ASL

[bet-on-me-13]

Cass joins Team Phantom

So, we all know how Cass escaped her terrible dad at the age of 8 right? And how she is adopted by Batman at the age of 16-17 right? Well, what happened in between that time?

Cass has been on the run for Years now. She is 13, and at this point she has been on the run for nearly half of her entire life. So it's really no wonder that when she finally got to a relatively safe place after weeks of little food, little rest, and constant attacks by her pursuers, she accidentally fell asleep.

She woke up in a nice comfy bed, in a room that looked like an Astronomy Geek's dream. Once the people who found her noticed she was awake, they explained what had happened.

Their son, a boy named Danny, had found her passed out in their Shed the previous day while cleaning up. He had quickly brought her in and offered his Room so she could rest comfortably.

Cass doesn't really trust them, and tries to run more than once, but her weeks of constant exhaustion have finally caught up with her and she is stuck staying with them until she is fit to leave.

And unfortunately for her, the Fentons are very Endearing.

By the time she is healthy enough to leave, she genuinely wants to stay. So they unofficially adopt her, letting her stay in their house and sharing a room with Jazz (Danny did kind of need his room back, and Jazz was a good sister like that)

She ends up going to the same school as Danny and ends up befriending both of his friends, Tucker and Sam.

The day of the Accident, Cass is right there alongside Tucker and Sam as the Portal kills Danny.

After the Accident, she is a great help in teaching him some calming routines and meditation techniques so he can get a handle on his Powers much easier.

They also find out that standing in front of a Portal as it rips reality apart is just as bad as being inside of it. They all end up extremely liminal and get Powers. Tucker has Technomancy, Sam has Plant Powers, and Cass gets Shadow Manipulation (or whatever you think fits her)

She is having the best time of her life, but unfortunately it can't last forever.

About 2 years after the Accident, the GIW get a lucky shot on Danny. They were using one of the inventions the Fenton's had made before the Reveal (which was a good one) one that made Ghost Powers weaker for easier capture. While it didn't hurt Danny too much, it did weaken him enough that he flickered into his Human Form for just long enough for the GIW Agents to see him.

Now with Danny's identity exposed, the GIW could track down the Identities of the Humans who had been helping him all this time, aka, Tucker, Sam, and Cass.

During a Raid on Fenton Works, they all got seperated somehow.

Danny got injured protecting the Team, and had to be rushed to the Ghost Zone by Jazz, a stray shot from the GIW blowing up the Portal behind them. They ended up in the Far Frozen, to get Danny fixed up.

Tucker was arrested and sent to prison for a little while before a glitch in his cells Security System allowed him an opening to use his Powers to escape.

Sam was chased out of the Town by the GIW and ended up in the Forest nearby. She had to use her Powers to run away, disappearing too deep into the Woods for the GIW to follow.

Cass managed to sneak out, and ended up trying to save Tucker on his way to prison. She failed though, and the GIW chased her all the way to New Jersey before loosing her trail.

This is how she ended up in Gotham, and got adopted by Bruce Wayne. But she would never forget her first Family, and would try for years to see if she could find where they ended up.

Potential Part 2? Maybe, I have some ideas...

What do you think?

[starry-bi-sky]

I am procrastinating homework and finals studying so I'm making another DPxDC au -- or more accurately, I am making an au of an au. or combining two aus to make a third one, because I am Procastinating And thinking about it.

(the part two for my Danny is Jason Todd au is like,,, half-made and I will get around to finishing it, promiiissse)

So the two aus I had in mind were combining, of course, the two clone aus - the Danny Clone and the Damian Clone au. For folks who haven't seen either posts (or saw one but not the other) here are summaries of both:

Damian Clone Au: The LoA make a clone of Damian Wayne specifically to either kill Damian Wayne and have the clone take his place as the heir to the LoA, or to bring him back. At 6 years old though and through magical teleportation mishaps, Baby Damian ends up in the warehouse district of Amity Park and picked up (and later adopted) by Danny Fenton. They develop a brotherly dynamic with one another.

Danny Clone Au: Danny is straight up a clone of Bruce Wayne, doesn't find out until a year after he has his accident. And, for the fun of it, is also mostly-powerless (he retains his ghost sense and a semblance of a ghost core and signature, but no ghost form). His reasoning for becoming Phantom is because he has walked into the lab watching his parents dissecting ghosts post-portal working more times than he can count. And due to this, changes his beliefs from "ghosts are evil" to "ghosts are sentient and sapient beings who don't deserve this treatment". (masterpost pinned on my blog, its currently incomplete) He is also a little GNC, as a treat. Long-haired Danny ftw. Ellie is a halfa because of the ectoplasm that Vlad used, and also the same age as Danny. They call each other twins and she is viciously protective of him. He uses a baseball bat and brass knuckles that I call 'jawbreakers' to fight ghosts.

Now admittedly, not much probably changes with the combination of these aus other than the potential parallels between Damian and Danny, and Bruce and Damian - and of course, I am always a sucker for parallels. Plus Damian's running off would take Danny finding him much longer, since he can no longer fly, but all the more meaningful because he still took so much time to find him.

(It probably also makes their first meeting different as well - Danny wears a ROTTMNT Casey Jones Jr. esq. mask when he goes out, but Damian would recognize lazarus green anywhere. He'd probably try harder to kill him though once he sees his face, since he knows that its not his father but an imposter.)

It also includes what I consider a hilarious conversation: "Since I'm a clone of Bruce Wayne, does this make me your dad or your brother?" "Don't be an idiot, laeazir." "You didn't answer my question."

The biggest change that comes from this is, of course, the fact that Danny now no longer has a leg to stand on with the "you're a human, I am a ghost" excuse in order to prevent Damian to help him with ghost-fighting, because now Danny is also a squishy, fleshy and fragile human just like Damian. And a human who, arguably, has less combat training than Damian and no powers to make up for it.

Now, Danny in both aus are about 16-17-ish in age, so they've had time to adapt to their new vigilante-hero lifestyle, but its still not the same as Damian's training as an assassin. Damian, unlike in the original clone au, remains insistent on his want to help Danny.

And,,, eventually wears him down after weeks or months of sneaking out after him, helping in fights, interfering, arguing, etc. Danny eventually agrees, exhausted, but he makes Damian promise, promise, that he will be careful and to focus on dodging and distraction. At least until Danny can figure out a safer alternative. He wants him as far removed from the fight as he can, he's a child for ancient's sake, after all.

Which is another issue too - if we follow Damian Clone timeline, then Damian is six years old when this happens. I'll be point blank, I do not see Danny ever actually agreeing to let a literal 6 year old go with him. SO, solution, I bump Damian's age to 7 when he arrives in the Fenton Family, and make him freshly eight years old when he finally gets Danny to agree.

It still SUCKS. He is still very much an itty bitty child, but as someone who has seen the difference between a six year old and an eight year old due to working at a daycare, an eight year old is still... slightly feasible. And an 8 year old assassin even more so (even if he hasn't trained properly in nearly a year or so)

So Danny, reluctantly, agrees to let Damian come with him on patrols.

He ghost-proofs Damian's sword (as he has since learned to do with his bat and jawbreakers), makes him a grappling hook and a Fenton thermos, and reluctantly lets Damian come with in his old LoA uniform that he appeared in (with some tailoring and ghost-proofing, because he has since begun to grow out of the uniform).

(and Danny himself also finally starts looking into alternatives to improve his own "suit" - which is all but a hoodie and reinforced jeans and a hockey mask. He needs to set an example to his little brother, goddammit.)

Then, as they're planning for Damian's eventual (dreaded on Danny's part) debut, they sit in their shared room and brainstorm for what to call Damian. "Ellie already uses the name Spirit." Danny says, sitting criss-cross at his desk with the eraser nub of a pencil chewed between his teeth.

(Behind him he has an investigative corkboard set up -- his accident left him with the ability to see ghosts not capable of being seen on the visible plane. 'Stereotypical' ghosts. Between school work, his social life, and ghost fighting, some of his downtime is spent figuring out ways to help them move on. His most recent is a cold case.)

(Bc with Danny, I loove to have him have some sort of trait that ties him in with his original counterpart. Nature vs Nurture and all that. Investigative work can be part of that.)

"What about Wraith?" Damian suggests from the floor, leaning against the bed frame while he goes over one of his english books. They've been practicing his reading and writing.

Danny furrows his brows. "A ghost seen typically shortly after or before someone's death?"

Damian nods. "Yes, it's of a similar cadence to 'Batman and Robin'."

"What's with you and your thing with Batman and Robin?" Danny asks with a playful half-smile, Damian shrugs and looks at his books. Danny sticks the eraser back between his incisors. "Phantom and Wraith... that works, though."

The first night out together, Danny fusses over Damian, making sure every bit of uniform was secured and in place -- something Damian took mild offense over. His outfit was far more reinforced than the juvenile get-up that his older brother wore.

But he let him fuss anyways. It made him loved.

"Now remember, Wraith--"

Damian interrupts him: "Yes, I know, Dany. Avoid and distract. Stay situationally aware. I fear that is something I should be telling you, however. Mother would have your head if she ever saw what your training was like."

(It was, not for the first time, that Damian wondered how his,,, "mother",,, would react if she ever met Danyal. Not good, he knows.)

Danny's shoulders sag, and he sighs. "I believe that, what with that super-secret spy--"

"Assassin."

Danny sends him a half-hearted chagrined look, "Assassin," he corrects, "organization that made you. I'm sure I'd give your mother an aneurysm." When he's finally okay with whatever make-believe issues he found with his suit, Danny reaches for the nearby side table and carefully slips on a black domino mask over Damian's eyes. It was thin, flexible, and made with some kind of material that Danny reassured was environmentally safe.

("Some kind of matieral that Wayne Industries invented awhile ago, Sam bought it for me." Danny told him when he first showed it to him.)

It was also cold. But the chill was made up for, slightly, with Danny's warmer hands smoothing it out over his skin, and ridding of any ridges that could form. Damian isn't sure entirely what Danyal did to keep it stuck onto his face, but when he touches it with his fingers he feels a very faint seam at the edge, and it doesn't budge against his hands. It felt like a second skin.

"There we go." Danny smiles, pulling his hands back. He still looks nervous. "It's not the same as my hockey mask," which sat atop his head, ready to be pulled down, "but I think a domino mask will work better for you considering your background."

He was right, a hockey mask would only hurt Damian's peripheral vision. This mask was thin enough that it didn't.

"Ready to go, Wraith?"

"After you, Phantom."

+++

Damian has much issue with Danny's suit. He can think of a million ways to make it better. It is one of the things he and Samantha Manson can get along with, and the few times they have spent time together they have brainstormed suit ideas. He knows that since Danny took him on as Wraith, he has started to look into better suit alternatives.

However. They are both aware of the same thing:

Danny is not Batman, nor Superman, nor Wonder Woman, nor Aquaman, or the Flash, or Green Arrow, or Nightwing, or any single hero on the public roster. He is also not rich like Lex Luthor or Vlad Masters or Bruce Wayne himself.

He has no money and no contacts, and thus, no way of properly improving his suit to be something even half as safe as the other supers.

And he refuses to let Samantha Manson help him find a way to fix that - even with all that money, Samantha Manson is on an allowance from her parents, and also, despite her other range of abilities, not capable of getting those materials without putting herself on a list of some sort. They are at a standstill.

Damian knows this, because he has asked.

Until one day when Danny is talking about a case he is working on and telling Damian about old adventures he had in the Ghost Zone, does he see his brother get hit with a lightbulb.

He slaps a hand against his forehead and straightens up from his swivel seat. He huffs a laugh, "Of course! Why didn't I think of it sooner?" And he turns on his heel and hurries to his bookshelf, pulling down a notebook and flipping open to an empty page.

Damian frowns, "Laeazir?"

"I know you don't like my suit, Damian," Danny says, striding over to his desk and snatching a pencil out of a cup. He begins jotting something down on the notebook. "And there's nothing I can really do about it because, well, I'm poor in comparison to my facesake, and I don't have the resources to get my hands on someone who would make me a new suit."

"Yes, we have talked about this..." Damian nods slowly, still frowning, and trying to follow his brother's line of reasoning.

Danny shoots him a megawatt, half-tilt smile, his hair tied up into a half-bun. "But! I was thinking about it from the wrong angle. I don't have the living resources to help me get a suit, but..." he trails off, staring at Damian intently.

It dinged in Damian's brain to where he was going, "But you have the undead resources instead." He says, his eyes widening slowly. Of course, of course! Danyal was ridiculously charismatic by accident, and Damian has seen plenty of times where his heart-of-gold had one or two non-hostile ghosts be incredibly grateful to him.

His brother makes a loud, 'ding-ding-ding!' sound, pointing his pencil at Damian as his smile stretches further across his face. In a few quick strides, he was sat down next to Damian and showing him his notebook. "Correct! When I first started out as Phantom a few years ago, I managed to help a ghost who called herself Taylor, and apparently she was a seamstress both in and out of life."

Damian watches as Danny writes the name at the top of the paper, and creates bullet-points down the page. "She said that in return for saving her, I should come find her in the Ghost Zone if I ever need clothes made for me. It's a one-time thing, but I was thinking that she could perhaps help make me a new suit."

Danny turns a bit pink at the ears, and rubs his neck, "I never thought much of it because I didn't think I'd ever go into the Ghost Zone, or ever need ghost clothes, so I forgot about it up until now."

A scoff forces itself out of Damian's mouth, but he is smiling. "Danyal, you are the smartest idiot I have ever met."

For the next hour, both he and Danny make a bullet point list of what both of their suits would need. Reinforcement in certain areas, gauntlets with reinforced knuckles to replace Danyal's jawbreakers. A different weapon than a bat.... a utility belt, reinforced boots. Anything they could think of.

It was Damian's idea to add a cloak to both of their suits, asymmetrical and torn at the edges for a more 'ghostly' look. They have a theme, after all. It's quite fun.

Then Danyal calls up Sam for help in drafting up design ideas. And while Danyal steps mostly to the side when it comes to the design itself, Damian and Sam fill pages with designs until coming up with one they both agreed on and like.

