#aliens are always cooler to meet when they aren't part of death cults

[mutable-manifestation]

Summer Vacation Summoning Shenanigans Part 3

Part 1, Part 2

***

“D- shit!" Red cursed, leaping to catch him judging by the suddenly much-closer voice and the arms now cradling his head and shoulders to keep them off of the floor. "Steph!" 

"Names~!" Spoiler sing-songed.

"We were going to have him wear the sensory suppression helmet!"

"Well, this worked just fine didn't it?" Danny hears a sloshing noise - probably the recapped chloroform bottle getting twirled.

"No." Robin deadpanned. "The timeframe of his unconsciousness will not be sufficient to reach the batcave and we will need the helmet anyway."

"Pppshaw," Spoiler dismisses. "The last time any of you guys checked the time it was, what, when you were proving you weren't secretly cult maniacs by showing him those news articles? Between then and when he wakes up he won't have any way to tell how long he was out. As long as he can't see the entrance by the time he's up it'll be fiiiine."

"You will also have damaged what trust we had thus far been able to build with him, likely setting back our investigation and thus both our ability to interfere with the League of Assassins and to help Danny himself," came Robin's scathing reply.

"...ah."

"We're wasting time," Red sighed, moving to sling Danny over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, judged by the shoulder now jamming into his stomach. "Thank you, Spoiler, for volunteering to drag the captive. Robin, doors."

There was a lot of boredom after that, mostly just listening to the three shuffling around and hearing some kind of hissing noise that he assumed was a hi-tech door or something, given everything he'd seen so far.

Then they were moving, and Danny realized he had no idea how long he should pretend to still be out. 

Luckily, just as he was debating playing 'waking up' the group stopped, Robin commenting it would be best to be stationary when he awoke to increase the time he might suspect had passed.

After being carefully propped up against a wall, he counts to thirty before letting his breathing return to normal, slowly opening his eyes.

He looks to Spoiler - kidnapped assassin slung over her shoulder - first.

“I’m gonna be real,” he starts before anyone else tries to speak. “I think something might be wrong with your perfume.”

Spoiler snorts and Red’s lips twitch in a suppressed smile, but Robin remains stoic.

“That was not perfume,” he says carefully. “It was a mild sedative, so that we could further obscure the location of the batcave. Perfumes are generally incapable of causing unconsciousness.”

“If no perfume: why smell good?”

Spoiler bursts into cackles at that, Red making a strangled noise between a cough and a laugh and slapping a hand over his mouth.

“Please do not attempt to use or offer chloroform to others to use as a perfume, it is a highly unsafe chemical and can be fatal,” Robin says, brows pinched into a vaguely concerned expression.

“Aw,” Danny pouts dramatically.

Red clears his throat.

“Spoiler is very sorry for springing that on you,” he starts, with a pointed look her way. “We had intended to talk to you about the need for another layer of obfuscation around our security.”

“Yep!” Spoiler grins. “From the bottom of my heart, my bad.”

Danny lays a hand over his chest, using the other to wipe away an imaginary tear as he chokes out “Of course I forgive you!”

Then he snorts, dropping his hands to lounge in his pockets.

“So now that you’ve taken me to a secondary, and a tertiary, and a…um - quadrertiatry? - location, which way are we going?” He makes a point to look back the way they came.

They’re quick to correct him, leading the way through the tunnels at a more sedate pace - a fast walk instead of the running from before.

They claim to be half way there by the time he wakes up  - they definitely aren’t. It takes a solid 30 more minutes.

At least now that Danny is ‘awake’ they’re talking again - mainly about Spoiler’s questionable taste in ‘perfume’ and whether or not it would be safe for any of the aliens they know to use as perfume - a very sneaky way for Danny to acquire more knowledge of alien biology, if he does say so himself.

---------------------

Given their track record for getting along, everyone had been worried when Tim and Damian went missing at the same time. Sure, Damian had gotten a lot less murdery over the course of the last four years, but the worry was still there. 

