He's studying for the SAT, he's already been kidnapped by Vlad like, four times that week and it was a fucking Tuesday, he forgot his wallet at his new apartment, locked himself out of said new apartment (he could phase through the door but that wasn't the point), he's just been informed that the grant he applied for was denied so he needs to ask his mom and dad for college funds when he'd already told them he had it covered, and just...it was shit.
It had been shit. The entire week had been awful and annoying and he was ready to either murder everyone on the planet or go find a corner to cry in for the next three days.
So when the band of wild goons working for whatever villain of the week pulled up and tried to kidnap him, he snapped.
He used them to vent.
Shouted about how terrible his day had been, how terrible his week had been, how he'd already been kidnapped by his creepy godfather who was way too into him, how college funding was shit and the grant system was rigged, and how he'd have to call a locksmith or break down the door to his own apartment if he wanted to go to bed-all of it. He unloaded all of his frustration.
The goons actually backed off.
One of them gave him an awkward side hug and told him it'd get better.
Danny wasn't paying attention to his surrounding. He doesn't realize that the whole thing was livestreamed.
So when he gets home to his apartment later that day, his door is opened for him by the vigilante Spoiler before he can even turn intangible.
She brought over BatBurger and kidnapped Bruce Wayne, Gotham's bumbling Prince, to talk about college grants.
Danny is dating a hero, and he's been keeping the whole "Phantom" thing under wraps.
After all, he's retired. Amity is under control. There's no real reason for "Phantom" to make an appearance, and it's not like Danny wanted to be a hero in the first place.
But his hero, naturally, has a villain, and one day that villain grabs Danny and the hero both.
The hero is in a glass box made of just the right stuff to contain them. Probably not like, forever, but long enough for the villain to dramatically murder Danny right in front of them.
He...really doesn't want Phantom to have to make an appearance.
But the cards are down, there's no one else coming, and Danny decides to compromise.
No one outside of Amity knows about Phantom. He is, after all, the American Governments biggest embarrassment; they believed pseudo science and declared an entirely separate species to be ghosts, of all things.
So they keep a tight lid on all things Phantom related.
While Danny may have been able to...finagle his own scientific papers a bit, to make ghosts seem to be aliens from another dimension and get those Anti-Ecto laws taken down, he is actually half ghosts.
And ghosts don't have actual physical forms.
So he decides to be dramatic.
"If I have to, I'll become a monster. For them."
With that, he Goes Ghost, taking care to make sure his form is far more monstrous than human.
The villain never stands a chance.
On the other side of things, his hero lover is convinced they just watched Danny sacrifice his humanity to save them.
Once more, have a prompt entirely in memes because I'm too lazy to properly write one right now lol.
I just had a DPxDC crossover idea that I thought was funny.
What if every time John Constantine sold his soul he was basically agreeing to being “adopted” by the entity he was selling his soul to.
He thinks all of the entities he sold his soul to are leaving him alone because they’re too busy fighting/have a truce to not fight as long as none of them claim his soul, meanwhile he’s got like a dozen or so ghost/demon parents ready to go to court to fight for custody when he finally dies.
Danny, having been taken in as a ward by an older ghost since he technically counts as a baby ghost until he’s 100 or something, meets Constantine for the first time and is like: “Why are you 1/15th my brother?”
Bonus points if Danny is technically the big brother in ghost terms because he’s been a ghost the longest. Sure Constantine may be a little liminal but that doesn’t count he doesn’t even have a death day yet.
Like:
Danny (Certified little shit): “Baby brother why do you never come to dinner? :(”
Constantine, too sober for this: “The fuck did you just call me?”
Constantine vehemently denies any relation but they bicker like siblings.
Commissioner Gordon was ostracized within the Gotham Police department. He knew this was because of his ties to the Bat, his late hours, constant overtime. He knew that even the good officers, while he couldn't tell too much who was who, didn't mean to ostracize him. It happened on accident, he's sure. He picked up some clues from the world's greatest detective. Rumors went around, running rampant about him. He just couldn't care so much about them.
