The Uno Reverse Adoption Saga 9
AO3 Link: here
First: Chapter 1
Previous: Chapter 8
Current Characters: Jason Todd, Sam Manson, Tucker Foley, Danny Fenton, Jazz Fenton
Summary: Forced to attend a gala by her parents as she is every year, Sam Manson was resigned to suffer through the stifling three-night gala until something pulled at her core. The something turned out to be a someone. Just who is Jason Todd and can the trio gain enough of his trust to help him before his struggling proto-core collapses?
JPGPV = Jazzy-Pants Ghost Proof Vehicle
Warnings: Cursing. Discussion and description of the death picture and the portal incident. And technically someone steals an organ?
👻 {Chapter 9 Below!)
Jason was perturbed.
A lot had happened over the past week or so and it could be summed up as goddamned history coming to haunt him.
His history with the pits, his history with Bruce. History repeating itself in the form of three undead teenagers.
Jason let his head fall and he clutched the glowing camera a little tighter.
He had no doubt the picture he’d found was of something sinister . Honestly, he wasn’t sure how they’d survived something so horrific. Manes’ hand was literally melting . Not to mention the boys…
(Halfa. Half human, half ghost. He had a suspicion and he prayed he was wrong. His nightmares were going to feature screaming kids, dying kids, for a while; he could already tell.)
Why were they in a lab? It had to be intentional. Why else had Phantom been in lab coveralls? Why else would Manes have been documenting it? Were they sent into that tube to test it, whatever it was?
And the green.
He’d know that green anywhere.
History, over and over.
Dramatic irony unfolding.
Squeezing his eyes shut, he wondered if this was what Bruce had felt like, loath as he was to think it. Seeing those kids and knowing they could do better if he steered them right… knowing that they were going to get themselves killed (again?) without him.
He was despairing, he knew, about how unfair it all was. While their situations seemed too similar to be comfortable, their attitudes couldn’t have been more differed than his own. He didn’t see himself in them so much as he saw three versions of Dick. Optimist. Hopeful. Helpful. Unlike his dear older brother though, these kids were utterly alone.
Usually he wasn’t so doubtful. He’d always been a decisive person. Acting with impulse and anger wasn’t the best approach for everything, he knew, but not once had he been called hesitant. It was just that this would be a huge deviation from his norm, not to mention he would have to hide the ghost thing from the others on top of the kids. He’d have to change nearly everything; his schedule, his tactics, his habits, and the list went on.
God damn it. He was lying to himself. He wasn’t still considering it. The minute he offered the gremlins advice in the attic some part of him knew that he’d already decided to take them under his wing until he cleaned up whatever the hell was going on.
He just didn’t want to accept it. How long had he raged at Bruce for taking on young sidekicks? How much of a hypocrite could he be?
Then again, the situation was totally different, what with them having to fear for their safety in a way even he, a crime alley kid, never had to. Gotham was rough, but the dark city would be kinder to them than Amity. Even the government didn’t so much as breathe in Gotham without the damned Bat’s say so.
The problem, overwhelmingly, was that not only did he have no idea who they were as humans, but they seemed to take their haunting of Amity very seriously. Something told him that they would never compromise on defending their city.
He could admire that.
Jason set the camera down on the empty couch next to him.
He could also despise it.
He ignored the part of him that sneered at himself. What could he possibly teach them when he had so thoroughly failed to even keep himself alive?
He wasn’t perfect- hell, nowhere close- but he’d be damned if he let the trio go off on their own unless he was completely, 100% positive they could handle themselves.
Glancing to the clock, he wondered when exactly said trio would appear. They’d hastily promised transport before they’d left but had denied to mention a time. He didn’t know if the waiting was making his apprehension worse.
He was about to go into a whole other dimension.
A canyon that ate people? A dark forest that claimed the lives of any who dared to approach? A series of shifting dunes that would swallow any hapless wanderers whole? All contained on crumbling, floating islands beneath a green sky?
A truce in that hellscape?
It was too surreal to picture.
It was also surreal to think he had a ghost core, but considering the fucking circus that was his life, he shouldn’t have been surprised. He was still vainly hoping that there was some kind of a mistake.
A line appeared in the air.
Jason stared at it.
It grew in size and light, eerie green light, began to spill from the forming cracks. Jason tensed as a bleached begloved hand reached out and then groped around the empty air for a moment before clasping onto the edge of the crack. It flexed and then a familiar head of pale wispy hair stuck through the growing hole that had materialized in the living room.
