To be honest. DCxDP where the reason Danny meets the bats is Ace the Bat-hound
Like, just think about it for a second. Danny is in Gotham for college, or maybe he just moved out to find a city where having mad scientist parents isn’t actually that unusual.
He can see ghosts.
The ghosts know this.
Now he’s getting harassed left and right by spirits trying to get closure. Fine, whatever, most of them are a one-and-done type deal, and the amount of ghosts trying to get his help steadily decreases.
Except for this one very stubborn dog.
It just keeps showing up and leading him to crime scenes! He doesn’t know how many “anonymous tips” he can call in to the cops before they trace his phone! And this dog, this incredibly good boy, will not stop trying to help the city. He’s never met anyone with such a strong sense of justice, let alone a dog. Can dogs even have a moral compass?
And so Danny just accepts the fact that Ace isn’t going anywhere and becomes his reluctant sidekick/dedicated medium. He leans into the whole thing, dressing up in a mix of traditional magic-user attire and accessories that pay homage to the ghost dog.
He becomes somewhat well known. The psychopomp detective following around the shadowy figure of a German Shepard? That’s unusual! That’s weird! I mean, it’s not the weirdest thing in Gotham, sure, but he’s a new vigilante and he’s got a ghost dog that people can only see when it’s around him. Someone’s gonna notice.
Damian, as Robin, is the first to reach out to him.
Ace doesn’t know Damian but he does know a Robin, and while this isn’t his Robin, he’s still friendlier than usual. Danny’s panicking because oh god the bats are here and also is this kid gonna steal my ghost dog, Damian is absolutely delighted by Ace, and Ace is just happy to see a Robin again.
Damian decides that the psychopomp isn’t a danger to anyone, and there’s no reason to put this encounter into his reports, really, and perhaps Danny can help with some of his cases in the future.
Danny is sweating bullets because Damian basically tells him that he’ll keep him secret as long as he gets to play with Ace. Ace is happy that he’s finally getting some bat affiliated crime-fighting assistance.
And so, Danny is now both Ace AND Damian’s reluctant assistant. At least whenever he’s in trouble, he can always call a middle schooler to help him.
(Is Robin even in school? He’s out patrolling damn near every night, and he stays out late as hell. Does he have a bedtime? He should.)
Eventually it gets to the point where Damian is going over to Danny’s house. When he first sees it, he has a damn bitch you live like this moment, to which Danny responds that not everyone has the money to afford a nice place. Damian counters that he could at least take the time to clean up, and Danny replies that he’s working, going to school, and being a vigilante assistant to a ghost dog, something’s got to give.
Danny nearly has a heart attack when he checks his bank account the next day and sees that someone transferred him 10,000 dollars.
And so they get into a routine. Danny and Damian fight crime with Ace at night, and occasionally Damian stops by during the day to play with Ace and have Danny help with his homework.
(Damian is smart enough to do it on his own, but some of the instructions are written incredibly confusingly, and he would never admit to needing help to his family. Danny is just glad that the kid is in school and cares about his education, blissfully unaware that he’s basically emotionally adopted him.)
Damian is used to being in Danny’s company.
Eventually, when going over a case with the family, Damian absentmindedly remarks that he’ll have to ask Danny about some of the clues that they might be missing. Nightwing asks who he means and Damian makes a face like he just swallowed a lemon.
Cue shitstorm.
Who is “Danny?” Why is Damian willing to ask for help from anyone, much less someone outside of the family? Does he know who Damian is? Has Damian been compromised? What the hell is going on?
Damian now has to explain that Danny is the psychopomp with the ghost dog who he might have met hunted down while on patrol and conveniently not mentioned, but he’s not a bad person, really, and he lets him play with Ace, and he’s been quite helpful on certain cases due to his ability to talk to ghosts.
Bruce insists that the family meet Danny. Damian, hoping that he won’t just skip town the second he hears the news, relents.
Danny is surprisingly eager to meet the bats, considering his earlier fears.
Damian, blissfully unaware of what’s coming, sets a time and place to meet.
Once everyone is there, he gives Bruce the earful of a lifetime.
Robin is in middle school! Danny knows that there’s no way to stop the boy from going on patrol, but you could at least shift his schedule so he gets enough sleep on school nights! Does the Bat even know where he is half the time?! (No) And why isn’t he comfortable asking his family for help with both cases and homework? Did they ever even notice how much time he was spending at Danny’s house? If Danny was a bad person, he could have seriously hurt the poor boy! Shame on you!
Nightwing is mortified that Damian didn’t trust him enough to tell him about any of this. Red Hood is laughing his ass off, because yeah Danny is making good points but he’s also chewing out the literal Batman. Tim is recording the whole thing. Steph is delighted by the absolute gall of this Danger Twink™️, and already planning to add him to several groupchats. Damian is more embarrassed than he’s ever been in his entire life.
