#Jazz is just trying to help

[phantomphangphucker]

Phic Phight - Acatalepsy

@atropos_aeneas @lwh-writing

Jazz had always been very firm on her opinions on her parent’s beliefs and behaviour, but she was far more firm on her love and care for her little brother.

Chap. 1:

Peremptory

Jazz has had it about up to here, with these so called ghosts, with her parents dangerous obsession and neglect that bordered on abuse, with the town even vaguely entertaining all this foolishness, with a skin tight costume wearing wannabe vigilante. She couldn’t do much of anything about the seeming mass hallucinations. She couldn’t do anything about her parents, she’s spent years trying after all. She couldn’t do anything about the town as a whole, even if she’s still trying to figure out why everyone’s decided that now is the time to go along with her parents insanity. However she can at least try to do something about the vigilante, she can talk to him and try to get it through his head that feeding into this was bad and if someone real took him seriously he could get really hurt.

It wasn’t like it would be all that difficult to chase the boy down, he got spotted multiple times a day so all she had to do was wait for a ‘ghost sighting’ and track him down. She, once again, was proven to be firmly correct. She’s easily able to spot him at the next ‘ghost’ sighting; she’d really like to figure out what was causing so many people to either have hallucinations or to just be going along with certain people’s delusions.

The thing that gets her though… is he is actually glowing from head to toe. How? Some sort of spray perhaps? That seemed like a lot of effort just to play into all this foolishness. Was this a teen who genuinely desperately wished to be ‘a superhero’ and thus took the first chance he could get? That was incredibly unhealthy and spoke of a very unbalanced and unkind childhood. Neglect perhaps? Or parentification maybe? Trying to make up for childhood feelings of helplessness?

Now how to best get his attention? pretending to be injured or under attack posed the risk of attracting her parents or genuinely worrying the teen. She couldn’t simply wait around to talk to him, as he was known to not stick around after catching ‘the ghost’. Perhaps she can flex her big sister muscles and point aggressively at the ground in his direction? he looked young enough that that very well might work.

Well that’s the best she’s got so that’s what she does. Waving in the air at the teen and then pointing at the ground very firmly with a ‘you better come here, mister’ eyebrow. The teen looking cautious and unsure as he lowers himself to the ground, her absently wondering how he’s managing this floating ability; cords? a wire system? magnets?

The teen giving an awkward, “yes, random citizen?”. Oh he’s trying to pretend he doesn’t know exactly who she is, with her parents it’s no surprise that a so called ‘ghost’ would know them and thusly her. Her parents have talked about shooting at him, she’s been on the receiving end of their inventions enough to know how unpleasant that could be.

Jazz crossing her arms at the ghost, “I think it’s about time we talked”. The teen seems more fidgety at that, and she doesn’t want him running off. Gesturing at a bench and making a point to smile softly, comfortingly, “how about we sit down? It’s nothing bad, I promise. I just want to understand why you’re doing this?”.

Somehow she gets the feeling that actually annoys him but he sighs, ‘lands’ on the ground, and walks with her to a more out of eye sight picknick table than the bench she’d pointed out. Was he paranoid of being seen in general? Or of being seen talking to her specifically? The later she could understand due to her parents reputation, but the former? If it’s the former then she’s even more confused and concerned over why he’s doing this… unless he’s suffering from genuine delusions himself and truly believes his ‘heroics’ are necessary.

What she gets from him is snark, defensive snark. He’s absolutely paranoid and nervous. “So what does the daughter of the ghost hunters constantly shouting about shooting me and how I’m evil, want with me?”, him gesturing at her body, “you aren’t armed so doubt they sent you to try and shoot me”.

Even though he’s being defensive, he’s not wrong either. Her parents did shoot at him and did tell everyone they could that all ‘ghosts’ including ‘the ghost boy’ were evil ‘ectoplasmic’ manifestations of ‘post human consciousness’. If ghosts were somehow real, which they were not, it would make sense to behave defensively regarding her parents and anyone closely associated with them. She puts her hands up in a surrendering motion for a few seconds, “no ‘weapons’ or ‘inventions’ I promise. I meant what I said, all I want is to know why you’re doing everything. I’d simply like to ask you some questions and hope to get honest answers in return”.

He seems… more annoyed but less fidgety, less paranoid. He believes her but finds what she’s doing annoying. Perhaps he’s been taken to therapists before? And has had less than positive interactions with them for one reason or another? She’s fully aware that the wrong therapist to patient relationship can do more harm than good, and that there are bad actors out there and those who are simply looking for the paycheck. Unfortunate, but true. “I’m going to be annoyed if this winds up on the news but alright”, making ‘go ahead’ gestures at her, “ask your questions”.

Jazz’s response is near automatic, “I believe in absolute confidentiality, it will not”. He eyes her with those green eyes, expensive contacts she imagines, and seems to take her word for it. So she asked her first question, “throughout your childhood, have you always had an inclination towards vigilantism? A desire to monitor your environment for signs of deviance or punish those who do wrong onto others, perhaps?”.

The teen scoffs, actually scoffs, at her, “my home is and was always ‘deviant’, looking for that would be dumb. And I don’t like bullies sure, but no, I’ve never wanted to ‘punish’ people’”, he shakes his head softly, like he’s trying to be gentle with her, “I’m not a vigilante, I’m not fighting crime or evil doers or whatever. I’m not Batman or robin and I’m not trying to be. I’m just protecting people and ghosts, and a little bit of socialising”.

She’s not one hundred percent sure if he’s simply really good at going along with the ‘ghost’ bit or if he actually believes in them. “So you would describe what you’re doing as ‘protecting the masses from harm’ then, yes? Would you say that’s for people’s general physical safety or for protecting societal integrity and status quo?”. There was a very big difference between the two after all. “And why would you seek to go about protecting in this manner? Rather than working towards a career in a protective field, such as a police officer or fireman?”.

Now this, he actually looks like he’s genuinely considering her question before responding, “physical safety, of everyone including myself. Your parents are menaces.-”. She can’t argue that last statement. “-I never wanted those kinds of jobs, I didn’t really even want this one at first”, shrugging, “no one else was or could, no offence but also full offence, deal with all the ghosts causing problems”.

… He might actually genuinely believe this ghost thing. She can acquiesce that if ghosts were somehow real that her parents would not actually be all that great at dealing with them. Her dad was far too forgetful and easy going, while her mom would be held back by her dad. The fact that everyone justly thought them insane wouldn’t help either. “Physical safety, of others and ourselves is important, however aren’t you putting yourself in danger by doing this? From ‘ghost hunters’, yes like my parents, and the ‘ghosts’?”; it’s incredibly hard to keep the disbelief out of her voice but she needs to tackle the ‘superhero’ identity first. Maybe getting him to see how illogical and backwards it ultimately was would help break the delusion.

“Obviously I’m putting myself in danger, but I am either way-”. That makes her furrow her eyebrows at him. “-nearly every fight I get into I did not start, they’re picking fights with me. Some super directly by literally hunting me down to try and beat me up for one reason or another. Others are more invading my territory I guess, and harming those people and objects inside it”; it looks like that genuinely really bothers him on a deep level.

Now if he is actually just being attacked by these mass hallucinations or projections perhaps then self defence did make sense. But if these were mass hallucinations why would they be specifically targeting one person like this? That wouldn’t make sense. Now if they’re projections that someone, who is definitely insane, is creating then why are they going after this one teen so much? “Do you believe you know why you’re being targeted so much? Outside of my parents being crazy”. As for him being apparently territorial… “and why do you view Amity as your territory?”. Yes people did often claim their city or town as part of them and then part of it, but to be explicitly territorial and possessive was abnormal.

He actually chuckles a little, “outside of your parents being crazy, it varies. They usually tell me why, though Boxy seems to just be looking to get beat up? Or he is insanely nuts about how strong and scary he is. The Lunchlady threw stoves at me because her food got messed with. Skulker wants to skin me, which is very gross and something I want nothing to do with. Plasmius is angry I won’t ’let him adopt me’, and wants to constantly try to prove he’s better and stronger than me in every way. I could go on”, sighing, “as for the town? It’s just is my town? That’s really all there is to it. It’s mine and other ghosts aren’t welcome to harm anything inside it”. He says that like it’s a given, like it’s obvious and simple, like it’s not supremely abnormal and unhealthy.

If someone is indeed creating and controlling projections then they are a very cruel person, as it seems that this teen genuinely believes these reasonings; meaning it is unlikely this is some sort of game or set up that the teen is in the know on. “What if the ‘other ghosts’ aren’t doing any harm? Would they be welcome then?”.

He blinks, looking a bit confused and surprised by that question, before humming to himself, it vibrates oddly. “I suppose so. If Cujo was less accidentally destructive I’d be fine with him running around, he’s pretty much just a dog after all. A green dog but still just a dog. And Piondexter I would leave alone since I know he doesn’t actually mean harm, he just really hates bullies and unties their shoes and shit”.