Everyone knew that Commissioner Gordon always took his late dinner at 9:37 at night. Everyone cleared from the break room. Gordon opened the door, taking a heavy breath. He was still expecting the empty room. It felt empty, in a way Gordon had picked up from The Bat. He pulled his burrito out of the fridge, opening the styrofoam container and eating a bite. "You're not going to heat it up?" Gordon barely manages to catch his burrito, his whole soul leaving his body.
"Jesus Christ, kid, you scared me." Gordon lets out a heavy breath, seeing the new detective sitting at a table in the corner. He's eating... Something indescribable. He looks tired, his long black hair bulled back into a high ponytail. His face seems disproportionate, large prominent features. A crooked nose, a wide, thin mouth, large eyes accompanied by large bags. His skin was pale, dusted with faded freckles and litchenburg scarring. The young man- still a boy, practically, shrugged at Gordon's words, eating another bite of the odd food. "No one warned you I'd be in here?" Gordon decided to sit with him.
"No, they warned me. But the past couple of days they've been... Avoiding me." Dr. Fenton, Gordon remembers his file passing over his desk. He could never be a cop- he was a detective-by-hire because of some medical condition. Gordon feels a pang at the emotionless words.
"Ah, they avoid me too." Gordon takes another bite of his cold burrito. "So, how have you been enjoying working here?"
"Well, it's been alright, I guess." Fenton took a drink from his thermos- which has a straw in it. It goes unsaid that this was the only job Fenton could really get. Close to the force, anyways. His medical condition refrained him from being a proper officer, so he wasn't officially a Gotham PD detective. He was an out-contract detective, receiving the same work, pay, and hours as the regular detectives.
"Getting around the town well enough?"
"Well enough, I suppose. Almost got robbed." Fenton held three doctorates- criminology, psychology, and natural sciences. All at the young age of 22.
"Almost?" Gordon snorts a bit at that. "Scared them off with your badge?"
"I don't have a badge. And I don't have a gun, if that's what you're thinking. I guess they just thought I was too pathetic to have much cash." Danny shrugged.
"Oh come on, you're not pathetic." Gordon is a bit taken aback that the boy doesn't carry any weapons. He makes a mental note to get him a badge.
"I looked pathetic enough not to rob."
Gordon feels like he missed something there, because Gotham robbers would rob a kindergartner if they were unattended. Regardless, he and Fenton sat in silence for a good couple of minutes. "What are you eating?" Fenton asks eventually.
"A burrito from the Mexican stand on Westwood."
"Why are you eating it cold?"
"Because if I reheat it, then the sauce becomes a solid liquid and everything gets soggy. What are you eating?"
"It was supposed to be stir fry?" Danny stared down at the leftovers container. "I'm not good at cooking. No videos ever make sense, so they don't turn out right."
"Your parents didn't teach you?" Gordon asks.
"No, they weren't the best chefs. They did pass on the family fudge recipe though. I can make some killer fudge." He laughs a little bit at that.
"I'll bring you lunch in from now on." Gordon says. "Until we can get your cooking sorted out, anyhow. Normally my daughter and I spend Tuesday nights fixing dinner together, so you'll get the best meals Wednesday."
"You don't have to do that." Danny seems a little caught off guard by the kindness.
"I can't have one of my youngest detectives going hungry!" Gordon smiles. "Besides, you're the first person in the precinct to eat dinner with me in nearly twenty years. You keep eating with me, it'll be no problem. I enjoy the company." Danny smiles at him and Gordon is reminded of someone, but he can't remember who.
Over the next couple of weeks, Gordon and Danny get well acquainted in their overlapping shifts. Danny works the nights and sometimes early mornings, similar to what Gordon does. Gordon finds himself feeling fatherly to the young man, who's working and picking up significant overtime to pay off his student loans. He learns that Danny moved here from Illinois- it was the only PD he could work at. He had no formal fighting training, but apparently his mom had taught him some moves. They had yet to overlap in the field, and it was easy for Gordon to forget that the boy was really a detective.
"Danny?" Jim paused, having finally made his way to the crime scene. Danny was crouched over a dead body, using his gloved hands to inspect the wound- the word Joker carved using some sort of knife.
"Gordon?" Despite all insistence, the boy still used his last name.