"What about a lightning bolt on the chest?" "Why are we using my traumatic accident as a symbol of my identity?" "Ghosts do it all the time, Danny. Ember sings about her death." "I'm not dead?" "No that won't work, Manson. Shazam already has a giant lighting bolt emblem." "Okay, but I still want to use it somewhere." "How about this?" "...That could work. Okay, now onto your emblem--"

Last was the hard part: getting into the Ghost Zone without the Fenton parents noticing the disappearance of their precious Fenton Specter Speeder. They employed Jazz's help with that. She would get the Fentons out of the house long enough for him and Danny to get into the ghost zone, hopefully find the seamstress, and cash in that favor.

They went through with their plan that following weekend. Danny tossed Damian a small jumpsuit as they both climbed into the specter speeder, but did not grab his own. He had a small duffle bag on him that he threw under the seat.

"What is this?" Damian asks, nose scrunching up at the gaudy picture of Jack Fenton's face square at the center of the chest. He held it far away from it, as if it had a disease.

"Your hazmat suit." Danny replies, settling himself into the driver's seat as the door hissed shut and he began turning it on. He had some sort of gas mask on in his lap, too small to fit Danny's head, but certainly the right size to fit Damian's. "Normally you wouldn't need it since you'd stay in the speeder, but we're both getting out once we find Taylor. It's to protect you from the ectoplasm."

A scowl forces itself across Damian's face, "You don't have one." He points out, finding seat in the passenger chair next to Danny. His arms cross over his chest, and he was not pouting.

Danny looks at him amusedly, "I have enough ectoplasm in my body that I don't need one, you however, do not." He retorts, poking a finger into Damian's ribcage pointedly. "If you don't put it on now, you'll put it on when we find Taylor."

Damian's scowl deepens, feeling petulant as he sunk into his chair. Danny turns back to the console and flips a few more switches. "I will not, it looks ridiculous." He turns it around to show Danny the Jack Fenton Face.

The Specter Speeder hums to life, and there's a moment of turbulence as it lifts off the ground. While it does, Danny turns back to him blankly, stares at the emblem, and then reaches forward and yanks it off with a scriiiiich of the emblem. He crumples it up with one hand, and throws it into a small bin at his feet.

"There, fixed." He smiles. Then turns back to the controls, taking the yoke with both hands. "And I'm calling Dad Rights; you will put it on when we find Taylor or you'll stay in the speeder."

Damian sputters, sitting up incredulously. "You are not my father." He argues.

"Teeechnically, I am." Danny says, "I'm a clone of your father, and since I am fully his clone, that makes you my son by a technicality." He says cheerfully, pushing the specter speeder forward and into the swirling green portal.

Before Damian can retort, they're passing through the portal. This was his first time going into the Ghost Zone, and for a few seconds there was nothing but bright, swirling green filling his vision. His body felt like it was being twisted and pulled, his up and down reversing and returning. It was painless, but dizzying.

It only lasts for a few seconds, but it feels like a minute, and when they exit out the other side, Damian is holding his head while his vision spots and swims. Internally, he felt like those cartoon characters when their eyeballs rolled around in their head.

The dizziness fades away slowly, and as Damian regains his sight, he notices Danny's hand splayed over his sternum, gently keeping him pressed against his seat. It fell away when Danny saw that he was alright.

"Put your seatbelt on," Danny orders, nodding to his chair. Damian listens absently, before remembering their conversation before they went through the portal.

"That is not how it works." He scowls, and, annoyingly, only gets a challenged eyebrow raise from Danny. He could see the words written on his face without Danyal ever having to say it.

Because, dangit, he was technically right. Damian refuses to say this aloud. He screws his jaw shut, and crosses his arms back across his chest.

Danny chuckles under his breath, and turns his eyes back to the ghost zone. "My point still stands, either you wear the suit, or you don't leave the speeder."

"Fine."

+++

They eventually find where the seamstress is. Through quite a lot of Danny stopping to ask questions with any friendly ghost he came across, they eventually locate an island with a strange, urban city bustling with life on it. Massive, rocky stalagmites grew from the ground, and buildings were built on top of it or around it, with strange, warping architecture.

It was oddly beautiful.

Danny parked the speeder on the side of the street with a two hour parking sign on a nearby post. As he turned off the engine, he flipped a switch on the console that darkened the windows. He unbuckles his seat, and stood up, stretching out his back with a deep groan.

"Alright, put your suit on. The windows are tinted, so nobody should be able to see into the speeder." He orders, pulling out the duffle he brought in earlier and unzipping it. He pulls out his hockey mask and the hoodie he wore out for patrol, and the notebook they'd been using to jot down ideas for their suit.

Danny even had the hindsight to write in their respective heights, and with Tucker's help, some of their measurements. While he did that, Damian sourly pulled on his hazmat suit, irritated by the need to wear it.

Unfortunately, he also had to wear the boots and gloves for 'extra precaution'. Damian nearly bites out a grumpy 'you're as paranoid as father', but holds his tongue. He wasn't going to tell Danyal that secret.

Once he was done and Danny has his hockey mask and hoodie on, Danny grabs the gas mask and helps fit it over Damian's face. It was a sleek, simple design, shaped similarly to a regular face mask, with little filters on both sides of the mouth and a clear, protective covering around the eyes and forehead. Danyal improved it from the original his parents made.

He was smarter than he gave himself credit for.

Danny checks, then double checks that it the mask is tight, then smiles. Patting Damian's shoulders before standing up fully. "Taylor's shop should be somewhere nearby." He says, grabbing the notebook and tucking it under his arm.

Damian nods, and follows him out the door and onto the busy streets.

Finding Taylor becomes remarkably quick now that they were inside her city - something that Damian silently wondered was based loosely off NYC. Danny kept a firm arm around Damian's shoulders the entire time they walked down the street, keeping the both of them on the inside sidewalk.

Barely anyone passed them a second glance, spare the few odd looks shot at Damian. Danny whispers to him the first time it happens that it's because he has no ghost core, those more attune to their signatures might've been picking up on it.

They didn't notice Danny, because he had one, albeit a weak one.

Taylor's shop has a big sign on it in logographic writing that Damian has no idea how to read. The text shifts slowly, a jambled squiggle of lines, dots, and connected curves that look like a mix of messy cursive, gibberish, and logographic alphabets. He only knows its Taylor's shop because Danny pulls them towards it, stating that it was the place.

"You can read that?" He asks, incredulous as they draw closer to the door. Danny moves his arm off his shoulder, and wraps his fingers around Damian's instead.

"Yep," He replies, then scrunches his nose up, "sort of. It's - uh--" he stumbles over a word that Damian's ears cannot comprehend, but fills his head with slight static regardless. Danny winces. "It's the written form of ghostspeak, but since I'm not a ghost, I can only read some of it. Like uh, dyslexia."

"...I see." Damian says after a moment of silence, trying to replay the word in his head. His mind can't grasp the sound.

When they enter, the door doesn't ding with the sound of a bell, but rather it makes a low scream. Nobody bats an eye to the sound, keeping to their slow search through the racks of clothes.

At the counter was a woman talking quietly to another woman, one of whom Danny recognizes, as he walks over to her.

He doesn't need to say anything, because the woman behind the counter sees him coming, and her face positively lights up with delight. "Phantom!" She cries, and gestures to come over. "I was wondering when in the high ancients you were going to come see me!"

Danny's face is obscured by his mask, but Damian knows he's smiling sheepishly with the way he tilts his head and the way he tenses his shoulders. "My bad, Miss Taylor," he says, reaching the counter and standing beside the woman she was talking to, "It kinda... slipped my mind."

Taylor waves her hand dismissively, "Well you are here now!" She replies, grinning wide. Then her eyes pop open - literally - and she puts a hand over her chest. "Oh, how rude of me!" She turns and gestures between Phantom and the lady next to him, "Miss Mabam, this is Phantom. I told you about him a couple of years ago. He saved me from humans. Phantom, this is Gigi Mabam, she funds my shop. In return I make clothes for her and her staff."

The 'Gigi' woman turns just as Danny does, and smiles wide at him. Damian narrows his eyes at her, shuffling behind Danny legs as he looked her up and down. She had silvery-white hair and purple skin, and wore a darker purple business suit, a red gem cravat at her collar, and teal cat-eye glasses.

There was a lot of purple.

"So this is the ghost-touched you were telling me about, dear!" The woman, Mabam, said. Her voice was rich and low but she spoke in a whimsical cadence. It made Damian's skin crawl, and his narrowed eyes turned into a glare. "I must thank you for saving my seamstress, it would've been quite a fizzy-wink if she had been lost to those ghosty hunters."

What were those nonsense words? Damian hated it.

"Miss Mabam here runs a five-star hotel nearby," Taylor explains, her body turned to Danny, "she also is in charge of the city's Battle Nexus."

Danny is silent for a moment, and his free hand lifts and places itself on the back of Damian's head, keeping him close. "Battle Nexus...?"

Mabam claps cheerfully, laughing low, "Oh yes! Ghosts from all around the zone come to attend and watch as their fellow haunties are ripped from limbity-limb in a blood-curdling battle!"

Danny is still as stone. "I see." He says, careful. Damian wraps his fingers around his pant leg. "Well, I hate to interrupt your conversation, but I was hoping to cash in that favor, Miss Taylor?"

"Of course! What do you need?"

Danny looks down at Damian, and he looks up at him, locking eyes with the ominous green glowing from the eyeslits of his mask. He nods, and Danny looks back up. "Do you know how to make suits? Of the protective kind?"

+++

The seamstress it turns out, is capable of such a thing. And she ushers the both of them into one of the backrooms, sending off Mabam with a farewell and a promise to continue their conversation soon.

She flips through their design book, and immediately gets to work making their suits. In the end, with the help of her powers, she gets both done over the span of four hours. It's longer than both Danny and Damian want, but neither rush her.

Damian just hopes that Jasmine can keep the Fenton parents distracted for that long. She will have to.

The suits are better in real life than on paper, and Damian preens from the side in his own custom suit as Danny examines his own in front of the three mirrors. They were both dressed in all black, but whatever fabric Taylor used was of a blackest-black, turning Danyal - and Damian's - bodies into a black hole to look at. Both of them were fitted for agility, with reinforced padding around their shoulders and chests, as well as around the joints of their legs. Their boots were reinforced as well.

("It was hard to make your boots shock absorbent," Taylor explains, "since we all fly, but I applied similar stuff to what I did with your shoulders and chestplate.")

On the side of Danyal's legs were raised, black, lichtenberg-like figures that were contained to the seams and disappeared under his boots. There were similar designs going up his sleeves, with spiked gauntlets wrapped around his lower arm and hands. The knuckles were reinforced, just like he wanted.

Damian's favorite parts were their capes, however. Black like the rest of the outfit, but "wrapped" around their shoulders like an apocalyptic shawl with a back that went down to their knees, and at the hems the capes were torn and ripped like a wraith. Danyal's mask had gone through very little change. It was made of a stronger material, and Taylor had gone and made it more skull-like in its shape, with three large grills at the front, and the sides curving inward below the 'cheekbones' of the skull to better fit his face. It was still shock white, the only white part of Danyal's entire costume.

Damian's suit was almost identical. However, rather than having the seams of his suit resemble lichtenberg figures, the seams of his sleeves and upper torso were that of a black skeleton, with bone-y designs over his gauntlets and the fingers an ombre of dark red-to-black. And around his torso were raised lines that looked similar to a ribcage. The edge of his cloak was splatter a dark red as well. And he had a new domino mask that looked similar to the upper half of Danyal's mask, with the outer edges curved downward over his cheekbones. He was briefly allowed to take off the upper part of his gas mask to try on the mask.

The best part however, was that since the suits were made of material native to the ghost zone, they could also be taken off quickly and hidden in a small artifact. It was magic, is what it was. Danyal chose earrings, and Damian chose a ring.

When they got back to the Fenton house, Jazz demands a box of chocolate for her hard work. Damian thinks that's only fair as Danny takes them both out to get candy for Jazz.

+++

But other than vigilante stuff, not else much changes. Danny gets to pull a "Dad By Technicality Rule" card over Damian when he's being a brat. Danny doesn't have his run in with Rift (a ghost who portals him into Gotham) until after he meets Damian/lets Damian join him on patrol and when they get new suits.

My reason? Because I want it to happen after that point in time lol. It also makes the eventual "heyyyyy you have a clone" @ bruce much funnier to me because not only does he have a clone of HIMSELF but also THAT clone has a clone of Damian living with him.

Also when Danny destabilizes for the first time Damian is terrified for his safety. The fentons are surprisingly good at cloning, Danny hasn't had any issues up until this point in time, and that's only because he got hit with a new gun from Skulker that messed up the ectoplasm he had in his dna, which in term fucked with his own DNA.

Danny's destabilization, imo, is not "I cast you with Melt" he's not Ellie, he's not made of 50% ectoplasm. His parents surprisingly knew what they were doing, and he was human. So his destabilization should be unique to himself and different. Thus his destabilization is "I cast you with Compromised Immune System" his body slowly weakens over time as his cells destabilize. He becomes unnaturally frail and sick. Damian calls Ellie for help when Danny doesn't get up after being hit in a fight that he normally, and Ellie helps figure out that he's destabilizing. This is whats gonna happen in OG clone au too, but Ellie is going to be there rather than Damian.

It makes going to Wayne Manor after that slightly more interesting,,,

[new-revenant]

Only God is my Judge in Wayne Manor

Just a little something i’ve been working on, trying to figure out how to write characters you know? DPxDC in which Dani sneaks into the Wayne Manor, half-successfully. EDIT - ao3 link :)

Chapter 1 - Does Janus also work with Windows?

Dani loved to travel. She loved to see places filled with different people, many people, no one at all. It was nice, but it was dangerous. She met all kinds of people, but she was lonely. She could’ve possibly stayed with Fentons, but the paranoia of the boy she was cloned from stayed with her.

Dani traveled alone. And, like always, she was walking along the streets of somewhere dangerous. This place, in particular, was one of the worst places she could be in. A place that was so low in ambient ectoplasm that she wouldn’t be able to go ghost for very long.

Dani was in Gotham. And she was hungry. But she wasn’t dumb enough to try to go ghost and possibly get caught one way or another trying to get something fancy. And she wasn’t desperate enough to break into some rando’s house.

And yet Dani clambered over a fenced wall. It surrounded a manor that was even larger than Vlad’s. Crossing the green fields of grass, silent as a specter, she quickly glanced through the ground floor windows, looking for the kitchen.

