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redflagshipwriter · 5 months ago

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Mama Bat 9: Dinner Out

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After her promise, the bats were a whirlwind of activity. He didn’t know where Uncle D or Alfred went, but Cass and Bruce gently bustled him across the house to plan his ecto dinner like it was an attack on an enemy base.

“I think it was around here,” Danny said uncertainly over the map in Bruce’s study. “I don’t know the names of any of these places. But there was this abandoned-looking theme park that had a lot of what I need.”

He didn’t have to be the world’s smartest ghost to recognize that there was a lot of tension in the air after he said that. That tracked. There were not many pleasant ways for a place in the human realm to accumulate a glut of deathly energy.

“That makes sense,” Bruce said. “Cass, honey, do you think we should ask Dick and Jason?” He folded the map back up along the same lines as before without even looking. Danny wondered at why he had that muscle memory. Did he fold everything in the same pattern?

“Big visible muscle,” Cass agreed. Her phone appeared out of nearly nowhere. “Danny.”

He stood up even straighter.

“Is Amity dangerous?” She pinned him in a look, her soft brown eyes arresting. “Dangerous to Jasmine Fenton?”

“Jazz,” he corrected automatically. Cass nodded. He rolled his ankles around, stimming below their line of sight. “Uh.” Danny faltered. “Um.” He bit his lower lip and tried to feel less like there was a painful hand around his heart.

He hadn’t thought so. But he would never have thought that he and Vlad were in serious danger, either. Now that the GIW and Mom and Dad knew… They would know who to ask for more information.

His parents would never push his friends or Jazz too hard. But the idea of the GIW trying to intimidate his friends and family was almost too upsetting to consider.

“Batdad extracts them?” Cass cocked her head at him to make it even more of a question. It was up to him. Was it a good idea?

Danny licked his lips. His mouth was so dry. He struggled for words. “Maybe.” One shaky inhalation. “If, um.” It sounded like someone else’s voice. It couldn’t be him saying that right now. “If it wouldn’t be too obtrusive… I don’t want to extract them and then, like, they can’t go back if they wanna.”

“We can handle that.” Bruce made eye contact to promise. He looked, Danny thought, like a more responsible, boring version of Jack Fenton. His eyes burned.

“That would be, uh. Cool.” Danny managed to get that out and avert his eyes, but he felt like everyone could see that he was about to cry.

Whatever. He leaned to the left before he consciously knew that Cass was lifting an arm to put over his shoulder. It slotted in place like they’d done it a billion times. Danny tilted his head towards the nails she gently scratched through his hair.

“Batdad, Damibat, Timbird, Stephanie,” Cass listed easily. “Amity.” She jostled Danny a little. “And we get dinner. You only need me. I’m the best. But we bring boys too, Dickbird and Jason.” She blew a raspberry.

Bruce looked exhausted and fond. “She is the best,” he agreed. Danny watched their interplay like it was a pingpong match. “I think you ought to go tonight to get something to eat. Would you recommend that we contact Jazz and your friends in the daytime, or should we leave as soon as possible?”

…They all had school in the day. Even Jazz was still in high school. Danny eyed Bruce doubtfully. He did know about school, right? “Night is probably better.”

“I’ll make a few calls.” Bruce sat back and seemed to flip a switch into planning mode.

“Text!” Cass said, disagreeing strongly. She rolled her eyes, but it wasn’t too mean. “Grandfather Bat.”

“Oh!” Danny startled. “Um, I should contact Sam and Tucker. So that they know to expect you.”

Bruce balked. “We don't normally contact civilians about ongoing investigations…” He looked constipated about it.

Danny crossed his arms. He wanted to think it was stubbornness more than self comfort. “You're not going to like, creep up on my friends. If they want to go, they need some time to get ready.”

“Preparing could give away the plan to observers.”

“Is Amity Park Batman's domicile?” Cass asked archly. “Batdad.” She put both her hands on his desk and leaned forward to give her father an unimpressed look. “Mayor of Amity Park?”

Bruce snorted and then covered his mouth guiltily. “Point taken.” He cleared his throat, trying to retain some dignity. “Danny, do you need help to contact your friends?”

He shrugged. “Just a computer.” Danny fiddled with the strings on his hoodie. Tucker's hoodie. “I know you gave me a phone, but we thought -”

“That communications might be intercepted,” Bruce said, nodding as if that kind of paranoia was commonplace. “It's the first thing I would do if I expected a person of interest to contact a friend. What's your workaround?”

