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Chapter Text

Amity Park - Wednesday

Danny Fenton had had better days. He had had better months and years, too. In freshman year of high school they had to fill out a 5 year plan. His plan had included things like asking Paulina out to prom, getting into a good engineering college, eating every item off the menu at the Nasty Burger, and beginning astronaut training. Things he hadn't thought to include on his list were gaining ghost powers, making an enemy of his dad's old college roommate, and fighting ghosts. Unfortunately, that second list was closer to the truth, and was the catalyst for his current situation. 

Danny jumped back just before a pink plasma blast exploded the ground where he had been standing just a second ago. "Two years of training and you are still this slow? I'm disappointed, Daniel." Vlad Plasmius, white and red cape billowing, sneered from where he hovered ten feet above the boy. 

Danny felt his irritation rising, his back pressed against the wall of the massive gym. It had been two years to the day since his parents had died. Two years since Vlad had become his guardian, two years of 'ghost training' which seemed to be just another excuse for Vlad to verbally abuse him. 

"If you would let me use my powers this would be a much fairer fight!" He yelled. Vlad didn't answer, he just aimed another blast at Danny's head. He ducked just in time, but still smelled burnt hair and ozone. "How am I supposed to fight you with no weapons and no powers?" 

"This isn't fight training, Daniel, this is dodge training." The older man said with a sardonic smile. "Now dodge." Danny had to leap forward in a roll to dodge the plasma beam Vlad shot at him. 

They had been at this for a while, Danny wasn't sure how much longer he could keep it up. His hair was soaked in sweat and his shirt clinged to him uncomfortably. His arms and legs were numb, and he could already feel bruises forming from where he hit the ground or the wall too hard in his efforts to dodge. Vlad hadn't broken a sweat. Four more blasts came in quick succession. Danny backflipped out of the way.

"It's good to see the gymnastics training is paying off." Vlad said, aiming another blast. "Private tutors don't come cheap." 

Danny twisted away from the blast. "Don't pretend like you're hurting for cash!" He spat.

A plasma blast caught him right in the chest. 

Plasma blasts weren't deadly to humans, but they could be painful and leave burns. Danny usually pulled his blasts when dealing with humans so he didn't hurt them too much. Vlad never did. A blast from Vlad felt like getting hit by a red hot tire iron hooked up to an electric fence. Danny collapsed to his knees, clutching his chest.

Vlad came down to squat in front of him, eye level. "Maybe if you were faster your parents would still be alive." It was a taunt, bait to goad Danny into attacking. He didn't rise to it. He was too tired, too hurt. He just put his head down against the cool wood floor. He heard Vlad walk away, out of the gym, up the stairs, out of earshot. 

Danny stayed there, crouched on the floor for longer than he wanted to admit. As much as he hated Vlad, hated when he said things like that, hated everything the man did and said, he had a point. 

Danny had been too slow to save his parents. 

Jazz had drilled it into his head in the weeks and months after their death that it wasn't his fault. She had made him repeat it over and over. "It wasn't my fault they died. It was an accident. No one is to blame." He recited, even now.

Still, a small piece of him, whispering in the back of his mind said 'But if you had been faster you could have saved them.' The accident wasn't his fault, but he couldn't help blaming himself for their death.

Danny - Later That Night

"Guys, relax, it's fine. Look, it's already healing." Danny was on a four way video call with his two best friends, Sam Manson and Tucker Foley, and his sister, Jazz.

"I still don't like the idea of him using live rounds on you, Danny!" His sister was fuming. "How many hours a day does he train you?" 

"I do rest, Jazz! Not having to worry about ghost attacks in the middle of the night is great for my sleep!" It was true, Danny did sleep well most nights. Ghost attacks were virtually non-existent since his parents' portal had been shut down. Valerie had figured out about Vlad being Plasmius, and it didn't take long for her to figure out that Danny and Phantom were the same person. Since then they had called a truce and traded off patrol weeks. It was easier on both of them.

"Anyway." Sam jumped in, tired of the sibling's squabbling, "are you guys coming over this weekend? I got an advance copy of the new Terminatrix movie, and my parents upgraded the theater. Curved screen, surround sound, the works!"

"That sounds awesome!" Tucker joined in, looking up from his PDA "Count me in!"

"I can't" Jazz said "I have to study. My Pharmacology class is kicking my butt." Jazz had graduated high school a year early and had immediately started psychology at Yale. She had earned a full ride academic scholarship. "How does anyone remember what the different salt forms of hydroxyzine do?" 

Danny didn't have a clue what she was talking about, but to hear her struggle with something for once made him feel a bit better about his own academics. Vlad had insisted he finish high school online which turned out to be a better fit for him than in person classes. Being able to work more or less at his own pace allowed him to produce better work faster. He was set to graduate in the spring.

"Bummer. What about you, Danny?" Sam asked hopefully. 

"I can't. I have that technology fair in Gotham on Saturday." 

"Wait wait wait. Gotham?" Tucker was paying full attention now, not even looking at the PDA he had been coding on all night. "As in 'Home to Wayne Enterprises, makers of the best tech on the planet' Gotham?" 

"Yeah, well it is the Wayne Enterprises technology fair. I've only been working on my submission for 6 months. I'm sure I've told you guys about it."

"You did say you were submitting something a few months ago." Jazz said "But you never said you heard back." 

"Oh. Sorry." Danny rubbed the back of his neck. "I got the invite in the mail a few weeks ago." 

"What did you end up submitting?" Sam asked, "I don't think you ever said." 

"Oh, it's the portable force field belt. It was the only prototype I had that was operational at the time."

 "If you are going out of town does that mean the ecto-signature dampeners are working?" Jazz asked.

"Kind of. They work when I'm in human form, but if I change into Phantom they short out. They should help when the G.I.W. come sniffing around, anyway." Danny fiddled with the titanium bands around his wrists.

"At least you can use your powers with these. The last ones nearly knocked you out when you flashed your eyes green!" Sam said, laughing. 

Danny laughed, too. "Yeah, basing the design off the Specter Deflector was probably a bad idea." The group dissolved into giggles and laughter. A few minutes later the alarm on his phone went off. 

"Bedtime?" Jazz asked. "It's only eleven."

"Yeah, but I have Judo at six, so I have to get some sleep." Danny was feeling pretty tired, anyway. "I'll talk to you guys tomorrow, okay?"

"Okay, Danny, good night." Jazz looked upset. Probably thinking about how busy his schedule was, but she disconnected the call without saying anything more.

"Night" Sam and Tucker said at the same time. 

"Night guys, don't let the ghost bugs bite." Danny grinned and disconnected the call. His face fell immediately into something not quite a frown. 

Danny wasn't pretending to be happy for his friends sake. He was genuinely happy to talk to them. Just as he was genuinely irritated and angry at Vlad. But when he was by himself, alone with his thoughts he found it hard to have emotions or feelings. When his hands were still and his mind was allowed to wander it wandered into some dark places. Places Danny didn't like to think were part of him. His parents death had left him not quite broken, but definitely cracked. 

When he told Jazz about it she had suggested therapy. When he told Vlad he had suggested sucking it up. 

So Danny kept himself busy. Without the distraction of Ghost fighting his grades jumped immediately. He was graduating early and was looking into engineering colleges. In the meantime he kept busy with Judo, Kendo, gymnastics, and ghost training with Vlad. He didn't need to take days off to recover, his healing factor made him good as new with a good night's rest. 

When he wasn't training he was tinkering with gadgets. His room looked more like a lab than a bedroom. Danny removed the titanium bands from his wrist and put them on the charging pad. It glowed faintly green.

Jazz liked to think Vlad was responsible for Danny being so busy, but the truth was that Danny had asked for all the extra curriculars. Being busy kept Danny from thinking too much. It kept him from spiraling. He had seen where spiraling led to, and he wasn't interested in becoming Dan. 

In the bathroom Danny studied his reflection as he brushed his teeth. He had changed a lot since he had become Vlad's ward at fifteen. He was still shorter than most other boys his age, but he had filled out. He was lean and muscular, thanks, no doubt, to all the martial arts training. Danny rinsed his mouth with mouthwash and then peeled the gauze off the plasma burn on his chest. It was already halfway healed, only the size of a fist, the new pink skin around it was still a little tender. By morning the burn would be gone without a trace. Danny recovered the wound with a fresh gauze pad and headed to bed.

Chapter Text

Amity Park - Thursday Morning

The next morning Danny headed into the kitchen at 5 am. Ever since he had started living with Vlad he woke up ridiculously early. Still, Vlad was already awake, already dressed in his usual suit, eating a bowl of granola.

"Do you ever sleep?" Danny asked, grabbing a bowl and filling it up with Raisin Bran, the only "sugary" cereal Vlad allowed in the house. 

"Vampires don't sleep, Daniel." He quipped, not looking up from his tablet. 

"Glad you are finally admitting to being a Vampire." The two had an uneasy, and unspoken truce. It involved Danny not being an insufferable brat and Vlad not being a crazed up fruit loop. They regularly ended up in fights, anyway, but at least they could eat breakfast without exchanging blows.

"I have a long day at the office today, and we are heading out as soon as I get back. I expect you to be packed and ready by then. Your Sensei should be here soon, and your Gymnastics coach will be here at one. Eat more than a sandwich for lunch. I don't need you passing out on me again." 

Danny suppressed an eyeroll. He didn't need to be reminded of his schedule, he had set it up himself. "Okay." Vlad gave him a look. He stood up, put his bowl and spoon in the dishwasher, and turned to leave. 

"Oh, I almost forgot." He turned back around and grabbed a small, handheld device. "Can't forget to Maximize you before I leave." With that he touched Danny's side with the device, shorting out his ghost powers. 

Danny suppressed a yell. "I get why you feel the need to do that, but does it have to hurt so much?" Danny rubbed his side.

"Not really, but then it wouldn't be as effective. I made some upgrades so it should be active for nine hours. I should be back around four, so behave yourself." Vlad gave him another look before leaving through the garage. 

Gotham - Friday Morning

"What do you mean you didn't pack a suit?" Danny gave Vlad a funny look.

"The invite said 'business casual'." Danny had on dark blue jeans and a green short sleeved polo shirt. It was one of his favorites since it had Pluto stitched where the usual logo was.

"That's not what business casual means, Daniel." Vlad sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Did you at least pack a jacket?" 

"Of course." Danny pulled a black zip up hooded jacket out of his suitcase. 

"That's...not." Vlad stopped and pinched the bridge of his nose, "Have it your way, little badger. We are late enough as it is." If the boy wanted to feel underdressed and out of place, that was on him.

They didn't end up being late, after all. Vlad dropped Danny off at the check in for contestants at the back of the convention center and went to find a place to park. Danny joined the line of other teens waiting to check in. 

Danny was assigned to table 142, right in the middle of the convention center. He set right to work setting up his table. He had spent hours tweaking his design for the last few months, testing and re-testing. He felt ready. He felt confident. He felt… He felt nauseous. Slightly panicking he pulled out his phone and called Jazz. She picked up on the second ring.

“Hey, Danny, how's it going?” She asked, confused. 

“Jazz, what was I thinking? I can’t do this! I’m average at best, and the rest of these kids are geniuses!” 

“Of course you can, Danny. You have worked for this for so long. You know your tech, and you are going to do great. Even being there is proof that you are a genius, the same as anyone else in the room.” Jazz said, full of confidence that Danny didn’t feel.

“You don’t understand Jazz. The girl across the aisle from me has a bike with frictionless wheels! Do you know how fast you can go on frictionless wheels? All I have is a glorified Ghost Shield!” Danny was starting to hyperventilate now. The dampners on his wrist gave a warning vibration, indicating he was close to losing control of his powers. He took a deep breath and held it for a few seconds before releasing it slowly. 

“Danny, you are going to do great. Your forcefield is just as good as anyone else’s invention. Now, take me through the schedule."

"The engineers are going to come by first to check our work and make sure it is functional and safe. If the engineers give you the green light then you get to present in front of the board, and they decide who wins the scholarships."

"Great. You are going to do amazing. I have to get to my study group, but I love you, Danny." 

"Love you, too, Jazz." 

Danny hung up the phone and put it in his pocket. Turning back to his table he felt less nauseous. He can do this. It's just impressing the smartest people at Wayne Enterprises with the force field he built in his bedroom. 

No biggy. 

There was some commotion around the corner. The engineers were coming. They stopped at the girls table across the aisle from him. He watched as the girl pulled out blueprints and demonstrated her wheel, giving it the slightest push and watching it spin and spin. 

The bands on his wrists gave another warning vibration. Deep breath. Focus. Oh no. They are coming over here. Deep breath. 

"And this is Daniel Fenton with his force field." A blond woman with a clipboard said to an older black man. His name badge said L. Fox. 

"Well, Mr. Fenton. Tell me about your invention." Mr. Fox said. He looked kind.

"Right. This device that Annie is modeling is the portable force field generator." Danny gestured to the mannequin standing behind him. Around her waist was a silver and black belt. "It can repel any hit that could cause major harm." 

"Annie?" Mr. Fox asked, with a slight smile.

Danny felt his face heating up. He hadn't meant to call the mannequin by the name Tucker had given her. "Uhh.. Yes, sir."

"Could you give us a demonstration?" A man standing behind Mr. Fox asked. 

"Of course." Danny twisted the knob on the belt and the black lines illuminated with a soft blue glow which then traveled up to Annie's head, and down to the floor before fading from view. "When the belt is activated a friendly touch can pass through." He circled around behind the model and put his hands on both of her shoulders. "But an unfriendly touch can't." He brought his right hand down hard Annie's shoulder, the blue light of the force field showing briefly before his hand was stopped an inch from the plastic.

"Interesting." Mr. Fox said "Do you mind if I try?" 

"Not at all." Danny stepped back and allowed Mr. Fox to place his hand through the force field. He gripped the mannequin's shoulder, then aimed a punch in the middle of her chest, his fist stopping just short of contact.

"What does it feel like for the wearer?" Mr. Fox was quick. He seemed really interested.

"Like being hit with a water balloon that didn't break. It can sting a little, but not nearly as badly as being punched." Danny said. 

"How long does the force field last?". Mr. Fox had moved to the table where Danny had set up his blueprints and other testing notes. 

"In stand-by mode, what it is right now with nothing touching it, it can last 12 hours. Under a constant barrage it can last about 20 minutes." 

Mr. Fox was about to ask another question, but was interrupted by the blond woman with the clipboard. "Mr. Fox, the 5 minutes are up. It's time to move on to the next candidate." 

"Of course. Mr. Fenton. It was great to meet you, feel free to pack up and mill about until the decision has been made." He held out his hand and Danny shook it without hesitation. 

"Thank you for your time, Mr. Fox. I look forward to it." Danny said with a smile. All in all, he felt that went rather well. 

Which is a sure sign that everything was about to go wrong.

Chapter Text

Danny wasn't sure where Vlad had gone, but he wasn't going to dwell on it too much. He was probably talking to all the big wigs trying to make connections for his own business. He didn't really care. It took Danny about 10 minutes to find where Vlad had parked the car and stash the mannequin. He didn't really feel like lugging her around, and he planned on doing a practical demonstration if he got through to the board. 

"Thanks for your help, Annie. Wish me luck in the next part." 

Danny clipped the belt around his waist for safekeeping and grabbed his backpack, but left the duffle bag with his notes and blueprints in the trunk with Annie before heading back to the convention center for lunch. 

He spotted Vlad in the food court at a table with some other businessmen, but he either didn't see the teen, or chose to ignore him. That worked just fine for Danny, who grabbed some noodles from a Chinese place and chose an empty table to sit at. 

No sooner had he finished his noodles and pulled out his phone to text his friends when a shiver ran up his spine and a thin mist escaped his mouth. "You've GOT to be kidding me." A second later he heard screaming from the event hall. His phone buzzed in his hand and he looked. Vlad had texted him. 

Don't even think about it.

You know I can't ignore it.

It isn't your responsibility

Danny was already running toward the screams

You are going to get yourself captured. You know they will be here soon.

Fine, minimal ghost powers.

No ghost powers. I won't save you if you get captured.

Danny groaned. Dealing with ghosts was hard enough, but doing it without ghost powers was frustrating. As much as he hated to admit it, Vlad was right. The GIW usually shows up about thirty minutes after a ghost does. Using his ghost powers at all was dangerous, changing into Phantom outside of Amity Park would be suicide.

He had to push through a lot of people running the other way, and was sorely tempted to use intangibility to make it past one particularly crowded doorway, but he pushed through without it. When he finally reached the event room it was chaos. 

Everyone had left the room already, and display tables were overturned, discarded inventions were being gathered up into the center of the room, forming a 10 foot tall mech who was laughing maniacally.

"Technus! What are you doing here?" Danny shouted. 

The battle mech turned to face him. He had taken a large screen television from one of the walls and the green skinned, white haired ghost glared at him from inside. "I should ask you the same question, child! I did not expect you to be here! But now that you are, I have taken all of this technology, and with it I will be unstoppable!" The ghost threw his mechanical head back and laughed. 

Or he was about to, but a small object whizzed out of the rafters and embedded itself in the screen, right in the middle of the ghost's face. "What?" Was all he got out before the device exploded, destroying the screen. 

But Technus appeared on another screen. This time a grappling hook embedded itself in the screen and a black figure swung down and landed a kick in the middle of the mech's chest. 

Danny was distracted when he was grabbed by his arm and dragged behind an upturned table. "What do you know about that thing?" Danny was surprised that Nightwing had gotten there so fast.

"Uh.. his name is Technus. He's a ghost. He controls technology and electricity."

"A ghost?" He asked skeptically. 

"Ghost, ectoplasmic entity, whatever you want to call him, but you can't defeat him without ghost weapons." Danny crossed his arms in front of his chest.

"How do you know so much?" Another boy, about Danny's age in red and black asked, ducking behind the table as something was thrown into it.

"Amity Park is ghost central. Everyone there knows how to protect themselves from ghosts." Danny said, digging in his backpack and pulling out a cylindrical container and clipping it to his belt.

"Is that a thermos?" The older man asked, eyeing the device. Before he got his answer a booming voice echoed around the room 

"Nightwing!" The man peeked over the table to see Batman was being held down and the mech was charging a green blast in his right hand. 

"Oh no you don't." He said before grappling over and slamming into the mech. 

"Have you fought him before?" The boy asked. Red Robin, Danny remembered. 

"No, but Phantom, has." He said with some hesitation. 

"What does he do?" Danny couldn't tell if the other believed him or not, but he plowed on, regardless. 

"We have to separate him from the mech suit. He usually runs Portals XL, so usually Phantom would distract him while his ally backdoors into the system to shut him down." Danny said thoughtfully. "But he must have taken over the computers here. He's much faster than usual." Danny said, observing the smoother movement as Technus fought against Nightwing.

"Then he's running on Wayne tech." Batman said from directly behind Danny, who startled and whipped his head around so fast he gave himself a crick in the neck. "Not many exploitable weaknesses."  

"Well," Red Robin mused, "there is one."

Batman's eyes landed on the boy. "How long will it take?" 

"About five minutes." 

"Get to it." The boy ran off, pulling something up on his wrist computer, and Batman turned to face Danny "You need to get out of here." 

"I can help. I know how to fight him." Danny said desperately. The ghosts were his responsibility. He had to do something. 

"Absolutely not. I will not have an unknown…" but he was cut off by the table they were crouching behind being knocked aside. 

"There you are!" Tech-mech shouted. Batman and Danny both jumped aside as the mech brought his fist down right where they were standing. Danny landed in a crouch and twisted the band on his right wrist until a small blaster appeared. He leveled his shot at Technus' head and fired a green energy beam, blasting a smoking hole in the screen he had been using as a face. 

"What was that?" Nightwing asked, backflipping out of the way of Technus's swinging arms.

"Anti-ghost wrist ray." Danny said simply, aiming another blast and taking out one of the ghost's legs.

"Got another one?" Batman asked. Danny grinned and pulled a wrist ray from his backpack and tossed it to the man.

"It's a prototype so it will take a bit to recharge, but it should work fine. Squeeze your fist to fire." Batman fastened the device to his wrist and gave it a test fire, blasting one of the mech's arms off. 

"You can't stop me!" The ghost shouted. "I am Technus! Master of all Technology." He gathered the loose technology back up and reformed his body.

"You're master of giving me a migraine is what you are!" Danny shouted, taking aim. Before he could get a shot off he had to dodge a pile of inventions that were tossed his way. He recognized one of them and grabbed it from the pile. He leapt onto the bike. It took him a minute to get used to the frictionless wheels, but in a few seconds he was zooming around the room firing blast after blast faster than the ghost could keep up. 

"How long until you're done, red? We can't keep him busy much longer." Danny heard Nightwing ask. He must have got a response Danny couldn't hear, because a second later he responded "Well, wrap it up."

Danny was distracted by Red Robin grappling back down to the ground just long enough for Technus to get a good shot in, hitting Danny in the shoulder with a plasma blast and knocking him off the bike and into a table. 

"You okay, kid?" Nightwing was there in a second, helping Danny to sit up. 

"Yeah, I'm fine." He said, rubbing his shoulder and standing up and looking around. Technus was rebuilding again after all the damage that had been done to him.

"You just got shot with some kind of energy beam, you shouldn't be fine." 

"You shouldn't be here." Batman yelled from where he was attacking, alternating between his explosive batarangs and the prototype wrist ray.

"Batman, I wrote a virus that will force a factory reset, but I need a physical connection to upload it." Red Robin interrupted. 

"There should be an access port on the back of his neck you can hook up to." Danny said. The ghost never seemed to learn from his mistakes. Red Robin nodded at Danny and grappled onto the mechs back. 

"Are you sure you're fine, kid? You got hit pretty hard." Nightwing was watching Danny, so he didn't see the 6 foot long lead pipe Technus had thrown right at him, but Danny did. 

He had spent the better part of a year improving his ectoplasmic shield, focusing on making it smaller and stronger, right up against his body to protect his arms and legs from blows without losing momentum in a fight. He did it now on instinct, jumping in front of the other boy and covering his arms in a shield. Danny deflected the pipe with his right arm, it missed Nightwing's head by a hair and clanged noisily against the floor.

"Whoa. That was close." Nightwing whispered. Danny gripped his arm. That hurt. Without the shield he was sure his arm would have broken.

"What is going on?" Technus exclaimed. The screen he was using as a face was glitching and freezing before finally turning to static, only to be replaced with the Wayne Tech logo and the technopathic ghost was ejected from the mech, landing in an undignified heap right in front of Danny. In one swift motion the boy pulled the thermos from his belt, uncapped it and sucked the ghost inside. Then he stuffed the thermos back into his backpack.

Batman and Red Robin ran over to where Danny and Nightwing were standing. "Okay, kid. Start talking. Who are you, what was that thing and how do you know each other?"

Danny took a deep breath. The glare he was getting from Batman was terrifying. "I'm Danny, that was a ghost. He controls technology. He likes to invade my hometown." 

"Amity Park, right?" Red Robin clarified, already typing on a device he pulled from who knows where.

"Right." Danny eyed the teen warily. He knew Batman and his brood of Robins were smart. He really hadn't wanted to meet them like this. 

"How do you know so much about ghosts?" Nightwing was slightly behind him, now, with Batman a few feet away to his right. They were boxing him in so he couldn't bolt. Danny's heart leaped up into his throat and his wrists started to tingle.

This was bad. 

"Danny?"

This was not the kind of attention he needed right now. He had to get out of here before the GIW showed up. They likely already knew about the attack. They would be on their way. He couldn't be found at the scene of another ghost attack. Not this far away from Amity Park. 

His wrists were tingling

"Danny, breath."

Danny Fenton, under suspicion of being involved in ghostly activities is found at the scene of a ghost attack in Gotham, a place where no ghost has ever been found? They'd arrest him.

They find out. 

They'd KNOW! 

 Why do his wrists keep tingling? 

No

Vibrating.

Oh, right

Panic attack

Deep breath

"Good, deep breaths. In and out." Why was Batman coaching him through a panic attack? Worry about that later. Get through the panic attack first. Deep breath. 

Danny brought his attention to his surroundings. Focused on Batman. He was right in front of him, hands on his shoulders, grounding Danny to something tangible. Danny always thought his suit was black, but up close he could see it was a very dark grey. His bat insignia was black, and his cape. He could feel his heart rate slowing "Better?" Danny nodded weakly, and Batman moved away a few steps.

"B, we have incoming. Police and some guys claiming to be from a government ghost organization?" Nightwing said, a hand to his ear. Danny couldn't fathom at the moment how he knew that.

"The GIW." 

"Yeah, that's what their van says. You know them?" 

Danny looked at Nightwing, his eyes were obscured by the domino mask, but he met them anyway. "They are a menace to ghosts and humans alike."

"I'll deal with them." Batman said. "You three get out of here. And Danny, don't think this conversation is over." He warned.

Danny ran for the emergency exit door and didn't stop until he was in the parking lot. In the relative quiet he heard his text notification go off. He checked his phone and found three missed calls and a text message from Vlad.

 Meet me in the car.

"I am so dead." 

Chapter Text

To Danny's surprise, Vlad didn't kill him immediately.

"What happened?" He snapped after the teen settled into the passenger seat of the luxury car Vlad had rented. Danny was trying to figure out the look Vlad was giving him. He looked angry, but there was something else there, too. 

"It was fine. It was Technus. I trapped him in the thermos." Danny said, patting the backpack at his feet.

"And you didn't use any ghost powers?" He asked accusingly 

"No! Well. No noticeable powers." He said, thinking back to the fight. "I had to use my body shield at one point, but it was under my jacket, so no one could see it." He said, inspecting his jacket to prove his point. "Oh, hell."

"What?"

"Technus ripped my favorite jacket!" He said, holding up his arm showing Vlad a long tear in the fabric.

"Daniel, you're bleeding."  

"Huh?" He looked at his arm through the rip. "Would you look at that?" He pushed his sleeve up, revealing a six inch gash in his forearm. He pulled his first aid kit out of his backpack and set to work cleaning and bandaging the wound. It was hard with his hands shaking as they were. 

Vlad pinched the bridge of his nose. "I knew I should have Maximized you." 

Danny smirked, "Too bad you forgot it at home." He said, unwrapping an antiseptic wipe and cleaning his arm.

"I did not forget it. Somebody removed it from my bag." He said, glaring daggers at the younger man.

Danny's smile deepend. "Now who would have gone and done a thing like that?"

Vlad took a deep breath. "So nothing else happened? Nobody was there to see your… indiscretion?"

Danny wrinkled his nose at the word, or maybe it was the smell of rubbing alcohol. "Indiscretion? You make it sound like I was caught having an affair. Like I said, no one saw anything."

"So there was someone there."

"Well... Batman was there."

"What?" 

"And Nightwing and Red Robin. I always thought Nightwing's costume was black and blue, but it's black and red. Did he have a costume change recently? I don't keep up with the Gotham heros as much."

"Daniel. Did you have a panic attack?" Vlad asked. He was looking at him with that angry-but-not-quite look.

"No, why would you think that?" Danny deflected. It's bad enough he had a panic attack in front of Batman. He didn't want Vald to know, too. 

"Because you are shaking, and rambling and derailing the conversation. You tend to do that when you have had a panic attack and don't want to admit it." Danny was shaking. He could barely wrap the rolled gauze around his forearm. How did Vlad know that? He didn't think the man paid that much attention to him.

"I'm fine, Vlad. I don't want to talk about it. The ghost is caught, the GIW doesn't know I was here, and my dampners are working perfectly. I just need to keep my head down for the rest of the visit, and we will be fine." Danny fumbled with a roll of gauze. He always had the hardest time getting it started. The fabric wouldn't stay in place around his wrist, it kept slipping off. His arm was starting to throb as the adrenaline worked its way out of his system. He hoped it was just the cut and a bad bruise, and he hadn't fractured his arm.

"Oh, for the love of cheese, give that to me!" Vlad snapped and snatched the gauze out of Danny's hand after he dropped it for the third time. He quickly and neatly bandaged his arm and handed the roll back to Danny to put away. 

"Thanks." He said, stuffing the first aid kit back into his bag.

They sat in the car in silence for a while after that. The police weren't allowing anyone to leave until they could straighten out what happened and decide if the fair would continue that day, or if it had to be postponed. 

Danny was used to ghost attacks, and if they were in Amity Park he was sure the event would continue as soon as everyone had collected and fixed their tech. 

Since it was Gotham, however, the police wanted to be thorough, and make sure it wasn't a new villain who needed to be taken down. He huffed a small laugh at imagining Batman trying to explain to the police that the villain was a ghost who was currently in a thermos in the possession of a 17 year old kid from out of town. 

About an hour after the attack Danny received a phone call.

"Hello?" It was a number he didn't recognize, but had a Gotham area code.

"Hello, is this Daniel Fenton?" A female voice asked. 

"Speaking. How can I help you?" Phone etiquette was one of the things his mom had drilled into him and Jazz from a young age since they used to answer the phone for FentonWorks regularly.

Vlad looked at him and mouthed 'who is it?' Danny shrugged

"Hello, Daniel, this is Janet from the Technology Fair. How are you doing after the attack? Did you make it out safely?"

"I did, thanks. Just some scrapes and bruises." That was true enough, if you count a six inch gash to the forearm a scrape.

"That's great to hear. I'm calling because your invention was one of the ones selected to be reviewed by the board. Was your device damaged at all in the attack?"

Danny's brain short circuited. He was selected? He had a chance to present in front of the board? He could get the scholarship? 

"Mr. Fenton? Are you there?" Janet sounded concerned.

"Yes! I'm sorry, Janet. I had my device on me when the attack started, so it made it out fine." His heart was beating so fast he could feel it in his throat. Vlad was still giving him that angry-but-not-quite look again.

"That's wonderful! Unfortunately, due to circumstances we are having to move the presentation to a new location and date. If you are available we are setting up times starting tomorrow." 

"Tomorrow works great for me! We were going to be in town for a week, anyway." Danny said. 

"Great, great. I will put you down for tomorrow at 3 pm. The presentation will be at Wayne Enterprises, main campus. Do you need the address or directions?" 

"The address would be wonderful, Janet, thank you." Danny opened his backpack and pulled out a notebook and pen to scribble down the address as Janet read it out to him. "Thank you so much! I will see you at 3 tomorrow."

Danny hung up the phone in mild shock. 

"So?" Was all Vlad asked.

"I was selected. They had to move the presentation, but… This could be it! I could actually go to college!" Danny was almost vibrating in his seat. "Wait. Ugh, I'm such an idiot."

"What?" 

"I was wearing a battle shield during a ghost battle and I forgot to use it! This could have been the perfect time to test it in the real world!" Danny slapped his hand to his head. 

Vlad was giving him that look again, but Danny ignored it. 

Not long after the phone call the police had allowed people to start leaving, so Vlad drove them back to their hotel.

When Danny thinks of a hotel room, he thinks of a single room with two queen size beds and a bathroom so small you can sit on the toilet and wash your hair at the same time. If you're lucky there would be a coffee maker and a mini-fridge.

When Vlad rents a hotel room there are a minimum of two bedrooms, a huge bathroom with a shower and jacuzzi tub, and a fully functional kitchen, and separate living space. 

The teen didn't even want to think about how much it cost to rent a room like this for a week, but if it meant he didn't have to sleep in the same room as Vlad, he would take it. Vlad went to bed early, and was such a light sleeper that even having a light on would keep him up. Danny could sleep through an earthquake.

"I'm going to bed, Daniel." Vlad said, turning off the news and standing. There had been a report about the attack, stating only that no one was killed and only minor injuries were reported, but there was no news on who, or what had attacked the Wayne Enterprises Technology Fair. 

Danny didn't look up from where he was fiddling with his belt at the table, tools spread all around the work surface. "Night, fruit loop." He traced a wire from the battery to the force field emitter, checking for any damage that the fight may have caused. Vlad hadn't moved from where he was standing. The teen looked up at the older man. He was looking at him again with that anger-but-not look. Danny tried to place the emotion. Was that concern? Worry? Was Vlad worried about him? "What!" Oh, that came out a bit sharp. "Is something wrong?" He finished softer.

"Nothing, Little Badger. Just don't stay up too late." He was still looking, waiting for an answer. 

"Yeah, I'm just gonna finish this, then head to bed." That seemed to satisfy the older man, so he headed into his bedroom. 

Danny traced another wire around from the battery. It's connection to the circuit board was loose. He grabbed a screwdriver, ignoring how his arm protested the movement. He figured it was fractured, the throbbing had gotten worse. He wished he had remembered to pack ibuprofen, Tylenol, something. 

Maybe Vlad had some. 

He shook the thought from his head. No way was he going to admit to that man how much pain he was in. For him to look at him with that concerned look. Like he cared what Danny felt. He gave the screw a final twist before setting the screwdriver down. 

He rubbed his arm absently. The bruising had faded from dark ugly purple to mottled yellow, and the cut scabbed over and started to heal, but was starting to itch. By morning it should be fully healed. The bone, though, would take a day or two to fully heal. 

He checked the last wire in the belt, determined that it was fine before screwing the backing in place. He gave it a final once over, double checked that it was operational, then plugged it up to charge. 

Danny stood up and stretched. His muscles protested, he had been hunched over his work for too long. He rubbed his eyes, he was so tired. He knew he should go to bed, but Batman's words echoed in his head. "Don't think this conversation is over." 

He didn't want to have a conversation with Batman. He didn't want to do anything except crawl into bed and sleep for a week. This was supposed to be his week off. A week out of town, to secure his future. To hopefully gain a scholarship and a place at the best engineering school in the country. But no, nothing ever goes his way. 

Ghosts had ruined his high school experience, and they were ruining his college experience before he even had a chance to have one. 

"You're catastrophizing." Jazz would say. "Things aren't as bad as they seem." 

Danny sighed. He would get some water, go out to the balcony and clear his head, then go to bed. He needed sleep. He had a big day tomorrow, and he was going to do his best. Vlad had stocked the fridge with fancy, imported water. He grabbed a bottle, then crossed to the sliding glass door leading to the balcony. The air outside was cool, but heavy with the promise of rain. He crossed the space to the railing and looked out across the city.

He could see why people liked it here, despite the danger. Gotham truly was a beautiful city. Every building looked like it belonged, all designed with the same gothic architecture. Danny tilted his head up. Looked at the sky. He couldn't see any stars. The dark clouds, illuminated by the lights of the city, swirled around and around. It was almost hypnotic. 

Some sense pulled his eyes down from the sky. There, on the roof of the building across the street from the hotel, a dark silhouette against the cloud cover stood a man. He knew who it was. Dreaded who it was. The figure moved, pulled out a device and was suddenly flying across the space between them, closing the distance. He landed silently on the balcony just behind him. 

Danny didn't move, didn't turn, didn't look. "Evening, Batman." He greeted, his voice even, though his hands were shaking. 

“Daniel Fenton. It’s time we finished our conversation.”

Chapter Text

Danny was sure he hadn't told Batman his full name. He wasn’t surprised the man had figured it out, he was supposed to be a great detective, after all. It wouldn't take a genius to go through the list of attendees for anyone named ‘Danny’ or ‘Daniel’ 

“Okay, what do you want to know?” he asked. What do you already know, was the unasked question. Batman’s first question took him off guard. Probably because it wasn't a question.

"You got hurt." He was looking down at Danny's arm. He had wrapped it tightly in an Ace bandage after his shower, the compression helped a little but it still throbbed with every heartbeat. 

"It's just a scrape. It'll heal." Faster than you know. He thought. Batman was staring at him, like he was waiting for something. "I've had worse." Nope, still staring. What did he want him to say? Danny chose to stay quiet

The older man sighed "You should have left when I told you to."

"That pipe would have taken Nightwing's head off if I hadn't been there."

"He would have seen that pipe coming from a mile away if you weren't there to distract him!"

"It would have been WORSE if I wasn't there!" Danny could feel his blood pressure rising. Not good. He closed his eyes, turning away from the bat. He couldn't afford to lose his temper in front of Batman. In the daylight his eyes flashing green could be mistaken for a trick of the light, but at night, in the darkness there was no disguising the glow. He gave himself a few seconds to calm down before he turned back to the man and continued.

"You haven't faced someone like Technus. The first time he showed up it took Phantom a week to figure out how to beat him. He's clever and slippery."

"I've faced clever and slippery before." 

Danny sighed and rubbed his eyes. He was too tired for this. His nerves were shot and his hands still shook from the adrenaline. "You could have taken down his mech, sure. He probably would have abandoned it eventually, but you wouldn't be able to contain him. He would have gotten away, or worse, gotten captured by the GIW."

"How is that worse?" 

Danny hesitated. It would be bad if the GIW got their hands on Technus. When they got their hands on Ember they tried to harness her hypnosis ability. They had almost managed it before he stormed their facility and freed her and destroyed their progress. He didn't want to see what the GIW would be able to do with weapons made by Technus. But how would he explain that to Batman? 

"Maybe not bad for you, but bad for me, for Phantom, for all ghosts." 

"You care about them." Another question in the form of a statement. And another thing he couldn't explain without giving too much away. He turned and leaned against the balcony railing, staring out across the city. He was starting to get a headache. Didn't he bring a water out here? Yeah. There it was on the railing. When did he put it there? He grabbed it and took a long sip before answering Batman's not-question.

"Ghosts are like people. Most of them just want to live their lives uh… afterlives. They stay in the ghost zone and they don't bother anyone. Ghosts like Technus, ones who want to take over, or cause trouble, are a vast minority."

"That's not what the leading research says." The man said. He came over and leaned on the railing next to Danny, mimicking his stance. 

Danny has a feeling he knows what research Batman is referring to. "Let me guess 'Ecto-ology and the Study of Obsession as it Relates to Ghostly Behavior.' by Doctors Madeline and Jack Fenton? I've read it." He said with just a little derision. He loves his parents, but their research left something to be desired. Batman was giving him a look. He had a hard enough time reading faces as it was, with the mask covering half his face it was nearly impossible. He figured that was the point of the mask in the first place. He idly wondered if Phantom should wear a mask. All his enemies knew who he was, and civilians believed Phantom was dead, so it's not like his identity was in danger, right? A mask would probably look stupid. Would it even stay if he transformed back? Maybe if he made it with ecto-cloth. Course, that project wasn't progressing as fast as he would hope. How hard was it to weave ectoplasm into cloth? Pretty hard, apparently. Ectoplasm took to metal like crazy, but it just wouldn't stick to fabric. Maybe if he added rubber to the weave. Ectoplasm sticks to rubber pretty well. Or.. what is his suit even made of? His parents had them specially made, so he wasn't sure. They felt like rubber. 

"Danny? Danny." He jolted from his thoughts when Batman shook his shoulder. He was distantly aware that he had been speaking to him. "You okay, kid?"