“Hi,” Phantom grinned toothily.
Parts of the portal’s border crumbled and fell to the floor and the kid grimaced apologetically. “Sorry about that, I’m new to the whole portal thing.”
“It’s fine,” Jason dismissed. He’d gotten worse than portal crumbs in the carpet.
“Well, come on. We have a few hours before we have to be anywhere but I figured you’d want to explore a little first.”
Jason hesitantly approached the giant crack hovering in the air and Phantom offered his hand. Jason wasn’t going to take it initially, but the kid seemed so serious. Hiding his grin, he took the offered hand and Phantom nodded very solemnly.
It was kinda adorable.
“Ok. We’re going through the zone to Amity, where you can hang out. Then later we’re going to go through either the fruitloop’s portal or the Fenton portal to the zone and meet the yetis. Hang on tight, I don’t think you’ll want to fly on your own here.”
Jason couldn’t fly, but he could grapple just fine. He wasn’t going to let the kid attempt to carry him. But Phantom didn’t try to. Instead, he held onto Jason’s hand and helped him up into the portal.
The first thing he saw, besides Phantom, was an endless expanse of an unnatural green.
It was a world of Lazarus.
Ghouley had said as much, but seeing it was a whole other thing.
And as he looked around at the disembodied doors and isolated islands, Jason knew there was no way a grapple would do anything. Ghouley had made it sound like neighboring islands were a skip and a jump from one another.
Then again, maybe they were when flight was factored in.
“I can’t fly,” Jason admitted. He’d need Phantom’s help to get anywhere.
“Not yet,” Phantom said, eyes twinkling with mirth. He pulled Jason the rest of the way through the portal and it closed behind them. Instead of plummeting to the abyss below they hovered, suspended in the foreign air.
“Anyone can fly in the zone, even humans. It takes some getting used to, but we have time.”
“Not worried about a ghost snatching me up?” Jason snarked.
Phantom hummed. “Not really. Manes and Ghouley are running interference.”
He tugged Jason, who realized the kid was still holding his hand. It didn’t feel like they were moving and Jason had no way to tell if they were.
“So firstly, the Ghost Zone, or the Infinite Realms, isn’t like space. In space there is microgravity because everything naturally produces a tiny amount of gravity. It’s because particles are like that and they have levels of attraction- eh hem. There’s also time in space and there is a connection between the gravitational field and the perception of time and- uh. Anyway, there is no microgravity here unless the object or person is from a living world, and there is no time.”
“Seems simple enough,” Jason said sarcastically. “No gravity and no time. Got it.”
Phantom nodded. “Yes, you have to keep that in mind. And now the fun part, flight!”
It was not fun. Phantom, for all his enthusiasm, was dreadfully awful at giving instructions.
“You gotta feel like you’re moving.”
“Maybe pretend everything is magnets?”
“Have you ever flown? It’s like a weightlessness. Picture that…”
“Think of a line graph.”
“Tilt forward? I mean you don’t have to, it’s more about what you think moving is like.”
He’d pictured soaring through the air, he imagined free falling, he remembered the little moments of weightlessness he’d experienced throughout his life.
Phantom was stupidly earnest with his instructions and relaxed the longer Jason struggled. He even started smirking, the shithead, but at least he didn’t make any comments.
After at least two hours of struggling, he still could not fly (much to his irritation). He couldn’t even vaguely float in the direction he wanted to go. Phantom assured him it was fine, that he’d learn in time.
He would admit, he was pretty pissed he made absolutely no progress. There wasn’t time, the appointment was today . And if he couldn’t move, how the hell was he supposed to escape ghosts?
Phantom hovered, watching him with an unnervingly unblinking stare. “Let’s head to Amity. There’s plenty to do there,” he suggested.
Amity. Fuck, he forgot that’s where the kids were from. They probably had people they were ignoring while he tried and failed to get his ass in gear.
“Sure,” he agreed unhappily. He didn’t want to, not really, but he wasn’t going to make the kids miss out on Christmas.
Phantom blinked slowly, “We don’t have to, you know. We can keep working on flying.”
“I think I’m done with flying for now.”
Phantom’s eyes lit up, literally, and he grabbed Jason’s arm. “Come on,” he said, pulling Jason, “we’ve got to stop by the Nasty Burger. It’s always open.”