Danny bit his lip. It sounded stupid when he said it aloud.

Ten minutes later, Damian joined Cass in her perch on the back of the sofa and watched with morbid curiosity as Danny joined Doomed chatroom after chatroom, scanning for Sam's username. “She’ll leave it running whenever she's home in case I ping her,” Danny defended weakly. He left another chatroom.

Damian hummed, two pitches that came off incredibly doubtful. He had a gift for that.

“No, really, this- yes!” Danny pumped a fist and sent a HEY ITS YA BOI message.

It took seconds for Sam to get to it and add his temporary account as a friend. She sent a DM before he could and then ignored his response to start a voice chat.

Once he'd confirmed to her satisfaction that he was himself and that he hadn't gotten any deader in Gotham, he passed on the information that the friggin Batman was going to stop by Amity and wanted to check in. “But don’t worry, he’s kinda cool,” Danny added. “I gotta go. I am starving.”

Sam said all the rude words that she knew in quick succession. Damian looked sort of impressed. “Fine,” she said, obviously annoyed about it. “I’ll meet with Batman, but only because I hate the GIW more.”

“You hate Batman?” Damian asked. It was hard to tell from his tone if he had any feelings about that.

“That’s Damian,” Danny introduced. “He’s cool.”

“Hey,” Sam said shortly. “Yeah, he’s basically a cop. You have a problem with that?” Her voice went a little too aggressive.

“Just so you know, Damian is a child,” Danny said warily.

Sam scoffed. “You said he’s cool. I respect him enough to fight him if he’s wrong.”

“Batman may be improved by your feedback,” Damian said idly, as if he wasn’t making trouble for his father on purpose. “You should be certain to give it to him as soon as you see him. Do you have time to prepare a presentation?”

Danny sniggered into his hand.

“I can reuse the posterboard from Current Events class, yeah.” Sam mused. “Good idea. Alright, thanks for the heads up. It’s really good to hear from you. We were starting to get worried here. You missed a check in, you know.” She was trying to sound tough, but there was a hint of strain.

Danny flushed. “Yeah, I had logistical difficulties,” he said, which sounded less pathetic than “I got robbed while I was sleeping outside and had no money to use to access a computer.”

He ignored the thoughtful look he knew he was getting from Cass and signed off. He avoided making eye contact with anyone as he stretched, hands over his head. Then Danny put his hands on his hips and kind of stretched by rotating his back around. “Well, that’s done. Have fun with Sam, Uncle D.”

Damian made a hum in the back of his throat, eyes lost in thought. “I think I will.” Then he stalked away without a proper goodbye. Just a big housecat, that kid.

“Do you think Jason and Dick will be here soon?” Don’t ask, don’t ask, Danny silently hoped.

Cass looked at him for a long moment, silently weighing options and odds behind her dark eyes. Then she nodded. She turned on her heel and left, obviously expecting him to follow.

Danny jogged to keep up. How did she move so fast without running? She had short legs, too. He was still busy pondering when they rounded a hallway corner and heard male voices from the entryway.

“Wait.” Cass shoved him the last step with a gentle palm press to the shoulder and then flitted back down the hallway.

“Hey, buddy,” Dick said.

Danny managed a nod in return. He stuffed his hands into his hoodie pocket and tried not to look like he was hiding.

Jason all but oozed reassurance at him, without ever looking at him. As far as the eye could tell, the blonde was barely aware that Danny was present. But under the surface of his skin, his masses of ectoplasm were roiling with a sort of proprietary indulgence.

It was a kindness, probably, that the two men continued their conversation as if they were still alone. Danny didn’t really pay attention, thoughts consumed with a mixture of nerves about his worlds colliding and sobbing relief that he might get really, genuinely full for the first time since he had to run away from Amity Park. He edged a little closer to Jason without thinking about it consciously.

Cass arrived silently. Danny looked up as she entered the room only because he could sense her steady presence. “Time to go,” he said.

Jason startled with a very small jump. His expression instantly changed to exhausted resignation.

“Haha,” Cass said, pointing at him.

“Poor scared little guy,” Dick cooed. “You can’t sneak up on him like that.”

“Too scary,” Cass said, nowhere near as convincing as Dick at empathy.