Jim has to stop himself from asking him why he's here. Danny's eyes shift to a spot behind him and James sighs. "What happened?" Batman's voice startled the last officer in the room, who quickly stuttered an excuse and left.
"The Joker broke in, tortured her, and left." Jim says. "We just have to figure out why."
"No, we don't." Danny looked back at the body, his eyes unfocused. "It was political. Do you see the swelling here on the neck? No lacerations, and no bruising. Allergy, I suppose, or a poison that reacts similarly. No clawing at the neck or face, but heavy rope burns on the wrists and ankles. The cuts were sloppy, and from the bleeding, it was done after she had died. Maybe five, ten minutes after? The window wasn't fully closed when it was broken into, do you see how the glass fractured there at the top?"
Jim blinked, and Danny continued. "It doesn't fit the motive of a mad-man like the Joker to do this. Who you're looking for is a woman, younger than the victim, maybe around twenty or thirty?" His eyes unfocused again. "Hmmm." He snaps back, looking around. He stands, his hands shaking a little. He looks around, eyes landing on the shelf. He scans it, using gentle hands to lift the potted plant. He pulls out a camera, unplugging it. "A Direct Link- model E47C." He sets the camera in an evidence bag.
Batman gives a grunt- and if Jim isn't mistaken it was one of approval? Danny held the camera out to Jim. "That was some fine detective work today, kid." Jim sets his hand on Danny's shoulder. Danny glances off to the side nervously. He locks eyes with Batman. "Danny, this is Batman. Batman, this is Dr. Daniel Fenton, the newest detective on the force."
Batman holds a hand out. "I look forward to working with you." Danny pulls off one of the disposable gloves, reaching out to shake his hand. "You're shaking a little, are you alright?"
"Medical condition." Danny answers. "You're taller than I expected."
"It's the ears." Jim represses a smile. "You go ahead and get your deductions filed. I brought pasta." Jim watches Danny leave. He turns to Batman, who's staring him down with that signature I-know-everything™ face. "What?"
"When are you going to let him know that you're mentoring him?" He says it like a sentence, and was that amusement in his tone?
"I'm not." Jim turns to the window.
"You brought him pasta."
"He never learned to cook."
"So you're teaching him." There was definitely amusement in his tone now.
Jim huffed. "We're getting old." He finally sighs. "We both have full grown kids. Crime and corruption are still thick in this city." Batman is standing next to him with a swoosh in his cape. "Retirement... I could see myself with it. Sipping cocktails on the beach. A beach with sunshine and no broken down carnivals."
Batman is silent for a moment, as if considering this. "So you see Fenton taking your place?"
"Like you see your Robin." Jim admits.
There’s that temper of yours again.
"I need your phone."
Tim looks up from his laptop. The boy in front of him looks like he's been dragged to Hell a week ago and just made it back: smudges of soot on his face, his not-so-white t-shirt smelling of smoke, and a nasty looking burn on his hand that he somehow doesn't even pay attention to. Tim thinks back to his mental list of 'Rogues currently on the loose', but it's only Ivy and Harley (who don't even count anymore), and Penguin, who is not known for setting things on fire.
"I can call 911 for you, if you want?" He offers, because this is still Gotham. Despite the fact that a slightly scorched guy casually walking into a coffee shop is not something out of the ordinary here, he's not giving his phone to strangers.
The guy grimaces and starts aggressively rummaging through his pockets.
"No, thanks, ACAB and all that, and they won't do shit here anyway," he says, and then pulls a handful of tangled golden jewelry — rings, chains, necklaces with various gems in them — from his pocket and places it on the table in front of Tim. "I need your phone," he repeats.
Tim stares. First, at the gold — these things look antique, and his parents were archeologists, he knows what he's talking about — then, back at the guy. He looks... ordinary, sans the dirt and smell.
But the burn on his hand looks significantly more healed than it did just a minute ago.
Thankfully, Tim has already had his cup of morning coffee. Which means he is thinking very rationally when he does get his phone out of his pocket and hands it to the guy, just to see what he does next.