A growl was heard. Dani spun around and growled back, purposely making her eyes that signature ghostly green. The dog that was behind her, a brown, muscular guard dog, promptly whimpered and hid his face from the clone.

Dani moved onwards. She was able to find the kitchen, and luckily enough, the window was just ever so cracked open. Opening the window, she slipped inside. She looked around the kitchen quickly, then darted towards the pantry. Food from the pantry usually last longer than food from the fridge.

Dani still went over to the fridge, however. And the fridge had cheese, and she had a mission to take all of the cheese. Cheese never goes bad, only better. That’s what Dani’s mentality was at least.

Halfway through stuffing all the cheese into her bag, she heard an bloodcurdling scream behind her. Whipping her around, she made her eyes the same green from before. She quickly realized her mistake, and her eyes returned back to blue.

But the person saw, the look on their face said it all. They were tall-at least, taller than her-had dark skin and very short hair, much like Tucker, but the first thing that Dani noticed about them was that their eyes had a an odd sheen to them. Dani however, didn’t care to find out why this person’s eyes were like that, as she had better things to do. Like getting out of this manor before she got in any deeper water.

“Thanks for the cheese my friend!” Dani closed the fridge and turned towards the window, only to hear it click and see a butler close it. Said butler was also holding a shotgun, so no one could really blame her for letting out yelp of fear.

“Master Duke, why would did you scream so loudly at a cheese-loving child?” The butler asked. Dani couldn’t help at snicker at her new moniker.

“Her eyes were green,” Duke hissed, voice shaking, confirming the idea that he did in fact see her eyes.

“It appears that they share some similarities with Todd then,” Dani spun around, nearly giving herself whiplash to look at the small child that spoke. The child was holding a fucking sword. Moment by moment, Dani was regretting coming here.

“Well ‘Duke’ here started screaming before I faced him, so do what you will with THAT information,” Dani stated, readjusting her bag nervously, “And what I’m going to do, is get the hell out of here, so if you’ll excuse me-“ Dani took one step towards the window and everyone took one step closer to her.

Dani was fucked. She had no idea how to get out of here without using her ghost powers. She probably could use her powers, but the consequences of using them would absolutely be dreadful.

Dani heard footsteps coming towards the kitchen. Unlike the others, she could actually hear these footstep-except Duke’s footsteps could’ve been heard but she was too invested in thieving food to notice his.

The man that came into the kitchen was large, not as large as Mr. Fenton, but seeing him just made Dani’s heart race.

“Oh fuck this,” Dani muttered, “Can’t a girl just take some food in these dire times?” She took another step towards the window, and everyone took one step closer to her once more, with the child now pointing his sword directly at her neck.

“Damian,” The tall man said, putting his hand on the child’s shoulder. The kid made a ‘tt’ sound and relaxed his stance, just a bit. The man took a small step closer and crouched down to Dani. “You aren’t from Gotham are you?” the man asks, “You don’t have to tell me where your from-“

“Then I don’t need to tell you shit,” Dani hissed, “Maybe I’m not from here, so what? I’m not staying here for long so who cares?” Dani fidgeted with her bag again, a large scowl on her face.

The man, however, had a soft, sympathetic look on his face. Which was a surprise to be sure, since Dani was almost sure this guy owned the manor they were in, so he was obviously very rich. All of the rich people that Dani met were evil so far, so she couldn’t bring herself to trust him in the slightest. He was still probably better than Vlad, although that was a very, very low bar.

“Well then, I’m Bruce Wayne, and this is my manor you broke into,” Dani and Duke both snickered at the straightforward delivery that Bruce spoke in.

“Blame the guy who left the window open,” Dani leaned on a counter, trying to look relaxed as her eyes darted towards as the exits she could see, “So I never really broke in per say, the only crime I committed was theft, theft of food, for I am but a poor, orphan child without a home,” Dani slowly inched her way towards the window as she spoke. Worst comes to worst, she would have to fight the old butler.

The others looked at each other, with both Damian and Duke glaring at Bruce specifically.

“What’s your name?” Bruce asked. Dani hesitated, obviously, why would she tell this random guy who she just broke into the house he lives in her name? But then she noticed something-he was ecto-contaminated. Only slightly, but being ecto-contaminated at all meant that he got exposed to a lot of ectoplasm. And he wasn’t the only one here who was contaminated. The kid was definitely contaminated, and there could be someone else here who was contaminated, but Dani couldn’t tell.

Dani didn’t need answers. But she wanted them. So she’ll play along. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but she was already brought back to life. Well, sorta.

“Dani,”Dani muttered, “My name’s Dani, Dani with an ‘i’ sir.” Dani focused her gaze straight at the window, not wanting to look at anyone else there. There was a long silence, as Dani waited for someone to say something.

“Well, Dani,” Bruce finally spoke up, “Do you need a place to stay?” Dani whipped her head around, definitely giving herself whiplash this time. She then looked quizzically at the old butler, because surely he would have an explanation.

“Master Bruce tries to care for all children,” the butler explained, “he especially has a tendency to care for troublemakers.”

Dani blinked a few times. She absolutely did not want to stay here, not in the slightest, even if they had a lot of food and Bruce seemed nice, she could be compromising everything that Danny tried so hard to keep hidden.

But Dani needed answers. And a bed to sleep on would be nice. Even if it was just for a little while.

“As long as I get free food I’ll do whatever in hell’s name you want Mr. Wayne,” Dani stated, staring confidently at him. Bruce gave her a sad sympathetic look again, with a sad smile to accompany it.

“The only thing I want is to make sure another kid doesn’t have to sleep on the streets tonight,” Bruce said softly. “Alfred, can you prepare one of the spare bedrooms for Dani? And please get rid of the gun.”

The butler nodded, “Will do sir,” he said as he walked out of the kitchen.

“Wait, is she staying?��� Duke asked, utter confusion written all over his face.

“Funny, I asked the same thing when you showed up,” Damian remarked.

“Wha-what is that supposed to mean?”

“Boys, be nice,” Bruce scolded them lightly.

“I am being nice father,” Damian defended himself, “But I would like to know why Thomas screamed so loud at this,” he gestured over to Dani, who promptly stuck her tongue out at him.

“Well-I thought she looked kind of like a raccoon okay!” Duke threw his hands in the air in defeat, “It’s like twelve til’!”

Damian made another ’tt’ sound before leaving the kitchen, with Duke himself leaving soon after to got to his room. Dani was quite lost on what to do.

“So…how many people live here?” Dani asked Bruce.

“Well, there’s me for one. Then there’s Duke, Damian, Alfred, and Cass. I have more children who come by every now and again who sometimes bring their friends along,” Bruce responses softly. Dani thought he was trying a bit too hard to get Dani to trust her. Might be her paranoia, or both, she didn’t care.

“Who’s Cass?” Dani asked. She then saw a shadow move out of the corner of her eye, and someone jumped down from the shadows of the cabinets above right in between her and Bruce. Dani yelped and slipped on something on the floor, falling down. Before falling all the way, the person caught her just in time, going on to help her stand back up.

“That, would be Cass,” Bruce sighed, going closer to Dani to check on her. Cass meanwhile had the most guilt-stricken face that Dani had ever seen before. She made her hand into a fist and rubed it in a circular motion across her chest. Dani knew it was sign language but she didn’t know any signs. So she just smiled awkwardly and said a little hi.

“Master Bruce,” Alfred announced, walking back into the kitchen, “Miss Dani’s room is ready.”

“Thank you Alfred,” Bruce straightened up his posture, “Now then, Dani, why don’t you let Alfred show you to your room?”

Dani heaved out a sigh, “Whatever you say Mr. Wayne.” Dani waved goodbye to Cass before making her exit.

“Oh, and can you please give the food you stole back to Alfred?”

“Can I? Yes. Now, will I? No.”

Once Dani had left Bruce turned to Cass, “Cass, inform the rest of the family of Dani’s appearance. And make sure to ask Duke for what he saw exactly when he first came down here,” he whispered, “meet me down in the Batcave at two til’, got it?”

Cass nodded, giving Bruce a thumbs up before setting out. Bruce sighed before checking the contents of the fridge and pantry, almost a quarter of the food was taken from the later, and there being a noticeable absence of cheese from the former. If anything he now had an idea on what to get Dani if she was being too unreasonable. But then again, it’s not like that would be as easy as it sounds.

But it didn’t matter now. What did matter was trying to figure out who-and perhaps even more importantly what-Dani is. And he confident he could do it. After all, he was the world’s greatest detective, Batman.

And Dani was tired. And it was the first time ever since she got away from Vlad that she actually felt somewhat confortable in a manor-and bedroom-of a size like this. But it was surprisingly cozy, and the people here were nice, definitely not normal absolutely not, but neither was she.

Dani slept, and for the first time in a while, she was smiling.

[artistfingers]

GET DRESSED!!!

The Concert - Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

[Undercover AU]

[forgottenpnffacts]

I saw mention on a different thread that Perry knows ASL. Now, I don't doubt that in the slightest, as he is a very capable platypus, but I don't remember seeing him use ASL. Do you recall it?

Hmm, i’ve only ever seen him point/roll his eyes or nod/shake his head when it comes to communicating physically (in addition to communicating through writing) during PnF’s run, and I haven’t found anything on Dwampy’s twitters or in any interviews i’ve seen. It’s possible that he might use sign language in Milo Murphy’s Law (which I don’t follow), but it’s most likely that it was someone just presenting their headcanon (for the past few years people from Tumblr have had the habit of stating their headcanons as being canon facts, so i’d advise being cautious of that sort of thing).

[mr-lancers-english-class]

Forest Ghost

Phic Phight 2021 let’s go!!!

Prompt from KC: Summer Camps is not complete without a courage test of walking to the haunted woods at midnight. Amity Park campers are weirdly prepared for this. Other campers are not sure how to deal with that.

AO3

Mikey didn’t really consider himself a daredevil. Quite the opposite, in fact. If you asked his classmates, or his parents, or his teachers, or heck, even his boss, they’d all say, without a moment's hesitation, that he was a coward. Maybe not as much of a coward as Fenton, but that was more a lack of convenient getaways than actual courage. If Mikey had Fenton’s seemingly supernatural ability to always just up and leave before the ghost-of-the-week appeared, he would. As it was, he was only able to run away maybe half the time. The other half of the time, he hid as best he could and hoped for the best. 

Say what you want about bravery and cowardice, it had been a sound strategy so far. He wasn’t dead yet, which was more than could be said for the ghosts he avoided. Mikey knew he was a coward, and he didn’t care.

“Mikey, what the unmitigated fuck?” The stage-whisper carried between the trees, twisting and curling like mist. Mikey shuffled himself around to face his co-counselor, balancing precariously on the log that had fallen across the small brook three summers ago.

“What?” His voice rang out into the night. Aaron jumped at the sudden noise, and began frantically shushing him, voice still barely into the audible range.

“Shh! Dear god, what the fuck, don’t you know this place is haunted?” Aaron had moved to stand at the base of the improvised bridge, and Mikey could tell they were debating whether or not to join him on it.

“Really? Doesn’t feel like it,” Mikey said, just as loud as before but now more thoughtful, more considering. “There’s not enough…” He paused, and gestured vaguely in a windmill motion. “...You know?”

“I really don’t. And I swear, there’s a ghost out here. Caty saw it!” Aaron hadn’t moved onto or away from the log, and was instead wringing their hands and pacing. “At least, she said she did. And Caty doesn’t scare easy-”

“Caty? Caty wouldn’t know a ghost if it came up and threw a cardboard box at her.”

“What?”

“Believe me, if there’s a ghost out here, it’ll be too weak to do anything besides stand there and glow funny.” Mikey turned back around, and began to continue his way across to the other side of the bridge. “Would be interesting to talk to, this far from any portals. Probably couldn’t though, this far from any portals. Not enough ectoplasm to keep anything stable for a conversation.”

“Mikey, you are saying a lot of things that make very little sense right now,” Aaron whispered, still on the opposite bank. “Can we please just go? I’d really rather not meet any angry spirits tonight. I’m on Morning Duty tomorrow, and you know how bad the kids are at seven in the morning.”

“Just five more minutes? I want to check if there’s any residual ectoplasm, or anything else fun. Besides, you were the one who wanted to go ghost-”

Mikey cut himself off as the world in front of him began to shimmer and twist, sparks flitting through the air as a vaguely humanoid shape began to coalesce in the empty space ahead of him. He could taste the burnt coppery tang of old ectoplasm in the back of his throat, feel the faint tingling of static electricity, smell the distant ozone of a long-dead portal.

“Holy shit fuck what the hell!” Aaron had given up on the pretense of a whisper, and instead let their shouts carry through the dark woods. The ghost had stopped forming, just a faint silhouette of energy with barely-discernible arms reaching out to Mikey. “Mikey what the fuck is that?!?!”

“Looks like an imprint. Old one, if I had to guess. I’ve never actually seen one, they don’t really form near open portals; there’s always enough energy for a full ghost. Hi! I’m Mikey. Can you hear me?” Mikey held out his hand, as if to grasp the ghost’s own hand and give it a firm shake. The ghost didn’t react. “Hmm, shame. I don’t think it knows I’m here. I wonder what called it to manifest. Hey Aaron-” Mikey turned back to look across the brook and found himself alone. He hadn’t even heard Aaron leave. “Huh. I mean, you’re just an imprint,” he muttered, turning back to the glowing form. “Not like you could hurt me-”

The ghost was holding his still-outstretched hand and tilting it’s head.

“Oh. Okay. So you can see me. Cool.” He shook his hand up and down, and the ghost’s hand followed the motion half a second behind. Mikey let go and pulled his pack around to dig through for a notepad.

“Can you talk? Or, I don’t know, do you know ASL? Or can you hold a marker? I brought a whiteboard,” Mikey grunted, pulling the whiteboard and two dry-erase markers out of his pack. “I’d love to ask some questions, talk a little bit- Huh.” He looked up to where the ghost had been to find himself completely alone. “Dang. That’s, well, huh.” He shoved the writing tools back into his bag and cupped his hands around his mouth. “Hey ghost! If you can hear me, I’ll come back tomorrow night! Stay safe! Bye!”

[12daysficmas]

Here's what I did last year!

