Archive of Our Own ^beta

In Death's Sweet Embrace: Volume 1

Jason pushed the swinging saloon doors wide open. Underfoot wooden floorboards loudly creaked in the sudden hush. As one, everyone in the establishment turned to see who had just walked in. Ghosts of every shape, size, colour, and configuration, were all dressed in keeping with the Wild Western theme. Jason meanwhile was the obvious outsider dressed in 21st Century gymrat chic - a sleeveless sports hoodie in red and black worn over a grey compression T-shirt, and black  sweatpants. 

Numerous eyes tracked Jason's nonchalant approach to the bar counter. Knocking on the counter, Jason pulled the bartender's attention. A minotaur, dressed primly in a navy waistcoat and a white floor-length apron, stared Jason down.

In his right hand, Jason laid flat a handful of silver coins. They clattered and sang as the coins bounced on the countertop before spinning to a still.

“The finest food and drink this can get me,” Jason ordered. Jason had earned those coins from reverse mugging an asshole who thought he'd be an easy mark because he was, in their words, “a puny weak ghostling”.

The barkeeper looked him up and down before taking the coins.

“Any cannots?” the barkeeper asks whilst drying an empty flagon with a clean but threadbare checkered cloth.

“... No, I ain't picky.”

The barkeeper grunted, “A’ight then, food will be out in a moment.” The minotaur stalked off. Jason wasn't by himself for even a full minute before a bother came up to harass him. Jason glared. 

“I’ll be generous and warn you: If you don't let go now and walk away, you won't be keeping that hand attached.” Predictably the ghost laughed, as if Jason had offered a joke and not a warning. Jason summoned his All-Blades and in one smooth motion sliced off the hand that had been touching his arm.

The ghost screeched and reared back in pain, its hand left to flop, bleed and sizzle in a puddle on the saloon's floor. But instead of running away, the ghost decided to get in Jason's face bellowing. Jason, in contrast, silently and smartly sent the ghost flying backwards by sparta-kicking him squarely in the chest. The ghost smashed into an empty table. It crashed to the floor in a broken heap, with the insensate ghost crumpled on top. Jason made a mental note to pay for the table.

Nudging the unconscious ghost with his boot, Jason then squatted down to do a pat down and pilfer all the valuables the ghost had on him. With heavier pockets, Jason returned back to his place by the bar counter. From his vantage point, Jason surveyed the saloon and took note of all of the attention on him. 

“I'm here to find the Ghost King,” Jason loudly announced, his voice carrying through the whole saloon. “Apparently he’s the only one with a stable portal to Earth.”

There's a pregnant silence. Stood leaning back on the bar counter, Jason overhears the slowly gathering snippets of muttered conversation. The Gothamite patiently waits for one to speak up. 

His patience is rewarded.

“When he's not haunting the Living Realms the Ghost King may be found at the Harmony Archipelago.”

“Where's that?” Jason asks, his head turned in the direction of the voice. His boots thud repetitively on the wooden floor as Jason slowly approaches the booth table where the intel came from. Walking up from behind, Jason could see that the speaker had eye-catching rippling bright red hair that appeared seaweed-like in texture. The hair was draped down their face like a long veil as it spooled out to make a red puddle on the booth table. 

“Oh they're what the Broken Lands are called nowadays,” they answer. Jason slides down into the free unoccupied seat. Now face to face Jason could see that the speaker was a grey-blue skinned humanoid dressed like a Spaghetti Western extra and slouching bonelessly in their seat. Resting his arms on the table, Jason repeated his question. 

“The Broken Lands is the region that received the biggest backlash when the Ancients ended the Old King’s Reign.”

Jason suppresses a full-body flinch as he tries to hide his shock. Peeking out from behind the crimson curtain of seaweed hair was what appeared to be a black crab demon with two red tentacles. Judging by how its two tentacles, previously hidden among the weeds of red hair, were plugged into the neck of the humanoid, the crab was using the humanoid to talk. It was like a ventriloquist act but in the reverse. This time the humanoid was the puppet.

As it continued talking, Jason idly wondered if there were any lights on inside for the humanoid or whether the tentacled crab was just hijacking a humanoid stiff for its vocal cords. 

“Nice history lesson,” Jason dryly comments. “So to make things crystal clear, the Broken Lands are where I can find the current Ghost King right now?”

“Most likely,” the crab’s tentacles pulsed as it answered. Aside from the flapping lips, the human body stayed deathly still. “King Phantom apparently likes to explore what has become of his predecessor’s territories.”

“Your information is incomplete , Unidaria.” Jason looks up. The minotaur bartender had arrived with Jason's food and drink. He laid that and some information down. A full flagon, an empty glass, and a white and blue porcelain plate with a surprisingly delicious smelling meal were set in front of Jason. The minotaur kept talking.  “It's wintertime at his preferred Haunt on Earth right now, so he’ll most likely be at Ghost Kingswinter.”

“Ahh right,” the crab's pincers clicked in time with the pulsing tentacles, “Ghost Kingswinter, of course. Apparently that Lair is as beautiful as it is freezing, is that true?”

The minotaur barkeep rolled their brown eyes, “Its nearest neighbour is Far Frozen , what do you think?” With that the minotaur walked off.

Jason inspected the meal in front of him and grinned. A heaving plate of what looked like BBQ pork ribs and lamb steak drizzled in honey, and paired with cheese and bacon fries on one side and spicy chicken and chorizo paella on the other. Jason then sniffed the towering flagon of what smelled like an expensive brandy. Taking a sip, the fruity burst of smooth liquor wet his tongue, so he took a longer, more appreciative drink. Jason then picked up his knife and fork, ready to dig in.

“So this Ghost Kingswinter,” Jason prodded, “how might someone go about getting there as quick-”

“Oi ghostling, this ain't over!”

Jason paused. The ghost whose ass he had just kicked, and whose hand he had cut off was calling out to him. This time he brought friends. Jason shook his head, dropping his knife and fork in disappointment. 

“Can we schedule this later, I'm just about to eat and I'm in the middle of something here,”

“That sounds like the words of a ghostling running from a fight!”

Jason deadpanned, “Didn't round one tell you everything you needed to know about the difference between you and me?”

“But you can't fight all of us, ghostling,” the ghost boasted, “and this time you ain't got no element of surprise!”

Jason pointed incredulously at the ghost’s friends. “And you think adding two more is going to make up that difference between us?” Jason sniggered. “Boy are you bad at maths.”

“No you’re the one bad at maths,”  the ghost jeered, motioning behind Jason. “You might want to count again.”

In his peripheral vision, Jason noticed that some of the other ghosts who had been quietly talking and drinking amongst themselves had started to get up and approach. Jason rolled his eyes, and then his neck.

“Everyone who doesn't want to get in my way, better duck,” Jason confidently declared to the entire saloon.

Not even five minutes later Jason was walking out of the saloon, victorious, with Unidaria at his heels. The tentacled crab-humanoid unit had offered a ride to Kingswinter in return for a cut of the moolah Jason had pilfered from the fallen thugs. So in a flying ghost ship Jason hitches a ride to the borders of Ghost Kingswinter. 

Jason, leaning over the side of the flying ship, looks down below. Sandy hot deserts had eventually been replaced by icy cold deserts. The ship glides through a clear night-sky sea. No clouds, just twinkling stars before them over an arctic tundra where a majestic palace of ice and light could be seen shining in the distance, like a beacon in the night. The humanoid body steering the ship’s helm brings the flying ship to a standstill.

“Looks like this is as far as I'm going,” Unidaria calls out. 

Jason protested, “But the palace is still miles away!”

“I said I'd take you to Kingswinter. This is Kingswinter.”

“You seriously can’t drop me off at the palace?”

“No.”

Jason crossed his arms, “Can you at least take me closer to the palace than here?”

The humanoid crossed his arms back. “No.”

Losing his temper, Jason growled. The humanoid made no response. The crab was unreadable but it looked very unimpressed. Jason counted back from five before speaking.

“Can you please at least get me to ground level? We're still like thirty feet in the air.”

“Over Kingswinter so I'm not going one inch closer,” Unidaria adamantly denied.

Jason snapped. “Are you fucking for real right now?!”

“Am I?! What about you? Are you out of your damned samhill mind?! Can you not tell that the King isn’t in the mood to entertain visitors. If we get any closer we’ll be considered trespassers . No amount of easy money is worth me taking part in a suicidal move like that.”

Jason stared blankly at Unidaria.

“What do you mean?”

“Are ya sense-blind? Are ya’s sharp as a marble? Or are ya just simply block headed? How are you not picking up the major Keep Out signals Kingswinter is sending?”

Jason looked between the icy landscape below and back to Unidaria who’s humanoid was standing on the ship’s deck and angrily gesticulating. Making a snap decision, Jason jumps down. But instead of the expected plummet,  a buoyancy kept Jason in the air, floating. He gently made his descent like a drifting feather. The ability of flight weakened though. Closer to the ground, gravity caught hold of Jason and, like an anchor, dragged him forcibly down. Jason wrestled for every inch of flight, as the ground rapidly approached. 

THUWMPOOF . In the banked snow, Jason makes a three-point landing. High above his head, a ghost ship soars away out of sight. 

The endless expanse of an arctic desert rolled out before Jason. It was stunning. A masterpiece of the fierce majesty of glacial natural wonders. Jason however struggled to appreciate it, dressed as he was in two thin sleeveless layers. He took a deep breath. Old lessons with Bruce, years old memories (cracked and tear-stained) unfurled in his mind. Jason took another deep breath. He slowed down his breathing. He slowed down his heart rate.   

"Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt," Jason whispered to the cold wintry sky.

As Jason crossed the tundra, his boots crunched wet snow underfoot. He made the haunting palace in the distance his North Star but the bastion of glacial beauty felt helplessly out of reach. Like when you stand on the Earth’s hard ground, and futilely reach out to touch the stars in the sky. It’s an impossible distance to cross. Still Jason’s feet kept on trudging. He was going to get home, even if he had to travel across an arctic desert and then fist fight a Death God to do so.

Relentlessly and thunderously, his boots crunched wet snow underfoot. The air’s bone-chilling touch repulsed him. It infuriated him. Jason bitterly wished that he had at least worn his leather jacket instead of this useless sleeveless hoodie. Tendrils of air seemingly furled around him with painful disdain and lingering mockery. The rub of his cargo pants (too stiff, too raw, too coarse) scraped against frozen skin. His boots crunched wet snow underfoot. His shirt sleeves’ hem pulled irritatingly tight around his arm.  His skin itched. It crawled. It scratched. The clothes he was wearing suddenly felt like cardinal sins. His boots crunched wet snow underfoot. Jason wanted to scream , but that would be a waste of breath. Quicker and quicker, his boots crunched wet snow underfoot. The frigid air got thicker. It got heavier. Clogging and suffocating, the air became hard to even breathe, and his boots crunched wet snow underfoot. His chest tightened. Under the hostile weight of the thick glacial atmosphere. His boots crunched. The wet snow. Underfoot. The biting cold sank, its fangs, into his skin. And tore into his lungs. Jason felt light-headed. He took a desperate gulp of air. When did he last breathe easy?

Falteringly, unsteadily, his boots crunched wet snow underfoot. 

The Palace was like a mirage. Unreachable. In the starlit dark, strained eyes failed to judge the unfathomable distance. Weakly, his boots crunched wet snow underfoot. Amidst the palace’s glow, Jason could faintly pick out the flecks of ice shards the palace was built with. Weakly, his boots crunched wet snow underfoot. A foreboding ambiance emanated from the palace with glowering radiance. Slowly and stutteringly, his boots crunched wet snow underfoot. As he trudged towards a palace that blankly refused to get closer, Jason felt the piercing gaze of several eyes out of sight. Haltingly, his boots crunched wet snow underfoot. Jason couldn’t see or hear them but instinct shrieked that several somethings were watching him. His boots crunched wet snow underfoot. His hearing, ratcheted up, only caught the deafening silence of their silent unhappy presences. His boots crunched wet snow underfoot. His sight, strained to their limit, failed to pick up even a trace of their shadows. His boots crunched wet snow underfoot. His heightened senses drove a red-hot spike through his mind. His boots crunched wet snow underfoot. His knees followed suit. His hands. His elbows. Jason came to a halt in the wet snow with its cold, fractal snowflakes. Sharp, infinite interrations, and endlessly white, neverending as far as the eyes could see…

In the silence a flock of blob ghosts flickered into view and approached the Sentinel trapped in a Zone-Out. 

“‼️❓❓‼️”

The blob ghosts frantically bobbed over the collapsed ghostling who was borderline insensate and radiating extreme pain and distress.

“‼️😫👻‼️” The blob ghosts cried to each other.

“🆘😫👻” The blob ghosts, as a giant shoal, quickly floated the ghostling onto their collective back. Heedless of anything outside of what they were fixated on, the ghostling was utterly unresponsive. The blob ghosts ushered the ghostling quickly to the safety of the Palace. 

“🔍 👻👑/👻👑🆘😫👻/🔍 👻👑”

Once in the palace, more and more of blob ghosts scattered off to retrieve their Ghost King.

> “📣: 👻👑/🆘/📣:👻👑”

Reminiscent of the North Pole, the Ghost King’s Lair stood at The Edge of the World. Outer Space was his horizon. And standing monumentally tall was his Phantom Palace; a wintry aesthetic blend of starfaring sci-fi and gothic fantasy architecture that shone like a beacon against an ever-changing spectacular spacescape. 

A dazzling ring of light flashed across the dark stellar sky. Gliding out from behind the blinding glare, as if sculpted from celestial nebula, was a titanous eldritch dragon. Seraphine wings, diamond cut and shining, lined up and down a serpentinous back. The wings, shaped in impossible geometries, were kaleidoscopic to behold. Danny could definitively count two - which was not wrong per se. But he had as many wings as stars in the sky, each burning, blinding, and as magnificent as the sun.     

Floating along in the sky of the domain Danny was attuned to meant he instantly felt the disturbance in the force that told him that there was someone who didn’t belong, a trespasser , in his territory. In a blinding solar flare of light Danny disappeared and reappeared in front of the intruder. The intruder, who was in his room and lying on his bed . 

In a vicious fit of alpha territoriality Danny fully flared out his seraphine wings, stretched out his giant draconic body as far as his bedroom would allow and roared, “GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT! WHOM THE FUCKETH ARE YOU TO DARE TRESPASS IN MY -” and was immediately sorry. 