"Yeah, I'm okay, just tired. What did you say?" He tried to ground himself, he could feel himself swaying. Find something tangible. He squeezed the water bottle in his hand, listened to the plastic crinkle under the stress. Batman was studying him. He met the man's gaze and studied the bit of his face he could see. Just his mouth and chin was visible. Even his neck was covered in the cowl. Batman had a scar. Just a thin white line running down through his lip. Barely even noticeable. He was still giving him that indecipherable look. Was it even the same look? 

"You're crashing, kid. You should already be in bed." 

"Yeah. Probably." Danny agreed. Nothing sounded better than a warm bed right now. He had been up since three that morning, too excited and nervous about the fair to sleep. Was it really only that morning? Danny shook his head as the fog settled its way into his brain. No matter how many times he stayed up for 20 plus hours, it never gets easier to deal with the crash.

Batman sighed again, rubbing his temples. Maybe he had a headache, too. He should have brought him a water. His mom would be upset with him for not offering a guest a drink. "Go to bed. We can finish this conversation later." His tone left no room for argument, so Danny nodded, mumbled a quiet "night" and headed back into the room, making sure to lock the balcony door behind him. 

Tim Drake - The Batcave

Tim Drake never really knew how to quit. When he set his sights on figuring out a mystery he didn’t stop until it was solved. It’s how he became Robin in the first place. The Phantom of Amity Park seemed like a new mystery, and Tim wanted to solve it. 

Unfortunately he wasn’t able to get to work right away. There was the aftermath of the ghost attack to deal with. Then a debriefing with Bruce where he had to defend his decision to take advice from a stranger, (He had gone quiet when Tim pointed out that he had accepted the wrist ray without complaint.) Then Dick wanted to have dinner while they were both in town. 

When he finally got back to the Batcave it was late. Bruce had already left to patrol Gotham, and probably talk to the kid. He wasn't surprised when he saw someone, probably the Bat himself, had done some research on the guy. 

Daniel James Fenton, son of Jack and Madeline Fenton, deceased. Tim frowned. There didn't seem to be much on the kid, average student, if some attendance issues, then after his parents death he was taken in by the reclusive billionaire mayor, Vlad Masters. Tim pushed that information aside and focused on what really interested him at the moment: Phantom.

 There were, perhaps not surprisingly, very few official reports about Phantom, and the ones he could find were all over the place. The few newspaper articles he could find couldn’t agree on if the ghost was a menace or a hero. They seemed to flip-flop back and forth from week to week.

The blog posts were a different story. It seemed the ghost kid was a regular sight at Amity Park’s only public high school, Casper High. Most of the kids had a run in or two with him, and took to the internet to talk about it. So far, the blog posts were a much better source of information on the sightings of the ghost kid than the news was. With much better pictures, to boot. Tim examined the most recent photo of the ghost he could find. The ghost in question was floating, framed by the stars, looking pensively at something somewhere above the photo taker. White hair, a black suit with white gloves and boots, and a white insignia on his chest. He looked young, about his own age. 

The next photo seemed to be from a fight. Phantom was up against a robotic ghost with a green mohawk. The blog post detailed the fight between Phantom and a ghost called Skulker. Apparently they were long time rivals. Tim went back and back through the blog posts, saving any photo that showed the ghost’s face well. The more data points he had, the better the facial recognition software would work. The reports of Phantom disappeared after three years. The first photo of Phantom, an action shot, green eyes focused on something just behind the camera. Tim saved it, and pulled it up next to the most recent photo of the ghost and studied them. Something was different about the two, and it only took a moment to figure out what it was. He wasn’t sure what it meant, but one thing was sure. 

The Phantom was aging. 

When Bruce returned to the Batcave after his patrol he wasn't surprised to see Tim at the computer, typing away, Dick, still in full costume leaning over the back of the chair. 

"Hey, B. How did the talk go? You didn't go too hard on him, did you?" 

"No, I was not hard on him." He grumbled, removing his cowl and cape. "The kid was dead on his feet when I got there, he nearly passed out on me."

"How was his arm? I thought I heard a crack when he hit that pipe."

"He said it was scraped, but it was wrapped in bandages from wrist to elbow." He stood behind Tim, reading over his shoulder.

Dick frowned. "Why would he hide his injuries?" There was no good answer to that question.

"Did he give you the thermos?" Tim asked, changing the subject.

"No, I didn't get to that. I looked for it after he went to bed, but it wasn't in his backpack or the hotel safe." 

"Someone will have to go tomorrow when the room is empty and look more thoroughly for it." Tim said

"Or we can talk to him when he is more awake and ask for it, instead of stealing." Dick suggested. The look the other two gave him had him shaking his head. "Anyway, did you find anything else out?"

"Yeah, he knows a lot more about these ghosts than he lets on." Bruce said.

"His parents were the leading scientists in the field." Tim said. "It would make sense that he knew more than most." Tim felt like he was an expert by now, having read all the Fentons research papers. He could only imagine being raised in it.

"Except he doesn't respect his parents' research. Or he doesn't believe it's accurate."

The computer pinged. "Facial recognition complete. 100% match found." 

"That was fast." Tim said as he clicked the notification. "Oh... he may be closer to this than any of us realize." 

The three of them studied the two images side by side. Theories flying through their heads, each more ridiculous than the last. None of them could come up with a reasonable explanation as to why Daniel James Fenton and The Phantom of Amity Park would have the same face.

Chapter Text

Danny slept for 10 straight hours and woke up with a headache, a sore throat, and a backache. The good news was that the throbbing in his arm had downgraded to a dull ache. 

He stumbled his way into the bathroom and unwrapped the Ace bandage from around his forearm and pulled the gauze off the wound and frowned. Instead of clear undamaged skin there was a silvery white scar about four inches long where the wound had been. It's not that he couldn't scar, but that injury wasn't bad enough to scar. He's certainly had worse injuries that hadn't left a mark. He would have to ask Frostbite about it the next time he saw him. 

After dressing in another polo, this one with Saturn, complete with rings, stitched to the breast pocket, he headed out to the common room. Vlad wasn't there. That's odd. Danny crossed to the kitchen, intent on starting a pot of coffee when he stopped. Vlad had left him a note on the coffee machine.

"Daniel

I have a meeting in Metropolis today. You will need to find your own way to your appointment this afternoon. I trust we will not have any more incidents like yesterday.

Vlad"

Right. Danny had almost forgotten the interview Vlad had scheduled when he found out they were going to be in Gotham. He had scheduled business meetings for himself all week, using Danny's trip as an excuse. Danny sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. The dude just couldn't do something without getting something out of it. 

"That's business, Daniel. Never give something away for free." He would say. Danny could feel his headache getting worse. He would have to stop by a pharmacy and get something on his way to Wayne Enterprises. 

In the meantime he busied himself by making a pot of coffee and breakfast. Someone had stocked the fridge with real food, so he made himself a sausage, egg, and cheese scramble in the little kitchen. Soon enough the coffee was finished brewing and the eggs were done and there was a tap on the window.

What? 

He looked over and saw a familiar hero waving at him from the balcony "Nightwing?!" Danny asked incredulously. He went over and opened the sliding door. "What are you doing here?" 

"I came to check up on the kid who saved me from a concussion. I heard you got hurt." He said, looking Danny over critically. 

"No, I'm fine, see?" Danny said, showing Nightwing his arm. You couldn't really see the scar unless you were looking for it. 

"You don't say. Something smells good." He said, peering into the room.

"I made some breakfast. Do you want some?"

"I never say 'no' to free food." 

They crossed to the kitchen and Nightwing took a seat across from Danny's spot. "Are you cooking for an army?" He asked, eying the mound of eggs and sausage on the counter. 

"I always misjudge when I'm cooking eggs. Six didn't look like enough, so I added two more for good measure. It ended up being too much." He explained, pulling an extra plate, mug and silverware out for his guest. "I was going to save the leftovers for breakfast burritos tomorrow, but this is good too." Danny said, smiling, digging into the mountain of eggs.

"This is pretty good. Who taught you to cook?" Nightwing said, mouth full of eggs.

"My sister, Jazz, and I learned how to cook as a survival mechanism. My parents were great scientists, but not great cooks. They brought dinner to life more than once." Danny said easily, digging in.

The older man choked on his coffee. "Brought dinner to life? What? How?" Nightwing asked, looking at the teen dumbfounded. "Are you messing with me?"

Danny hid a smile behind his coffee cup. "No I promise. I know how it sounds, but it's true." 

"Okay." The man said slowly, taking a bite of his eggs. "So then how?"

Danny considered the question for a second. The information was public if you knew where to look… "How much do you know about ectoplasm?"

"I read your parents' research on it."

"Okay so you know the basics, then. That's good." Nightwing was giving him a curious look "My parents were Ectologists. Their life's work was studying the unique properties of ectoplasm. They used it for everything from powering the house to cooking dinner. We had no electricity bill, but we also had hotdogs that tried to attack us."

"You say that like it's normal." 

"Normal is relative." Danny said with a shrug. "Normal for you is jumping off rooftops. Normal for me was fighting my lunch."

"So," the older man was eating his eggs again. "Ectoplasm can bring things to life?" 

"Not exactly. Pure ectoplasm is like a living thing. Everything that makes a ghost is already in the ectoplasm, waiting for a push to bring it to sentience. So if you infuse a hot dog with it under the right conditions… Sometimes it bites back."

"Huh… I still don't fully understand, but I guess that makes some kind of sense." He shook his head and took a sip of his coffee. "So that… thing you trapped the ghost in. What is it? It looked like a thermos."

"It is a thermos. Stands for Totally Hermetically-sealed Ectoplasm Retainment, Monitoring, Or Storage device." He said with a grin

"You made that up." The older man accused with a matching grin. 

"I did. But that's still what it stands for."

"That's stupid." He said with a laugh.

"When you fill out the patent paperwork, you can name it whatever you like." Danny smiled. Nightwing was easy to talk to, like he was talking to an older brother. 

"So you invented it?" 

"No, my parents did. They were great inventors, but terrible at all the legal stuff. Jazz and I took care of most of the patent paperwork and stuff." 

"I do have to ask." Nightwing said, pouring himself a second cup of coffee. "What's going to happen to that ghost?" 

Danny finished the last of his coffee and poured a second cup. "He's trapped in the thermos until I get back home. Then I'll give him to Phantom to deal with." 

"What is Phantom going to do with him?"

"Dump his butt back into the ghost zone where he belongs." Danny said, not a little bitterly. 

Nightwing chuckled at that, prompting Danny to start laughing, too. 

"You keep mentioning the ghost zone." He asked, once they had stopped laughing. "Is that some kind of prison?"

"Kind of. It's where ghosts come from. It's a parallel dimension, on the flip side of our reality." Danny said, flipping his fork over in mid air to demonstrate. "It's hard to get from one side to the other without a stable portal, so once a ghost is there it's hard for them to get back." 

"So, sending him home is his punishment?" 

Danny thought about that for a long moment. He never considered putting ghosts back into the ghost zone a punishment, that's just where they belonged. It also kept them from interfering in the human world, which was a plus. "No, leaving him in the thermos for a week is punishment. The ghost zone is his home, it's where he belongs."

"So you don't think he should be held accountable for the property damage he caused?" 

Danny huffed a laugh at that. "According to the government, Technus is not a sentient being. You can't hold a non-sentient being responsible for property damage." 

"What do you mean? He seemed pretty sentient to me." 

"Ah. You haven't got there yet. Look up the 'Anti-Ecto Act' you'll see what I mean." Danny said, finishing the last of his eggs. "Are you finished?" he asked, holding out his hand for Nightwing's dishes. The older man nodded and handed over his plate and fork. Danny took both sets of dishes to the sink and quickly washed them and put them in the dish drainer before turning back to the hero sitting at the bar. 

"In any case the GIW is going to cover any damage costs from an ecto-damage fund, then enact a cover up declaring the attack was orchestrated by Russian hackers, or something." 

"You seem sure about that." He said, pressing a hand to his ear. Danny recognized the gesture as silencing a com, but he ignored it.

"They are very careful to not let ghost attacks be known to the public. If anything does catch attention outside of Amity Park they swoop in with a cover story." 

Nightwing's phone started ringing, but he ignored it, letting it ring through to voicemail. Danny raised an eye at that. "Shouldn't you get that?" 

"It's just Red Robin wondering where I am." He said, ignoring his phone ringing through a second time. "He's been sending me texts for the past 30 minutes." He said, tapping his mask. 

"Wait… your mask has text read out?" Nightwing nodded, smiling at Danny's excitement. "Woah. Is it just texts or is it visual modification too? Like, do you have night vision or infrared?" 

"Yes and yes." Suddenly his face soured and he put a hand to his com again. "Alright, don't get your cape in a twist, I'm coming." He said to whoever was on the other side " sorry, Danny, but I have to go. Thanks for breakfast."

" No problem, I have to get ready, anyway." Danny said as Nightwing left the way he came; out over the balcony.

Danny left the hotel and gave himself two hours to walk to the nearest pharmacy for Ibuprofen and then to Wayne Tower. It was only two miles away. He used to walk a longer distance to and from school everyday, so it really shouldn't have been a problem. 

He should have known walking alone through the most dangerous city in the United States had BAD IDEA stamped on it in bright red. Then again, nobody had ever accused him of having an abundance of common sense. 

So he really shouldn't have been too surprised when a couple of thugs grabbed him and shoved him into a brick wall before he had even made it to the pharmacy.

"Gimme your wallet punk, or I'll slit your throat." Danny didn't think it was an empty threat, the guy was tall and skinny, and already had a blade pressed against his neck. 

Danny's eyes flickered to the other assailant. He was tall, too, but built like a linebacker. 

"Okay, okay. It's in my back pocket. I'm gonna reach real slow and grab it." Danny reached around and pulled out his wallet, then tossed it across the alley. Both of the men were distracted for a second, watching the wallet sail through the air. It was all the time he needed. 

He grabbed the hand the knife was held in and wrenched it away from his neck, squeezing the man's wrist hard. He cried out and dropped the knife. Danny let go of his wrist and kicked the knife under a dumpster at the end of the alley.

"You little shit!" Skinny yelled, rearing back for a punch. Danny crouched at the last second and the man's fist collided with the brick wall with an audible crunch. The man screamed, but didn't have long to agonize about his broken hand, since Danny swept his legs out from under him with a well placed kick. Skinny landed flat on his back with the wind knocked out of him. 

"What the hell?" Linebacker had been distracted, he held Danny's wallet in his hand. It took him a few seconds to take stock of the scene. Danny slipped his arms out of his backpack straps and let it fall to the ground, silently thanking Tucker for convincing him to get a case for his project. Then he stood facing the bigger man, back once again up against the brick wall, and he waited. He could practically see the cogs turning in the big man's head. 

"What are you waiting for, big man? An invitation?" Danny said with a smirk. 

"Get...Him…" skinny gasped from the ground. 

With a roar Linebacker charged at him, Danny grinned. At the last second he leapt high, straight up into the air. Linebacker ploughed head first into the wall at full speed before collapsing on top of Skinny. Danny landed heavily on the big man's back, knocking the wind out of the smaller man again, before jumping off again, landing a few feet away, raising his arms in mock victory. 

"And he sticks the landing!" He said to no one. 

"You'll pay for this, brat!" Skinny still had enough breath in him to complain, that's good. He didn't do too much damage. 

"Send me a bill, we'll settle up. In the meantime." Danny plucked his wallet out of the big man's hand, checking his pulse at the same time. Steady, strong. Good. "I'll be taking this. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have somewhere to be." Danny stood up and was about to make his way to the end of the alley when he heard the unmistakable sound of a gun cocking. 

"You're not going anywhere except a hole, little man." Where did he come from? He hadn't seen anyone else in the alley, or heard anyone else approaching. "Put your hands where I can see them." Danny reached his hands up beside his head. The new guy grabbed his wallet. "No cash? Really kid?"

"Who carries cash anymore? No one I know. Friend of mine doesn't even carry a wallet." He was stalling. He needed the guy to get closer.

"Shut up, kid." He was still thumbing through his wallet. 

"It's true. He got a chip put in his hand. He can just scan his hand and pay for stuff."

"You got a death wish or something?" The man pressed the gun into the small of his back. 

"Or something." Danny twisted, grabbed the man's hand and pushed down and away. The man dropped the weapon in surprise and he kicked it to join the knife under the dumpster. The gunman raised his other arm to hit him. Danny easily caught that. Then he reared his head back and slammed it into the other man's nose. Blood started gushing down the man's face, and he fell to his knees. 

"Not that this hasn't been fun and all, but I really gotta get going." Danny said, picking up his wallet from where the gunman had dropped it. 

"GCPD! Put your hands on your head!"

"Are you kidding me?" 

Chapter Text

Danny had been on the wrong side of the law before. Heck, with the Anti-Ecto laws in place his whole existence was the wrong side of the law. All the more reason that getting arrested now would be bad. 

"Hands on your head, both of you! Do it now!" The officer sounded more scared than angry. Danny slowly put his hands on top of his head.

"I can explain, officer." He said calmly. 

"Turn around slowly and get on your knees." Danny turned on the spot and knelt down. The officer had his gun trained on him. He was young. His finger was already on the trigger. 

"These guys tried to rob me." Danny said, trying to keep his voice calm and even.

"Shut up. Let me see some ID." 

"Of course, it's in my wallet." Danny said, waiving his wallet. The officer took it from him and dug through it until he found the card. 

"And you?" Gun guy slowly reached into his back pocket and handed the officer his ID, too. "Don't move, either of you." The officer took both IDs back to his patrol car to run them. Danny let out a long sigh. 

"I tink you boke my dose." Gun guy said through the blood streaming down his face. Danny looked sideways at him, they were facing opposite directions and he could see the others face in profile.

"A of all, no I didn't, it's bruised at best. B of all, you pulled a gun on me! Was I supposed to let you shoot me?" 

There was a groan from behind Danny. Linebacker must have come to, but Danny couldn't see him from where he was. 

"What hit me?" He groaned. 

"Get off me, Paul, you ran yourself into the wall like an idiot. Now shut up before the cop comes back." 

"Shut up, Chad. I'm not an idiot." Paul grumbled. 

"Shut up both of you." Gun guy said. He seemed to be breathing better now that his nose wasn't streaming blood. "We aren't alone." He gave Danny a glare. 

"Shut up, Brett, you're not the boss of us." Chad grumbled. Danny rolled his eyes, these guys were probably the worst attempted muggers he had ever met.

Danny watched as a second patrol car pulled up in front of the first and two officers got out and spoke to the first officer. They were too far away for Danny to hear what they were saying. It wasn't long before the three officers approached them. A middle aged, but fit officer stood in front of Danny, holding out his ID. 

"Come with me, son. Let me get your statement." Danny stood and followed the officer, McNiece according to his badge, to the second patrol car. "Now, start at the beginning and tell me what happened." 

So Danny did, he told everything that had happened since he was pulled into the alley. Officer McNiece listened, made notes on his notepad, and asked clarifying questions. It took longer to tell than it did for the whole incident to happen. Then Officer McNiece went to talk to the first officer, Carr. Then Officer Carr came over and made Danny explain the whole ordeal again, asking the same clarifying questions. Then he had to do it all over again with the third officer, Jones. Danny was tired of cops by the end of it.

Finally the three thugs were put in the back of a patrol car, arrested for the assault, a weapons charge, and the ounce and a half of weed Chad had on him. Danny was answering some last minute questions with officer Jones when his radio crackled to life. 

"Jones, come in." The radio hissed.

"Go ahead for Jones." 

"You still got that Fenton kid with you?" Hiss crackle pop. It really was the worst radio.

"Yeah, he's here."

"Good, bring him in. That agency covering the convention center attack is here asking for him" The voice said. 

Danny felt his heart drop into his stomach. 

"Is it a request or a requirement? I really do have somewhere I need to be."

"I don't think you can get out of it, kid." Jones said with a bit of sympathy in his voice. "You can ride with me, those guys are going to the hospital first."

Jones let Danny ride in the front seat since he wasn't being arrested. He clutched his backpack to his chest the whole time, hoping his project hadn't been damaged. It was a short ride to the precinct, since it was only three streets over from where they were. Jones led Danny into the building and down a complex series of hallways before finally reaching the room the GIW were using to conduct their investigation. 

"Is that him?" A middle aged man in a brown trench coat asked. 

"Yeah, commissioner, this is Fenton." 

"Alright, Jones. You're free to go. I'll take it from here." Jones nodded once, Gave Danny's shoulder a sympathetic squeeze and headed back down the hallway. 

"Sir?" Danny started "I'm not sure why I'm here." He nervously adjusted the straps on his backpack.

"Call me Gordon. Everyone else does. To be honest I'm not sure why these guys want to talk to you, either. There wasn't any video of the incident, and the only witness said no one else was there. But these guys saw your name and insisted you must have been involved." 

Danny assumed the witness was Batman. He wasn't sure why he would have lied and kept his name out of it, but he was grateful for it anyway. Danny hmmmed and checked his phone for the time. 1:46 pm. If this didn't take long and he hurried he could still make it in time. 

"Makes me think." Gordon continued. "Have you met these GIW guys before?" 

Danny hmmmed again, rubbing the back of his neck. "Yeah. I've had a few run-ins with them." 

As if to prove his point the door to the interrogation room opened up and a tall man in a white suit stepped out, still talking to a tall broad shouldered man.

"Thank you for coming down today, Mr. Wayne. If you can think of anything else that might help our investigation, give us a call." The man in white said, handing a card to Mr. Wayne.

"Of course, Operative K. I, and any of Wayne Enterprises employees would be glad to help in your investigation into this cyber attack." He said with a smile. Danny thought it looked a little fake, but not as condescending as Vlad's fake smile.

The Operative K's eyes fell on Danny. 

"Daniel Fenton. Why am I not surprised?"

"Well, Kevin, it's probably because you asked for me to be here." Danny said with the air of someone who was more confident than Danny felt at the moment. He had avoided talking to the GIW pretty successfully. If they thought he was involved in any ghost related incidents he made sure he was far away from them. Or he would show up as Phantom and lead them on a merry chase until they forgot about Fenton.

That wasn't going to work today. He was going to have to talk to them. They wouldn't believe a ghost showed up and the son of ghost hunters wasn't involved, especially since he had been doing more ghost hunting as Fenton now. 

"That's Operative K to you." 

"I am never going to call you that, Kevin. Where is Oscar today? Are you two still together?" Operative K didn't say anything, but his cheeks dusted a light rose. Danny saw Mr. Wayne hide a smile with a cough.

"Enough, Fenton. I have some questions about the incident yesterday, and I expect your cooperation." The agent said with a glare. 

"See. I would, but I don't think I should without my guardian present."

"What?" Kevin said, a vein standing out on his temple.

"I'm a minor, so I have a right to have a guardian present for any questioning." Danny said. If he could pull this off then they would have to deal with Vlad, and for all his faults, Vlad has no patience for the GIW. 

"Then call your guardian down here." 

"I would. I really would, except he's not in town today. He had business in Metropolis, so he won't be back until late tonight. You can call his assistant and he can set you up with an appointment. Do you have Mr. Weston's number?" 

"Yes, I have Weston's number. Why don't you give me Masters' number so I can call him personally?"

"Sorry, I'm not authorized to give that out." Danny said with a smirk. Mr. Wayne was coughing again. 

"Sorry to interrupt this...whatever this is" Mr. Wayne interjected "but I could stand in as a guardian for Mr. Fenton if you really need to speak to him today."

Danny paused. The GIW wouldn't be able to ask him about ghosts if Mr. Wayne was there. "I'm okay with that. What about you, Kevin?" 

Kevin looked like he had been force fed a lemon. 

"Or" Danny countered. "You could set up an appointment with Vlad. He could probably get you in sometime next month." 

"Fine." Kevin growled. "That would be alright." Kevin led the way into the interrogation room. There were only two chairs so the Commissioner pulled a chair from another room for Mr. Wayne. The two of them sat on one side of the table and Kevin sat on the other. 

Kevin sat a recording device on the table. "This conversation is going to be recorded." He began "Please state your full name for the record." 

"Daniel James Fenton, with Mr. Wayne acting as guardian and advocate." Mr. Wayne was giving Danny a curious look.

"Mr. Wayne, if you will state your full name for the record."

"Bruce Wayne. If I may? This seems much more formal than my interview. Is there a reason you are treating this child like he has committed a crime?" 

Danny blinked a few times. This was a pretty standard interview process with the GIW, he thought. Was this not how interviews were supposed to go? And also, Mr. Wayne was sticking up for him? That was unexpected. 

"We have reason to believe Mr. Fenton was involved in the attack yesterday." 

"What evidence do you have that connects Mr. Fenton to the attack?" Danny tried hard to hide his smile. Having an adult on his side for once was nice.

"We aren't at liberty to divulge that information at this time." Kevin said. In Danny's experience that usually means they don't have anything yet. This was a good sign that he would get out of this quickly.

"But you do have evidence, right?" Danny said. "Because last time you accused me of a crime with no evidence your boss was not happy."

Kevin was sucking on the lemon again. "We are not accusing you of anything at this time, Mr. Fenton." So, no evidence, then. That's good. "Now, if you would, tell me in your own words what happened yesterday at the convention center."

"Okay. So I was eating lunch in the food court when I heard people screaming. Then everyone got up and started evacuating, so I was running with them. People started pushing and shoving, and I didn't want to get trampled so I broke away and hid in a closet. When the crowd died down I snuck out a side exit and ended up in the parking lot. Then I went to the car and waited." It wasn't a lie, really, he just told Vlad's story as if it were his own.

"So you didn't see who or what attacked the convention center?" Kevin said with a disbelieving stare.

"Nope." Danny said with a pop. 

"I feel I must remind you, Mr. Fenton, that lying to me about this matter is a federal offense." Kevin said, straightening up in his seat. 

"Noted. Do you have any more questions or can I go?" Danny was already pulling his backpack off the back of his chair.

"Just one. Can I search your backpack?" 

"Do you have a warrant to search my backpack?" He asked, clutching his bag closer. He had pared down his weapons for his trip today, but being caught with even one would be enough to get him in serious trouble.

"If you don't have anything to hide it shouldn't matter if I search your backpack." Kevin already had his hand out for his bag.

"He said 'no' Kevin. You aren't searching Mr. Fenton's bag." Bruce stood up suddenly "Are there any more questions relevant to the case?" 

"No. Not at this time. Mr. Fenton is free to go." Kevin said, standing up to match height with Bruce.

Danny stood up, too, and followed Bruce out the room. The commissioner was gone, and Danny and Bruce stood alone in the hallway. 

"Thank you for that, Mr. Wayne."

"Call me Bruce, and think nothing of it. Do you think you can find your way out of the building?" He asked, heading down the hallway.

"No, I don't think so, it's like a maze in here." Danny said, following close behind.

"It was built that way on purpose to keep prisoners from escaping. Or so the legend goes." Bruce said with a smile. "So you are in the Technology Fair? Which invention is yours?"

"Mine is the force field belt." Danny said. 

"Ah. Lucius was particularly interested in that one. He seemed to think it was made out of a microwave, though." 

Danny rubbed the back of his neck "He isn't wrong. I modified the magnetron from an old microwave to emit the force field." 

"And the batteries and casing?"

"I used lithium ion batteries from some cell phones. I used the circuit boards from the cell phones, too. The casing was tricky, but I finally settled on a titanium alloy from the fuselage of a 747" Bruce had stopped walking, Danny turned to look at him.

"Are you telling me" He started "that your invention is made from an old microwave, four cell phones, and scrap metal?"

Danny smiled wide. "It's eco-friendly. All recycled materials." Bruce shook his head and continued walking.

"When is your interview?" He asked, checking his watch. Danny gave him a questioning look. "You made a force field out of junk, of course you earned an interview."

"Three. I hope I can still make it." Danny said. The interrogation had taken much longer than he would have liked. He hoped he didn't have to run

"It's fifteen after two now. Were you going to walk?" They had made it to an exit door, but Danny realized it wasn't the door he came in. It led to an underground parking garage. 

"That was the plan, yeah. I might have to run if I want to make it in time." 

"Hmm.. then you will be sweaty and disheveled when it's time for your interview. It's not the best look."

"No, it's not ideal." Danny was too busy looking for an exit sign to notice Bruce was leading over to where a black BMW i8 was parked until the car roared to life at the press of a button on the key fob. Danny gave an appreciative whistle "Is that yours?"

"Yeah. Hop in, I'll drive you."

"You don't have to do that, Bruce. I've already taken up too much of your Saturday." Danny said, hands in the air.

"Nonsense. I'm going to Wayne Tower, anyway. There is no sense making you walk." He said with a smile.

Danny checked the time on his phone. There was no way he was making it on time if he went on foot. And Bruce was going there anyway, right?

"Can I drive?"

"Absolutely not." 

Chapter Text

Nightwing - Several Hours Ago

Dick grappled to a semi-private rooftop a few buildings away from the hotel before calling Tim on his com.

"Alright, Red, what is so important that you had to interrupt my breakfast."

"Please, we both know it was your second breakfast. I wanted to let you know that Red Hood was spotted in town last night."

"Is that all?"

"No. B wants you to tail the kid today. Make sure he doesn't get into trouble." 

"Does he realize that I was going to do that anyway?"

"Probably." Tim said 

"None of this sounds important enough to interrupt my breakfast." Dick said with a sigh. "Danny and I were having a very nice conversation."

"I know, I was listening." He said "and it gave me an idea, so I have to go." Then the line went dead.

Dick sighed and grappled back to the hotel, waiting on the roof of the building across the street for the boy in question to appear. He didn't have to wait long, after only a few minutes Danny appeared, the purple backpack slung on his back making him easy to track. 

He ran into his first problem a few blocks away from the hotel. Danny was waiting at a crosswalk when a man with a red helmet squatted down beside Dick, mirroring his pose.

"Hey, Hood. What are you doing in town?"

"Same as you, I came to check out the tech at the fair. So, who are we tailing?" ,

"The black haired kid with the purple backpack." The crosswalk light turned and Danny started walking again, Nightwing and Red Hood jumping to the next building to keep up.

"Is he trouble or is he in trouble?" 

"Probably a bit of both. He was involved in the incident yesterday."

"Yeah, I read the report on that. Ghosts, or something?" Jason said

"Yeah, He's a good kid, but he definitely knows more than he is telling." Dick said. He hadn't seen Jason in a while. He would never tell him but he missed his brother. 

"Your kid is about to get jumped."

"What?" Dick looked and sure enough two guys were peeking out of an alley, pointing at Danny. "We should probably do something about that."

"Probably." They moved to get a better view of the alley the thugs were in. 

"Of course, we do need to get a gauge of his abilities." Dick felt a bit guilty about letting the kid who made him breakfast get jumped, but he was really curious about how the guy would handle himself in a fight. 

So they waited. Danny was grabbed and pushed into the wall, knife at his throat. Dick could see the kids face, and was surprised that he didn't look scared, more resigned. "Smart to toss the wallet." Hood said, Dick hmmed his agreement. Danny took down the first attacker in just a few seconds. 

"He's quick." Dick said, watching Danny face the second, much larger opponent. The bigger man rushed him, Danny leaped straight up into the air and landed square on his back. "Woah. How high was that?" 

"At least five feet, maybe more." Hood said. "I could do it, so could you."

"Exactly. Most people can't do that." Dick said 

"That guy has a gun. I bet he's with the muggers." Hood said, nodding to a guy approaching the alley. Sure enough, he tried to attack Danny, and ended up much like the two already incapacitated. "Man, who called the cops?" Hood complained as a squad car pulled up to the alley. 

"Nightwing" Tim called over the com. "I need you back at the cave. I found something you are going to want to see."

"Want to come back to the cave? Red found something." He asked the younger man, who shrugged and they both set off.

Danny Fenton - Currently

There was something about Gotham that Danny couldn't quite put his finger on. He realized as they drove that this was the first time he was really seeing the city in the daylight. The buildings were tall and imposing, with an air of warning. 

"Have you ever been to Gotham before?" Bruce asked as they pulled to a stop at a traffic light.

"Once when I was seven. I don't really remember the city, though." Danny said. He watched the pedestrians in the crosswalk hurry across the street. 

"What do you remember?" The light changed.

"The science museum. There was an exhibit on space exploration that I must have spent three hours in. And I remember a planetarium. I would have watched every show if Jazz hadn't dragged me away." Danny smiled at the memory. 

"That would be the Gotham Museum of Space and Aeronautics. I think they have expanded the exhibit recently."

"Really? I'll have to check it out before I head back home." He said, already planning the trip.

"So you like space, then?"

"Yeah, I wanted to be an astronaut." He said.

"You don't want to be one anymore?"

"I do, but…" Danny gripped his left arm, the lichtenberg scars from the portal accident had faded to silvery white, nearly invisible against the pale skin on the inside of his arm. "I wouldn't pass the physical." Danny said with a forced smile. 

Bruce was giving him a quizzical look, but if he had questions he kept them to himself. "Where did you get the idea to use a microwave to make a force field?"

Danny was grateful for the change in subject. "I guess I learned from my parents. They were inventors and used microwaves and toasters more than once as a base for a prototype." Danny glanced at Bruce, he was watching the road, but had a look on his face that Danny couldn't quite place. His mouth was turned down in a thoughtful frown, a thin white scar ran through his upper lip, a bit like… Danny shook his head before he could even finish the ridiculous thought.

They fell into an easy silence for the rest of the drive. Bruce pulled into the CEO space of the employee parking lot and led Danny into the building.

"Oh, Mr. Wayne." The woman at the front desk said "I didn't expect to see you today."

"Hello, Janet. I wanted to see how the interviews were going." He said with an easy smile.

Janet looked at Danny curiously, but responded to Bruce "They are going well, the board is interviewing Miss. Tomago now, and we are waiting on Mr. Fenton to check in."

"That's me. I'm Fenton." Danny said quickly. 

"I'm sorry. I didn't realize you knew Mr. Wayne." Janet said with a polite smile.

"I don't, really. We just met today." Danny said quickly.

"Okay." Janet said with a quick look at Bruce, who was busy with his phone and didn't notice. "Well, I've got you checked in, so if you want to head down the left hand hallway and have a seat outside of conference room B, the board will be with you shortly." 

"Thanks, Janet." Danny said, and with a quick wave to Bruce, who had started talking on the phone to someone, he headed down the hallway and took a seat and waited.

The Batcave - Currently

"So what did you find, Tim?" Dick asked as he approached the computer. Tim looked like he hadn't moved from the spot since the night before.

"So after Danny mentioned the coverups this morning I set up a VPN and an IP address with the location set to inside Amity Park and… well, look" he said gesturing to the screens. There was so much more information than the few blog posts pertaining to just Phantom. Pictures of all different beings from amorphous green blobs to enormous dragons, videos of ghost fights, page after page of scientific research, so much information that it would take days to sift through it all. 

"Someone is making sure no one outside of Amity Park knows about ghosts," Tim said. "And there is an app."

"An app for what?" Dick asked, studying a picture of a ghost with a flaming blue ponytail that looked somewhat familiar.

"For tracking and reporting ghost attacks." Tim said, tossing a spare phone to Dick. The app was already pulled up, showing a report from about ten minutes before "'A pod of ectopuses have been spotted in the park near the lake.'' He read aloud "'Ectopuses are normally docile and will not attack unless provoked. Avoid the area until further notice.'" 

"What is an ectopus?" Jason asked, pulling his helmet off. 

"It's a type of ectoplasmic ghost that looks like an octopus." Tim said, pulling up a picture. 

The phone Dick was holding chimed. "Someone is live streaming." Tim clicked a few buttons and the video was pulled up on the screen. 

The shaky video showed four green octopus shaped ghosts floating beside a large lake. A figure in a red battle suit flew into view on a hoverboard that matched her suit. 

"Alright, guys." The figure said "You know you're supposed to be on the other side of the lake." The figure pointed across the water. "You have ten seconds to clear out before I send you back to the zone." 

The ectopuses glanced at each other before attacking the figure. Unfortunately for them this was expected. Four blasts from a familiar looking wrist ray stunned the attackers, and the red clad hunter sucked them into a thermos before flying off. The live stream ended. 

"Is this the trouble you think that kid is in?" Jason asked, turning to Dick. "You think he's involved with those ghosts?"

"No, we know he's involved with the ghosts." Tim said "it's only a question of how involved he is." 

"What do you mean?" 

"There are two main ghost hunters in Amity Park." Dick said "Red Huntress, who you just saw in action, and Phantom." 

"Huntress, by all accounts, is a human with a high tech suit." Tim continued, pulling up a photo of Phantom on the monitor. "But Phantom is a ghost." 

"A ghost who happens to share a face with the kid I was tailing this morning." Dick said. "And we don't know why." 

"I still hold that Fenton and Phantom are the same person." Tim said. 

"But Danny is alive, Tim. I confirmed it myself this morning. He has a pulse, gives off heat, breathes and eats, everything ghosts don't do." Dick said. "You can't be dead and alive at the same time." 

"Did you see his arm? It was completely healed overnight. Not even a bruise was left. That's not normal, Dick." Tim countered. "Plus, I saw the reading you took this morning. His heart rate and breathing are too slow, and he's cold."

"So he's a meta with a healing factor, that doesn't mean he's a ghost." Dick said, rolling his eyes. "And his vitals are still in the normal range, just on the low side." Dick countered. 

"Normal for ninety year old people on heart medication, Dick, not healthy seventeen year olds." 

While Tim and Dick argued Jason took over the computer and pulled up the video of the fight from the night before. He watched Nightwing's video first. Something was off about this kid, but he couldn't put his finger on it. He watched Red Robin's video next, ninety percent of it was watching him code tucked away in the rafters. 

He moved on to Batman's video. The man seemed to have been watching Danny closely throughout the fight. Something about the kid bothered him. Jason slowed down the video, then clicked through one part frame by frame. Then he saw it. The briefest flash of green right as a pipe impacted his forearm. 

"Hey." Jason said. Tim and Dick continued their argument.

"All I'm saying is we have seen people come back from the dead before, Dick." 

"Hey!" He said louder.

"Yeah, come back from the dead, not stuck in some half dead, half alive limbo!"

"Hey, birdbrains!" Jason yelled. They both turned to him as if they had forgotten he was there. "I found something." He replayed the video.

"Someone should call Bruce."

Chapter Text

Bruce Wayne - Wayne Tower - Currently

Bruce's phone started vibrating in his pocket while he was talking to Janet, so he discreetly stepped away while she was checking Danny in to answer it. 

"Hello?" 

"Hey, B." Tim said "Are you with Danny?" 

"Not anymore," he said as he waved Danny off and headed down a different hallway for some privacy. "Is something wrong?"