When it turned out to be a self-imposed mission to Nanda Parbat they had worried even more. Unfortunately, no one else had been able to leave Gotham. By the time they could’ve caught up they would have been more likely to draw unwanted attention to their two strays than be of use.

Luckily, they’d managed to put the Riddler away that night, making it back to the cave just in time to receive Tim’s update - a success and a surprise guest.

A guest that, as far as they could tell, did not exist. 

No paper trail, no pictures, no appearances in any images or even audios as far as they could tell. Expanding beyond Illinois to the US in general didn’t turn up anything. A global search yielded yet another heaping helping of nothing.

There were some possible explanations, of course, but it was decidedly suspicious.

Any hope that the three had escaped unnoticed were dashed when they were over the pacific and the local branch of the League of Assassins began moving obviously enough for Oracle to detect them - branching throughout the city and posting up on various vantage points in some kind of search grid.

One group even made their way to Wayne Manor, posting up around the perimeter.

All in full view of cameras. 

One even waved. 

For a group like the League it was verging on something like polite. 

Or threatening. 

The utter lack of activity from any of them once they reached their apparent destinations put the latter option somewhat in doubt, however.

Even so, the situation was plenty alarming and Bruce had everyone arming themselves to the teeth while they waited and listened - not that Jason needed any encouragement even if he was still pouty about the lack of guns in the Bat-armory. 

Nightwing, being the loving older brother that he was, was quick to offer him a rubber band hornet to supplement his existing guns. He was immediately betrayed, narrowly dodging a projectile to the cheek.

Bruce had contacted the JLD about the situation not a second after the kid - Danny - said Ra’s was trying to summon the Lord of the Dead. 

Didn’t have to be deep into the occult to know that that was undoubtedly a very bad thing to allow to happen. 

With any luck, whatever ritual Ra’s was trying to use would be faulty and they would have more time to intervene and prevent him from finding something that would work.

Of course, to know that they needed to know what the circle actually looked like.

Good news: the kid saw the circle and seems to have a great memory.

Bad news: the kid set a condition for the knowledge and would not be swayed.

Good news: they personally know several aliens willing to help.

Bad news: literally every member of the JLD is ungodly hard to get ahold of at the best of times.

Good news: they managed to contact Constantine on the third try.

Bad news: he seemed very concerned by Bruce’s explanation of the situation.

Good news: he wanted to show up right away to help.

Bad (and worrying) news: he is currently too drunk to teleport. Or be awake, if the sudden snoring through the line is any indication.

So now Bruce is tracking his location and sending Supes to pick him up on the way so he can wait to sober up in the cave’s medbay.

Possibly for the best - given how talkative Danny was on the plane over Constantine might’ve lost it waiting for him to stop asking all the questions he’ll no doubt have.

Just another hour of playing suspiciously-polite-staredown with a murder cult and they might be able to get some answers.

---------------------

Damian watched Danny watch the door to the cave open in fascination, eyes alight with joy. Enthusiasm.

It was a large part of what made the plane-ride with him so much less distressing; normally being in a closed space with someone who’d taken a recent dip in a Lazarus Pit would be…exhausting. Manageable, perhaps, but requiring constant attention to avoid potential - likely - harm.

Any concern about erratic, violent behavior practically melted away in the face of Danny’s attitude.

His exuberant curiosity. 

The zest for life that colored each and every word he said or expression he made.

In combination with the skill he must have to have escaped imprisonment by the league? His sharp mind (even if he did occasionally lack information that should be common knowledge - Damian himself had been much the same when he first came to live with his father, he would not judge him for that)? The strong negotiation skills he had demonstrated in their talk? His unflinching will?

His beauty?

Damian was captivated.

He watched as he gasped like it was the last air he would ever breathe when he laid eyes on the T-rex, causing everyone else to tense up.

Then he moved - nearly too fast to track - before slowing back down when he was within a foot or two of the dinosaur - and many feet off of the ground. That certainly supported the sheltered meta theory.