Danny snapped down to human-size.  “Fuck oh shit, are you in pain? I’m so sorry,” Danny apologises, fumbling with his avalancing, immense guilt. The ghost in his bed was not just an intruder but also a Sentinel in the midst of a severe Zone-Out. 

“Fuck do you, is there someone to call?” Danny pleads. The deafening sound of silence answers him. There's no one else around for miles. “You need a Guide,” Danny, very panicked, mindlessly said aloud before slapping himself, “I’m a Guide!” Danny took a deep breath. “Ok Sentinel, I'm here to help.”

Danny knelt down at his own bedside, next to the distressed Sentinel. He gently laid a hand on their forehead. The heat radiating from the Sentinel seeped into his skin. It was feverishly hot. The Sentinel’s back arched, nuzzling into Danny's palm. Danny leaned in closer and with his Guide senses, he reached out. The Sentinel psychically latched on, fast and tight, and utterly unremovable. A metaphorical hand desperately clutching him, like Danny was a driftwood and the Sentinel was drowning.

Danny placidly braced against the Sentinel's frantic flailing. “Hi, can you hear me Sentinel?” A blistering tsunami wave of psychic distress and internal screaming crashed upon Danny’s mental shields in response. Danny winced. It was, however, a positive psychic response. The mental deathgrip the Sentinel had on Danny grew tighter which proved that the Sentinel could hear him on some level.

“Sentinel I need you to drop to baseline,” Danny commanded, his psychic voice poised to override and pierce through overwhelming the pained psychic white noise. He got psychically slapped for it as the Sentinel flailed against his shields like a drowning man scrabbling at a lone rock in storming rapids. The blistering waves of pain, dark, heavy, and suffocating, crashed upon themselves heedless of Danny’s commands.

“Baseline,” Danny repeated his order, “I need you to drop to baseline!” A gnawing fear spread through Danny. This wasn’t working. Danny could tell that the Sentinel was suffocating under the sensory input his dialled up senses were causing, and the agony that brought with it. The Sentinel was throwing all his energy at fighting and surviving against the pain his own mind was causing him. They were lashing out and Danny was strong enough to brace against it and stay steady, to absorb their frantic movements, but they were also hurting themselves. The Sentinel was using Danny as a foothold whilst simultaneously being unaware that Danny was even there, as a presence, as a Guide here to help him out of his Zone-Out. 

Danny couldn’t connect directly with the Sentinel like this. Forget using a dial metaphor to Guide the Sentinel into dampening his senses, his Sentinel could barely even notice him as it was! He had to change his approach. The Sentinel was burning and drowning in their own distress as scorching waves of dark turbulent energy tossed back and forth. 

Danny summoned a path of light through the darkness. He formed from balls of light and let them hang like a river of lanterns. 

All of sudden the darkness froze. Danny felt a wave of relief. He had caught the Sentinel’s attention. Now to guide the Sentinel out of his Zone-Out. 

“Baseline,” Danny repeated once more, “We need to get you to baseline, Sentinel.” Danny was pretty sure that the Sentinel still wasn’t mentally aware. That his words weren’t being heard and that this interaction was happening subconsciously. Still the dark energy was now burning as a fierce storm rather than a howling hurricane. 

It was still nowhere near baseline though.

Danny thought hard before inspiration hit him. Shining, Danny let rays of psychic light seep through the darkness, breaking it apart, and soothe the pain with empathic calm, chill, and bliss. Danny ignored the smarting touch of the Sentinel’s psychic energy, which was actually more burning smog than scorching sea. Slowly the pain receded and the Sentinel’s energy grew heavy. Danny had achieved in calming the Sentinel. But his senses were still too damn high, and the Sentinel was still in a really bad Zone-Out. 

“Sentinel, let me bring you to baseline,” Danny asked, and this time the Sentinel carefully reached back. With the psychic equivalent of letting Danny gather the Sentinel in his arms, a sea of smog was nestled in a bed of light. Danny gently led and carried the Sentinel out of his Zone-Out and towards Baseline. 

One-by-one, Jason's senses gently came online.

First was touch. Jason felt the warm comfort of a soft bed, and a cool calming hand upon his brow.

Next was hearing. It was the steady, gentle breathing of another person, of his, a Guide. Then it was scent. With the Guide so physically close, Jason caught the refreshing scent of crisp mountain air. He took a deep breath and all of sudden it was like he could breathe. Rushed hands clutched the hand on his face, and he buried his nose at the scent glands in the Guide’s wrist.

Instinctively Jason opened his mouth, but before he could bite down on the wrist, the hand slid and his teeth caught on the palm of Guide’s hand. It was grounding. His mouth filled with a sweet, cold, bracing taste. Tears of relief welled in his eyes. They blurred his vision as he looked up and saw a male figure kneeling beside him. Weak, cathartic breaths went in and out, and a woozy head leaned back and drifted off to sleep.         

Danny was exhausted. Fortunately the Sentinel was sleeping peacefully, lulled into a deep rest by the Guide. He took the effort to mentally shield the Sentinel’s mind in a psychic bubble of Danny’s power. The Sentinel would receive an additional buffer against the sensory physical world. This barrier gave the unconscious Sentinel the energy to spare in order to repair their own shields as they made their recovery unconscious. Hopefully, by the time Danny’s bubble waned, the Sentinel’s shields will have recovered enough to stand on their own. 

Standing back up with a slight stagger, Danny then took a moment to appreciate how attractive the Sentinel was now that they were no longer experiencing extreme levels of agony.

Danny then slipped out of his room to call Frostbite. Danny may have helped the Sentinel with their Zone-Out and their shields but Danny didn’t even know where to begin healing their sickly ghost core. His only idea of just feeding the core his own ectoplasm was held back by the possibility that it may worsen and injure the core instead. 

Quickly he flew to the communication centre of the Palace but he was stopped by a shoal of blob ghosts.

“👻👑🆘😫👻/👻👑💨/🆘😫👻/👻👑💨/👻👑🆘😫👻”

Danny looks at the panicked, frantic shoal of blob ghosts with a deadpan expression.

“Oh gee really I never would have guessed,” Danny’s sarcasm went unnoticed. But their well-meaning intentions softened him. Danny sighed, giving the shoal of blobs a sweet smile, “Thanks for telling me, you did good. You don’t need to worry anymore.”

The blob ghosts cheered before dispersing into the ether, which way and every way. 

Danny shook his head in bemusement, before floating off to call Frostbite. 

Jason woke up surrounded in an unknown place of luxury, utterly alone, and feeling very weak. But when he checked his mental shields, he found them to be surprisingly strong and stable. The psychic smog was much thicker than he had fearfully anticipated. Frankly, they were in a far better state than they had any right to be, especially after a severe zone-out in an arctic wasteland in a Lazarus Pit adjacent magic dimension. Jason decided not to question his good fortune. He stumbled out of the bed and reached the door, twisting the handle that was bitingly cool to touch. The door swung open to a corridor with a crystal floor, a ceiling full of stars and swirling constellations, and parallel walls lined with endless rows of purple doors.

It was utterly deserted.

Lingering in the doorway, Jason looked up and down the corridor. It was eerily lit. The only source of light came from the refracted starlight scattering off the crystal floor. There was an enchanting hum haunting the air. Jason had to forcefully drag his senses from chasing after the mellifluous sounds. Crossing over the door’s threshold, Jason’s ninja stealth footsteps nonetheless echoed mischievously off the curious crystal floor. Unsteady and light-headed, Jason rested his right hand on the ice-cold walls for balance. His fingers trailed along the walls' ice masonry and exquisitely adorned door frames. Strained sentinel senses refrained from getting lost in fascination with the texture of what he touched. But the corridor was still shrouded in a dark night’s gloom.

Finally Jason came across a doorway that had light shining through the gap between the door and the floor. Jason tested the door handle. With a quiet whisper, it cracked open.

"Hello," Jason calls out. He received no answer. Pushing the door open further, he entered the room. It was a library. A glorious library. One brilliantly lit with ice crystal chandeliers and arching floor-to-ceiling windows displaying a dazzling arctic nightscape as the stunning backdrop to the rows upon rows of towering bookcases. Bookcases filled to the brim with leather bound, hardcover, paperbacks, scrolls and journals and more. Jason was in awe. Enchanted, he walked up to the nearest bookshelf.

The Count of Monte Cristo, Treasure Island, Les Miserables, Catch-22, Lord of The Rings 

Looking at the titles written on the books’ spines, Jason nodded to himself at the owner’s good taste even as he wondered at their organisation system. He skimmed over to a neighbouring bookshelf. This one glimmered gold in comparison to the calm, sophisticated blue the previous bookshelf exuded.

Computing and Technology Ethics: Through the Lens of Science Fiction looked like a non-fiction book exploring the aforementioned themes. Domina by Matthew Mccoulum on the other hand looked like a sci-fi speculative fiction novel about an Urban Fantasy City. These two books were lined on either side of Duulamon’s Book of The Dead - Revised Edition. 

“Hmm, interesting.” Craning his neck, Jason peered up at the higher bookshelves that were astoundingly out of reach. No human would be able to get them unaided. Jason searched nearby for a ladder of some kind. Instead he finds a little blobby creature, shyly peeking around the bookshelf, looking at him from several feet up in the air.

"Erm hi?" Jason felt a little foolish as he smiled sheepishly at the little floating creature. It was very adorable for some kind of Lazarus Pit creature. The creature disappears like a popped bubble. “The fuck?” Jason then watched in wonder as it slowly emerged back into view. Then, gliding through the air, it approached him. Hovering in front of his face, Jason finds the creature adorable in its squishiness and shy behaviour, despite it looking like an animated glop of Lazarus Water. Carefully, hesitantly Jason dared to reach out to pet it.

It purred. Delighted, Jason laughed as the blobby creature slipped and floated between his fingers before excitedly whooshing around his neck. It then happily settled on Jason’s head, nestling in his hair. Jason chuckled. Then raised an eyebrow at the entire litter of blobs popping out of the woodwork. 

Only a little while later, Jason was absorbed in reading his chosen book whilst lying back on a giant beanbag formed from amassed blobs when the temperature dropped. Trepidation crept down Jason's spine. His flesh broke out into goosebumps. Abruptly nervous, Jason’s head snapped up. As he searched his surroundings, Jason reluctantly refrained from dialling up his Sentinel senses. He feared falling into another Zone-Out. The library's silence turned eerie as the library's light titled to uncanny creepiness. 

"I see̵͊ yȯ̵̟ụ̴͌ m̵̦͋ad̸̼̃ẽ̶̦ ̵͕̿yo̸ṷ̸́r̷̚se̷̦͊lf̸ ȓ̵͕i̷gh̸t̷ a̶͇͒t ̷͕̅h̷͈̆om̴̚ȩ̵̐"

Jason twisted round and looked up to where that ghastly sound was coming from.

His breath caught. 

His heart skipped a beat. 

What Jason saw, he did not understand .

Stretched in terrifying kaleidoscopic planes It loomed above. The enormity of Their presence warped, bent, and twisted the surrounding light and shadows. The presence writhed with fluid, organic, sleek movements; silently screaming and darkly blinding. Jason blinked. In that blink and a flash bang of light, the Lovecraftian Nightmare coalesced into a humanoid figure. Two arms, two legs, two hands, and one head. Twin supernovas as a pair of Lazurus green eyes. Sunbright white hair floated weightlessly in nonexistent water. Jason suppressed the instinct to look away. With boneless fluidity, the Being swung their two legs over the balacony's railing; a balcony Jason would have sworn hadn’t existed before. Then, with a suave disregard for gravity, It slowly sauntered down.

Jason's mouth dried as he watched the Other approach him. Dressed in a hoodie and jeans, the modern casual clothes were incongruous to the Being's unnaturalness. Fey and menacing yet, somehow , Jason felt familiarity and safety with this walking singularity.  Their two feet, clad in sparkling white sneakers, kissed the floor in eerie silence.

"Why do I know you?" Jason demanded. The titan of power was now within an arm’s reach. 

"̶̙͊I'̶͔̀m ̸͎͗t̷͓͊he ǒ̵͈nȅ̸̢ w̸̖̐ho̷̳͋ G̷̅u̵̯̽i̶d̴̺̀ed ̸̝͑y̴o̷̜͝u̶ ̴͙̿an̴̻̉d ̴͖͝pu̵̘̕ll̶͉̿ed̴ y̷ó̸̜u̴͐ ̸̣̆frȏ̸̪m̵͓͌ y̷̮̓ọ̵͐u̷̗̓r̴ Z̸̒ͅoň̷͓e-O̵͋u̸t”

Jason's face pinched as he difficulty swallowed that answer. Not to be prejudiced (Jason was after all, no one’s idea of an Omega) but Guides were supposed to be friendly and approachable . A part of Jason thought he might go blind or burn to ash if he even looked too hard at the titan.  He cocked his head. 

"Oh yeah, you're a Guide?" Prove it, Jason silently taunted.

A solar flare of overwhelming, Prime-level Guide Power physically reverberated the air. Jason shivered. It was bright and invigorating; like watching the rays of a breaking dawn warm a gloomy night. Jason was entranced. He could feel tears well up in his eyes. That wasn't fear running through his veins, clamouring in his heart, but awe and a soul-deep sense of safety and trust. He wanted to kneel, in surrender, in submission, in adoration.

"̶͉͛̆Y̸̤̌͆e̶͌͘ͅa̵̖͛̃h̵̫̽" the titan shrugged.

Jason was mortified with his instincts’ response to the Prime Level power flooding the room. His Sentinel, and even his Omega desires, wanted to surrender and relax in the face of their power. He didn't like it. This unfamiliar sense of serenity and faith, it itched at him. This unabiding trust that suddenly sprung up inside him towards this stranger. Jason's fists clenched, as his rage began to bubble up. Like a black hole, the titan quickly pulled in their Guide power. Leaving behind a disorienting vacuum in its wake, Jason dizzily blinked at the sudden vertigo.

"Ah, how are you feeling?"

"What?" Jason snarled, emotionally off-kilter.

"It's nice to see you up and about but you were in a very severe Zone-Out less than 24hours ago."

Jason frowned. This motherfucker was so hard to read, Jason cursed to himself. He had no way of telling if that was concern or disdain dripping from their words.

“I’m feeling just fine, thanks,” he bit out. “You’re the Ghost King right, is this library yours?” he blurted out loud. Jason gave the said library an appreciative eye.