Right, that Valerie girl claimed a ‘large green dog’ had gotten her dad fired and destroyed practically all of their belongs and that said dog belonged to ‘the ghost boy’. This ‘Poindexter’ though, “I’ve heard the ‘stories’ about the ‘green dog’, but I can’t say I’m familiar with Piondexter”.

The teen shrugs, “he lives in a mirror in that ‘haunted locker’ in Casperhigh, he can kinda use it like a personal portal”.

Oh not that stupid rumour. Of course who or what ever is causing all of this included that into everything. “Is there any others that seem tied to local myth and legend?”.

The teen shakes his head immediately actually, “no. Piondexter seems more like a coincidence than the trend.-”. Why would only one local legend be utlisied and not all of them? Strange. “-Just like how most of the ghosts want to fight and cause some chaos, so him being mostly chill isn’t the trend either”.

Honestly, that sounded a bit like her parent’s view of ghosts, just far less inhumane and illogical. This teen believed the ‘ghosts’ wanted to fight and cause chaos out of fun, it seems. Whereas her parents just thought they were inherently evil, living hating, monsters. She can admit this teens view point is far more logical. “So you believe these ‘ghosts’ are doing this out of enjoyment? Rather than being villains, or evil for that matter”.

“Some are just assholes, like people who pickpocket people in wheelchairs. Fighting is just, kinda part of how ghosts socialise, most aren’t actually trying to seriously hurt me or the citizens, they just forget how fragile the living can be; and that I’m not a freaking mind reader. Also more than a few of the ghosts who’ve shown up here have been to jail multiple times”.

So there’s some sort of judiciary system in his mind? Or is this something conjured up by the projection controller? A way to make it seem more believable perhaps? But in that case wouldn’t it make more sense to simply go along with what her parents say fully and have them be simply evil monsters? She will give this some credit on being a bit more complex than she had initially thought though. “Do you know how this jailing system works?”.

He blushes… green? How? At that, “not really, no. I do know that each prison is basically ran like a freaking dictatorship by the warden though, and that the prison that’s super close to your parents portal, you know on the ghost side, is ran by a hardass with a serious sadistic streak”.

She blinks, he says that like he’s been ‘on the other side’ of her parents contraption -because she is not calling it a freaking portal, that’s absurd- and like there actually is something on the other side of it. “You’ve been to this ghost side?”; that question is pure curiosity, no diagnosis involved.

He quirks an eyebrow at her, “of course? Every ghost has? That’s kinda where we’ve all come from?”, running a hand through his impossibly pure white hair, that she honestly thought was a wig but up close she can tell that’s not the case. “Honestly? The ghost problem is that portals fault”, gesturing with his hands, “your parents made a permanent, frequently opening, pass into the living world. Of course ghosts were going to take advantage of that, they know exactly where and when they’ll come out and they have a guaranteed ticket home. Which fine, I do speed along, since I just send every ghost I catch back, but that’s not the cause for them being here in the first place”. He eyes her for a beat before sighing and giving her an amused smirk, “you don’t believe in ghosts, do you? You think this is all a big conspiracy, or mass hallucinations, or projections, or just a bunch cock and bull people are making up for some reason. Am I right?”.

The way he says that tells her that she was right that he wasn’t ready to have to face that reality yet. Sighing at him and trying to be gentle about shaking her head, “no. No I do not. The idea of souls alone is unproven and highly unlikely. The idea of those souls creating their own forms out of energy and existing in a connected realm seems too far fetched. This isn’t a belief in the afterlife as a form of coping with death, which would be perfectly healthy and often religiously significant”.

“So if you don’t believe in ghosts, why are you even talking to me?”. He obviously thinks she believes that he’s one of these ‘ghosts’.

She shakes her head at him, “you’re not fantastical like all the images and reported sightings of ghosts are. You’re physical, you always read as more solid and human. A teen who’s dressed up and seen a chance to be the hero they’ve always wanted to be perhaps. Your behaviours vary according to situation, you have clear fight or flight. Your behaviour shows far more than simple: show up, cause chaos, and leave”. She’s not going to tell him that she hasn’t quite decided if he’s simply experiencing the same hallucinations or projections as everyone else, or is actually suffering delusional issues.

For whatever reason that makes him more nervous. He makes an aborted attempt to rub his neck before seemingly releasing that wasn’t very ‘professional hero’ of him, clearing his throat, “you pay way too much attention, geez”, shaking his head and frowning at her in a way that feels like pity, “spend any amount of time around any ghost and you’ll find the same stuff. Skulker makes awesome lemon creme pies and has a girlfriend. Technus keeps changing up his style to seem ‘cool’. Half the time Johnny and Kitty show up it’s because they’re having a lovers spat again. They’re people. Your parents aren’t crazy ‘cause they believe in ghosts, they’re crazy because they think ghosts are emotionless evil monsters.-”. So he’s delusional, not good… but outright dismissing him would do no good. He puts a hand to his chest, “-I’m not dressed up in some costume, or wearing contacts, or using some glow spray. I died in this, and no you don’t get to ask about the how of that”, he stares a bit before continuing, “I don’t breath, Jazz Fenton, does that sound alive to you? I certainly pretend to around humans, because they get freaked out otherwise. If you hook me up to an ekg you’ll get a whole lotta nothin’. If you were as cold as I am you would be severely hypothermic and dying”, and for the first time a so called ‘ghost’ touches her.

He’s solid yet feels like static, and he’s right, his skin feels ice cold. How? He’s solid, clearly a person. A bit unintentionally she watches his chest, it doesn’t move. No rise and fall. Nothing. Her furrowing her brows at him, still holding his arm, “this doesn’t make sense”.

The teen shrugs at her, “since when does everything ever make sense? I’m dead, that’s really all there is to it. Ghosts are cool with being dead so it doesn’t bother us, but at least I’m aware that the living aren’t super cool with death. You believe I’m real and all the others aren’t because I act more like what you know, aka, living humans”.

She frowns, could that really be the case? Her parents be both right and wrong? and her be wrong entirely? But that never happened, she was always in the right when she set her mind on something. When she was wrong it was over simple things she had no real opinion on. Matters of taste or what the weather would be like, perhaps what in all was going to be on a test. When it came to matters of the mind, behaviours, human nature, states of being; she was always right. Always. There was no real proof for souls, and thusly ghosts, none. Even studies claiming to be able to determine the weight of a soul were ludicrously biased and far too open for interpretation.

And yet…

Here was someone who was clearly not a hallucination nor a projection. He was solid, there was thought behind those green eyes, he could hold a conversation. Yet he did not seem to breathe, and cold radiated off of him like his insides were packed with dry ice.

He was a person, a being, and yet wasn’t behaving as one, a living one. She eyes him as he pulls his arm away, “so you don’t ‘float’ by a string system or magnets perhaps?”.

He attempts to cover up a laugh, she doesn’t even feel insulted because this is just all too strange, her being wrong. He shakes his head, “no, I don’t”, gesturing at the glow over his suit, “my energy, my ectoplasm, simply grabs onto the air particles and pulls me along as I want to”.

Ectoplasm shouldn’t be real. It shouldn’t be possible. “Ectoplasm doesn’t exist”.

“I am quite literally made of it so yeah it definitely does”, him then humming and tilting his head, then he… spits into his hand. Ew. Boys. EuGH. She absolutely recoils when he ‘offers’ said hand to her, but… all that’s in his hand is a glowing green goo-like substance. He… sticks his finger in it and pushes it around before pulling his finger up, the green substance sticking to his finger and stretching in strands of goo. It looks to be getting slowly absorbed into him until it’s all gone.

That should be impossible, shouldn’t it? She just witnessed an impossibility. But if she’s witnessing it then it isn’t impossible, improbable perhaps but not impossible. And it was impossible for any living mammal to survive without oxygen, meaning that no matter how improbable, what he’s saying must be true. What came out of his mouth he absorbed through his finger… as if it was a part of any area of his body rather than specialised by area as it would be for a living mammal. She stares at his hands, which are now simply resting on the table while he waits for her to think. “So, you’re a ghost and ghosts are real?”.

“Yup”.

“And the afterlife is real”.

“Bit more complicated than that but yup”, he snorts, “Zone I barely understand a quarter of it”.

Was that unusual? She doesn’t know. She feels like everything’s out of balance now. Like she doesn’t really know anything anymore. Like she’s fallen into the god complex trap. Where she’s convinced herself she’s infallible and perfect. Perfectly logical. Perfectly rational. Perfectly understanding. Perfectly right. “And the towns plagued by the dead”.

“Eh, it’s more like a hot spot, a vacation with fist-a-cuffs being the main dish on the menu”.

“And… it’s my crazy parent’s fault”.

“I accidentally made the connection actually work, so only partly”.

“You… did?”.

“Yup”.

Was… that part of why he was doing this? A sense of responsibility perhaps? “So you feel responsible? Like if you don’t, someone getting hurt will be, in a way, your own fault?”.