“No holiday plans?” he asked carefully.
Phantom shook his head with a sour expression. “Just avoiding my parents.”
“Damn.”
Interesting.
👻 {Boo!)
The ‘fruitloop’ portal was very different from Phantom’s portal. Where Phantom’s portal was more akin to going through a broken mirror the other portal was smooth and the rim was circular… it looked like a boom tube made out of Lazarus waters.
“The fruitloop is very distracted,” Phantom said smugly. “So we’re free to go.”
They slipped through the portal and Jason was met with the visage of a lab.
“Oh shiver me timbers,” Phantom spat not three steps in. “You need to hide- Shulker got away.”
He ushered Jason into a- very menacing- tube shaped pod and shut the side almost all the way before dashing back to the portal. And he wasn’t a moment too soon- a large figure walked through the wall and immediately locked eyes with Phantom.
“Whelp,” the robot with a fiery green mohawk said.
“Shulker,” Phantom returned. He seemed to glow brighter for a moment and then-
Something crashed over him, something cold and ridged and hefty. But… it felt good, even if he didn’t know what it was; it felt refreshing, not unlike a mint.
It felt solid.
It felt strong.
It felt safe.
“Just passing through,” Shulker grumbled, glowing a bit brighter himself.
Beneath the cold was another feeling, something cool and smooth and metallic with sharp edges. Belatedly, Jason realized that the two sets of impressions were from the two ghosts staring each other down.
Phantom squinted distrustfully at the other and then nodded. “It is truce day,” he said.
“Otherwise I’d have your pelt,” Shulker sneered in apparent agreement. He cast an equally suspicious look at Phantom before making his way to and through the fruitloop portal, the feel of sharp metal vanishing with him.
Phantom’s glow paled and the heavy cold vanished immediately. He flew back to the pod and opened the door. “I’m so sorry, I know it can be uncomfortable to be around heavy moods but I needed to make sure Shulker didn’t notice you and would leave,” he grimaced, biting his lip.
“It’s fine,” Jason said, voice more strained than he would have liked. “The moods are…?”
“Oh. Like, uh, ghost auras. But we call them moods.”
That didn’t really explain anything but Phantom was more concerned with getting them out of the lab. He took Jason’s hand again. “Here, I’ll need to hang on to you just a bit longer, okay?” He didn’t wait for a response and the strangest feeling spread over him. Phantom summarily plunged them through the wall. It was disorienting, to say the least.
It made sense because ghosts, but come on .
They went through the wall, down into the floor, then through dirt before finally popping up on a grassy patch outside of the back of a mansion.
“Looks like our ride is here,” Phantom said cheerfully, motioning to a car (if it could be called that) which looked like it wasn’t legal to be on the road. A large acronym, JPGPV, was printed on the side, though it failed to hint at what exactly the vehicle was.
And were those tank treads ?
“Is that safe?” he asked dubiously. He’d been in a lot of vehicles and never had he felt so vaguely threatened by one before.
“Jazz is driving,” replied Phantom. That didn’t explain anything.
They approached the car (if one was being generous) and Jason ended up in the back seat next to Phantom. The driver’s seat was occupied by a young woman, presumably Jazz, who was probably at the tail end of her teens. The passenger’s side had a dark-skinned boy with glasses who was fiddling with a futuristic looking sci-fi gun.
Jason did a double take.
(He almost didn’t recognize the face he’d spent the morning studying without the pained contortions.)
“No trouble?” Jazz asked, looking at Jason through the rearview mirror.
“Nope,” Phantom said, popping the p. He buckled into his seat.
Jazz nodded. “Great. That’s good. Anyway, nice to meet you Jason. I hope the trip wasn’t too bad. The zone can be overwhelming the first few times.”
She started the ignition and began backing out of the mansion’s rear driveway.
From the pointed ears and fangs, he was going to guess she was a meta.
“Nice to meet you too,” he said awkwardly. “And the zone was fine.”
“He can’t fly,” Phantom butted in gleefully.
The kid in front, who had to be Ghouley, snorted.
“Hey, it was his first time! And Danny, human,” Jazz said.
There was a flash as the rings manifested and the messy haired boy Jason had glimpsed the other day sat slouched in the seat next to his.
(This kid might have died, a nauseous part of him whispered. If he was right then this kid had died. He’d died screaming .)
“Sorry, forgot,” Phantom, Danny said.
That was progress.