“You guys have a dinosaur in here!?” he yelled, flitting around it in a manner not unlike a hummingbird. “That’s so cool! Is it real? Or like, not real because it obviously isn’t alive but is it, like, taxidermed - taxiderm-y-ed? Or is it a replica? Or-”

“Animatronic, actually,” Father cut in, drawing his attention. 

“It moves!?”

“It used to. We keep it shut down for safety reasons, however.”

“Aww, boo,” Danny pouted, snorting at some unknown joke as he descended back to the ground.

“It’s nice to meet you, Danny. Though I do wish it were under better circumstances,” Father gestured to the table near the batcomputer - where the rest of them had gathered to wait - before moving that way.

“It could be worse,” Danny shrugged, following after - still floating.

Halfway to the table, Danny gasped again, this time accompanied by a small blue mist.

His head snapped to Jason - fast enough Damian was vaguely concerned for his neck - and paused to stare owlishly at him.

A glance revealed him to be visibly bristling at the attention, every muscle tense.

“These are my associates,” Batman cut in before anything unfortunate could be said. “You’ve met Red Robin, Spoiler, and Robin. This is-”

“Red Hood,” Jason cut him off. “And we ‘associate’ barely.”

“I’m Nightwing!” Richard shouted, one arm waving in the air for emphasis. “And I can totally fly!”

“Grappling hooks don’t count,” Hood shot down.

“They do so!”

Hood just stared

“Orphan,” Cass interrupted, as brief as ever.

“I’m Signal,” Duke added, making the last introduction. “And I’d hate to see circumstances worse than being hunted by a globally active death cult made up of highly trained assassins.”

“Hunted?” Red Robin asked, straightening up at the new information. 

“Most likely,” Batman answered as Danny finally joined them around the table - still stealing glances at Hood. Damian frowned.

“Not long after you left Nanda Parbat, the local branch of the League began moving - their assassins have posted up throughout the city - and around our perimeter. They’re being subtle enough to avoid civilian attention, but they waved directly at our cameras. Normally we’d assume they were after the assassin we brought here, but Ra’s is normally more direct than this. He would’ve called, tried to negotiate, or just sent in men to retrieve him. That he hasn’t is unusual-”

“Which is why we suspect he’s still after you,” Spoiler added as she rejoined them, having gone to secure the prisoner.

“Spoiler!” Nightwing scolded.

“Whaaaat? It’s already obvious. No point in hiding it when the guy’s already been kidnapped once.”

---------------------

Danny hmmed.

“It comes to me that if your group is so well known, saying I’m ‘flying away with a pair of Robins’ is maybe, possibly, potentially not the incredibly vague and unhelpful clue I thought it was.”

He rubbed at the back of his neck, laughing sheepishly as all eyes whipped around to stare at him. 

“Ahaha… my bad?”

“Danny.” Batman asked after a pause. “Who, exactly, did you give this ‘clue’ to?”

“Uh…Ra’s?”

“Wh- How!? We’ve been with you the whole time since we met!” Red Robin asked.

“I just sent a duplicate,” He shrugged, splitting off a duplicate and popping it after a three-count.

“Sorry about that.”

“The fuck kid? Why the hell would you give hints about your location to a guy who wants to murder you,” Red Hood fumed, standing to slam his hands on the table.

“That will cost you two meetings with aliens,” he winked, putting a finger to his lips.

“That’s quite a high price considering you only asked for one meeting to learn the supposed summoning circle for the Lord of the Dead.”

Danny spun around at the unfamiliar voice, only to be met with Superman. He gaped.

“Sorry for the delay, I’m Superman, Kryptonian alien extraordinaire,” he topped off the introduction with a dramatic bow before landing gently on the ground. 

“I hear you have a lot of questions for me,” he smiles, holding up a hand when Danny opens his mouth to reply. “But first, I believe you promised my friends a summoning circle?”

Danny pouts.

“Yeah, I did,” he sighs, turning to Batman. “Got a pen and paper?”

___________________________________________________________

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