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mokulule · 1 year ago

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The Number You Have Called Cannot Be Reached - part 11

First | Masterlist

Ship: Dead on Main (Danny/Jason) Fandom: DP x DC Summary:

Danny is just trying to build a portal home, becoming a thief was just an unfortunate side effect of that goal. Now if only this vigilante family would just leave him alone. Especially Red Hood - the semi retired crime lord whose ghost-like presence keeps drawing Danny to him.

Part 11:

Danny took a running leap and landed lightly on the next shoddily tiled rooftop. He’d lost the midget in the Southside factory district and now he was in some sketchy neighborhood with smaller buildings. It was on ground level, but it seemed almost like it was sunken into a hole as the rest of the city had grown up around it and swallowed it - one of the main highways even went plain over it.

Danny stopped for a moment catching his breath. The roll of heavy duty cable slung over his shoulder was… well heavy. He looked out over the mishmash of old neon lights and newer LED signs for bars, nightclubs and little kiosks. In the alley next to Danny’s building money was exchanged for services Danny was not sticking around to watch. Blushing, he skipped to the next roof, taking care to land silently.

He should just disappear, he was far enough away from his own hidey hole and he was tired. He was always so freaking tired.

But…

Well, first off he wasn’t phasing through a night club to go underground.

And secondly…

Red Helmet hadn’t showed up.

That was a good thing, Danny told himself frowning, as he walked along the spine of the newest roof, dodging around chimneys. The past weeks had been torture.

Every time the Red Helmet had shown up it had been so hard not to go to him. He’d wanted so bad to give in, to just for moment heed the call of his core, the promise of companionship, comfort. Refusing that instinct was agony. And Ancients, Danny remembered how he’d looked in civilian dress, in that well worn henley, broad chested and with those big arms, he probably gave great hugs - if only he wasn’t one of the vigilantes trying to capture him… And if he wasn’t absolutely terrifying.

Danny shuddered, remembering how angry he’d been last time, yelling for him to stop. Yeah… Red Helmet was… He was an anglerfish, a lure, a treacherous light in the dark, that he had to resist, and last time he’d shown his teeth.

Red Helmet not showing up was a good thing.

Danny stopped and looked up to the cloudy night sky, jaw tight. It was a good thing. Why did he still feel so bereft?

He pulled the goggles down around his neck and rubbed his wet eyes angrily. Fuck it all, he just wanted to go home already!

His only warning was an electrical bzzt and he threw himself to the side instinctively. His eyes widened in fear as he only barely dodged two sticks sparking with arcing lines of electricity. Every hair on his body stood on end. The entire world narrowed in on those two weapons. He jumped backwards, uncaring where it took him he just needed to get away.

Something hit his back and stopped him. His hands touched brick: wall. One of the sparking weapons was swung in lazy swirls as the dark shape attached to it bent down to pick up the roll of cable that had caught on a small chimney. Danny touched his shoulder, finding it bare of its earlier cargo. His hand tightened into a fist angrily and he cursed himself for not paying better attention.

The shape got up and while half Danny’s attention was on the electrified weapon, he could now see it was Blue Bird. Danny had encountered him before, though only a couple of times. He’d been the bantering, good natured sort next to the angry midget, and he hadn’t known those sticks he used for weapons could do that.

Realization ran cold down Danny’s back; Blue Bird hadn’t thought he needed the electricity before, but he did now.

Blue Bird moved and Danny ripped himself free of his petrification. Casting around he realized the wall was not a wall, but a pillar and most importantly neither was a thing that could stop him. It was only at the last second he went intangible and stepped backwards. The metal sticks clanged against the bricks where he’d stood.

The sound of Blue Bird cursing, was a dull far away sound, as Danny started shaking. He kept a tight desperate hold on his intangibility but still felt himself losing focus. He quickly had to go somewhere.

He dropped down until he found one of the many flood pipes that handled overflow if the sewers couldn’t handle the pressure. Something that seemingly didn’t happen too often judging by the dry debris left here. You could say what you wanted about this city, but the web of underground channels and tunnels was impressive, and the city was if nothing else prepared.