He shrugs, “I have the ability to help, so I help, and Amity is mine”.

This still didn’t make sense though, why… this ‘ghost’? Why was he acting as a protector and claiming this town to be his? “Why you?”.

The smile he gives her is a bit rueful, “I was here first. This town was my home long before these other ghosts made some kind of game out of stirring shit in it”.

“So you haunt this town? Why?”.

“Because it’s mine, there really ain’t anything more to it”.

That still seems illogical to her, “wouldn’t it be easier to go ‘haunt’ somewhere else?”.

“Easier, but wrong”, he shrugs, “no ghost in their right mind would abandon what’s theirs just because some other ghost is being an asshole”.

So then were these ‘ghosts’ territorial to a fault by nature? Intentionally putting themselves in harms way for ‘their possessions’? That seems so foolish, to risk throwing away one’s life over objects and places… but then again, this boy… wasn’t alive, was he? She, logically, can’t ascribe living values on someone non-living. A strange thought in and of itself. “So you have no issue being involved in fights and risking injury, while also taking great issue with loss or harm to what you claim as yours?”.

He chuckles, genuinely, “oh I also just enjoy a good fight, you know? Stretching my ectoplasmic hide and whatnot. Like you guys and stretching those muscle things”, pursing his lips, “but if I get my arm lopt off I can just slap that shit right back on or reform a new one. Yeah I get hurt, yeah it’s painful, but it ain’t that serious. I mean I’m probably totally gonna pick a fight I can’t win someday and that’ll be that. The way the cookie crumbles and all that”.

“So you don’t care that you might die- stop existing?”.

“I care about my own end, simply less than you care about yours. I’d rather risk being ended than not protect”. The way he says that had such a firm definiteness to it that it sounded like an unmovable unalterable fact. No different from the colour of the sky or the name of their planet. Unchangeable and absolute.

So for him, this was need. It was a drilled in fact of who and apparently what he was. Something every person in Amity could bend steel around. That was sort of… a comfort actually. With this new reality that ghosts are real, that her parents are right, that this town is truly plagued by death, that it even needed a ‘protector’ at all. It made sense to feel comforted, after all weaker prey animals always felt safer with a larger more dangerous animal protecting them. The sheep relied on the dogs, and the dogs fought the wolves even if it died doing so. “Wouldn’t it be better to get rid of the portal?”.

He’s response is immediate and almost aggressive, “no”; his eyes even have a brightness to them they normally did not. His eyes could change brightness… that was bizarre to witness. Perhaps, in his apparent accidental aid in its connection, that he hasn’t expanded upon, he became aggressively fond of the device. He shakes his head and the light dims, “anymore questions about my whole existence thing? Or attempts to ‘analyze’ me?”.

She shakes her head slowly, she needed to digest all of this, think on it all. “No. I suppose, if you truly are not human, there’s no rationalising you to me, and no rationalise myself to you”.

“You say that as if I don’t remember being human. You’ve never been a ghost, I’ve been human”.

Jazz smiles a little at that, “so something else my parents are wrong about”; it was comforting to know they were still wrong about a lot of things, just not everything.

He waves her off, “eh, I’m kinda a weirdo. Don’t think too much about it or you’ll hurt yourself, you over analyzer”. He sounds honest and she didn’t realize then how glad she’d be for that.

Chap. 2:

Reticency

These days Jazz had a lot of opinions about ghosts, some were complicated some were simple. Ghosts were real was simple. Ghosts were her towns pride and joy even if they also hated them was simple. Ghosts were mostly annoying was simple. Ghosts were possible to call friends was complicated. Ghosts were complex intelligent sentient beings was complicated. Ghost hunting was a real profession was complicated.

The Box Ghost being weak and not the least bit frightening was simple.

Danny Phantom being her brother was complicated.

Her parents being so wrong on ghosts that they’re best ignored was simple.

Her finding out about her brother’s ‘alive’ status without him knowing and thus her having to ignore that she knows was complicated.

If she had it her way, Danny would have told her on his own, himself. She wouldn’t have just stumbled on it, on him. She wouldn’t have had to realise in a random back alley that her brother was dead. Had died. She never noticed. Their parents never noticed. Yet somehow he was happy like this, stronger as a person like this. She knew that for a fact, she knew that more strongly than she’d ever believed ghosts weren’t real.

Sometimes she’d worry that he was suffering, that he needed help and a diagnosis, then she’d always remember how stupidly honest and genuine he’d been about enjoying fighting and being alright dead. But still, it was impossible for her to like her brother being dead, which was a dilemma all of its own. Especially when his friends seemed to feel no different about him, seemed to see him no different; as his big sister she had to give him the same. She knows she’s right that it would hurt him if she wasn’t completely okay and supportive of him being as he is, and she’s sure she’ll get there she just didn’t have enough of the facts, enough of the knowledge, to feel comfortable and assured just yet. It was a work in progress.

So she didn’t tell him she knew. She gave lies and ignorance to his face just like he did to hers. Because she wanted to be as okay with it as he was. Because she wanted him to tell her himself, to confide in his big sister. Even if he was confiding about being dead. Because she wanted to understand ghosts before hand. At least now she knew what he had meant by weird, being able to still look human. And at least she knew why he didn’t want the portal destroyed so badly, it didn’t take a genius to realise his accident with it had been what resulted in his demise. In a lot of ways that made her hate the machine, but he cleaned that thing almost obsessively; it was the one part of the lab he was genuinely thorough with. It was as if it was sacred to him, near and dear. And really? It was. It was his grave after all, as disturbing to her as that was. Perhaps it was something of a coping mechanism to him, part of grieving that he could only complete in part because he hadn’t ever moved on. It was one of his possessions, like everything in his room, she used to worry about how oddly possessive her brother had become over his things.

Now she knew.

One thing she doesn’t know is what happened to his body, his living body that died, and she honestly doesn’t want to. That’s one unknown she’s fine leaving as an unknown.

But she’s very glad he was honest with her, when she sat him down as Phantom. Honest about how he felt about everything. Honest about being dead. Honest about remembering himself. Honest about trying and wanting to come off less inhuman. She’s proud of him for that honesty alone, even if she’s also proud of him for many many other reasons. From how he chose to be a wannabe vigilante that was more a genuine hero these days, to how he interacted with fellow ghosts.

He really was trying for coexistence, regardless of their parent’s bigotry.

And now a lot of the town agreed with him even, he was doing it, was achieving something full grown adults seldom could. He was being a protector both in the physical sense and in the societal sense. Honestly? He somewhat was like Batman. So yeah, she was incredibly proud of him. That pride didn’t stop their interactions from being a bit awkward for her though. Especially when he was Phantom.

Why?

Because she had to pretend she was just ‘another random citizen who also just so happened to be the towns primary ghost hunters and ghost experts daughter’ instead of being his big sister. Had to pretend she didn’t know exactly who he was and all that he was juggling. That Amity’s hero was also a struggling teen. Had to pretend like she was doing right now.

Zone, did she ever hate getting caught up in a ghost attack, even if actually physically seeing the reminder that her brother was having fun and could actually hold his own was a needed reassurance for her.

It was that science technology ghost that somehow managed to be incredibly outdated. TechMaster? CompWiz? She could never quite get all of their names right, especially since they were so different from human ones; something else she’d like to understand, even Danny had gone with an altered non-human name. The ghost has taken over the mall again, and right when she’d been in the bookstore looking for new published ghost-related studies to read and maybe figure things out better with. She was lacking clarity on how, exactly, ghosts fuelled themselves; she knew they needed ectoplasm, or energy in general, but that didn’t explain Danny being in Amity constantly. He’d always been fine going without food for extended periods of time and she doesn’t want him carrying on that trend with ectoplasm.

“TREMBLE BEFORE MY TECHNOLOGICAL WRATH! AND! MY RAZER BACKLIT MOUSEPADS!”

Like she’s said, ghosts being annoying was a simple fact. She’s fairly certain he doesn’t know what ‘backlit’ actually meant, not that she’s ever heard of a backlit mousepad herself though she imagines Tucker had one.

“Oh come on Technus!”.

Ah right that’s his name. Her poking her head out from around a coffee table for the little local coffee shop inside the bookstore, wincing to herself when Danny gets stabbed by a hard plastic square thing with a cord attached to it. He rips it out and whips it back like a frisbee as if the injury means nothing to him. Which she guesses is the case, he got hurt a lot which was hard to see on tv, but he was also more durable with improved healing; that didn’t make it much better, she knows he can feel the pain of it. And she’s painfully reminded of the statement he’d said like fact about one day picking a fight beyond his capabilities.

Danny kicking the other ghost into a wall, ecto-blasting him right off the bat after; he even blows off his finger with a goofy smirk making her roll her eyes and laugh a little to herself. He’d always been such a silly kid, it’s nice that death didn’t kill that.