Jason scowled. “Shut up,” he complained. He zipped up his jacket and yanked the door open. The sound of early crickets immediately cut into the house along with a fresh, cool breeze. “You both suck.”

Danny felt a faint smile pull at his face. He ducked his head and fell in, following at Jason’s heels. He didn’t look back to see who shut the door.

Dick drove them all. They parked a few blocks away and made it across the barren, creepy fairgrounds in utter silence. Danny followed his instincts and the source that he’d sensed from kilometers away in the city center but had been too worn down to even try to trek to without at least feeding his human body.

“So, what now?” Dick turned a cautious circle. “I didn’t exactly expect to see a physical object for you to eat, but I did sort of expect something.”

Danny made a face. “If I had the right tech I could filter and extract it out of the air, condense it into a really dense, liquid form. But, uh.” He turned a little to the side to avoid eye contact and hunched into his hoodie. “I sort of need to just hang out and…filter feed.” He grimaced. He sounded like a dumb fish.

“Inefficient,” Cass observed.

He nodded. “Yeah, but I’m really drained, so I need to be around a high concentration to get a jumpstart. If I needed less, I could probably just…” Danny made a circle gesture and sort of pointed at Jason. “Hang around him, I guess.”

Cass hummed in the back of her throat. “Perimeter.” Then she ran directly at a wall and hefted herself up onto the roof of the derelict funhouse. She was out of sight in seconds, which was impressive athleticism. Danny watched her go with raised eyebrows.

Dick huffed and shuffled even closer to Jason, clearly wary of Cass. “You can’t be the favorite uncle,” he lamented. “That should be me.” Danny choked down a laugh and pretended to be very busy filter feeding.

“You’re just crabby because you aren’t full of delicious ghost juice,” Jason muttered into Dick’s ear at a volume that he clearly thought Danny wouldn’t hear. The banter didn’t stop him from making periodic glances around the area. He caught an elbow to the gut from Dick for the comment and the inattention. Danny took a step further away from jabbing range.

“We aren’t here to hear you brag about how juicy you are,” Dick said out of the side of his mouth.

EW. But Danny felt smug satisfaction in Jason’s aura at that answer, so apparently it wasn’t as nasty sounding to him as it was to Danny. He made a blegh face, scraping his tongue against his teeth.

‘Maybe I should tell them at some point that I have better than human hearing.’ He pointedly wandered a few steps further away and pretended to be occupied with sniffing out the highest concentration of ectoplasm.

Jason grinned unpleasantly. “No, I usually have that conversation with all of your exes- oof.” Jason bent over and tried to breathe through the hit to his diaphragm.

Danny did his best to ignore the commentary from the peanut gallery. He took deep breaths and tried to keep an eye on all the shadows.

Amusement Mile wasn’t saturated with high quality ectoplasm like Amity Park, but nothing ever should be. Danny licked his lips and tried to stay alert. There could be any number of distressed or territorial dead around a place like this. It was eerily still.

“This place is just plain creepy.” Danny hid a shudder. “What happened here?”

Jason huffed a laugh with absolutely no joy in it. “It’s more like what keeps happening here.” Danny glanced over at just the right angle to realize that Jason had a gun in his pocket. Holy shit. A gun. His eyes went wide.

“But nothing should happen tonight,” Dick cut in. His eyes looked tight and tense in a way that his breezy tone didn’t hint at. “The person who likes to use this area as a staging ground is currently in lockup. We double checked before we came out here.”

All three of them tensed when Cass jumped back down off the same building she’d climbed earlier. “Suspicious,” she said flatly.

Dick and Jason instantly lost their facades of ease. Danny realized, a bit late, that this place was really fucking concerning even to the living. “What’s wrong?” Dick snapped out. His posture changed and somehow his shoulders looked broader. Alarmed, Danny glanced between the adults.

“Someone was here.” Cass held up a very familiar piece of tech. “Inside vent.”

Danny felt the blood drain out of his face. Cass zeroed in on the expression. “GIW,” he said. “Uh, that measures… that senses ghosts.” He licked his lips. “I think we should go.”

“Are you- are you going to be hungry?” Jason’s brow furrowed fiercely. “You think they might have an alert that you came out here?”

“We are more capable than we look.” Dick promised. And his serious voice was pretty reassuring, actually, all things considered. But Danny still felt like he was going to be sick.

Tires screeched. It was too late to get out of here.

#red mama bat #dp x dc #dc x dp

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