She's heard from the locals that, while Phantom favors the form of a young boy, he is far older than even she. There are records going back centuries of his existence.
Phantom, however, looks confused.
"Villain....? Oh! Okay, you want to fight Dan! Yeah, lemme just go call him real quick."
"...Who?" Wonder Woman asks, now sharing the confusion.
But Phantom already has a phone out and is calling someone, promising that it won't be but a moment.
"Hey, so...yeah, I know you don't wanna talk to me but...no but someone wants to fight you...gimme a second to specify and I'll....Wonder Woman. Wonder Woman wants to 1v1 you."
Phantom holds the phone away from his ear as what can only be described as a triumphant war cry almost breaks the speaker.
Then it's just a dial tone.
Phantom smiles at her.
"Okay, he'll be here in like, four-"
"Fight me!" Another ghosts interrupts, landing in front of Phantom.
He's huge; bigger than Superman, with fire-like white hair and excited red eyes.
He looks very, very ecstatic for the opportunity to fight her.
And, well...Diana does love a good fight.
Very well!
She will fight this 'Dan' instead!
They know instantly.
I want Danny, in king Phantom form, to meet Billy, in his hero form, and for them both to immediately know that they other isn't the age they present themselves as.
They then proceed to troll the whole League into believing that they've been friends for eons.
DP x DC: The Dead Man at the Diner
Danny has a hard time maintaining regular jobs. At this point he’s pretty much nocturnal after years of being attacked at night, and possibly just part of his ghostly nature. He’s odd, and a basic google search brings up various news articles about him getting into fist fights with the mayor of a small town. He barely passed high school and college was out of the question, so who in their right mind would hire him?
What’s a job that would work with his odd hours, doesn’t require a college education, and a possible criminal record and a tendency to be ready to throw down is NOT an issue?
Danny is a cook at a 24hour Diner in Gotham
The man just needs to be able to flip a burger and make breakfast food and doesn’t mind a gun in the face because he’s well used to it. So what if the robber was dumb enough to pull that shit next to the fryer. If he didn’t want something to end up extra crispy he should have stayed out of Danny’s kitchen
Just think of all the folks he would meet.
Sure, the vigilantes of the city would be obvious and you can’t tell me spoiler isn’t dragging folks there to eat. Maybe they notice some weird things about the cook, like he doesn’t breath, his eyes reflect light like an animal’s, or the time he accidentally cut off a finger and it was fine the next day, or maybe the time a robber shot him and he just... didn’t react
Something is weird about that guy
And of course the person I think would love a jersey style diner breakfast at all hours: Harley Quinn
Technically she’s not supposed to bring the hyenas in, health code and all that, but everyone else is to freaked out to tell her and Danny doesn’t care. Frankly he spends his break petting them and they like him because he smells like food.
Save my life When I’m too far gone Be my savior And don’t let go ©
Constantine: I hate to say it. But we might need help from... The Ghost King.
The last phrase is whispered with a depth of terror the heroes assembled had never heard before from the man who fucked demons.
Batman: the ghost king?
Constantine, gravely: yes. I don't know much about the new one- just that ue managed to defeat the fearsome Pariah Dark- the king feared by all the biggest bads in all the Realms of heaven, hell, and everything in between, before and beyond. In single combat.
Wonder woman frowned, : so.... can you summon him?
Constantine shifts uneasily: summoning the ghost king- particularly one as fearsome as Phantom- is quite the risk, it could get us all killed in a moment- or worse. He is the ghost king, after all.
Impulse frowns. The name 'Phantom'and 'Ghost King' was familiar... but why... he turned to the side, to spot Rook (Tim) napping quietly in his seat, a can of zesti by his info pack- and that was when it clicked.
He nudged Tim. "Hey. Hey Tim?" He whispered.
"Mm?"
"Isn't that the guy you were fucking?"
Rook raised his head to stare blankly into Impulse's eyes. "What?"
"You know, the person you and uhhh- code name... fuck it. You and Bernard fucked?"
At this point, Clark raised an eyebrow at the whispered conversation, whilst Kon was hiding his grin.
Rook continued to stare blankly. "You're going to need to be more specific. "
Impulse sighs, irritated, "Phantom. The fearsome and deadly, possibly evil ghost king?" He gestures to where Constantine was drawing up a variety of different reasons why he shouldn't be forced to make a summoning circle to call Phantom.
Tim frowned at the board. "Oh. Hmm. Well he wasn't the evil ghost king when i was dating him that was his evil alternate future self."
This statement caused more than a few heroes to turn his way, eyebrows raised.
Nightwing: ....anything you wanna say there, Rook?
Rook glared at Impulse before rolling his eyes before the domino, "nah just talking about how I ficked the guy Constantine is stressing over."
The statement silenced the entire table. Constantine glanced between Rook, the board, and back again.
Constantine: you....fucked... the ghost king???
Tim: well I mean it was out of office hours so was it really fucking a king, or-
Constantine: EVEN I WOULDNT DO THAT
Tim: well I certainly hope you wouldn't. He's a bit young for you.
Various different heroes snort or stiffle laughter at the statement.
Nightwing, frowning: R, I thought you were dating B?
Tim turns horrified eyes to Nightwing, "YOU THOUGHT I WAS DATING OUR FATHER????? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU-"
Nightwing: oh, no, I meant your boyfriend!