Angel - Paulina is suspicious of Danny and knows there's something up with him.

Gift - The Box Ghost explores a new warehouse.

Jolly - Another hilarious Fenton invention affects Danny.

Grinch - Just because he had his holiday special of a lesson last Christmas doesn't mean seeing holiday decorations set up too early aren’t going to make the boy grumpy after so many years, it’s basically Pavlovian.

Holidays - Danny has a plan to survive the holidays.

Santa - Danny tells the story of one of the many bad Christmases that Tucker hadn't told Sam last year.

Boots - Bored in class and feeling a 'mess with Wes' deficiency, Danny tests his abilities.

Puppy - The Red Huntress finally gets her revenge on the ghost dog that ruined her life, she thought it would fix everything. And maybe it would have. If Danny Fenton hadn’t seen it.

Silent Night - Danny tells the story of why he knows ASL.

Cold - AU where instead of having Undergrowth to fight when he got his ice powers his parents actually notice something is wrong.

Eggnog - Danny enjoys some eggnog at Vlad's lame Christmas party. This was inspired by the song Ho Ho Ho by Sia.

Ornament - Part two of Angel. Danny tells his friends what happened.

[concussions-and-clues]

Dream Game Challenge... Nancy Drew: Dead on Target

for @nancydrewnetwork​ ‘s Dream Game Challenge!

Plot Synopsis:

Just nicely home from her latest adventure Nancy receives a phone call from the enigmatic Gray Man, the leader of the shadowy Network. The Gray Man informs her that both of the Hardy Boys have been hospitalized due to a car bomb planted in their vehicle. An information leak is suspected at the Network and as such the Gray Man would like Nancy to investigate the incident in Bayport and bring the culprits to justice!

Characters:

Brian Conrad:  Voted most likely to need a good lawyer, Brian Conrad is a bully that has been hassling the Hardy’s since grade school. Rich and snooty Brian is irked by the Hardy’s because of all the positive attention they get… could he do something to try and ruin their squeaky-clean appearance, after all he was at the First National Bank at the time of the bombing (because Brian Conrad is always there).

Callie Shaw: Born and raised in the farm land just outside of Bayport, Callie Shaw has just recently moved into town with her cousin. An intelligent young woman, Callie works at the First National Bank. Still gaining friends, Callie is fond of the Hardy’s since they are some of the only people in town that ‘speak’ her first language: American Sign Language. Callie doesn’t let her lack of hearing stop her from living life to the fullest and rumour is that she may have a crush on a certain tall, dark, and handsome Hardy!

Oscar Smuff: Oscar Smuff dreams big of being a police detective one day. Unfortunately, he has not yet been able to pass the training; however, he hopes that working as a security guard for the First National Bank will give him the experiences he needs to be successful. He was the first responder to the car bomb and hopes that how he acted will help him when he next applies for the police force.

Chet Morton: The Hardy Boys best friend, confidant, and often co-conspirator, Chet Morton is one of the few civilian people who knows that the Hardy’s are spies! Chet’s passions in life are his hobbies and his Queen, a bright yellow jalopy that he fixes enthusiastically if not effectively. Despite being a star football player and power lifter, Chet still often gets bullied by Brian Conrad.

Iola Morton: Iola Morton is the younger sister of Chet and Joe Hardy’s long time (and according to Frank long suffering) girlfriend. Currently Iola is working as a barista at the Meet Locker, saving enough money to fulfill her passion and study Chemistry at MIT when she graduates high school. More introverted than her brother, she has recently been taken under the wing of Callie Shaw and the two are becoming fast friends.

Dr. Carrini: Dr. Carrini is flagged by the Network as a possible agent of the terrorist group the Assassins. Suspicion was raised when he was tangentially tied to a series of missing children cases a decade previously, but nothing could be proven. Currently his is working in Our Lady of Mercy Hospital… is it possible he planted the bomb so that he may have the Hardy brothers under his care, or under his knife?

Ripley Lansing: Another person of interest flagged by the Network, Ripley was found to be blackmailing and threatening contestants on a reality TV show where the Hardys had gone undercover. Money and an influential mother meant that she didn’t serve any jail time; however, her public image was ruined. She knew Frank and Joe as Frank Dooley and Joe Carr, respectively, and now that she is here in Bayport she might be seeking revenge having realized they were the ones who ratted her out to the police.

Fenton Hardy: Fenton Hardy is an ex-NYPD detective and the Hardy Boys father. After his retirement from the NYPD Fenton co-founded the Network (formerly American Teens Against Crime) with the mysterious Gray Man. Currently, Fenton keeps his work for the Network secret by working as a private detective. As is obvious, when it comes to detective work, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree!

Laura Hardy: Laura Hardy is Frank and Joe’s mother and the heart of the Hardy family. However, Laura doesn’t just use her heart, with a doctorate in Library Sciences Laura is currently working at the Phillip J. Roscoe Community College as their head research librarian. She doesn’t explicitly know about the Network but with her eye for detail it is unlikely that she doesn’t suspect something about what her sons are up to!

Frank & Joe Hardy: Nancy’s long time friend and teen detective contemporaries. They are currently under hospital orders due to being injured in a car bombing. Smart and intelligent the brothers are no strangers to injury but this seems like something more. Just like it would be for Nancy, narrowing down the suspect list for this crime is going to be challenging…

Spud: Chet Morton’s pooch Spud is a very good boy, well most of the time… Spud tends to follow his nose which makes him an excellent tracker although he has ended up in the Morton trash can one too many times.

Phone Friends:

Bess Marvin & George Fayne: Bess is in the process of fixing up her car for the winter. She is getting George’s help although this time it is George who is on the back foot and keeps messing stuff up for Bess.

Ned Nickerson: Since the game takes place at the beginning of December Ned is studying like crazy for his final exams. Being only three hours away from Bayport at Emerson, Ned is constantly debating about putting down the books and visiting his injured friends and Nancy in Bayport.

Vijay Patel: The Network’s tech guy, Vijay is the Q to Frank and Joe’s James Bond. Recruited by the Network when he was 17 he has built a lot of the infrastructure that the Network uses and is upset that a mole may have penetrated his system. An affable young man, Vijay is fond of the Hardys and is willing to do anything within his power to help Nancy find the culprit.

Locations:

First National Bank:

The location of the bombing. One of the oldest remaining buildings in Bayport. It is rumoured that there are tunnels and secret passages throughout the building, the remnants of a meticulously planned 1832 bank robbery.

Phillip J. Roscoe Community College: A school where there can be big fish in a little pond. Most Bayport students make the leap to the larger pond of New York to peruse their post-secondary needs; however, the Phillip J. Roscoe Community College is carving a name out for itself as an excellent research institution.

Our Lady of Mercy Hospital: The hospital where the Hardy’s are currently being housed. It is shiny and clean, smelling of carbolic cleaning agents, like almost every hospital in the world. What is not like most other hospitals is that it was converted from a school into a hospital during WWII since Bayport was one of the first ports when coming back across the Atlantic. Quickly refurbished, there are strange dead end hallways and the possibility of a room long since forgotten being every wall.

The Meet Locker:  A great little coffee shop with a really dumb name, according to the local teenagers. Often just referred to as the Locker, the Meet Locker, is a regular hangout for local teens with its comfy seats, highly caffeinated products, and cheap prices!

The Hardy Forensics Lab: Located in the barn in the Hardy’s backyard, the forensics lab is used equally by the Hardy Boys and Fenton Hardy in their respective cases. Stocked with forensic tools bought second hand from various police stations around the country, the Hardy’s have enough tech to make the Gil Grissoms and Horatio Caines of the world jealous.

Where People Are:

First National Bank (Callie Shaw)

Outside Bank/ security office (Oscar Smuff)

Hospital (Frank and Joe Hardy)

College Library (Laura Hardy)

Forensics Lab (Fenton Hardy)

Meet Locker (Iola Morton)

Meet Locker (Ripley Lansing)

Nurses station in Hospital (Dr. Carrini)

Gym at College (Brian Conrad)

Parking Lot Outside Gym (Chet Morton)

Puzzles:

Find the appropriate clothing to investigate (i.e. going undercover, wearing warm clothing when outside, etc)

Foot Print Matching

Fingerprint matching

Codes and ciphers (i.e. Frank and Joe’s notes and Network communications will all be coded)

Chemical Testing

Ink Chromatography

Using Spud to search for explosive device

Helping Chet fix the Queen

Learn ASL to better communicate with Callie Shaw

Help Iola serve people at the Meet Locker

Types of Codes/ Ciphers I’d Like to Use:

Scytales

Caesar shift

ASCII

Atbash

Binary

Braille

Columnar Cipher

Dice Cipher

Digraph Cipher

Dorabella Cipher

Keyboard Code

Morse Code

Pigpen Cipher

The Grid Code

Vigenere Cipher

Element Abbreviations

Game Features:

Day/ Night Cycle

Read through all previous books at the research library

Multiple Mysteries (i.e. who is the Gray Man, why were certain people at the crime scene, etc)

[cinnabuntastic]

any headcanons for alto? i mean i know You created the character so they wouldn't really be headcanons lmao but it'd be cool to hear more about him!

Alto is a genuinely bright kid! He's a little quiet when he's younger, though that's partly because his best friend just... doesn't talk at all, except with her hands. But he's a natural little mechanic, often sitting and watching Launchpad for hours once he's old enough to help out with the vehicles.

He has a really good relationship with Gosalyn, looking up to her a lot, even if he's a lot younger than she is. By the time he's doing things mostly on his own, after all, she's ready to start getting ready for college. But she still sees him as her little brother and introduces him to her friends as such. She also gladly takes him to playgrounds and his Junior Woodchuck meetings.

Due to being around Gandra and Fenton a lot (they're his godparents!), Alto ends up learning Urdu (from Gandra, whose family was originally from Pakistan) and Spanish (from Fenton, obvs). He also picks up very quickly on ASL, since their daughter is nonverbal, and she's his best friend.

Learned how to throw a punch pretty early. Drake at least has a pretty non-traditional job, working as a model and doing some acting work (modeling is far less demanding now that he has a family). Where his dad may have gotten bullied as a kid, Alto can and has fight bullies himself. He's gotten something of a reputation in his school for not tolerating anyone picking on other kids.

[mandareeboo]

Unfinished Work #38: Unnamed

Title: Didn’t have one!

Summary: Smth smth making lists is a reoccurring theme in my darkwing duck works

This one started out really strong! It was gonna be a longshot of Drake realizing “hey maybe I should give Gosalyn an actual room in an actual place to live” and them swinging for an apartment. I was gonna have the Muddlefoots be kind but silly neighbors that Drake lowkey despised because they kept beating him at hand and foot despite not knowing how to play. I was also gonna include a scene where Drake went into Gosalyn’s room and finds makeshift plans for a new RAMROD and they talk about Waddlemeyer a bit more. I just didn’t want to reach that far out of canon for what I was hoping to be a non-AU piece.

(I also have a running theme of Prof Waddlemeyer being German and Gosalyn being more connected to her German roots than her Spanish ones bc yeah but that just ended up being confusing rip.

———————————————————————————————————–

List of Gosalyn:

#1: Gosalyn likes to talk about good things. Not bad things.

Drake makes a list. Because, well, he figures Gosalyn's going to be around for a bit yet. And eventually they might get to a nitty-gritty point where he knows her like the back of his hand, but that time isn't now, and one thing he knows for sure is that she can and would hold it over his head.

(Okay, and maybe that'd make a bit more sense if she hadn't already found it and teased him over it, but! Kids are weird! Kids are so weird, and Drake doesn't pretend to get even the slightest thing about kids.)

Fun fun facts are first, and easy. Gosalyn loves to talk about accomplishments. She uses four languages fluently- ASL, English, German, and Swahili- has two she's got a good grasp of but doesn't speak well- Spanish and Mandarin- and has gotten the basic Latin alphabet in her brain somewhere for, and he quotes, "When I get around to summoning a demon one of these days."

She's related to Professor Waddlemeyer through her mother's side- apparently, his genius loves to run down the female side of the family- and though she has a tía out there somewhere, tía apparently cut contact with her father long before she was born. Gosalyn's pretty sure that's the only relative she has- that's, you know, in this universe. Neither Drake nor Gosalyn like to say Professor Waddlemeyer is dead. They can't confirm that. And maybe it's easier that way? Or maybe it's just harder, waiting every day for a magical solution to a problem that may never be solved.

(But Drake has hope! He does! He remembered Della Duck's disappearance, just as he remembered watching the TV with awe as she returned. Missing a leg, sure, but alive.)

Her favorite takeout is Chinese, because the boxes open so no one has to do dishes. Drake hadn't known that. He'd felt pretty silly when he found out. She can also use chopsticks. Drake is pretty sure he's dealing with a future diabolical mastermind at this point. Then she tries to teach him how to pick locks, and Drake scratches out the future part.

He knows she was in the foster system at some point. Saw the file when he filed for custody, and just how thick it was. He knows it's not for him to see, and signs on the dotted line without looking beyond.

———————————————————————————————————–

#12: Gosalyn doesn't "do" bedtimes.

"Alright, that's it," Drake decides, walking up to the little legs sticking out of his motorcycle. "I've got a mug of warm milk with your name on it, young lady. Get out here and do some self-care."

Gosalyn snorted. "Make it coffee and I might take you up on that offer." There's a loud snap noise that does very little to soothe Drake's nerves. "Dude, you gotta introduce me to Fenton. This baby has everything!"

"If I say yes, will you go to bed?"

"Nah. I'll just steal your phone."

He ignores that. Gosalyn's done it before. There's not much to see. A bunch of cat photos and saved Darkwing Duck wallpapers. Drake wiggles the mug pointedly, letting the milk slosh around. "Not gonna waste good dairy, are ya?"

"I just chugged five PePs. Nothing can stop me."

"Maybe not, but the bathroom can." Drake took an experimental sip. Lukewarm. Ah, well, better luck next time. Setting the mug aside, he bent at the knees, making one of those old-man grunts while he did so. He grabbed the sides of the creeper and tugged, bringing Gosalyn to the surface from her motorcycle dreams. She squinted at him, bags under her eyelids.

"You can't make me," she pouted.