“It’s collaborative,” they answered back evenly. “My sister arguably has the greatest ownership over the library.”

“I see.” 

The two quietly took the other in. Silence teetered between being awkward and ominous. Jason felt his skin crawl at how the other’s sheer power glitched reality around them.

“So you are the Ghost King, right?”

“Right”

“Ok good, because I have a favour to ask of you,” Jason stated with forthright bluntness.

“Is that favour the reason as to why you are here? Because you could have met your end trying to reach me.”

“Yeah it is,” Jason candidly admitted. “I want to go home, and apparently you, the Ghost King, are the only one in this entire dimension with a stable portal to Earth.”

“Untrue, there are others, but I see your point.” The titan hummed. “Sure, I can help. Where are you from, trespasser?”

“Gotham City, USA born and raised,” Jason proudly answered. The titan's brow crinkled. Jason’s stomach clenched. 

“If you're from Gotham then we don't share the same Earth. My portal to Earth will be useless to you,” they confess with sympathy writ in their pretty eyes. 

Jason closed his eyes. “Of course it wouldn't be that easy,” he angrily sighed. “Well what does that mean for me?”

“Well it won't be impossible but it will take some time. One of my friends is currently in possession of the infi-map, which is an artefact that will get you home to your Earth. Unfortunately, he's also in a different reality and reception between dimensions can be a little unreliable. We’re working on that. For now I'll send him a message to bring the infi-map with him to the Palace but I don’t know when that’ll be precisely. Still”  the Ghost King promised, “I’ll make sure you get home safely and timely,” Jason stared. The King was literally glowing with his sincerity. 

“Sure, ok, thanks, much appreciated” Jason muttered as he rubbed a tired hand over his face, feeling very strung out and oddly embarrassed. 

“Well silver lining, since you're stranded here for the moment, you'll have plenty of time to go visit my doctor and fix your health!” The titan toothily grinned.

"Err thanks but no thanks.” Jason flatly refused, “I don't need to see a doctor."

"Sure, and I'll agree with your opinion," the Ghost King gives a regal lackadaisical shrug, "once I hear my doctor say that too."

Jason scoffed, "Fuck you, I ain't going."

"You need to see a doctor," they insisted.

"I said I don't need a doctor!"

"And I said I'll agree with that opinion once a medical professional says it too."

Jason crossed his arms, digging in his heels, and silently glared. A whistling breeze swept the closed room.

"Is there a reason why you don’t want to go?" the Ghost King eventually asked.

Jason smiled sharply, "I don't know your doctor from a shitty drug pusher in Gotham’s streets.” 

The air rumbled and the light sighed. "I get where you're coming from, but my doctor is the best where it comes to conditions like yours."

Jason rolled his eyes, "It was a Zone-Out, a shitty one sure, but its hardly a condition. ” 

The temperature blinked. "Oh yes, that too but I was talking more about your ghost core?"

"My what?"

"Your ghost core. When I was Guiding you, I could tell it's basically suffering from severe malnutrition, especially for a being of your strength."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Jason deadpanned.

The light stilled. "About the malnutrition?" 

"About having a ghost core."

The air cursed blue. Within the hour Jason was being prescribed cuddles and fights, from a giant Viking Yeti.

It all started when the Ghost King got in his space and solemnly asked, “Do you trust me?” and Jason found himself in the position of honestly answering yes . Despite the abruptness of the depth of that trust, and his internal side-eye, self-admonishment and disconcertment because of it, Jason was still willing to make that Leap of Trust. Besides, Jason convinced himself, if the Ghost King had wanted to cause harm it had free opportunity to do so when he had been utterly defenceless. More cynically, if this powerful being had an agenda with Jason in mind, complying with their wishes for the moment would only be advantageous. Especially since the Ghost King was his best chance of getting back home to Gotham.

The Great One’s presence was felt long before you could see or hear him. The Great One’s aura heralds his arrival upon Far Frozen, like a dawning sun harkening a new day, as their mere presence lights up a night sky. Since his coronation, the Great One had ascended from a Guide of some strength to a Prime, and a monstrously powerful one at that.

“Your Majesty,” Frostbite brightly greets his High King as he slides out of his chosen vehicle. 

“Frostbite,” his King greeted back exasperated, “how many times do I have to tell you, to just call me Danny?”

“At least once more, O’Great One,” Frostbite laughs proudly. Privately in his mind Frostbite already calls his High King, Danny. But as young and lovable as Danny is, Frostbite would never be so disrespectful as to casually address the halfa as such out loud to anyone let alone to his face. Besides it was so very amusing that manners of all things proved to be an excellent way to tease the young monarch. 

“Hold the phone,” Danny’s companion interrupted, “I'm sorry but your name is Danny? The Big Bad Ghost King is called Danny ?” The companion who’s not one of the Great One’s liminal fraidmates beside him. Up close Frostbite could tell that this must be the Sentinel with the frail ghost core that the Great One had wanted him to heal.   

“I wasn’t born ‘The Big Bad Ghost King’. I was Danny Phantom first.”

“I’m genuinely surprised that your name isn’t something like Belial or Morgoth or Asmodeus.”

“Well first off that sounds kinda racist and I don’t…”

As the two bickered in their own little world, Frostbite took the time to curiously look over at the King’s Sentinel companion. From a cursory glance Frostbite could tell that their ghost core was concerningly feeble. In fact as a ghost, they were weaker than even the liminal human members of his King’s fraid. Although with only a superficial overview, Frostbite couldn’t tell whether the weak ghost core was because they were a new baby ghost or whether it was because of stunted development. 

“Wait, you’re half-human?!”

“Is that so hard to believe?” cluelessly asked the fledgling Ancient.

“I mean yeah, kinda” drawled the little ghost. The Great One pouted. 

Jason was in the middle of getting an ecto-scan. He was currently stripped to his boxers and floating submerged in a vat of clear listerine blue bubbly liquid whilst wearing a respiratory helmet. The giant yeti who was apparently the Ghost King’s private doctor was explaining why Jason was so fucked up. As for the Ghost King himself, he was there. To be fair, the Ghost King had offered to step outside so that this appointment occurred in private. But Jason had felt uncomfortable at the thought of separating from the Ghost King and so told Phantom to just stick around. Still being all but naked was very awkward. The awkwardness was only mitigated by how clinical and unbothered the other two ghosts were of his state of undress. Idly, Jason wondered whether that was because these ghosts had a cultural lack of a nudity taboo, or if the difference in species made his nakedness a non-issue. After all, the giant yeti was only marginally more dressed than him. The Ghost King’s doctor was only wearing what amounted to a loincloth around his waist and a cape on his shoulders. 

“... so the human body digests food to absorb the nutrients and turn into fuel whilst your liver detoxifies what you’ve consumed and the ghost core carries out similar functions with ectoplasm. But that’s not what’s happening with your ghost core because it’s not capable of digesting and detoxifying what you’ve been feeding it which seems to be,” Frostbite pulls up a recent scan which shows an outline of Jason with a circle dead centre filled in with angry red and green splotches, “a whole lot of rage, some really toxic emotions, and some awfully cursed energy. All of this is way too strong for your imperfect ghost core to currently handle. So for the time being you need to feed your ghost core some gentler, purer emotions.”

“Baby food,” the Ghost King snickered, “you need to eat baby food because of your idle widdle ghost core.”

“Don’t think I can’t kill you a second time,” Jason threatened, the All-Blades humming in the back of his mind. 

“Also have you experienced a greater appetite, an increased need for calories?” Frostbite the Giant Yeti Doctor interjected. Jason nodded. “That is because your human half is working overtime trying to keep your body alive whilst your ghost half is weak, malnutritioned, and starving. A state that I imagine is wreaking havoc on your overall physiology and psychology. Extreme metabolism, unhealthy obsessions, and emotional dysregulation such as severe mood swings or uncontrollable fits of rage would be some of the expected side effects.” Jason crossed his arms, his silence speaking volumes. Jason assumed that the giant yeti’s grin in response was supposed to be reassuring.

“Luckily this is fairly easy to treat by having easy access to healthy ectoplasm and having a stable healthy fraid. And what do you know? When developing fraid bonds something that is very helpful are Sentinel and Guides bonds. A bond that you and the Great One already share.” Jason stared at the giant yeti who was talking crazy. 

“The Ghost King is not my Guide,” Jason adamantly denied. 

“Verily,” the yeti agreed, “but you two do share a nascent bond.”

“Oh,” went Jason. Then he turned to glare at Phantom, “Wait, did you know about this?” he demanded.

“Yes?” the Ghost King cocked their head, “it’s right there. Or are you seriously trying to tell me that you don’t feel it?”

“What am I supposed to be feeling?” Jason’s arms sent bubbles frothing.

The Ghost King sighed with his entire hovering body. “Jason, we’ve known each other for less than 24hours but you’re already very important to me,” he confessed. “I want to share my time and my things with you and I barely know you. If you were to leave, I would miss you terribly. If you were to stay, I would like to spend my time helping you and be with you. I’m so very attached to you and I look forward to knowing you better.”  

And Jason, Jason blushed. A rosy pink filled his cheeks. Having this eldritch titan say some of the sweetest, most heartfelt words Jason had ever had addressed to him, truly flustered Jason.

The giant yeti doctor continued speaking. “It’s not uncommon for nascent bonds to form between compatible Sentinels and Guide especially after an intense interaction, such as Guiding a Sentinel out of a dangerous Zone-Out.”

“But those bonds fade with time and distance right,” Jason pointed out, “otherwise Guides wouldn’t Guide anyone except their chosen Sentinel.”

“Exactly,” the doctor agreed, “but nascent bonds are also a very good foundation for true Sentinel-Guide bonds. It proves the compatibility between the Sentinel and the Guide making it essentially the first step to true bonding.”

Jason was now back out of the ecto-scanning pod, dry, and redressed in his clothes. The three of them further discussed Jason’s unique ghostly biology and the ways that they could improve his overall health. At first Jason was resistant, especially because most of the treatment methods involved long term care. It was also advised that Jason should have an additional training period. This suggestion was made because with a stronger, healthier ghost core Jason was likely to develop ghost powers. Powers that he would need time to master and control. Therefore, it took some convincing and promises on Phantom’s and Frostbite’s part that when Jason returned back to his dimension they’d make sure that it’d be like no time at all had passed (“Don’t worry I’ll be able to return you back home as if you never left,” Phantom had promised. “What like Narnia?” “More like the Tardis”) but Jason was now leaning back in an armchair, listening attentively to the giant yeti’s explanation about his own fucked-up biology.  

“Although I cannot formally conclude, from what you have told me, I suspect that before you developed a ghost core you were fully revenant. And this reanimated undead state of being seems to have caused your ghost core, and thus your ectoplasmic ghost body, to instead form and bond with your corporeal human one rather than separately, similarly to His Greatness.

Unfortunately, unlike the Great One, the formation of your ghost core was imperfect. I’m hypothesising it’s because of the difficult ectoplasm environment you were resurrected in, these Lazarus Waters . However this means that fragility of your ghost core is not the result of insufficient ectoplasm or energy during formation but instead impurities. This means it’s a treatable condition. In fact I suspect that once we purge you of those impurities and give you pure ectoplasm, you will eventually develop a very strong and powerful ghost core. Plus you said that your physical body experienced a large rapid growth spurt before and after your death?” Jason nodded. Frostbite hummed. “Whilst it may be human adolescent growth, we can’t disregard the influence of ghost biology; mind over matter, self-presentation, and so forth.” 

“Also didn’t you say you died at age 14?” Phantom piped up. “Ghost puberty is basically like pokemon evolution or levelling up. One minute you're stuck in one form for ages and then ‘when you're ready’ you’re speedrunning puberty. I for one was looking fourteen and short with it until I was eighteen and then bam I grew 2 feet in 2 months. And now I’m going through it all over again with this High King bullshit trying to turn me into some kind of Lovecraftian Kaiju Dragon. Which is ridiculous because Pariah wasn’t rocking a look like this when I last saw him.”

“That was because he was severely weakened from his millenia trapped in the Sarcophagus of Forever-Sleep, Oh Great One.”

Phantom harrumphed, “Was still strong enough to interdimensionally pull my entire hometown from Earth into the Ghost Zone and send all the Ghosts in his vicinity running.”

“Well that’s just the power that comes with being the High King, even a dethroned one,” Frostbite pointed out to his current High King. 

Jason folded his arms, thinking deeply. “So to summarise, I am half ghost, half zombie and my ghost half, my ghost core, is unhealthy and poorly developed because of the shitty ectoplasm and emotions I’ve been feeding it since its formation, which in turn is screwing me over and giving me health problems i.e. my Pit Madness. Luckily for me this is curable by making ghost core healthy lifestyle choices, such as pure ectoplasm and ghost fights?”

“That and indulging in your ghost Obsessions,” Phantom piped up. “But figuring out your Obsessions and carrying them out in healthy, moral ways can be a little tricky and probably isn’t something you should be worrying about right now anyway.”

“Right.” Jason hairy eyeballed Phantom over his unhelpful add-ons. He’s already had a lot of information to digest (including his unwitting transition into another species) he didn’t need more piled on.

Frostbite continued explaining, “In general there’s nothing like a good fight to reaffirm your existence and grow your core. For you however, with your condition that exacerbates your anger to uncontrollable magnitudes and the current fragility of your ghost core, only once your core is strong enough to start showing basic ghost powers will we move onto ghost fights. For now absorbing pure positively-charged ectoplasm is your primary objective. Fortunately the Great One, whom you share a nascent bond with, will be an excellent source of such ectoplasm. Therefore, to start with your primary treatment method will be to have prolonged intimate contact with His Greatness.”

“... Are you trying to tell me that to cure my Pit Madness I need to fuck Phantom?!”

Frostbite and Phantom had been quick to assuage Jason that ‘prolonged intimate contact’ did not need to be sex.  However Jason wasn’t sure whether the alternative was better for his dignity. Now back in the library, Phantom was lounging upon his mountain of blob ghost beanbags. He looked up at the still standing Jason. 

“Ok so how do you wanna do this?” 

Jason eyed the relaxed King and the wealth of space presented to him. He tightly held a copy of Huckleberry Finn in hand.