“Danny, huh?” Jason said.
“He didn’t even introduce himself?” Jazz grumbled. “He’s Danny, or Phantom as I believe he introduced himself as. I’m Jazz, his older sister. And this is Tucker.”
“I’m Ghouley,” Tucker said, never looking up from the little output display on the gun. “Manes- er, Sam, can’t go human with the fear stuff or she’d be here too.”
Danny, Tucker, and Sam from Amity Park. Now he was getting places.
They’d tried to lie about it at first, and now they were being so open about it. He wondered what had changed.
“What you got there?” he asked, motioning to Tucker.
The kid grimaced. “An ecto gun. It’s specialized for tagging anything with a signature and doubles as a tracker. I’m trying to sabotage it but I need some more… stuff.”
Danny perked up. “I can take a crack at it.”
“Mom and Dad’ll be in and out of the lab all day,” Jazz reminded them. “You’ll have to distract them or steal the tools from Vlad’s.”
“Wait, no. I think you still have the emergency ghost tool repair kit from your birthday, right? There has to be a calibrator in there.”
“A calibrator would work but I was thinking of uploading an alternate signature directly to the gun, it would seem more like a mistake on their part…”
The three began chatting about the methods and logistics of sabotaging the gun and while Jason was no slouch, he couldn’t really follow along.
“Why does this gun need to be sabotaged?” he asked during a lull in the conversation. “I’m birthday cake confused.”
The car burst into snickers.
“You tried to curse, didn’t you?” Jazz asked, amusement dripping from every word.
Tucker twisted in his seat to see Jason. “Welcome to Amity, a nice place to live. You can’t curse, can’t say the ‘w’ word, and can’t live without ghost insurance.”
“The ‘w’ word is wish. Don’t say it, there’s a ghost genie named Desiree who grants the ‘w’ word monkey’s paw style,” Danny stage whispered.
“Wait, so I can’t strawberry curse? That’s rocky road!”
He was never letting anyone know about his time in Amity. The things coming out of his mouth were humiliating .
The snickering continued.
He noted that they didn’t answer the question.
👻 {Boo!)
There was something wrong with Amity Park.
He grew up in Gotham, had died, was revived, got trained by assassins, and to this day spent his time running around with a mask to terrorize the city’s criminal underbelly like some kind of bad dream. Gotham had a lot on the daily, had seen a lot in her past, and so in theory he really shouldn’t have found something he wouldn’t have been able to handle.
In theory.
They’d picked up some food from the Nasty Burger before sitting down on a little building overlooking a park. From this one vantage point there was more than enough to force him to reevaluate that theory.
There were floating buildings. What the fuck was that about? Buildings didn’t float, not even the magic ones he’d seen. The sky was tinged green and the soil had purplish tints, not unlike the ghost realms or whatever the hell the Lazarus dimension was called, and there was an ambient lighting that didn’t seem to come from anywhere. And something was off. But… the grass was swaying gently, the sun was shining, and no matter how he looked about, something uncanny and just out of reach mocked him.
He set that aside and continued to observe. It seemed like Jazz wasn’t the only one with mutations- the people he saw at the park had mutations, all of them. Fangs and pointed ears and ash tinged skin, like they were teetering on the edge of oxygen deprivation. Glowing, sometimes flashing eyes. Pointy fingers. It was a city of vampires.
People would walk and flicker, as if they weren’t entirely there. The shadows moved on their own. There were a few cars without drivers. Ghost birds perched next to living ones on the power lines.
Hence his conclusion: There was something wrong with Amity Park.
While at the end of the day he was categorized as a vigilante, he was also a detective.
“Amity is the most haunted place on earth,” Tucker shrugged when he asked what was going on with everything.
“How does haunting equate to all this?” Jason motioned to everything around him.
“In layman’s terms? Ghost juice.”
“Ghost juice,” he repeated flatly before casting his drink an overly suspicious glare.
It had the intended effect when Danny laughed lightly. “It’s everywhere. Food, water, air. Ectoplasm, I mean. It’s seeped into everything, not to mention that this world and the Ghost Zone kinda have joint custody of Amity? Everyone’s liminal at this point.”
Liminal. He’d read that word not too long ago when going over the Anti-Ecto Acts.
“Liminal? As in… ectocontaminated..?”
The whole damned city? That was sobering.
Tucker sighed. “Pretty much. Ectocontaminated… no one calls it that except hunters. Speaking of, I don’t think I need to tell you that if you see the GIW, you need to run.”