"No… well maybe. Jason found something in the video from the fight yesterday."

"Well." Bruce prompted when Tim didn't continue. 

"During the fight there was a moment when his eyes flashed green." Jason supplied

 "Also, his arm was healed this morning." Dick added

"I noticed his arm, but I haven't seen his eyes change color." That was something to watch for. Danny being a metahuman might complicate things, he had to figure out the extent of his powers, and he had an idea of where to start. "Have you gotten anywhere on the GIW systems?"

"No, their encryption is… complicated. I haven't seen anything like it before." Tim said, frustrated. "I'll keep working at it."

"Do that." Bruce said. "Is there anything else I should know now?" 

"Nothing pressing." Tim said

"Alright. Let me know if you find anything else." 

"Will do, B." Dick said right before the call disconnected. 

Bruce pinched the bridge of his nose. He wasn't entirely surprised that Danny was a meta. He had first suspected it when he had deflected the sixty pound pipe like it was nothing. Getting hit with that much force should have broken his arm. 

No, what was the most surprising, and worrying, was that he felt the need to hide it. 

Danny was an expert at talking around the truth, and a very convincing liar. A skill born, no doubt, from years of practice. But why?

The involvement of the Ghost Investigation Ward was worrying. Were they interested in Danny for his powers, or his involvement in ghosts? Or both? 

Was there any credibility to Tim’s theory that Danny was Phantom? Or was he possessed by Phantom? Or were they two separate people who just so happened to look alike? 

The more he learns about the kid, the more questions he comes up with. Unfortunately he wasn't going to be giving a straight answer anytime soon, so Bruce was going to have to keep digging. 

Bruce opened a back door to conference room B. Two board members were discussing the candidate who had just finished their presentation. He took a seat next to his friend Lucius Fox. 

"Bruce." He greeted simply.

"Lucius." Bruce returned, settling in.

He didn't have to wait long for them to call Danny in for his interview. 

Danny Fenton - Currently

Danny sat in the uncomfortable seat for what felt like hours, but was probably only a few minutes. He bounced his leg in an effort to dispel the nervous energy that was buzzing like an electric current beneath his skin. It wasn't helping his nerves at all. 

Thankfully he didn't have to wait too long. A middle aged woman poked her head out of the door.

"Daniel, we are ready for you." 

Danny stood up too quickly, bumping the chair behind him into the wall with a loud bang. He winced at the noise, but followed the man into the room. 

Danny faced the two members of the board, the woman who showed him into the room, and the engineer from yesterday, Mr. Fox. he took the seat he was offered. He could feel his heart start hammering in his chest, and the band on his wrist gave a warning vibration. He took a deep breath, willing his heart to calm. He took a quick look around the room and recognized some of the engineers from the day before, including Mr. Fox, and right next to him was Bruce. The familiar face set his nerves at ease. 

"Daniel Fenton," the woman began. "Thank you for joining us today. I am Nancy Meyer, I am in charge of admissions at Gotham University of Engineering. I will be conducting your interview today." She said, holding out her hand.

"It's nice to meet you, Mrs. Meyer, please call me Danny." He said, giving her a firm handshake and a small smile.

"Of course, Danny. Mr. Lucius Fox is the CFO of Wayne Enterprises, and in charge of the scholarship committee." She said, gesturing to the man sitting beside Bruce. Danny gave the man a friendly smile and a nod, which he returned. "And Mr. Wayne is here to observe." She finished. "So, would you like to start with the demonstration, or the interview?" 

"Let's start with the demonstration." He said. He was always more comfortable doing than talking. He pulled the case from his backpack and set it on the table. "I am going to need a volunteer." 

"You didn't bring Annie today?" Mr. Fox said, a small smile on his lips. "Is she okay?" 

Danny grinned. "Yes, Annie is okay, but she can't help me with this." He opened the case and pulled the belt out. It didn't look damaged at all, so he put it on. "I am going to be doing a live demonstration, so I need a volunteer to try and punch me." 

A ripple of unease flowed through the room. No one, it seemed, wanted to be the one to punch a child. "Bruce, why don't you do it?" Fox suggested, a smile tugging at his lips. Bruce gave Fox a look that Danny couldn't quite decode.

"I don't know if that's a good idea, Lucius." He said, his voice carefully controlled.

"I think it's the best idea." Nancy said "Since you aren't on a deciding committee." 

Bruce still looked somewhat uncomfortable. "Come on, Mr. Wayne, have you never wanted to punch a teenager in the face?" Danny said with a smirk. That seemed to get his attention, he turned to Danny with an unreadable expression "I'm offering you a one time deal to wail on a smart mouthed teenager as hard as you like with no repercussions." 

"As hard as I like?" He repeated with a smirk, like he was laughing at some inside joke. Standing he removed his suit jacket, draping it over the back of his chair and loosened his tie as he came around the table.

"Yep," Danny felt a familiar chill down his spine. He thought back to a lesson he had with Frostbite a few months before when his ghost sense had gone haywire and had gone off seemingly at random.

'Your ghost sense is expanding, Great One.' the yeti had told him 'Soon you will be able to sense those humans with a strong presence. Be wary of them, many of them are dangerous.'

Danny's sense was telling him that the man in front of him rolling up the sleeves of his dress shirt was dangerous. Danny swallowed against the apprehension building in his chest. Bruce wasn't going to hurt him. He believed in his tech enough to let Skulker wail on him, Bruce shouldn't be a problem. Danny twisted the knob on the belt, watching the blue field engulf his body, the familiar tingle setting his nerves at ease. 

"Ready when you are." more out of habit than necessity Danny dropped into a loose ready position, feet staggered, arms held in front of his chest, hands open. He met the other man's gaze. There was something in his look for a second, a calculating questioning look that was gone too fast for Danny to name it. 

"Are you sure about this, lad?" He asked, "I don't want to hurt you if it fails." 

"It won't fail." Danny said with quiet confidence. 

"If you say so." He conceded. Then drew back and punched. Danny raised his hands instinctively to block, and the force field absorbed the blow before it could reach him, tingling as it rippled across his forearms. 

The teen lowered his arms and looked at Bruce. He was a little surprised by how weak the punch was. Bruce was a big guy, and definitely had the build of someone who worked out. "Is that all you got?" He asked before he could stop himself. 

Bruce tilted his head questioningly. "Come on," Danny taunted, "hit me as hard as you can." He smirked at that secret joke again before rearing back. His fist connected with the force field with an electric crack, flaring bright before fading back into invisibility.  

"Wow" Danny breathed. That was a hard hit. Harder than Danny could hit in his human form for sure. 

"Well." Nancy said. Danny jumped, he had almost forgotten there were other people in the room. "I think I have seen enough for a practical demonstration, how about you, Mr. Fox?" 

"I'm not sure, I think I need to see one more demonstration." The man said with a smirk.

"Lucius." Bruce said, a bit of warning in his voice.

"Alright, alright. I've seen enough, as well. Go ahead and have a seat, I have some questions." 

Danny powered down the belt and took it off, placing it on the table. Bruce re-took his seat beside Fox, rolling down his sleeves and fixing his tie. 

"Can I have a closer look at that?" Fox said, gesturing to the belt. Danny handed it over and watched as Fox looked it over with an experienced eye. "How long did it take you to build this?"

"It took about six months to get the force field to work and another four to get it to fit into a belt." Danny said.He barely remembered those months, he was in a dark place and had thrown himself into his work, only coming out of it when Jazz had dragged him bodily from his room and made him talk about it.

"Where did you get the idea to make a force field?" Nancy asked.

That was a hard question to answer. In truth he got the idea from his parents ghost shield, but since most people didn't believe ghosts exist he couldn't tell them that. So, he decided to tell a half truth

"My parents," he began, "died in a car crash two years ago. I wanted to make something that could have taken the force of the impact." Danny cleared his throat, annoyed at the lump he felt growing there. "This model is still a bit too weak to take the impact of a car, but the concept is the same."

"What would it take to make it strong enough to withstand a car crash?" Mr. Fox asked.

"I'd have to design a magnetron specifically for the device, and it would need a stronger power source." Danny explained. He wanted to go on about his plans for the force field but held off, afraid of getting off track.

"This is quite impressive, Danny." Nancy said, eyeing the welding on the belt. "I did have some questions about your application, though." 

Danny felt his heart drop into his stomach. He knew what questions she had. He really didn't want to explain it. "Okay." He said, trying to keep his voice level.

"Your transcripts from your home school program were impressive. I see you were able to take a lot of high level math and science classes, which is good. However, the transcripts from Casper High were not as impressive." She said with a frown. "And I'm concerned about some of the notes on here about attendance issues. Can you explain a bit about that?"

He nodded. He hated telling this story. "The summer before my freshman year I was in an accident." Danny started "It left me with some permanent nerve damage in my left arm, and some lingering health problems. I missed a lot of class time because of it, and my grades suffered." He rubbed his left palm, trying to rid it of the tingling sensation he gets every time he talks about the accident. "But I'm in physical therapy now, and doing much better, so attendance won't be a problem." He said with a smile that may have been a little strained. He supposed martial arts training was the same as physical therapy. 

"And the ban on handling chemistry equipment?" 

"The nerve damage made it hard for me to hold onto things. I would drop beakers and flasks in chemistry. After the third chemical spill in the first month Mr. Kirk officially banned me from touching any of his equipment." He said with a ghost of a smile. "I don't have that problem anymore." 

"That's good to hear. I don't think I have any more questions. How about you, Mr. Fox?" Nancy stated.

"I do. Danny, if money were no object how would you improve your force field?" Mr. Fox asked

He paused and thought about it. "Besides making it car sized, I'd also like to make a better personal force field with a heart rate monitor. Right now the belt can't account for all attacks, but with a heart rate monitor it could account for stress levels and adjust strength as needed." 

"Why wouldn't the force field be at full strength all the time?" Mr. Fox asked

"It drains the batteries way too fast to run at full strength for more than a few minutes." he explained “you go from a twelve hour battery life to a one hour battery life.” 

“That does make sense. I don’t believe I have any more questions.” Mr. Fox said, nodding.

“Alright, well if that's it, Danny do you have any questions for us?” 

“I do have a question for Mr. Fox.” at his nod Danny continued “how would you improve the force field?” 

“Well, I’d start with machined parts instead of scavenged. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great that you are so resourceful, but specially made parts will always work better than modified.” Danny nodded, he had figured that would be the case. “And I’d use a fiberglass coated aluminum for the casing, so it would be lighter and not act so much as a heat sink.” 

Danny blinked because that… that is a great idea. As it is the belt weighs about ten pounds and the metal heats up to uncomfortable levels within twenty minutes of being turned on. Mr. Fox figured that out after looking it over once. He wished he could have Mr. Fox look over some of his other designs. “I’m going to have to look into that.” Aluminum was easy to come by, and fiberglass… he could get his hands on that easy enough. 

“So, if there are no more questions, Danny, you are free to go. We will be in touch soon with our decision.” Nancy said with a hint of finality. Danny stood, thanked them for their time and gathered the belt from Bruce, who was inspecting the back of it.

He left the room feeling light. He did everything he could, and now whatever was going to happen would happen.

Chapter Text

Danny’s good mood lasted until he reached the empty reception desk.

It was raining. 

Not just raining, but pouring buckets of water out over the city. He could see lightning tracing across the sky outside the plate glass window. The rumble of thunder sent his heart thudding in his chest. He swallowed against the panic threatening to claw up his throat and decided to try and wait out the storm.

Out of habit he checked his phone. Vlad had texted him.

Call me when you get this.

Danny sighed and clicked the call button. it rang twice before the man answered. 

“So nice of you to call me back Daniel.” Vlad said in his usual condescending manner. Normally this wouldn’t bother him, but the rolling thunder was setting his nerves on edge.

“I just got out of my interview, Vlad," he spat, "What do you want?” Lighting struck close by and Danny tried hard not to jump.

“I wanted to inform you that I would not be back until late tomorrow or early Monday. I acquired tickets to the Meteors vs. Packers game tomorrow.” The man said. His voice sounded far away, Danny suspected he was on speaker while the man drove.

Thunder shook the windows and Danny let out a small involuntary squeak of surprise. “You could have sent that in a text.” his voice sounded small, he hated that.

“Is that thunder?” Vlad asked. 

“No, I'm taking Cujo for a walk.” Danny said, rolling his eyes. He hated appearing weak in front of his ex-nemesis. The Vlad of the past would use every opportunity to belittle him for being afraid of thunderstorms. Danny couldn’t put it past the Vlad of the present to do the same. Even though Vlad surely knew how thunderstorms affected him, Danny wasn’t going to confirm that information for him. 

“How are you going to get back to the hotel?” Vlad asked. 

Danny scowled. What business did Vlad have asking him that? “I’m going to walk.” it’s not like he had many choices.

“In the rain?” he sounded disgusted.

“If I have to.” Danny replied stubbornly.

“Why don’t you call a cab?” he suggested. He sounded much closer to the phone now, maybe he had parked?

“I’m not paying a cab to drive me two miles. I walk two miles to Sam’s house every day. I used to walk three miles to school every day. It's just a little rain, I’ll be fine.” Lightning struck again, even closer than before, followed almost immediately by a crack of thunder. Danny shut his eyes, forcing his breathing to slow and deepen. ‘Hyperventilating now won’t solve any problems’ he told himself. 

Vlad sighed on the other end of the line “You are the most stubborn boy I have ever met, Daniel. If you get sick from walking in the rain I don’t want to hear a word about it.” 

“Don’t worry, Vlad, you won’t. Enjoy your game tomorrow.” and with that Danny hung up, not caring if it made Vlad angry. He couldn’t stave off a panic attack and coddle Vlad’s feelings at the same time.

Danny sat on a bench in the lobby and pulled out a bottle of water and a protein bar from his backpack. He realized he hadn’t eaten since that morning and it was catching up to him. The protein bar was gone in less than a minute and the water followed soon after, and he was still hungry. He tried distracting himself from the storm by drawing up plans and blueprints but every lightning strike made his hand shake and his mind go blank so he settled for doodling, instead. 

“Waiting for your ride?” Danny nearly jumped out of his skin, slamming his notebook closed. He had been doodling a new logo for Team Phantom when Bruce snuck up on him. 

“N-no, I was waiting for the rain to let up so I could walk.” Danny took a deep breath to try and get his heart rate back under control. 

“You’re going to be waiting a while. It’s supposed to rain all night.” he said with a small smile. “I could drive you back to your hotel, if you want."

“Wouldn’t that look like favoritism?” Danny asked. He really didn’t want to walk all the way back to the hotel in the rain, but he also didn’t want anyone to get in trouble.

“No, I don’t make any decisions for the scholarship, they just let me sit in on some of the interviews because my name is on the building.” he answered, sitting beside Danny on the bench, watching the rain fall. “I love watching thunderstorms.” he said with a sigh “My father and I used to sit on the veranda and watch the storms roll in over the bay.” 

“I never really liked storms. When I was a kid I would beg my sister to let me sleep in her room whenever there was a storm." He said. "She'd explain how the weather works, and what causes the lighting and thunder. She always said you could replace fear with knowledge."

"Did it work?" Bruce asked

"For a bit. Until my parents died." Danny said flatly.

"I'm sorry. Do you want to talk about it?" Bruce offered. 

Danny knew he was only asking to be polite. He didn't really want to hear about his sob story. He opened his mouth to tell Bruce that he was okay, that he didn't want to talk about it when the truth came tumbling out instead. 

"There was a storm, a bad one. Tornado warnings, the streets were flooding, the river was rising." Danny swallowed against the lump forming in his throat, Bruce sat quietly beside him and let him talk. "My parents had built this RV from the ground up, but it was more like a street legal tank. All terrain, four wheel drive, amphibious, a marvel from an engineering perspective. They were part of the emergency rescue squad for disasters, so they took the RV and went to rescue people from the floods." He tilted his head back and looked up at the sky, lighting tracing across the cloud canopy, and the slow constant rumble of thunder setting his teeth on edge. "They didn't make it back." 

"I'm sorry." Bruce said again.

"Don't." Danny whispered, closing his eyes against the prickling in the corners of his eyes. He could feel the man's eyes on him. "Please don't. After they died it was just Jazz and me, and everyone was so sorry and said 'call if you need anything' but only Vlad offered to take us in. Everyone was so sorry for our loss but behind our backs we were 'the mayor's charity case' or 'those poor Fenton kids' and everyone was so sorry." Danny couldn't help the bitterness that crept into his voice. So many people were the first in line to offer their condolences, then wouldn't meet his eyes when they passed on the street. That's what 'sorry' looked like, and he didn't want that from Bruce.

"You're right. I lost my parents when I was a child, so I understand how you feel." Danny looked over at the man. He could see the tension lines on his face, the weary look of a man who had something important ripped from him too soon. They sat in glum silence for a few more minutes before the quiet was broken by Danny's stomach grumbling.

"Come on, let's get some food, I'm starving." Bruce said, standing up and heading toward the exit. Danny hurried to catch up with him.

They walked out to the BMW and drove through the streets. Danny watched out the window as they passed people walking down the sidewalk, umbrellas up against the torrent.

In Amity Park most people would be inside during a storm like this. Low level ghosts are much more active during bad weather, so either he or Valerie would have to round them up before they hurt someone. It was always easier to get through a storm when he had something to do, even if that was hunting ghosts in the rain. 

“Do you need to call your guardian and let him know where you are?” Bruce asked. Danny pulled his eyes away from a man on the sidewalk dressed as Prince to look at Bruce. 

“No, I called him after my interview and he’s going to be delayed in Metropolis by another day." Danny said. Even so he doubted Vlad would notice or care if he was running late. "Besides, if I told him I was with you he'd probably want me to talk to you about some business deal or something." Danny said with a hand wave. 

Bruce 'hmmed' and Danny went back to people watching out the window.

 Before long they pulled into a small hole-in-the-wall Chinese place, definitely not a place he expected billionaire Bruce Wayne to pick. They walked in and were greeted exuberantly in Mandarin, and shown to a booth in the far back of the restaurant. 

Danny felt a little uncomfortable with his back to the door, but had little time to dwell on it before the waitress came over to take their order. He watched a little shocked as a switch seemed to flip in Bruce. A large, dopey grin stretched over his face and he ordered what was probably half the menu in Mandarin. When the waitress left he turned back to Danny with his normal expression of quiet observation. "Do you mind if I check a few emails while we wait?" He asked. Danny shook his head and Bruce pulled his phone out of his pocket. Danny unrolled his silverware and started fidgeting with his napkin.

He was used to what Sam referred to as 'billionaire fakery' from being around Vlad and his business associates for years, so he wasn't surprised that Bruce had a fake personality that he wore in public. No, what surprised him was that he had watched him interact with several people today, and everyone had received a different personality. 

Talking to Kevin he was professional and helpful, then in the interrogation room he switched to protective guardian, filling the role he put himself in perfectly. With Janet he was the perfect boss, again filling a role. It occurred to him that Bruce Wayne and Vlad Masters may not be all that different. 

His guardian never did anything without expecting something in return, so what did Bruce get from helping him out so much?

'You're being paranoid' he could almost hear Jazz saying. 'Some people just want to help others.' Maybe she was right. Maybe Bruce just wanted to help where he could.

"Danny? I think the napkin has had enough." Bruce said gently. He blinked as he was dragged from his thoughts and saw the napkin confetti littering his side of the table.

"Sorry." He said quietly and he swept up the mess and put it to the side. 

Bruce opened his mouth to say something when four waiters descended on their table, loading it down with plate after plate of delicious smelling foods. Dumplings, soup, seared meats, marinated vegetables, and plenty of rice, all served family style. 

"Xiè xiè!" Danny said as the waiters put down the last of the dishes and left. 

"You speak Mandarin?" Bruce asked, sounding genuinely surprised. 

"Vlad does a lot of business in China, so I've picked up a little." He said with a shrug. Truth be told, he spoke Mandarin fairly well. He was able to pick up languages pretty fast. Vlad said it has to do with ghost speak being a universal language. He bit into a pork dumpling, which was fresh and delicious. 

"You don't get along with your guardian, do you?" Bruce asked, before sipping on his soup.

"What makes you say that?" He asked, trying a bit of seared beef on rice, also delicious. 

"You say his name like a curse." He said simply. 

Danny laughed. "We've always had a bit of a ... complicated relationship ever since he tried to break up my parent's marriage and date mom." Among other, worse things, he thought.

Bruce was quiet for a while before he asked "How did he become your guardian?" 

"Jazz wasn't old enough to be my guardian at the time, so it was either Vlad or foster care." He said, sipping some hot soup. "Or a group home, which would have been the worst option for me." 

"Because of the problems from your accident?" 

Danny's eyes snapped up before he nodded. He knew Bruce had been in the room during his interview, but he had been on his phone texting most of the time. He hadn't realized he was paying attention. Bruce was watching him intently, no… observing him, he realized. He had been observing him all day, taking in every detail, every word Danny said. 

Why? 

His eyes flicked down to Bruce's scarred lip for a second before meeting his warm blue eyes, impassive and impossible to read. A thought flashed through his mind, a connection he had made before, but Danny didn't know if he wanted to entertain that idea.

He ate another dumpling, mostly to keep from staring at the other man, or giving his thoughts away, but his mind kept racing. 

If it was true. If he was right and Bruce Wayne was Batman, then Batman knows. He knows about his parents. His accident. Bruce knows about ghosts. He could make the connection between him and Phantom. He could have already made the connection. 

"Are you finished, bud?" The man asked.

"Yeah." His voice was too high, too loud. He cleared his throat and tried again "yeah, I'm done." 

"Alright, then." Bruce said, a bit hesitant, but waved down the waitress and handed over his card. Danny looked at what remained of the dinner, they had demolished all that food. Well, almost all. Danny swiped the last dumpling, no sense letting good food go to waste. 

Bruce signed the receipt when the waitress brought it back, Danny couldn't see the total but he felt like there were more numbers in the tip line than was strictly necessary. Then they were back in the car, heading to the hotel. 

"Do you have any plans for tomorrow?" Bruce asked. 

"Uh, no. I don't really know the city that well, so I don't know what there is to do." Danny hated thinking that people were out to get him. He liked Bruce. Or, he liked the role that Bruce was filling to get information out of him.

If that's what he was doing.

If he was Batman. 

"If you like I could have one of my sons show you around, since your guardian is out of town." 

It sounded like a good deal. It sounded like a good way to keep an eye on him. "That's really generous, but you don't have to do that, Bruce. I think I'm just going to stay in tomorrow. I have some class work I need to do." 

"Alright." They fell into a somewhat awkward silence until they pulled into the front of the hotel.

Danny paused with his hand on the handle "Thanks for… everything today, Bruce. I really appreciate it." 

"Wait." Bruce said, pulling out a business card and a pen from his pocket. He scribbled a number on the back and handed it to Danny. "Call me if you need anything." 

Danny looked at the number, neatly printed despite being written on the steering wheel of a car. "Thanks. I will."

'Once I figure out what you want from me,' he thought. 

Once he was back up in the hotel room he booted up his laptop. He needed to talk to Sam and Tucker, and he wanted to calm his mind by playing some Doomed.

Chapter Text

Bruce drove back to the manor in silence. It had not escaped his notice how Danny had shut down during dinner, and it was worrying him. He replayed the conversation over in his mind again, trying to see any thing that was said or done that would have triggered the teen, but there wasn't anything that he could think of. He had seemed… scared when he had brought up the accident. But fear of what, he wondered.

Was he scared that he knew about it? No, he had brought it up himself in the interview. Maybe scared that he had brought it up in public? Possibly. Or maybe it had nothing to do with the conversation. Maybe Danny had thought of something that spooked him? But he knew Danny wouldn't be telling him, he seemed exceptionally good at keeping secrets.

Bruce rubbed his eyes at a stop light. "Secrets." He growled. "So many secrets for one kid to keep."

The secret ghost town, with their secret hero protecting them from the secret ghost threat. The secret government agency tasked with ensuring the ghosts remain secret. And the biggest secret. The one Danny kept at all costs. That he was a metahuman. 

'Why' was still the unanswered question. Bruce couldn't help but feel like it was all connected and he was just missing something obvious. 

Before he could ponder the question anymore he had reached the manor. He didn't even remember pulling up the driveway. 

He found Alfred in the kitchen drinking a cup of tea and reading a book.

"Is there anymore, Alfred?" He asked, crossing to the kettle. 

"Enough at least for another cup, Sir." He said, putting his book down. "Would you like me to make you one?" It wasn't really a question, the elderly butler has long held the belief that Bruce's tea is little more than overly sweetened dishwater. So Bruce sat at the kitchen island and allowed Alfred to fix him a cup of tea. 

"Where are the boys?" He asked to fill the silence.

"Masters Richard and Damian are down in the basement, and Master Tim ought to be resting in his room." He said, setting a delicate tea cup in front of Bruce. 

"And Jason?" He asked, careful to keep his voice even. 

"Master Jason left a few hours ago." He said, sitting opposite the man. Bruce nodded and took a sip of tea. It was nice, jasmine and hibiscus, with a hint of honey. "How did young mister Fenton fare today?"

"He did great in his interview, if the school doesn't accept him I'm sure Lucius will give him an internship in R&D." 

"Is he that good?" Alfred asked.

"He made a forcefield that withstood a full strength punch out of spare parts. Imagine what he could do with Wayne tech." 'or bat tech' went unsaid. "I'm just concerned about what powers he might have."

"Do you really think he's a metahuman?"

"I'm sure he is. His arm healed overnight from a blow that should have broken his bones. It's more than that, though, or he wouldn't feel the need to hide it."

"Perhaps" the butler began "you should have a direct conversation with him about it." 

Bruce huffed a laugh "I doubt that would go over well." Danny had withdrawn into himself, it was obvious he suspected him of...something. The distrustful, suspicious nature was concerning. Teenagers don't usually become that way unless they are mistreated, and he knew where to start looking for the culprit. "We should have him and his guardian over for dinner. I have some questions for Vlad Masters."

"Very good, Sir. I'll set it up first thing in the morning." 

"Thank you, Alfred." He said. "I'll be in the cave if you need me." 

"Of course, sir." He said, clearing the tea cups. 

Down in the cave Dick and Damian were watching a video on the computer. 

"It's just a rabbit, why can't she catch it?" Damian asked.

"It's as big as a house, and can burrow into the ground to get away." Dick answered. "Hey, B."

"Dick, Damian. What's going on?" He asked. The video was shaky, as if the person taking it was running to keep up with the person in red armor, who was chasing an enormous glowing green rabbit. 

"This ghost hunter is pathetic, Father. She can't even catch a rabbit." Damian said with derision. 

"To be fair, it keeps burrowing whenever she tries to capture it." Dick answered. Bruce hmmed. 

They watched the fight for a few more minutes before the rabbit burrowed into the ground. Red Huntress threw her thermos at the spot where the creature disappeared in frustration. 

"You'll get it next time, Red!" The cameraman called out. The huntress turned to him and yelled.

"I'll get YOU, Weston!" Before charging. The video cut off with a shriek from the cameraman.

"Do we know who they are?" Bruce asked. Nothing about this situation sat right with him. Teenagers shouldn't have to defend their town from monsters. Someone should have known about this a lot sooner. 

He should have known about this a lot sooner. 

"The cameraman is Wes Weston, and Red Huntress we are pretty sure is Valerie Gray." He said, pulling up pictures of the two of them. "There are two more players, too, but we haven't figured out who they are. TechnoFreak created the app, and GothicChaos moderates it." Dick paused before continuing "B, I looked into the Anti-Ecto acts. Everything these kids are doing is a federal offense, they could get into a lot of trouble just for defending their town."

Bruce nodded. He had looked those laws up, too. They were passed secretly, mixed into a federal funding bill for disaster relief. Stripping any ectoplasmic being of their sentience, denying them basic rights, and allowing the government to apprehend them for study. The act also condemned any unsanctioned ghost hunting activities, which explained Danny's distrust of Operative Kevin. "I know. We will need to do something about that." 

"Father…" what Damian was about to say was cut off by Tim barreling into the cave

"I need the computer!" He said, practically shoving Dick out of the seat.

"What the hell, Tim?" He asked, recovering his balance easily.

"It's not encryption, it's a language." He said cryptically, pulling up the GIW systems

"You've either had too much coffee or not enough. What are you talking about?" 

"The encryption guarding the systems, it's not an encryption, it's a language." He was typing frantically "This word keeps popping up, 'utkari' it's similar to the Sanskrit word 'upkar', and the Tamil word 'utavi'" He looked up to the blank faces around him. "They both mean 'help'." There was a pause before everyone started talking at once 

"You think someone is asking for help?" Dick asked

"Since when do you speak Sanskrit?" Damian asked.

"Who would be asking for help through encryption?" 

"No one speaks Sanskrit."

"Boys."

"Seriously, an uncrackable encryption to ask for help?"

"People still speak Sanskrit, Damian. Just like people still speak Latin." 

"Boys!"

"Why Sanskrit and Tamil, though?"

"No one speaks Latin, Drake!"

"Can it!" Bruce roared, silencing the chatter, and disturbing a few of the bats above them. "Tim, can you break the encryption now that you know it's a language?" 

"I can try and translate it, but it's going to take time. It may be faster to go to the source." He said, typing on the computer. 

"The source being… the GIW facility. Where is that?"

"Their home base is in Elmerton, just outside of Amity Park." Tim said, pulling up the relevant information on the computer.

"It probably wouldn't be a good idea to show up in Phantom's territory without a heads up, though." Dick said, always the diplomat.

Bruce sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. That direct conversation with Danny was going to have to happen whether he liked it or not. "Alright. Everyone, get some rest before patrol. We'll talk to Danny in the morning about his abilities and running a mission in Amity." He said before turning and heading to his private bathroom. He needed to shave before suiting up.

He put a new blade head on his razor and set to work washing and lathering his face. He liked to keep a clean shaved face, it made the cowl much more comfortable. He was careful around his upper lip, the scarred skin pulled and puckered at times, making shaving there without nicking himself difficult. Bruce carefully dragged the razor over the scar, then stopped. 

The memory of icy blue eyes, bloodshot from exhaustion searching Batman's face for something to focus on, anything to keep himself on his feet a little longer. 

Those same eyes flashing over his face, a tangible shift in mood. "No… he couldn't have…" it was too dark last night, no one could have seen that tiny little scar in the dark.

Bruce shook his head. Now was not the time to dwell on his potentially compromised identity. Now he had to get ready for patrol. He would worry about how much Danny knew later.

"Come on, Tuck, you're closer than I am, don't let her get the key!" Danny yelled, hitting buttons on his keyboard like his life depended on it. His avatar was running toward a bridge in the distance, dodging obstacles and attacks left and right.

"I'm trying! She's too fast!" Tucker grunted over his headphones.

"You boys are never going to beat me." Sam gloated "I got some upgrades since we played last." She shot a new weapon at the two boys, obliterating their avatars in one fell swoop. The screen went black before her avatar was crowned champion. 

"One day, Sam, one day I will beat you." Danny promised "Are you guys up for another round?" 

"Nah, I have an essay for Lancer I have to re-write." Tucker said. "Apparently, 'Of Mice and Men' has nothing to do with mice." 

"You're lucky he's giving you the opportunity to redo it. He could have just failed you." Sam said. 

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was busy working on the new layout for the app. I sent you the beta, Danny, have you seen it yet?" 

"Yeah, it looks really good, Tuck. It's much more user friendly." He said, pulling out his phone to check the app. "Do you guys have any info on this rabbit ghost?"

"She showed up yesterday on the north side of the lake." Sam said

"That explains why the ectopodes were out of their region." Danny said

"It's ecotpuses, Danny." Sam said

"'Octopus' is Greek, Sam, so the correct way to pluralize 'octopus' should be 'octopodes.' and 'ectopus' should be 'ectopodes'" Danny said petulantly. It was his favorite way to mess with Sam.

"I'm not having this argument again. Back to the rabbit. Do you have any thoughts?" 

Danny hmmed in thought. "She may be looking for her kits, have you found a den?" 

"We haven't been out there yet." Tucker said "but I'll send Val a message. How did the fair go? You weren't on yesterday to tell us."

"Oh, Ancients, you don't know yet!"

"Know what?"

"I met Batman yesterday!" Danny had to take his headset off to avoid permanent hearing loss. When his friends quieted down he put it back on and continued. 

"Are you guys done?" At their assent he started. "So after the engineers came around I went to get some lunch, and then Technus showed up. I went to confront him and Batman, Red Robin, and Nightwing were there, and we took him down." 

"You met Nightwing?" Sam asked, feigning indifference, but Danny could hear the interest in her voice.

"Yes, and he's just as cool in real life as he seems on the news. He actually came over for breakfast this morning." 

"Really? What did you talk about?" She asked.

"Ghosts, mostly."

"You go all the way to Gotham to get away from ghosts, and end up fighting one anyway? Dude, you have the worst luck." Tucker said. 

"Yeah, I know."

"So, now that Batman knows about ghosts, what's going to happen?" Sam asked "I mean, he is a member of the Justice League. Wouldn't they report us to the GIW?" 

"Well, he hasn't yet, and if he does we have contingencies for that." He had insisted on having a kill code that would shut down and wipe everything, erasing all connections between them and ghost hunting, leaving only Phantom to take the fall. "And if he doesn't, we might have some real heros to help. We can't keep doing this forever." 

Nor does he want to. He knows Sam, Tucker, Valerie and even Wes have dreams that don't involve ghost hunting, and Danny was not going to be the one to ask them to stay on his account.

"Anyway, if the fair was cancelled how are they going to decide who gets the scholarship?" Sam asked, bringing them back on track.

"Oh, they had individual interviews today." He said.

"How'd it go?"

"It went okay, I think. I met Bruce Wayne."

"You met Bruce Wayne!" Tucker asked "Did you get his autograph?" 

"No, I didn't get his autograph. But, he did defend me from Kevin."

"The GIW were there?" Sam asked, concern evident in her voice.

"A ghost showed up, Sam, of course they were there." He said. "Kevin was interviewing him when I was brought to the police station."

"Why were you brought to the police station?" Tucker asked.

"Oh, I uh... I got jumped."

"What!?" Danny was not prepared for the volume at which his friends shouted.

"Danny, you are the worst at telling stories."

"I know, I know. So anyway, these three thugs, like straight from 'muggers-r-us', tried to jump me in an alley, so I kicked their butts. Then the police showed up and took our statement. Somehow Kevin found out I was there and had them bring me in." 

"What did you tell him?"

"I said I wasn't involved, that I had run when I heard screaming."

"And he believed you?" Tucker asked, incredulously.

"Of course not, but he couldn't accuse me of anything with Bruce sitting right beside me, so he had to let me go. Then Bruce drove me to my interview. Afterward he took me to get Chinese food, which was really good, then he drove me back to the hotel." 

"He sounds really nice."

"Yeah. He seemed really nice. He even offered to have one of his sons show me around Gotham tomorrow, and gave me his cell phone number." Danny chewed his lip, thinking. "Do you guys think Bruce Wayne could be Batman?" Voicing his suspicions made them sound ridiculous, and Sam's incredulous laughter a second later confirmed it.

"Bruce Wayne, the idiot playboy, prince of the Gotham social scene? No, Danny. I don't think he could be Batman." 

"Yeah, I have to agree with Sam, here. Bruce Wayne can't be Batman." 

"Why would you think that, anyway?" Sam asked, genuinely curious.

"I don't know, it's just.. I met Batman, and he's asking all these questions about ghosts, then I meet Wayne and he's asking about the accident, and, I don't know… it just seems suspicious."

"I thought you were okay with Batman knowing about ghosts?" Tucker asked.

"Yeah, ghosts, but not me. What if he decides I'm not cut out for ghost powers and takes them away? Or what if he bans me from his city? I heard he doesn't like Metahumans, so…" 

"Danny, he can't take away your powers, not even Vlad can do that. And if he bans you from Gotham, there are other engineering schools you can apply to." Sam said. Danny was grateful for her level headedness. 

"Sam is right, Danny, Bruce Wayne isn't Batman, so you have nothing to worry about." 

"You guys are right. I'm just freaking out over nothing." He said, but the image of Bruce's scarred lip wouldn't leave his mind.

Chapter Text

Danny didn't want to sleep. The storm had lightened up, but the occasional distant rumble of thunder echoed through the city, and rain still fell steadily against the window. He stayed up, playing Doomed until the server shut down for maintenance, then he fell down a Google rabbit hole researching Bruce Wayne and his sons.

He knew about Richard Grayson. Sam had been obsessed with him when they were younger, pouring over magazine articles and collecting pictures. Danny had thought it was a little creepy, but Tucker did the same thing with Wonder Woman. He had to break up more than one fight between them about the difference between admiring a known hero and obsessing over a teenager. Luckily her crush on Bruce’s adopted son had faded when Nightwing had come on the scene. 

He did not know about Tim and Damian. Tim was apparently some kind of genius, becoming the youngest CEO of Wayne Enterprises ever, but aside from press conferences there wasn't that much information about him. 

There was even less information about Damian, just press pictures from various galas and parties. 

Danny also found evidence of a fourth son, Jason Todd, in the form of an obituary. He closed the web browser after that. That was none of his business. 

Instead he pulled his force field belt out of his backpack to give it a once over. He didn't need to, since the interview was over, but tinkering helped him ignore the occasional rumble of thunder. 

He pulled the backplate off and inspected it. Phantom's symbol was etched into the titanium. He remembered learning about chemically etching metal one night when he couldn't sleep and he couldn't wait to try it. It seemed easy enough. The hardest part was getting his hands on the acids he needed. His symbol was on every piece of tech he finished, just as the name Fenton had been painted on every bit of tech his parents had made. In that small way he felt like he honored them.

He had a sudden flash of memory. Bruce inspecting the back of the belt before handing it back to him. He groaned. If Bruce wasn't Batman then it was just a strange symbol that didn't mean anything.

If he was Batman then it was another connection between him and Phantom that he didn't want the man to have. At this point he wondered if there was any reason he was still clinging to his secret.

He put his head down on the table for a second. There was nothing for it now, the damage was done. He shut his eyes. Just for a second. He wasn't sleeping, just resting. He doesn't sleep during storms. 

“Mr. Fenton, this will be on the test.” Mr. Lancer said from the front of the classroom.

“Sorry, Mr. Lancer.” Danny sat up and opened his book, but the book was blank. He looked over to Sam’s book, but it was blank, too. 

“Danny, pay attention. You can’t afford to fail another test.” she said when she caught him looking. He turned back to face the front. Mr. Lancer was reading a passage from the book, but it came out sounding like a gunshot instead of words. All his classmates were scribbling down notes, but he didn't have a notebook or pencil.