He set down carefully and then let go of his intangibility. He was still shaking. His heart was pounding too fast. He wrapped arms around himself and took careful deep breaths even as his body told him he wasn’t getting enough air. But he was, he knew that was the panic speaking.

He fucking hated electricity.

Hated it. Hated it.

You would think he’d be used to it by now. When he died, all the times Vlad shocked him, Vortex, that time Valerie tortured him in a basement, the- He forcefully shut down the thought.

He should be fucking used to it by now!

But he was not. Especially not when it came out of nowhere like this. He’d frozen. They could have caught him. Danny could not be caught. Could not. Could not. Could not.

Shakily he breathed in slowly through his nose and let it out.

They were going to use electricity again. There was no way they wouldn’t take advantage of a weakness like that.

He’d lost the cable.

Red Helmet hadn’t shown.

And why did he keep coming back to that! Of all things that should be the least of his worries. It was a good thing. It was.

It just didn’t feel like it.

Oo o oO

Tim didn’t blame Bruce for letting him take point on this.

After Jason had pointed a gun at him, he was rightfully shaken. Oh, he pretended not to be, but anyone who knew him could tell. There was a furrow edged on his brow even when he played Brucie whenever someone wasn’t directly interacting with him. He was worried and afraid.

And Tim got it. He had been there for everything. He understood how terrified Bruce was of losing Jason again, just as things had been slowly looking up. Bruce was drawing back, which was for the better. The alternative, that Bruce might come to a point where he thought something needed to be done about Jason, was too terrible to imagine. He would do it too, set aside his emotions, and do something, if he thought it was for the best. None of them needed the fallout of a Bruce who’d convinced himself Jason was too dangerous.

He was dangerous. But, thinking of the broken mirror, bleeding feet and tired eyes, Tim thought he was more dangerous to himself.

It had been a painful realization to make. Tim had gone to Jason, with the mission in mind, only to find that maybe Jason had needed someone to check up on him for him. But even worse, Tim couldn’t be that person, because they didn’t have that kind of relationship.

It wasn’t fair.

In an ideal world Tim got to be Jason’s annoying little brother. In an ideal world Tim wouldn’t be afraid of Jason.

What Tim could do was solve this issue. He took a deep breath and put all his emotions aside, they could wait. He was a plans guy and they needed a plan.

Tim surveyed the mess of papers he’d made of the table, as he’d pulled everything off the evidence board. It was time to start from the beginning.

He sorted through and found the “meta?” sign, crossed out the question mark, and hung it in the center of the board.

In the beginning they’d thought primarily that the Ghost used cloaking tech, but the phasing had made that very unlikely, and Duke had all but confirmed the meta theory when he told them he sorta glowed to his senses. He sorted through the papers and trashed those old theories.

He put the known powers back up, then paused when he found the little scrap with a silly cartoon ghost Dick had drawn and put up in the corner of the original board. It had eventually gotten covered with something else and Tim hadn’t seen it when he took things down.

Now he considered it with a sigh, and pinned it next to the powers. Ghost was as good a codename as any and Tim suspected it was only Barbara who still refused to use it because Dick was obnoxious about it. And, Tim moved on to the picture of the phone to pin it back up, there was the fact that the recovered messages said nothing but “ghost”. So there was some connection. He marked that connection with a piece of string to the cartoon ghost.

The short contact list went up with the phone picture.

At some point when this was all over Tim needed to take a closer look at that phone. He had no idea how that brick managed to get any signal, much less how all the contacts were out of service when called from that phone, despite some of them actually being in service. Yet, it could somehow call other existing numbers fine, both local, out of state and international.

It made no logical sense!

He rubbed the bridge of his nose and let it go.

Danny Fenton? went up above meta, they were reasonably sure that was his name. Next Tim took the list of known thefts and dates and hung it up on the left side of the board. Then added Star Lab break in a bit higher up. There was about three weeks in between the Star Lab break in and their first recorded sighting. It could mean anything. He could have stolen numerous things in the mean time without being discovered, or only just gotten to Gotham.

Tim had scoured crime reports of Metropolis and other nearby cities for thefts that fitted Ghost’s MO, but had found none, so for better or worse he seemed to be sticking to Gotham for now.