"Yeah, yeah." He tucked his hands under her armpits and lifted Gosalyn up, surprised to find she was light. It was hard to remember that she was a child, sometimes. Children didn't typically chide him for not using gas instead of electric. "C'mon, kiddo. Time to sleep."

"Can't make me," she repeated, this time punching him in the shoulder. Drake stumbled, but managed to keep on his toes. Perks of being accident prone, he supposed. "I was gonna... gonna make the Ratchaser cool."

"It'll still be there in six to eight hours, Gos."

Despite her grumbling, Drake felt her begin to sink into his arm as they maneuvered towards the chair. Gosalyn leaned into him, chin digging into his shoulder. "I was gonna make it good," she mumbled, only half awake. "Was gonna.. was gonna be good."

Something vulnerable in her voice plucked at Drake's heartstrings. "I know, Gos. It will be."

"People like it when it's good..." Her voice fell into a slur as her head touched armchair, curling up like a disgruntled cat. "I'll be good, Opa. Ich vermisse dich."

[officialrapunzelfitzherbert]

5 things tag!!!

tagged by @drelliotreidmd​ !!! thank you friend!!!

5 things you’ll find in my bag

umbrella because i live in hurricane swamp land

whatever harry potter book i’m on - i just started order of the phoenix yesterday!!! it’s good!!

my finding dory pez that i ate months ago and have not taken out of my bag since

a heckton of safety pins

lil bby sketchbook

5 things you’ll find in my bedroom

too many stuffed animals including 3 toothlesses and a giant stitch

pink ukulele

tangled tsum tsums

like 20 i’m celebrating pins because i’m disney trash

fairy wings that i still haven’t worn out in public but I Gotta

5 things I’ve always wanted to do in life

play a disney princess on stage please @ god

master at least one instrument? ukulele or guitar would be cool since I already own those and I’d like to be more than mediocre at them but also piano would be beautiful!

be fluent in ASL and/or spanish!!!!

learning to drive would be neat but lol anxiety

have like a really put together youtube channel. I have like one quality vlog and a few nice-ish covers and I just wanna be dodie clark level u know

5 things that make me happy

hugs

glitter

floppy hats

finding nemo the musical

cats

5 things I’m currently into

harry potter!!!! i feel like a real person now that i’m reading these it’s nice

bojack horseman

amelie the musical wow wow i’m in love

tiny lil canvases

“michael in the bathroom” from be more chill. I don’t know anything about the show as a whole but I saw the song on my dash and watched like 20 performances of it in one sitting and oh golly it gets me right in my small heart??

5 things on my to do list

commissions holy heck maria u gotta finish those

get an apartment!!!! my rooommate and I are working on it and it’s gonna happen soon I think!!!!

finish harry potter!!

plan a trip to chicago with my friend to see hamilton and visit our CP friend after her program is over oh boy we gotta

record some new covers!

5 things people may not know about me

(this is so hard y’all I’m pretty sure you know Everything about me by now bc all I do is overshare)

I’m possibly buying a performer friend’s old car??? costuming friend suggested I do that and she’d help me get my license because it’d be easier and cheaper than getting one elsewhere and like, it’s fish dad and I trust him with my life so. I might be trying this driving thing sooner than expected. it is possible!!

I’ve never been on a plane but if I end up going to chicago then that’ll happen??

I got called back for elle woods in my college production of legally blonde and I can guarantee than any female student would have been better for that role than me, but I was a senior and an ingenue type so I guess they felt obligated? but they were casting a professor as callahan and the callback was That Scene, so I spent a good half an hour believing that my first kiss was going to be with a professor 20+ years older than me. thankfully the director said we weren’t gonna actually do the kiss or the slap because that’s fight choreography or something so I survived. but the sheer panic in that moment was like nothing else I have ever experienced in my life.

I can do a pretty solid kermit the frog voice, but only when i’m singing. it’s weird.

i’ve been in love with danny fenton since 2004

tagging @euphrasiex​, @kathycats​, @rosswood, @ginnsweasleys, and @phoebedysquithsnavarro !!!

[starry-bi-sky]

More clone^2 snippets

Snippet 12: hands

Lancer: dear god, Mr. Fenton, what happened to your hands!?

Danny, had a run in with Damian’s katana and both of his hands have stitches: um… cooking… accident. I can’t use them that much currently

Lancer, pale: right, yes, of course. You may have one of your friends right you notes until they are properly healed

————

Snippet 13: more hands (and dash is a dick)

Dash: I bet Fenturd’s just faking his hand injury to get out of doing class work. Getting out of classwork is my thing! I’ll show him.

Danny, minding his own business:

Dash, yanks on his fingers harshly: Freak! Did you think you could copy me and het away with it?

Danny, his stitches torn from the way Dash grabbed him: you’re the last person I’d want to copy Dash, let go.

Dash: we all know you’re faking the hand injury, there’s no way you’d— you’d—

(Danny’s hands are bleeding, and starting to smear on Dash’s hands.)

Danny, (fake) calmly: you were saying, Dash?

Dash: I - uh—

Danny: thanks for opening them up, jerk.

—————

Snippet 14: Danny is Bruce’s Clone and Bruce Wayne has been hottest man alive for many consecutive years

The A-Lister Girls are at a sleepover

Star: Never have I ever had a crush on Danny Fenton

All girls (including Star): puts a finger down

A-List Girl: Paulina put your finger down

Paulina, begrudgingly putting a finger down: he shouldn’t count - he’s a loser!

A-List Girl: he’s still the cutest boy in our grade. Put your damn finger down.

—————

Snippet 15: unstoppable force vs immovable object

(In the Clone Danny Au, since Danny is not a ghost Valerie doesn’t see Phantom as the guy who ruined her life, but a very exhausted vigilante trying his best. They’re allies with conflicting ideologies on how to handle ghosts.)

Red Huntress: are you kidding me, Phantom? You dragged a kid in with you to fight ghosts? I thought you were better than that

Wraith, offended: *opening his mouth*

Phantom, tiredly putting a hand over Damian’s mouth: *in ASL + one hand* you don’t think I tried to stop him?

Red Huntress: he’s a child, Phantom, how hard could it be?

Phantom: looks down at Wraith

Wraith: looks up at Phantom with the eyes of a hundred enraged bulls

Phantom, kneeling down to Wraith and pulling his mask up to show his mouth: *whispering inaudibly*

Wraith: *takes off in the opposite direction*

Phantom, standing up to Red: *ASL* well? go get him

————

Snippet 16: identity

(Danny and Damian are sitting on a rooftop, in the middle of a break from patrol. Damian sits between Danny’s legs and Danny is slumped over Damian’s back.)

Damian, playing with Danny’s fingers:

Danny: who are you?

Damian: Damian.

Danny: who are you not?

Damian: Damian Wayne.

Danny: do you have to be?

Damian: no.

Danny: who do you have to be?

Damian: I just have to be me.

Danny: who are you?

Damian: I’m Damian.

Danny: good.

Damian:

Danny:

Damian: who are you?

Danny, smiling: Danny

—————

Snippet 17: long hair

(In the Clone Danny Au, Danny’s hair goes to his shoulders. I was in a GNC mood at the time the au was made and it passed on to Danny.)

Tucker: are you going to cut your hair, Danny? It’s getting long.

Danny, laying against the bed frame with Sam doing his hair: probably to get the dead ends cut off. I like it long.

Sam: I like it long too.

Tucker: you like it long because he lets you do whatever you want to it

Sam: it’s also a stand against the oppressive stereotype that men can’t have long hair and must always have it short in order to appear masculine! Danny’s showing individuality and sticking it to the patriarchy at the same time!

Danny: and because I let you do whatever you want to it.

Sam, making a punk hairdo for danny: yea that too

——————

Snippet 18: Danny is Bruce Wayne’s clone and Bruce——

Danny, getting stuff from his locker: my parents have a new ‘Fenton anti-ghost sticky bomb’ they’re working on and—

Student with a photography camera: Hey, Fenton!

Danny, looking over: what?

Student: *snaps a photo* thanks!

Student walks away

Danny:

Tucker:

Sam:

Danny: so… um…. Is that- is that another Wes? Should I be worried?

Sam: you should be angry! He just took your picture without your consent! That’s a violation of your bodily autonomy.

Danny: we can keep an eye on it, Sam, and if it becomes an issue then I’ll report it to a teacher.

Danny: and as I was saying, I can’t wait to have to make sure that that doesn’t hurt anyone.

Danny: i love having to stay up late sabotaging my parents’ inventions. Yay…

—————

Snippet 19: Danny is Bruce’s clone and—

Wes: ranting about how Phantom = Danny and how there’s proof and he has it and—

Random Student from his photography club: you wanna kiss him so bad it makes you look stupid.

Wes: I do nOT

Student: Its okay Wes, so does literally everyone else.

—————

Snippet 20: Lookalike

Danny: the only good thing about being Bruce Wayne’s clone is that my Brucie Wayne Impression is spot on

Damian: what??

Danny: my Brucie Wayne impression. It shouldn’t be as fun as it is doing it

[starry-bi-sky]

sO i got to part two of the daniel jason todd fenton au :)

>:) word count 8k+

So, first, taglist for folks who asked for it: @blep-23 @mikyapixie @isnt-that-grape @randomenglishmajor @illryiannightmare @the-navistar-carol

SECOND: this part needs a trigger/content warning list: - CW Mild Swearing - CW Slight Psychological Horror - ^ CW mild depictions of being haunted by your own ghost/death flag and not realizing it (other people do though) - CW Brief Emetophobia (Danny throws up during a second nightmare) - CW Danny has nightmares of dying - except its of Jason Todd's warehouse death. It's not explicit but it's implied - TW Mild mentions of perceived Blood - TW Depictions of Corpses (first is non-descript, and then second one is slightly more descript but its not anything uh, super descriptive) - TW Mild description of burns (the descriptive part above) - TW Depictions of Panic Attacks (Danny's nightmares)

I mentioned that this au was inspired by a song lyric from Jann's 'Gladiator' here is that line:

I know your addiction's attention, Let's start a show Is it everything and more than you were hoping for? Show us something we ain't never seen before

The day after Danny meets himself, he's downstairs having breakfast in the dining room with the rest of the family, listening idly in on their conversations. Tim Drake is talking about something about Wayne Industries with Mr. Wayne - and wasn't that a startling surprise to learn the first time? - and Damian was slyly trying to feed Ace under the table. Duke Thomas was mid conversation with Cass, much of it audibly one-sided as Cass swaps between ASL and verbal speech.

(Danny comes across her a fair few amount of times in Wayne Manor. The first time was in the library. She hands him a book about planets, smiles, and walks away.)

(He hasn't talked much to Duke Thomas yet, but he plans to - he seems cool. They just haven't had the time to run into each other yet. Danny might just have to corner him, he thinks.)

And finally Dick Grayson on his left, his Dick Grayson, was talking away with the other Dick Grayson - who had stopped by from Bludhaven for the morning for his day off. He was a cop, ew. They were comparing lives, specifically college lives. There wasn’t much to talk about in their childhood, it seems. Danny was quietly listening in. 

(They both gave their Bruces headaches as children, apparently. Climbing the chandeliers and sliding down the staircase banisters. Flips and tricks only a child raised by the circus could do.) 

All-in-all, a very quiet morning, Danny thinks. That is, until the other Dick Grayson turns to him and goes; "I'm sure you've been asked already, but what do your parents do, Mini Jay?"

Danny squints at him, and releases his grip on his spoon to raise a pointed finger. "First off: only my Dick Grayson can call me Jay, you have your own." He says, slightly playful and nodding to Dick - oh that was going to get confusing, fast. He should come up with a nickname for one of them, probably - "And second: you're the second person to ask me that, actually. Jason - er, myself? - asked me yesterday. My parents are ectologists."

Apparently, mentioning that he met himself is a set of magic words, because the whole table stops what they're doing, and Danny's half-sinking back into his chair when all eyes turn to him in varying degrees of surprise. Dick - Richard, he’s going to call him Richard - looks at him with wide eyes and furrowed, confused brows. "You saw Jason?"

(Danny sends Bruce a confused look, but he's not paying attention - looking at everyone else with threaded eyebrows and a faint frown. Well, at least Danny isn't the only one confused by the reaction.)

(What a comfort.) 

"I guess that nickname is a dimensional constant." He mutters under his breath, and straightens up, eyeing the room warily. It... doesn't bode well to him that the Waynes were surprised by his other self's appearance -- was hisself estranged from the family?

...He hopes that doesn't happen in his world. Dick and Bruce may not be his adoptive family, but he likes them quite a lot. He wants to stay in contact with them when they get home.

"Yeah, he was in the library." He says, frowning at Richard Grayson. "He was sitting in my armchair." He supposes it was Jason's armchair first -- god, that was so weird to refer to himself in third person. "We talked for a little bit, and he asked me what my parents did. They're ectologists, by the way."

He turns to Mister Wayne and tilts his head, "Did you really not know that he was here?" He asks, narrowing his eyes. He wouldn't expect Richard to know, he doesn't live here. But Mister Wayne looks just as surprised, perhaps even a little remorseful.

(There’s a pit in his stomach that’s growing bigger.)

(His neck burns with a new pair of eyes, ones that he can’t see.) 

Mr. Wayne looks thoughtful for a moment, and then carefully, he goes; "Jason is rather... independent. He comes and goes from the manor when he feels like it." And the way he speaks sounds like he was choosing his words carefully. Danny suppresses the shiver of unease.

Something was not well in this house. Something unspoken was haunting the air. 

(Jason would know about hauntings, wouldn’t he?) 

He hopes history won't repeat itself, he likes Bruce quite a lot.

"...Alright," he says after a moment of silence, not hiding his wariness as he slowly turns back to Richard. His eyes flick towards Bruce, and then to Ricard. "Anyway, my parents are ectologists, as I've said for the third time now."

Richard, for his effort, takes the topic change easily, and his surprise shifts into one of curiosity - as does everyone else. (Did Danny really not mention what his parents did? Even Dick and Bruce look intrigued.) "That's... new." Richard says lightly, Danny commends him for the way he sounds non-judgmental. "What are ectologists?"

Danny quirks a dry half-smile, and deadpans; "Studiers of all things dead and afterlife."

...And there is that reaction again. A ripple of surprise and intrigue that spreads throughout the room as everyone looks at him, like a bunch of cats perking up their ears. 