Then ‘Techous’? phases through the wall and sends her table flying, leaving her stuck crouched on the ground behind a ghost hoping he doesn’t notice her. This one was oblivious enough to actually not notice, thankfully. Her brother notices her crouching stock still immediately though, of course he does, she’d have to bite her tongue to avoid chastising him about situation awareness otherwise.

His eyes don’t linger on her, his eyes don’t even widden, the only sign he saw her was how he wasn’t shooting at the ghost and instead crossing his arms judgmentally, “dude, did you really have to wreck a local coffee shops wall? This place actually lets me buy the good stuff and now it’s gonna take forever for them to reopen. You suck”. His caffeine addiction worries her sometimes, but from what she’s read and learned on her own terms he should be fine, being an energy based being had its perks after all.

“I! CARE NOT FOR YOUR ‘COFFEE’!”. The ghost actually uses air quotes. “I CARE ONLY FOR MY TRUE DOMINATION!”.

Danny smirks, “you know there’s some pretty advanced tech in those espresso machines”. At least she knows if he isn’t sure he could win with pure might, he’ll use his mouth and try to quip his way into victory.

The ghost looks completely delighted, “THERE IS!?!”, and turns away to look at said espresso machines, Danny smacking him over the head with his thermos immediately and ‘sucking’ him in it. How that thermos worked still confused her a little, it was far too small to fit all that it could and did inside it, rationally.

Danny looks down at her, still floating a few feet up in the air while she’s still crouching, protective desire practically bleeding out of him, “you good, random citizen?”. She also doesn’t understand why he still bothered with that ‘random citizen’ phrase.

She stands up and puts her hands on her hips, “it’s Jazz, you know this. No one actually believes you don’t know their names by now and a concerningly high amount of deeply personal information about them. Do you keep using that phrase as an attempt to lie to yourself about knowing the townsfolk overly well? And that was very manipulative of you with Electrus”. She’s positive she got the ghosts name wrong again.

He blinks disbelievingly at her, “his name’s Technus, he screams his name every time he shows up?”, shaking his head, “and so what if I do? Let me have my lies”.

“Said lies are hardly healthy, mister. If you’re going to continue with being this towns hero, you should aim for quality mental health”.

“I am a model of mental health!”.

Oh he did not just quote a Batman meme at her?!? Zone he was such an utter goof. “You most certainly are not”, shaking her head, Danny and his quips that riled pretty much anyone and everyone up. Yes it could be effective in a fight, and for distracting people from traumatic and dangerous situations, but she’s had a lower tolerance for that pretty much all her little brother’s life. “Now that you’re done ‘socialising’, is there anything I need to-”, sighing, “-‘report’ to my parents?”.

He shakes his head without hesitation, as if going from quips to business so immediately wasn’t remotely jarring; which to him she imagines it mustn’t be, his mind functioned in a more combat and chaos setting after all. “No, Technus didn’t cause too much of a mess beyond this and having them looking everything over would just get in the way”, smirking, “they definitely wont find any new samples from little ol’ me”.

At least he’d gotten better at that. At not leaving behind his ectoplasm beyond the burnt off air born particles he left everywhere he went, just like any other ghost. She’s not sure if he’s realised that she’s been destroying any samples of liquid ectoplasm of his their parents find… if he did, he never let on. He absolutely did know that she knew that he didn’t want them having samples of him, she’d caught him in the lab twice now wrecking either samples or inventions. He also ‘stole’ their inventions for his own use a lot, she truly doesn’t get how their parents haven’t realised that. All they ever really caught on to was him stealing a Fenton thermos and somehow getting it to work, they were always trying to see if they could get it back from him too, looking if he dropped it because ghosts ‘were too singled-minded to keep attention on both a fight and holding a thermos’. At this point her parents being wrong was becoming less ‘ha! I knew they were wrong’ and more genuinely frustrating in a ‘can’t you see the harm you’re doing’ way.

The biggest help she could be to her little brother had always been dealing with their parents. Before he died and after. They never cared enough for either of them and Danny had always been too much of a trouble magnet, to have survived that house a child without her. Now the house tried to shoot him if he let too much of his energy seep out of his skin; which was thankfully something he was good at avoiding most of the time. Nodding with a reassuring smile at him, “good. Now, you’re getting enough ectoplasm right?”.

He groans, with his entire body, “why did you have to go from denial to mothering, ugh”, nodding his head, “yes, mom. I can handle being outside of the Zone a lot”. He doesn’t know she knows he’s effectively never in ‘the Ghost Zone’, which is entirely why she’s worries. She understands that it’s part of him being ‘weird’, even if her understanding of just how ‘weird’ he was was far too limited for her liking, but regardless worrying is what she does. And remembering the first time he ever called her ‘mom’ as a kid and meant it was always a little depressing.

Her quirking an eyebrow at him, “caffeine probably is not the healthiest replacement, you know”.

“Energy’s energy”.

She sighs at that, she didn’t know exactly how true that was. If he was that different from most ghosts. Then he does something that really throws her off, unclipping his thermos and offering it to her? “Will you give it a rest if I let you empty this for me?”. He says that lightheartedly, like it’s a joke, but she knows instantly this is some kind of test in his mind.

He wants to know what she’ll do, what she’ll do with something so useful and important to him; a genuine possession. She knows he has a test to study for, so it will save him time in the long run. But will she come off as ‘like her parents’ if she agrees? How would she go about returning the thermos to him? She obviously can’t simply leave it in his bedroom, that would be announcing that she knew so loudly that she might as well just tell him now instead. Sure doing that would give him the knowledge that she knew about him, without effectively forcing him to talk to her about it, to confront her about it. She stands by that she’d rather him tell her on his own volition entirely, however. That he’d eventually no longer feel the need to protect her from him, or himself from her. “And you’ll get it back from me how? Breaking into my room isn’t very heroic of you, not to mention would hardly save you time”.

He shrugs like it’s nothing, it’s distinctly not nothing though, “I’m literally around Amity multiple times a day, I can catch up to you before school easy enough”.

“This still seems less like a matter of convince, Phantom”.

“It’s a matter of not dealing with the Fenton house hold”.

That’s a lie and she knows it, she simply can’t tell him that. A ghost wanting to avoid a ghost hunters house was logical after all, if it wasn’t for the fact that he slept in it. Shaking her head and holding out her hand for the thermos, the idea of getting caught by her parents with this was a bit nerve-wracking but if it would get him to trust her more then it’s worth it. Plus… perhaps getting to talk to this ghost instead of simply releasing it immediately would be a good idea. “Fine, but if you make me late to class I won’t be impressed”.

And then suddenly she’s got Phantom’s thermos in her hand, something so many wanted to get their hands on for one reason or another. It was a little startling, a little heavy in both the physical and emotional sense, she grips it like it’s as important as it actually was. She can feel the cold of him radiating off of it, the cold that gave away so explicitly what, exactly, he was and wasn’t. Danny eyeing her, caution in his eyes, did she do the right thing? Would he wonder over what she’ll do with it so much that he won’t actually be able to study? Will he send his friends to ‘keep an eye on her’? So many possibilities and uncertainties, she hated uncertainty but she’d tolerate them for her brother. She tolerantes a lot of them for him, even if it was frustrating knowing so little about how he worked now in every sense of the word. He nods strongly, even if it doesn’t reflect in his eyes, “I will”.

“Good”. She stands there watching him float away a little before flying off properly. He does that silly one fist forward flight style, the one he does when he knows people are watching and he’s not completely focused in on whatever he’s doing; another part of the ‘hero’ act he’d adopted to be more appealing and comforting to the town and to himself.

She stands there for a while before lifting up the thermos and staring at it. It was so unassuming, like always, yet it contained not only an entire sentient being but also, metaphorically, her brothers trust in humans. His trust to use something made by humans, his trust to believe humans will accept him protecting them, his trust that if he ever was caught his very human parents would still love him, his trust in her trustability. Shaking her head at the device, she had no true way to know if her brother was keeping an eye on her but… this presented too good an opportunity to ignore. While he was still learning to trust and confide in her, she couldn’t wait on him to learn about him, to protect and look after him. That was her job as his big sister, and like always she couldn’t rely on her parents help with that.

Instead she’d turn to a ghost, it would seem, not Danny himself because she knows he’ll underplay his needs and well being. He may not even understand himself and his own needs fully. Fishing in her pocket to keep the only two devices she actually carried on her out, a scanner to know whether or not Danny was around and a ‘souped up’ lipstick blaster. Passable as normal items that were perfectly reasonable for a teen girl in Amity to have, one was effective to ‘avoid’ ghosts (or to find a little brother who liked to sleep in trees) and the other one was strong enough to do some serious damage. Putting the scanner on a table and holding the blaster up at the thermos, trying to copy Danny and be intimidating without feeling silly, “I’m going to open this and you will stay put, or I’m going to blast you with this till you’re full of holes”.

She gets no response. She doesn’t truly know if the ghost inside can actually hear her. She can only hope. So with a glance at the scanner, Danny’s not here, she lets the ghost out.