“We can start by sitting back to back,” Jason answered brusquely. Phantom nodded in easy acquiescence. Jason watched as Phantom shifted his long human legs for a wispy ghost tail. Jason could feel Phantom’s eyes watch him crouch down and crawl ungainly over the beanbags to sit with his back to Phantom. This close, Jason was caught by the King’s unashamed and blatant scent. It smelled like Alpha and it was attractive to his Omega instincts to a frankly obnoxious degree. It wasn’t the first time that Jason (and humans in general) have been confused by a non-human’s scents. For instance to human senses, Tamaraneans were a race of Omega Guides whilst Kryptonians read as Beta Sentinels despite both races not having a secondary gender at all.  

Jason felt a little uncomfortable giving his back to the King. Gingerly he rested his back against Phantom’s. A chill seeped into Jason’s back. 

“Oh you’re an Omega!” Phantom blurted. 

“Excuse me?” Jason immediately snapped, twisting round to get into the King’s face, his heart rabbiting. 

Phantom shrugged sheepishly, “Sorry, it’s just that I wouldn’t have realised that if it weren’t for your scent.”

“My scent,” Jason dumbly parroted. Jason was on heavy suppressants. His scent, even if it was detected, should be reading as neutral Beta. Nobody looks at Jason and his broad-shouldered 6 foot frame with his neutral scents and thinks Omega. People see him and immediately assume he’s either an Alpha wearing strong scent-blockers or that he's a bigger than average male Beta. And that’s the way Jason likes it. 

“Is this going to be a problem?” Jason asked testily. 

Phantom shook his head, “No actually, I was thinking it was a nice coincidence.”

“What?” Jason frowned.

“Well I’m an Alpha,” Phantom explained, “so I hope my scent will be extra relaxing for you. I know that my aura as a ghost and a guide can be a little overwhelming.”

Jason stared deadpan at the Ghost King, who was his perfect match as both a Sentinel and an Omega. Whose psychic energies nearly put him on his knees and now whose pheromones would have him wanting to be kept there. Jason suppressed the urge to smack Phantom, or himself for that matter. 

“You know, I initially didn’t think you even had a secondary gender,” Jason scoffed. 

“You didn’t even think I was human,” Phantom teased. “To be fair most non-human ghosts don’t have a secondary gender. Frostbite sure doesn’t. Plus I’m pretty sure he frequently forgets that secondary genders are even a thing. I do too sometimes if I’m away from humans for long enough and I’m half human.”

Then Phantom admitted that he hadn’t been the most human when they first met. Jason twisted round to talk to Phantom face-to-face.

“Yeah what was that about? You were basically glitching out and bending reality when we met in the library.”

Phantom gave Jason a sheepish smile, “I don’t actually have the best control over my aura right now. I was only recently coronated as Ghost King so I’m still adjusting to being essentially plugged into the Ghost Zone’s Energy Mainframe now. Nowadays if I don’t pay attention otherwise, my ghost form often starts taking on a kaiju dragon shape, especially when the Ghost Zone’s ectoplasm is in flux or I’m emotionally excited.” 

Jason eyed Phantom’s current far more human form up and down. White haired, green eyed, tall, and very handsome, his godlike beauty was far from his Lovecraftian first impression, but still very much not-human. It was in his fey posture and the way his form hinted that it was more the result of thought than matter.

“So what, back then you were experiencing a power surge?” Jason asked sceptically.

“Basically,” Phantom easily nodded, as he shifted about to get comfy. He sat up, his back pressing up against Jason’s as he carefully navigated Jason’s personal bubble but also his medical needs. Phantom could feel Jason tense up. It took a moment before Jason was willing to rest his weight against Phantom’s bigger frame, before he slowly relented the tension in his shoulders. After a while however, Jason was completely absorbed in his book and fully leaning against his companion. Phantom smiled.

“I actually have a fully human form, you know? Black hair, blue eyes, red blood, and likes to follow the laws of Newtonian physics. It’s the body that I have had since birth. But since I was coronated it’s been basically impossible for me to stay in it. Frostbite says I’ll be able to manage it someday but he’s also been very vague about the timeline.”

Jason leaned forward to turn round and pats the Ghost King commiseratingly on the back, “That’s rough buddy,” he says before turning back and cracking open Huck Finn .

So the snuggles became daily routines. Once a day, either Jason would hunt down Phantom and demand his cuddle time or Phantom would go up to Jason (happily spending time discovering and devouring all the books in the palace library) and offer it then and there. The cuddles could last anywhere from thirty minutes to three hours. Sometimes if it was late enough the pair of them would just fall asleep like that. Soon enough the two could be found napping together in comfy alcoves and corners of the palace. Although the preferred place was definitely the cosy library attached to Jason’s bedchamber. The two of them curled up together on the windowsill reading nook, the extensive bench-bed hybrid making for a comfortable place to relax. 

This routine intimacy naturally bled into their other interactions. Phantom, and his blinding power, became a figure of safety and comfort to Jason. His easy yet unconditional care coupled with his good humour and character earned the Ghost King, Jason’s trust and his loyalty. His banter and sense of fun however earned him Jason’s friendship.

Jason and Danny were snuggled side-by-side on the windowsill-bed. One arm laying on the backrest, the other caught by Jason, Danny was on a tablet, presumably doing Kingly Duties even whilst Jason was hugging his side with a book in hand. 

Turning the page, Jason briefly looked up for air, and noticed Danny’s side profile. The human curve of his ear, the softness of his cheeks, the silkiness of his white hair, the stretch of his neck and the scent glands laid scandalously, casually bare. 

Jason shifted to lean in closer into Danny’s space. Danny’s focus remained on his tablet. Gently, so gently, Jason relaxed his shields. Hesitantly he brushed the furls of his dense metaphysical smoke, sliding them against shiny synesthesia green shields. He watched with fascination as they essentially sparkled with the contact. Content ripples shimmered upon mental contact with Jason. An eye back in the real world had Jason seeing Danny not notice the mental contact, which meant the shimmering was Danny’s subconscious, reflexive reaction to Jason’s presence. Jason watched in wonder as his delicate, stealth touches spread skittering glimmers across the surface of Phantom’s mental shields.  

Then Danny started purring. Jason was struck with glee. He hadn’t known that Danny could do that. The purring was soft at first. A light hum. A psionic humming from the shield’s gentle vibrations. A psychic thrum when Jason’s smog stroked against Danny’s shields. Then one brush made the purring switch from psychic to physical. Initially Danny was distractedly purring, before suddenly looking pole-axed at the sounds he was vocally making.

Jason keenly watched Danny abruptly pull his attention from his tablet and swing it to Jason. Danny’s own keen eyes of interest locked in on Jason’s. Danny’s mental shields pulsed puddles of light with purpose against the furls of Jason’s psychic smog. Jason’s shields shivered, twitching between shock and pleasure, when Danny’s mentally reached back. Danny’s attention evoked in Jason an alarm akin to stage fright. It was sweetened by the pleasure of having Danny’s attention in the first place. This close, Jason could feel Danny’s expectant regard at an empathetic level. Jason gave a voiceless shrug. He had no answers as to why he had essentially been psychically petting Danny on the sly, going even further than the cuddling that he’d been medically prescribed. Even now Jason couldn’t hold back the internal wince of embarrassment that he was medically required to need hugs. Danny caught the embarrassed swirl in Jason’s smog. Phantom’s shields shone a lackadaisical shrug. Before pointedly turning away their focus, giving Jason space.

There was a moment of halted breath and then Jason, with giddy glee, immediately rushed Danny. His psychic smoke, like a trust fall, dropped the entirety of their psychic weight onto Danny's shields, fully expecting them to catch him. Danny didn’t even mentally blink. Stably catching him, with the soft landing of a mattress, Jason’s smog unfurled and rolled over the wide strong expanse of Danny’s shields.  

In the real world at this point, Jason had physically mirrored their psychic position. Lying his entire weight onto Danny like he was a big weighted blanket for the king. His head rested in the crook of Danny’s neck, eyeball level with the Alpha’s scent glands that lined the neck and peeked behind the silk of Danny’s hair. Jason looked away from the Alpha’s openness.

Danny seemed utterly comfortable with this position. One arm was wrapped around the back of Jason’s waist, the other was high in the air and still holding his phone. 

Jason’s eyes returned back to his book, his outside arm stretched out in front of him, cradling in hand the book he’d been reading. But his attention was split between the words in front of him and Danny’s open neck.    

“I wanna bite you,” Jason blurted out.

“Go ahead” Danny easily answered.

Jason paused, then reared back in total alarm and surprise. 

“What?!”

Jason looked down at the lazy, easy Alpha lying beneath him. His neck was free and bare. He felt his mouth dry. His psychic shields rolled against Danny agitated. Danny smiled softly, shining soothing psychic lights at Jason. 

“It's no big deal. You're feeling peckish right” then he gave an impish grin, “and I'm a snack.”

Jason groaned at the pun even before his brain caught up to Danny’s words. 

“Danny are you seriously offering that I eat you,” Jason was incredulous, “like cannibalism?”

Danny pulled a face at Jason’s words. “You don’t gotta put in that way,”

Jason barked in laughter, “Well what else do you call it when you tell your friend that they can take a bite outta you?”

“Sharing is caring,” Danny shot back, eyes sparkling with glee. “Ok so for humans it’s a little weird but like for ghosts it’s kinda less weird, I mean we’re all ecto,”

“And humans are basically walking sausages, I don’t see your point Danny!”

Danny grandly sniffed, “Well if you’re going to be so rude and reject the perfect snack that is your King, then maybe I don’t want to offer it anymore.”

Jason giggled, a wide grin helplessly breaking across his face, “You’re so weird!” He shoved at Danny’s shoulder, before sitting up, his knees bracketing Danny’s legs. “Alright then fine, since you’re so generously offering, let me dine upon you, Your Majesty.”

Danny flicked Jason’s forehead at the title, before glancing up at Jason behind long white eyelashes with burning green eyes. Jason’s breath hitched.

Danny lifted up his forearm, with his sleeve rolled back, naked skin and sculpted muscles on display. Jason's eyes honed in on the bare scent glands on Danny’s wrists before darting away. His cheeks felt unexpectedly flushed.

“Here eat.” 

Jason crawled closer. As if from a distance, he saw himself basically sit in Danny's lap, take the offered arm, and bring it to his lips. In disbelief he felt himself salivate. Jason opened up his mouth and sank his teeth in Danny's arm. He moaned. It wasn't taste or texture but a synesthesia of pleasure. It was a warm hug, a cool breeze, and a light laugh in a single mouthful.

Danny smugly grinned, “Like I said, I'm a snack.”

Jason was too busy nibbling on Danny to retaliate.

In Death's Sweet Embrace: Volume 2

Wind whipped through Dani's hair and she soared across Kingswinter’s icy tundra. Rapidly flying towards Phantom Palace, she spotted the Unstoppable Postman trundling below. She dived down.

“Hey Mr Postman! You’ve got mail for us?” 

Silently the Unstoppable Postman nodded as he kept on walking. 

“You can just hand it over to me,” Dani offered.

The Unstoppable Postman halted, considered Dani’s offer and nodded again. Retrieving from his mail satchel he handed over a string-tied bundle of scrolls (addressed for the eyes of the Ghost King) and a single letter addressed to all the Phantoms. 

“Is this an invitation?” Dani asked as she ripped into the letter and found a fancy card inside. “See you Mr Postman!” she waved goodbye as she flew off, reading the invitation in her hand as she sped off to Phantom Palace. Dani phased through majestic icy gates, the glimmering palace walls, in search of finding Danny.

Danny and Jason were in one of the smaller, more intimate dining rooms, eating dinner with a beautiful onlooking view of the Aurora borealis. Giant glowing borage flowers dangled like tinsel as ceiling lights, with blob ghosts happily chilling in their leafy vines. A fancy bolognese was dished on silver tableware, smelling mouth-wateringly delicious. Danny's breath mists. 

"INCOMING!”

Danny’s head pitches forward as it’s suddenly accessorised with a whole body as a wraparound.  

“Hey squirt,” 

“Hey old man, did ya’ miss me?”

“Like the tides miss the moon. Are you staying for long?” The child nuzzled the silky white hair and hugged Danny tightly before slackening her hold. 

“Well I think I might stick around for a bit, since you’re here too.” Dani looks around at the intimate setting, the pretty lights, the fancy food on the fancy plates, and the handsome dinner companion. She gasps. “WERE YOU ON A DATE?! DID I CRASH YOUR DATE?!”

Danny sighed in exasperation, “No Dani this is not a date. But say hi to our guest. This is my friend, Jason.” Dani waves her free hand in greeting as she floats above Danny like a balloon on a string. 

“Hi Jason, I’m Dani.”

“Hello Dani,” Jason smiled back, “it's nice to meet you. Are you named after your… father?” Jason looked between the two ghosts in front of him and was struck by their great physical resemblance. Moreover, Jason could definitely detect a parental-child bond, not just from their looks and behaviour, but also in their scents. The milk-neutral tones of an unpresented child carried the protective parental scents of a mature adult. Danny had thoroughly scent-marked Dani as her Alpha parent. Her powerful Alpha parent. Jason suddenly wondered how old Danny was. Sure Danny was half human and looked to be the same age as Jason, but he was also half immortal ghost of Eldritch power so appearance didn't mean much.

Dani cut through Jason's thoughts as she answered with a fierce nod. “Yeah I’m named after Danny but I’m Dani with a single n-i. He’s Danny with a double n-y.”

Jason smirked, “Oh I’m sure that’s never caused any confusion.”

“Oh you bet” Dani mischievously grinned, “and there's even a third Danny who goes by Dan, and he’s my older brother-cousin.”

“Your older brother-what?!”

“Dan’s my brother-cousin because he's Danny's alternate self from a bad timeline who then got adopted by Danny’s ex-nemesis, Vlad, who used to be my father before I disowned him because I realised that Vlad only had me to replace Danny.”

Jason stared blankly at Dani as he tried to understand all of that, and square away the impossible mechanics of reproduction that was just implied. They were ghosts, so what did he know? Ghosts were the manifestation of an identity through a medium of ectoplasm. Did they even need sex to reproduce? Maybe they were all brain-childs like Zeus and Athena? Or cabbage patch kids? Or was this a case of m-preg? Was Vlad one of those pseudo-science male Omegas that could actually do child-birth? Was he part seahorse? Running through his mind were questions that Jason didn't really want to ask right now at the dinner table. 

“How Greek mythology of you,” he eventually jokes,“or would you say it’s more a Spanish telenovela?”

“Greek mythology,” Danny answered wryly, “there’s not enough amnesia incidents and coma accidents to qualify as a telenovela.” 