There was a clap of thunder, a flash of lightning. There was a noise like a siren. Danny looked out the window. The river had risen until the water was lapping against the second floor window. He could see his parents RV bobbing along the current. 

He raised his hand “Mr. Lancer, I have to go.” 

Mr. Lancer turned to him. “It’s not safe, Mr. Fenton, you could die.” 

“I don’t care, I have to try.” he said before his transformation washed over him and he flew out the window toward the RV. It stayed a distant speck on the horizon. Vlad was beside him then. 

“You will never reach them in time.” 

“I have to try.” he flew faster, but as he watched the speck of the RV disappeared under the waves, he dove in after it, the chill of the water permeating to his core. The crush of the waves pulled him down. Then he was wrapped in Vlad’s cloak. He was pulled out of the waves, up into the air.

“I won’t let you follow them, Little Badger.” he heard Vlad say.  

Suddenly Vlad was gone. The river was gone. He was floating in space, surrounded by stars and galaxies. He could make out the Andromeda galaxy and Centaurus A.  

“Now, that was a terrible dream.” A face formed out of the emptiness surrounding him, blood red eyes, pale skin and a crown that resembled a goat's horns. 

“Nocturn? What are you doing here?” He hadn’t seen or heard anything from the ghost of sleep since he had tried to harvest the dreams from the people of Amity Park.

“This is the dreamscape, Ghost Boy, this is my domain.” he said with a slight smirk.

“Right, but why are you in my dream?” he really didn’t want to have to fight Nocturn again. He had only barely beaten him the first time.

“I would hardly call that a dream. ‘Nightmare’ is more like it, distasteful things.” he said with a grimace. “You can relax, ghost boy. I’m not here to fight you, or feed off of anyone’s dreams. I brought a message and a warning from Clockwork.” Nocturn’s head was floating around in a way that reminded Danny of the Cheshire Cat from “Alice in Wonderland”

“Clockwork sent you? Why didn’t he come himself?” he turned in space as Nocturn’s head floated behind him.

“Who knows why that man does anything he does?” Nocturn said, settling in one place. “Now, are you ready to listen to the message?” Danny nodded. “Good. ‘Trust and Beware’” 

He waited a few seconds for the ghost to continue. When he didn't, Danny scrunched his face up. “That’s it? Trust and Beware? Trust who? Beware of what?” 

“That was all. Now, it’s time for you to wake up.” Nocturn charged at him, the surprise startled Danny into consciousness.

He sat bolt upright, his breath making fog in the air. He looked around the room and saw a fine layer of sparkling frost coating every surface. He groaned. This is why he didn’t sleep during storms. He got up and opened the balcony door before willing the ghost ice to sublimate away. 

The rain had stopped, and the early morning air was cool, spring still clinging on before summer comes in full swing. He took a deep breath. The rainfall had washed away some of the heat and grime, and the sunlight was just barely peeking through the clouds. The city was bathed in a mottled light and the effect was beautiful.

He left the door open to warm up the room before setting up the coffee pot. The first part of his dream was starting to fade, but the second part was clear. Three words echoed around in his head as the coffee pot brewed. “Trust and Beware” he said out loud before shaking his head. It was just like Clockwork to give him a warning that made no sense. 

He went back to the table and grabbed his phone to check the time, but it wouldn't come on. Dead. He checked his dampners too; they were on three percent. With a sigh he gathered his phone and laptop and took them to his room and hooked them up to their chargers. He rubbed his wrists, missing the familiar and comforting weight of the dampners. 

He took a quick shower and brushed his teeth to try and wake himself up before dressing in some comfortable sweats and a baggy t-shirt. He wished he still had his hoodie. He was about to head back out to the living room to get some coffee when he heard voices. 

“Do you think he’s still asleep?” He knew that voice.

“No, the coffee is fresh, and the shower was running when I got here.” another familiar voice said. What were Nightwing and Red Robin doing here? 

“Boys, I told you to wait until he let us in. What are you doing in the living room?” Batman is here too? Danny tried to quell the panic rising in his chest. He hadn’t done anything wrong. He has no reason to be afraid. 

“The balcony door was open, B.” Nightwing said. “And it was so cold in here, I thought maybe he might be in trouble.” 

“Maybe he forgot to turn the AC off.” That voice was unfamiliar, but Danny could guess based on how young he sounded that it was Batman’s protege, Robin. What were they all doing here? Only one way to find out. 

He took a deep breath and pushed the door open. They were all gathered around the couch and balcony door, looking completely out of place. Four heads swiveled to stare at him, four sets of eyes hidden behind masks. He swallowed down his apprehension and stepped into the room. 

“Hey. What’s going on?” he said in what he hoped was a casual tone. 

Nightwing was the first to speak, “We just came to talk to you.” What was with the tension in the air?

Danny hmmed at that and crossed the room to the coffee pot. “All of you?” he asked, pulling down a mug and pouring himself a cup. His eyes flicked over the group, but no one seemed willing to speak. “About what?” He sat down at the table, facing the balcony.

“We had some questions about the ghosts in your town.” Red Robin said, holding a tablet. “and you."

Danny took a sip of his coffee. "What about me?" The four heroes shared a look before Red Robin and Nightwing took seats on either side of him. Batman and Robin stayed standing by the balcony door. 

"Danny, we know you're a meta." Nightwing said after a moment. "We just want to know about your powers."

He had the coffee cup halfway to his lips, but he set it down carefully before answering. "I'm not a meta."

"You knocked a sixty pound pipe out of the air like it was nothing. That should have broken your arm." Red Robin said. "But you don't even have a scrape."

He clenched his right hand, cursing the fact that his jacket had been ruined. "I'm durable, and I heal fast, but I'm not a meta." He took a sip of his coffee, the burning heat distracting him from his rising panic. 

"If you aren't a metahuman, then what are you?" Danny's eyes snapped to Robin. He was leaning against the wall, arms crossed over his chest, his lip pulled up into a disdainful scowl.

"I'm nothing." He snapped, his temper starting to rise above his panic.

"Danny." Batman spoke, his voice a low growl. 

"You can trust us, we want to help." Nightwing said.

'Trust and Beware' should he trust them, or beware? 

"I believe you." Red Robin said. Danny looked at him, confused. "I believe you aren't a metahuman. Ghosts can't be metas." 

Danny felt the blood drain from his face, before his temper returned full force. "I'm not a ghost!" He yelled.

Red Robin didn't even flinch. "Then why are your eyes green?" He asked calmly.

Shit. Danny closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "Living humans can't be ghosts." It sounded pathetic, even to him.

"You don't have to lie, we just want to help." Red Robin said calmly.

'Trust and Beware' 

He hoped this is what Clockwork meant. Eyes firmly planted on his coffee cup he began "What you have to understand is that my existence is a scientific anomaly. If the wrong people learn about me I will be hauled off to a lab to be studied for the rest of my life. There are no legal protections for ghosts like there are for metas."

There was a gasp to his left. "It's true? You're Phantom?" Nightwing asked, partially awed, partially horrified. 

Danny nodded.

Chapter Text

Silence fell over the room. Danny stared down at his coffee cup, not daring to look up and see their reactions. As the quiet stretched he got more and more nervous. Ghosts didn’t have the best reputation, and he didn’t really know how they would react.

"You owe me ten bucks, Wing." Red Robin broke the silence. 

Batman sighed heavily. "This is not the time, Red."

Danny let out an involuntary, and slightly hysterical laugh. "Really? You took bets?" 

Red Robin and Nightwing both looked a little sheepish. "Sorry, that was inappropriate." Red Robin said.

"I'm not mad, I would have done the same thing." Danny said, drinking his coffee again. "How did you figure it out?" 

"You and Phantom have the same face." He said. "and once I realized you were a meta it was easy to put two and two together." 

"And the fact that Phantom is literally dead didn't trip you up at all? 'cause that usually gets most people." 

"It just seemed like the most logical conclusion." He said with a shrug.

Danny huffed a laugh at that, shaking his head. He had to remember not to tell Wes about this, he would never hear the end of it if someone else figured it out the same way he had. “Not that I had a twin who had died, or that a ghost had taken my form, or that I was possessed? No, we have the same face, so obviously we’re the same person.” 

“For the record.” Robin said from his place against the wall “I have not ruled out possession.” 

“I’m not possessed, I’m half ghost.” Danny said, rolling his eyes. 

“That doesn’t make sense.” the boy spat, the permanent scowl deepening.

"Your parents were ghost hunters, right? How did they feel about you being a half ghost?" Nightwing asked, changing the subjects.

“They uh… they didn't know." Danny said, rubbing the back of his neck. "I never told them." 

"Why not?" Batman said, coming to stand behind the chair in front of Danny, partially blocking Robin from view.

"They were ghost hunters." He said. That should be obvious. Evidently it wasn't, as everyone kept looking at him. "Every conversation about ghosts turned into a laundry list of experiments they wanted to do on them. How could I tell them when they just finished saying how they wanted to tear Phantom apart ‘molecule by molecule’?” 

“Do you think they would have experimented on you, even knowing you were their son?” Nightwing asked, his voice carefully calm.

“Maybe, maybe not. They could have assumed I was possessed, or wanted to find a ‘cure’. Even if they accepted that I was half ghost, they would have been way more overbearing than they already were. I had my reasons for keeping it from them.” 

“Who helped you learn your powers? Did you have a mentor?” Batman asked. 

“No, believe it or not, being a half ghost isn’t exactly common. I had to figure out my powers on my own. My friends helped, but there was only so much they could do.”

“You told your friends, but not your parents?” Batman asked.

“I didn’t tell them, they were there when I got my powers.” Danny swallowed against the annoyance rising. He could feel the question coming, and he wasn’t looking forward to answering it.

“How did you get your powers?” Nightwing asked gently. 

"The same way anyone gets powers: I was in a lab accident." Danny said with a hand wave. He really didn't want to get into it, but he knew they would want more details. 

"Did your parents have anything to do with it?" Batman asked. The question rubbed Danny the wrong way.

"What? No, they weren't even in town at the time. I was a dumb teenager, messing around with something I shouldn't have been and I paid for it." He could hear the irritation creeping into his voice. 

"Danny, what exactly happened?" Red Robin asked. 

Danny took a deep breath and rubbed his eyes. He could feel his headache building up again, and he still hasn't managed to get his hands on any Ibuprofen. 

"My parent's portal didn't work at first. My friends dared me to go inside it. I was a dumb teenager, so I did. I tripped and caught myself on the wall. There was a… power switch on the inside. It was supposed to prime the portal with energy, kind of like a pilot light in a furnace." Danny had to pause at that, the echo of the pain was too much. Luckily he didn't have to continue.

"The portal opened up on top of you." Red Robin finished quietly.

Danny gave a small nod "I woke up across the room with white hair and ghost powers."

“So you get powers in a lab accident that should have killed you, tell no one, and decide to fight ghosts, putting yourself and your friends at risk of serious bodily harm.” Batman said.

“When you say it like that it sounds bad.” Danny crossed his arms over his chest.

“You’re a bunch of teenagers fighting an enemy nobody knows about with no backup, no legal defense, and no outside help. If you get caught you will all go to jail, or worse.” his voice was starting to sound strained.

“I take the fall if we get caught.”

“You fight in a hazmat suit!” he bellowed “You don’t even have armor to protect yourself.” 

“What am I supposed to do, let the ghosts take over?!” Danny yelled back. He knew his eyes were green, but he didn’t care. “It’s my fault they’re here. I opened the portal, so it's my responsibility to put them back. I’m just trying to clean up my own mess.” Danny and Batman glared at each other for what felt like a full minute before the older man let out a breath and turned away.

"What do you mean you take the fall if anyone gets caught?" Red Robin asked.

Danny let out a sigh. "Everything is under my name. The base is in a building that I own, all the equipment has my name on it, if anyone gets caught by the GIW they are supposed to act like I manipulated them into helping me. I'm not about to let my friends take the fall for me." 

"That is a terrible plan." Nightwing said, 

Danny just shrugged. "I know that, but what am I supposed to do?" 

"We are already working on taking down the GIW." Red Robin said, typing on his tablet. "That is the other reason we came here today." He put the tablet in the middle of the table, and Danny leaned forward to look.

"You're trying to hack them?" He asked. 

"Yes, but I ran into a problem."

"You can't read it, so you don't know how to break the encryption." The look Red Robin gave him was not quite shock, but was close. He recovered quickly.

"I figured out one word that keeps repeating." He said pointing to a word "'Utkari'' means help, doesn't it? Who needs help?"

Danny sighed. "Mina. She's a ghost. They have been using her as a firewall for the past six months. May I?" He asked, gesturing to the tablet. Red Robin nodded, so Danny took the tablet and started typing.

"What language is that?" Nightwing asked, leaning over to get a better look at what he was doing.

"It's the Language of the Ancients. Some types of ghosts know it instinctively." He said, not taking his eyes off the screen.

"What is she saying?" Red Robin prodded, looking over Danny's other shoulder. 

"Ah… she's scared. She didn't like you trying to hack her system." He almost had her calmed down. Red let out a quiet "oops" before sitting back down looking rueful.

"What are you saying?" Danny glanced up at Robin, who had at some point crossed the room to stand next to Batman without him noticing. 

"I'm letting her know that you're a friend of mine and to let you in." He said, focusing back on the tablet. "And… there, you're in." He said, handing the tablet back to Red Robin. 

"Just like that?" Nightwing asked. 

Danny shrugged. "If you think you can take them down, I'm going to help you do it." 

Red Robin took a moment to go through some files before looking up "Bats, this is everything. Employee records, info on different ghosts, research, even where their funding comes from." 

Batman came to stand behind Red Robin, reading over his shoulder. "We can use this." 

"What about Mina?" Robin asked

"She's only six months old, she can't survive outside of the ghost zone. Right now the server she's stuck in is sustaining her, but if I try to move her she'll fade." 

"So you aren't trying to free her?" Robin demanded. 

"I have been trying! She can't leave the server unless she has similar ectoplasm to sustain her outside of the ghost zone. That's why I need Technus."

"Why Technus?" Nightwing asked, confusion evident on his face.

"Technus is her father." All eyes snapped to him at that. He took a calm sip of his coffee and watched the cogs turning in their heads. Batman recovered first.

"Ghosts can have children?" He asked in a quiet voice.

"I don't know all the specifics of it, but yeah, ghosts can have children."

"How did Technus's daughter end up in the GIW? Did he just leave her there?" Nightwing wondered.

"As far as I can tell she was born there, and I'm not sure he has any idea she exists." 

"How can you have a kid and not know they exist?" Red Robin asked. 

"I don't know, do you have any ideas on that, Batman?" Robin turned to the older man, who leveled a glare at the kid that would crack stone.

"What was your plan for getting her out?" Nightwing asked, dissipating the tension. 

"First I have to convince Technus to come back to the GIW and rescue a child he may not know about. Second I have to break into the GIW with him and convince Mina to leave the server. It's the only thing she has ever known, so it might be difficult. Last I have to get them both out and back to the ghost zone without being caught." 

"That's not a plan. That's a bullet point list of things that need to be done." Batman said, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"All my well thought out plans go up in smoke, so I usually just wing these things." Danny said with a shrug. 

Nightwing laughed "There is no 'winging things' when it comes to Batman. His backup plans have backup plans." 

"And his backup plan's backup plan has a second, secret plan that he doesn't tell anyone about." Red Robin said, not looking up from the tablet.

"I'm not that bad." Batman said, earning a laugh from all the birds in the room. "Fine, I like to have a plan. And you are going to need a better one before you go in." 

"I have time. I wasn't going to do anything until the solstice, anyway." 

"Why the solstice?" Batman asked.

"The barrier is thinner during the solstice, so there is more ambient ectoplasm. It makes ghosts stronger. Mina is weak, she needs all the strength she can get."

"That's just over a month. That's not a lot of time." Nightwing said. "We need to get floor plans and security layouts."

"Wait." Danny hesitated.

"We need to figure out what defenses they have, both normal and anti-ghost." Batman continued.

"A lot of that is on their server, so most of the legwork is done already." Red Robin said "Now it's just putting together a plan of attack." 

"Wait, stop, back up. What are you talking about?" Danny asked, utterly confused.

"Danny, we said we wanted to help you. So we are going to help you free Mina, take down the GIW, and reverse the laws that put you and your friends in danger." Nightwing said with conviction. 

"But, why?"

Batman leveled his gaze at Danny "We can't ignore a cry for help."

Chapter Text

Vlad Masters - Metropolis - Sunday Morning

Vlad Masters had never claimed to be a good man. He had made his fortune through methods that were shady at best, and illegal at worst. Using the powers he had been cursed with to his advantage had helped him evade notice. It was no different, he told himself, than someone who had been born rich using those riches to become richer. Anyone in his position would do the same. 

Anyone except Daniel Fenton. 

Cursed with the same powers, Daniel had chosen to use those powers for good. To protect people from ghosts, and not for his own personal gain. Even when Vlad had offered him everything a teenage boy could want, money, power, training, you name it, Daniel had turned him down. Vlad had never understood why, and it irritated him to no end. 

That irritation had led Vlad to do things that even he had never thought he would do. Stealing things and selling them to the highest bidder was one thing. Creating clones of a teenage boy, trying to kill his father, nearly killing him… these are things Vlad has come to regret, and regret is not a feeling he is familiar with. 

He had gone too far, he realized that. He had become something he had never intended to be, had never wanted to be. He had become an evil man. 

The realization had come to him as he stood in the smoking wreckage of what had once been his cloning laboratory. He had lost everything he had ever wanted. His perfect clone had dissolved. His only successful clone had fled from him. Valerie, his perfect pawn, had found out the truth about him. Daniel would never come to his side. 

And Maddie. His sweet Madeline would never be his bride. Not after what he had done to her and her family.

So Vlad retreated to lick his wounds and try to come up with something else he could do with his time. He threw himself into his mayoral duties. Implemented policies that protected the parks from urban expansion to prevent another Overgrowth incident. Worked on improving public works, shielding the power lines to prevent Technus from taking over the power grid. He built ghost proof shelters in case of invasions, and provided ghost shields to schools, hospitals, and government buildings.

Despite the town hailing him as a hero, electing him as mayor again in the next election without any ghostly interference, despite the whole town loving him he still wasn't happy. He was still missing the thing he wanted most.

He still wanted a family. 

So when Jack and Madeline Fenton died and Jasmine and Daniel were left orphans, about to be separated by the state, Vlad stepped in. He took them in, not because it was the right thing to do, but because he was selfish. He wanted a family, and the Fenton kids needed a guardian. 

No, Vlad wasn't a good man, but sometimes he did good things. 

And sometimes, like today, he did bad things. Like meeting Lex Luthor to discuss a potential partnership.

Vlad surveyed the field far below him. He was excited for the game, he tried to catch every Packers game that he could. He even held season tickets for all the home games. Away games, however, were harder to catch. Away games meant dragging Daniel with him, even though the boy had little interest in football, or leaving him to his own devices for days on end. 

"Vlad, I was surprised when I received your invitation." Lex Luthor said, entering the private box. "I can't remember the last time I was at a football game." 

"Lex, it's so nice to see you again." He said, turning to the man and taking the proffered hand. "I'm sure it will be a good game, the Packers are in top form this year." 

"Yes, but the Meteors are nothing to scoff at, either." He said, joining Vlad back at the viewing window. They watched the players warm up on the field for a few minutes. "How have you been? Are you still mayor of… Amityville, was it?"

"It's Amity Park, actually. Things are going well, if I do say so myself" he said with a smug grin. He was proud of his work in Amity Park, even if it didn't completely fill the hole in his chest. "We just broke ground on a new wildlife preserve last month." 

"How interesting." Luthor said, not sounding the least bit interested. "How is your nephew?"

"Daniel is good. He's applying to an engineering college in Gotham. I tried to get him to come work at Dalv Co. but he wouldn't hear it." Which was a bit of an understatement, Daniel had fought him on so many issues, and this was no different. The boy was determined to be an engineer like his father, and refused to even consider working for Vlad.

“Yes, teenagers can be so hard to manage." 

"Indeed."

They fell into a silence that was more calculative than comfortable. They were both shrewd men who had come into this meeting with a goal in mind. There was no fun football game with friends in Vlad’s world, only a transaction to be made. He had tried to impress that fact on Daniel, and he hoped the lessons stuck. With how powerful the boy had become, powerful people would try to use him for their own gain if he wasn’t careful. Which brought him back around to why he had asked for this meeting in the first place. Now, how to bring it up? 

"I heard you have been delving into space exploration, lately." He started.

"Oh, yes. It's very exciting. Space is such an untapped resource." 

"Indeed. I myself have done some space exploration, and I might have discovered something of interest to us both." Lex raised an eyebrow at that, so he continued. "Have you ever heard of ectoranium?"

Danny Fenton - Gotham - Sunday Morning

The best part of waking up at dawn was having all day to be able to do what you want. The worst part of waking up at dawn was having to find things to do all day. 

The heroes had left him with a communicator that he was ninety percent sure was bugged, and a promise to be in touch for next steps before disappearing over the balcony railing. 

After that he made himself some breakfast, spent a good amount of time in the hotel gym, finished his classwork, and tinkered with some of the small projects he had brought with him. He was bored and it wasn't even noon yet.

He half considered calling Bruce and asking if the offer of one of his sons acting as a personal tour guide was still open, before shaking that thought from his head. Instead he opened his laptop and searched for things to do in Gotham City. One of the top results was the Gotham Space and Aeronautics museum that Bruce had mentioned. They had free admission on the weekends. 

His mind made up, Danny changed into jeans and grabbed his backpack. The museum was too far to walk, so he would have to take the subway. On his way to the station he spotted a bodega, and the scent wafting out of the open door made his mouth water. Inside the small shop was stuffy, and smelled strongly of spices. A couple were behind the register arguing quietly in a language that Danny didn't understand, but thought might be Persian. 

The man quickly cut off the argument and greeted him. "Salam, my friend, how can I help you?" 

"Hi, I was hoping to get some of whatever smells so good." 

"Ah, of course, we have kabob cooking today, do you want beef or lamb?"

"Beef, please." Sam would kill him if she found out he ate lamb. 

"It will be about five minutes to cook." 

"Okay." Danny turned headed deeper into the little store. There was a cooler at the back, so he grabbed a tea and two energy drinks. He could almost see Vlad's disapproving stare, but he didn't sleep last night, he has a headache, and he deserves it! 

He was headed back up to the counter when he spotted it. Ibuprofen! And not just ibuprofen, but Excedrin, too. He grabbed one of each and was checking the expiration dates when he felt it. A cold shiver shooting straight down his spine and settling like a block of ice in his stomach. 

"Salam, my friend! It's good to see you again." Danny looked up. He could just see the door over the low shelves. A tall man had just walked in. He looked a couple years older than Danny, wearing a brown leather jacket despite the warm spring day, and a baseball cap pulled down over his black hair and glowing green eyes. 

Danny blinked. Now his eyes were blue, not glowing green. Anyone else would have dismissed it as a trick of the light, but he knew better. He looked away so he wouldn't be caught staring, but he couldn't get that flash of green out of his head. 

And this chill was familiar, but he couldn't put his finger on exactly when he had felt it before. 

"Sir, your order is ready." The shopkeeper's voice broke through his thoughts. He made his way back up to the front, closer to the man his ghost sense was warning him about. He put his purchases on the counter, trying to ignore the way his ghost sense was clawing at the back of his throat. 

The man was speaking to the female shopkeeper in a language that might have been Arabic, but could have been Persian for all he knew the difference. He wasn't acting threatening. He wasn't attacking. He's not causing trouble, so why couldn't he shake this feeling of danger? 

His ghost sense doesn't usually stick around this long, unless there were a lot of ghosts around. The last time he felt this constant sense of dread was when Pariah Dark had invaded.

The shopkeeper read Danny his total, and he swiped his card without listening, because he had just realized where he had felt this chill before.

He accepted his bags and thanked the shopkeeper before leaving the little store, trying to put as much distance between himself and the other man as he could.

The chill dissipated as soon as he left the store, but Danny didn't stop walking until he reached the park. It was the quickest route to the subway station, and he wanted to sit down and think for a second. 

He found a bench a little ways off the path and sat down, popping open the to-go container. The scent of seared beef and saffron rice hit his nose and he forgot his earlier panic in favor of the gnawing hunger. 

The food was just as good as he had hoped it would be. He demolished the whole plate in just a few minutes. He opened his tea and took a sip. Now that he was full and his ghost sense wasn't threatening to throw him into a panic attack he could think clearly.

In all his years as a half-ghost he had never met two people with the same aura. Even related ghosts had noticeably different auras. But that man had the exact same aura as Pariah Dark. His whole lair was infused with his aura, and Danny was very familiar with it. He liked to swing by there whenever he was in the ghost zone just to make sure the tyrant king was still locked up. 

So with Pariah Dark locked up, that eliminated the possibility of overshadowing. And the ghost king would do more than order food if he had broken out and taken a human host. 

He needed to talk to Frostbite. The yeti would probably know, or at least be able to put Danny on the right track. There wasn't much he could do about anything, stuck in Gotham, nine hundred miles from the closest portal. 

Why couldn't his ghost problems stay in Amity Park where they belong?

Chapter Text

Danny was building a model of a space shuttle at the kitchen table when Vlad got back to the hotel. 

"You're back early." He said, not looking up from the pieces he was glueing together. "Was the game cancelled?" 

"No, Daniel, I received a rather interesting call this morning, and decided to cut my trip to Metropolis a little short." He said, putting his overnight bag down outside the door to his room. "Is there anything you want to tell me?" 

Danny kept his expression carefully blank as he searched the other man's face for clues. He had done so many things over the past two days that could end in an 'interesting phone call' but something to cut Vad's trip short? He was definitely dead. "Nothing comes to mind." 

Vlad sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Do you have any idea why Bruce Wayne would invite us to dinner tonight?" 

"I don't know." Danny said with some disbelief. Why would Bruce invite them to dinner? Bruce shouldn't have more than a professional interest in Danny. Sure, he gave him a ride to his interview, and bought him food after, but he was just being nice, right? "I met him yesterday, but I don't know why he would invite us to dinner."

"His Butler said you met at the police station. What were you doing at the police station?" 

"Some thugs tried to mug me, and Kevin heard about it and made the officers bring me in. He was finishing up with Bruce when I was brought in." 

"I can't leave you alone for any amount of time, can I?" 

"I can take care of myself, Vlad." He said, putting the pieces he was working on down.

"Can you, Daniel? You were on your own for two days and you got mugged, nearly arrested, and interrogated by people who want you dead." 

"The GIW don't want me dead, they want to cut me open and experiment on me." He said, picking some errant glue off his finger. 

"Did you even sleep, or are you running on coffee and energy drinks right now?" Vlad asked, ignoring Danny's comment.

"I slept." If you count the half hour nap interrupted by Nocturn and the infuriatingly vague warning. "What do you care, anyway?" He asked with a scowl. 

Vlad looked like he had been slapped for a moment before regning in his expression to his usual calm indifference. "We can discuss this later. As of now, there is a car coming to pick us up in half an hour, and I expect you to be presentable in that time." He said, glancing pointedly at his threadbare t-shirt. 

Danny rolled his eyes and went into his room. It took about three minutes to change into a nicer t-shirt and clean blue jeans. He also pulled on his new NASA hoodie before heading into the bathroom to work on getting the glue off his hands. 

He was back out in the common room with fifteen minutes to spare. Vlad was standing over the kitchen table, looking at his space shuttle. "Don't you already have one of these?"

"No, I have one of the Atlantis. This one is the Discovery. I also got a Lego model of the Curiosity Rover." He said, capping the glue and putting the pieces into the box to keep them safe. 

"Where did you get all this?" He asked.

"I went to the space museum today. It was free admission, but I did make a donation under your name." He said, pulling a paper certificate out of his bag and handing it over to him. "So, congrats, you have a star named after you."

"This says 'Fruitloop'." He said, handing the paper back to the teen.

Danny gave him a shit eating grin. "I have the coordinates, too, so we can find your star when we get back to Amity Park."

Vlad sighed, but didn't address the suggestion. "You can't wear that jacket, it isn't professional."

"Come on, it's dinner, not a dinner party. Besides, he has teenaged sons, do you think they are going to be in three piece suits? Or, whatever it is you have going on all the time." 

"This suit is Armani." He said, sounding offended. 

"And this is NASA. They are worth more than Armani, I'm not changing." He said, slipping his hands into the large front pocket. 

Vlad checked his watch before sighing. "Fine, only because it's time to go." Danny pumped his arm at the small victory before grabbing his backpack and following Vlad to the door. "Leave your bag, Daniel."

"But what if I need it?" He asked, clutching the straps. 

"What could you possibly need during dinner?" 

"I… what if I need my first aid kit? Or what if a ghost attacks and I need a thermos?" Vlad's confused look quickly turned to concern before disappearing back under his mask of indifference. 

"You won't need either of those things, so leave it here." Danny hesitated for a minute before setting his bag back down on a bar stool and followed Vlad to the elevator.

Danny tried to ignore how vulnerable he felt without his backpack. He still had the wrist rays built into his ecto-dampners, but the lack of the familiar weight of his bag made him feel...unprotected. He stuck his hands back into his hoodie pocket. He could still feel glue on his fingers, so he started picking it off. 

As the doors slid closed Vlad spoke up. "Now, I expect you to be on your best behavior. Mind your manners, and keep your temper in check. You remember the incident with David Proctor, I presume."

"Hey, I didn't even want to go to that stupid party, and Proctor was asking to have his nose broken."

"We have been over this, you can't punch someone for having an ego."

"He called himself my 'better' and said I needed to 'know my place.'"

"Is that why you punched him?" Vlad asked as the doors slid open and they exited into the lobby. 

"No, he assaulted a waiter after he was cut off." The kid was definitely not of age, and shouldn't have been drinking in the first place.

"You didn't tell me that." That concerned look was back for just a second. 

Danny shrugged, "You didn't ask, you were too busy yelling at me." The doorman opened the door for them and they stepped outside. 

There was already a black town car waiting for them in the circular driveway. A tall, older man greeted them. "Mr. Masters, Mr. Fenton, it's nice to meet you. I am Alfred, Mr. Wayne's butler." He said with a slight nod.

"It's nice to meet you, Alfred, but please call me Danny." He said, nodding at the man. 

"Of course." The older man opened the door to the back seat and gestured for them to enter. Danny climbed in first and slid all the way over to the door and buckled his seatbelt just as Vlad sat down. Alfred climbed into the driver's seat and they were off. 

They rode in silence for a while, both busy on their phones. Val had found the ghost rabbit's den, but now she wasn't letting anyone near her kits. How they had survived so long without their mother was anyone's guess. They decided to leave her be for now as long as she wasn't hurting anyone. 

Vlad broke the silence after a while. "What about that other boy, Stott?"

He thought for a minute "John Stott? He kept coming on to Sam, then called her a dyke when she refused to dance with him." 

"Always the hero." Vlad said with a shake of his head.

"I don't like bullies, no matter how rich they are." Danny glanced up front and met Alfred's eyes through the rearview mirror. He shifted in his seat. He had almost forgotten the older man was there. 

"Is that why you and Miss. Manson broke up? Because she's-" Danny cut him off before he could finish that sentence. 

"Oh, my God. We are not having this conversation right now!" Danny said, pulling his hood up, trying to disappear into the depths. He understood that she had to be true to herself, but that didn't stop the hurt.

"I'm just trying to take an interest." 

"Well, stop. It's weird." They sat in silence for a while. 

The city fell away behind them, replaced with tree lined suburban streets, which made way for large houses in gated communities. Slowly the developments turned into individual houses set so far back from the road the only way to know there was a house back there was the presence of a gated driveway. 

Alfred pulled the car up to a large wrought iron gate which opened on silent hinges. Danny could see a large house at the end of the driveway. 

"Is that a castle?" 

"That's Wayne Manor, sir. It has been in the family for generations." Alfred answered. 

"It's not that impressive. My place in Wisconsin is far larger."

"Size isn't everything, Vlad. Besides, the Dairy King's castle is a tourist attraction." He said. Sam would be more interested in the gothic architecture then Danny was, but even he could appreciate it.

"It is not a tourist attraction… anymore." The older man said with a huff. Danny just smirked. 

Alfred parked the car right in front of the front steps and Danny climbed out before he turned off the engine. He had been sitting still for too long and he needed to stretch. 

The sound of barking drew his attention away from the carved wooden doorway. A huge black dog was charging toward him.

"Oh, good. They have a dog." Vlad said sardonically, climbing out of the car.

"Titus, stop!" A black haired boy yelled, running after the dog. The command had no effect. 

"Come back here!" A familiar voice yelled. Bruce Wayne was charging up the yard after the boy and the dog.

Titus was almost on him. He looked like a jumper, and this hoodie was brand new. 

"Stop!" Danny commanded. It was the same kind of command he uses on Cujo when the ghost dog gets too rambunctious. The effect was immediate, Titus stopped in his tracks, ears alert, tail wagging low and slow in caution. "Hi, there. You're a good boy, aren't you?" He greeted, crouching down to offer his hand for the dog to sniff. 

"Titus is the best boy." The black haired boy said, scratching behind the Dane's ears. 

"Put a leash on him before he gets away again." Bruce suggested. "Danny, it's nice to see you again."

"Yeah, you too. Thanks for inviting us over." 

"Of course, this is my son, Damian." He said, patting the boy's shoulder. 

"It's nice to meet you, Damian." He said, holding out his hand. The other boy didn't take it, instead he looked Danny up and down.

"Titus doesn't listen to anyone but me. How did you get him to stop?" He asked, sounding almost accusatory.

"I don't know," he said with a shrug. "I just said stop. It always works on Cujo." 

"Who is Cujo? Your dog?"

"No, he's kind of a stray that I take care of." He said, tilting his head in thought. Titus was pushing his massive head into Danny's hand, so he scratched his chin. "Oh, you are the goodest boy, aren't you?" 

"I'm sorry for him, Mr. Wayne." Vlad said, offering his hand to Bruce. "Danny doesn't know how to act around dogs." 

"Don't listen to him, Titus, he's just mad that dogs don't like him." He said, standing up straight. 

"It's alright, Mr. Masters. Damian, put Titus in his kennel before you come inside." 

"Yes, Father." He said. "Come along, Titus." Damian gave the leash a tug and Titus promptly followed him back around the house. 

"Alright, are you ready to head in?" Bruce asked, already climbing the front steps, Vlad and Danny followed. 

The entrance hall was enormous and well decorated. Paintings lined the walls, and an enormous chandelier hung from the ceiling. 

Bruce led them down a hall that seemed clean but well used. The scent of dinner was wafting through the hall, making Danny's mouth water. 

"That smells good." He said, inhaling the scent.

"Alfred is making roast duck, I believe." Bruce said, glancing back at them. "I hope that's alright."

"That sounds good to me." Danny said. He had to remind himself of why he was so nervous for this dinner. Bruce invited them here for a reason, and he had to figure it out. 

Bruce led them to a sitting room with a large TV along one wall, surrounded by case after case of DVDs. Two boys were sitting on the couch watching a movie when they walked in. The older one noticed them first. 

"Hey B, what's up?" He said, sitting on the back of the sofa. 

"Dick, Tim, I'd like you to meet Danny and Mr. Masters.

Dick waved from his perch on the couch, but Tim stood up and shook their hands.

"You boys play nice. I'd like to talk to Vlad before dinner." He said, guiding Vlad out of the room and further into the manor.

"You owe me ten bucks, Dick." Tim said, giving the older man a smug grin. He just sighed and pulled out his wallet.

"You took bets?" This was all feeling familiar. "On what?" 

"I thought you would turn up in a suit." He said, falling backwards onto the couch. 

Danny wrinkled his nose. "If you let Vlad choose, I would only ever wear suits." 

"I don't think wearing a suit would help." 

Danny turned around to see Damian leaning against the door jam with a disdainful scowl. 

He blinked. All the pieces seemed to align. 

That same scowl, eyes obscured by a green mask. 

Damian Wayne was Robin.

"You owe me ten bucks, Wing"

Tim Drake was Red Robin.

“The balcony door was open, B.”

Dick Grayson was Nightwing.

Which could only mean that Bruce Wayne was the Batman.

Chapter Text

All the anxiety that had been buzzing in Danny's chest ever since he first met Batman burst like a bubble. He knew who Batman was. A giggle escaped before he could stop it. Rob- no, Damian narrowed his eyes. 

"What's so funny, Fenton?" 

"Nothing, sorry." Danny realized that he didn't register what Damian had said. "What were we talking about?" 

The kid sucked his teeth and his scowl deepend. "Father said you were smart, I see he was wrong."

"Yeah, no." Danny said with a laugh, rubbing the back of his neck. "I'm probably the dumbest person I know." His thoughts were buzzing with this new information. Should he tell them?

"I'm sure that's not true," Tim said, turning off the TV. 

Danny laughed again. "I know several teachers who would disagree with you." He should probably keep it a secret, at least for now.

Tim looked at him with confusion. "You are one of the finalists for the scholarship, right? You have to be pretty smart to even qualify for that." He said, taking his seat back on the couch. 

"That's right," Dick rolled back, letting his body slide back until his head was hanging off the seat of the couch and his legs were kicking in the air. "Bruce was telling us about your force field. You gotta be smart to make something like that." 

"I guess." He said, more to stop the conversation than because he agreed with what they were saying. One thing he knew for sure, he needed to get his head straight. "Um… is there a bathroom I can use? I need to wash my hands." 

Damian directed him to an immaculately clean bathroom a few doors down from the lounge. He washed his hands, scrubbing at the dirt that seemed permanently embedded in his nail beds before turning off the water and looking at himself in the mirror. 

"I know who Batman is." He whispered quietly, giggling like a child. Then the gravity of the situation hit him all at once.

"I know who Batman is." He whispered, breathless. They knew that he was Phantom, but Phantom was no one.

Batman was a legend. 

And Danny was freaking out in his bathroom! 

"Okay, it's okay, Fenton. Just get through dinner, and figure out what to do later." Jazz would know what to do. But… no, he couldn't tell Jazz. The more people who knew, the more likely it was that the information would fall into the wrong hands. He could only imagine the damage that someone like Vlad could do with this knowledge. 

Shit.

Vlad.

Vlad can never know about this. 

A knock at the door startled him out of his quickly spiraling thoughts "Are you okay in there, Danny?" Dick. 

"Uh, yeah, I'm fine." He pulled open the door and was met with a concerned frown.

"Okay, we were going to play Uno, do you want to join?" Dick asked, still looking concerned.

"Yeah, sounds like fun!" He said, a little too quickly.