“I! AM FREE! MWAHAHAHA!”. She shoots him one in his ghostly tail immediately. “HEY!”.

The ghost actually wilting when she points at him aggressively, “stay put you, I will reiterate, I will fill you full of holes if you don’t play nice”, putting her hand on her hip, “now sit. We’re having a chat about Phantom”. It always felt a bit strange to call her brother that, but it’s the name he’s chosen.

The tech ghost stares at her for a beat, searching for something in her expression it seems. It was almost as if the ghost was being leery of anyone wanting to know about Danny… like he was being protective. He either sees what he wanted to or what he never expected, the ghost going a little wide-eyed, or wide-sunglasses she supposes, “you know”.

So he wasn’t dressed like a scientist for nothing, good, he was out of touch but he was intelligent. She points threatening at him, “and don’t you be telling him that, or else”.

“Or else what? As if a puny human could threaten someone as great as I! Technus! Master of all the electronic devices in the world!”.

… He was also incredibly idiotic. Sometimes she wonders how her brother tolerates the personalities on most of these ghosts. Always having to remind herself that Danny was hard to tolerate sometimes too, he was ‘like them’ as it were. She puts her hands on her hips, “who would you rather be caught by? Danny, or our parents”. The ghost cringes noticeably so she nods firmly and continues, “now, sit. You’re going to tell me what you can about ghosts”. This ghost was an adult, and his tech interests were outdated enough to tell her he’s been dead for some time. Surely, as a scientist, he’d have an interest in learning about his own being?

The ghost seems completely flabbergasted by that question, he does float down to hover over a previously knocked over chair at least, “why?”. He’s not shouting, he’s not posturing and puffing out his chest, he’s taking her seriously.

“Because my parents are biased and I want to know how to look after my little brother like I have since the day he was born”. She hopes that response comes across as firmly as she wants it to.

The ghost, actually seems pleased about that. Taking her word almost immediately and gesturing wildly, “for starters! He’s a very weird ghost. Endangered even! So he’s actually way safer here than the rest of us! Annoying but it makes it so much more fun to fight him! Who would want to fight someone low on energy? Boring! I definitely don’t think his core’s developed at all yet though. Can’t wait to see how tough he’ll be then! Maybe he’ll have an electricity core even! Oh I would love that! It would be supreme to test that against mine! Ha! He probably hurt himself when that comes in though so watch out for that…”; he manages to monologue about ghosts for a very long time, it was almost as if he genuinely wanted someone caring for her brother, something about him being ‘a baby’. As well as wanting him to be strong and capable, genuinely looking forward to him growing as a ghost.

Ghosts must care about younger ones. Her parents couldn’t be more wrong and she, now, couldn’t be happier for that.

End.

Prompts: What if Jazz had a conversation with Phantom before learning he was Danny? What does their next conversation look like when Jazz knows but Danny doesn’t know she knows? If Jazz wanted to help her little brother, she had to learn more about ghosts. But she couldn't ask her parents, for obvious reasons, nor would she go to Danny with her ghost problems until he came to her about his. After searching everywhere online and in the library for any scrap of information, Jazz determined the only way to figure this out was to ask a ghost herself.

[stormygopher]

Wheeljack attempts cooking for his human friends. It goes about as well as you might expect.

Half of them don’t even know what banana bread is but they’re always down to roast Wheeljack

[starry-bi-sky]

im dedicating this to @detectivedarling. i felt inspired after seeing their little ficlet yesterday sadhjfl 🫶

-

Danny's grip on his cane tightens.

"What—"

His voice cracks. He stops, clears it, then tries again in spite of the nausea twisting in his gut. "What are — you, uh, watching, Bruce?" He sounds horribly far away.

Bruce doesn't look at him, his attention laser-focused on the screen. Which is— fine. It's usually not a problem, Bruce gets like that when he hyper-focuses on a case, and unless it's urgent — or he's been at it for hours — Danny sees no need to pull him away from it. He likes the quiet camaraderie they have, it's companionable and unique to the two of them.

He wishes he was right now though. Looking at him, that is.

That way he wasn't watching what was clearly one of Danny's ghost fights. One of the nastier ones, if the collateral damage and rubble on the street is of any indication.

Danny tries to remember which one that is. He shuffles a little closer to the desk, ignoring the rock in his stomach or the ugly weightlessness in his arms. It's not the blood blossoms, that much he knows. He just recently had an injection so it shouldn't be bothering him this soon—

So it's just nerves. Perfect.

Most footage of his fights are— messy, at best. Unusable at worst. Amity Park was obsessed with appearing 'normal' when they first started happening, and typical news stations censor the worst of the fights anyways for publishing, since they can get pretty gory at times. And ghosts move too fast to be caught on regular standard cameras, not including distance and light and—

That is to say— finding usable ghost fight videos is hard.

Danny wonders how Bruce got his hands on this one, and then stops wondering.

The audio is muted, which is - good. Good, because the fight is ugly and chaotic and clearly this was taken on someone's phone. Fuck, he can't remember if he ever saw that before — clearly not. They're hiding behind an overturned car, and Danny grits his teeth so he doesn't tell that idiot to run.

The camera turns up, and focuses on two figures in the air. It takes a few seconds, but when it does, Danny gets hit with a wave of vertigo. His grip tightens and he leans heavily on his cane, he waits for the black dots to disappear.

He- uh, he remembers this fight now. Uh, sort of.

He remembers being twelve at the time, and he remembers some of the injuries he got out of it. His eyelid spasms abruptly. This ghost wasn't one of his regulars, so he doesn't remember whatever name they had, barely remembered what they looked like up until- uh. Now.

Was he always that small? Well— Phantom's never been particularly big, perks of being a dead kid, but— it's - different. Seeing it from an outsider perspective. Was he that small? Or is it just because he's wearing a jumpsuit clearly too big for him that casts the illusion of being small?

Doesn't really - matter. Now. He can't access his ghost form, and he already knows the answers to his appearance.

Phantom is clearly bleeding, viscous and violently green like the bubbles of a lava lamp, clutching onto a limp shoulder that's missing an arm from the elbow down. Half his face is drenched in similar blood, the eye on the drenched side is closed — not because he can't see through the ectoplasm.

Danny's memories of that fight slowly come in a bit clearer. Right. He took a pole to the eye in that one. That had - hurt. A lot. Getting an eye gouged out usually does. It and the missing arm took hours to grow back.

He rubs his eye with his palm for no other reason than it itches.

The other ghost isn't untouched of any injury either, but he's not in a state of dismemberment like Phantom is.

Danny drops his gaze down at Bruce, whose sitting in his chair with his hands threaded together, looking so tense that Danny half expects to meet solid steel if he were to touch his back. His face is - blank. Terribly blank, with an intensity in his eyes that Danny doesn't see often.

He looks terribly distressed.

He opens his mouth, and finds that nothing comes out. His throat is thick with an ugly, tar-like feeling that makes his eyes sting. Kinda reminds him of when someone wraps their hands around your throat and presses. He closes his mouth, then tries again.

"B—" hhhhhh, "Buzz."

Finally Bruce looks at him, one hand slaps the space button on the keyboard, and the video pauses. His expression doesn't shift, but there's a weight in the lines of his face that reminds Danny of a set of weights sagging.

He looks quite like he's grieving something.

Bruce opens his mouth, his voice comes out terribly soft and heartbroken: "He looks like you."

Which is— a terrifying sentence in and of itself. One that makes Danny's legs shake and ignite his ragged, poison-chewed nerves alight with the need to run. An instinctive urge to deny, deny, deny.

How could he? He could say, that's a ghost, Bruce. I'm not a ghost. He could crack a joke, and ask, 'do I look dead to you?' or say something about how he knows that his parents studied ghosts, but that didn't make him one.

He could say that, and he could say it knowing full well that Bruce would see right through it. He'd probably let Danny too.

Danny closes his eyes. They sting, you see? So does his nose, right in the back like someone popped him in the face. And his throat is thick and gross and like someone stuck a spider, the big fat tarantula kind, right down into his esophagus.

He breathes in — through his mouth, because his nose stings and so it'd be best not to irritate it further with air — and it's terribly shaky and uneven. But it clears a pathway to his lungs big enough for him to say — whisper, really:

"You know, I think you're the first person to notice that."

[swiggity-swexual-i-am-asexual]

As per usual, it’s DP crossover with (probably) DC, although you could probably adjust it for other fandoms

ANYWAYS

A little kid and his mother are trick or treating in another city, perhaps at some kind of event rather than knocking on doors, and the kid is dressed as Phantom. It’s very adorable, with his little ghost-shaped bucket and clearly homemade and already stained costume—listen, white only works if you can just fly over street grime or phase it out of your clothes—and his slightly I’ll fitting wig. The kid is SO happy to be out and about dressed as his favorite, and maybe even showed it off to Phantom back in Amity Park before his family left.