"Thanks," the guy grins at him, plucking the phone out of Tim's hand and unlocking it. Tim's eyebrows shoot up — there's a password there! — but the stranger is already dialing in a number and pressing the phone to his ear.
It takes less than a second before someone evidently picks up, and the guy starts talking.
"I have less than three minutes before the phone dies, so listen very carefully. Etrigan is fine, Jason is not, Klarion is still being a bitch. Dora won't help anymore, so you're on your own until Sam makes it there with the staff. I'm in Gotham because, apparently, mazes and I don't mix well together, so if you could summon me back, that'd be cool," he says, a look of mild annoyance on his face.
Tim is back to staring at him. He recognizes some of the names, and, well, one could have been an oddity, two a coincidence, but three is a pattern.
"The fuck you mean you can't, I gave you the incantation two months ago!" The guy raises his voice, his foot tapping on the floor in frustration. "Do you think I just go around giving my summons to people for shits and giggles? Like, yeah, have a spell that unleashes a cosmic being of immeasurable power, use it as a bookmark!"
This interaction, despite Tim only hearing one side of it, gets more and more alarming with every word.
But then, the boy suddenly straightens up and stills, his eyes flashing bright, unpleasantly familiar green.
"You what?" He asks, his voice slipping from just angry to quietly enraged hiss, "Sold it to whom?!" But, before he gets an answer, Tim's phone makes a thin, tiny buzzing sound, and the guy takes it off his ear, looking at the screen.
"No, no-no-no," he mutters, shaking it like that would make it work. To no avail, though: the phone screen flashes a few times and goes black. The guy curses. At least Tim thinks it's a curse because he doesn't understand a word, but the stranger's face and intonation are telling.
"Useless fucking moron of a human, I swear I'm going to drown you in cow shit once this is over," he switches to English, dropping the phone on the table right by the small pile of gold, "I'll bargain your pathetic soul from everyone you've ever dealt with and give it to the Observants, and maybe, after a few millenia of endless Council paperwork, I'll have mercy and sell it back to Lucifer and watch him fry you on a skillet."
...Whoever the boy is, Tim absolutely refuses to ever piss him off, okay. That's an impressive threat to even make, not to mention being able to go through with it.
"Do you need help?" He asks cautiously. If he is getting his context clues right, this is something that involves JLD, and maybe John Constantine specifically since Tim doesn't know any other man who is a magic user, sold his soul numerous times, would care about Etrigan's wellbeing, and could invoke this kind of murderous intent.
The boy looks back at him, his eyes back to normal blue.
"Huh? Oh, no, I doubt this can be helped," he waves Tim off and pinches the bridge of his nose, "Sorry about the phone, but, unless you have a way to yeet me across the globe so I end up in London in the next twenty minutes..." he shrugs, smiling in that helpless 'nothing you can do here' way.
Tim picks up his phone. It's dead, wholly and completely, won't even turn on when he tries.
He really, really shouldn't do that. This is definitely none of his business, and very much out of his capabilities and area of expertise.
But he thinks about the zeta-tube in the Cave.
"Actually," he says, and the guy's eyes snap back to him, a bewildered sort of surprise on his face.
what artists dont tell you is that every compliment is actually 100 compliments because they'll go back to re-read it 100 times and it'll make them feel fuzzy all over again every single time
your writing does not have to be good. your author’s note does not have to go on its knees for a hundred words before each chapter repenting. you only have to let the soft gremlin of your brain write what it wants.
Danny is just Some Guy:
It started as a random idea and has since snowballed. It is not a cohesive storyline as none of these post were made in a particular order.
Original post, Post two, Post three, Post four, Post five, Post six, Post seven, Post eight, Post nine
Snippets/Outtakes: I didn’t know what else to do with these so here they are.
Snippet 1, Snippet 2
Anyway enjoy! Or don’t. I know I am.
—-
Things I might come back too:
Random snippets: Snippet 1
Being a Dad is hard. Jason being a Dad? It’s complicated.
Original post
Serial killer Jason just acquired a new pet: Demon Danny.
Original post
Reblogger/Writer/ArtistAvid supporter of gay chaosMy safe haven for the ideas my brain comes up with
160 posts