“Sure, won’t make me look suspicious or anything.”
“Everyone runs now,” Danny commented morosely. “No one wants to risk being captured.”
Something tightened around his neck, something like a noose. “They just… take people?”
“We break them out,” Tucker supplied easily, like the government kidnapping people wasn’t a big deal. “They’ve never gotten too far. We won’t let them.”
We won’t let them. Firm. Unwavering. A statement that brooked no room for failure.
Fuck, he hoped the kids weren’t in over their heads.
The kids were very obviously in over their heads.
“I can feel the depression from here,” Manes said, phasing up through the roof. Jason couldn’t see her and made a show of looking around like a civilian.
“She’s staying invis. Can’t have Manes Phantom hanging out with Fenton and Foley,” Danny said, taking a bite of his burger.
He tucked away the names for later. “I thought you were Phantom?”
“And I thought you’d grab me something,” grumbled Sam.
Tucker, nose wrinkled, pulled out a burger, partially unwrapped it, and held it aloft as though it had personally slighted him. “One veggie burger,” he said with clear distaste.
Sam snatched it up.
“We’re sorta all Phantom?” shrugged Danny, answering his question. “We’ve got Danny Phantom, Manes Phantom, and Ghouley Phantom. It’s because no one knew our names at first and then we all kinda responded when people called for Phantom, so…”
“That’s not confusing at all,” Jason said dryly.
“We know who people are talking to, unless they don’t know,” Sam said.
Good awareness then, he noted. He’d have to see how much, if any, of that translated to spatial awareness in a fight.
“Huh.”
Yeah, they definitely weren’t going to leave their city. And he couldn’t leave Crime Alley…
He’d propose the idea of sparring later. Nothing fancy, just some hand to hand to gauge how much they knew. Danny could make portals so it wasn’t unreasonable to hope that they could swing by Gotham or that he could pop into Amity for a few lessons.
He didn’t want to mimic the old bat, but it had become commonplace for mentors to do their patrols and cases with their protégés. It was a tried and tested method. Briefly, he contemplated setting something up. He was a known ‘contact’ of Red Hoof after all, but if he let them shadow him on patrol… they could ‘feel’ his core from what Sam had said and he had no clue how to hide it. They’d know he was Red Hood in a heartbeat so… he’d have to tell them who he was.
Red Hood was an anti-hero for a reason. He killed people. He didn’t think what he was doing was wrong, harsh maybe, but justified. Never had he shied away from violence.
Never had he given a psychopath the opportunity to hurt people, over and over again.
How could he tell three half-dead, possibly murdered, kids that he thought killing was okay?
(How many ghosts had he created?)
Yeah, no. He couldn’t tell them. He’d just have to do as regular old Jason. Besides, he wasn’t planning on sticking around for more than a few months anyway. Just however long it took to clear up the acts and whatever was wrong with his ghost side. There was no point in breaking the big identity rule.
Jason shuffled the thought away and went back to his mental notebook. He’d made a lot of progress. Now he had names to investigate and since he was inside Amity, well, a little visit to the public library was in order.
He side eyed the kids. The three were completely silent and the boy’s faces were eerily blank as they stared out over the park.
Hm. Alright.
He had a few things he wanted to do.
1- break into the library. Comb through the newspapers and then hit the computers
2- find out more about the kids. Preferably, who set their deaths up and where it happened
2.5- make sure the kids were competent; if not, give pointers
3- figure out if the lab from the picture was related to the League of Assassins and Ra’s. There was no way that much Lazarus was a coincidence
4- destroy the lab of whoever had the tunnel (again, no one should be messing around with Lazarus waters. No one.)
The list would not be accomplished in one visit but Jason was confident that he’d be able to work through it.
He stuffed the rest of his burger into his mouth, grimacing on the inside. That was his unhealthy treat for the week. Still, Danny had been so excited to swing by the Nasty Burger he couldn’t really say no.
It wasn’t as good as Bat Burger, but it wasn’t as bad as the name might have implied.
Swallowing, he looked at the still frozen kids. They were still occupied with whatever so he took the opportunity to stare a little.
Stemming from the fingers on Danny’s right hand, just barely visible, thin grey lines radiated out like vines.
He had never seen anything like it.
(He’d seen the same pattern glowing in negative, sharp against the halo of white engulfing the boy.)