The hero, insert whoever you wish here, is probably in civvies and just enjoying the event. The kid, meanwhile, is so glad when people ask who he is so he can explain, and so- the hero gets to hear ALL ABOUT the local town hero who is probably pretty small time despite the kid’s clearly exaggerated stories. The hero certainly never heard of him, but the kid’s mom confirms that Phantom really was the town hero, despite some mixed reviews of the poor guy.

“Did you manage to show him your costume?” the hero asks.

“Yeah! We went down to the cemetery to leave flowers and I got to show him my costume.”

Wait. Cemetery? Maybe it was part of theme, because Phantom had to be named that for a reason, but… it sounded like…

The kid ignores the suddenly VERY still hero and instead turns to his mom. “Momma, do you think we should bring him candy? He doesn’t get to trick or treat like we do, and I can work super hard to get him a bunch!”

The kid’s mom just smiles. “We could, but maybe we should bring him something homemade. I bet he’d like something more filling, teen boys like him have a hollow leg.”

The kid wrinkles his nose. “Like Vernie with the pizza bagels?”

“Like your cousin, yes. We can make some cinnamon rolls and take them to his memorial, maybe bring some of the apples from your grandpa’s garden…”

The hero is pretty much forgotten as the two-part family wanders off, not quite intentionally forgetting the hero is there so much as the hero somewhat accidentally ended the conversation when they just froze and didn’t ask anything further.

Not that the hero didn’t want to. But they’d learn something very serious.

One—there was a small town hero they’d never heard of. Two—that hero was apparently a teen. Third—most pressingly, the teen hero was both beloved enough to have kids dressing up as him and dead enough to have a grave.

This… might require some phone calls.

[thisdudedoesntexist]

Danny has a problem.

It's been around two weeks after fighting vlad and removing his powers, the tension has been building between them for a long time.

First it was the crown, Danny had earned it after fighting Pariah but Vlad thinks that Danny isn't ruthless enough to rule saying that he's "too soft" and "too indecisive" to wear the (for all the title of Ghost King is worth) glorified funny hat. Then after a long time of arguing between them Vlad came up with a scheme. If he couldn't become the king he would become the regent, he just needed to possess Jack Fenton, have him divorce Vlad's "beloved" Madeline and then possess her into marrying him.

As you can guess this didn't work, Danny found him about two seconds after he tried to divorce Maddy cause he wasn't even trying to act (like a human sized Golden retriever) his dad. So he and mom beat the creepy incel out of his dad, in the process Danny was forced to transform and his parents accepted him (YAY!), he also got hit in the side of his head by Vlad, damaging his Broca's area just enough so he can only speak in Ghostspeak, but he can still understand human words and letters. After that mess they moved to Gotham so he could recover in a place with high ectoplasm without Vlad harassing them. ( Lady Gotham hates Vlad.)

Now you're probably wondering, "What's the problem, Vlad is out of the picture and your parents accept your half dead-ness."

The problem is that some guy dressed as a scarecrow released some weird gas into his school. He didn't get a lot of people cause the "Bats?" Showed up but his friend Damien got sprayed and ran off saying he was gonna kill his brother tim. So in Danny's infinite genius he ran off after him to make sure he doesn't hurt someone.

He's not sure why Damien speaks Ghostspeak though.

[magicpiano]

Dark AU, Arkham patient! Jazz Fenton.

Sadly, Jazz Fenton is convinced that her brother Danny is still alive, that Phantom didn't kill him, that ghosts are actually sentient and not necessarily evil. Clearly she was brainwashed by Phantom who was pretending to be her brother.

The GIW graciously don't charge her with the crime of violating the anti-ecto act by protecting ghosts as a kindness to her parents who have done so much good work. She is sent to a mental hospital outside of Amity Park because they think she will recover better away from ghosts.

Well Arkham doesn't know what is about to hit it and Jazz is going to do whatever it takes to escape and save her brother.

[gilbirda]

More than Jazz as a psychiatric I see her as a Social Worker that focuses on Children and Family.

Leaving the plot aside, Jazz may have had the CPS visit her home (or never) and saw how the system failed her and her brother, who ended dead.

She could still study psychology and focus to get a degree in children welfare (or whatever is called) to help children out of abusive/neglectful families.

And then I introduce you "social worker Jazz Fenton Nightingale meet crime lord/children defender red hood"

You are SO RIGHT and actually I had an idea like that written down.... somewhere.

Basically social worker Jazz tries to fix the system from the inside etc etc etc and becomes trusted contact for Red Hood to properly relocate the kids and help them recover.

Everyone knows about Ms. Fenton. That Hood approves of her, that she will always have warm food and a blanket, no questions asked.

And that she would fist fight anyone if they try anything funny with the kids under her protection.

Even Batman.

[minty364]

DPXDC Prompt 58 Part 7

The long dining room that held the ornate old dining table that seated way too many people already held  most of the family. Bruce was missing and Damian informed them he was at work, the only other person missing was Jason but it was typical for him to skip out as he didn’t live there and didn’t have the best track record with the rest of the family. That left Damian, Tim, Cass, Duke, and Dick seated.

Damian sat next to the chair that Bruce normally sat in at the head of the table. Tim sat across from Damian followed by Dick, Duke, and Cass. Danny sat next to Damian and Jazz sat next to Danny. 

“So, how was school?” Dick asked his elbows on the table with his head on his hands and a smile. He was the only adult in their life besides Bruce that actually cared about their schooling. 

Danny had actually forgotten that all of this had happened in just one day. The thought was a little jarring if Danny was being honest with himself. He wasn’t sure what to tell Dick, on one hand he was just asking about school on the other… no he wasn’t going to think about what happened right now. Just the thought caused phantom volts to go through his body like he was reliving the accident. He felt a nudge to his foot from the right and looked up to see Damian giving him a quizzical look. He cleared his throat and looked back over to Dick who was giving him the same kind of look. 

“I-I’m, uh… school was fine, didn’t learn much since school just started,” He eventually decided to say after stumbling on his words a little. 

“Dash isn’t picking on you again this year is he?” Dick asked with a concerned look on his face. 

Danny wished it was just Dash, the pain he felt from the portal was a thousand times worse than anything the bullying blond could pull. If it was just Dash, Danny could have just laughed it off and forgotten it probably, but it wasn’t just Dash and Danny couldn’t help but take a deep breath trying to gather his thoughts and calm himself.

He startled as he felt a hand on his knee, he looked to his left to see Jazz giving him a look of sympathy as she rubs her thumb comfortingly on his knee. She then spoke, “Danny you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, Okay?”

Danny gave her a small nod, a small smile on his face. 

Before a new topic could be discussed Alfred arrived with their food and began serving them. Danny loved the food the old butler cooked especially since he was able to do so in a kitchen that wasn’t contaminated. Alfred did his best to make sure everyone was served food to their liking, as long as it was a balanced meal at the end of the day the elderly butler would serve just about anything you’d request.

Danny picked up his fork to begin on his salad, however when he tried to push the fork into the lettuce his hand felt a cooling sensation with pins and needles and his fork went through his hand. He stared at his hand for a moment wondering what just happened. He then picked up his fork to try again and was able to get a mouth full, but when he went for a second bite it happened again, his fork clanging against the bowl again.

“Something wrong Danny? You're staring at your hand weird,” Danny heard Dick speaking and looked up to see Dick staring at him giving him an odd look. 

Danny couldn’t help but rub his neck nervously with his other hand, he hoped to get ahold of whatever this was so no one noticed. Though knowing his luck everyone probably did notice, over the years he and Jazz both noticed that the Wayne family was much more observant than their media persona’s showed. 

Dinner continued and Danny struggled to eat anything as anything he tried to hold fell through his hand frustratingly and Danny couldn’t help but get agitated. 

Eventually his glass he was holding slipped through his hand and tumbled onto the floor shattering into a thousand pieces. Danny let out a frustrated sigh as he stared at the mess he made. 

Before he could stand to clean up Alfred appeared by his side with a dustpan and broom and began cleaning it up, “are you still feeling unwell Master Daniel? Perhaps you should retire for the evening, I will attend to this mess.” Danny begrudgingly nodded his head and made his way out of the room.

He wasn’t alone for long as Damian and Jazz tailed him out of the room. 

“What was that? It looked like your spoon was going through your hand,” Jazz asked after they were a ways from the dinning room.

“Jazz, honestly I don’t know, it felt cold and then anything I tried holding fell through my hand.” Danny brushed his bangs away from his forehead and they dropped back into his face as he dropped his hands back down to his side.

The walk went silent after that, although it didn’t stay for long as Danny felt the cooling sensation again but this time through his whole body, he let out a yelp as he felt his body sink into the floor.

Damian and Jazz looked at him with panic but as they grabbed at his arms or his hands to pull him back up they went through him just as the spoon and apparently the ground now. 

He let out a panicked yell as the floor swallowed him whole, so now he was sinking further down further into the earth. What was going to happen to him? Would he ever find his way back up?