On the other side of the table, Damian scoffs quietly, a sound much like the one Jason - the other one - did when Danny told him. Danny's eyes snap over to him in an instant, he stares at him, trying to study him. Why that reaction - again? 

He lets himself frown, briefly, before addressing Richard again. "Everyone just calls them ghost hunters, but the 'official' term is ectologists." He drawls, air-quoting the word 'official' with his fingers as he rolls his eyes. "They've been obsessed with ghosts since college. We even have a lab in the basement, and they keep liquid ectoplasm samples in the fridge."

Danny's been in the lab a handful of times, he and Jazz both have, either to clean it as part of their chores, or to listen to a lecture from their parents for their newest invention. The lab is cool, kinda, but Danny thinks it wouldn't look out of place in any evil lair of a Rogue with a doctorate. 

…He’s glad that the Fentons weren’t stationed in Gotham. They would have blown up a street. He’s surprised they haven’t already. 

"Ectoplasm?" Dick asks, leaning over to catch Danny's eye. Almost by instinct now Danny smiles at him, and then nods.

"Mom and dad say it's the stuff that makes ghosts." He explains, leaning back against his seat, his arms crossing. "It's invisible in its natural state, and it makes up everything. Kinda like the Force from Star Wars, or just, matter in general."

That cracks a few quiet, laugh-like sounds through the dining room. Danny halves a smile again, a swelling of pride in his chest that lingers for a moment. "My parents say that when ectoplasm condenses enough in one area, it can start taking on visible properties," he continues, "they say that ghosts are just the memories and emotions of a dying person or animal being imprinted on a concentration of ectoplasm, and that the ghost itself isn't actually the person or animal, just matter trying to mimic it."

Which Danny guesses makes sense, even if the way they talk about ghosts made him really uncomfortable. His parents insisted that ghosts weren't actually people, but he just couldn't shake the idea that they were. How close to ‘human’ does something get before they actually are? 

Well, no, that wasn’t fair. Superman wasn’t human, and yet everyone treated him like he was. Let him rephrase himself:

How human-like must something get before they are considered as such? Before they’re considered sapient and sentient, and real?  

"That's... quite interesting." Someone says, and Danny turns to see Bruce leaning his elbows against the table and putting his chin on threaded fingers. He looks genuinely engrossed in what Danny's said, and pride once again leaks into his heart. "You mentioned they kept ectoplasm in a liquified state in their... fridge?"

"Oh yeah," Danny says, putting his full attention to Bruce, "it's crazy. They keep little test tube racks in the freezer full of liquid ectoplasm, and it's this - uh - glowing, bright green stuff. It used to be the weirdest thing in the house."

(From his peripherals, Danny notices the room tense up again at his description — and he bites back the urge to slow his talking down and narrow his eyes. Suspicious. Suspicious. The Waynes weren’t scientists - why do they react to something like they are?)

(Nobody knows what ectoplasm is. To the scientific world, it's an unconfirmed theory of a state of matter. Why do the Waynes act like they know what it is?)

(Danny is not stupid. Even if his scientific family makes him feel like it, sometimes.) 

Bruce gives him this half-tilted, confused smile, the corners of his eyes crinkling up. "Used to be?"

Danny opens his mouth, the answer already on the tip of his tongue -- and then he freezes. His jaw clicks shut as he frowns. Should he say what his parents' latest pet project was? Surely, surely, it would be fine? Their inventions never work - and a life-sized portal is just another thing on his parents' crazy ideas list.

His teeth sink into his bottom lip, chewing on the skin as he rolls the answer over in his head. ...Surely, it would be fine. His face turns in hesitance, and his shoulders scrunch and twist to his ears, like he's about to admit something that could get him grounded by his parents.

"They... may, or may not, be building an inter-dimensional portal in the basement?" His voice steadily pitches upward nervously the longer he speaks. By the time he finishes, his voice is close to a squeaky pitch.

There is a horrified silence that follows him, sitting in the air so still-like that Danny could hear the whoosh of a pin drop. He should have expected that, nervously surveying the ranging horrified expressions on the Wayne family's faces. "...I promise they're harmless... to the living." He hesitates, "Mostly."

Bruce stares at him for a long moment. "Mostly?" He repeats, his brows arched high and pinched together. Danny cringes back a little.

"Dad's a little clumsy, that's all." He says, shrugging with a helpless smile. It doesn't help, he thinks, and the silence is strangling. Sitting up, he's a little frantic to add; "I really, really, doubt it's going to work, Bruce. Their inventions never do. Mom and dad built a mini portal in college and it didn't work either!" There's a moment of silence following him, before he quietly adds, wincing, "It- it did hospitalize the guy who was helping them, though."

He only heard about that when he asked his parents about the portal - it was still in production when they picked him up. Jack Fenton claimed it was safe as safe could be - they’d make sure that the ‘college’ instance never happened again.

Bruce - both Bruces actually - looked vaguely ill at the thought. Mister Wayne’s face was blank, his face sunk into his folded hands, and Bruce’s stare burned into Danny, intense like concentrated fire. 

Danny for some reason - either through his panicked urge to make things better, or through temporary insanity - laughs forcibly. "The worst thing that could happen is that the portal could explode, but that never happens."

Next to him, Dick makes a stressed sound. "That's not better, Jay." He forces out. He looks even more horrified.

Danny sucks on his bottom lip for a long beat. Then lets out a breath.

"Yeah, I know." Danny sighs, deep and long while his shoulders slump. He watches the room for a moment, with their various stony-like expressions, and looks back at the very concerned-looking Bruce. "But Bruce, I swear it's fine. Nothing's gonna happen, please don't call the Justice League on my parents. They really are harmless."

Bruce looks conflicted.

"I was being dramatic when I said the portal could explode, it won't." He continues, giving Bruce what Jazz has called his 'cheating puppy eyes'. "My parents are eccentric about their line of work, but they understand lab safety. They'd never do anything to put me and Jazz in danger."

...Actively or on purpose, that is.

He and Bruce stare each other down. One second, two seconds; what feels like thirty seconds pass in silence before Bruce relents, sighing deeply and uncannily dad-like. He drags a hand down his face, and rubs his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. "When we get back to our universe, you are giving me your phone number so you can contact me if anything happens."

Danny beams, nodding hurriedly. "Thank you, Buzz."

Bruce isn't able to hide his smile - small as it was - quickly enough. "You're welcome, Danny."

—-----

Danny has a nightmare that night. He doesn't remember most of it. There's a ticking sound, and high laughter, and there is a thumping heartbeat in his ears. Everything is dark and he is in agonizing pain.

He wakes up in paralyzing terror, a scream lodged in the back of his throat. His head pounds like a concussion and there is a shallowing ache in his ribs, like someone's kicked him, and kicked him, and kicked him until all air has been knocked from his lungs. He can't breathe.

Danny's hands scrabble for his throat, and even though he can hear himself gasping for air, it doesn't feel like he's taking any of it in. There is no relief in the action, no reassurance, and everything is so hot. He kicks at his blankets, his panic growing higher as they tangle around his legs.

He needs-

He needs--

He needs to move. He needs to get up. He needs to free himself. He needs to prove that he's not dying. He feels like he's dying. He feels like he's burning. There are tears swelling in his eyes as he finally gets the blankets off his feet, and he rolls - quite literally - out of bed.

He tries to catch himself, he does. But he doesn't. He hits the floor with a heavy thud and can hardly bring himself to care -- he catches himself on his elbows, and the sting it causes makes him feel worse. The air is knocked out of his chest again. 

The ground is cold though, blessedly cold. And before Danny can realize this, he lifts his head and, disoriented, looks for the door. It's too dark, it's too dark. His head swivels blindly in search of it. He needs to get out, he needs to escape. 

"Bruce." He croaks, still trying to force air down into his lungs. His call comes out raspy, weak, and hot tears blur his vision.

"Dick." He tries instead when a minute passes and no one comes, and he thinks he can finally start breathing. No one comes to find him - his voice is too quiet to wake anyone up. The tears in his eyes bubble and pop, and stream down his face.

He makes a distressed noise. "Jazz?" He whispers, his voice shaky and uneven with an encompassing want for his sister. It's nearly been a month since they got here. He wants Jazz.

No one hears him. He's alone.

God, he doesn't want to be alone. Please don't make him be alone.

Danny eventually gets himself calmed down. But he is curled up on the floor, trembling with the lingering traces of fear from whatever dream had woken up. His fingers dig painfully into his arms, leaving crescent-moon indents by his nails. The contents of the nightmare are already fading further into his mind, slipping out of his hands like water. Like ash.

He feels no need to chase after it.

The back of his shirt is damp with sweat, and in between the trembling he is also shivering, goosebumps lacing up his arms. His eyes have adjusted to the dark, and he stares with wide, crying eyes at the side of his bed. His breath comes out in short, shaky pants.

He doesn't know how long he lays there, trying to comprehend what happened as his mind still hangs onto the edge of the dreamworld. It feels like there is something in the room with him, crawling along the walls.

Danny forces himself to get up, and the sudden standing makes his vision blacken and swim as blood rushes to his head. He stumbles, slightly, and lurches halfway across the room for the light switch.

He squints as the room is drenched in light, chasing away the lingering paranoia in the back of his brain. He is still shaking. His head still hurts. He still looks, wide eyed, around the room for anything out of place.

There is none.

But he still feels unsafe. He needs- he needs to find someone, or go somewhere else. He grabs a firm pillow off the bed, and leaves.

(He ends up in the library alone. He turns on the lights and grabs a book Dick recommended to him, and he curls up tight in his armchair. He ends up falling asleep just as the sun is rising.)

(He doesn't tell anyone about the nightmare.)

-

Progress in getting the three of them back to their home dimension is slow. Dimension Hopping is a rare experience, and what update Bruce gets he relays back to Danny and Dick: they're trying to figure out a way to send them back safely, from the exact time they disappeared, and to find what dimension they're from. It's complicated magic.

It's been three weeks. 

Danny, for one, is getting homesick. He misses Jazz, Sam, and Tucker terribly, and his parents. Bruce and Dick are great, really, and Danny kinda wants to keep in touch with them after they return to their own world, but they aren't replacements of his sister and friends.

His nightmare from a few days ago still haunt his steps. He closes eyes, and that high-pitched laughter and blood-rushed pounding burns itself his ears and fills a level of unseen terror into his heart. Danny thinks that if he was hit with Scarecrow's fear gas, this is what it would feel like.

He tries to avoid falling asleep by reading in his room, by stargazing, but the place sets him on edge; an unsettling reminder of that nightmare. So he goes to the library when it gets too much, he's run into Bruce twice now doing it, and they both do reading.

Danny thinks Bruce can suspect something is up with him, but he doesn't want to tell him about that nightmare. Dick either, for that matter. He just wants to forget it.

They spend afternoons in the gym, they have it mostly to themselves - Tim Drake is at Wayne Industries, Damian Wayne is at school, so is Duke Thompson, and Cassandra Cain is... doing whatever she does during the day. Danny's not totally sure.

Dick in that time, tries showing Danny how to be more flexible. He says he's a fast learner, but Danny knows he's been slacking lately with his lack of sleep.

There isn't much they can do outside of the manor - Bruce and Dick can't go outside because they'll catch the attention of the paparazzi, and they are both significantly younger than their counterparts, and Danny isn't allowed out without a chaperone.

Which has its own unique set of problems because rumors could rapidly start if he's seen with any of the Waynes multiple times. The paparazzi aren’t dumb enough… okay, most — some — of them aren’t dumb enough to make a tabloid claiming there’s a new Wayne kid just because they see the Waynes interacting with one kid, one time. Multiple times however? That’s another story. And, he has the same issue as Bruce and Dick - he's a baby-faced Jason Todd. Who is Bruce Wayne's adoptive son in this world. He could be recognized. 

And how do you explain a tiny Jason Todd to a world where Jason Todd is a full grown man?

So all three of them are... stuck inside, so to speak. And making do with what they can. Danny spends most of his morning and early noon with Dick, and then they both separate after to have time to themselves before dinner.

Bruce is in one of the studies, doing... something. Danny's not sure and he keeps forgetting to ask.

--

Dick likes Danny - Jason? - Jay. Danny said that he can call him Jason, and he doesn't protest to being called Jay. 

Point is: he likes Jay. He's a delightful kid to be around; he's funny, and clever, even if he doesn't realize it himself. And Dick's a little upset that Jay isn't his brother in his world, he would've loved to have him around the manor. He probably would have visited more if he was around.

Something that he and Bruce were still slowly trying to fix...

He likes spending time with him - getting to teach him his acrobatic tricks was not something he expected, but he loves showing Jay how to do them. He thinks this is probably how Bruce felt when he was training Dick how to be Robin, all those years ago.

Speaking of which, Dick was still not over the Robin jacket that Jay wore. The origins of it weren't the best - Jay started wearing it to take back the insult the other kids at his school were throwing at him - but isn't that what part of what being Robin was about? 

Cheesy, he knows. But his point still stands.

He thinks that if he had to pass the Robin title down to anyone, it would be Daniel Jason Todd-Fenton. Or perhaps just Jason Fenton-Todd? Jay doesn’t seem all that attached to the name Danny. 

(“Mom and dad just started calling me it when they picked me up.” Danny — Jay shrugged when Dick asked him about it, the two of them swinging from bar to bar. “I wasn’t tellin’ ‘em my name at the time, so they gave me a new one.”) 

If he had met Jason before the Fentons had, Dick thinks maybe he would have adopted him instead. And what would that future look like? Would he have been able to, when he had to go to college and classes? Would he have been able to keep going out at night, and keep that secret to himself? 

He’ll never know, he supposes. 

“I think that’s it for today.” Dick says, swinging off the jungle gym and landing on the mats with a cat-like thump. Behind him, Jay groans, and drops with a less graceful thud as Dick stretches out his spine. There’s a satisfying pop-pop-pop of his back as he leans back. 

He turns, and sees Jay going for his water bottle. He looks tired — from what, Dick doesn’t know. But there are dark bags under his eyes and a sleep-distracted look on his face. He’s been distracted, and their lessons have been suffering from it. 

Dick wants to know what’s bothering him, but Jay hasn’t said anything, and Dick doesn’t know what he could say to make it better. 