"You have sixteen cards in your hand, Fenton, and you don't have a single green one?" Damian asked, glaring at the Wild Draw Four. 

"Nope, not one." He said with a smirk. Damian had Uno and was about to win for the third time in a row. Danny had made it his mission to stop him.

"That is statistically impossible. You have to have at least one green card." 

"Are you challenging me?"

"Yes. Let me see your cards." 

Danny shrugged and handed over his cards. The younger boy flipped through them, getting more and more frustrated. "Fine, I'll draw four." He said with a scowl.

"No, you challenged and lost, you have to draw six." Tim said, giving Danny a small smile. Tim was helping him take down the reigning champ.

Damian didn't respond, just drew his six cards in silence. 

"What color is it now?" Tim asked.

"Red."

Tim nodded and played his card, followed by Dick. Danny played a skip and Damian groaned in frustration. Tim played a draw two, forcing Dick to skip his turn. 

"Uno." Tim said. Danny grinned and played a reverse. Dick played an eight and Tim won by putting down his last wild card. 

Damian threw his cards down. "You cheated!" He said, pointing at Danny. "How can you have not had a single green card unless you cheated?" 

"Cause I had all the green cards." Dick said, laying his cards on the table. Sure enough half his hand was green. 

"This is a stupid game." 

"It wasn't stupid when you were winning." Tim said, gathering up the cards and shuffling them.

Damian was quiet for a few seconds. "I'm going to go see if dinner is ready." He said, standing up and leaving the room.

"Sorry, should I have let him win?" Danny asked. 

"No, he's just not good at losing." Dick said, standing up from the floor and stretching. "I'll go check on him." He said before leaving Danny and Tim alone. 

"So…Damian is a little…" Danny started, waving his hand vaughly in the air.

"Bratty?" Tim asked with a snort,

"I was gonna say 'high-strung.'" Danny laughed, leaning back against the couch. "I don't think he likes me very much." 

"Don't take it personally. He doesn't like anyone very much." He said, putting the Uno cards back in their place. 

"Master Tim, Master Danny, dinner is served in the dining room." Alfred said, breaking the awkward silence.

"Oh, good. I'm starving." Tim said before practically bolting from the room. 

Danny followed at a much more sedate pace, wringing his hands in his hoodie pocket.

The dining room was smaller than he was expecting. Danny would call it 'cozy' if it weren't so luxuriously furnished. The table was perfectly sized for all six people to sit around comfortably, but could still easily speak to each other. 

Bruce sat at the head of the table, looking relaxed and at ease, having a quiet conversation with Damian on his right. Tim sat on his right, typing furiously on his phone. Danny met eyes with Vlad, who was looking pleased with himself at the other end of the table. That expression rarely boded well. 

He took a seat next to Tim, and Dick sat down opposite him. The table was already set with steaming dishes of roasted vegetables, mashed sweet potatoes, glazed carrots, and a spinach and mushroom salad. 

Alfred brought in a large covered dish and sat it down in front of Bruce. He pulled the cover off revealing a perfectly crispy roasted duck. The scent made Danny's mouth water. 

"Thank you, Alfred, everything looks delicious." Bruce said. He cut the duck, serving it up to everyone except Damian, who took an extra serving of salad. 

After an awkward few minutes Dick broke the silence. "So, Danny, who is your favorite superhero?" 

"Zorro." He said with no hesitation. 

"Really? Why is that?" Bruce asked. There was something in his voice that Danny couldn't pinpoint.

"He's a nobleman who fights for commoners and indigenous people, people who were barely considered people at the time. He uses his position of power to give a voice to the voiceless." Danny explained. He took a bite of potatoes before continuing. "The Curse of Capistrano was one of my favorite books growing up." He left out the fact that it was one of the few books in the house that wasn't science related.

"That would resonate with you, Daniel." Vlad said in a way that made it sound like an insult.

"I kind of meant a real superhero." Dick said, scrunching up his nose.

"Zorro is as good an answer as any." Bruce said. Danny gave him a grateful smile. He didn't have a favorite real life superhero, they always had a way of letting you down.

Dick and Damian started a conversation about heros, and Tim, Bruce and Vlad started talking about business. Danny tuned them all out. 

His hoodie kept catching on his ecto-dampners, and it was starting to get on his nerves. He would have to redesign them to be more streamlined. He wondered if he could use the aluminum and fiberglass that Mr. Fox had suggested to remake the dampeners. It would lighten them, for sure. 

"What do you think, Danny?" Bruce asked, cutting through his musings. 

"I'm sorry, what do I think of what?" Vlad groaned beside him. 

"I'm thinking of opening a branch of Wayne Enterprises in Amity Park." Bruce said. 

Danny blinked. "Oh. Amity is kind of a small town, though. Wouldn't a bigger city like Chicago or Saint Louis be better?" 

"We already have a headquarters in Chicago," Tim said, "and we have been looking to expand into smaller towns." 

They can't be serious. They know about the ghosts, why would they...

Oh.

Bruce Wayne needs a reason to be in a small town in the middle of Illinois. He must be serious about helping to free Mina.

"You should visit, then, before you decide." He said. "There's a summer festival at the end of June."

"Oh, yes. The Solstice celebration." Vlad said. "It certainly is something to behold." 

"Then it's settled." Bruce said with a grin. "I'll have Alfred make the arrangements right away." 

After dinner Alfred served a delicious strawberry tart for dessert, then everyone retired to the library for coffee. 

"Tell me about this Solstice celebration thing." Dick said, flopping onto the couch next to Danny. 

"It's kind of like a harvest festival, with food stands and carnival games. Some people come and sell their crafts and things like that. The main thing, though, is the bonfire. It's lit at sunset on the solstice, and kept burning until dawn the next day. It's supposed to keep evil spirits and ghosts away." 

"That sounds like superstitious nonsense." Damian said, sipping his tea. 

"It sounds like witchcraft, to me." Tim responded. 

"Some of the founders of Amity Park were supposedly witches fleeing the witch trials in Europe, it would make sense that they would start traditions that would protect the town." Danny said. Alfred handed him a cup of coffee and he drank it gratefully. He could feel eyes on him, all three boys were staring at him. "What?"

"You did not just casually drop that your home town was founded by witches." Dick said. 

"That's what they told us in school, anyway." Danny said. 

"You can't actually believe in witchcraft." Damian said, his usual scowl back is full force.

Danny shrugged. "I don't see a reason it can't be real." 

"It doesn't make any sense." Danny could tell the boy was getting frustrated. 

"Is everything alright over there?" Bruce called out from the chess board that he and Vlad were hunched over.

"Everything is fine." He grumbled.

"Good, try and keep the noise level to a dull roar." 

"Yes, Father." 

"Sorry, I didn't mean to upset you." Danny said gently.

"You didn't. You just don't make any sense." Damian growled before stalking out of the room. 

"He really doesn't like me." Danny said, shaking his head. 

"He's like that with most people." Dick said, rifling through an end table drawer. "Yes! I found a deck of cards! Do you know how to play Rummy?" 

Dick, Tim and Danny played a few rounds of Rummy before it was time to go. 

"Before you go, can I see your phone?" Tim asked, holding out his hand expectantly. They were standing outside at the bottom of the front steps while Alfred brought the car around.

"Um…" Danny thought of how proficient a hacker Red Robin was, "no?" 

Tim huffed a small laugh. "I just wanted to give you my number." 

"Oh," Danny pulled out his phone and opened a new text message "go ahead." Tim gave him the number and Danny sent a quick 'hi' message so he would have his number, too.

"Alright, I guess I'll see you later, then." He said, waving.

"Right, see you later." Danny said with a smile. 

"Danny, it was good having you over." Bruce said, clapping him on the shoulder.

"Yeah, thanks for having us, I had a great time." Danny said. Alfred had stopped the car in the driveway and he climbed in while Vlad said his goodbyes, then they were off back to the hotel.

Chapter Text

Just one day. That's all he's asking for, just one normal day, without a ghost attack or a visit from a vigilante, or something crazy happening. But, no. No! The half ghost kid is a trouble magnet, and he has to deal with this… nonsense! 

'Go to the bank' they said 'it'll be fine' they said, 'no one robs banks anymore' except in fricken Gotham city, apparently!

Danny followed one of the robbers with his eyes. He was waving a large assault rifle in the air, demanding everyone get on the ground and making vague threats about what he would do if anyone so much as sneezed. A second robber was zip tying everyone's hands behind their backs. 

Danny looked around quickly, he saw six people. An elderly couple, the teller who had been helping him withdraw some cash, a loan officer, the bank manager, and himself. Zip ties and Assault rifle had six hostages. 

He should be scared, he thought as he sat on the floor, hands tied behind his back. He really should be scared. Everyone else was scared. Zip ties pushed the bank manager to the ground, and she let out a frightened whimper. He was saying something to her, but he was too far away to hear. She was shaking her head and crying, which just seemed to make zip ties angry. He held a pistol to her temple and Danny decided he'd had enough.

"Hey, idiots!" He yelled, getting his legs under him. "Why don't you pick on someone your own size?" He phased out of the zip ties, but kept his hands behind his back as he stood.

"You think you're brave, little man? You want to be a hero?" Assault rifle asked, aiming the weapon at his chest.

Yep, okay, there's the fear. He took a deep breath, willing his heart rate to slow. "Let her go." He said, with all the calm confidence he could muster.

Zip ties dropped the bank manager and turned the gun on him. "What's it to you, short stuff?" The man stalked closer to him, aiming at his head. He saw something, a flicker of movement and color in the corner of his eye. Something brown and bright red had slipped into the building using a window on the upper floor.

Danny licked his lips before speaking. His heart was hammering in his chest, but his voice was steady. "Let them go, and I'll go easy on you." He said with false bravado. What is he doing? He fights ghosts, not bank robbers!

"Oh, is that so?" Zip ties asked, taunting him. He was close, now. Danny could take him out with a good leap. "And what, exactly, are you going to do?" 

As if on cue, the power to the building was cut, plunging the whole room into darkness. 

Danny moved without thinking, tackling Zip ties to the ground. A gunshot went off very close to his head, deafening him in one ear, but he managed to knock the gun out of the man's hand and sent it skittering away across the marble floor. He overshot his target, though, and his momentum carried him off the other man. 

He recovered quickly, twisting around in the air and landing in a crouch. He could see in the dim light someone was fighting with Assault rifle, and the loan officer was herding everyone into a back office. 

Zip ties was getting to his feet now, looking around in the darkness for his gun. Before he had a chance to find it Danny attacked again. The man was bigger than him, and had more experience in street fights, but Danny could see, and Zip ties couldn't. 

The man didn't see Danny's fist before it connected to his cheek, and he couldn't see his kick before he was doubled over, wheezing on the ground. 

He used some zip ties from the packet sticking out of the man's pocket to tie his hands behind his back before turning to see Assault rifle go down, unconscious from a blow to the back of the head. 

Danny got his first real good look at the other man then. He was wearing a brown leather jacket and a red helmet that he recognized immediately.

"Red Hood." He whispered. A block of ice traveled down his spine and settled heavy in his stomach. He sensed the other man's aura now, familiar and oppressive. The man took a step toward him, and he took a step back. 

The man from the bodega was Red Hood. 

"Kid." A modulated voice said, emotion impossible to read.

His hands were shaking, and his right shoulder was starting to burn. Red Hood shared an aura with Pariah Dark. He didn't know what that meant, but it couldn't be anything good.

"You're bleeding." He said. 

Danny put his hand on his burning shoulder and felt something warm and wet. He swallowed against the nausea that was threatening to empty his stomach on the floor. "'M fine." He got shot? How could he have gotten shot? Sam and Jazz would never let him out of their sights again.

Red Hood took a step forward. Danny took a step back. "You're going to pass out if we don't stop the bleeding." Step forward, step back. "You need a hospital." 

"No!" He couldn't go to the hospital. They would run blood work, see the anomalies and he'd end up in a lab. Blackness was gathering at the edges of his vision.

"Okay." Red Hood said, stepping forward again. Danny stepped back, but was met with the counter. "If you don't want to go to the hospital, then we have to get out of here before the cops come." Step forward, Danny had nowhere to go. "Let me help you." 

Danny's knees felt weak, and he was starting to sweat. The darkness was overtaking his vision. He just needed to sit down for a second. He hit the ground with a heavy thump.

"I'm going to put a pressure bandage on your shoulder to stop the bleeding." That was the last thing he registered before the burning in his shoulder was replaced with blinding pain that radiated down his arm and up his neck and the darkness overtook him. 

Jason wasn't a stalker. He hadn't meant to run into the ghost kid at the bodega. Amin and Sima make the best kebab in the whole city, and it was just a coincidence that the kid was there. 

But he couldn't ignore how the Pit flared up when he got close to him. Not with rage, though, more like recognition. Like when you see someone you think you should know, but can't quite remember. The kid, Danny, hadn't acknowledged it, so he had done the same. 

He did notice, though, how Danny's hands had shook when he swiped his card, and how his voice wavered when he thanked Amin for the food, and how he all but ran from the shop. 

Whatever Danny had felt when he saw Jason had scared him.

Jason wasn't a stalker, but he had followed Danny to the science museum, making sure to keep his distance so he wouldn't see him. He had read all the information the bats had gathered on ghosts in general, and Danny specifically. It was frustratingly little. 

And, yes, he had followed Danny to the bank that morning, but he wasn't stalking him. He was worried. This kid had taken on ghosts, and muggers, lied to government agents with a straight face, and stood up to the freakin' Batman, but the sight of Jason Todd in his civvies sent him running. He needed to know why. 

He was going to just watch him, see what he did and where he went, maybe confront him later at the hotel. Then the robbers showed up and blew a hole in his plan. 

Who paints a target on themselves in the middle of a robbery? It was the stupidest thing he'd seen anyone do in a long time. 

He'd be surprised if Bruce hadn't already drawn up adoption papers. 

Danny had come-to sometime on the ride to his safehouse, so he helped him inside to the couch. 

"Stay there." Danny gave him a hazy look, not quite back to his full capacity. He took off his helmet and hurried to the bathroom to grab the med-kit. Danny was trying to stand when he came back. "Sit." 

"I'm fine." He said, wobbling. Jason gently pushed him back down to the couch. 

"You got shot and lost a lot of blood." He said, setting the kit on the arm of the couch. "I need to look at your shoulder." 

"I'll be fine, I heal quick. I need to go, my uncle is waiting for me." He said, trying to stand again. Jason put his hand on his good shoulder and kept him down, he tried not to sigh. He knew Danny didn't trust him, he wasn't sure why he expected him to cooperate. 

"Why don't you call him then, let him know you're going to be late." He knew Danny was bluffing. Masters had left early in the morning, heading for New York. Sure enough, Danny sighed and stopped trying to stand. 

He carefully pulled the bandage back from the wound. "It's a graze, but it's deep. You need stitches." The bleeding had stopped, at least. 

"I'm fine, just let me go." Danny said, staring resolutely at the coffee table.

"And have Bats after me for letting his newest protege get an infection? I don't think so. Take your shirt off." Danny made no move to comply.

"I'm not…I'm just a kid from Illinois, I'm not anyone's protege." 

"Right, like the Bats haven't been to see you every day since you got here, Danny." 

Icy blue eyes snapped to him, cold and calculating. They reminded him of Bruce's eyes when he's trying to solve a particularly difficult case. 

"That's right, I know all about you, Phantom, and I don't care how fast you heal, that wound needs to be cleaned and stitched." Confusion and understanding warred with each other in Danny's expression. 

"You're Jason Todd." He said it like it was a fact that didn't make sense.

Jason rolled his eyes. Kid must be good if Bruce told him the family secret already. Figures he'd leave the black sheep out of it. "Shirt off." 

Danny didn't move, staring into his eyes. Suddenly, Danny's eyes glowed toxic green, and the pit reared up to match, tinting everything emerald before fading away. When the world was the right color again Danny was watching him like he was a tiger who could attack at any moment.

"Don't do that. Take your shirt off before I cut it off." Finally Danny pulled his shirt off, carefully maneuvering it over his injured shoulder. "What was that?" He asked as he set to work flushing the wound with antiseptic. 

Danny responded, hissing in pain at the sting of the antiseptic. "The ectoplasm in your body reacting to the ectoplasm in mine." 

"I don't have ectoplasm in my body." Unless by ectoplasm he means Lazarus water.

"So you haven't come across any glowing green substances, about the consistency of glue?" He asked, wincing as Jason patted the wound dry. 

He didn't respond, that did sound an awful lot like Lazarus water. "I'm going to wash my hands before I stitch you up."

He took off his jacket and scrubbed his hands up to the elbow before grabbing a wooden spoon and heading back to the couch. "You're going to want to bite on this, I don't have any lidocaine." He said, handing the spoon to Danny before putting on sterile gloves and opening the suture kit. 

To his credit, Danny didn't jerk away or flinch too badly during the procedure. The way he breathed, deep, even, deliberate, made Jason think this wasn't his first time being stitched up without anesthetic. The thought made something protective bloom in his chest. 

He tied off the last stitch and put a large gauze pad over it. "I don't think I need to tell you this, but try not to get them wet." 

"Yeah, not my first time having stitches." Danny said, "Can I go now?" He asked, standing up from the couch as Jason packed the med kit up. He got his first good look at the kid, then. 

Danny was small. Not just short, but thin. Far too thin. Silvery white scars, like branches of lightning arced across his chest from his left arm. He crossed his arms over his chest, his ruined shirt hanging from one hand. 

"You are going to tell me why you're scared of me, and then I'm going to call someone to come get you."

Chapter Text

Danny stood in front of the bathroom mirror, dabbing at the blood that had dried on his neck and chest. Red Hood-Jason Todd, had told him… ordered him?-Said he should clean up while he made lunch. 

The domestic terrorist Red Hood was making him lunch. 

What even was his life anymore?

His phone buzzed in his pocket and he jumped. He pulled it out and frowned at the incoming message.

Tim

This meeting is boring as hell. What are you up to? 

It took Danny a second to catch back up to the fact that real life is still going on outside of his own drama, and another to remember …Tim was Red Robin… a slow smile crept across his face. The instinct to mess with someone was too hard to resist. 

Danny

Got shot in a bank robbery and kidnapped by Red Hood.

The usual.

Three dots appeared, disappeared, and appeared again as Tim struggled to respond.

Tim

That's not funny, Danny.

Danny

I'm not laughing.

He sent a selfie showing his blood covered shoulder and stitches for good measure. Tim didn't text back right away. He heard Jason answer his phone in the next room, but he couldn't hear anything that was said. 

Tim

Send me your location.

I'll get someone to come get you.

Danny

I'm fine.

He's making lunch and it smells really good.

I can get myself back to the hotel.

Tim

No,

That's a bad idea

Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?

You'll get mugged.

Danny

Been there, done that.

I'll be fine

Tim

Stay there until someone comes to get you.

Don't be stupid.

Danny

I feel like I should be offended

But I am pretty stupid

So you are forgiven

Tim

I have no response to that.

Danny counted that as a win, if you could win conversations. He finished cleaning up, putting a thin layer of his ice over the wound to help with the pain, and went into the kitchen where Jason was cooking some kind of pasta. 

"Took you long enough." He said. "Tim should be here in a bit to get you."

"Yeah, he texted me." Danny said, standing awkwardly, arms crossed over his bare chest. "He said he was going to call someone to come get me."

"He told me… wait… do they not know that you know?" He asked. 

"Oh, no. I figured it out yesterday, and I haven't had a chance to tell anyone yet." He said, suppressing a shiver. 

Jason studied him for a minute, hmming in thought. "I grabbed a shirt for you." He said gesturing to a bundle of cloth on the counter.

Danny grabbed the shirt and pulled it on. It was a Wonder Woman shirt, far too large for him, but it was soft, and it beat standing around shirtless. He wasn't going to complain. "Thanks." 

"So, how did you figure the bats out?" Jason asked, spooning up a bowl of pasta and handing it to Danny. 

"Batman has a scar, and Robin has a permanent scowl." He said, taking a bite of his pasta. It was really good. It seemed to be just bowties, tuna, and parmesan, but it was delicious. He must have been eating too fast, because Jason noticed.

"Ha! The old man got made by a scar?" He laughed "I am never letting him live that down." He said, digging into his own pasta. Danny was already half way through his own bowl. Jason noticed. "Hungry?" He scoffed.

"Always. Increased metabolism is a side effect of the ghost powers." He took another bite.

Jason hmmed. "At the bodega, was that another side effect?"

"What do you mean?"

"You knew I was there before you saw me." 

Danny sighed and set his empty bowl down on the counter. "One of my abilities is called 'ghost sense'. I 'sensed' you when you walked in." 

"You sensed me." He repeated. "And that scared you?" 

"A ghost's presence, or 'aura' or whatever it is is unique. I've never met two ghosts who 'feel' the same." He said, crossing his arms over his chest. "Until you." 

Jason narrowed his eyes at him "I'm not a ghost." 

"I know." 

"How can you sense me if I'm not a ghost?"

"It's not limited to just ghosts. People with a strong presence, or highly ecto-contaminated people can also trigger my sense."

Jason was quiet for a minute. Danny could almost see him turning that information over in his head. 

"Who do I feel like?" 

"His name is Pariah Dark. He was king of all ghosts for… I'm not sure how long. All of recorded history."

"You're scared of him." It wasn't a question.

Danny shrugged, and winced when it shot pain through his shoulder. "All ghosts are scared of him."

"Why? What did he do?"

"What didn't he do? He's guilty of every war crime ever conceived of, including some that he invented himself." Danny answered. "His ultimate goal was the subjugation and/or destruction of the whole world and everything in it." 

They were quiet for a while while Jason digested that information. He supposed it was a lot to take in, being told you had the same presence as a tyrannical warlord. 

"You said he 'was' king. Is he not King anymore?" 

"No, the Ancients defeated him, locked him in the Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep, and broke up the kingdom." 

Jason hmmed in thought. "So, why do I have the same presence as this Pariah Dark guy?"

Danny rubbed the back of his neck in thought, "It has something to do with the ectoplasm in your body, but-" the rest of his sentence was cut off by a window opening in the living room 

Jason reacted immediately, grabbing a gun, from where, Danny didn't know, and went to the doorway out of the kitchen. Danny turned, peering over Jason's shoulder as Tim slipped through the window in full Red Robin gear.

"The hell are you doing, Red?" He asked, slipping the gun into a hidden holster. "Can't you use the door like a normal person?"

Tim gave Jason a glare before shifting his attention to Danny. "Are you alright?" He asked.

"I'm fine, this is probably the nicest kidnapping I'd ever been a part of." He said "six out of ten, would be kidnapped again." 

"Six out of ten?" Jason said, sounding almost offended. "After I fed you and stitched up your shoulder?" 

"Yeah, I had to deduct points for the lack of anesthetic, and the interrogation." Danny said with a smile. Now that Tim was here he felt a bit more comfortable. 

"The niceness of the kidnapping aside, are you ready to be rescued?" He asked. 

"In a bit, we aren't done with our conversation." Jason said. 

"Right, you were going to tell me where your ectoplasm came from." Danny said, turning to Jason. 

"Ectoplasm? Do you mean Lazarus water?" Red Robin asked. 

"Lazarus who, now?" Danny asked. 

"There are these… pools… called Lazarus Pits that can heal people who have been seriously injured and would otherwise die." Jason said. "But the revival comes at a cost." 

"It's called 'pit madness'." Tim continued when Jason fell silent. "Basically, it's temporary homicidal rage."

Danny hmmed. "Ectoplasm doesn't cause that. It has some restorative properties, but only under specific conditions." He said. "And I'm not sure it would work on someone who isn't already ecto-contaminated." Pools of rage-inducing ectoplasm that can save people from death? That was bad news with a capital B. "How many are there?"

Red Robin shifted on his feet, cape swishing on the wooden floor. "There are only a few of them."

"Where are they?" He asked.

Tim shifted again, "Well..."

Danny tilted his head. "You don't know." 

"It's complicated." Tim said defensively, crossing his arms over his chest. "It's not like they're on Google maps." 

"Being guarded by an immortal assassin makes it harder to track them all down, too." Jason said. 

Danny blinked. "I'm sorry, what?" 

"Ra's Al Ghul has been using the Lazarus Pits to extend his life for thousands of years." Red Robin continued. "He's extremely possessive of them."

Danny hmmed. That name sounded familiar, but he couldn't put his finger on why. One thing was for sure, if these pits were connected to Pariah Dark then they were a problem. Being used by an immortal assassin was just icing on the cake. He really would have to ask Frostbite about it once he got back to Amity Park. 

"Does everyone who uses the pits end up with ecto-contamination?" He asked. Jason shifted on his feet.

"I'm not contaminated." He said defensively.

"I can see it in your eyes." When he didn't answer, Danny continued. "I'm going to make some guesses. You heal faster than other people. You don't use anesthesia for sutures, possibly because you metabolize it too fast for it to be effective. You're faster, stronger, and more durable than normal. Your emotions are stronger than they used to be-"

"Okay, stop." Jason said, holding up his hand. "So I'm ecto-contaminated. Now what? Is there a way to remove it?"

"I'm not an ecto-biologist, but I can ask Frostbite. To be honest, it might do more harm than good." Danny said, frowning. "Ectoplasm is generally pretty safe."

"Who's Frostbite?" Tim asked.

"He's kind of like my mentor. I wanted to ask him about some things anyway." Like why he's scarring all of a sudden.

"When are you going?" 

"We will go home late tomorrow, so probably Wednesday." 

"Okay, I'm coming with you." Jason said.

Danny laughed. "No you aren't. The ghosts won't be too happy to have someone with your aura showing up in the ghost zone." 

"What, are you saying I'll scare the ghosts?" 

"That's exactly what I'm saying." Danny said firmly. "The last time Pariah Dark was freed all the ghosts evacuated the ghost zone and took over Amity Park. I don't want to deal with that again." 

Danny and Jason glared at each other for a few seconds before Jason sighed. "Fine. You go ask your mentor, and let me know what he says."

"Alright. Give me your number and I'll text you when I have answers." Danny said, pulling out his phone. Jason gave him a number and Danny saved it in his phone. 

"Okay, now get out of here. And use the door this time, Red." Jason said, shooing them to the door. 

"Alright, we're going." Tim said. 

Tim led Danny down the stairs and out a side door that led to an alley where a red motorcycle was parked. Danny gave it an appreciative look. "Nice bike." 

"Thanks." Tim said, handing him a helmet. "Do you want me to take you back to the hotel? Or do you want to do something else?" 

"Don't you have to get back to work or something?" He asked. Tim gave him a look like he was trying to solve a puzzle before responding carefully.

"No, I took the rest of the day off." Tim said, fiddling with his own helmet. "Danny, do you know?" 

"Do I know what?" He asked, false innocence on his face. 

"Do you know who I am?" He asked. 

"Yeah, you're Red Robin." He said with a shit eating grin. 

"Okay, let me try again, have we met outside of masks?" 

Danny's grin didn't falter. "You'd know better than I would." He said.

Tim sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Next time I come to dinner we should play Monopoly." Danny said, putting the helmet on. 

"Last time we played Monopoly Robin didn't talk to me for a month." Tim said with a grin. "So we should definitely do that." 

Chapter Text

Tim drove Danny to an underground parking garage not too terribly far from Jason's apartment. They went down to the bottom level, stopping at a seemingly blank stretch of wall. He pressed his hand to a section which turned out to be a hand scanner. The scanner popped out a keypad, which Tim input a long string of numbers into before a section of the wall slid open just wide enough for the bike to fit through. 

"Fancy." Danny said, looking around the room. There was a large computer against the far wall, a training area complete with dummies, and punching bags, and a workbench with half finished gadgets spread out on it. His fingers twitched to get his hands on some of the tech. "I have a secret lair, too." Of course, his secret lair was in his parent's basement. 

"It's not a secret lair, that makes it sound villainous." Tim said, parking the bike. "It's just the Brownstone. Like a second Batcave, but mostly for us Robins. B doesn't come here much." 

"Ah, so it's the Robin's Nest." He said, casting a longing glance at the workbench as they walked towards the computer. 

Tim huffed a quiet laugh, but didn't comment. "B is going to want you to write a report."

"A report?"

"Yeah, like a post mission report, detailing what happened." Tim said, logging into the computer. "We will need two reports, actually. One for the bank robbery-turned kidnapping, and one for the security breach." 

"Security breach? You brought me here." 

"Not… no. How do you know our identities?" Tim clarified.

"Oh...who said I know your identity, Tim?"

"Who's Tim?" He asked deadpan. Danny blinked once before Tim broke into a grin, pulling off his mask. "I can't believe you let me get all dressed up to come get you when you knew all along."

"Sorry, there wasn't a good time to say anything." Danny said, rubbing his neck. "I only figured it out yesterday." 

"Right before you went to 'wash your hands' for ten minutes?" Tim asked, sitting down at the computer. 

"Yeah." Danny said, wandering over to the workbench. A half built grapple gun caught his eye, and he put his hands in his pockets to keep himself from grabbing it. Tim wasn't looking at him, his focus on the computer. 

"What tipped you off?" He asked, typing something.

"Damian's scowl. But I probably wouldn't have connected him and Robin if I hadn't already suspected Bruce of being Batman." There were a few prototype batarangs in different shapes, as well as small disk-blades. For vigilantes so against killing, they had no problem using deadly knives on people.

"When did you first suspect Bruce and why?" He asked, all business.

"I noticed that Bruce and Batman have the same scar on Saturday." He said, glancing at Tim. He wasn't watching him. He probably shouldn't touch anything, but he wanted to know how you were supposed to retract the blades on the disk.

Tim turned to look at Danny. "You met us on Friday." He said.

"Yeah." He said, "I know." He said, looking over his shoulder at the other boy. 

Tim steepled his fingers and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. "You knew Batman for less than twenty four hours and figured out his identity." Danny was getting used to the way the bats all seemed to ask questions without asking them.

"Well," he said, turning toward Tim "I suspected his identity. I didn't know it until last night." 

"That's still seventy two hours from first meeting to discovery." He said, turning back and typing some more on the computer. "Alright, now the bank robbery." 

"Do we have to do this?" Danny asked. 

"Yes, we have to write a report after every mission." Tim said.

"But, I wasn't on a mission, I was making a withdrawal. And I'm technically a civilian, right? So I shouldn't have to do homework." He said, pulling his eyes away from the work table. 

"Just humor me, okay? How many assailants were there?"

Danny sighed and complied, answering Tim's questions. Two assailants, one with an assault rifle and one with a handgun, maybe a 9mm. Six hostages. What is an exit strategy? Tim sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose at that. 

"You didn't have any plan, you just stood up in the middle of a bank robbery. What were you thinking?" He asked.

"I was thinking someone had a gun to the bank manager's head and I had to do something about it." He said. "Can we do something else now?" He didn't want to have to explain that his obsession had forced him to act. 

"Danny, do you have a death wish?" Tim asked, truly sounding concerned. 

"I'm a ghost, Tim. I'm already dead." He said, a small smile tugging at his lips. 

“That's not funny.” he said, turning back to the computer. 

“It's a little bit funny.” he said, quietly picking up the disk blade.

“Put it back.” Tim said without looking. 

“Okay, Dad.” he said, putting the blade back and walking over to stand behind the computer chair.

“So you rushed the robber with the 9mm and subdued him. Then what?” 

“Ugh.” Danny complained. 

“Why do you hate this so much?” he asked. 

“Vlad does this. 'Where'd you go, who was there, what exactly happened, why didn’t you do this instead?’ I hate having to defend myself and my decisions all the time. I did what I did and everything is fine. I don’t understand why everyone is so worried.” he could feel his irritation rising.

Tim paused for a second and turned to face him. “I can’t speak for Vlad, but it sounds like he’s concerned for you.” Danny rolled his eyes. Vlad worried about him? That’s ridiculous. “I’ve known you for three days and I can already tell you’re reckless, you don’t think before you act, you don’t take injuries seriously, and you have little to no regard for your own safety.” he said, counting them off on his fingers. “If I was your guardian, I’d be worried, too.”    

Danny sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. He wanted to argue, but he couldn’t counter Tim’s assessment. Jazz, Sam and Tucker have been telling him the same things for years, but the idea of Vlad being concerned for his safety? He couldn’t wrap his mind around it. “After I rushed the gunman his gun went off. I knocked him down, and tied him up. Red Hood had already taken care of the other guy. I must have blacked out, ‘cause the next thing I know I’m on his motorcycle. You know the rest.” 

Tim finished writing the report before saving in and turning back toward Danny. “Alright, that's done. Now I’m going to get changed and we are going to do something fun.” 

He led Danny to an elevator, which let out in an immaculately clean loft apartment. The open kitchen looked out over the living room, brightly lit by the sunny day outside the large sliding glass door. He could see a seating arrangement on the balcony, centered around a low table with a firepit in the center. 

“Are you allowed to have fires on the balcony?” he asked. 

“I own the building, who’s going to tell me no?” Tim responded, heading down a short hallway to what Danny assumed was his bedroom. He didn’t follow. 

Instead, he looked around the apartment. He was afraid to touch anything, since it looked like it was set up for a magazine photoshoot. The kitchen looked like it had never been cooked in. Even the kitchen at Vlad’s place was obviously used, even Mary came through to clean once a week. The only appliance that looked like it got any use in Tim’s kitchen was the espresso machine, because of course Tim would have an espresso machine instead of a drip coffee maker like a normal person. 

“Alright” Tim said, walking back into the room wearing blue jeans and a red button down shirt left open over a black Superman t-shirt. He threw a plain blue t-shirt to Danny, who caught it easily. “I thought one of my shirts would fit better than Jason’s.” 

Danny shrugged and pulled off the much too-large Wonder Woman shirt and tugged the new shirt on. It did fit much better than Jason’s shirt. Him and Tim were about the same size, even if Tim was just a hair taller.

“Alright, since you’re leaving tomorrow, you have to see all the important sights today. Lucky for you, you have a personal guide. Someone who knows Gotham inside and out.” 

“Oh, cool. Who’s that? Dick?” Danny asked, which earned him a lighthearted shove from Tim.

Tim, true to his word, showed Danny all the important sights. First, they went to the only coffee shop in the city that would put six shots of espresso into a cup of Death Wish coffee. Their menu guaranteed “heart palpitations or your money back.” The barista greeted Tim by name and started his drink without being asked for his order. 

Next they went to an arcade. It wasn’t very crowded, so they had their pick of all the games. Tim chose a first person Zombie shooter game. Neither of them missed a shot, earning them the high score. 

“You’re a good shot. I didn’t think you had any weapons training.” he said as they put in their initials. 

“I’ve never used a real gun, but I am very accurate with a wrist ray.” he said, fiddling with his ecto dampner. “It's not much different.” 

“What other weapons do you use?” Tim asked.

“I don’t really use weapons. I have my ghost ray, and the wrist ray when I can’t use my powers.” he said, looking around the arcade. "Let's play that one next."

Danny chose a fighting game that pit heros against each other. "We don't have this game in Amity. It's kinda weird to play real heroes." He said, picking Wonder Woman. 

"Yeah," Tim said, choosing Superman. "It's part of the reason I don't really play this game." 

The match started, and Danny attacked. Tim tried to retaliate, but Danny already had him backed into a corner. 

"Shit. Shit. Shit" Tim cursed as Wonder Woman pummeled the snot out of Superman. "Come on, laser eyes...how do you do laser eyes?" Tim said, smashing the buttons. 

Danny chuckled and activated Wonder Woman's special move, winning the match.

"What was that?" Tim asked. "I thought you hadn't played this game before."

"I never have. We have one arcade in Amity Park, and they have an old Marvel vs. Capcom cabinet. The controls are the same." Danny said, smiling. "Do you want to play again?" 

"No, I'm picking the next game." Tim said with a pout. Danny laughed. 

They played games until Dick texted Tim, asking if he wanted to get dinner, so they headed out to a place called Bat Burger. 

Dick ordered for him, claiming he could not come to Gotham without getting a Batburger Deluxe and Jokerized fries. It was pretty good, but it was no Nasty Burger, and he told them as much.

"Uh!" Dick said, acting as if Danny personally offended him. "I can't believe it. You come into my house, and you insult my fries?"

"No, the fries are great! Nasty fries have nothing on Jokerized fries, but nothing beats the Nasty sauce that goes on the Nasty Burger." He said. 

Damian 'tsked' before speaking up. "How can you eat at a place that's literally called 'nasty'?" 

"'Cause it's delicious, and it's the only restaurant in town that allows teenagers in." He said, eating a fry. "We'll go when you come to the solstice celebration. You'll see what I mean." 

Damian 'tsked' again but didn't say anything. 

"I've been meaning to ask you about that." Tim said. "Does the bonfire actually work to keep the ghosts away?" 

"I… don't actually know. The celebration has never been attacked, and it's usually pretty quiet around town for a few days after." He said. He had never thought of the celebration as actually doing anything since it didn't seem to affect him at all. He may have to ask Skulker of Box Ghost if it affects them at all. 

After they ate, the four of them went to a mall, where Danny bought souvenirs for everyone back in Amity Park, including a couple for some of the ghosts, which might be kind of strange, but when he saw the bank that looked like a box of oranges with a cat inside, he knew he had to get it for Box Ghost. 

Bullet wound and kidnapping aside, it was a pretty good last day in Gotham. 

Chapter Text

Danny's first day back in Amity Park started early. Much earlier than he would have liked. They had gotten home later than they intended due to some technical malfunction on the plane causing a delay. A trip that should have taken a couple hours took most of the day. By the time they got home, Vlad and Danny were at each other's throats. Vlad retired to his office and Danny collapsed into bed and fell asleep fully dressed. 

His ghost sense woke him up. He glanced at the clock and groaned. 3:14 am. "Can I have one full night of sleep before I go insane?" He asked no one before allowing his transformation to wash over him. 

Gravity fell away and he floated intangibly through the door, following his sense down the stairs and into the garage. The Box Ghost was hunched over a box of scrap metal, giggling. 

"What are you doing, Boxy?" The ghost whipped around, levitating several boxes of spare parts behind him.

"Beware!" He started. "I am the Box Ghost!" 

Three words echoed in his mind 'Trust and Beware' Danny mentally cursed Clockwork. Trust the bats, but beware the box ghost? That didn't make sense. The only time the box ghost was any real threat was when he got ahold of Pandora's Box. Most of the time he doesn't even bother transforming to deal with Boxy. He doesn't even cause that much damage, mostly content to putter around abandoned storage facilities. 

"You will not trap me in your vacuum sealed container of doom! Tremble before me!" Box Ghost was monologuing, or, as much as a ghost with no long term plan can monologue. 

"I don't even have the thermos on me." And wasn't that an oversight. "I don't want to fight right now." He said. He would if he had to but… it was Boxy.