Thankfully he didn’t have to wait long as the cooling sensation left and as gravity took hold of him again he fell. Apparently there was a cave under the manor and he was able to turn back into solid as he felt air again. There was no way he was surviving this, even with new weird powers now was when he’d get impaled by spikes right?

The cave was too dark to make out much but Danny thought he might have seen a computer with several monitors. That didn’t matter now as he finally landed, and he grunted as he landed on a person who also grunted as having a teen land on you couldn’t be the most comfortable.

He knew he was in big trouble when he realized who he landed on, “Batman??”

[quibbs126]

Oh yeah so I had this idea earlier when I was thinking about Beast Wars, only reason I didn’t post it earlier was because I got dragged out to dinner

Anyways, so basically I had this thought of a Transformers series where basically the Autobots and Decepticons crash land on Earth, and due to them having no clue where they are and no current way of getting back home, they decide to work together, at least for the time being

So like, the main group of protagonists would consist of both Autobots and Decepticons

But also it wouldn’t be the entirety of both groups working together, as members on both sides refuse to work with the other for one reason or another and instead decide to do their own thing, being their own separate parties that probably cause trouble from time to time. But every member here has their own reasons why they are or aren’t fine with teaming up, and why they’re on one side or the other

I kind of don’t want Optimus and Megatron there, probably because I was thinking of Beast Wars which doesn’t have them, and also because I want to see this alliance come from characters other than them. But at the same time I feel like they kind of have to be there. My current solution is that the two were on a different part of the ship that came off during the crash landing, and in current day (assuming they all were unconscious for a bit like g1 or Animated) the two are missing, which might be a reason for the two groups to team up. Their goals are to: find fuel, find everyone that might have gone missing, find a way to contact/get back to Cybertron, and find their leaders

I’m not entirely sure what’s going on with Optimus and Megatron here yet, just that they’d probably be absent until like, maybe the end of the season or something

But one concept that did come to mind is that whoever found them basically decided to stitch the two of them together using each’s body parts into one powerful robot (probably not knowing what they really are), and so the two are pretty much fused together into one, with them having to deal with this, assuming they still have a mind anymore. And also with this concept, this Frankenstein of them is specifically not one or the other with the other’s body parts, it’s both of them in there, through whatever magic means. Or neither if we just want the body horror and the new team having to put them down. Or I suppose you could have instead their minds/sparks being fused into an entirely new being. Didn’t really think about that concept until right now. But yeah, might not be the concept I stick with, but it is the one in my head right now

Edit: all I know is that I don’t think I want it to just be “they decide to work together”, because while I’m down for a solo Optimus and Megatron team-up side plot, the rest of the group is already doing the team-up, so it’d be treading the same ground. I want to do something different with them, and fusing them together into one being certainly is that. Throws a wrench into the whole war thing too

And yeah, I just wanted to share this concept because I thought it was neat. I would try to develop it more, but I have literally no clue who would be on either side, because the only characters I think about are Optimus and Megatron, and I also don’t really want Starscream and probably Bumblebee here either

[wifeguycyclonus]

ok idk how to actually write this but i had a jazzprowl au idea ft identity porn on Jazz’s part and poor Prowl ends up thinking he’s in a weird love triangle thing with like four different guys but actually its just one guy lol

[resident-gay-bitch]

little rich boy sirius who gets disowned and can barely survive without his expensive brands and the basic human need to eat at least once a day meeting the entirely too generous james potter who just falls for the vanity and sincerity of the reformed rich boy and decides that once sirius stops caring about brands and status and rich boy things and just cares about what matters in life he decides to spoil his boyfriend to pieces because he’s secretly sitting on a fucking fortune

[bluerosefox]

A Fair Warning

It was only a matter of time, and a long awaited and well deserved comeuppance, when Joker tried to hurt the wrong person or people.

Not everyone was going to play his games like 'Batsy' does. Not everyone will hesitate or let him live should he put his hands on someone to hurt them. Not everyone will believe Arkham could 'fix' him, he just needed more time and help.

No.

This time Joker bit off more than he could chew when he kidnapped the newly hired Arkham psychiatrist Jasmine Fenton (and he had plans, so many plans, for her. With her mixture of Harley's mind and her looks matching Gordon's daughter would sure to cause some chaos and pain in memories) and the girl's visiting sister Danielle 'Ellie' (and did he laugh when he noticed the 'Wayne' adoptive looks the girl had, on the fun he'll have, maybe he'll beat her the way he beat the second Robin just for funzie's, it'll no doubt upset Batman) from Jasmine's apartment.

He had plans to keep the Bats guessing where he was and by the time they reach him it'll be far to late for them to save either of the two girls, he had just sent the little video he taped to the Bats and the police to get the ball rolling...

So...

So why did a shiver run down his spine for the first time in years when they both looked unafraid (it was their eyes that made him shiver, a look of already dead yet somehow alive, something he never seen before. He's seen the light fade from people's eyes before yes, he's even laughed as he watch people desperately cling onto life only for it to fade into nothing as they took a final breath but never have he seen someone, something alive yet dead at the same time before. It, their eyes, held a natural yet unnatural sense as they stared at him, stared at everything that made him Joker and it unnerved him), honestly they looked very bored, and one of them (the youngest of the two, and the one with more of the look of death than life in their eyes) said with a chill tune in their tone.

"Last chance to back out of this Freakshows Reject. You wont like what'll be waiting for you."

The tone alone was enough to send another bone deep chill down Joker's spine.

But instead of listening to his natural instincts, the deep inkling of run blaring at him, Joker merely placed a grin on his face, ignoring the strain he felt from doing so, and said as nastily as he could in order to scare the two girls (BOTH OF THEM STILL LOOKED BORED WITH HIM?!?! Not even a twitch of fear!)

"OH? And pray tell what is awaiting little ol' me hum?"

His mocking question got a wide feral grin from the smaller girl, a grin with sharp teeth and iris eyes beginning to bleed slowly from sky blue to neon green with each second he stared at her and he barely stopped himself from jumping in his spot when Jasmine answered his question.

"Your end."

-x-x-

By the time the Bats get to the warehouse Joker had taken Dr. Jasmine 'Jazz' Fenton and Danielle 'Ellie' Fenton they were prepared for anything and everything to go wrong. As much as they held the tiniest bit of hope that the two young women were still okay they knew better than to really do, this was the Joker that had them after all.

They had manged to narrow down his location much quicker than normal when they gotten Joker's first video and his little 'game' he was setting the Bats on, most locations he gave them were going to be red herrings or traps to keep them busy and it would had worked. Batman and the others would had been searching for hours for even a hint of the clue of where the Joker and his hostages were actually being kept.

It was nearly, not really, a shame all of Joker's plans went to waste when Red Hood had stumbled onto something when scooping out Jasmine's apartment with Red Robin.

You see, not only were they looking for clues at first but something about the apartment Jasmine rented seemed off, Red Robin noticed it first and called in back up encase there was more to oldest Fenton than what they could dig up (oldest daughter of Dr's. Jackson and Madeline Fenton, grew up in a small Illinois town, straight A student and a goal to become a psychologist, has two younger siblings, etc etc) and their suspension raised up more when the moment Red Hood entered the apartment and seemed to freeze for a moment.

Red Hood couldn't really explain it but he said it felt like something was... strange. Not evil bad danger strange but it felt familiar? Like he was a kid again on the streets and had walked into someone else's territory but knew the person wouldn't be too much of a hardass about it as long as he didn't stur up trouble or disrespect. A kind of... as long as you don't fuck around you won't find out feeling.

It was because of this feeling that Jason had manged to stumble across something in the room, his instincts telling him there was more to it, and they had discovered a clunky old custom PDA hidden away in a false floorboard in the office room. Thankfully Red Robin, was there in person because the old thing apparently had a rather ingenious firewall to keep others (aka Hackers) OUT but it did nothing against someone who held the main thing.

But still it took Red Robin almost frying the damn thing to get to open up, turns out the ghost and star stickers on the PDA was a rather large hint of the pass code. Once Red Robin was in the PDA he noticed some rather interesting files, one of them labeled "Gremlin Tracking" with a tiny green blob with red eyes and a green outlined star as the icons.

Curiosity taking a hold on the most curious of the Bats he opened it up, hoping it would need another password, and watched as the screen split into two maps, one was... strange, there was no land marks or anything but the star icon seemed to be right in the middle of wherever it was and the only hint of anything was the name "baby brother" and the map labeled as IR.

The other one showed an above map of Gotham, before zooming into the city, heading towards some abandoned warehouses Red Robin knew of and stopped right at one. This was the green blob icon, the short abbreviation for Gotham in the corner of the map, and the name for the icon was 'baby sister'

Red Robin immediately got onto coms to tell the others of what apparently was a tracker for Jasmine's younger siblings. Some questioned why the young woman had trackers on her siblings, though some of the others snarked back that "oh didn't know keeping trackers on each other wasn't normal. Mind if I loose the one you got on me than?"