Jason sighed heavily. He needed to focus.
Step one: get to the library. The lie spilled from him too easily: “Hey. Uh, I figure I’ll wander a bit, you know, see the sights. You kids should go spend time with your families or whatever you do today.”
There was a pause, so slight that it would’ve ordinarily been dismissed. Then, the boy’s faces quickly adopted expressions.
Jason wondered what that was about. He added it to his ever-growing list of ‘weird fucking ghost shit’.
“I don’t celebrate Christmas,” Sam said blithely.
“I wish my parents didn’t,” Danny said miserably.
“You’re always welcome at my place,” Tucker offered. “My cousins are kinda annoying but hey, no ghost traps.”
Danny grimaced and bit a fry in half.
“How about this? It’s already three. Jason can explore till nine. We’ll meet back here and then head to the zone,” Sam strongly suggested.
No one objected.
Six hours was good enough for him.
👻 {Boo!)
The library was laughably easy to break into.
Maybe it wasn’t wise, but with all the flight cancellations, who would expect Jason Todd to be in Amity Park when he’d been spotted less than three hours earlier in Gotham?
He skimmed the layout and made a beeline for the periodicals. Depending on how far back he needed to go he might end up having to break into the archive too.
A green sticky note was slapped on the topmost paper. He was going to ignore it, at first, but something about it grabbed at his attention.
‘ It is not necessary to show others you have changed; the change will be obvious, ’ it read.
Clearly it wasn’t anything important. Maybe the librarian was into scavenger hunts. He put the note aside and out of his mind, turned to the complication of papers, pulled out the first one, and began to read.
👻 {Boo!)
Five hours later Jason still hadn’t gotten to the computers.
The papers were chock full of information. Ever so slowly he made his way backwards, watching as the eldritch city transformed from something inexplicable and alien to a scarred city that held wounded history in every crevice.
The widespread liminality? An ongoing ectoplasm exposure issue that initially stemmed from an outbreak at the local high school three years ago.
The ‘don’t step on people’s shadows’ rule? There were shadow ghosts, notably the Halloween spirit, that you didn’t want to piss off.
The little shrine of new books in the library labeled ‘Do Not Touch’? Tales to entertain a ghost that liked to trap people in fantasy stories and read to the children on occasion.
The dreamcatchers hanging literally everywhere? A peace offering to the ghost god of dreams, or a warding away of the entity, but they prevented him from trapping you in an unwaking slumber in any case.
The frankly bizarre two mailbox system? A set up to prevent the box ghost from tampering with and or stealing packages en-masse.
The greenish sky and purplish soil? After effects of the city being pulled into the mother fucking Lazarus dimension for a whole god damned month.
How the hell had something of this magnitude flown under the radar?
And the kids.
Holy hell he had never been so right yet so wrong before.
They weren’t just in over their heads, they’d been drowning in a tsunami and somehow managing to stay afloat at the same time. And as much as the papers said, there was a whole lot they didn’t say. The sheer number of documented altercations put his number of confrontations to shame and he had no doubt there were plenty of fights the papers didn’t know about. Fights aside, so many pieces were still missing. How had the Phantoms been created in the first place? Had it been intentional? Where had the ghosts been four years ago, five, six, seven? Why only the past few years?
It was like every time he set a timeline for associating with them something cropped up and pushed the deadline back further and further. It was going to be a quick association at first, then a commitment, and then a long-term commitment that just kept getting longer.
He rested his head in his hands and closed his eyes.
It wasn’t so much about his help being good or not, rather that he was going to help at all. They needed any help they could get.
How could he sit here and plan to walk away?
(He was exactly like Bruce, wasn’t he?)
👻 {Boo!)
His despondence dawdled and did not help with his apprehension regarding the yeti visit. Deciding to leave the library early, Jason put everything back where it belonged and removed all traces of his presence before heading back to the rooftop overlooking the park.
He had a lot to chew on.
Around quarter to nine Danny as Phantom flew up to him, glowing in the dimming world around them.
“Hey Jason! How did the exploring go?” he greeted cheerfully.
Jason quirked a brow. “Well enough. You seem to be in a better mood.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “So here’s the plan. We’re going to be going through the Fenton portal and then heading to the Great Star Bridge Sera- er, it’s basically a mansion. Super pretentious name, if you ask me.”
Jason couldn’t help but wonder why it had to be there. He didn’t really like the idea of going to a mansion but didn’t bother to say anything about it.