“What’s a telenovela?” Dani asked, curious, looking between Jason and Danny for an answer.

“It’s a type of TV show,” Jason explained after a quick non-verbal back-and-forth with Danny, “that typically have serialised plots with cliche melodramatic plot twists and messy family drama.”

“Oh I see. So would being friends with Danny's ex-girlfriend, ex-nemesis who first betrayed me before helping to save me with Danny from Vlad my former father and her former employer be the kinda thing you’d see in a telenovela?”

Jason gave Danny a very judgemental side-look that Danny avoided, apparently entranced by the floor’s decor.

“Have a lot of ex-nemesis, huh Danny?”

“I'm not the best at making great first impressions,” Danny wryly answered.

Jason snorted, “You’re telling me you Eldritch Abomination. You literally saved me from freezing to my second death and you still had me thinking you were some kind of Lovecraftian demon.”

Dani floated down into a conjured third seat. “Oh do tell,” she turned to Jason with a captivated look on her face. Jason grinned back.

“Ok so there I was…”

Straight after dinner Danny and Dani phased through the dining room ceiling, into the royal office above. 

“Well Jason seems cool,” Dani lightly commented, now clinging to Danny’s back like a koala.

“Oh yeah,” Danny hummed as he rummaged through his stomach to carelessly dump the sheaf of mail onto his desk, into a tray already overflowing with mail. Danny, leaning his hip against his bureau desk, kept ahold of the sole letter, not very surprised to see that it was already opened. Dani, piggybacking on her template’s tall back, peeked over his shoulder. 

“Oh, that’s an invitation to Dorathea’s Mabon Ball,” Dani pointed out.

“Yeah, I didn't realise that was coming up already.” Dani rested her chin on the top of Danny’s head. 

“Hey Danny, are you going to bring Jason to Dorathea’s Ball?” she asked. 

“Why do you ask?”

Dani cheered, “We’ll finally have even numbers!”

Danny chuckled, “Huh, you’re right. You know what, I will ask him to accompany me.”

Returning back from the office (Dani had since disappeared to her own royal quarters) Danny then passed to Jason the invitation and intently watched Jason read it. The enchanting shape of Jason’s blue eyes that glowed with an mesmerising shine. The curve of his eyelashes, the cut of his jaw, the plush of his lips; they were beautiful all. An omega’s allure set in a masculine casting. Jason was gorgeous. Danny had known that from the first time he set eyes on him but sometimes he was caught unawares at how Jason was truly breath-taking without even trying. 

Jason looked up from the invitation. “Danny, if you officially go by King Phantom doesn't that mean your name is basically King Ghost, so doesn't that basically make you King Ghost The Ghost King? Talk about unimaginative."

Danny ticked off his fingers as he muttered underbreath, "King Ghost The Ghost King." Pause. Danny's eyes literally sparkled. "Jason, Jason. It's a palindrome!"

"...Danny no."

"How did I not see this before?"

"Danny please," Jason begged.

"THIS IS AMAZING, I'M MAKING THAT MY OFFICIAL ROYAL TITLE FROM NOW ON!" Danny roared out of the room to his office. When he came back Jason was waiting for him, arms folded.

“Danny, I don't know how to dance, especially not this kind of formal dancing”

Danny gave Jason a sceptical hum. “Do you know how to fight?”

Jason rested his hands on Danny's shoulder, and looked him directly in the eyes. “Danny, I'm a crime lord from Gotham.” Jason sees there are no thoughts behind those stunning green eyes. He sighs aggrievedly, “Of course I know how to fight!”

Danny cheerfully nodded. “Then as you know, when you’re fighting, you’re moving your body in response to the other person’s movements. But when you're dancing, you’re also moving your body in response to the other person’s movements. The main difference is when you’re fighting it’s a competition. When you’re dancing it’s a collaboration. If you can fight well, you can dance well. You just need to learn the right steps.”

Jason crossed his arms, stubbornly remaining unconvinced.

“At least give it a try. With the way you can meticulously plan things, I bet you’ll make an excellent lead.” Danny then smirked impishly, “But I think you’ll enjoy being a follow. It’ll appeal to your sense of dramatics.”

Jason gasped, indignant. “I’m not dramatic!” 

“That’s what a dramatic person would say” Danny and Dani chorused.

“Hey Dani,” Jason greeted Dani, who had popped up next to him like a jack in a box.

“Hey Jason.” Dani spots the invitation in Jason’s hand. “You are coming right? We’ll finally have even numbers.” Jason counts the three people in the room and then gives Dani a look . Dani giggled, “No silly, I’m talking about everyone in the fraid.”

“What’s the fraid?”

“It’s basically pack and/or cluster but for ghosts,” Dani explained as she held and swung Jason’s hand back and forth, “and instead of packmates which use bonds that are based on biology and pheromones or the psychic sentinel-guide bonds that make up a cluster, a fraid will have fraidmates, members of a close-knit social group with ectoplasm-supported interdependent relationships that are typically symbiotic and/or intimate in nature.”   

“That’s a lot of big words, you sure you know what they all mean?” Jason teased, ruffling Dani’s hair.

“Haha, very funny,” Dani pouted.

Dani’s mention of fraidmates couldn’t have been timelier because one by one the rest of Danny’s fraid visited. Jazz was the first and a total surprise. She arrived during one of their cuddle sessions. Danny was behind him, arms wrapped around Jason like he was a teddy bear. The King happily snoozing on top of Jason, with his chin resting on Jason's head whilst he passively fed Jason clean ectoplasm.  Meanwhile Jason, comfortably sitting in Danny's lap, was fascinated with reading a copy of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice from a different reality and spotting the differences. 

When Jason heard footsteps (not Dani’s light and bouncy patter, but the steady clip-clip of sandals) and the complementary rustle of clothes (cotton trousers, light blouse) he looked up in confusion.

“Oh?”/“Oh?”

Jason dug his elbow into Danny. Like a napping dragon, Danny cracked open a single eye.

“Oh hey Jazz,” Danny said around a yawn. Jason's neck prickled at the gust of air at his neck.

“I didn't know you'd be here already, I thought I was going to pick you up?” Danny mumbled sleepily. ‘Jazz’ raised an eyebrow at the table before her.

 “Wulf gave me lift” she airily answered. With a light polite smile she asked, “And who is this?” 

Danny’s arms around Jason squeezed gently before proudly introducing, “This is Jason he's my friend. Jason, this is my older sister, Jazz.” 

Jason’s first impression of Danny’s sister was she looked surprisingly human. Jason could have met Jazz on Earth and would never have guessed that she was anything but a redhead female Alpha, albeit a very tall one even for an Alpha. Jason’s second impression was that her scent was surprisingly noticeable for someone that came across as having quite prim social etiquette. Not that the scent was overwhelming or even inappropriate, only that, the same way Jason would assume that Jazz didn’t have any tattoos or body piercing’s, he would have assumed that she would be the type to have her Alpha scent conservatively masked. It would have been a shame because the scent was very appealing to Jason’s Omega. It shared familial tones with Danny. They were both Alphas although Jazz’s was more feminine and reminiscent of libraries and old books whilst Danny’s was more masculine and was bracing like cold fresh air. There was a blend in their scent profiles that was unmistakably that of pack. Jason was instinctively well-disposed towards her purely because of that. 

“Hi Jason, it's nice to meet Danny's” here Jazz made a pointed pause, “new friend, ” she teased. Her teal eyes had a very knowing glint. Jason flushed at her implication, knowing what a sight they must look like to her, with him wrapped up in her brother's arms. Danny meanwhile seemed utterly oblivious. Innocently shameless before his sister at their close contact. 

Then came Sam. Jason had walked in whilst she was making breakfast in the kitchen. As a Sentinel, Jason had detected that there was someone in the kitchen but he had assumed it was Jazz, not a whole new fourth person who was also a female Alpha. Upon Jason’s entry, they stared at one other like it was a Mexican Stand-off. Sam, dressed in a gothic yet floral black and purple outfit stared down Jason who was dressed in what was obviously Danny’s oversized hoodie. 

“Who are you and how did you get in here,” she demanded. The butter knife in her hand started to look like a weapon. The flowers hanging from the rafters began to writhe and rustle.

Jason crossed his arms. “Hello, nice to meet you too. I'm a friend of Danny’s.”

“Danny doesn't generally invite new friends to the Palace,”

“That's kinda because he didn't invite me,” Jason smirked, “I kinda invited myself and then he said I could stay here.” Purple lipsticked lips pinched into a scowl. “It’s because I’m stranded here,” Jason deigned to explain, “my Earth isn't his Earth so the,”

“Amity Park Portal will be useless and Tucker has the infi-map so you've been stuck here waiting for him to bring it,” she shrewdly finished.

“Right exactly.” Sam raked her eyes over Jason, the hoodie that was obviously Danny's, and clearly judged to find him wanting. Jason bristled.

“Well I'm Sam,” she introduced herself, “Danny's best friend. As you can see Danny didn't say anything to me about you.”

“To be fair, I don't think Danny said anything to anybody. We surprised his sister Jazz, when she surprised us with her early arrival,” Jason pointed out. Sam rolled her eyes with fond exasperation. 

“I swear becoming Ghost King has made him worse about these kinds of things. Which is not great for a king. We’re lucky that the Infinite Realms operate with a quasi-anarchical framework and that no one needs Danny to be in charge of running the day to day governance.”

“Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses,” Jason commiserates. “Do you want any help with the cooking?” He extends an olive branch. Sam, with a faint look of surprise, nods, making space for Jason at the kitchen counter. Like Danny and Jazz, Sam was fairly unrestrained with her secondary gender, with bare wrists and mild scent blockers no stronger than her deodorant. Standing side-by-side with Sentinel Senses, Jason could even pick up the more Sam-specific notes of her female Alpha scent; earthy moss, light petrichor, and floral undertones with a sharp tang that Jason associates with ectoplasm. Jason wondered if all the floral and nature aesthetics in Phantom Palace was because of her.

Of course that meant the last of Danny's fraid to arrive was Tucker, aka the one with Jason's ticket back home. Jason had been sitting on a carpeted floor at the foot of Danny's bed between Danny's dangling legs, whilst Danny was up on his bed playing video games, when Danny’s phone rang. Pausing the game, Danny checked his ringing phone, showing that he had an incoming call. 

“Hey Tucker!” Danny cheerfully answered.

Jason could clearly hear through the phone line, static and a male voice. 

“Hey Danny, I got your message. What's this about needing the infi-map to take a stray back home?”

Jason smacked Danny's leg. “Did you seriously call me a stray?”

“What? What else do you call it when you invite someone into your home because they have nowhere else to go?”

“Oh, is the stray there with you? Hey no worries, Mr Stray we'll get you back home soon enough,” Jason could hear the snarky grin from the other side of the phone line. “I'll be in the Palace Portal Room when I get there. See you in a bit!”

C’mon guys you’ll have to see this,” Tucker loudly declared, “This is basically a Star Wars movie but the main characters include a cyborg princess, Frankenstein’s Monster, and The Lorax, you’ll love it!”

“What’s it called?”

“Are the special effects any good?”

“Do we know any of the actors?”

“What’s the plot even about?”

Jason squints in disbelief, “Is that a VCR?”

Movie night had been fun, it had really helped break the ice between Jason and the rest of Danny’s fraid. It had been really nice to see them relaxed and welcoming, especially as the others saw how fond Danny and Dani were of Jason. But after movie night, Jason woke up the next morning feeling a little… off. Groggy and moody, Jason blearily opened his eyes and groaned. But sleep eluded him. Disappointed, Jason was then surprised to find that he was wrapped up in blankets that carried a scent that smelled like pack, a harmonious blend of several scents including Danny’s rich Alpha scent. Slowly heaving himself up, Jason spotted four other sleeping bodies lying next to him. Dani, the mischievous pup, was sprawled out starfish, with one leg halfway up his chest. Sam, Tucker, and Jazz meanwhile were peacefully, vulnerably asleep. Jason looked at his the fraid, with warmth spreading in his heart, as he sat up. Slowly, Jason dragged his body out from under the covers to go find his Guide, his Alpha Danny.

In his socks, padding his way down the corridors, Jason absentmindedly marvelled at how the dimly lit hallways that once evoked unease instead now inspired comfort. His fingers breezily traced the markings on the wall before picking a door and twisting its doorknob. Jason entered an already lit kitchen. 

Standing at the kitchen counter, turned away from Jason, was his Guide, his Alpha Danny's large, broad-shouldered back. Silently approaching from behind, Jason then fully dropped his entire weight onto Danny, burying his face into his back. Danny didn't move an inch. Unsurprised by Jason's presence Danny greeted him happily. 

“Hey Jason, did you sleep well?” he warmly asked. Jason hummed into Danny's back in response, nuzzling his nose closer and closer to his Alpha’s Danny's scent glands. Danny reached behind him to stroke Jason's hair. He noted, with a pleased hum, a natural sweet-spicy cinnamon scent coming from Jason. Danny never had the chance to pick up Jason’s omega scent this strongly before. IFt was very pleasant and warming. Danny took deep, slow breaths to quietly appreciate and savour the scent. The alpha’s chest rumbled at the blatant show of the omega’s trust. Bending down Danny brushed his cheek against Jason, briefly scenting the omega intimately. With a content sigh, Jason relaxed further against Danny, bonelessly resting his entire body on the alpha.

“Still feeling sleepy?” Danny asked over his shoulder, his eyes still focused on what was in his hands on the counter in front of him. Jason squeezed his arms tightly around Danny's waist, pulling in closer for a deeper hug, and grunted. Danny chuckled underbreath but did nothing to jostle the giant limpet firmly attached to his back. In the comfortable silence, Danny continued on with his task at hand. Jason, lifting his head up, goes on tiptoes, and rests the crook of chin onto Danny's shoulder. He looked down onto the kitchen counter.

“You’re not making breakfast,” Jason baldly announced. Danny shook his head. In his hands was a screwdriver and what looked like the disparate mechanical parts of a microwave scattered on the counter. Jason pouted. Then he thoroughly scent marked Danny, rubbing his wrists against Danny’s sides and waist, before he reluctantly peeled away to go make them breakfast. Reaching up for cupboards (that slid down into easy reach before disappearing high out of view when not in use) Jason surveyed its contents. He chuckled softly at the snoozing blob ghosts hiding behind the sugar. 

“How do you feel about pancakes?” Jason called out.