“I can still keep going.” Jason insists, but he tiredly slumps over to grab his water, and straightens up sluggishly. It’s probably not a lie, but anything Dick shows him he doubts that Jay will retain it. “You don’t have to stop.”

“Oh but I want to.” Dick says, walking over to grab his own water. “I’m human too you know—” and Jay snorts at him with a grumbled ‘doubt it’. “—so I also need my breaks.” 

“With the way you can bend I really don’t think so.” Jason mutters, eyeing him up and down. Dick laughs quietly and takes a long sip of his water. “Seriously, circus boy, what do they feed you? Actually - what did they feed myself?”

Dick’s laughter doubles as Jay’s eyes grow wide and wild, his head shaking with spasming arms. “No, seriously! I don’t know if you’ve seen the other me yet, Dick, but he- he’s fucking huge!” He exclaims, and jumps as high as he can as his arms try to make a silhouette above his head. “I- I’m almost as big as Jack Fenton, and we’re not even biologically related! I don’t know where he got that much height to him, ‘cause- ‘cause Willis, that drunk bastard, was never that big!” 

Dick hasn’t seen the elusive other Jason Todd, and he’s been so curious about him. Both he and Bruce have — especially considering that everyone else doesn’t seem to want to tell them about him. He tried stopping his other self to ask about Jason Todd of his world, and his other self just said that he was his little brother and the second robin, and that he did a lot of his own stuff. 

It was a whole bunch of fucking nothing. And he and Bruce were growing suspicious about it. They hadn’t thought of it before because, well, they were busy adjusting to being in a new world and trying to figure out a way back. And then Jason was never really brought up, but neither was Dick Grayson unless Dick asked about it, and he didn’t think to ask about Jason Todd before.

It was all just strange.

But Jay’s exclamation over the size of himself distracts Dick long enough that he forces himself to put the mystery of Jason Todd on the backburner for now. “I’ll- I’ll have to see him for myself, Jaybird.” He says when his laughter subsides, and he straightens up. 

“Seriously,” Jay stresses, and he starts to make his way towards the gym door. “He’s fucking massive, Dick. Built like a brick shithouse.” 

Dick almost starts laughing again, “Where did you even learn that phrase?” 

Jay rolls his shoulders back and grins at him slyly, “I read.” He says, and it’s so clearly not how he learned that word that Dick barks out a laugh. 

They reach the door, and Jay holds the door open as Dick reaches for the light switch. He looks behind him, surveying the room quickly to make sure that there’s nothing they could have left on the floor, before turning off the lights.

Bright green eyes stare at him from the mirror. Right where Jay is standing. 

In an instant, the lights are back on. Dick’s heart has been kickstarted into fifth gear, suddenly and loudly racing in his chest as he darts his head around the room. It was only two seconds, perhaps only even one, but fear has been shot like an adrenaline needle into Dick’s veins. An inhuman, skyrocketing fear alike to Scarecrow’s fear gas. 

What was that?

What was that?

WHAT WAS THAT?  

But there’s nothing there. There’s nothing there. There’s nothing there. There is only Jason where the eyes were. 

From the mirror’s reflection, Jason turns his head — he hadn’t been looking at Dick, he hadn’t been looking at Dick — and stares up at him. There is confusion written on his face as he glances up at Dick, and then at the mirror. He meets his eyes - Jason’s blue, blue, not green, eyes — and Dick forces himself to look away from the mirror and down at Jay.

“What was that for?” Jay asks him, perfectly normal and perfectly confused. 

Dick feels like he just ran a marathon. He’s panting, he doesn’t know why, and he forces himself to sound like he wasn’t as he wets his lips and furrows his brows. “I thought I saw something.” He says, frowning. 

He didn’t think. He did. He did. 

What did he see? 

It was standing where Jay was. Those eyes. Those green-green eyes. It was where Jay was. He forces himself to shake his head, his frown deepening, unsettled. Jason peers around him as if to see what he had, and Dick puts a hand on his chest, stopping him. “It was nothing, let's go.” 

He turns Jay around, and ignores his bewildered look. That lighthearted mood he had earlier has plummeted, replaced with an eerie paranoia as he takes the door from Jason’s hand and flicks the lights back off. 

When he looks over his shoulder at the mirror, there’s nothing there. 

—------------

Danny has another nightmare. It’s the same one. It’s dark again. That high pitched laughter fills his ears. The ticking is louder, louder, louder. It’s counting down, but to what - he can’t see — he can’t see what it’s counting down to. 

There is still so much pain. His head hurts, his body hurts. He has a body now, he can remember he has a body. He’s in so much pain. He looks down at his hands and pooling around his knees is a bloody yellow cape, it’s torn and bloody and his hands are bloody and torn and he’s wearing green gloves. 

He wakes up just before the ticking stops. He doesn’t know how he knows that the ticking stops. 

Danny rolls over and hangs himself sideways off the bed, gasping for air that doesn’t come. He wants to scream again, to shriek with such terror that it sends everyone in the manor running into his room. He doesn’t, he can’t, he has no mouth and he must scream. 

Danny gasps for air instead, and then dry heaves until he throws up onto the floor. His head is spinning with the fadings of a dream-made concussion, again. His chest hurts deeper, more, it’s no longer shallow and as if someone was sitting on his chest, like someone had beat him in the stomach and chest and head.  

He feels like he’s choking. He is, he’s choking on what bile he can’t get out of his throat, and he forces himself to swallow it back down. He’s crying, he realizes, and dragging in air down into his lungs to the point it hurts. 

What is going on? He thinks through the haze in his mind. With what lucidity he has he brings a hand to his head to make sure he’s not bleeding. His palm swipes against sticky skin, and all that comes back is sweat. He’s not bleeding. He feels like he is. 

Make it stop. His inner mind wails as he finally, finally, starts to calm down again. He’s still crying. The tears burn down his cheeks, and he absently sticks out his tongue and licks the ones that gather at his lips away. He wipes at his face again, and when he looks at his hands, all he sees is skin.

He’s not wearing gloves. 

His hands reach for his back, and grasp his sweat-soaked shirt instead. He’s not wearing a cape. It soothes him, just a little bit. But not enough to keep him feeling safe. 

Danny peers over the side of the bed, and through his dark-adjusted eyes he sees the sitting puddle of throw-up on the floor. He cringes, sniffling. He can’t keep that there. He needs to — he needs to clean that up. 

Alfred must be sleeping by now — what time is it? He doesn’t know. He can’t wake him up. Where does Alfred keep the cleaning supplies? 

Danny throws his legs over the side — they’re not broken, he thinks dazedly — why would he think they’re broken? — and he stumbles to the door. He avoids, somehow, the sick.

(He passes by a mirrored vanity on his way to the door. He doesn’t see his reflection staring at him with green-green eyes. He doesn’t see those eyes following him.) 

He runs into Bruce in the hallway. He should have guessed it so. Danny freezes in his tracks, fear shooting up into his throat as Bruce turns towards him, already a smile pulling on the older man’s face. 

It drops immediately when he sees him. It twists down, and his face burrows into concern. “What’s wrong?” He asks, and Bruce is kneeling before him before Danny can blink. He looks worried. Danny must look awful then.

(He does. He looks pale as a ghost, and his face is splotchy red and shiny with tears.) 

Danny blinks at him numbly, trying to get his thoughts in order. Bruce’s hands are on his shoulders, Danny throws his hands over them, squeezing the knuckles and blinking widely. “I had-” he licks his lips, “a- uh, nightmare. And then I threw up.”

Fuck, he feels like a toddler. His eyes burn with embarrassed tears. He’s fucking thirteen. He’s not a baby. But he feels like a little kid going to their parent’s room. Bruce isn’t even his dad. He shouldn’t feel this way. 

But Bruce doesn’t make fun of him, or scold him, and Danny didn’t really expect him to, but the concern that melts over his face as his eyes soften makes him feel all warm and fuzzy anyways. “Okay,” Bruce says, expression softened but no less worried, and stands up. “Okay, we can go find Alfred then.” 

Danny’s lips press together, uneven and wobbling. “Please don’t.” He says before he can stop himself, and his voice cracks. He feels like such a baby. “I can clean it myself. We don’t have to wake him up.” 

“Do you even know where the cleaning supplies are, chum?” Bruce asks, and in the dark hallway he can see him raise an eyebrow. Danny’s lips press tighter together. He doesn’t. But he can find it. 

They wake up Alfred. Dany feels like shit the entire time. 

“I’m sorry.” He croaks as he follows Alfred and Bruce down the hallway with a mop and a bucket. He’s so embarrassed. He’s going to cry again, and he hates it. “I can do it, Mister Pennyworth. Please.” 

“You sound,” Mister Pennyworth starts, his voice soft, “just like young Master Jason when he started living here.” He turns to throw Danny an endeared smile, and Danny thinks it’s supposed to make him feel better. It does, a little bit, and it also makes him feel worse. 

“I am Jason.” He says, and tears spill down his face again. He is Jason. That’s his name. It’s not Danny, it never has been. The time he’s been here has slowly been pointing that out to him. He may be Fenton, but he’s not Danny. 

Alfred gets it all cleaned up, and Bruce sticks with him after he leaves. Danny’s grateful and resentful of it — hasn’t he embarrassed himself enough tonight? 

Bruce leads him to the library, a funny parallel to the first time. “We can ask Mister Wayne —” Bruce’s face scrunches up slightly, and Danny laughs under his breath. At least he’s not the only one still weirded out by it. “— about getting you a new room tomorrow.” 

Danny sniffs dryly, “How’d you know?” He didn’t think it was obvious that he didn’t want to go to sleep in his room. Bruce smiles knowingly at him, sadly, and they both sit down in the lounge chair next to the fireplace. It sits across from Danny’s armchair.

“I know a thing or two about nightmares.” He says softly.

Oh. 

Yeah.

That’s right. His parents. 

He probably had nightmares about that. 

Danny looks away from him, his eyes drop to his hands. His bare, non-bloody hands. He leans into Bruce’s side. “I don’t wanna talk about it.” He mumbles. He doesn’t want to talk about dying. Or what he thought was dying.  

“And you don’t have to.” Bruce says, slinging one arm around him and slumping against the curve of the chair. Danny reluctantly follows his falling, and finds himself trapped between the back of the chair and Bruce’s side. His ear is pressed to Bruce’s heartbeat. “We can just sit here, and talk about something else.” 

Danny blinks at the empty fireplace. “Okay. Tell me about films again.” 

Bruce’s fingers dig gently into his hair, and scratch slowly against his scalp. “Okay, Danny.” 

Danny frowns. “And don’t call me Danny. It’s Jason.” 

He doesn’t look up to see Bruce’s smile, but he can hear it as the man thumbs over the shell of his ear. “Okay, Jason.” 

(Danny falls asleep halfway through Bruce’s telling of the history of the Grey Ghost. Bruce knows by the way his breathing slows into a steady rhythm and his eyes don’t open.) 

(He smiles for mite a moment, before it drops and his eyes turn to the bookshelf in the corner. Standing there is a small black figure, with two burning green eyes.) 

(They stare at each other for a long, long minute, Bruce’s heart rising slowly. The figure tilts its head, and disappears. Bruce doesn’t sleep for the rest of the night.) 

—-------

Danny stares down Bruce. Bruce stares him down back. It’s morning. It’s breakfast. Everyone is at the table eating, and he and Bruce are having a silent staring contest. Danny has to ask Mister Wayne about moving to a new room, he thought he would be able to do so after breakfast. 

(Who was he kidding? He wasn’t going to ask at all - why bother Mister Wayne about something he can get over?) 

(Bruce, apparently, wasn’t having it. With that stupid knowing look on his face.) 

But Bruce wants it to be now. Danny narrows his eyes at him, and Bruce raises an eyebrow back. Dick Grayson, his world, was going to notice soon. He was sitting next to Bruce this morning. That traitor. 

If you don’t do it, I will. Bruce’s face says. Bastard. Danny was going to take away his Jason rights.

Danny’s the first to relent, pressing his lips together into an annoyed, thin line, before he lets out a silent sigh and turns to Mister Wayne. “Mister Wayne?” He says, cringing slightly when Mister Wayne looks up at him - as with most of the room. 

“Yes, Danny?” 

He spares one last look at Bruce, who nods curtly at him, and Danny throws him one last annoyed look before turning back to Mister Wayne. “Would it, uh, be fine if I changed rooms?” He asks. 

Mister Wayne tilts his head, slightly, to the side with a look of interest. “You can, but what brought this up? Is everything okay?”

Fuck. Shit. Fuck. Danny was expecting that question. He glares at Bruce from the corner of his eye. And then smiles shakily at Mister Wayne. “Um, uh, yeah. Everything’s fine— it’s just, it’s stupid. Some, some stupid nightmares keeping me up.” 

Mister Wayne’s brows furrow, and Dick looks concerned from Danny’s peripherals. “It’s not stupid, you can change your room. I’m sorry you’ve been having nightmares.”

He doesn’t even ask what they’re about. Bruce didn’t either — he thinks he would’ve, maybe — but fuck, jeez. Danny laughs uncomfortably, scratching his jaw. “Yeah- um, thanks. It sucks.” He just barely stops himself from blurting out that he was dreaming that he was dying.

That was not a can he wanted to open. They would have questions, he knows they would, and he doesn’t want to think about it. The image of his bloody, torn hands are already seared into his mind. 

Everyone goes back to eating.

(Dick keeps looking up at him with a shadow of a frown on his face, like he’s keeping an eye on him. Quick enough that Danny doesn’t notice it. Bruce does, and watches his son from the corner of his eye.)

(Danny doesn’t see it, but his reflection turns its head. And peers around the back of its chair. Its eye burns green and it stares at Dick. The next time Dick looks up, it catches his eye.)

(He doesn’t straighten up, he forces himself not to react. He just keeps staring at it, his breath locked in his lungs, his limbs filling with a low, buzzing static. He doesn’t know what it is. It’s terrifying him.)

(The reflection doesn’t react to him, but its eyes seem to… glitch. And an eye appears next to it, and another one appears in a line. The pupils slowly turn to look… at Danny.)

(The window begins to crack.)

“JaSON!” Dick suddenly yells, standing up so abruptly that his chair falls back and slams against the ground with an echoing bang. Danny jerks back in surprise, and stares at Dick, who looks at him with equally wide eyes. 