"You… don't want to fight?" Box asked, unsure.

"It's three am, I was stuck in an airport with Vlad all day, and I'm tired." He said, rubbing his face. "So, no, I don't want to fight." 

The ghost set the boxes on the ground slowly, as if waiting for a sneak attack. "But you always want to fight."

"I don't want to fight. I just have to fight." He said. He was aware that he was about to reveal his Obsession to the Box Ghost of all people. Time to change the subject. "What are you doing here, how did you get out of the Zone?" His parents' portal had been shut down for years, and Vlad's portal had been locked down tight. But, if there was a way out of the Ghost Zone, he could trust Box Ghost to find it. 

"Nobody had seen you for a few days." Boxy said, still sounding unsure, wary. 

Wait… they, the ghosts hadn't seen him in a few days, and now Box Ghost is in his garage… "Were you worried about me?"

"You have saved me from those white suited terrors. Skulker thought maybe…" Box Ghost trailed off, clearly uncomfortable.

Danny fell a few inches in the air as realization hit him. Boxy, Skulker… they were worried about him. Boxy thought he had been captured, and came to check on him. The thought was… kind of sweet. "No, I didn't get captured. I was out of town for a few days. Oh! Speaking of which, I got something for you." He said before zipping through the house and up to his room. 

He was digging through his suitcase when Boxy floated through the floor. "I have never been in your lair before." 

"Humans call them 'bedrooms'. Aha!" He said, pulling the plastic bag free. "Here." 

Boxy took the bag carefully as if it would come alive and bite him. "BoxLunch?" He asked, reading the bag.

"It's the name of the store, open it up." Danny crossed his legs, sitting criss cross midair. 

Boxy gave him one more wary look before opening the bag and pulling out the box. "What is it?" He asked after a minute inspecting the box.

"It's a bank. Can I show you?"  He asked, holding out his hand. Boxy put it in his palm as if it would explode. Danny opened the box, careful not to rip it, and set the plastic bank on the desk. "So, you put a coin here." He said, grabbing a quarter from the coin jar on his desk and setting it on the spot. "And the cat comes out to grab it." 

Boxy watched in fascination as the cat popped up from the plastic box, grabbed the coin, and disappeared again. "Do it again." Danny grinned and dumped the jar out on the desk. Boxy grabbed a dime and set it on the right spot, and giggled when the cat popped it's head up and grabbed the coin, then he continued with another coin. Once all the coins were gone he turned back to Danny. "Thank you for this. I have never received a gift before." Then he disappeared through the wall, box, bag and bank in hand. He shook his head and updated the app, letting people know to be on the lookout for the Box Ghost before falling back into bed.

After the box ghost left he tried to go back to sleep, he really did, but he was up now. He grabbed the black messenger bag he had taken to carrying as Phantom, stuck a note on the electric kettle for Vlad and left the house. The sun had barely risen, shining early morning light over the town. 

Danny smiled as the wind whipped his snow white hair back from his face. It had been almost a week since he had been able to fly. In the air the tension that had hung over him the whole time he was in Gotham fell away and he was free to just exist. He made a lazy circuit of Amity Park, 'haunting his territory' as Jazz likes to say. 

He stopped at a gas station to pick up some energy drinks. Wes's brother, Kyle, was working the register, if you could call leaning against the counter playing Candy Crush 'working.'

"Hey, Kyle." He said, phasing through the door.

Kyle looked up from his phone, eyes bloodshot. "Oh, whassah Phantom! Come to get your morning 'go' juice?"

"Yeah." Danny liked Kyle, he never treated Phantom any different than anyone else. That may have something to do with the fact that Kyle doesn't believe in ghosts, but he was going to take wins where he could get them. He grabbed two energy drinks and a large bottle of water from the cooler, some Pop Tarts, and some beef jerky and headed to the counter. 

"Man, you gotta be careful with these." He said, scanning the cans "I know a guy who's cousin drank like, four in a day and his heart exploded." 

"I'm already dead, but thanks for the warning." He said, sliding his card into the reader.

"Ha, always with the jokes. Do you need a bag?"

"Nah, I got it, Thanks Kyle." He said, slipping his purchases into his bag

"No problem, dude." He said, pulling out his phone again. 

Danny flew out through the ceiling and angled toward the woods north of the lake. It didn't take long to find the rabbit that had been causing so much trouble. A twenty foot tall glowing green bunny charging straight for you was hard to miss, after all. 

"Whoa!" He barely dodged in time. He was definitely in the right place. He hovered at the rabbit's eye level as she banked to make another charge at him. "Easy, mama, I want to help." He said, holding his hands up in front of him. The action had no effect on the bunny, she still charged, swiping at him with her forepaw. 

As he swerved to miss the swipe he caught sight of something silvery glinting through the glowing fur on her neck. "That's… not right." Mama bunny was making another pass, he had to see what was around her neck. He flew straight toward her. Bunnies were prey species, so she should back down. 

She did not back down. While Danny was trying to get a better look at the thing around her neck, she swiped him straight out of the air and sent him flying into a tree. "Ow." He lay in a crumpled heap at the base of the tree for a minute, re-assessing the situation.

"I take it that went better in your head." A mechanical voice said. He furrowed his brow in confusion, he knew that voice. Sure enough, Red Hood was crouched on the lowest branch of the tree he had just been thrown into.

"What are you doing here?" He asked, shaking the leaves out of his hair and floating up to Hood.

"Watching a guy get his ass kicked by a bunny." He said. Danny couldn't see his face through the helmet, but he imagined he was smirking. "Who are you, Elmer Fudd?" 

"He's got jokes. If you think you can do better, have at it." He said, crossing his arms over his chest.

"No, I'm having too much fun watching you." He said, settling against the tree and stretching his legs out along the branch. 

"Whatever." Danny turned back to find the rabbit. She was crouched about thirty feet away, watching him warily. Or.. not him. He listed to the left a bit, and mama's eyes followed him for a second before snapping back to the tree. Back to Red Hood.

"What's going on, why is it so still?" He asked.

"She's scared of you." Just like he thought. All ghosts instinctively fear Pariah Dark, even the animal ghosts. "This could work, keep her distracted." He said before turning invisible.

"How am I supposed to do that?" Jason tried to keep Danny in his line of sight and shifted, shaking the branch. The rabbit startled and charged at him. "Shit!" He jumped out of the tree, pulled out his grapple at the same time and swung away just as the rabbit crashed into the tree. 

"Like that!" Danny called. He was behind the rabbit now, and while she was dazed he flew up and landed on her back. He dug through her fur until he found the silvery thing he saw before. It was a wire, and it was cutting into her skin. He could see ectoplasm, thick and sticky, welling up around the wire, which… shouldn't be possible. 

He grabbed onto the wire and tried to turn it intangible to get it off of her, but his powers had no effect. Strange. He could cut it, but he didn't have any wire cutters. The rabbit was shaking her head, coming out of her daze. 

"Hey Hood, do you have any wire cutters?" He asked. 

"Uh… maybe." He said, as he dug through a pocket in his jacket. "Oh, shit." The rabbit locked eyes with him again. Danny could see where this was going, and he tightened his grip on the wire. 

What followed was perhaps the only rabbit rodeo ever. Danny struggled to maintain his grip on the wire, slippery with ectoplasm. The rabbit tried to attack Red Hood, and Hood tried to avoid getting slapped out of a tree by a twenty foot rabbit. The rabbit might have won, too, had Jason not jumped through two trees that were too close together for the rabbit to fit, flinging Danny, still holding onto the wire, a hundred feet through the woods. For the second time that day he found himself crumpled at the base of a tree. 

"Ow" 

"Where did the rabbit go?" Hood asked, walking toward him.

Danny sat up and looked and, yeah, the twenty foot rabbit was gone. "Either she shrunk when I pulled the wire off, or she burrowed."

"Wire?" He asked. "What happened to your glove?" 

Danny looked and, sure enough, his glove looked like it had been melted where it touched the wire. "Huh, must have a high iron content." 

"So the whole 'ghosts can't touch iron' thing is true?"

"Mmhmm." Danny said, gathering up the wire and putting it into his bag.

"You're taking it with you?" Jason asked.

"Yeah, I can't really leave it here for some other animal or ghost to get tangled up in." There was a shuffling in the underbrush, and a much smaller ghostly rabbit hopped toward them. "Hey there, feeling better?" Danny asked as the rabbit hopped up to him and snuffled at his hand. 

"Is that the same rabbit that attacked us?" Jason asked, fingers twitching on his gun. 

"Yeah, you can see the scar where the wire was." He said, rubbing her neck. Jason squatted down to get a better look.

"I don't know what I was expecting from a ghost fight, but this wasn't it." He said as the rabbit allowed Danny to pick her up and cuddle her close to his chest. He stood up and started through the woods towards where he thought the rabbit's den was.

"Not all ghost fights are like this one. The animal ghosts are usually pretty easy if you can figure out what's bothering them." He floated over a fallen log, and heard Jason climbing over it behind him. 

"So, where are we going now?" 

"To her den. I’m thinking she had kits, which is why she’s stuck around this long.” 

“Why?”

“What do you mean?” Danny pushed a branch out of the way, and held it out of the way for Jason to duck under.

“Stopping the ghost rabbit I get. Having a twenty foot bunny hopping around is dangerous. What I don’t understand is checking on her kids.” 

Danny paused, running a finger over the bunnies soft, if ghostly, fur. “I don’t know if I can explain it.” he started picking his way through the woods again “Something killed this bunny, and she turned into a ghost. That makes her, and her kits, my responsibility.” 

“I’m surprised you hadn’t met Batman before this weekend.” 

“Why’s that?” he glanced over his shoulder to see Jason looking at him, or, he guesses he was looking at him. The helmet didn’t give much away. 

“You talk just like him.” Before he could respond, the bunny in his arms started snuffling, trying to get down. He set her on the ground and she took off. Danny followed close behind, until she disappeared into a hole. “Where’d she go?” 

“I’m guessing she found her den.” Danny squatted down beside the hole, Jason next to him.

“What do we do now?”

“I’m not sure.” it felt wrong to leave before he had a chance to make sure the kits were taken care of. He sat down on the ground and dug into his bag, pulling out his snacks. “Want a Pop Tart?” 

“No, thanks. I’ll take some of that jerky, though.” Danny handed him the package and offered him the second energy drink he had bought. Jason accepted both of them and pulled his helmet off, setting it in his lap before running his hand through his hair. “Can you eat like that?” 

“I can.” he said, biting into the Pop Tart “Everything kind of tastes like dust, though, so I usually don’t.” 

“How do you go back?” Jason was watching him closely. Danny let his transformation take over his form. In a bright flash of light Phantom was replaced by Fenton, sitting criss cross on the ground. 

“Ta Da!” he said. Jason let out a single laugh before pulling the bag of jerky open. They sat in silence for a bit, eating and drinking. 

“You could do so much with your powers. You could be unstoppable. Why don’t you- Why do you do this” he gestured to the hole in the ground. “When you could do anything?” 

Danny opened his mouth to answer, but shut it again. What could he say? That there was a future where he WAS unstoppable? He was saved from having to answer by a little black head popping up from the hole. “Mrow?” The cat’s nose was twitching, sniffing the air. Her eyes landed on Jason, and his beef jerky, and she walked out of the den confidently towards him. 

“Give her the jerky.” but he already had the meat held out, and she took it from him before darting back to the hole. “So… that explains how the kits are still alive, mama cat adopted the orphaned bunnies.” 

“Did you see the white mark on her chest?”

“No, why?” 

“It looked kind of like a bat.”

“We should call her BatCat, then.” 

Jason laughed. They left half a pack of jerky and some water for the cat to find before packing up and heading out of the woods. Jason had parked his motorcycle at the edge of the woods. Apparently he had spotted Danny flying from the ground and followed him. He gave Danny a ride back into town and they stopped at Nasty Burger for an early lunch. 

“You never really answered my question.” Danny said after they had gotten their food and sat down at a booth. “What are you doing here?” 

"Dick said you were dissing BatBurger. I had to come see for myself if this Nasty Burger was any good." He said, unwrapping his sandwich and taking a bite. "Oh my god" he said with his mouth full. "That's good!" 

Danny laughed and shook his head. "The secret is in the sauce. Highly concentrated, highly volatile, highly addictive. So, you came halfway across the country and followed me into the woods to try a burger?” 

“Pretty much.” Jason bit into some fries and frowned. “These are awful.” 

“Yeah, they aren't the best, that’s why I get the onion rings.” 

“Hmm.” Jason pushed the fries to the side and snagged one of Danny’s onion rings. “These are much better.” he munched on the onion ring for a minute before saying. “There was another reason why I came.” he fell silent for a minute before starting again. “I had a dream last night.” 

“What kind of dream?” Red flags rose in Danny’s mind. 

“It started out as a dream I had had before. Well, not a dream.”

“A nightmare?” This sounded familiar.

“Yeah. Anyway, right about the time I normally wake up, the dream changed. I was laying on a couch in B’s study. I don’t know if you’ve been there…” Danny shook his head. He’d been to the lounge and the library, but not Bruce’s study. “Well, he has this broken clock, and in the dream it was still broken, but I could hear it ticking. I go to the window, and I can see stars, then the stars tell me to come to Amity Park and find you.”  he grabbed another onion ring before leaning back. “It sounds crazy.” 

“No, no it doesn’t.” Danny pinched the bridge of his nose. He was going to strangle that ghost. “That was a message from Clockwork.” 

Chapter Text

They left the Nasty Burger and Jason drove them, following Danny's directions, away from the city center and into a residential neighborhood. Their destination became clear when he saw the large flying saucer looking addition to the roof of the last building on the street. A giant neon sign declaring the building 'FentonWorks' was imposing, and ridiculous. He wondered what it looked like lit up. Danny directed him to drive around and park in the fenced in backyard. 

"Okay, what is up with that?" Jason asked after he had pulled off his motorcycle helmet, the normal one, not the Red Hood one. He hid that in his saddle bags when they left the woods. That thing on the roof couldn't be safe, or legal. He couldn't imagine any city official, no matter how inept or corrupt, approving that. Danny looked up from where he was covering Jason's motorcycle with a tarp. 

"That's the Ops center. My parents weren't big on subtlety." He didn't explain what an Ops center was, or why his parents needed one. Danny phased his hand through the back door and unlocked it from the inside. The house smelled musty, like it had been locked up for a long time. Like one of his lesser used safe houses. Danny didn't seem bothered. He didn't even glance around as he made his way through the kitchen, into the living room and down the stairs to the basement. 

The lab was obviously well used. A long work table was along one wall, cluttered with devices and works in progress. A bank of large electronic devices, the purpose of which Jason could only guess at, lined the other wall. On the back wall, almost like a centerpiece of the whole lab, was a giant, empty crater in the wall. It had obviously been something at one point, but now it lay in pieces with exposed wires and missing pieces.

“Is that the portal?” he couldn’t imagine it was anything else.

“It was.” he said, tossing a small case to Jason. Inside was a pair of green earbuds. 

"I already have a com, you could just connect to my frequency." He said, inspecting it. It was a store bought model, but customized somehow, if the green detailing was any indication. 

"It won't work in the ghost zone." He said, putting a few items into his bag. "There's too much ghost noises, it interferes with normal electronics." Danny checked his bag again, and seemed satisfied with the contents. In a bright flash of light, the blue-eyed, black haired teenager in a NASA hoodie was replaced by a white haired ghost wearing a black hazmat suit. 

Jason knew before coming to Amity Park that Danny was Phantom. He'd seen the pictures and videos so he knew what Phantom looked like, but seeing the transformation in person was something else. The energy that radiated from Phantom reminded him of the Pit; otherworldly and powerful. But there was something else about Phantom; a sense of safety where the Pit was rage. 

"Alright, three rules you need to follow." Danny said, putting an earbud in his own ear. "One: Gravity is weird, so keep a hold of me until you are used to it. Two: If we meet a ghost don't ask any prying questions like how they died. They won't thank you for it. Thee: Don’t open any doors. Most of them lead to a ghost’s lair, and they don’t like having their home broken into. Any questions?”

“Yeah, just one. If the portal is dismantled, how are we going to get to the ghost zone?” 

“I’m going to make one.” he started walking over to the empty portal and Jason followed.

“You can make portals?” 

“Yeah, well, sometimes. It’s easiest to make them where the barrier is already thin, like where someone already punched a hole through.” he said, holding up his hands. Jason watched as green light bloomed from the teens palms and lit up the interior of the portal. 

“Nothing’s happening.” Danny’s brow furrowed in concentration, and a bead of sweat trailed down his temple. 

“Shut up. I need to concentrate.” he screwed his eyes shut. For a long moment nothing continued to happen. Then, a green dot about the size of a dime appeared about a foot in front of Danny’s outstretched hands. As soon as it appeared, Danny threw his arms to the side, tearing it open just large enough for someone to step through. He grabbed Jason’s arm and jumped into the hole just seconds before it closed up behind them. 

Jason’s first thought upon seeing the Ghost Zone was “Why does it need to be so big?” That thought must have slipped out because Danny laughed.

“It's not called ‘The Infinite Realms’ for nothing.” he said, drifting almost lazily. All at once Jason became aware that he was floating in mid-air. 

“Shit! He flailed his arms to try and catch his balance, and Danny grabbed his other arm and steadied him. There was gravity, he could feel it trying to pull them down, but it was like they were just ignoring it. “Whoah, when you said gravity was weird you weren’t kidding.” 

“Yeah, it takes some getting used to.” He said, still keeping a steadying hand on his elbow. “Let's get going, he’s going to be waiting for us.” Danny took off, tugging Jason along. 

They passed purple doors and floating islands, and went through a seemingly endless expanse of nothingness before it suddenly ended and they were passing doors again. They saw a multicolored, glowing, pearlescent cloud that Danny gave a wide berth, giving him the cryptic warning to “avoid the glow cloud at all costs.” and wouldn’t elaborate. They passed over a large cavern that Danny called the “Carnivorous Canyon.” That one he did explain as a giant mouth that eats anything that flies inside. They flew for what seemed like hours and all the while The Ghost Zone swirled around them, Lazarus Green and omnipresent. 

Finally, when Jason was about to ask if Danny even knew where he was going they started passing gears spinning idly in midair. In the distance, and getting closer faster than should be possible, he could see a clocktower. They flew in through an upper window, and gravity reasserted itself. Only his training kept him on his feet after Danny let go of his elbow. 

The room they flew into was enormous, and eerily quiet, the only sound was the steady ticking of a clock in the distance. Gears floated here and there, slowly spinning, and some had what looked to be TV screens in them. Jason stopped to watch one. The image was blurry, but recognizable as a farm. As he watched the image dissolved into static before the screen disappeared.

"Alright, let's go see what Tickity Tock wants." Danny said after a minute before following the sound of ticking.

"What's with these gears?" Jason asked to fill the silence. 

"They're portals to different times." Danny said, giving one of them a spin "Clockwork uses them to monitor the time stream." It didn't take long to find him, and when they did Jason froze. 

A small being, a child, floated in front of a group of gears. He turned to face them and Jason realized the ever present ticking was coming from the clock mechanism in the ghost's chest. The hood on his long purple cloak was pulled over his head, so he almost missed that his skin was so pale it was almost blue. Solid red eyes, one with a jagged scar, met his, and Clockwork smiled. 

"Clockwork!" Danny yelled with mock anger. "I've got a bone to pick with you!"

"Now, Daniel-"

"Don't 'now Daniel' me. How can you send me a message as vauge as "Trust and Beware'" and expect me to get it?" Jason silently agreed. His message was weird, but at least it was straightforward. "Go to Amity Park. Find Daniel." The only part of the dream he couldn't understand was why he was in Bruce's study.

"I sent you exactly the message you needed to hear. You did exactly as you needed to." With that the ghost turned toward him. "Jason Todd, it's nice to meet you." He spoke softly, with a confidence that was well earned. 

"Yeah, nice to meet you, too. Danny has told me nothing about you." He said, glancing over to the ghost kid. Danny rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly.

"I didn't know what I could say." He mumbled.

Clockwork chuckled and his form shifted, seemingly without input from the ghost himself, into an adult version of the ghost. "I am Clockwork, I oversee all of time." He said, gesturing to the gears around them with his staff. Jason had so many questions, but before he could ask any of them the ghost shifted again, into the form of an old man with a long white beard. "Duck."

"Wha-" Jason didn't get a chance to finish that thought before a portal ripped into existence right above him and a seven foot tall werewolf in a green sweatshirt leapt at him. He barely dodged the beast's claws. His guns were in his hands without a thought, trained on the beast's chest.

"Stop!" Danny said with such authority it gave him pause, the wolf man felt it too. Both of them turned to stare at the Half-ghost. 

"Li estas danĝera, amiko." The wolf said.

"I'll show you dangerous!" He said, aiming his guns again. 

"No, put the guns away." Danny said, stepping between the two of them. "Jason, this is my friend, Wulf. Wulf, ĉi tiu estas mia amiko, Jason." Wulf retracted his claws, and Jason put his guns away, but neither of them relaxed their posture. "Alright, good. Now, what are you doing here, Wulf?" 

Wulf spared Jason one last look before saying. "Vi sopiris trejnadon."

"Training, Ah, fek." Wulf pounced at the same time Danny crossed his arms in a block, creating a green bubble around himself. They both disappeared through the floor.

"Danny!" Jason yelled.

"Don't worry, Daniel is fine." He said, seemingly unconcerned by the fact that someone was just attacked by a freaking werewolf. "Now, I believe you wanted a question answered." 

He did. He had a lot of questions, really, but never anyone who would know the answers. He licked his lips and swallowed, trying to quell the blooming hope in his chest. Clockwork was a young man again, looking at him with those red eyes. "Danny said I had the same aura as Pariah Dark." 

The ghost turned into the child version of himself and held out his hand toward the large gear behind him. A green portal opened, and an image appeared on it. A man…it looked like a man, except he was enormous, and had horns, a flaming crown sat between them. Jason could see why everyone was afraid of him. "You do." 

"Why?" 

"Daniel already has the answer to that, he just hasn't realized it." Clockwork said with a knowing smile, turning back into the old man. "But he will." 

"Okay, cryptic." Jason said. "Can you give me a hint on where to start looking?" 

"The information will come to you when the time is right." 

"You are maddeningly unhelpful." 

"And you are not asking the question you really want answered." 

The question that has been running through his head ever sense the green faded, ever since he learned to tamp down the rage, to ignore the voice in his head that screams for blood and vengeance. The rage had grown quieter over the years, but it was never quite gone. What he wanted to know…

"Yes, someday, your mind will be your own again." 

"What? I didn't ask that."

"You never would have." Clockwork gave him a knowing smirk that infuriated him. Relief tricked in, someday he wouldn't have to fight the pit back at all times. He allowed himself to feel cautiously optimistic. "Now, I believe our time is up." 

Just then a green portal opened up in front of him and Danny popped his head out. "Hey, it worked!" Danny said, stepping through his portal, Wulf the werewolf just behind. 

"Bona laboro." He said, clapping Danny on the shoulder before ripping open his own portal and stepping through.

"How long were we gone? Time is weird in the clocktower." Danny asked, turning to Jason. He looked slightly disheveled, but none the worse for were. "It's been about two hours for me."

"It's only been a few minutes. How much time has passed in the real world?" They had to have been here for hours, with the flight here and everything. 

Clockwork checked the clock on his staff and said "about fourty five minutes." He said. "And you should be getting back before your friends come looking for you." 

"Shoot! I forgot we had made plans." Danny held out his hand and formed a swirling portal much easier than before. "Ready to go?" He asked Jason, holding out his hand. Jason nodded and grabbed Danny's hand. Danny waved to the ghost and stepped through the portal. 

Once they were gone a being seemingly made of the night sky slipped down from the ceiling and stood beside Clockwork. "When are you going to tell him?" Nocturn asked.

"When he is ready. He still has so much to learn before he is ready for the crown." The image in the gear shifted to show a much older Danny sitting on a throne, flaming crown upon his snow white hair. 

"And the other one, Todd? I can't imagine you had me bring him a message just to tell him things he would have found out eventually." 

The image shifted again, this time showing Red Hood, guns in hand, fighting side by side with Phantom. "I wanted to meet the future King's Knight for myself."

Chapter Text

"So, Danny." Val said, flopping onto the couch next to him. "Who was that guy you had lunch with today?" 

"I don't know what you're talking about." He said, not taking his eyes off of the TV. Tucker had gotten an advanced copy of some ridiculously popular Japanese fighting game that Danny didn't know the name of, and they were taking turns. After telling Danny what Clockwork had said (and it was just as frustratingly vague as he thought it was going to be) Jason had left on his motorcycle, and he hadn't mentioned his presence to anyone.

"Really?" Val asked in mock surprise. "Because Irving said you and a very handsome stranger were getting cozy in a booth this afternoon."

"Irving needs to mind his own business." Danny grumbled.

"So you did have lunch with a handsome stranger?" Wes asked, his avatar performing a finishing move on Danny's. "Ha! Undefeated!"

"Yeah, yeah, all hail king Wes." Danny said sarcastically, handing his controller off to Sam "kick his ass, Sam." He said.

"Oh, I've been waiting to." She said, sitting down next to the red head with a vicious smirk. 

Danny stood and headed over to the kitchen to check on dinner. The best thing about Vlad's place was the open kitchen and living room. It was also the worst thing, since he couldn't get away from Tucker and Valerie, who seated themselves at the bar. 

"So, who is this guy? Are we going to get to meet him?" Tucker asked. 

"He's no one, and no, probably not." He said, stirring the pasta. It was almost done, just a few more minutes on that. He turned to the double oven and popped the breaded eggplant into the top oven with the honey glazed carrots and brussel sprouts before checking on the chicken in the bottom oven. If he timed it right, everything should finish at the same time. Danny shut the oven door and turned back to Tucker and Val, who were giving each other meaningful looks behind his back. He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the counter. "What?"

"We were just wondering…" Tucker said before trailing off.

"We just wanted to know…" Val started again.

"They wanna know if he was one of the bats." Sam yelled from the living room. Danny sighed and rubbed his eyes, which was apparently as good as an admission.

"Oh my god!" Val said "Who was it?"

"I'm not telling you." Danny said, more to be petulant than because he didn't want to tell them. 

"Okay, so we'll have to guess." Tucker said, pulling out his phone. In less than a minute he had the security footage from the Nasty Burger pulled up, which Danny couldn't imagine how, since it was a closed circuit. "Okay, Irving said you were there right after opening, so, rewind...rewind...rewind, ah, here we go. Wow, he wasn't kidding about this guy being built. He's huge!" 

"So not Robin, or Red Robin." Val said, looking at her own phone. "They're both tiny." 

"Come on, guys, knock it off." Danny said, checking the pasta again. It was finished so he drained it into a colander in the sink and added butter and garlic to the pot. "And Red Robin is my height." 

"Right, like I said. Tiny." Val said with a smirk. Danny rolled his eyes and added parmesan cheese to the butter and garlic.

"Can't be Nightwing." Tucker said "too tall, and the build is wrong." 

"I'd say it's Batman, but he's so young. Batman has been around since we were kids, so he has to be in his thirties or forties by now." Val said. "Is that all the Gotham heros?" Val asked. 

"Yeah." Tucker said, flipping through his phone "all the guys, at least." Danny smiled a bit. Red Hood was still considered an outlaw, not a hero, so they wouldn't think of him.

"What about Red Hood," Wes called from the living room. Not for the first time Danny wondered if Wes could read minds. 

"Um.. yeah, height and build match," Tucker said. "Danny, did you have lunch with Red Hood?" 

"Dinner's almost done." He said, ignoring the question and tossing the pasta in the garlic butter and poured it into a serving bowl.

"Don't try and change the subject." Val said. "Did you, or did you not meet Red Hood for lunch?"

Danny looked her right in the eyes and said "I did not meet Red Hood for lunch." Which was true. He met Red Hood in the woods, and they happened to go get lunch after. "Can you get the plates down? I'm too tiny to reach." He said. Val scoffed but moved to grab a stack of plates from the cabinet. The oven timer went off and he pulled the chicken and eggplant out to cool.

"Ha! Chaos reigns supreme!" Sam exclaimed suddenly. Wes groaned and slumped against the couch in defeat. 

"Come on, man, you should know you can't beat Sam at video games." Tucker said.

"I know, I know." Wes said, rubbing a hand through his hair.

"You put up a good fight." Sam said, holding out her hand. Wes took it and she hauled him off the couch. "You just have to work on your finishing combo."

"Wanna go another round after dinner?" Wes asked, making his way over to the bar.

"Anytime, Weston." Sam and We took their seats at the bar and Valerie passed plates around to the group while Danny put the chicken and eggplant on the counter. They all dig in and start eating before Sam turns to Danny "so, did you have lunch with Red Hood or not?"

Danny took a bite of the pasta before answering. It was pretty good, but not as good as what Jason had made the other day. "Yeah." There was a second of silence before his friends exploded with questions and concerns.

"I knew it!" "What?!" "For real?" "What's he like?" "Are you okay?" "How did you even meet him?" Danny stayed quiet until they settled down. 

"I'm fine, guys. He's not as bad as the media makes him out to be." 

"Danny," Sam said gently. "He is a criminal."

Danny shrugged. "So am I, technically. So are all of you for associating with me." He reminded them. 

"He's killed people." Tucker said. 

"I'm not saying he hasn't done anything bad, I'm just saying he's not a bad guy." Danny defended. He didn't want to tell them how he met Jason. He knew they would worry about him too much if they knew he had been shot. And he couldn't tell them about the ecto-contamination, or the pit, that was his business. "I don't think he'd hurt someone for no reason." 

Wes and Valerie nodded, they trusted Danny's judgement. Sam and Tucker knew him better. 

"No offense, but you are the worst judge of character." Sam said, cutting into her eggplant.

"Full offense taken." Danny said with mock outrage. "I am an excellent judge of character." 

"Is that why you dated Valerie freshman year, knowing she was trying to kill you?" Tucker asked. 

"Hey!" Valerie exclaimed. "I was trying to capture him, not kill him!" 

"And I knew she wouldn't hurt me." Danny said, pointing his fork and Tucker. "Because of my excellent judgement." 

"You trusted Dani, even after she tried to capture you." Sam said. "Plus, Vlad. How many times has he tried to kill you, and you still live in his house?"

"He hasn't tried to kill me in years, Sam." Danny said. 

"Do you guys realize how weird your conversations are?" Wes asked. 

"You're the one who wanted to be part of this group, Wes." Danny said with a smirk.

"No, I wanted to prove you were a ghost. You guys dragged me into this group." 

"You can't know the secret and not be part of the group." Tucker said matter of factly.

"Does that mean that Batman is part of the group?" Sam asked. 

A slow smile crept across Danny's face. "Yes. Yes it does. Batman, Robin, Red Robin and Nightwing are now officially part of team Phantom. All agreed?" A chorus of 'ayes' went up over the kitchen. "Great, I can't wait to tell them." 

Phantom

I talked to the gang tonight and it was unanimous.

The BatPack is an official part of Team Phantom now.

Red Robin

Oh? 

And what, exactly, does membership entail? 

Phantom

We have laminated membership cards.

And you get free coffee at the Circle K on Elm street.

But only when Kyle is working.

Red Robin

That's a bit far to go for coffee. 

And membership cards could be incriminating, so I think we'll have to pass on joining.

Phantom

It's too late for that, we already voted.

But I'll hold off on sending the cards, if you don't want them.

R ed Robin

Do we get any say in this at all?

Phantom

Nope! ^_^

Welcome to Team Phantom!

Danny sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. He was starting to get a headache, either from lack of sleep, or too much or too little caffeine, he wasn't sure. He picked up his mug and took a sip only to be met with air. He sighed into the bottom of his empty coffee cup and set it down. He just had to put the finishing touches on the containment chamber, then he can release Technus for their long overdue chat. His phone vibrated loudly on the metal work bench beside him.

Corpse Party

GothicChaos

Are you sure you don't want us to be there?

GhostBoi

You guys have finals tomorrow, Jazz would kill me the rest of the way if she knew you didn't get a full night's sleep because of me.

Besides, I just want to talk.

WesCoast

*Loads shotgun* I just wanna talk to him.

TechnoFreak

*Rings doorbell* I just wanna talk to him.

BestHuntress

You guys are ridiculous.

GhostBoi

And should be studying. I'll call if I need help.

Danny put his phone down and grabbed the thermos. He set it in the dock on the containment chamber and hit the release button. The familiar form of Technus materialized in the cylindrical cell. 

"What…?" Technus looked up at Danny from where he was crouched on the ground. "Ghost child?" 

"Hey, Technus. Long time, no see." Danny grinned. 

Technus took a minute to look around the workroom. It used to be a garage until Danny had claimed it shortly after moving in. Vlad had put up a token argument, but relented soon enough. Danny having his own space to work in kept him out of Vlad's lab for the most part. "This is highly unusual, ghost child. What is going on?" 

"I needed to talk to you." Danny said, crossing his arms and leaning against the workbench. "Do you remember last year when you were captured by the Guys in White?" 

"How could I forget?" Technus said. "Those white clad dolts had me locked up in their firewall for weeks. Don't they know how powerful I, the great Technus, can be?" 

"Settle down, gramps." Danny picked up a tablet and started typing. "You left something behind." He said and turned the tablet toward the ghost so he could see. 

"What?" Technus stared at the screen for a long time. It had taken him weeks to work out how to read Mina’s unique language, the occasional cry for help not withstanding. Even now he really only got the gist of what she was saying. Technus didn’t seem to have that same problem. “I have offspring?” he asked, stunned. “And you haven’t saved her from those monsters?”

“We’re working on it, but we need you. She was born in that computer, and she’s scared to leave it. You’re the only one who can go in there and get her to leave.” he said, putting the tablet down. 

“Well let's go now.” he said, banging his fists on the glass. 

“It’s not that simple. The GIW have beefed up security since our last raid.” Red Robin had discovered that while going through their files. There may be something to be said about having a plan of attack, after all. “And Mina is weak. Too weak to maintain her own form outside of the Ghost Zone.” 

Technus slumped against the containment field. “So what’s the plan?”

“The plan so far is to wait for the solstice. The barrier is thinner then, so it will be easier for me to make a portal for you to take Mina from the computer directly to the Zone.” He would have to get much better at portals before then. The tips Wulf had given him earlier had helped a lot, but he still couldn’t sense the barrier like he was supposed to be able to. “Until then, there isn’t much for you to do but wait.” 

“Oh, that’s where you are wrong, ghost boy.” Technus said “I can infiltrate their systems, wreak havoc. It will make it easier for your raid if their security systems are down.” 

That was true. Having a man on the inside would make breaking in and freeing Mina so much easier. “I can’t ask you to do that. It’s dangerous, and if you get caught, I can’t guarantee that I will be able to save you.” 

“These people hurt my child. I will not give them the opportunity to capture me.” Technus had a look in his eyes that Danny had never seen before. The serious determination and barely concealed anger sent a chill down his spine that had nothing to do with his ghost sense. 

“Alright.” Danny hit the release button on the containment chamber. “Give them hell.” 

Technus grinned and shot out of the chamber like a bullet, phasing out through the ceiling. Danny would hate to be in the GIW right now. 

Finally, everything he wanted to do today had been done. It was past midnight, the town was quiet, and Danny was tired. He trudged up the stairs, cursing not for the first time the fact that billionaires seemed to have a love affair with stairs, before pushing his bedroom door open and collapsing into bed. Right onto a book. 

“The hell?” Danny jumped up and turned his bedside lamp on. A copy of “The Curse of Capistrano” had been carefully, deliberately set up against his pillow. And not just any copy, if the chocolate stain on the back cover was any indication, but his dad’s copy. The one he would read from when Danny had trouble sleeping as a child. The one that had been lost years ago. With trembling fingers Danny opened the front cover and there, on the inside was an inscription. He had always seen it, but it was written in neat cursive so he had never been able to read it. 

Jack, 

Your friendship means the world to me. I don’t know where I would be if you hadn’t convinced me to join your ghost club this year. Happy eighteenth birthday.

Vlad

Danny was aware of a presence in the room. 

“Do you like it?” The Box ghost asked. He was still clutching the bank, looking at Danny like he could explode. 

“Yeah.” Danny’s voice cracked. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Yeah, Boxy, it's great. Thanks for finding this. You have no idea how much this means to me.” The box ghost blushed a deep green before flying out the window. 

Danny hadn’t known Vlad had given his dad the book, or that they had been so close before the accident. He didn’t know if any of that mattered, really. All of that was a problem for future Danny. Present Danny wanted to read about Zorro. 

Chapter Text

Vlad was a very busy man. Between running his company remotely, mayoring a town that was ghost central, and trying to keep the GIW out of his town and away from himself and Daniel he often felt like he was working six jobs and barely keeping himself afloat. Well, it's just a good thing he can make clones.

One of his clones sat in a boring counsel meeting, something about a change of zoning for a residential neighborhood, while he sat on a conference call to the board of directors at Dalv Co. They were trying to facilitate a merger of a much smaller tech startup. In his younger days it would have been much easier. Overshadow the right people and you can get anything you want. If it weren't for Daniel, that’s how he would still be doing business. Daniel had made him agree to a truce, and part of that truce means doing business the legal, human way. 

“Alright, Mr. McAtee,” his COO, Denise said “We here at Dalv co. are excited to work with you going forward. We will have our lawyers send the contracts over to you right away.”

The little beatnik, McAtee, was speaking again. Vlad turned him out, he trusted Denise to handle this meeting, he was just there as a formality. Instead, he focused on making plans for the Solstice Festival. Planning for this had been going on since January, and now that Bruce Wayne was coming, it had to be perfect. He sent a quick email to the head of the planning committee to ask about food vendors.

“Alright, I believe that’s all we have for today, unless you have anything to add, Mr. Masters?” Denise said.

Vlad unmuted himself just to say “No, I believe you covered everything, Denise, I have nothing more to add.” Denise spent the next few minutes ‘signing off’, promising to send the highlights from the meeting in an email to everyone who was in the meeting, which, to Vlad, seemed to defeat the whole purpose of having a meeting in the first place. Finally he was able to hang up the call and go get some lunch.

He entered the kitchen and saw he wasn’t the only one to think of lunch. “Hello, Daniel.” The boy was sitting in his usual spot at the bar, a plate of leftover chicken and eggplant in front of him, apparently forgotten. Daniel was too engrossed in his book to eat. “What are you reading?”

“Curse of Capistrano” he said, marking his place and setting the book down. He was giving Vlad a look, like he was waiting for his reaction. 

“Oh.” he wasn’t sure what to make of that. Daniel had said it was his favorite book, so why wouldn’t he read it? 