Tim: BATMAN IS NOT MY BOYFRIEND WHAT IN THE EVER LIVING ACTUAL FUCKING HELL-
Nightwing: no no no B as in the conspiracy theorist boyfriend.
Tim: oh. Yeah I am.
Nightwing: but you fucked-
Tim: dated, actually. Dating, technically.
Nightwing: you know I never thought I'd have to have this conversation with you, Rook , but cheating is bad.
Nightwing turns to Batman helplessly, "help me out here B...atman."
Bruce raises an eyebrow in response. "Rook your brother is right."
Tim raises an eyebrow. "I'm not cheating. Anyway, why do we want to call Danny?"
Constantine gestures vaguely at the monitors and they flare to life with a live video feed of Undergrowth ripping a city to the ground.
Tim: huh. Just a sec.
He turns to his phone and taps for a moment
Tim: he'll be here in a moment,
Danny, in full king regalia, behind Constantine: hey R. What's up? OH are you the guy whose soul is owned by like a gazillion other people?
Constantine gulps.
Danny grins: can I have your soul?? Only I kinda want to fight in the bidding fight-
Constantine: the what fight?
Danny: you know, for your soul? May the best and most dangerous individual win?
Constantine has suddenly gone very, very pale.
Remembered the phrase "[someone] is turning in his grave", as a way of saying that someone who's now dead would so deeply disapprove of something that a living person is doing that their corpse would stir in unease.
Then I remembered an expression, "even a worm will turn", as a way of saying that no matter how downtrodden or lowly someone seems, they can nonetheless turn against their abusers and oppressors once they've had enough of it.
Then cross-contamination happened and the phrase "a worm is turning in his grave" emerged to me. I have no idea what that means.
The Justice League and Young Justice were too late, the summoning had been completed and whatever creature the cult had chosen to wreck havoc on earth was coming out of an ominous green portal.
The head popped out. It looked as if a piece of space was trying to imitate a human head but the constant movement made it appear as if it was burning and flowing underwater at the same time. A halo made up of floating pieces of ice gathered behind its head, glowing and rearranging itself to look like a wheel with never ending details. To top it all of a crown the deepest black anyone has seen sat ontop of it's head, embedded with five beautiful blue jewels. However, the longer anyone stared at them the more the jewels started to look like eyes.
The head turned towards the cult members, freezing them in a blink of an eye, the attack too fast for them to comprehend. It then set its sights on them, scanning the heroes before a giant hand?...Claw?... Some weird mixture of both reached out towards them with insane speed.
"SUPERBOY!"
Someone shouted but it was too late, the creature already had him in its grasp and bring him up to its face and–...actually, it doesn't seem to be harming him at all, much to everyone's confusion. Furthermore it is as if it was...lovingly nuzzling him?
Superboy looked red in the face and rather embarassed?
"Mommm, stop, you're embarassing me infront of my team."
"MOM?!"
I come from a culture that has no nudity taboo - nudity is not considered inherently sexual, or somehow traumatising to witness. What that means in practice is that there is a clearly drawn line between sexual and non-sexual nudity. There is nothing wrong or inappropriate about nudity in a sexual context, and nothing wrong or inappropriate about nudity in a non-sexual context. However, it is 100% inappropriate to be nude in a situation where it is not obvious from context whether this is sexual or not.
I've seen random kids who briefly escaped from their parents bolt across a public park buck-ass naked after they were playing in the water fountain and their parents were in the middle of changing their kid from wet clothes to dry clothes when the small nudist escaped. Changing your small kid's clothes right there in public is ok because there is obviously nothing sexual about a child whose clothes got wet. But although people will have baby pictures of their kids in the bath or just running around the house like that because sometimes little apes hate clothes for some reason, it's considered common sense to not share those pictures on facebook mom groups and such, because you have no way of knowing who's seeing them, and that blurs the line of context.
It all boils down to the clearly defined context. Bathing nude in the same sauna with five of your co-workers at the office christmas party? Clearly nonsexual, therefore completely fine. Your friend-with-benefits inviting you to come over and opening the door in nothing but a doggy collar and the most porn-scented perfume? Clearly sexual, therefore completely fine. A woman checking her breasts for lumps in the gym lockers just before or after a shower? Clearly non-sexual, therefore completely fine.
But if you went to the bank today and there's some guy who walks in and immediately strips naked, doing his banking business wearing nothing but a deep smile and being clearly very content with this situation, you have no way of telling whether he's getting kicks out of this or not. There is no contextual reason for him to be nude. Therefore, that is inappropriate.
Then you go home and post on tumblr - as one does - going like "there was some dude completely fucking buck-ass naked in the bank today. That was fucking weird and I wish he had not done that." And someone immediately swoops into inform you that actually nudity is not inherently sexual or inappropriate, and there are cultures out there that have no nudity taboo. It's not fair to call somebody a freak for something like that, maybe that guy was just finnish.
I love talking with neurotypical people about my executive dysfunction because I'm like "yeah there's this invisible wall in my head that I'm incapable of getting past no matter what I do and it stops me from doing things" and they're like what the actual fuck
Meanwhile other neurodivergents are like
Bella / Minor / Any Pronouns I'll mostly reblog stuff and the stuff I reblog WILL be random. Follow at your own risk.
162 posts