“Alright, let’s get going. Are Manes and Ghouley…?”
“They’re at the portal.”
Danny then took his arm, turning them invisible and flying up and towards some unknown place.
Flying like this was different. It should’ve been impossible, supporting his weight just with one arm. It was as though Danny had turned gravity off for just the two of them.
Their destination became apparent as they approached a building with a giant glowing sign labeled ‘Fenton Works’ alongside an arrow oh so helpfully pointing down to the building they were perched upon. He’d read about them in the papers.
He could only imagine the portal was nearby.
Jazz had made it sound like she, and possibly the trio, frequented the other dimension. One of the newspapers had an interview with a ghost named Kitty, who claimed that the Phantoms took wayward ghosts back to the zone. It wasn’t unreasonable, given the amount of ghost fights he’d read about, that the Phantoms spent solid chunks of time in both dimensions. Jason didn’t like the idea of having to sneak by people who hunted him to get home every day on top of all the regular vigilante crap. It was exhausting for him and it could only have been the same for them.
The kids probably had been caught off guard before, trying to pass through.
How badly had they suffered?
“Nervous?” Danny asked, slowing to a stop.
Maybe he was wrong. Maybe it hadn’t happened. Maybe they were still…
“Are- did you die?” Jason asked in a rush. Immediately, he wanted to take the words and stuff them back in his mouth.
Danny was quiet for a moment. “Why?”
Scrambling for an answer, he meekly offered a thought that had occurred to him yesterday on patrol.
“I mean- are they gonna ask me about my…?”
Would he have to explain his own demise?
He would if he had to, in the barest sense, but it wasn’t information he was going to volunteer.
“Ok. So, don’t do that. Ever,” Danny gently admonished. “Real quick lesson in ghost manners. You don’t ask about death. It’s a sensitive topic among ghosts. And to answer your question, yes, I did die. I can’t say what the yetis will ask but one of us will be right there at all times, okay?”
Danny, even as Phantom, was dwarfed by Jason. He was sure that he could punt the kid pretty far, so small he was, and he still had baby fat clinging to his cheeks.
Would he ever get to grow up?
Or had that been ripped away from him?
Jason cleared his throat. “Right.”
Danny took them down to the street right in front of Fenton Works and then phased them through the floor and into a stairwell.
“Ready?” he asked.
Manes poked her head out of a doorframe at the bottom of the stairs.
“As I’ll ever be,” replied Jason.
Danny floated them down the stairs and through the doorway. Tucker was inside with Sam and they split with Sam taking point and Tucker covering the rear.
The wall of the lab they directed to was shockingly familiar. If one took out the blast doors and the active portal, the setup was identical to that of the picture.
Danny confirmed he had died.
Sam had referred to the boys as Fenton and Foley earlier. It didn’t matter that he didn’t know which was which; one of them was Fenton, and that was enough information.
With sick horror, it dawned on him that one of the boys’ families owned this lab. One of their families hunted ghosts. One of their families hated the Phantoms. One of their families had killed them.
The Fentons had killed their own child and his two friends.
They had died right here , in this very portal.
Why the hell were they here?
“Jason? Is something wrong?”
“No,” he said shortly.
What were the kids playing at?
The three seemed to silently agree on something.
“Jason,” Tucker said, putting a hand on his shoulder, “we’ll be with you, alright? If something’s up we can handle it. We can help.”
“How can you be here?” he asked a little desperately. “This is-”
He couldn’t even think about the warehouse.
Danny hugged him slowly, and then Sam, and then Tucker joined them.
It didn’t matter that they were pressed up so close he could feel their bones digging into his body because there wasn’t a single pulse among them.
The kids had died.
“You saw that picture, didn’t you?” Tucker said lowly. Jason didn’t deny it.
“It’s mildly uncomfortable but we had to deal with it pretty early on,” Sam explained. “We’re largely used to it by now.”
Anger that had been silently simmering began to boil.
“You had to deal with it?” he repeated shrilly.
Of course, he thought bitterly. If the Fentons had killed the kids, likely with the intention of collecting their ghosts for some fucked up study, then the trio would’ve been forced into the lab at one, or several, points. But why come back at all?
The portal they died in. It was one of the only stable portals. They’d have to deal with it if they wanted to use the portal to herd the ghosts out of Amity.