He put up buyer? And building? Underneath. Tim still had the terrible hunch he was building a portal that would end up destabilizing reality, but since he had nothing but his gut feeling to build that on he couldn’t put it on the board - not the board in the cave anyways.

He trashed a few dead end theories, found a scrap of paper that simply said “electromagnetic interference”. He held it in his hand for a moment, something niggling in his brain, but it was only half formed, he turned around and pinned it under powers and let it go.

Next he pinned up the “weaknesses”. Finally, thanks to Dick’s temper, they had something. He’d not been pleased to come home from his mission to the state of things being even worse so he’d gotten serious and treated the Ghost as an actual threat.

Tim wrote electricity on a new scrap of paper and then put it under weaknesses. He tapped his chin with the capped marker. The Ghost’s behavior was odd. With the abilities he had, why even play chase with them?

He didn’t use the phasing to escape them early on. It was only when Jason entered the picture that began. Was it because the ability had a limit? Did it cost him to use it? Also what prompted the odd reaction to Jason that first night? And what about it made the Ghost so desperate he’d disappeared on them as soon as Jason was in sight?

Tim grabbed a new scrap of paper and pulled off the cap on the marker. He had to resist the urge to write “Jason” on the scrap, he’d keep that thought to himself, and instead wrote “limit?” And hung it under weaknesses with electricity.

There were more papers on the table. An analysis of the electromagnetic signal he gave off, that Tim had used to reduce noice in their visuals and audio. Pictures of the protein bars and the backpack. A map with every place the thief had disappeared on them marked: aka basically spread all over Gotham. A blood sample readout that was too degenerated for a useable DNA sample. These things didn’t go in the trash, but they weren’t important for capturing the Ghost, instead they went into a folder and put to the side.

Table now clear, Tim noticed his favorite mug full of steaming coffee and a plate of cookies set near the edge. He smiled and rubbed a hand through his hair self consciously. He hadn’t even noticed Alfred had been by, but he was a lifesaver. He would have to thank him later.

He took the mug and a cookie and sat himself on the table, surveying the evidence board. He sipped the mug savoring the good coffee. It went perfect with the chocolate chip cookie.

His eyes rested on “electromagnetic signals” again. It had been one of Dick’s early “proofs” that their thief was a ghost - if you subscribed to Ghostbusters lore at least. Tim rolled his eyes. The real reason the ghost couldn’t be a real ghost was that he was visible at all. Only magic users could see ghosts without a spell to make them visible (Something Tim was pretty sure Dick knew). He didn’t actually know whether the electromagnetic disturbance was a real ghost thing, the JLD didn’t need such tools after all when they could see them just fine. And besides if it was it probably wasn’t to the degree the Ghost gave it off.

Would an EMP do anything? Probably not, since they were convinced the Ghost wasn’t using technology at this point, but a small localized pulse couldn’t hurt to try.

He took another sip of his coffee, contemplating, he needed something better. They could run the Ghost around all they wanted, but unless they stopped that phasing, he would get away every time.

Jason couldn’t continue staying out of it like this. They’d chased the Ghost once without him and he was worse than a tiger in a cage, and twice as vicious. Tim scoffed, if only they could put the Ghost in a cage-

Tim’s thoughts crashed to a halt.

No, they couldn’t- it’d never work- but if they-

He jumped off the table, took three steps, then turned back to put down his mug and cookie. Then hurried over to the where they had the maps. With nimble fingers he sorted through the rolls only barely skimming the tags before discarding and moving to the next. They had to have- Got it! A utility map of the industrial area in Southside Gotham. He grabbed it and hurried back to the table. Unrolling it he placed the mug and the plate to hold down the corners even as he was already scanning the map looking for-

There!

It may be a while until the Ghost hit the area again. And they would need all hands on deck for this and preparations had to be made. But…

Tim smiled. They had a plan.

So we've gotten to this point :D Hope you enjoyed it! Comments will keep me warm on my night shift tonight <3

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#dp x dc #dead on main #Jason is catnip to Danny #missed connections #The trap is set #watch out Danny

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