“I'm always down for pancakes” Danny cheerily answered. “Thank you Jason, you're amazing.”

“They're just pancakes,” Jason grumbled, blushing. “It's not that impressive.”

Danny smirked. “Impressive or not, it doesn’t make the offer any less sweet and you any less amazing.” Jason scowled. He began pulling the rest of the ingredients from the fridge. 

“You don’t need to butter me up, I’m already making you pancakes.”

“Ahh but Jason,” Danny playfully whined, “what if I want to butter you up just because.”

“Morning everyone,” Dani rushed in, greeting Danny with a quick hug before leaving in favour of zooming over to Jason. “Whatcha making?” she asked with excitement in her eyes. Jason looked down at Dani fondly.

“Pancakes.”

“Did someone say pancakes?” Tucker called out as he too entered the kitchen.

“Jason is making pancakes,” Dani happily declared from the kitchen counter she was sitting on.

Tucker turned to Jason with a beaming smile, “You’re the best,”

Jason rolled his eyes, “Who said any of this was for you?”

Tucker clutched his heart with overwrought betrayal, “Oh c’mon Jason, don’t do me dirty like that.”

Dani sidled up to Jason, “But you’re making me pancakes right?” she asked with puppy dog eyes. 

Jason rolled his eyes, “Of course I am you tiny terror.”

Tucker scoffed at the blatant display of favoritism. “Oh it's like that huh. Ok I see how it is. Someone clearly has favorites.”

Danny laughed, “Like that was even in question Tucker. Jason has been soft on Dani from day one!”

The kitchen was filled with laughter when Sam and Jazz walked in. Jason did end up making some truly towering stacks of pancakes for everyone, with a dazzling range of delicious toppings on offer. The entire fraid all thanked and praised Jason for the scrumptious meal, titling him King of the Kitchen, and promising ludicrous favours in order to get him to cook for them again. Jason could feel himself practically glowing with pride and joy. 

A little while later, whilst Danny, Sam, and Tucker were lined up at the sink and washing the dishes, Jason was still eating, along with Dani, at the kitchen table, underneath which a clutch of blob ghosts were playing. Jazz meanwhile was making for everyone their choice of coffee or hot chocolate. Hot drinks were the only thing Jazz could be trusted to make in the kitchen. Jazz, after stirring in the creamer Jason's coffee, walked back to the table to hand Jason his drink. Placing the mug down on the table in front of Jason, she noticed something. 

“Oh Jason, you're in pre-heat,” Jazz commented lightly.

Jason froze. Hesitantly he sniffed at the scent glands in his bare wrists. Jason's scent then curdled, embittering the previously sweet taste, as psychic distress spilled out like a torrent from behind Jason’s shields. Dropping his soapy plate like a hot potato and instantly phasing off his gloves, Danny immediately rushed over to comfort Jason, cradling his face between his hands. 

“Hey Jason, Jason what happened, is there something wrong?”

“Of course there’s something wrong!” Jason snapped. “I’m going into heat for the first time in years and I’m totally unprepared! This shouldn’t even be happening! And I don’t have any of my shit with me! I don’t even have my fucking collar let alone the rest of it. Fuck !” Panic seized Jason. “I don’t have, fuck! ” Panic clogged up his throat. It stole away his breath. Jason choked. Suddenly he felt terrified, lost, and alone. 

Heat steals reason, forces vulnerability, and destroys independence. Jason didn't even have the protection of his heat collar, leaving his neck bare and vulnerable to any knotheaded Alpha willing to prey on Jason’s incapacitated state. And everyone knows that the longer you delay your cycle, the worse it gets. The needier, more desperate, and more vulnerable you become. And Jason hasn’t gone into heat since he had heat-shared with Roy and Koriand’r, nearly three years ago. This was a fucking disaster. Jason struggled to breathe . 

“Jason, we’re right here, I’m right here.”

Jason slaps Danny’s hand away. “What so are you going to fuck me then?!” Jason snarled, rage spitting and lashing out at Danny’s shields, even as distress charred his scent. “Oh fuck I’m so stupid. Of course you are! Because I’m the omega in heat and you’re the closest Alpha nearby. So obviously I should be happy and pathetically grateful to offer my ass to your knotheaded oversized Alpha dick. Oh Danny ,” Jason meanly sighed in a horrifying falsetto, one hand dramatically resting on his chest, “ Why even bother waiting? Just -” 

Jason’s temper erupts. He sees green. Jason kicks the kitchen table, sending it and everything on it flying across the room. CRASH. It lands in a broken heap, crockery smashed to pieces. Food and drink spilled on the floor like visceral carnage. 

“- bend me over the counter why don’t you and fuck me in front of everyone, right here right now!”

Danny stared at Jason, aghast and speechless. The absolute fear and disgust radiating from the omega suffocated the Alpha. It scalded the Guide. Danny had to physically back away. 

The air rings silent. Nothing could be heard except from Jason’s heavy breathing. Then Jason burst into tears. The scent of the omega’s rage blackened to grief. A scent of loss, disappointment, and shattered peace slowly drenched the room. Psychic acidic smog volatilely lashed out, aggressively defensive. Although Danny’s shields were robust enough to only take superficial damage, the consequent psychic burns still had Danny flinching. The others were not so lucky. Tucker especially looked very pained. 

Jason’s furious hands desperately tried to wipe away the tears staining his face. Danny’s hands strained to not reach out and comfort Jason. His instincts as a Guide and Alpha had him desperate to help the distressed Omega Sentinel. But Danny feared that his comfort would only make things worse. In the ringing silence, Jazz delicately raised the question that everyone else in the room was thinking.

“Jason, what exactly is scaring you?”

Jason’s tear-streaked face stared dumbly at everyone. 

“I'm, I'm going into heat.”

“You are,” Jazz agreed, “and why is this so scary for you?” she gently asked. 

“Because it’s a heat and heats are the fucking worse especially if you don’t have a heat partner to share it with!”

“Ok but do you need a heat partner?” Jazz gently asked. “I know we’re not pack and that the only one you are actually that close with is Danny - but this is obviously an intense heat so we’ll do everything we can to ease it. Also Danny is a Guide so he's perfectly suited to help regulate your mood swings and heightened emotions.”

Jason sniffled, “You can do that?” he asked in wonder.

Danny smiled reassuringly, “There’s more to being a Guide than just pulling Sentinel’s out of Zone-Outs you know. I’ll make sure that your heat won’t mentally compromise you. Also if your Omega pheromones do for some reason cause us Alphas to become so irrational that we try to give you claiming bites or something ridiculous, Tucker and Dani will be right there to stop us,” Danny added. Tucker and Dani gave twin mischievous grins. 

Jason stilled. “What do you mean by the others will be right there?” he asked, squint-eyed. 

“The more the merrier, Jason.” Danny cheered.

“But that's inappropriate,” Jason protested, scandalised. “You can’t seriously tell me that it’s ok that everyone will be in close proximity to my heat pheromones!”

Danny shrugs, “I’m pretty sure that’s what deodorizers and air fresheners are for. Don't worry, it’s not like it’ll be any worse than a high school full of teenagers and we all survived that.”

“Speak for yourself,” Dani scoffed, “you’ll never catch me step one foot in those government sanctioned prisons.”

“We’re not having the public education is not prison discussion again” Jazz deadpanned.

“I dunno, I’m pretty sure Dani speaks nothing but facts,” Sam smirked. Jazz rolled her eyes.

“Yes, we all know where your opinion on the matter falls.” 

“Not to get sidetracked,” Tucker dryly interjects, “but we're getting sidetracked.”

“Ahh right,” Danny sheepishly says. “So game plan: integrating Jason into our cluster. Since we don’t have enough time for our scents to blend together enough to make Jason pack, we should make him part of our cluster.” Danny further explains, upon seeing the look of incomprehension on Jason's face. “Being part of a cluster will ease your cycle and help soothe some of the difficulties of going through without a pack or a mate. It will shorten its duration and reduce its severity. Also as a Guide I’ll make sure that even during your peak that you don’t lose your focus, so that you'll be no worse than your average horny teenage boy.” 

“And that works?” Jason asks, his voice thick.

“Of course it does. It’s how we manage a lot of my ruts,” Danny smiles reassuringly. “Don’t worry Jason, you’ll see. It’ll be like one big sleepover!”

“Ok so this will be easier for me to accomplish if we all sit down and put our hands in the middle,” Danny addresses everyone. They all sit back down around the (thanks to the blob ghosts) regenerated kitchen table and basically put a hand in a pile in the middle of their circle. Danny closes his eyes, and focuses. 

One by one Danny reaches out and pings everyone's psychic energies. Gently, ever so gently, Danny coaxes Jason’s smog to approach the rest of the cluster. Just like when they were practising dancing, Danny leads. He gracefully guides Jason’s movements and Jason, giving Danny his complete trust, faithfully follows. 

Jazz-pillar-patience-curiosity waits expectantly for Jason. She had agreeably made space for Jason and his rolling fog smoothly filled in upon arrival. 

Danny then spins Jason towards Dani so that young-mischievous-roaming-free can easily reach Jason with big welcoming hugs. And psychic smog tightly hugs Dani back. 

Tucker’s golden-keen-mind-and-spirit approaches Jason to offer a jaunty welcome. Encouraged by Danny’s pulsing light, rolling fogs bank peacefully against dusty dunes of sand and gold. 

Danny then introduces Jason’s gritty roiling smog to the nightshade-beauty-gothic-vines that is Sam. Smoothly, the two reach a pleasant equilibrium and partnership. 

With great care, Danny settled Jason amidst their cluster. Jason’s psychic energy smoothly slides into place alongside everyone else's. A sense of safety washed over Jason. Fear and tension drained right out of him. It was replaced by a long-lost and worn sense of community, comfort, and family . Everywhere; Jason could feel support coming from every direction where his smog rested. Formed from the bonds growing between them, Jason, and each other, Jason rested upon a bed made up of his cluster’s psychic energies. Jason’s Omega instincts were soothed by the sensation of having a supportive pack in his corner.    

Everyone in the fraid then began to help build Jason’s nest. Tucker and Dani (a beta and unpresented respectively therefore having the most neutral scents) went and grabbed more cushions and blankets that Jason could add to his nest before going to the library to bring Jason a collection of books to read.  Sam and Jazz meanwhile loaded up a freezer bag so that it was stuffed full of food, sugary drinks, and tasty snacks. They also gathered different kinds of incense and scented candles so that Jason could have his pick of calming scents.

As for Danny he went and got laundry that carried his Alpha scent and that of his fraid. He got as many as he could, hoping not to overwhelm Jason but only to give Jason as many choices as possible. Omegas could get very particular about what they allowed in their nests, and Danny wanted to give Jason all the options and not feel restricted. Once satisfied with his offerings Danny loaded the laundry between his two wings and onto his back and carefully carried them off to Jason.

Jason’s sentinel senses picked up the noises of someone's approach to his door. He patiently waited as he made their arrival. The footsteps weren’t like any he had heard from his the fraid though. In fact his ears could pick up the whisper a heavy weight makes when being dragged along hard floors. As the presence got closer, Jason received a polite psychic request. It was Danny. Light gently crested at the edges of Jason’s psychic shields. 

There was a knock on the door.

“C’mon in,” Jason called out. Danny in his kaiju shape (albeit shrunk to only the size of a bear) floated in, carrying cargo telekinetically. Jason raised an eyebrow.

What with this form? Jason silently asked.

“I thought this form might be more reassuring to you at the moment,” Danny admitted as he dropped his offerings at Jason’s feet. Already he could see the beginnings of a nest taking shape in the form of an ultimate pillow fort. The bed had been disassembled and then rearranged with the additional blankets and pillows that Jazz and Dani must have given Jason.

Jason appreciated the large shiny fangs in front of him, “I think we have different notions of reassuring.” He gleefully inspected the goods that Danny gave him. Tucker and Sam then entered the room, their arms almost spilling with snacks and ecto-rich drinks.

Jason was wearing Danny’s hoodie. It smelled of him and Jason was drowning in it. Comforting smells of love, safety and joy suffused the fabrics artfully arranged into a plush nest. Music was playing in the background as Tucker somehow managed to hook up to Jason’s Spotify playlist across dimensions. 

The mood was gleeful as the smell of happy omega suffused the nest. Jason’s happy scent made the fraid happy which in turn made Jason happy causing him to release more happy omega pheromones. Sooner or later, this positive feedback loop caused the fraid to create a party atmosphere, aided by all the snacks, sugary drinks, and a feisty, chaotic game of UNO. 

As a distraction tactic Danny started chucking sweets and mini marshmallows into the others’ mouths, which continued post the final round as everyone eagerly tried to get their share. Of course there was favouritism and sabotage happening. Jason got a bunch of easy tosses whilst Sam and Tucker were desperate to steal from each other. Dani meanwhile made it a point to only snatch any that were going Jazz’s way. Although she did frequently hand over her ill-gotten prizes to Jason.

“Thank you Dani,” Jason laughed around his illicitly earned goods. Dani giggled as cuddled up to Jason, wrapping around him like a limpet noodle. 

Jason purred. There was a moment of stilled surprise from everyone. Then they all broke out into happy trills, cheers and purrs of their own.

.....

...