Unwilling to dislodge the kids and possibly hurt them, he couldn’t move. Not with all three pairs of arms wrapped around him. But goddamn it, he was tempted to break something.
“… it’s not that bad. We’re fine. We’re not going to make you confront your death, alright?” Danny said.
“ My death? What about yours? This is cookies and cream awful. Who the hell made you deal with it? Chocolate Raspberry. Who ?”
“We did because it was the right thing to do. It’s a story for another time, okay?” Sam said a little desperately.
Danny lifted one arm and wrapped it around Sam.
Tucker pressed his head against Jason’s shoulder. “Jason. I know this kinda sucks but there’s nothing you can do. It’s in the past now.”
They had given up on themselves.
It was all too common with heroes, wasn’t it? To save everyone else? But what about them?
Oh, how he wanted to rage.
But he couldn’t.
Keep it together for the kids, he scolded himself. He made progress. He had the lab. He discovered that the Lazarus water thing was actually the Fenton portal. He found out more about the kids.
He made progress.
Inhaling quietly, he focused on the oscillating edges of the portal, moving in and out in a mockery of breathing.
His breath hitched.
The kids weren’t breathing . Their chests were still, their diaphragms didn’t move and never would again, up and down, in and out. Their lungs-
- were vibrating?
The pure confusion overrode everything for a moment. The kids were vibrating. And there was a sound quite similar to purring, though it felt as though it reached all the way down into his soul.
“… are you kids purring at me?”
“No,” Danny said, continuing to purr.
“Is it working?” grinned Sam.
“We’re ghosts, not cats,” Tucker scoffed.
“We could be engines.”
Danny groaned and thunked his head against Jason’s arm. “One time.”
“One time’s all it takes,” snickered Tucker.
“Danny overshadowed a car once,” Sam explained. “But he wasn’t really, he was in the engine and didn’t realize it. He was stuck as a car for almost a full day.”
“It was an anti-ghost vehicle too, mind you,” Tucker added.
“Stooop,” Danny complained.
“It was his sister’s car.”
“Guys, I’m already half dead, please don’t kill me the rest of the way.”
“Jazz-”
Danny reached past Jason’s head to presumably clamp a hand over Tucker’s mouth. “Okay! That’s enough for today! We’re going to be late!”
👻 {Boo!)
Jason avoided the manor.
That wasn’t atypical, not really, but missing his phone call to Alfred was. Especially on a holiday; especially on Christmas.
He wasn’t at his official residence, nor his unofficial one, and so the only thing to do was to go through his safe houses. Easy enough. If there was one good thing about the whole mess with Dr. Crane, it was that they had more time now that their civilian identities were “hospitalized”.
One of the safe houses, located in an old apartment, showed signs of Jason being there recently. Why hadn’t he gone back to his actual apartment?
There were no real clues- nothing to hint at his home being compromised, nothing to indicate why he’d come to this particular apartment. The perishable food indicated Jason was residing here now, and had been for a few days as his suit from the gala was here, as was an assortment of gear Jason never left behind. Among them were his prized handguns.
So why were they here when Jason wasn’t?
There was only one other thing out of place. One clue that might lead to an answer instead of more questions.
Laying on the couch was an odd camera. It didn’t look like the kind of camera someone could buy at a store, no matter how high end. Some of the parts were standard, others looked custom, and none of them looked over a day old. Someone took good care of this camera, and if there was something he knew, it was cameras.
Jason had never been interested in photography and there was no way he knew how to care for a camera. So, to whom did it belong?
Well, if he left it here he’d never get answers. Jason might be bitchy for a while but the answers would be worth it. Besides, he’d get it back. Eventually.
Red Robin picked the strange camera up, tucked it into one of the dozen pockets on his person, and left the apartment.
👻 {Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed it.)
Taglist time! If you want to be added, just say so!
@depressed-bitchy-demon @dp-marvel94 @birbtails @mr-lancers-english-class @miraculousandmore @iglowinggemma28 @manapeer @azzysflowergarden @notwhat-i-seemtobe @whobee7 @trippingovermyfeet @stormhaven257 @imsociallyanxiousgetoverit @passivedecept @lovetheryu @ever-after-aaa @mysteriousooze @wegetitethan @cyber-geist @t-nayira @wisteriavines @starscreamlover @recently-diagnosed-lady-knight @thescarletcryptid @jaguarthecat @blankliferain @crimsonaccent @terzatheunderscorerima
82 notes
·
View notes