“Have you ever read it?” he asked. 

“No, I don’t believe I have. I was more into French literature at your age. ‘Le Miserable’, or ‘Notre-Dame de Paris’” That was apparently not the answer that Daniel was looking for, because he went back to his lunch with a frown. Well, he doesn’t really have time to figure out what the boy is thinking. He has a meeting with the Parks Department in forty five minutes. “Is there any more chicken?” he asked, turning to the fridge.

“Yeah, and some eggplant and carrots, too.” he said without looking up from his one meal. 

Vlad made himself a plate and sat opposite the teen at the bar. He pulled out his phone to send some emails when he felt eyes on him. He looked up to see icy blue eyes burning into his soul. "What?" 

Daniel looked like he was warring with himself before asking. "When did you meet my dad?" He said it quickly, like he was trying to get the question out before he lost his nerve. 

Vlad sighed. "I don't want to talk about Jack right now." Or ever. 

Daniel looked back toward the book thoughtfully before responding. "Right." He grabbed the book and hopped off the barstool. 

Too late Vlad realized that Daniel was reaching out to him. "Wait, little badger." Daniel paused at the base of the stairs. "Your father and I met in our senior year of high school. I was new in town and Jack was the first person to speak to me." Vlad's heart gave a small ache, the same way it always did when he remembered the good times before the accident. 

Daniel turned around. "Did you follow him to college?" 

"He followed me, I'll have you know." He said. He still remembered Jack's booming voice, announcing to the whole lunch room that he had been accepted into the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Vlad had been headhunted after a paper of his had been published. Daniel gave a small, half smile. 

"Is that where you met my mom?" He asked. 

"Yes, we met her during Rush week." He said. "Your father and I were rushing for Sigma Pi and we met at the frat party for new members." 

"I didn't know you were in a fraternity." Daniel said, sitting back down across from him. 

"Oh, yes. We even got matching tattoos." He hadn't thought of that in years. Getting tattoos was Jack's idea in the first place, then he blubbered like a baby the whole time. In the end, Vlad had a beautifully done tattoo of an owl, and Jack had an outline. He had always said he was going to go back and get it finished, but never did as far as he knew.

"You have a tattoo? Can I see?" Danny asked, apparently shocked.

"It's not in a place I feel comfortable showing a minor." He said. "I'm surprised your father never told you any of this."

"Dad didn't like talking about his time in college, and I never really thought to bring it up." Danny said, rubbing the back of his neck.

Before Vlad could think too much into what that might mean his phone started ringing. "Masters"

"Hey, Vlad," his assistant, Walter, said. "I'm about five minutes out."

"Alright, Weston, I'll be ready." Vlad said with a sigh. Daniel stood and cleared his plate, Vlad followed him to the sink. "We can talk more tonight, Little Badger."

"Sure." The teen replied sharply before wincing. "That sounds good." He amended before heading out to the garage. Vlad turned to go out the front when he noticed the book on the counter. 

'The Curse of Capistrano'

Daniel had said it was one of his favorite books. Funny, Vlad had once gifted a copy to Jack. 'The Mark of Zorro' had been Jack's favorite movie, so Vlad had scoured second hand book stores to find a copy of the book. Jack had exclaimed his gratitude, but Vlad had never seen him reading it. He figured the book had been lost. Idly he flipped the front cover open and was met with his own neat handwriting. His heart stuttered in his chest and his breath caught in his throat

Jack had kept the book. Jack had kept his book. Was it possible he had read it to Daniel? He could just see him in that ridiculous orange jumpsuit reading his son a bedtime story from the book Vlad had gifted him. He didn't know how he should feel about that.

His phone buzzed on the counter. Weston was here to take him to his afternoon meetings. Vlad took a deep breath. He didn't have to sort out his emotions about his former best friend right now. Right now he just had to be Mayor Masters. 

They didn't end up talking that night. Vlad barely saw the boy over the next week. He was busy with preparations for the Solstice Festival, and when Daniel wasn't locked up in his bedroom or workroom he was flying around town doing his hero bit, or out with his friends. 

Which was fine, really. He didn't need to talk to Daniel. They had spent two years barely speaking, there was no sense starting now with the boy getting ready to go to college. He was a busy man, anyway. He had a company to run, a town to mayor, and a festival to plan. Speaking of which.

"No, Pamela, I don't think we need to saber a champagne bottle." He said. There was a knock on the door and Daniel let himself into Vlad's study. 

"Hey, Vlad…" he started before stopping, a hand over his mouth. Pamela was still speaking, something about the Benson's doing it at their last party. 

"If you want to do it, then you are welcome to do it at your own party, but I am not having the town pay to ruin a nice bottle of champagne, now I must go, I have a pressing appointment." He said with as much politeness as he could muster. 

"I didn't know you had any more appointments today." Daniel said, leaning against the door frame.

"I don't, but that woman doesn't know when to shut up." He said, rubbing his eyebrows.

"Sam's mom? Yeah, no. She just keeps talking until the other person gives up." He said. He started rubbing his shoulder, a nervous habit. 

"Is there a reason you came in here?"

"I can't want to visit my uncle Vlad?" He asked, mock offended.

"You never have before, unless you wanted something." Daniel visibly deflated.

"Okay, there was one thing." He crossed his arms in front of his chest 

"No, you can't bring the cat and rabbits into the house." He said, straightening the papers on his desk. Daniel had been visiting those mangy animals every day since they had returned from Gotham. 

"That… no. I'm building a hutch for them in the backyard. No. I need to borrow the truck tomorrow." Vlad gave Daniel a look that he hoped was as unimpressed as he felt. 

"Did you ask me if you could build a rabbit hutch in my backyard?" Daniel looked away and shrugged.

"I'm telling you now."

"I don't want a bunch of rodents running around my backyard." 

"Rabbits aren't rodents, they're lagomorphs. And they won't be 'running around' the backyard, they'll be running around the hutch." 

"Just leave them in the woods, Daniel." 

"Geeze, Vlad, it's like you want them to be eaten by a coyote." He said with a frown.

Vlad sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He figured out why the teen and Pamela Manson never got along: they were much too similar. "How many are there?"

"Well, there's Bunnicula, Batcat, four rabbit kits, and two kittens." He said, counting them off on his fingers. 

"And when were you going to build this hutch?" 

"That's part of the reason why I need the truck tomorrow. There's a discount scrapyard up by Springfield, and since Jazz is flying into ALC tomorrow, I figured, ya know, two birds, one stone." 

A discount scrapyard. Vlad had enough money to buy the hardware store in town, but Daniel would rather drive three hours out of his way to go to a discount scrapyard.

"Text me when you get there, and Jasmine is diving home." 

"Thanks, Vlad." Danny said with a grin before leaving, shutting the door behind him. 

Vlad sat back in his desk chair and covered his eyes. Why was it so hard to say 'no' to that boy?

Danny spotted his sister right away. Flaming red hair all the way down her back was a dead give away. She spotted him pretty quickly, too. Well, ridiculous signs will do that.

"'Go back to Yale', really, Danny?" She said, enveloping him in a bone cracking hug. 

"Missed you, Jazzy pants."

"Missed you too, Danno. Now let's get something to eat, and tell me everything that's been going on." 

They ended up in a Denny's off the freeway. "And professor Lance said she was going to submit my paper to be published!" Jazz said over her plate of eggs.

"That's really exciting!" He said. "I'm happy for you." 

"Thanks, so what's up with you? Have you heard about the scholarship yet?" 

"No, not yet. It's only been like a week, though."

"Yeah, it took a month for my acceptance letter to come in." Danny hmmed in acknowledgement but didn't say anything else. "So why did you bring the truck?"

"Oh! There's a scrapyard I want to check out." 

"A scrapyard, really?" 

"Please? It's only a half hour out of the way, and there's a used book store close, too. I can drop you off there, and go to the scrapyard myself." 

"No, you know you have to be eighteen to get into the scrapyard. We'll go there first before it gets too hot, then the book store." 

The scrapyard was a jackpot. Within fifteen minutes of arriving Danny found almost everything he needed to build the rabbit hutch, as well as enough scrap aluminum to remake his force field belt twice over. 

"Alright, you have everything you came for, can we go now?" Jazz asked, swatting at a sweat bee. 

"Yeah, I just want to get this wire." He said, yanking on it. It was good copper wire, he couldn't pass it up. "Can you lift that tire up?" 

"No," she said, straining to lift it "Can't you just phase it out?" 

Danny tried, concentrating on the wire. "Yeah, but it's caught on something big." He said. "I'll have to pull it all out." He started pulling the intangible mass out.

"A motorcycle?" Jazz questioned as the thing became clear. Danny gave it a once over, wiping away the muck that had caked onto the emblem.

"Jazz, this is a Harley-Davidson XR-750." It was a bit rusty and needed some work but…

"No." Jazz said firmly

"I can't leave her here to rust."

"No, Danny. I can't let you get a motorcycle." 

"Come on, Jazz. This is the same motorcycle Evel Knievel rode." 

"That is not a convincing argument." Jazz sighed "do you even know how to ride a motorcycle?"

"Of course I do." He said defensively. "Johnny taught me." 

"Johnny Thirteen, the ghost who died in a motorcycle accident." Jazz deadpanned before sighing. "Fine, but you have to get your motorcycle license and take a motorcycle safety course." 

"Yes! Thanks Jazz." He said. This was going to be so much fun.

Chapter Text

"A motorcycle, Jasmine? You let him buy a motorcycle?" Vlad watched through the window as Daniel unloaded his haul with Tucker. Jasmine was sorting several bags of books on the coffee table behind him. 

"Yes, I did." She said without remorse. 

"I don't want him riding a motorcycle. I don't even want him driving." He was a better driver than Jack, but not by much. 

"Do you think I want him on a motorcycle?"

"Then why did you let him buy one?"

"Why'd you let him turn your garage into a workshop?" She deflected.

"That's not the same." It wasn't, right? Jasmine sighed in a way that told Vlad he was wrong, and came to stand beside him at the window. 

"You remember how he was when we first moved in, right?" 

He did. Daniel had been despondent and distant, and when he did show an emotion it was always anger. He never left his room except for meals and school, and when he talked it was monosyllabic responses to direct questions. Far and away from the easy smiles and quick puns he was used to. He was so different from the boy he knew before the storm, and something ached in Vlad to fix it, like his little badger was a machine that just needed to be tuned so it would work again. 

Daniel didn't want help, or at least didn't want Vlad's help. It hurt how he would flinch away from him, so different from the boy who would face every challenge with a defiant smile. Vlad was starting to think Daniel would never get better until the washing machine broke. 

He had pulled into the garage after work to find Daniel had pulled the whole machine apart, and he sat in the middle of it all, fitting a new belt on the motor with that defiant glint in his eyes that had been missing for so long. It was easy, after that, to find broken things for the boy to fix, to keep that glint in his eyes as he fixed a broken lawnmower, or made something new from junk. 

His projects took over his bedroom and the garage, but as much as he tried to be annoyed that he had to park in the driveway now, he also couldn't find it in him to take that away from him.  

"He's joking again, hanging out with his friends, excelling in school. He hasn't done this well in school since before the accident." Jazz was watching him now. "I don't think you realize just how long Danny has been like this, it didn't start with our parents' death. It started with the accident. He saw the motorcycle, and I saw my little brother again."

Vlad sighed, but he understood. Jasmine couldn't say no to him, either. 

"He's taking every motorcycle safety course known to man." He said, turning away from the window.

"Of course." Jasmine said. Something in Vlad told him she was already looking into them. 

Danny glared between the motor on his workbench and the printed schematic. He knew how to read a schematic. He was in charge of drawing the schematics when he and Jazz submitted their parents' inventions to the patent office. He could read a schematic in his sleep, but the engine didn't match the schematic. 

He double checked the model number on the paper against the number etched into the metal for the hundredth time to make sure they hadn't changed in the last fifteen minutes. Nope, he was right. This schematic was supposed to be for this engine, but they weren't the same! 

Someone in the fifty year history of this motorcycle had heavily modified the engine, and he didn't know enough about auto repair to be able to figure out what was wrong with it. 

It was looking more and more like he would have to replace the whole engine, which would wipe out half of his savings. Savings that he would need if he got into Gotham U. He couldn't do that for a hobby bike. 

"Hey Danny, are you in here?" Jazz called from the door. 

"Here." He answered, not taking his eyes off the engine.

"It looks like an auto body shop exploded in here. Did you take the whole thing apart?" She asked, edging around the bare bones of the motorcycle. 

"I had to figure out what all needs to be replaced, and what can be fixed." 

Jazz settled behind him and rested her chin on his shoulder. "Stare at it a little harder and it might burst into flames."

"I don't want it on fire, I just want it to make sense."

"A machine you don't understand?" She said with a gasp. "I'm going to have to put this in my diary. 'today Danny was stumped by a motorcycle engine. Will wonders never cease?'" 

"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. This engine is Frankenstein's monster of engines. Someone stuck six dead engines together and struck it with lightning to get it to work." He said, tossing the useless schematic onto the workbench. 

"Well, it's only been a week, I'm sure you'll figure it out, you're good at Frankensteining things. Now, come on, Vlad is getting us Thai for dinner." 

"Alright, let me wash my hands." He said Jazz headed back into the house and Danny followed her a few minutes later smelling like citrus degreaser. It's not a great smell, it's strong and sharp and overpowering, but the smell of degreaser and oil is familiar. It brought him back to fixing the GAV with his dad, and he found himself smiling at the memory.

They all sat around the bar, plates filled with Pad Thai and fried rice when Vlad cleared his throat and spoke up. "So, Daniel, how is your motorcycle coming?"

He glanced over to Jazz before saying "It's going okay, the body is in good condition. It just needs to be stripped and repainted. All the hoses and belts and tires need to be replaced, but that's easy enough. The only thing is…" he stopped. Vlad was a mechanical engineer. Vlad knew about engines, he'd probably know exactly what's wrong with it. "I could use some help with the engine." 

"What's wrong with it?" 

"I'm not sure. It doesn't match the schematic, and I don't know enough about engines to figure it out." He took a sip of his drink before saying "maybe you could take a look at it, after dinner?" Danny's heart was beating hard in his chest. What if Vlad said no? Why did he care if the man said no? He was taking a long time to answer, it was stupid to ask. Vlad was busy, he didn't want to work on a motorcycle in his spare time. 

"Of course I'll take a look at it." Danny tried not to smile at that. They finished dinner and cleared their plates before heading out to the garage. 

Vlad looked between the schematic and the engine, turned it around, poked a few places, turned a few things, humming and hawing the whole time. Danny felt a little like a parent whose child was getting a checkup. 

"It's in surprisingly good condition." He said at last. "It is missing a piece, though, but it should be easy enough to source." He said, gesturing to a section. "Whoever built this knew what they were doing, though, it looks like it would be twice as powerful as a standard motorcycle engine."

"Could you teach me how to fix it?" Danny asked, trying to keep his excitement under control. 

Vlad blinked at him for a few seconds before saying "Of course, Little Badger. As long as you keep up with your school work and training."

They fell into an easy sort of routine after that. Ghost training in the morning, which became more instructional, with Vlad actually teaching Danny how to do things, instead of insulting him when he isn't able to, then whatever extracurricular activity Danny had that day after Vlad left for work. Then after dinner they would go out to the garage and work on the motorcycle together. Sometimes Jazz would come out with them and read, giving them little smiles over the top of her book. 

"Dani's flying in for the festival." Danny said the day before the festival. "She should be here early tomorrow." 

"Oh." Vlad's voice is carefully even. 

"She wants to talk to you about something, she wouldn't say what."

"Well… I'll be glad to see her when she gets here." He said before excusing himself from the garage. 

"I'm surprised you don't believe in witchcraft, Damian." Tim said as they waited in line to be let into the Solstice Festival. The last few weeks had been pretty chaotic planning the raid on the GIW in between dealing with a breakout at Blackgate and all the usual Gotham chaos. Tim was looking forward to having an easy week in Amity Park maybe. Hopefully. 

"I can not see how a bonfire can possibly keep ghosts away." He said, crossing his arms over his chest. "What most people refer to as witchcraft is just parlor tricks and confirmation bias." 

"You've met John Constantine, right? Zatara?"

"Of course. That is magic, not pyromania." 

"I'm sure there is more to it than that, Damian." Bruce said. They finally made it to the front of the line.

"How many?" The woman at the table blocking entry asked, already pulling three paper wristbands out of the package.

"Three, please." He said, already pulling out his wallet.

"That will be fifteen dollars." Bruce handed over a twenty, and Tim was a bit surprised he had such a small bill on him. The woman handed back a five and the wristbands. "These will allow you to come and go from the festival all day, so try not to lose them." Bruce thanked her before walking past the table and handing the bands to Tim and Damian, wrapping his own around his wrist. 

"Alright, what do you want to do first, food, games, or rides?" 

"The first thing you should do is set your intentions." Tim whirled around and came face to face with a grinning Danny. "Did I spook you?" 

"Stop scaring the out of towners, Danny." A woman with long red hair, held back from her face by a teal headband said, coming up behind Danny. 

"These are my friends I was telling you about."

"You must be Jasmine." Bruce said, reaching out to shake her hand. 

"It's Jazz, You must be Mr. Wayne." 

"Call me Bruce, these are my sons, Tim and Damian." He gestured towards the boys. "Now what is this about setting intentions?" Danny led them over to a covered pavilion with long tables covered in markers, pens, paints, and herbs. He handed each of them a pen and a slip of paper while he explained. 

"Write down something you hope this bonfire will bring to you or to the town over the coming months." He said as he drew a strange looking sun symbol.

"Does it have to be a picture?" Tim asked, glancing over to Jazz, who was drawing an intricate peace sign. 

"No, you can write it down in words, or draw a picture, as long as it means something to you." Jazz said. He glanced over at Damian, who was drawing an intricate looking rune. Danny was watching, too, a small furrow between his brows. 

"That's a powerful protection sigil for someone who doesn't believe in witchcraft." Danny said as Damian finished his drawing. Damian clicked his tongue before responding.

"I don't have to believe in something to be respectful of it." Tim had to smile a little at that. He was sure Damian and Bruce had a long conversation about respecting others beliefs. He still wasn't sure what he should put down as his intention, so he took a leaf out of Jazz's book and drew a peace sign. When they were done they put their slips into a wicker basket and Danny explained how it would be put in the bonfire right before it was lit.

Then they were off, Danny and Jazz leading the way through the maze of rides, food stalls, games and people. Jazz pointed out which rides were probably safe to go on, ("the ferris wheel is usually set up right, but the tilt-a-whirl is an absolute no go.") While Danny pointed out food stalls they had to try ("you haven't lived until you've had a chocolate covered deep fried Twinkie") 

About midway through the tour Tim became aware of someone following them. It started as a prickle at the back of his neck, then he started seeing glimpses of a girl with long black hair tied back in a ponytail. Every time he saw her she seemed to melt into the crowd and disappear. They had reached the part of the festival that was mostly crafters and artisans selling their wares, and Bruce was examining a blown glass vase while Danny was chatting with Jazz. Tim saw her again, and this time she locked eyes with him and gave him a sly smile and held her finger up to her lips. Her eyes locked onto Danny and she took a running start and leapt onto the teens back.

"Got you!" She squealed. "Did I spook you?" Danny, apparently, wasn't spooked. 

"Hey, Dani. Did you have a nice flight?" He said, adjusting the girl into a more secure hold on his back.

"Aww, how'd you know I was coming?" The girl, Dani, apparently, said, wrapping her arms around his neck.

"I saw you two hours ago, I've been waiting for you to attack me. I want you to meet some people. This is Bruce Wayne, Tim Drake and Damian Wayne. They're the ones I was telling you about. Guys, this is my cousin, Dani."

"With an I." The girl amended. 

Bruce smiled warmly before saying "It's nice to meet you, Dani with an I." 

"Doesn't that get confusing?" Damian asked. "With both of your names the same?"

"Don't worry, Damian, you can keep calling me Fenton." Danny said before stage whispering to Dani "Don't tell him your full name."

Damian scowled, either at Danny's tone or at the prospect of calling someone a nickname, he wasn't sure. 

"So." Jazz said, pulling everyone's attention. "Do you want to keep looking at crafts, or go play games?"

"I want to play games." Dani said, giving a slight kick to Danny's thigh. "Onward to victory, noble steed!" 

Danny sighed and bounced Dani higher onto his back, jostling her, but keeping her secure, a slight smile playing on his lips. "It's not up to you, let the guests decide what to do." 

"Games sound like fun." Tim said. 

"Games it is, then." Danny said, leading the way as if the teenaged girl on his back weighed nothing.

Chapter Text

"I betcha I can win that." Dani said, pointing to a stuffed animal. Danny couldn't tell what it was supposed to be, maybe a platypus? Whatever it was, it was right up Dani's alley, in a 'so ugly it's cute' kind of way.

"You can not win the basketball game, it's rigged." Damian said, crossing his arms over his chest and scowling at Dani.

Dani smirked. "All the games are rigged, you just need to know the trick to them."

"I doubt you know the trick to these games." Damian snapped back. 

Dani's smirk only widened. "How about you put your money where your mouth is, rich boy? I betcha I can win that thing on the first try."

Damian bristled at the challenge, but stalked up to the attendant. "How does one acquire that… creature?" He demanded, gesturing to the stuffed animal. Danny was a bit glad he wasn't the only one who couldn't identify it. 

"It's a dollar a ball, and you need three in a row to win." The attendant supplied with a large showman's smile on his face. 

Damian scowled and slammed some money on the table. "Three, please." The attendant took the bills and put three balls down. Damian turned to Dani and raised his eyebrow in a silent challenge. 

Dani smirked, stepped up to the table and grabbed the first ball, bounced it on the ground before taking a step back, shooting the ball high in the air and sinking the ball, hitting nothing but net. 

"What's going on here?" Tim asked, handing Danny a lemonade. "Damian looks ready to pop a blood vessel."

"They're bonding." Danny said, taking a grateful sip of his drink. 

Tim looked on skeptically as Damian silently fumed. The next two balls followed the exact same trajectory as the first, sinking through the hoop without so much as touching the metal. 

"We have a winner!" The attendant announced loudly, pulling down the platypus bear thing and handing it to Dani. 

Dani skipped up to Danny and Tim, grinning ear to ear, Damian grumbling behind her. "You cheated." 

"You can't cheat a cheater." 

"That was impressive, where did you learn how to do that?" Tim asked. 

"Last summer at a carnival in Missouri, or… maybe it was Ohio. One of those places." 

"Do you travel a lot?" Tim was giving Dani a calculating look that Danny recognized as his 'detective face.' 

"Yeah. Hey, they have one of those drunken ladder things! We could race." Dani rushed off, leaving the rest of them to follow after them.

"You said Dani is your cousin, right?" Tim asked. 

"That's right." Danny said. He knew it wouldn't be long before Tim or Bruce got curious about Dani. He thought he had bought some time when Jazz had wandered off with Bruce, talking about some psychology paper she was working on. 

"Is she your maternal or paternal cousin?" Damian asked.

"Hmm…" Danny rubbed the back of his head, thinking it over. "She's my cousin in the same way that Vlad is my uncle. The specifics are kind of weird, but she's family."

"Who does she travel with?" Damian asked. Danny couldn't help but smile.

"Are you worried about her?" He teased.

Damian shifted uncomfortably, a move that told Danny everything he needed to know. 

"Hurry up, slowpokes!" Dani called from her place in line.

"So, who's racing who?" Danny asked as they reached her. 

"I wanna race Damian." She said without hesitation. Danny smiled just a bit at the pink tinge that colored Damian's cheeks. 

"Guess I'm racing Tim." Danny smiled. This was the one game he knew he could win every time, thanks to his powers giving him near perfect balance. It was almost unfair to the carnival, but, like Dani said, you can't cheat a cheater.

Tim and Damian both had their detective faces on as they watched person after person topple off the rope ladder. Danny knew they weren't related, but they looked so much like brothers in that moment, he kind of wished he had a camera.

"It's just balance?" Damian asked as a middle aged man took a hard fall. 

"It's like crawling across a tightrope." Danny said. "Keep your center of mass right above the midline, and you should be fine." 

"Don't give away the secret!" Dani said, slapping Danny lightly on the arm. 

Tim leaned down and whispered something to Damian that Danny couldn't quite hear, but the younger boy suddenly smirked. 

"We should make this race interesting." Tim said. "Say, losers buy the winners lunch?" Danny glanced at Dani, who smirked. 

"You're on, rich boy." Danny said, echoing his clone's smirk. Tim raised an eyebrow at the nickname, but didn't comment. 

Dani and Damian went first. As soon as the whistle blew they both shot up the ladder as quickly as they could. Dani scrambled up the ladder, almost as if she were flying, while Damian's moves were much more calculated, quick, but efficient. Not a single wasted movement. Dani hit the buzzer just a hair sooner than Damian.

She rolled off the ladder with a laugh before gently pushing Damian's shoulder. "Looks like you owe me lunch." Damian scowled, but there was no heat behind it. 

Danny and Tim stepped up next, taking their places at the bottom of the ladder, waiting for the attendant to blow the whistle.

"Hey, look, Kwan, it's Fenturd!" 

Damn it, not him! The attendant blew the whistle and the two boys raced up the ladder. Tim took just a few seconds to adjust to the strange balance of the ladder, and Danny took full advantage, climbing up like he was born to it. He was almost to the top, just a few more rungs! He was gonna win! 

Pain exploded at the base of his skull, whiteing out his vision. He was vaguely aware of falling.

Danny blinked up at the blue sky, head pounding. He sat up slowly and shook his head. "Ow." 

"Danny!" Tim dropped from his ladder and crouched in front of him. "Are you okay?" 

"Yeah, I'm fine." He said, pushing himself to his feet. He looked around and saw Damian physically restraining Dani from attacking Dash. 

"Did you really just hit him with a baseball? Are you insane? You could have killed him!" He could hear Dani yelling, and it was only due to her self control that she didn't phase out of Damian's grasp and attack the bully. 

"Ha! Fenturd has a little guard dog!" 

"Shut the hell up, Dash!" Danny yelled as he came up and put a hand on Dani's shoulder. "Before I shut you up."

"What did you say to me?" Dash's voice was low and dangerous. Ancients, he was so done with putting up with Dash.

"You heard me, shut up, or I will shut you up." 

"Uh, Dash, we should go." Kwan said, eying Danny warily. 

"You seem to be forgetting all the beatings I gave you in high school. Maybe I should remind you." 

"Maybe you should listen to Kwan. He always was the smart one." 

Dash narrowed his eyes, and glanced behind him. "You won't have your attack chihuahuas with you forever." He said ominously before turning and stalking off, Kwan trailing behind and tossing wary glances back at Danny.

"Did he just call me an attack chihuahua?" Dani asked, sounding a little bewildered. 

"I think he called you and Damian both attack chihuahuas." Danny said, shaking out his hands. 

"I am not a chihuahua." Damian said with a scowl. 

"Is it wrong that I kind of love it?" Dani said with a smirk. Danny just laughed and slung an arm around her shoulder.

"Come on, chihuahua, let's get some lunch. Tim, I owe you, so what do you want?"

"No, nope. You would have won if that jerk didn't interfere, I'm buying you lunch." 

"How about," Dani said, pulling a card out of her pocket "Vlad buys lunch." 

"Yeah, that sounds fair." Danny said, heading toward the food stands.

Apparently it didn't sound fair to Damian. "Fenton may have been interfered with, but you won our match, I insist you let me pay for your lunch." 

"Nope, Vlad is buying everyone's lunch. It's the least he can do, so get whatever you want." They wound around a corner into the area with food stalls and stopped at the sight of the crowds. "Damian, how about you wait in line with me, and Danny and Tim can find us a place to sit." 

She didn't give anyone time to respond before grabbing Damian's wrist and pulling him toward a taco truck. 

"I don't think I've ever seen anyone boss Damian around like that." Tim said, watching the two younger teens walk off. 

"Yeah, Dani's good with people." Danny said, scanning the tables for four empty seats. A familiar red beret and a head of red hair caught his attention. "Are you okay sitting with my friends?" 

"Yeah, that sounds good." 

Danny and Tim made their way through the table to sit beside Tucker and Wes. 

"Hey guys, this is Tim." Danny said, "Tim, Tucker and Wes." 

"It's nice to meet you both." Tim said politely. Tucker had frozen, pulled pork sandwich halfway to his mouth, and stared at Tim.

"It's nice to meet you, Tim." Wes said, reaching across the table and physically shutting Tucker's mouth. "Danny said you might be coming." 

Tim gave Tucker a concerned look before his eyes fell to the camera bag on the table. "Is that your camera?" He asked, nodding to the case.

"Hm? Oh, yeah." Wes said, pulling out the camera. "Are you a photographer?"

"I used to sneak out at night and take pictures of Gotham. I'd love to get back into it, but I don't have a lot of time to devote to it."

"There's no better place than Amity Park to start up again." Wes said. "There are some beautiful landscapes if you can get up high enough." 

"You're… you're…you're…" Tucker stuttered. 

"Is he okay?" Tim asked.

"He's rebooting." Danny said, taking the sandwich out of Tucker's hand. "He gets this way when he meets someone he admires." 

"Me?"

"You're Tim Drake! CEO of Wayne Enterprises!" 

"Former CEO." 

"You oversaw the production of some of the best tech on the planet!"

"Don't make a scene, Tuck, remember ComicCon." 

"That was not my fault." He said, finally snapping out of his daze.

"The stampede was." Wes said.

"Wait, was this ComicCon the year before last? With the fire? I saw that on the news! You started that?" Tucker gave Tim a sheepish grin. 

"Yeah, I thought I saw Wonder Woman."

"Are we talking about ComicCon?" Dani asked, setting a large tray filled with food on the table and sitting next to Tucker. "I'm still banned from California, even after I put the fires out." She said with a grimace. 

"You made them worse." Danny said, accepting a plate from her. 

"How did you make them worse?" Damian asked, taking a seat across from her.

"You know the saying 'fight fire with fire?' apparently it's not supposed to be taken literally." There was a pause before a small grin stretched across Damain's face. 

"You're an idiot." He said, but the insult lacked any heat at all. 

The rest of the Solstice Festival passed quickly. Dani pulled them along from ride to ride, game to game, and Danny let her. He didn't get to see his clone as often as he would like, so it was nothing to him to let her decide what to do, and Tim and Damian didn't seem to mind either. 

About a half hour before sundown Danny snuck everyone into town hall and up to the roof

"The perks of being the mayor's nephew," he said, gesturing over the wall toward the town square and the massive pile of logs and branches that would be the bonfire "is getting the best view in town."

They all settled in to watch the sunset. Tim and Wes started talking about cameras and editing software while Wes took pictures of the setting sun and the town square. Damian and Tucker got into a conversation about the best coding languages, and their debate quickly turned into a argument. 

Dani wandered off across the roof, away from the group, to stare off across the steadily darkening town, clutching her platypus plush to her chest. Danny sidled up next to her and nudged her a bit.

"What is it?" 

"I'm going to ask Vlad to send me to school." 

Danny blinked. Vlad had offered to send Dani to school shortly after he had taken Jazz and Danny in. It would require him to forge paperwork and give her an official, legal, identity. It would require both Dani and Vlad to make their psudo father/daughter relationship legally binding.

"I know I said I didn't want to make it official, but… I don't know. You said Vlad was different now, and I want to learn and I can't do that unless…" 

Danny cut her off with a hug. "Do you want me there when you ask him?" He felt her nod into his shoulder. "Then we'll do it tomorrow." 

"Hey! They're lighting the bonfire!" Wes called from across the roof. Danny gave his clone a final squeeze before heading over to the group.

Chapter Text

Danny Phantom watched the bonfire burn in the middle of town square, sending embers up into the night. Volunteers from the fire department occasionally tossed logs into the fire pit, talking and laughing, their voices carrying in the otherwise quiet night. The earpiece he was wearing crackled to life, and Wes’s voice spoke.

“I’ve got a potential portal forming on Ash street.” 

“I see it.” Sam said. There were a few minutes of silence before she spoke again. “Neutralized. How’s it going on your end, D? Any sign of the big bad Bat?”

“Not yet, but it's still early.” He said, glancing around at the shadowy rooftops. He was excited to finally, after a month of planning, take on the GIW and free Mina, but that left his friends to close the portals on their own. It was just Sam, Tucker, Dani, and Wes tonight, since Valerie had gone on vacation that week. It was fine, they could do it, it would just be easier with more fliers.  

“I can’t believe you wouldn’t let us meet him.” Tucker complained.

Danny snorted. “And watch you fall all over yourself asking for an autograph? No thanks.”

“I wouldn’t ask for his autograph. I’d ask him to get me Wonder Woman’s autograph.”  

“I wonder if he can get Superman's autograph for me?” Dani wondered. 

“Portal forming on Park Ave.” Wes said. 

“I’m close, I’ll get it.” Danny said, figuring he might as well make himself useful while he waits. Park was only two streets over from town square, anyway. It took him only a few minutes to locate the swirling mass of ectoplasm and overload and collapse it before it could fully form. “Neutralized.”

“I’m still mad that you met Nightwing and didn’t get his autograph for me.” Sam said.

“I wasn’t going to ask anyone for autographs, that’s just weird.” Danny said, flying over Town Hall he spotted a shadow that wasn’t quite right. He turned invisible, probably too late, and flew lower to get a better look. 

“Just because you’re uncomfortable giving autographs doesn’t mean all heroes are.” Tucker said. “You could have asked.” 

Danny didn’t answer, just clicked his com twice, sending a chirp to signal that he heard, but couldn’t speak. As he got closer to the shadow he noticed two glowing white eyes peering right at him. If he didn’t know the man was going to be here the sight would have scared him. 

“Danny, is it the Bat?”  Dani asked. He chirped his com once for ‘yes’.

“Sweet, ask him for his autograph.” He chirped his com twice for ‘no’.

“Killjoy.” she pouted. Danny smiled a bit before switching to a private channel and flying down to meet the shadow.

“Batman.” he greeted the man, turning visible again. “You’re early.” 

“Phantom.” Batman said. “Are you ready?” 

“As I’ll ever be,” he said. Batman grunted at that, and stalked over to the edge of the building, away from the bonfire, and leapt off the roof, pulling out a grapple at the last second to slow his fall just enough to land safely. “That can’t be good for your knees.” he said, wincing as he heard the older man’s joints protest. 

Batman stared at him for a moment before taping something into his gauntlet. “My knees are fine.” 

Danny opened his mouth to protest the statement, but was cut off by the rumbling of a motorcycle coming up the street without a rider. 

“Whoah, self drive? That’s so cool!” Batman didn’t let him admire the bike, throwing a leg over and revving the engine.

“Let's go.” he grunted before tearing off into the night. Danny couldn't help the giddy laugh that bubbled up in his throat. He did a loop-d-loop, letting out a whoop of excitement before flying to catch up to the bike. He kept pace easy enough, with wind tearing through his hair as they raced out of Amity Park and towards Elmerton. 

The GIW base wasn’t in Elmerton proper, rather it was located on the outskirts, as close to Amity Park as they could get without being inside the city lines. Batman pulled up at an abandoned looking warehouse, close enough to the GIW base that Danny could see their lights, a soft glow in the middle distance. Inside the warehouse was a fully operational home base, complete with computer, training area, and workbench, where Robin was busy sharpening a sword.

“You’ve been in town for two days, how did you set all this up?” Danny asked, looking around at the massive computer, currently showing security footage from inside the GIW facility. 

“I’ve been here for a week getting everything set up.” Red Robin said from where he was sitting in front of the computer. “They only got here yesterday.” he said, jerking his thumb at Batman and Robin. 

“Huh, I guess that explains why you haven't been answering my texts.” Danny said, floating next to the teen.

“Yeah, I had to leave the civilian phone at home. Your man on the inside has been doing a number on the GIW.” 

“Yeah, Technus was spitting mad when he found out about Mina, and he has no shortage of creative ways to mess with technology.” Danny had been keeping an eye on the ghost’s activities, and it has been entertaining to watch the GIW deal with everything from power outages in the middle experiments, to blasting the heat in the middle of summer, making the building uninhabitable. The most fun has been watching him shut down parts of their network, only to turn it back on once they finally got through to IT, making it look like there never was a problem to begin with. His exploits have been thoroughly entertaining. 

“Tt. I can not believe we are relying on a being who has attacked us in this mission.” 

“Robin.” Batman said, warningly.

“I’m sorry,” Dany said, turning to the younger hero. “If you had been there you would know that Technus didn’t attack anyone. He’s drawn to technology, not hurting people.” 

Robin scowled at Danny before going back to sharpening his sword with a tutt.

Red Robin let out a breath. “So, before we go, we have something for you.” he said, crossing to the workbench and grabbing a box. “Here.” he said, handing it to Danny. 

He swooped down and hesitated for a second before he grabbed it. He spared a look at the three vigilantes, Robin wasn’t looking at him, entirely focused on his sword, Batman was standing a ways off, expression impassive, but his glowing white eyes were focused on him. Red Robin was looking at him with a slight smile. Danny opened the box and gasped.

Inside was a suit. Black, with white detailing around the arms, neck, and down both sides of the chest, and right in the middle of the chest was his logo, silvery white and centered on a black bat that nearly blended into the rest of the suit. Danny swallowed thickly. “You made this for me?” Danny looked up and met Red Robin’s eyes. 

“Well, Batman did most of the work. It’s Kevlar and Nomex, so it’s bulletproof, and flame resistant. It’s also insulated, so electricity isn’t a problem. You had said that electricity interferes with your powers.” Red Robin was rambling, like Danny did when he got excited about a project. “I did the internal wiring. You should check it out, make sure I did it right.” 

Danny pulled the suit out of the box, turning it around to find the hidden zipper. He pulled it down and examined the wiring, hidden under an internal layer. It was familiar. Not just familiar, this wiring pattern was his. “Is this whole suit an ecto signature dampener?” he looked up at the three vigilantes looking at him. “How did you even know about it?” 

“You gave me a prototype.” Batman said, pulling out a wrist ray. The wrist ray Danny had given to him when they first met. “I couldn’t figure out what the secondary wiring was meant to do, but Red Robin cracked it in no time.” 

“And Robin did the logo.” Red Robin said. Danny glanced at the kid, who looked away quickly.

“I had no choice. Nightwing was going to put a ghost on the front.” he said, not making eye contact. 

“I don’t know what to say. This is… Thank you.” he clutched the suit to his chest. 

“You should put it on, make sure it fits.” Red Robin said, gesturing to a bathroom. 

“And hurry up, the guards are going to change shifts soon.” Robin said.