After a quick sweep into the warehouses camera feeds, the very few up that could be accessed, done by Oracle they quickly discovered that yes the tracking on the younger girl of the two, Danielle Fenton, was correct and that was where they and Joker were at.

Despite this, Batman decided that in order to make sure Joker didn't have suspicion that they already know his actual location he made sure to send a few of the others to the fake locations.

So here they were now, staking out the warehouse where they could see a few of the Jokers goons walking around and looking for a way into the building without alerting any of them. As they talked low into coms, Robin mentioning a possible way in for Red Robin by how small it was, Red Robin hissing back a "just because you got a growth spurt doesn't mean you can poke fun at my height you little-"

"Wait!" Red Hood suddenly hissed shouted, his tone startling the rest of them and they all turned their heads to him. Batman made a quick and harsh grunt as a way to say "report."

Under his helmet Jason's eyes were wide and wild. He could feel something, something huge was on the rise, like something was out of sight but the energy of it was felt.

And if Jason could feel it from his spot, the Jokers goons all felt the same thing from the way they all dropped their weapons, turned toward the warehouse and looked ready to bolt like scared animals.

Jason opened his mouth to explain but fell silent when the feeling suddenly popped. Whatever was causing the feeling was here and like the calm before the storm he could only watch as the first drop of rain fall.

The next thing they know, was the noise and the screaming.

It was inhuman, a mixture of noise and sounds to hard to explain. The closest they could explain was a thousand voices coming in all at once mixing with radio static that kept changing volume so only few words could be even hinted at, and the angry cawing of crows along with the flapping of their wings as they took flight. The noise was so bad that many who heard it nearly ripped their coms out, or covered their ears. Thankfully it only lasted a few seconds.

Then, the air itself shifted. It felt like the coldest of winter nights and bone chilling shivers ran down their bodies for a moment. The air was suddenly that sharp cold that hurt to breathe sometimes.

The goons surrounding the warehouse fled in fear. Many scrambling to get far, far away from whatever was happening. If they felt even a fraction of what Jason could feel, he could understand. He honestly felt like a small animal cornered by a predator and there was no escape.

Then just as suddenly as it happened, everything shifted again. The noise of Gotham returned to normal, cars honking, a stray cat hissing or a dog barking, police sirens in the distance, hissing steam from a nearby factory. The air went from winter cold to a chill mid winter harbor feel now.

Once everyone registered what had just happened and not wanting to waste anymore time they bolted towards the warehouse, cautious and alert in case they needed to fight. Batman went in first, quickly making his way to the area he knew Joker would be with the Fenton sisters and wondered just what the fuck was that? Did Joker do something? Was he messing with things outside of his usual MO?!

He walked into the room and stopped.

There was nothing.

The room was in fact the room Joker had used to record his first message to them, the layout was correct and the evidence of two people who had been tied up were still there as well, ropes that weren't cut sitting on them, a lone lamp light above shining down from above no doubt to emphasize the two girls were meant to be the 'stars' of Jokers latest show. Thing was, the two weren't there despite the fact Oracle swore she could see them a few mins ago from a camera set up in the room, she would later explain that she heard the noise as well and that all her tech had glitched hard.

The only other thing in the room was, sitting innocently on one of the chairs was a green sticky note and on a tiny pillow was a tiny sickly green orb with hints of purple, white, and red swirling in it.

A note they would later read the following message written on it after carefully examining it over.

'Joker learned not to touch what is mine to protect. Sorry not sorry, but hey one less killer clown and he was warned not my fault he didn't take it seriously... The massive amount of souls wanting to rip apart the Joker's soul into nothing was quite a sight to be honest.

They were so ruthless. Best not mess with the vengeful dead am I right?

PS. I left a tiny gift for Jason Todd aka Robin Two. It's the tiniest piece of Joker's soul left over after everyone else got done. He can finish it off since he's a reverent and all, and well they need their revenge filled in order to peacefully move on later or else they'll be stuck forever in a loop of madness and revenge. So yeah. Hope he likes the gift.'

D.P.'

It took Jason less than a second after those words were spoken out to reach for the orb, ignoring the cautious and alarmed cries of the others, and could feel deep, deep, deep in his own soul the absolute pure weeping joy as he threw the orb onto the floor, the bottom shattering thus it didn't roll away and stomped hard with his reinforced boots. Crushing the broken orb into more pieces and if one listened closely they could hear the pure screaming terror that came from it.

And Jason for the first time in years felt his rage finally leave him.

[enhanced-operatives-division]

Head in hands. 'I Spy' with Pulp is such a banger for Zor. It's giving me the urge to finally think about designing them (+ redesigning a couple others..). There's something so good abt some of the lyrics like: "you see I spy for a living // and i specialise in revenge // on taking the things that i know will cause you pain". Like....likee.............

Theres earlier parts that also make my brain tick: "it may look like to the untrained eye // im sitting on my arse all day // I'm biding my time until i take you all on // my lords and ladies, i will not fail // i will prevail, cause i spy"

PLUS the name. That did not help the situation. Alas Different Class by Pulp 🤝 IEYTD Characters. Similar can be said about the Chicago soundtrack but thats a. Whole other ramble

[budutinahrobnositmandarinky]

i found this emojiridden copypasta that i made in 2020 in the depths of my notes app and i think the world (like 3 people on tumblr dot com) should see it.

twin size mattress

This 👉 is for the lions 🦁 living 🌱in the wiry⛓️ broke 🚫💸 down ⬇️ frames 🔳 of my friends 🤼 bodies 🏋️‍♀️

When ⌚the flood water 🌊 comes🏃‍♀️, it ain't💁‍♂️ gonna be clear 💎

It's gonna look 👀 like mud 🤢

But I 🙋will help 💪 you swim 🏊

I 🙋‍♂️ will help✌️ you swim 🧜

I'm gonna help 🙏 you swim 🤽

This 👈 is for the snakes 🐍 and the people👫 they bite 🦷

For the friends 🤸 I've made; for the sleepless 🚫🛌 nights 🌌

For the warning ⚠️ signs I've completely ignored 🤦‍♀️

There's an amount to take 🎁, reasons 🤔 to take more 🛒

It's no big 🧿 surprise 🥳 you turned out 📝this way 🛣️

When they close 🗝️ their eyes 👁️ and prayed🛐 you would change ♻️

And they cut your hair 💇‍♂️, and sent 📨 you away ↪️

You stopped ✋ by my house 🏠 the night 🌌 you escaped 🏃‍♀️

With tears💧in my eyes 👁️, I begged 🙏 you to stay🕺

You said 🗣️, hey man 👨‍🌾, I love 😍 you 💆‍♀️ but no 🙅‍♂️ fucking way 🛤️

I'm sure 👩‍🏫 that we could find 🕵️ something🙌 for you 🧘‍♀️ to do on stage 🎶

Maybe shake 🗯️ a tambourine 🥁 or when I sing 👨‍🎤, you sing harmonies 👩‍🎤

This 👐 is for the lake 💦 that me and my friends 👬 swim 🏊‍♀️ in

Naked 🧖‍♂️ and dumb 🤪 on a drunken🍹 night 🌃

And it should've 🙈 felt good 👍

But I 🙋‍♀️can hear 👂the Jaws 🦈theme song 🎵 on repeat 🔁 in the back 🔙 of my mind💆‍♂️

Make sure you kiss 💋 your knuckles ✊ before ⏪ you punch 👊 me in the face 👩

There are lessons 👨‍🏫 to be learned 🧐, consequences 😬 for all the stupid 🤪 things I say 🗣️

And it is no 🚫 big surprise 🎉 you turned out this way 🛣️

The spark ✨ in her eyes 👁️

The look 👀 on your face 👩

I will not 🚫 be late ⚰️

I'm sure 🤔 that we could find 🕵️‍♂️ something for you 🙇‍♀️ to do on stage 🎤

Maybe shake 🌀 a tambourine 🥁 or when I👩‍🎤 sing, you sing 👨‍🎤 harmonies

I wanna contribute 🤲 to the chaos 🦠

I don't wanna 🙅‍♂️ watch 👀 and then complain 😾

'Cause I am through ☠️ finding blame 🙊

That is the decision 🤔 that I have made 🚽

She hopes 🙆 I'm cursed 🧙‍♂️ forever ♾️ to

Sleep 💤 on a twin-sized 👯 mattress 🛏️

In somebody's attic ⬆️ or basement ⬇️ my whole life 👴

Never graduating 🎓 up in size to add ➕ another ⏭️

And my nightmares 👹 will have nightmares👺 every night 🌃

Oh, every night 🌉, every night 🌌

[maerossi]

saw the brutalist again. I really never think this about art but for people who dont like the brutalist...that's a skill issue.

[frodo-baggins]

you guys wouldn’t believe me if i told you how badly my move yesterday went 😭