Dick looks like he’s seen a ghost, his face pale as a sheet. He looks ill. He’s panting, there’s a sheen going over his forehead, like he’s just run a mile. But he’s gripping the table like he may just vault over it.

And everyone is looking at them both once again. Bruce looks incredibly concerned. 

“I— what?” Danny says, pushing his back into the chair as far as he could go. 

Dick blinks, and heaves a breath. Like whatever trance he was in was just… snapped out of. His brows furrow, and he moves, suddenly, peering over Danny like he’s trying to look around him. Left, right, and over, and then back again. 

“You—” he pauses, breathing in, “you looked like you were about to disappear.” 

Danny stares at him in disbelief. And he looks behind him, laughing nervously. There’s nothing there but his own reflection in the smooth glass window. “What- what kind of fucking—” he turns back around to look at Dick. “Why would you say that?” 

“There was something in the window.” Dick says immediately, and Danny is immediately rising to his feet and rushing around the table. Nope - nope, nope, fuck that. He’s by him and Bruce in an instant, as the other Waynes stand up and turn to the window as well.

Dick’s arms are around him the moment he’s within reach, tugging him into his side as one hand presses down against his chest, keeping him close. Dick hasn’t taken his eyes off the window, brows furrowed and serious. 

Everyone looks so serious. It’s freaking him out a little bit. 

“What was your nightmare about, Jay?” Dick asks when he finally tears his eyes away from the window and looks down at him. He’s got a protective hold on him, something so similar to Jazz whenever their parents set something on fire upstairs. 

Danny swallows dryly — does he have to say it? Saying it might bring him back to it, and he doesn’t want to go back to it. Twice was enough for him. “I was dying.” He admits anyways, and regrets it immediately when half a dozen heads all snap to look at him. 

In a panic, his mouth runs. “I was- I don’t remember anything- I just, it was dark and I was in pain and-” He presses his lips together, “I— I was in so much pain. There was this laughter—” Laughter. Familiar laughter now that he thinks about it. From the news. Danny’s lips curl downwards, and he whispers to himself, “Joker?”

“Joker?” Dick repeats, his voice hard. When Danny looks up, his face is unrecognizably stern. “You had a dream that the Joker was killing you?” 

“I— no— yes?” Frustration bleeds into his chest, fear pooling up his throat as the nightmare pulls on the edge of his memory. “I don’t fucking know. I didn’t see anything, all I heard was ticking and that stupid laughter. And I was bleeding, and I was wearing this yellow fucking cape, and- and I was dying.” 

He pulls himself away from Dick, his breathing picking up. “I just- I was— there was this ticking sound and I woke up before it stopped, and I- I don’t know why I knew it was about to stop — but I know that when the ticking stops something bad was going to happen— and it was just a nightmare.” 

Danny grits his teeth, and looks back up at Dick, forcing himself to calm down before he works himself into a panic. “It was just a fucking nightmare, Dick.” He says forcibly, and then he marches out of the room to the library. 

His appetite’s been ruined. 

—---------

Danny’s — Jason’s — asleep next to him. Bruce would think it was sweet if it weren’t for the fact that Jason’s been having nightmares about dying of all things. Nightmares that weren’t, he suspects, completely unfounded. 

His other self looked ill in the face as Jason marched out of the room that morning after Dick’s outburst. Outburst. That’s all he can think to call it even if it sounds juvenile. Like it was unfounded as Jason’s nightmare. 

His other self has been hiding something from him. Something about Jason Todd of this world, who he hasn’t seen at all since they arrived, but Danny — Jason — has. He would’ve thought the other Todd was a ghost if his other world’s… children… hadn’t confirmed seeing and knowing him recently. 

(That was something he still hasn’t fully comprehended. Children, plural? He adopts more after Dick? He has a biological son?) 

He’d be interrogating his other self on this if Jason wasn’t asleep next to him. It would be remarkably easy, as they were all sitting in the living room for the afternoon. All his other children were vigilantes, he wouldn’t need to keep pretenses.

But Jason is asleep next to him, and he doesn’t know. So he resolves to staring holes into his other self’s head, who was going through documents. A case, he bets. His other self doesn’t pay him any mind, but Bruce knows he knows that he’s staring at him. 

(“What have you been keeping from me?” He growls the moment Jason is out of the dining room, rising to his feet. The look on his other self meant that he knew something about those nightmares that Bruce didn’t. 

His other self looks at him, “Nothing that concerns your world.” He says, all of the kids looked tense as well, but now they were staring between the both of them like a fight would break out. 

“Bullshit.” Dick snaps before Bruce can speak, he walks around him and points an accusing finger at his other self. “You looked like you saw a ghost when Jaybird said he was dreaming of the Joker killing him. You know something.”

He did not tell them anything.) 

Whatever it was that his other self was hiding, Bruce would find out before they went back to their world. This concerned him, and it concerned Jason’s safety. If he wasn’t safe and his other self knew something about it, Bruce would be furious. 

Jason’s ragged gasp cut through the air like a knife, and Bruce’s gaze snapped down to his face as the boy’s eyes flew open and he jerked sharply. Jason’s hands were latched onto his shirt before Bruce could react, his nails dragging into his skin like he was trying to claw himself up.

It was another nightmare. Jason was clawing at him, trying to sit himself up while jagged, awful sounding gasps filled the air. He wasn’t looking at Bruce, he wasn’t looking at anything, his eyes glazed over like he was still trapped in the nightmare. 

Bruce wrapped his arms around the small boy and pulled them both down onto the ground, ignoring his other children standing up and looking at them until he had Jay in a cradle. 

The boy was still gasping for air, hyperventilating. His hands drop from Bruce’s shirt and scratch at his throat, his arms forming an ‘x’ while he tilts his head back and desperately tries to draw in oxygen. Bruce tilts his head back up with his hand, and leans him against his shoulder. 

“Breathe.” He murmurs, pushing damp black curls out of Jay’s face. It was a poor command - Jason’s eyes were squeezed shut and his face scrunched in pain, Bruce doesn’t think he can even hear him. “You’re safe.” 

“Bruce.” Dick hisses into his ear, and Bruce doesn’t look at him. He grunts to let his son know he heard him. “The mirror.” 

Bruce’s eyes fly up.

There was a floor length mirror sitting in front of the couch. A mirror that Bruce was conveniently, coincidentally, sitting in front of. A mirror that should have been working as all mirrors do. 

A mirror that, instead of showing Bruce his reflection back as he was, showed him in his Batman suit. Jason was in his arms, but in a torn, bloody uniform. A uniform that looked like a Robin suit. Jason - his Jason - wasn’t a Robin. But here he was, dressed as one, his black-yellow cape pooling beneath him and covered in blood. 

The Jason in the mirror, the Robin, wasn’t breathing. His head lolled over Bruce’s arm lifelessly. 

Bruce’s heart skids to a stop, and he looks back down. Jason was still breathing, his hyperventilating was beginning to slow, but he was breathing. The pained crease of his face was softening, even as his brows were still furrowed. 

When Bruce looks back up at the mirror, the reflection has changed. It wasn’t back to normal, Jason was just in a different suit. He was wearing a white hazmat suit now, and he was burned, horribly. The suit was melted to his skin in patches around his body in black, charred splotches, what wasn’t burned was torn, and the skin he could see was cauterized. The only part of him that was bleeding was his head, and it soaked his black hair red. What of his face he could see, there were bright green lightning figures going up his neck, burning the skin around where it glows. 

The mirror cracks down the middle, severing Jason from Bruce. 

He forces himself to look down, terrified to see the reflection a reality right in front of him. But Jason was alive, uninjured, and breathing quietly. Bruce presses two fingers to his throat, and feels a steady pulsepoint thumping against the pads of his fingers.

Jason’s eyes open and blue stares up at him.  

When Bruce looks up at the mirror, the reflection is back to normal.  

[starry-bi-sky]

Part two of the "Clone Danny" au

The link to the first part is put above!

His friends know that he's phantom, they help him out just the same as before. Due to not having any ghost powers, Danny has to rely on tech and outsmarting the ghosts a lot more than before. He can't keep stealing tech from his parents' lab either, and he can't ask them to fix it if his stuff breaks. He teaches himself how to fix it.

(Its a lot of sleepless nights stealing his parents' blueprints and trying to study them. And a lot of late night research and talking with Tucker on how to build and understand tech. He refuses to rely on Tucker for his gear)

He talks to Sam about fashioning a persona as both Phantom and as Fenton. She's been to a lot of rich parties, she's seen celebrities and how they act. A "careless party boy" won't work for Danny. He's no A-Lister. But coward, feeble Fenton works just fine. Minus his smartass comments, which he can slowly start phasing out of his "civilian" life under the guise of there being ghosts.

He draws into himself, keeps his head down in class, wears baggy clothing. Ghost fighting at night really does a lot of the work for him, since he's so tired in class that he doesn't bother putting his hand up or participating. He can play the part of "loner, loser Fenton" pretty well, and ups the ante.

Phantom already has a small fanbase amongst the A-listers for being the strong, silent confident vigilante-hunter protecting them from the ghosts. Nothing much changes there other than a few minor things. Anyone who knows ASL knows he's a major fucking smart-ass who keeps cracking jokes and puns at the ghosts.

Danny learns self-defense after getting his ass beat too many times (he also gets Really Good at gym because he runs a LOT after ghosts. He eventually learns to make trackers to stick onto them when they fly away) and even gets a few ghosts to help him after he befriends them while they're exploring Amity at night. Its nothing professional and he still gets hurt a lot, but he knows how to throw a better punch than before. And he knows how to dodge better.

Since he's going for a "get them tfo of here before my parents get here" approach, danny takes a more of a "talk first, fight later" route. this... kinda works. mainly for the non-hostile ghosts. its how he manages to get some of them to help him with fighting.

Danny's honestly really, really clever. He largely relies on his wits since he doesn't have any powers to force ghosts back into the ghost zone.

TUE still happens it just occurs a little differently. Vlad Masters still wants Danny to be his son and Maddie his wife, etc. But he also wants to turn Danny into a Halfa like himself, since he knows that Danny has mild ghost abilities, he thinks he has the capacity to turn into a halfa.

Dan happens when Vlad manipulates a grieving danny into agreeing to become a halfa like himself. Except it kills Danny fully, and in his rage, Danny, now dead and a ghost, rips out Vlad's ghost half and merges with it and creates Dan. So not too different from canon.

….actually i change my mind. Danny’s ghost doesn’t merge with Vlad. Danny’s ghost tears Plasmius apart for lying to him. Dan is entirely Danny, just big and hurting and wanting to hurt others because of it. His emotions are big so Dan is big.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 4.5 (Dani interlude) Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 7.5 (Dan Interlude) Part 8

[artistfingers]

For undercover au, Danny starts forgetting what he's told Sam and Tucker as Phantom and as Fenton and accidentally mixes something up and turns all of their theories around like 'what if they're actually good friends but they can't be seen together because of the Fentons??? How else would he know we said that??'

[Undercover AU]

yes yes YES 100% YES. Danny definitely mixes up which persona is supposed to know what or have said which thing, especially once he’s known Sam and Tuck for a long time in both forms. Stuff that happened like six months ago could have happened to anybody, let alone trying to keep straight whether he was Phantom or Fenton when Tucker told that story about his mom baking cookies with salt instead of sugar or when Sam gave them all matching spider keychains.

He’s certainly re-told stories as both Fenton and Phantom, causing Sam and Tucker to wonder if they were both there for the time the hot dogs came to life or what. Details about the chronic pain in his bad hand and relearning to write with his non-dominant one fall under that category too, because he does get comfortable talking about it eventually, probably inspired by the way Tuck doesn’t shy away from admitting he’s hard of hearing, and doing things that make his life easier, like using ASL. In the end, it makes it seem like Fenton and Phantom deal with very similar hand-related issues. (Though he definitely keeps straight the fact that Fenton’s stem from a “lab accident” and Phantom’ trace back to his mysterious, as-of-yet unexplained death.)

I have a note about Danny using sign language with them as Fenton, since he’s been practicing a lot with them as Phantom and it’s becoming a habit. Which confuses them, because he told them Fenton doesn’t know any ASL, as a way to keep the two Dannys more different way back when. Which… oops? Also he keeps badly stifling laughter at Tucker and Sam’s ASL jokes that nobody else is supposed to get, so that’s kinda suspicious too.

Not to mention…

Phantom knows way too much about Fenton tech and how it works, and that’s on top of carrying around a Fenton Thermos to use on the daily, flying them in and out of the Fenton Lab the first day they met, and openly admitting he dumps unruly ghosts back in the Zone via the Fenton Portal—which means he knows how to bypass the fingerprint lock.

Plus he knows Mr. Lancer’s book title swears well enough to mutter them under his breath simultaneously to Lancer, and not just the last four times he came to deal with a ghost at school. Maybe he’s just dealt with too many ghosts at Casper High, though. And Lancer’s swears are… unique.

Fenton, meanwhile, knows a lot of weird stuff about the Ghost Zone (“it’s like the definition of non-euclidean geometry in there sometimes”) and ghost biology (“my parents have only documented five, but there’s actually nearly a dozen core types that I’ve encountered, and that’s just scratching the surface”) so… what’s up with that?

Fenton also just has like. Encyclopedic knowledge on Phantom’s fights and enemies.

“Oh yeah Skulker was a big problem at the beginning but now he’s mostly around for sport and usually it’s possible to distract him with a good sparring match or by getting him on a tangent about really fascinating endagndered animals. I mean, I’m not into hunting by a long shot, especially if the animals are rare, but even I can admit that guy does his research. At least he sticks to ghost animals now.”

“You’re thinking of the ectopuses. Yes, that is what they’re called.”

“No, no, Phantom did fight Ember, you’re right. She kept cropping back up actually but they called a truce last year. I think it was in spring? Yeah, spring of freshman year. So she’s around in the human realm a lot more often these days but she doesn’t try to mind control anybody, she just wants to make music.”

“We’re definitely over a hundred and fifty Box Ghost encounters. What…? He’s persistent.”

“Ohhh, the thing at Coulson Street, yeah, I remember that. The crater was like three feet deep, I felt really bad about it.”

this kinda stuff is my bread and butter!! I can’t wait to come up with more little incidents for use in the comic ( •̀ ω •́ )✧