.

~~~~~~~~~~Meanwhile back on Earth DCU~~~~~~~~~~

Bat Chat

Dick: Has anyone heard from Jason recently?

Steph: Isn’t he somewhere in the Middle East on a mission

Tim: No, his mission in Tajikistan finished weeks ago

Duke: Ok, well he’s not back in Gotham

Steph: Obviously, would Dick be asking about Jason if Jason was in Gotham.

Tim: Dick could be, because what difference does it make if Jason is in Gotham or not, he barely talks to us either way

Dick: But he’s more unreachable if he’s not even in the country

Duke: Well, is he in the country? 

Tim: Evidence says no

Dick: So where is he then?

Steph: Well assuming the mission was over successfully, he’s probably just taking the scenic route back to Gotham. Maybe he took a detour mission?

Dick: Do you think he could be in space?

Duke: How would Jason be in space?

Steph: Nah, aren’t Alien/Space missions more a Justice/Young Justice thing.

Dick: But didn't he go to space with Roy and Kori that one time?

Steph: You would know ain't they both your exes?

Dick: I never dated Roy 

Steph: Still had a thing for him though

Tim: Old news. Dick has a thing for every redhead he knows.

Dick: I DO NOT

Tim:  Barbara, Kori, Roy, and Wally, I rest my case

Duke: That’s definitely enough redheads to make pattern

Dick: Can we stop talking about my lovelife and get back to the matter at hand 

Tim: ?

Steph: ????????????

Duke: ???

Dick: Jason's whereabouts!

Damian: You can stop your inane investigation. I know where he is.

Dick, Tim, Steph, Duke: You do?

Dick: Weren't you on a Teen Titans mission?

Damian: The mission was in fact a trap arranged by Grandfather. Grandfather wished to sacrifice me to a Lazarus Demon and Todd apparently discovered the plot and attempted a rescue. But during the attempt he instead ended up getting sacrificed in my place. 

Dick, Tim, Stephanie, Duke are typing

Cass forwarded screenshots of the group chat to Barbara and Bruce.

As the first day of his heat began to wind down, Jason’s nest became a glorified puppy pile. Danny had agreed to transform into an appropriately bigger dragon form in order to be used as a pillow fort. Danny wrapped his long serpentine body around his fraid like an ouroboros, whilst his wings made an excellent roof cover. Jason got the seat of honour, cradled in the crook of Danny’s draconic neck, where he slowly drifted off to sleep. Throw pillows and blankets cushioned him and Danny’s scales. Dani was holding fast to Jason, squeezing one of his arms like it was a teddy bear whilst lying along Jazz and Danny. Sam meanwhile had rested her head on Jason, using his legs like a lap pillow whilst the rest of her was tucked between Danny’s tail and Tucker.    

“What I don’t understand Danny is how you, an Alpha, didn’t pick up on Jason’s impending heat right away,” Sam called out.

“Hey in my defence I did pick up on his scent, I just thought it was because Jason hadn't worn his scent blockers yet,” Danny protested.

Jason blinked drowsily before murmuring into Danny's neck, “I don't wear scent blockers. Don't need them. I've been on military grade suppressants pretty much since the moment I’ve presented.”

“Is that healthy?” Tucker asked squint-eyed behind his glasses.

Jason shrugged, “Ain't killed me yet”.

Jazz sighed, “A lot of things won't actually kill you. That doesn't mean it won’t still hurt.”

Jason shrugs, “C’est la vie.” He then quotes, “Anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is selling something.” 

Jazz rebuts Jason’s words with a pithy quote of her own. The two then devolve into lazy back and forth of book quotes.

One by one everyone in the cluster drifted off to sleep, having sweet dreams, as happy omega pheromones filled the air. The comfort and safety they found in each other in this quiet moment had the nascent bonds softly grow together. Psychic energies reached out towards each other with delicate earnesty. The bonds settled like gently falling snowflakes on snow, building up as they knitted him into their cluster, embracing the Sentinel. A bonding encouraged by Jason's sweet pheromones from his gently rising heat. The omega felt safe and relaxed. They even had a nearby Alpha being supportive, providing, and protective. An Alpha who was a trusted Guide leading them away from fits of anxiety and embracing them with care and safety. The omega made an easy release of pheromones sliding towards their heats peak. And everything was quiet and peaceful.

Then everyone yelled at once. It was a sudden knife in one's back, a freezing bucket of ice, a choking hand on one's throat; the entire cluster woke up screaming. Panic engulfed everyone, it seized them in a viscous grip of horror. There, in their cluster, was a gaping, profusely bleeding torn hole.

Jason was gone.

“I see Dead people,” Nightwing joked over comms. 

“For fuck's sake Dick, you've already worn that joke out!” Steph cried.

“Oh I'm sorry, are we not going to address the Spirits of the Undead, roaming about in broad daylight.” Nightwing dramatically gesticulates with their escrima sticks at his on-going futile efforts to effectively herd, hustle, and exorcise the alarmingly growing number of intangible spirits in the streets of Gotham. Batman was up at the Watchtower along with the rest of the Justice League and Justice League Dark addressing this necromantic crisis. Meanwhile Alfred was holding down the fort at Wayne Manor and looking after the insensate, in-heat, in-pain Jason Todd. This meant the rest of the Batfam were out, actively patrolling Gotham, doing their best to combat and control the global pandemic that was the Undead Uprising occurring in their city. Unfortunately traditional methods such as salt and holy water barely phased them. At best they’d glitch out of view and then disconcertingly respawn again elsewhere in under an hour. This was made worse because the number of new ghosts was also increasing. It was like playing a very frustrating, increasingly difficult game of whack-a-ghost. 

“Hey Robin,” Tim called out over comms. 

Damien scowled. Speaking in a scathing tone, he talks back. “For the last time no, I don’t have any information about what is currently afoot. So if you could desist with your incessant repetitive questions it would be a far more productive use of our time and the very air we breathe. ”

Spoiler, perched on a rooftop, hums. She idly watches a flock of ghosts zip about in the air above her.  “Ok but you can't deny that the Lazarus Pits had something to do with this,” she says in defence of Red Robin. Damien rolled his eyes. 

“Wonderful use of basic inductive reasoning Brown,” he retorts.

Signal interrupts. “So are we also not going to talk about how in Gotham the dead are most active in Crime Alley, or how they are homing in on Wayne Manor, which are both places where Jason our neighbourhood zombie haunts? Or are we ignoring that too?”

Nightwing grimaced. “So I wasn’t imagining things.”

“That the dead’s main aim appears to be getting to Jason, oh most definitely not.” Signal, having covered in his patrols both the Narrows and Crime Alley, since Jason was so thoroughly out of commission, had been the first to notice that. Then Tim decided to add more intel.

“Have you been hearing what they’re saying?”

“They can talk?!” Dick squawked. 

Damien nodded grimly, “They can talk.”

“It’s most obvious near Wayne Manor and Crime Alley,” Oracle pitches in.

“Which is probably no coincidence,” Red Robin remarked.

“Ok I’m just going to say the quiet part out loud,” Spoiler bluntly speaks up, “This entire Undead Uprising is all Jason's fault.”

Dick protests “But Jason’s literally in heat and borderline comatose right now. He can’t even speak or move or do anything, let alone reanimate the dead.”

Dropping down in front of Nightwing, Cass shrugged.

~~~~~~~~~~36 hours earlier~~~~~~~~~~

Beep.Beep.Beep.Beep.

"Hmm" Batman grunted at the unresponsive JL comm to one John Constantine. He switches to trying the magician’s mobile. 

"The number you're calling is not available right now, please leave a message after the tone. Beep."

"Constantine, answer back. There is an urgent matter I need to discuss with you."

Batman calculated the time in Las Vegas before calling.

Beep.Beep. Click

"Zatanna speaking."

"This is Batman. I have need of your assistance Zatanna on Lazarus Demons and potential urgent rescue missions."

"Got it. I'll be at Watchtower soon."

Batman hangs up. Then he calls again.

“The number you're calling is not available right now, please leave a message after the tone. Beep.”

"Constantine, the matter has not become any less urgent. Answer as soon as."

Beep.Beep.Beep.Beep.  

No response.

Beep.Beep.Beep.Beep. Beep.Beep.Beep.Beep. Beep.Beep.Beep.Beep. 

“The number you're calling” 

“The number you're calling” 

“The number you're calling is not available right now, please leave a message after the tone. Beep.”

"Constantine answer back as soon as. I need to know what you know about Lazarus Pits, and rescuing people sacrificed to their demons"

Beep.Beep.Beep.Beep. Beep.Beep.Beep.Beep. Beep.Beep.Beep.Beep.  

"The number you're calling is not available right now, please - Click."

"Why are you blowing up my phone?!" John yelled down the line.

"You didn't listen to any of my voicemails."

"I ain't listening to all that, you left like fifty"

"Hn,” Batman grunted, “I need you to help out with an urgent matter."

"It bloody better be urgent after all this fuss you're making," John snapped, "what the hell is this all about?"

"What do you know about Lazarus Pits?"

"That they exist, that they fuck about with the natural order of life and death, and that you're better off not touching that shit for the sake of your sanity and mortal existence,” John rapidly lists off, “why?" he demands.

"What about the demons that lie within?"

John does an aggrieved sigh. "That they exist, that they're the immortal fuck-ups of the natural order of life and death, and that you're better off staying away for the sake of your sanity and your mortal existence. Why ?"

"As of approximately forty-two minutes ago, when Red Hood rescued Robin and the rest of Teen Titans, he was inadvertently sacrificed to a Lazarus Demon. The current mission is to retrieve him and mitigate the consequences of doing so."

John kissed his teeth. "Red Hood, that's your zombie crime lord son right?" he said, thinking aloud.

"Hn."

"In that case since this isn't League business but personal business, I want a fee," John demands. 

Batman didn’t even blink. "Expect a deposit in your bank account."

John grinned. "Awesome, nice doing business with you, Spooky. Have you called Zatanna?"

Batman’s eyes flick up to watch as Zatanna zetas into the Watchtower at that very moment. 

"She's already here at the Watchtower. She answered my call right away."

Batman could hear Constantine’s eye roll. "Yeah, yeah don't get your panties in a bunch. I'll be there in a likety-split," and John hangs up.

"Whos su Jason Todd dna sih noitacol!"

Several members of the batfam watched Zatanna's magic lightshow in anticipation. Bright colourful magic lit up the bat cave before forming a wispy silvery, green, and blue nebulous mist that hung and lingered in the air before slowly dispersing.

"Was that mist supposed to tell us something?" Batman immediately demanded.

"Well ideally we would've been able to scry Jason's location and see what and how he was doing because then it would just be a matter of arranging a pick-up," Constantine muttered around the cigarette butt in his mouth. "But clearly we got zilch on that front so we're now going onto Plan B - pass me his shit, love" Constantine asked Nightwing. With a quirk of an eyebrow at the endearment, Nightwing handed over the personal artefacts of Jason that John has requested for. 

John checked out the three items he had been given: one Red Hood mask, his toothbrush, and a gym hoodie. "Yeah these should work"

"Will it, or will Plan B fail just like Plan A?" Batman acerbically said, crossing his arms.

John gave Batman a side-glare but at Zatanna's look and nudge, John magnanimously decided to give Batman some slack and swallowed his sharp words

"The first spell failing means that Jason isn't anywhere in this known universe or even in this time," Zatanna clearly explained.

"Wait so does that mean that Jason could have time travelled?" Red Robin piped up.

Zatanna nodded, "That or landed in an alternate reality."

"What about Outer Space?" Dick asked next, "what if he's just on another planet or something?"

Zatanna shook her head, "Then the spell would've given us something to work with even if it was a snapshot of the back of Jason's head."

By now John had placed the three items into the magic circle that he had emblazoned on the bat cave ground with chalk. With the nod of his head, John cued Zatanna to begin chanting.

"Nommus I Jason Peter Todd, Nommus I Jason Peter Todd, Nommus I Jason Peter Todd, Nommus I Ja..."

"How long will she be saying that?" Nightwing asked John sotto voce.

"360 times," John muttered back. "You're lucky that the ritual used to sacrifice your brother was basically the magical equivalent of sending a package through the mail making it possible to basically hijack the delivery and reroute the package back to us. You’re also doubly lucky that Zatanna is even half as powerful as she is because we're also talking about dragging one specific man across time and space from an unknown location anywhere in the infinite universe of our infinite multiverse across infinite realities. There is a reason summoning rituals are notorious for needing blood sacrifices, multiple participants, and 12 hour long chants.''

The first thing they hear is the unrelenting scream of agony. The first thing they see is Jason on the ground, convulsing and crying. 

“What’s going on?!”

“JASON!”

“He’s screaming!”

“Zatanna what’s happening?!”

“Is he injured?!”

“I don’t know what’s going on?!”

“Guys I can’t find his injury!”

“This isn’t supposed to be happening!”

“JASON”

The air was razor sharp. The IV monitor beeped in monotone. Deathly pale, Jason laid sedated and insensate. A total black out on a psychic level, Jason was mentally dead to the world. His stench was deeply upsetting. The scent of loss, of pain, mixed starkly against the bleeding scent of an omega in distress, and an omega in heat. It hurt to even breathe near Jason. Scent deodorizers desperately tried to sterilise the area but Jason was haemorrhaging pheromones. His body was screaming. Jason was being tortured at the hands of his own biology but there was nothing anyone could do to help but stand guard. 

Danny stared, gasping, frantically taking desperate breaths of air, at the empty space that Jason had just been. Multitudes of spawning wings and limbs and tails vainly searched the space. Danny threw his Guide senses far across the entirety of his Lair but all he received was the hollow negative absence of Jason’s presence. 

Outside Phantom Palace, a deadly blizzard raged. The glacial permafrost of Kingswinter shook and trembled. Lightning blitzed the sky as the void screeched and howled. Furious thundersnow rampaged and spread across unfathomable oceans of ectoplasm stirring up electrical hurricanes across the entirety of the Infinite Realms. Ghosts watched in fear and dread as crashing waves lurched, swarmed, and frenzied winds thrashed upon their lands; as devastating tornadoes ripped apart the landscape, tearing up and tearing down their Lairs with rampaging torrential hail storms and heavenly lightning strikes. 