The suit fit like a glove. Not quite as comfortable as his Hazmat suit, which felt like a second skin, but comfortable enough. He left the bathroom with his Hazmat suit over one arm. 

“Do I want to know how you got it to fit so well?” he asked as he approached the vigilantes. 

“No, probably not.” Red Robin admitted as he came over to check the fit. “I outfitted you with a wrist computer, it works just like a smartphone.” he said, opening a section of Danny's left gauntlet and showing him the screen. “You can turn the dampener on and off from here.” he said, tapping the screen. Danny felt the telltale tingle against his skin. 

“It feels like it’s working,” he said. His com cracked to life in his ear and he jumped, having half forgotten he was wearing it. 

“Are you okay, D? I lost your ecto signature.” Wes said. 

“I’m fine, Wes, thanks for checking.” he said. 

“Alright, let me know if you need anything.” he said before the line went silent once again.

“Yeah, that’s frighteningly effective.” he said. All this time, all he had to do was make his dampeners bigger to hide his phantom form? Why didn’t he think of that? 

“Awesome.” Red Robin said with a grin. “One last thing to complete the suit.” he said, holding out a domino mask. 

Danny took it and pressed it to his face. It felt like it was molded to fit his features, and the adhesive still allowed plenty of flex. Even with the mask on his vision wasn’t obscured at all, if anything the lenses enhanced his already sharp vision. “How do I look?” he asked, holding his arms out. 

“Like a vigilante.” Red Robin said. “Now, what are you going to do with that?

“Well, technically it's ectoplasm, so I should be able to…” Danny held his right hand against his old suit and concentrated on the feel of ectoplasm from the material. Once he had a grip on the feel of his old suit he let it flow into him, absorbing it into his new suit. Immediately the feel of the suit changed. It felt more like him, and less like a suit. With a gasp he opened his eyes and looked down. The old suit was gone, and the new suit had taken on an unearthly glow that all ghosts have. 

“What did you do?” Robin asked. 

“I merged my old suit with my new suit. I’ll be honest, I didn’t know that that would work.” he said. 

“If we are all ready, we should head out.” Batman said. “Phantom, tune your com to our frequency so we can keep in touch.” With that the man turned on his heel and left the warehouse, three teenaged vigilantes trailing behind him. 

Chapter Text

The plan was simple. 

Step one: Get in the base without being detected. 

This went off without a hitch. Technus shut off the power exactly on time, and the four vigilantes entered the building through a loading bay and snuck into an unmonitored service hallway before the power kicked back on. 

Steps two, and three were nested steps: Infiltrate the server room, and make contact with Technus.

This, too, went as planned. The server room was in the basement, and it was easy enough to get in with Danny's intangibility. All it took, then, was plugging Red Robin's tablet into the server and connecting with the ghost. 

Step four was where things started going off the rails. Step four was supposed to be 'get Mina out of the server and into the Ghost Zone.' Unfortunately, this was proving difficult.

"What do you mean 'she can't hold a physical form?'" Danny hissed at Technus. 

"I don't know what to tell ya, kid, she's a ghost, but she doesn't have a physical form. She only exists in the technological plane." 

"Why didn't you tell me this before?" Danny said. 

"Would you have come if you knew?"

"Of course I would have!" Did Technus really think he was going to leave someone trapped, scared and in pain just because they didn't have a physical form?

"So she can't leave the server?" Red Robin asked.

"She can, but only to another device. One big enough to store her." 

"How big?" Red Robin asked. 

"About two terabytes should do it." 

"I don't have anything that big." Danny said, running a hand through his hair. 

"Does the GIW have any external hard drives?" Batman asked from his place at the door. 

"There are some in the lab, one floor up." Technus said. 

"Phantom…" Batman started, but Danny was already gone.

He found the lab easily enough, a gleaming stainless steel table sat at the center of the room, and counters lined the walls. He tried to ignore the ectoplasm floating in jars along the shelves and focused on finding the hard drives. He could come back later, after Mina was safe, and destroy this place. 

The hard drives were in a drawer, five of them, five hundred gigabytes each. He grabbed all of them and was about to fly back down to the server room when a shiver went up his spine and his breath misted in front of him. He turned to see the biggest blob ghost he had ever seen before. The ghost nearly reached the ceiling, smelled like a tire fire in an open sewer, and was giving off a presence very similar to Pariah Dark. Danny couldn’t help the shiver of fear that ran down his spine when the blob ghost roared. 

His com chirped in his ear and Batman’s voice came through “What was that? Is everything alright, Phantom?” Danny was too busy dodging the ecto-sludge the ghost was throwing at him to answer right away. He phased through the wall into the next room to buy himself sometime.

“That was an angry blob ghost, It’s going to take me a minute to deal with this. I don’t want to lead it back to you guys.” he said, keeping an ear out for the ghost. It didn’t take it long to follow him, phasing through the wall and leaving a trail of ectoplasm behind it. Whatever had made this blob ghost huge and angry had also left it unstable. 

“Did you retrieve the drives?” Robin asked. 

“Yeah, I have them.” Danny answered in between ecto-blasts. 

“Then I shall come get them from you.” 

“No, stay there, it isn’t safe.” Danny said as he threw up a hasty shield to block the ghosts' next ecto-sludge attack. 

“We do not have the time. It would be quicker for me to come get them from you if you are busy. In any case, I am almost there.” Danny was about to respond when the ghost charged at him, leaving a slimy trail of stinking ectoplasm behind him. He phased into the hallway just before the ghost hit the wall. Robin, true to his word, was sprinting up the hall towards him. Danny started down the hallway towards him when the ghost phased through the wall in between them. It spotted Robin first, who slid to a stop. 

“Hey, tall, dark and blobby!” Danny yelled, hitting the ghost in the back with a two handed ecto-blast to get its attention. The ghost seemed to shrug his attack off, solely focused on Robin. 

“What is that?” 

“Don’t let it touch you!” He had a feeling he knew what had caused the blob ghost to get so big and angry, and he did not want to see the angry cinnamon roll that was Robin hyped up on the same juice that Red Hood is on. He needed to get the ghost’s attention back on him. He shot another double handed ghost ray into the ghosts back, followed up by a blast of ice, which seemed to do the trick. The blob ghost roared and turned to face him, advancing slowly. 

Ice seemed to be it’s weakness, which is great since he made the stuff. If he could get close enough he could freeze it solid. Suddenly the ghost let out a roar of pain and a split formed down its middle. Danny could see Robin standing with his katana and a smug grin for a second before the ghost reformed itself and turned it’s full attention on the younger boy. It threw a blob of ecto-sludge at him, and Robin barely backflipped out of the way in time. Danny shot beam after beam of ice at the ghost, hoping to distract it long enough for Robin to get away, but all he seemed to do was antagonize the ghost. 

Robin flipped out of the way of another blob of ecto-sludge at the same time as the ghost reached out a slimy appendage towards the boy. Danny acted without thinking, diving in the way of the arm. As soon as the ghost touched him, he knew he made a mistake. A burning pain radiated out from where the slimy limb was wrapped around his torso. Almost on instinct Danny let his power flow into the ghost, and ice started climbing up the limb. The blob retaliated by wrapping another slimy limb around his shoulders, which also started to ice.

“Phantom!” Robin slid to a halt in front of him. Danny pressed the hard drives into the younger’s hands. 

“Take these and go, I’ll be fine.” Robin looked unsure, but took the drives and ran towards the stairs. As soon as the boy was gone Danny let his power run over his body, knocking the ghost limbs off of him. His body felt tingly where the ghost had touched him, almost itchy, but not quite. “Alright, now for you.” If he had a thermos on him it would be easy, but he had given his last two working ones to Sam and Tucker for their patrol tonight. 

The ghost roared and charged at him, and he phased through the wall and into a large storage room of some sort. The ghost came in right behind him, throwing another glob of sludge at him, which he barely dodged. He tried to phase through the wall, but couldn’t go through the boxes lining the walls, and the ghost was blocking the door. The ghost threw out another limb, trying to catch him and Danny flew up to avoid being hit. He had to end this now, and he had an idea of how he could do that. He took a deep breath to steal his nerves and flew into the ghost.

This was a mistake. 

The burning pain returned full force over his whole body, but he ignored the discomfort, instead focusing on freezing the ghost from the inside out. The ghost, apparently, didn’t appreciate this, roaring and throwing slimy limbs and ecto-sludge all over the room, knocking the boxes off the walls, spilling their contents on the floor. Slowly the ghost froze solid, it's movements becoming slower until it stopped moving all together. Danny turned intangible and flew out of the frozen remains of the blob ghost. The ice was cracking, large chunks falling away, until all that was left was a normal sized blob ghost slumped on the ground. 

Danny kneeled beside the ghost. "I'm sorry, you didn't deserve this." He said. The ghost trilled before fading away. 

Anger burned in his chest. Something, something that wasn't him, grabbed onto the anger and amplified it into an all consuming rage. He wanted to make the GIW pay. He wanted to destroy everything! He could feel the wail building in chest. It would be so easy to let it go.

"Phantom, report." Batman. Batman was still in the building, along with Robin and Red Robin. He couldn't bring down the building with them in it. He shook his head and took a few deep breaths before responding.

"I'm fine. The ghost is…the ghost is neutralized." Neutralized, like a threat. Ancients, he was going to make the GIW pay. He ran a hand down his face, scrubbing at the itchy feeling the ghost had left in its wake before glaring at the still frozen debris of whatever it was that made the blob ghost go rogue. It was connected to the Lazarus Pit, he was sure of it. "I found something I need to look into." He said, picking up the chunk of frozen ectoplasm. Underneath it was a rock. A very familiar rock. "A couple of things." He said. He looked up toward the boxes lining the wall. All of them had labels on them, saying the same thing:

Space Debris

Object class: Ectoranium

That lying son of a bitch.

Two people in the world knew that one of Saturn's moons was an enormous chunk of ectoranium, and he certainly hadn't told anyone.

Which could only mean Vlad had told someone. The urge to fly to Vlad's place and beat him to a pulp was almost overwhelming. Unfamiliar rage burned in his chest, taking him by surprise. He couldn't attack Vlad, he reasoned. He had to have proof before he could confront him. Danny stood and kicked the ectoranium away from the door so he could phase out of the store room. He had to be quick. No doubt the guard would be by soon and raise an alarm when they see the mess in the hallway.

"Phantom, come back to the server room." Batman was saying. 

"I'll be there in a bit." He said. "I have a personal matter I need to attend to." 

"Whatever it is, we can look into it together." Red Robin said. 

"This isn't anything you can help me with." They kept trying to talk him down, but he ignored them. He flew to the other side of the building, far away from the hallway filled with ecto-goo, and went looking for Operative O's office. 

Once he found Oscar's office he wasted no time booting up his computer. One good thing about having to bust ghosts out of the GIW every few months is having the opportunity to steal passwords for high ranking operatives, so logging into the computer using Oscar's password (Oscar&Kevin4ever) was easy. Once he was in the system he pulled out a flash drive and plugged it into the computer. This one was specially programmed by Tucker to automatically find and download files using a keyword search. He set the program to find the word ‘Ectoranium’ and started looking for data on the blob ghost. 

What he found was a long and detailed report of various experiments they had been running on blob ghosts. Apparently they had found a pool of ectoplasm deep under Amity Park that caused ghosts to become stronger, and more volatile. Danny swallowed down his anxiety. There was a Lazarus Pit under Amity park. The GIW knew about it, and was using it to experiment on ghosts.

He would have to do something about that. 

Danny set everything about the Lazarus Pit to download as well before freezing. He could hear a key turning in the lock. He hit the power button on the monitor and turned invisible. The guard opened the door and swept an ectoplasm detector around the room. “No ghosts in the offices.” he reported into his radio. “Section seven is clear, heading down to the sublevels.” The guard said, shutting the door.

Batman was on the sublevels. 

A light on the thumb drive turned green, letting him know the downloads were complete, and he breathed a sigh of relief. He pulled the drive out and flew through the floor and down to the server room. 

Red Robin was kneeling on the ground arguing with Technus. It looked like they had connected all the hard drives together and hard wired it into his tablet. As soon as he turned visible Batman grabbed his shoulder, turning him around to face him. 

“Don’t run off on your own like that! What if something had happened to you?” 

“Lecture me later, the guards are coming.” he said, turning intangible and letting Batman’s hands fall through his shoulders. Batman’s lips thinned in obvious displeasure. “Where’s Robin?” 

As if on cue, the boy in question skidded into the room before whispering. “The guards know there are intruders, they are coming.” 

“Red, how much longer?” Batman asked. 

“At least fifteen minutes.” he said, the loading bar was only on fifty percent. “Mina is huge.” 

“I can defeat the guard easily enough.” Robin said, wrapping his hand around the hilt of his sword.

“No, none of you can be seen here.” Danny said. 

“We need to leave.” Batman said. Danny could just hear the jangling of keys coming down the hall.

“There’s no time, Technus, hide in the server.” The full ghost disappeared into the server, hiding his ecto signature, while Danny grabbed Batman and Robin and carried them over to Red Robin. “Hold on to me.” He said, turning all three of them invisible. The guard opened the door to the server room, sweeping the ectoplasm detector around as he walked through the stacks. 

The guard’s radio crackled to life. “Anything in the sublevels, Bill?” 

“No, nothing.” he said as he walked past them. Danny wasn’t breathing, and he could feel all the Bats were holding their breath as well. “This place gives me the creeps at night.” The guard said, shutting the server room door behind him. Danny gave him a few moments to get farther away before letting his invisibility drop. 

“That was too close. Red Robin, finish up. And you.” Batman said, turning to Danny. “Stay where I can see you.” 

With some cajoling from Technus, Mina downloaded herself into the hard drives, and once they were safely tucked away in one of Red Robin’s many pockets, Danny flew them out of the GIW base and back to the warehouse, with Technus trailing close behind.

Chapter Text

“Where were you?” Batman rounded on Danny almost as soon as they landed in the warehouse.

"I told you, it's personal." Danny crossed his arms over his chest. He was not going to get into Vlad’s fruit loop plans with Batman.

“That’s not good enough. How can I trust you on a mission if you run off with no explanation?” 

“I had some stuff to look into, it’s not a big deal.” This is why he doesn’t like plans. They leave no room for new information.

“It is a big deal. That bat on your chest puts you under my protection. I can’t do my job if you run off without a word.” Batman jabbed a finger towards Danny’s chest. 

“I have been protecting myself just fine for years.” Danny said coldly. He could feel anger simmering in his chest. He was going to have to get out of here before he did something stupid.

“You have consistently put yourself in danger for years.”

"I wouldn't have had to if…" Danny stopped himself, taking a deep breath. 

"If what?" Batman asked in a low, dangerous voice. 

"Nothing. If nothing." Danny's blood was boiling. "It doesn't matter." It didn't matter anymore that the Justice League was called, several times, to help with the ghosts in Amity Park. It wouldn't help anything to bring it up now.

Batman opened his mouth to respond, but Red Robin interrupted him. "Where did the ghost go?"

"He should be…" Danny turned to where Technus was just a second ago, only to be met with empty air. His eyes fell on the computer set up. "Check the drives." If he was Technus, and his daughter was free for the first time in her life, and there was an open internet connection… Well, he knew where he would go.

Red Robin wasted no time pulling up the drives on his tablet. "Empty. She's gone."

"So we did all that for nothing?" Robin asked. 

"Not for nothing," Red Robin said. "Mina is out of the GIW, and we gathered information that will help bring them down. Phantom, what…" Red Robin turned, but Danny was already gone.

Danny switched his com back over to his friend’s channel as he flew over Amity Park. He knew Batman was going to be furious with him for leaving, but he had to get out of there before he did something he would regret. Still, the rage burned in his chest. 

“Hey guys, how’s it going?” he asked, he could see the bonfire in the middle of town, still going strong. 

“It’s going alright. Starting to calm down a bit.” Wes said. “Dani already went home. She said she was beat.” Danny took a deep breath and let himself sense the ectoplasm in the air. 

“Yeah, I don’t think there is going to be much more activity tonight.” he said. “Why don’t you guys head home? I can take care of anything else.” 

“Okay.” Sam said. “But only if you tell us about what happened tonight at the GIW.”

“Alright, meetup back at FentonWorks.” Danny angled toward the building and let himself float through the ceiling all the way to the basement.

“Did you get a new suit?” Wes asked, coming close to inspect the suit. “Wait, is that a bat? Did Batman make you a new suit?” 

"Kinda."

"Wow! Are you like, part of his team now?"

"No? I don't think so."

"So the guy makes a bat suit for you and he doesn't want you to be on his team?"

"What's this about a team?" Tucker said as he stomped down the stairs.

"Batman made Danny a suit." Wes said. "Complete with Bat symbol." 

"What?!" Tucker leapt over the last few stairs, with Sam hot on his heels. "You have to let me take it apart."

"We can look at it later, but we aren't taking it apart." Danny said. "Well, except to take out any tracking devices." He was sure there were more than one. He had found no less than five on his stuff when he unpacked after getting back from Gotham. 

A wave of rage and 'how dare they?' overtook his senses, he clenched his hands into fists and screwed up his eyes, trying to will the anger away. When his head finally cleared he opened his eyes to find his friends staring at him.

"Are you okay?" Sam asked, concern obvious on her face. "You went...more ghostly than usual."

"What?" He felt drained as his feet touched the ground. 

"You… well, you went paper white, almost blue, and your ears were pointy… Almost like..." she trailed off. 

"Almost like Dan." Tucker finished.

Danny pressed a hand against his ear experimentally, but it didn't feel any different from normal. "That…that explains a lot about him, actually.” he said. If Dan had found the Lazarus pit under Amity park, no doubt it would have fueled his rage. 

“What does? Danny, what happened?”

Danny looked around at his friends. Something, some deep part of him was telling him not to trust them. That he was alone, and no one was going to help him. But Tucker and Sam had been his best friends since Kindergarten, they had been through everything together. No matter how much they fought, he knew they would always be there for him. Wes was newer, but even still, he had been there after his parents died, and he knew how that felt after losing his own mother. If he couldn’t trust his best friends, who could he trust?

“Alright.” How should he start? “Okay. So, the GIW have been experimenting with blob ghosts. Apparently they found this… pool of ectoplasm? I think it’s ectoplasm, I haven't had a chance to look at the data yet.” That was going to be a job and a half. “But, anyway. This ectoplasm makes blob ghosts… huge and powerful. The one I fought tonight was resistant to ecto blasts. I had to freeze it solid to stop it. I absorbed some of the ectoplasm from the ghost, and I have been having anger issues ever since.” 

“Anger issues?” Sam wondered, “Like with Vortex?” 

Danny frowned. “No, this is… I feel angry all the time, and sometimes it overtakes everything else.”

“Like when you…changed?” Wes asked. Danny nodded. “What were you thinking about?”

“How Batman had no right to put tracking devices in my personal belongings.” The anger started rising again, and he took a deep breath to quell it. 

“I wonder if being in Ghost form is making it worse?” Tucker asked. 

“Yeah, try transforming.” Sam suggested. Danny shrugged and allowed his transformation to wash over him. The anger was still there. 

“I don’t think it worked.” He said.

“Me either.” Wes agreed. “Your eyes are green.” 

Danny touched his face, then ran through a breathing exercise Jazz had taught him before turning back to his friends. “Anything?”

“Nope, still green.” Tucker said. 

Danny cursed under his breath. “Well, there isn’t anything we can do about it now. You guys should go get some sleep.”

“Alright, Danny. Let us know if you figure something out.” Sam said, and led the other two boys out. 

Danny sighed and ran a hand down his face before sitting down at the computer. He had a lot of information to sift through tonight.

Morning found Danny propped up against his work bench in Vlad’s garage turned workroom. His mind was turning over everything he had taken from the GIW the night before. He knew he had to have a conversation with Vlad, and it wasn’t going to be a pleasant one, for either of them.

He heard Vlad shuffle into the kitchen around five thirty, listened as the man paused outside the open garage door.

“Good morning, Daniel. I didn’t expect you to be awake this early.” He said. Danny didn’t move from his spot. Didn’t look away from his motorcycle. After an awkward silence Vlad cleared his throat and asked hesitantly. “How was your night?”

“Informative.” he said simply. “Did you know, the GIW isn’t funded by the government?” Danny didn’t look up from his bike, but he could almost see Vlad’s confused look at the non-sequitur. “They operate under a charter, like the Justice League. And, just like the Justice League, they’re privately funded.”

“I wasn’t aware of that.”

“Do you know who their top benefactor is?” Danny looked up at the older man for the first time since he entered the room. 

“I believe most of their money comes from privately owned businesses.” He said evenly. 

“Yeah. So, I did what you taught me to do, when you wanted me to take over Dalv co. I followed the money.” Danny said. “Sixty five percent of the GIW’s funding comes from private businesses owned, in full or in part, by your friend, Lex Luthor.”

Vlad blinked. “I wasn’t aware of that.”

“Were you also unaware of the fact that former president Lex Luthor was the one who signed the Anti-Ecto act into law?” Danny watched as the blood drained from Vlad’s face, and that was answer enough. 

“How do you know about that?”

“Contrary to popular belief, I’m not completely stupid.” Danny said. “Why would you tell him about ghosts?”

“Lex already knew about ghosts before I met him. He was the one who funded your parents and my initial research in college.” 

“So you were friends?”

“No, Daniel. He was our benefactor, nothing more.” 

“Is that why you told him about S313?” 

“What?”

“The moon, Vlad. Saturn’s moon. The one made of ectoranium? You remember that one, right?” He could feel the rising anger, and for once he reveled in it. He could get used to the powerful feeling the rage was giving him. 

“Daniel.” Vlad took a step forward, one hand disappearing into a pocket of his suit jacket. Danny pushed off the bench, arms falling to his sides. “I haven't done anything.” 

“You told Luthor, the man who signed away our sentience, about one of our weaknesses.” Danny took a step towards Vlad. “What else have you told him?” 

“You are being very dramatic about this whole thing. It was a business deal, Daniel. I don’t expect you to understand.” Vlad said. “You never had much of a head for business.” 

Danny pounced, transforming at the same time as his fists connected with Vlad’s cheek, his nose, his eye. Then, burning electric pain shot through his side, and he fell back onto the ground. He blinked up through hazy eyes at Vlad, who stood above him holding the still smoking Plasmius Maximus. Vlad took the handkerchief out of his breast pocket and dabbed his bleeding nose. 

Dannny blinked, and blinked again. The rage that had been simmering just under the surface for hours had disappeared along with his powers. He filed that tidbit away for further examination later. Now, though, he still had questions. “What else have you told Luthor?” He asked, pulling himself to his feet.

“Daniel.” Vlad, a hint of warning in his voice.

“Does he know about you? Or me? Does he know about Dani?” Danny stepped forward until he was within arm’s reach of Vlad. “Does the man who signed away ghost’s rights, and fought a legal battle to declare clones the legal property of their creator know about your half ghost clone daughter?” 

“Daniel, that’s enough.”

Danny moved quickly, yanking the Maximus out of Vlad’s hands and jabbing it into the other man’s ribs, where he knew it would hurt the most. Vlad doubled over, clutching his side. 

“Why did you tell him about the ectoranium?” 

“I needed a way to get it to Earth. Dalv co. doesn’t have any spacecraft that can carry that much weight, but Lex corp. does.”

“And what does he get for letting you use his spaceship?” 

“Nothing. He didn’t agree to my proposal.”

Danny stopped, staring at the man for a long moment. “What?”

“I asked him if I could use one of his spacecraft, and he said no. I could have overshadowed him, made him agree, but I didn’t.” Vlad said. “I would like to know how you knew I told him anything, and how it relates to the GIW.”

Danny ran a hand through his hair. “The GIW has a hundred pounds of raw ectoranium sitting in a storage closet in Elmerton. It was ‘donated’ by an anonymous benefactor. Luthor is their only benefactor who has access to the kind of technology it would take to bring that much raw ectoranium back to Earth.” 

“Well.” Vlad said, straightening his tie. “I am going to have to do something about that.” 

“What?”

“Luthor crossed me. I’m going to show him why that is a bad idea.”

Chapter Text

[“King Arwan, having been betrayed by his trusted advisor, declared him unperson, named him Darkness, and cast him out of the Otherworld. That is how it came to pass that the unperson Darkness came unto the land of the living. He found there people whose hearts were filled with greed, and promised them immortality in exchange for their eternal service.”]

Danny stared at the page in front of him. Ancient was hard enough to read on a good day, but he hadn’t slept in forty-eight hours and had a splitting headache. Still, he had promised Clockwork that he would translate this whole book on the history of the Infinite Realms before the end of summer. He had been working his way through it since before he went to Gotham, and was only three-fourths of the way finished. Since Vlad had grounded him to his room for punching him, he figured it was as good a time as any to work on it. He rubbed his eyes and kept reading.

[“It was there in the living realm, in the land of Gaul, that The Darkness found a man possessing wit and strength to match his own, and The Darkness named the man his Knight. The man had a fearsome countenance, and all who beheld him atop his mare trembled. The Darkness had forged a mighty sword, which gave the Knight the powers to instill fear into those who would oppose them.”] 

Danny rubbed his eyes again. ‘The darkness’ must be referring to Pariah Dark, and the knight must be Fright Knight. He really could use some coffee, the words were starting to blur together. “One more paragraph, then you’re done with the page and can go get some food.”

[“With his army, led by his knight, The Darkness set upon conquering the living realm. He set his base in Najd, near Mount Aja in the Shammar mountains.”] 

“Where the heck is that?” Danny asked out loud. He pulled out his phone and Googled it. Luckily, the names hadn’t changed that much in the thousands of years since this book was written, so he wrote down in parentheses (Modern Day Saudi Arabia)

[There among the mountains lies a spring, naturally connected to the Infinite Realms, and The Darkness ordered his army to spill their blood into the spring, and, taking his knife to his arm, spilled his emanation into the spring. When this had been done, he ordered his army to drink from the spring, giving them immortality. The Darkness, then, named himself the Head of the Undying.”]

“What.” Danny read the passage again, sure that he had mistranslated it, but it was the same the second time. He had hit ‘call’ before he had a chance to second guess himself. The line rang twice. 

“Someone had better be dead or dying.” Jason snapped over the phone.

“I’m half-dead if that counts,” Danny said. 

Jason was quiet for a second before sighing. “What do you need, ghost boy?”

“I think I found out how the Lazarus pits are connected to Pariah Dark, and Ra’s Al Ghul, maybe.” He said, “And I might have an idea of how to temporarily… quiet… the pit rage, but I don’t know how it would work on a non-halfa.”

“Okay, start with the Lazarus pits. How are they connected to Pariah?” 

Danny quickly read what he had translated to Jason. For his part, Jason was silent, listening intently. When he was finished Jason didn’t say anything for a long moment. Danny was half afraid that the call had dropped.

“And you’re sure your translation is right?”

“Yeah, I mean, the syntax in Ancient is a little weird, so I had to move some of the words around to make it make sense, but the meaning should be right.” 

“And the location of the spring, it’s in the mountains, not in the desert?” 

“Um.” Danny re-read the passage, just to be sure before responding. “Yeah. ‘Among Shammar mountains high, near to Nadj, near to AjaMon.’” he translated directly. “Why, were you expecting it to be in a desert?”

“Yes.” Jason said but didn’t elaborate. “How does this all connect to Ra’s Al Ghul?”

“‘Head of the Undying’ in Ancient is ‘Ra's al Ghul’ which I don’t think is a coincidence.” 

“When did all this happen?” 

“That’s hard to nail down, since time in the Ghost Zone is kind of weird, but my best guess is ten to fifteen thousand years ago?”

“That’s way before even Ra’s time,” Jason said. "He’s only like, five hundred years old or something.”

“There’s something else you should probably know.” Danny hesitated before continuing. “There’s evidence of a pit under Amity Park.” Jason went quiet again, and Danny resisted the urge to fill the silence. 

“What?” 

“The GIW has found it, and are using it to experiment on ghosts, and I may have been… exposed.” 

“What did the big man say?” Jason asked after a long silence.

“I didn’t tell him.” 

“Hiding injuries? That’s a big no-no.” Jason teased.

“I wasn’t hurt, I just absorbed some contaminated ectoplasm.”

“Did you… hmm.” Jason started before cutting himself off.

“Did I what?” 

“Did you hurt anyone?”

“No,” Danny said, running his hands through his hair. “It was a close thing, though. I had to leave before I lost control.”

“You have some pretty good emotional control, then.”

“I have to have. My powers are affected by my emotions. If I get too angry, I could hurt someone.”

“You said there was a way to quiet the rage?” Jason asked.

“Yeah, but as I said, I don’t know if it would work on a non-ghost. And it’s kind of painful, and it’s only temporary.”

“Just, what is it?” he interrupted.

“There is a device that’s basically an anti-ghost taser. It neutralizes ectoplasm, so it silences the rage.” Danny heard Jason take in a deep breath on the other end of the line before letting it out slowly.

“Okay, we are going to revisit you getting tased later, but for now…” Jason was quiet for a long moment before sighing deeply. “I hate that I’m about to say this, and if you tell anyone, I will deny it, but you should tell Tim about the pit, and the Ra’s Al Ghul connection.”

“Tim?”

“He’s pretty much our resident Ra’s expert.” 

Danny ran a hand through his hair before sighing. “Alright, I’ll talk to him,” Danny said. He had to talk to Batman about running off, anyway. That was not going to be a fun conversation. “I should let you get back to sleep.”

“Yeah. Thanks for letting me know about all this.”

“Of course,” Danny said before hanging up the phone. He sighed and stood up from his desk, stretching his back as he went, before heading downstairs. 

“Danny!” Dani yelled as he came into the kitchen. “I made waffles!” He scanned the kitchen, every surface was covered in flour, including the floor. A large stack of waffles sat on a plate by the steaming waffle iron. “Do you want some?”

“Uh, sure. Do you need any help?” Danny said, grabbing a kitchen towel and wiping flour off of the bar stools. 

“Nope!” Dani said as she floated up to the top cabinet to get down the sprinkles. 

“Danny! Where are you?!” Jazz called from the garage. 

“I’m in the kitchen,” Dani answered. “You just saw me a minute ago.”

“Not you, boy Danny.” She clarified, stomping into the room. “Oh, good, there you are! You got a letter!” she said, brandishing the envelope towards him. 

Danny took it with trepidation and read the return address. “This is from Gotham U.” he said before ripping open the envelope and pulling out the letter. 

“Dear Mr. Fenton, congratulations, I am pleased to inform you that you have been accepted into the Engineering program at Gotham University.” 

“Oh my God! You got in!” Jazz screamed. 

“Who knew there was a brain in that head?” Dani teased. 

“What is all this noise?” Vlad asked, stalking down the stairs. 

“Danny got into Gotham U!” Jazz exclaimed. “We should celebrate.” 

A complicated string of emotions crossed Vlad’s face before he settled on a vaguely pleased look. 

“I’m glad, Daniel,” he said. “We should celebrate this occasion. It’s not every day one is accepted into their first-choice college.” 

“Can we have pizza for dinner?” Dani said, putting the plate of sprinkle-covered waffles on the bar. 

“I suppose, you might as well invite your friends over, also.” he said, “I’m sure they would want to celebrate.”

“Oh, I should go get ice cream and drinks!” Jazz said as she grabbed her keys and headed out the door. 

“Hey Vlad,” Dani started. Danny looked up from the letter in his hand toward his clone. She met his eyes, and Danny nodded. “Can I talk to you?”

Vlad glanced between Danny and Dani before nodding and taking a seat. “Of course.”

Dani took a deep breath “I want to go to school.” 

Vlad paused for just a second before nodding. “Alright, if you want to restart your lessons, I can update the virtual tutor program and…” 

“No, I want to go to real school with other kids. I want to go to college someday, get a degree and do something with my life.” she said, fidgeting with a fork. Dani didn’t meet Vlad’s eyes, but Danny paid close attention. The man kept his face carefully blank, but was that hope in his eyes? 

“Okay. I can make that happen.” he said. “Have you put any thought into what school you would want to go to? Surely not Casper High.”

“No, not Casper. I was thinking Gotham Acadamy, so I can keep an eye on Danny.” 

“Hmm, yes, that is probably a good idea.” Vlad said with a small smile. Danny rolled his eyes. 

“If you two need me, I’ll be in the garage.” he said. Dani smiled at him, and he found it hard to be upset at the jab.

“Push the clutch, put it in neutral, then hit the ignition.” Danny said to himself. The motorcycle roared to life under him and Danny let out an excited whoop. It was working, finally, after so much work. Danny revved the engine, putting it through all the gears, up then down, before turning the motor off. 

“That’s a nice bike.” Danny whipped around at the voice. “Harley Davidson XR 750, right?” Bruce was standing in the open garage door. “What year is it?”

“I’m not sure, the body is from the eighties, but the engine was a custom job.” Danny said, wiping grease from his hands onto a shop towel. “Not to mention, I had to replace all the wires and belts, and half the engine, so it may as well be new.” 

Bruce stepped into the garage and circled the bike. “Did you do all the work yourself?” 

“Vlad helped me rebuild the engine, but other than that, it was all me.” Danny went to the fridge he kept drinks in and grabbed two water bottles and tossed one to Bruce. The man caught it without looking up from the bike. 

“Have you gotten to ride it yet?” Bruce asked. 

“No, Jazz won’t let me until I get my class M.” Danny took a long sip of his water and watched Bruce circle the bike again. “I don’t want to be rude, but why are you here?”

“Dani invited Damian and Tim over. She said something about wanting as many people over as possible so Vlad has to pay through the nose for pizza.” 

“Yeah, that sounds like Dani.”

“Who is her father?” He asked suddenly. Danny gave Bruce a guarded stare.

“Bruce, Dani is like my little sister. The specifics of her parentage are personal.” Danny crossed his arms over his chest. 

“Okay, its not really my place.” Bruce said. Danny got the feeling he wanted to say more, but they were interrupted by Jazz poking her head in the open garage door. 

“Danny, there you are! Oh, hi, Mr. Wayne.” Jazz said. “Sam and Tucker are here.” 

“Alright, Jazz, I just gotta clean up in here.” he said. 

“Hurry up, Damian and Sam are ganging up on Tucker about ordering meat lover’s pizza.” she said before disappearing back around the house.

“I suppose I should go reign him in.” Bruce said, heading towards the door.

“Hey, Bruce?” Danny pulled a flash drive from his pocket and tossed it towards the man, who caught it easily. “My report from last night.” he said as he put his tools away.

Bruce looked at the drive for a second before tucking it into his pocket. “I’ll look over it.” then the man was gone.

Vlad leaned against the porch railing, watching the group of teens play some card game. He didn't know the rules, but they were laughing loud enough to be heard from the second floor. He heard the sliding door open behind him but didn't look up. 

"I wondered where you ran off to." Bruce said, taking up a position beside him. Vlad only hmmed in acknowledgment. "It's been a while since I have seen my boys get to act their age." They watched the teens play in silence for a while. 

"We used to be like that." Vlad said, gesturing with his glass to Danny and Tim, who seemed to be working together to win the game. At Bruce's confused look he continued "Jack and me. We were inseparable. I thought it would be that way forever." He studied Bruce from over the rim of his glass. "You look like him, you know, around the eyes."

"Are you feeling alright, Vlad?" Bruce asked in concern.

Vlad didn’t answer, instead, he turned his attention back to the teens in the backyard. “I’m moving back to Wisconsin, once they leave for school.” Vlad said. “Daniel trusts you.” he looked Bruce in the eyes “Take care of my son, Bruce.” Vlad went back into the house, leaving “or else” hanging, unsaid in the air.

The End

Chapter Text

"So, since you own this place can we paint it?" Dani asked, flopping down on the couch Danny and Vlad were moving. "This beige is 'blah'"

"You may paint your own rooms however you like." Vlad said, setting the couch down. "But the common areas stay how they are." 

"Sweet! I'm thinking splatter paint!" She exclaimed before jumping off the couch and flying to her room.

Vlad sighed. "I'm going to regret that." He said. 

"Yeah, probably." Danny said, turning toward the large window looking over the city skyline. The view from the penthouse apartment would be beautiful if the rain would let up. He could feel Vlad's eyes on him, but he didn't turn around. "What?"

"Your eyes aren't as green today." Vlad said.

"Today's a better day." He admitted. Everyone had noticed the rage immediately, but Danny had only spoken about it after Jazz staged an intervention. 

That had been a hard conversation, and the only reason Danny hadn't broken anything was because Jazz had had the foresight to confront him in Vlad's gym. Still, Vlad would have to replace his punching bag.

Vlad didn't say anything for a long moment before clearing his throat. "I have one more thing to show you." Vlad said. Danny gave the man a questioning look, but Vlad just turned on his heel and headed to the elevator, fully expecting him to follow. Danny sighed and rolled his eyes, but followed the older man. Vlad hit the button for the sub basement, and they rode down in silence. 

The sub basement was used for extra storage for the apartments, if the chain link cages filled with totes and bags were any indication. Vlad led him past rows and rows of storage units until they got to the end. A cinderblock wall, painted with primer stood in front of them. Vlad turned intangible and slipped through the wall, and Danny followed suit. 

It was his workroom. Everything from the garage was here. Even the worktable was the same, distinctive because of the spot near one end that was partially melted. 

"There is a way in through the garage, near our designated parking spots." Vlad said, nodding toward a door at the other end of the room. "Evidently it was used by a mob boss who was ran out of town a few years ago." 

"How did you get all this here?" He asked, opening his tool box to check the contents.

"The vultures did most of the heavy lifting." Vlad said. 

"You overwork those guys." 

"Perhaps, but they are much more reliable than the ectopusses."

"Ectopodes."

"It is not 'ectopodes', Daniel." 

Danny opened his mouth to respond when his phone beeped with an incoming message.

GhostGirl: 

There are some rich kids here to see you.

GhostBoy:

You say that like you aren't also a rich 

kid.

GhostGirl: 

Offended.

I can still kick your ass.

GhostBoy:

Danielle Jacqueline Fenton-Masters!

Watch your language.

"The Wayne's are here, we should probably head up." Danny ran a hand over the melted corner of his work bench. "Hey, Vlad?"

"Yes, Daniel?"

Danny paused. He should say it, it's just two words, he can thank Vlad for all this. "It's 'ectopodes'." 

Vlad shook his head, but Danny could see a rare, genuine smile, so different from the one he usually wears. "Before you go, would you be interested in a joint venture?"

"What kind of venture?" 

"It has come to my attention that there is about a hundred pounds of raw ectoranium in the possession of the GIW. Would you be interested in assisting me in relieving them of it?" 

Danny grinned, and the anger that simmered in his chest surged at the thought of taking on the GIW again. "I'm interested." If Danny's grin turned a little feral, Vlad didn't say a word.