Give him back, Give Him Back, GIVE HIM BACK The Ghost Zone cried in the deluge.    

~~~~~~~~~~Present Day~~~~~~~~~~

“Breaking news, reports are coming in from all around the world of an abnormal increase in sighted paranormal activity. Cities renowned for being paranatural hotspots, like London and Glasgow, and especially in the US cities of New Orleans, and Gotham, as well as leyline nexus points like Stonehenge, the Swiss Alps, and Ayers Rock, Australia have all experienced a significant uptick of supernatural incidences. Colloquially known as the Undead Uprising our news correspondent, Richard Jones, has the details.”

“Thank you, Lyall Matthews. I’m here in London at Hampton Court, which is one of the many places where there have been several firsthand accounts of restless spirits wandering and flying about in broad daylight in the last day alone. However I'm pleased to report that there have been no incidences of violence or any cases of adverse health effects when interacting with living. But there are major concerns that traditional protections such as salt and holy water appear to have a very limited effect upon repelling these spectral encounters.

We interviewed Guide Elizabeth Simmons, a representative from London's Sentinel&Guide Consortium to discuss why this strange phenomena may be occurring.”

Guide Elizabeth Simmons looked to be a fairly attractive dark-haired woman in her early thirties.

"Guide Simmons, what can you tell us about this ‘Undead Uprising’?”

Guide Simmons tucked a lock of hair behind her ear as she began speaking. “Right so just to make things clear I’m a Guide not magic, so my talents and knowledge of the occult arts and ghosts in particular are limited," she emphasised. "But just like how some people are just more sensitive to sunlight, as a Guide I am more naturally sensitive to the more paranatural energies of the universe. Ultimately this means that I'm capable of telling whether something or someone is legitimately magic, haunted, or cursed or whatever else - but no more than that because I am not a master occultist or specialist of any kind. So when it comes to something like this Undead Uprising I don’t actually know more than the average person.”

“I see but you said so yourself, you are able to tell if something is actually magic right? So then in your opinion would you say that the reports are true?”

“Oh definitely” Guide Simmons decisively nodded. “Of course, some people may be jumping on the bandwagon and lying for clout and whilst I personally haven’t seen any, that’s because I go out of my way to avoid places that carry a high risk to those with empathic abilities, such as these haunted hotspots. But such a dramatic surge of first hand accounts from all these different people who are experiencing similar events at roughly the same time, all over the globe, especially in areas well reputed to be paranormally active, does mean that I am inclined to believe that they are true.”

“But isn’t it more likely that these visions are some kind of mass hallucination, illusion or attack from supervillains or other nefarious parties?”

“Ha” Guide Simmons barks in laughter, “Oh yeah I know that the gut instinct is to like blame villains, aliens, metas, or even the government, literally anything but magic but no. To be pithy, there’s been a disturbance in the Force and the dead are just reacting to it. The average null person wouldn’t be able to tell but trust me, us Guides and some Sentinels - especially those with high empathy abilities and/or shamanistic training - we can all tell Earth’s natural background necromantic radiation has absolutely skyrocketed. In fact we’re currently in the middle of what is basically the necromantic equivalent of a worldwide heatwave."

"What does that mean for us?"

Guide Simmons tilted her head in thought, "If we’re lucky these ghost sightings will be the worst of it, and things will naturally (Ha!) will naturally die down on their own. On the other hand this could just be the sign that there’s worse to come.”

“Thank you Ms Simmons. Let's hope that doesn't come to pass. Back to you in the studio.”

Watching the BBC news from inside the House of Mystery, John picks up his ringing cell phone.

“Hey Zatanna, how are you doing this fine Zombie morning?”

(in regards to the Undead Uprising the public are advised to treat these spectres)

“Deadman did what? Well have you tried… right, right of course that was the first thing you thought of.”

(like wild animals and to keep your distance in order to avoid interacting and especially antagonising)

“Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Do you have any idea why this is happening?”

“Ok but why does Captain Marvel think that unsummoning Batman’s Drug Lord Zombie Son from wherever he was sacrificed to, disrupted the Infinite Realms so badly that it's now screwing over the Physical World?”

(there are no official enforced curfews in place however late night travel is being discouraged)

“Because the Wizard Shazam said so. Fuck fine. Ok so what kind of damage are we looking at?”

(with advice can be summed up as Keep Calm and Carry On)

“So what you're trying to tell me is that the undead uprising is like tsunamis occuring after a major earthquake.”

“Oh that’s not all?”

 “Well how many more necromantic calamities are expected?”

“I’m sorry, the fuck do you mean Captain Marvel doesn’t know”

“The fuck do you mean that it’s not going to stop and it’s only going to get worse?!”

(And now the weather.)

Rotting corpses, human and animal, shambled down empty streets. Dead foliage clumped and writhed together to spawn unholy creatures. The rain cried. The wind screamed. Thunder and lightning blitzed the Earth. Spirits of the dead rampaged through howling skies. Reality glitched and tore itself apart. Sentinels and Guides staggered under pressure as they echoed the words that The Dead of The Earth shrieked.

Give him back, Give Him Back, GIVE HIM BACK.

The End

In Death's Sweet Embrace: Coda

In and out, the Omega Sentinel drifted in and out of consciousness. Unseeing eyes would flicker open before closing shut like the slamming of a window shutter in fierce wind. Each time, each attempt to reach out to the other end of his new bonds, the Omega Sentinel flinched. All he could feel was the stark lonely cold of gaping absence.

Where was his Guide/King/Alpha ? Where was everyone else? Where was his pack-cluster-fraid?

I'm alone, I'm here, where are you? Please find me! the lonely Omega Sentinel howled in anguish.

There was no appreciable difference between the cries of a storm and the howling dead.  Frenzied spirits took the skies. Shades swarmed the streets. The earth groaned and cracked. The trees moaned and trembled. The wind shrieked and wailed. Shadows hungered, and ice devoured. Scratching, clawing from beneath the earth, pounding, and clamouring in buried coffins, the dead violently stirred, desperately seeking to answer their brethren's call.

Give him back, give him back, give him back, chorused the dead.

Kaleidoscopic wings, uncountable, shifting, burning, bristling, screeched as they burned with incandescence. 

“̷͎̝͓͘W̶̛̯̰̕h̶͈̖̒̚a̴͖͒͛͠t̸͚͍̬̲̀̇̊͝ ̸̻͔͚̋ì̸̡̖s̷̝̉̑́ ̵̮̔̉g̷̨̬͛ǫ̸͙͚̋͒̌i̴̲͓̽̔ṅ̸̰̅̽g̶͙̖̼͆͂ ̷̜̾̏̈́̑ó̴̻̙̾ṉ̵̡̉,̶̲͂̑͊̈ ̶̜͔̳̹́̈̎́w̷̨̧̞̋̾͝ḫ̵̥̦̯͆́̍̚ẻ̶̛̜͙͐͘r̷̘͉̬̥̎̈́e̸̱̼̖͕̎̓̊͒ ̸̗̩̯̀̃i̸̟̣̋̏̌͝s̷̡͇̲̄̕͠ ̸̮̒̾̒J̴̟̜̳̒͐a̴̛̙̔̒ş̴̿̃́͝o̵̟̊͛͆͠ṅ̸̮͎̣͖̾,̸̘̲͖̪͂̀͠ ̶̺̼̣̟̿w̸͙͙͂́̓͊h̵̩̉͊͜e̵̛͚̩͛̍͘r̴̥͋̔̆̚͜ḛ̴̈̾̅͠ ̶̳̂͘i̶͉̹̔s̵̞̮̺͌̍͋ ̵̗̲͛̌ḣ̴̨̉̾͜ḝ̴̢̱̝͆?̶̧͉̀͠!̶̟͈̲̘̇͆̅”̴̧̜̩̙͆͒̉̕ Danny shrieked. His Omega, his Sentinel, Jason was gone. Danny had been trusted to look after Jason (his pack, cluster, fraidmate) at a time where he was at his most vulnerable and he had failed . The fresh bond between him and Jason, between Jason and Danny’s own, were strained to snapping. His instincts as a Guide Prime, as an Alpha, as the motherfucking Ghost King went berserk.   

Tucker winced, holding his head in his hands as his mind screamed at the sudden loss of Jason and the cluster’s thunderous emotions of grief, guilt, and utter panic. 

“I̸ ̴d̶on̶’̸t̵ ̶k̶no̸w̵ ̵D̶an̶n̵y̴. ̴ My̴ ̵b̵e̷s̵t̵ ̵gu̵e̶s̴s̴ ̴is̶ ̶t̵h̷at̷ ̵J̴a̵s̸on̸ ̶w̸as̴ ̴f̴or̶c̵i̷b̴l̶y̴ ̵s̶um̷m̷o̴n̴e̴d̴.̸ ̷C̴an̵’̷t̵ ̷yo̷u̷ ̴s̴en̸s̷e̴ ̷th̵e̴ ̴m̷a̵g̵i̶c̶ ̵of̶ ̴d̶i̸s̵p̵l̶a̴c̴e̸m̶e̷n̴t ̸i̶n ̵th̸e̶ ̶ai̶r̸?̷”̷ Tucker's voice crackled with sand and electricity as his own liminality was brought to the surface. His ghost traits reverbed in response to his own emotions and the enraged emotions from his Guide, his King and his fraid.

“̸̣̐W̷͍͑h̴̢̔o̷̧͋ ̵̲̃Wọ̵̋u̴̬͗l̵͙̀d̶͌ͅ Dâ̷̖r̸̬͐ẹ̷͋ ̸̗̾Tà̶̘k̵͖͝e̶̊ Fr̸̨̅o̵͎̎m ̶̯͒Me̵̟͑ Oņ̶̓e̶̹͒ ̷̫̃Of̴̳́ ̷̢̐My̸̟͆ ̷̦̔Ow̴̻̓n̸̟͗?̵͎̏”̸̦̈́

“Doesn’t matter,” Sam snarled as her heart clenched in pain, “they won’t g̴̙̀e̵̗̔t̴̯̍ ̴̯̔ṱ̶͆ö̵̝́ ̸̜̎l̶͎̎iv̸̫͆e̴͖͒ ̵̖̒to̵̟̐ ̸̭͂r̷̘͌e̶̲͠gr̸͚̾ě̴͕t̷̤̎ i̵̾͜t̷̨̀,” she avowed.

"W̶e̸ ̴c̷a̷n̸ ̸use ̶t̵h̴e̵ infi-̵m̵a̸p̵ to g̵e̴t̷ ̷h̶i̶m̶ ̷b̸a̷c̴k̷," Dani declared, ignoring salty tears streaking down her face into her lips.

Jazz sharply nodded. “Danny, can you reach Jason through the Spiritual Plane to let him know we’re coming for him?” she furiously demanded.

““̴I’̷m a̵ G̵u̴i̶̟͈̰̓d̴e̶ P̶r̸i̴m̷ë̸́̆̐ a̴nd̸ ̷t̵he Ḿ̸̨̜͒̒̓͜o̴̖͍̟̐͘ẗ̶̙́͛̌͗̏ĥ̴͖͕̰͚͑͒ẹ̶͎̞̣̘̇r̸͎͉̙̎͝͝f̶̘̏̉̿͂̏͠ų̴͖̭̺͂̃́̇ͅc̶̯̘͔̰͇̓̉̈́̍̇ͅk̷͕̘͆̌͗̚̕͝i̵͈͔̳̎͠n̴̟̱͈̹͔͋̏̀͂̔g̴͕̚ G̴͎̀h̴̖͠o̶̡̽s̶̘͂t̷̒͜ ̸̲̐K̸̙̈́i̶̹̋ṅ̴͖ġ̴͜!̵̹̉ O̴͔̊F̸̫͆ ̶̭̋̄C̷̨͘O̷͕͆̍U̷͎̽̒Ṟ̴̐Ś̷͎͒ͅË̶̦̚ ̵̝̻̾Ȋ̵̹͈̽ ̶̛͇W̷̬̺̩̽̍̊Į̴͕͖͛̓́̐L̶͍̳͗͛͗̊Ĺ̶̥͚̬́̄ͅ!”

Clark Kent was sitting at his cubicle in the Daily Planet editing and fixing the numerous typos, spelling and grammar mistakes in Lois’ news article at a quick pace. 

His mind however was far and away, focused on all the recent ghostly visitors. The general hum that was Metropolis City life had changed to a disconcerting pitch now that those from beyond the grave were joining in. But so far, nothing going on was dangerous enough that Superman’s presence would actually help. Nevertheless Clark was still on edge, waiting anxiously for news and leads from his occult-inclined counterparts.

Clark, when he heard Jimmy's footsteps approaching from behind, lifted his head in absentminded acknowledgement. Jimmy thrusted his camera in front of Clark's nose. 

“Hey Clark, check these pictures out.” 

Jimmy rapidly switched to the next one, and then another one. One after another, Clark was faced with several glitchy photos depicting ghostly encounters.

“Creepy huh?”

“Yeah, pretty creepy,” Clark agreed. “Do you think -”

It was like a click, or a soft hiss, and that static sigh when a radio catches a signal amongst white noise. Clark and Jimmy watched with growing dread as around the office a few of their co-workers suddenly froze as one. They stiffly opened their mouths. And Clark could hear it. From the mouths of many, this same message was shouted all around the globe in deafening stereo. 

“Jason, where are you?! I'm coming for you!”

Horror struck, the rest of the office watched their co-workers speak as if possessed. Then the restless dead joined in. 

“I'm coming, I'm coming, I’m coming” they loudly chanted as a worldwide Greek Chorus.

Distressed smog weeped wisps of relief as a piercing light, green and brilliant, found him.

I'm over here! Alpha-Guide-King-DannyPhantom I'm over here!

Streams of fog frantically reached out to embrace the light, and rays of light fiercely curled round misty shadow. Gripping tight and holding fast, their psychic energies caught hold of each other like two outstretched hands clasped across a treacherous chasm.

Ḭ̶̡̟́̊’̷̲͓͕̰͐̓m̸̻͙̀̐̓ coming for y̶͚͒ȏ̸̢̭̪̈́ų̶̺̗́̎̏̈́.

young-mischievous-roaming-free; Jazz-pillar-patience-curiosity; Golden-keen-mind-and-spirit; Gothic-nightshade-and-vines, chorused W̴̻͑ẹ̶͠’̸͍͉̭̩͆̍̓r̵̢͚͇̆̑͜ë̷̬̳͚͊ coming for y̶͚͒ȏ̸̢̭̪̈́ų̶̺̗́̎̏̈́.  

Fiery smog hissed with breathless teary relief.

Bruce watched ashen-faced as his son cried in his sleep.

“I will fix this,” Batman gravely vowed. Lightning flashed outside. Everywhere, Guides and Sentinels stared unseeing.

We’re coming, we’re coming, we’re coming for you, the world cried.

The souls of the damned trumpeted lightning death knells across the skies. They laid out a carpet sewn from hungry shadows and icy storms. 

They saluted, they bowed, they genuflected at their Sovereigns.

Death and his Kin were here to take back what belonged to them.

Jason desperately fought against the heavy tug of Morpheus trying to pull him under, as he clung to consciousness. He could hear arguing, raised tempers and frayed patience. But he could also hear his fraid and his Danny.

“Danny,” Jason whispered beseechingly, “Alpha, Guide,” he pleaded. Jason was swept up and cocooned in twinkling wings of cool gentle starlight. “Danny,” Jason contently murmured, holding tight and refusing to let go.

“I’m here,” his Alpha Guide whispered back fiercely. “I’m here Jason.” 

Distantly Jason could still hear angry noises in the background, but it was so far away in comparison to Danny who was right there next to him. Jason squeezed.

“Love you, Danny.” 

The batcave fell silent. Danny’s voice was thick with emotion as he whispered back, “Love you too Jason.”