You, he points to Nightwing, did your academic life feel supported when you were a Robin? Nightwing is too stunned to speak. Red Hood, eternal shit-stirrer, says that oh, we all prioritized patrol over our education, that’s just how it is. Red Robin actually dropped out of high school to avoid distractions, did you know that?
Danny honest-to-god shrieks at this.
He finishes his angry rant and leaves, everyone too stunned to stop him.
And as it turns out, Tim wasn’t the only person recording the whole thing.
The entire internet is blowing up with Psychopomp The Danger Twink™️’s rant. People are taking sides. Things are getting messy. Red Hood literally admitting on-camera to previously being a Robin is somehow not the main focus here.
Eventually someone connects some dots from the video, as well as stories circling the internet about the psychopomp. A ghost dog named Ace, who is the literal only reason that the psychopomp is fighting crime at all, which seems incredibly fond of Nightwing and Robin.
A crime-fighting dog who wants constant attention from both the current and original Robin.
Oh my god, Ace the Bat-hound died and became a crime-fighting ghost.
And, somehow, that’s still not the strangest thing going on in Gotham.
8K notes
·
View notes
Soulmate AU: First Words + End of the World ; requested by @justwannabecat!
Duke has long since accepted that he doesn’t have great luck. Most things in his life tend to go wrong very quickly, or complicate situations he was already struggling in (see: being a meta and getting his powers in the middle of a fight). Having an incomprehensible soulmark is an unpleasant discovery on the morning of his nineteenth birthday, but not entirely unexpected.
He had been hoping for something simple, a common one like hi it’s nice to meet you or sorry, didn’t mean to bump into you.
What Duke gets instead isn’t even words.
Scrawled across his left hipbone is a string of symbols glowing a faint green. They’re not in a language he recognizes, and the symbols seem to move, shifting ever so slightly so they look different every time he blinks.
“Well,” he says after a solid five minutes of staring into the mirror, unable to rip his eyes off his soulmate’s words, “I hope theirs looks nicer than mine.”
He spends his birthday in a bit of a daze, enjoying time spent with the Waynes and his friends. It’s hard to be fully present when he’s all too aware of the soreness on his hipbone flaring up each time he moves. It’s hard to keep his mind off of it, wanting nothing more than to search for answers, unravel the mystery of his soulmate’s first words.
“Something on your mind?” Jason asks, as the attention shifts off of him for a brief moment as Harper and Cullen get ready to leave and everyone rushes to give their goodbyes,
Duke shrugs, carefully keeping his hands still so they don’t drift to where his soulmark is hidden beneath his clothes. “Yeah. Nothing you need to worry about, though.”
Jason looks him over critically, then nods.
Duke resigns himself to being investigated by the rest of the Bats. If he’s off enough that Jason had to comment on it, then that means everyone’s noticed and are trying to figure out what’s happened. They’re not going to ask him, because they think he needs space to work through whatever’s got him so distracted, but they’re also not going to just do nothing.
This won’t be the first time they’ve done this. Duke expects it. Frankly, it would be stranger and much more concerning if they didn’t try to dig up all his secrets the moment they caught wind of him hiding something.
He’ll tell them about getting his soulmark soon. Soulmarks can appear on any birthday between the ages of thirteen to twenty five; they might suspect he got his, but they won’t be able to confirm.
For now, Duke can keep his soulmate’s first words (whatever that gibberish means) to himself.
He makes the decision then and there, as his birthday party winds down, to tell them in a week.
And because his luck is abysmal, a world ending threat hits five days later and suddenly there is no time for soulmarks and first words.
Duke is the last to arrive at the Fortress of Solitude, hitching a ride from Superboy to get there. The biting cold and the harsh winds keep the place far from the reaches of the rest of humanity, surrounded by nothing but deadly white.
Desolate as the landscape is, it’s still in better shape than the rest of the world.
Things would be better if it was alien invaders. It would be more bearable if some sort of cosmic colossus tried to eat their solar system. At least then there would be something physical that they could fight.
Instead, the world is breaking apart, the sky and earth both fracturing to reveal glowing green faultlines. Timelines are getting mixed up and muddled; just yesterday, Duke had to evacuate a building that had been demolished forty years ago, then stop a gang leader who wouldn’t be born for another eight years from taking over a neighborhood block and holding the residents hostage. Strange creatures are appearing out of nowhere, crawling out of shadows and tide pools and from beneath the roots of trees, all horrible, monstrous things that go after people with teeth and claws.
The Flashes and the rest of the speedsters are nowhere to be found. The last time anyone get communication from them, it had been Impulse sending Red Robin a glitchy, barely audible video chat saying something along the lines of “trying to fix—unstable—keep us here—never been alive before.” All things that are very concerning to hear, made worse by the fact that no one had been able to contact them at all.
The quiet loneliness of the Fortress of Solitude is a welcome change from the constant screaming, death, and destruction that’s taken over Gotham as well as the rest of the world. Last he heard, even Justice League China was at the end of their rope.
“In here,” Superboy instructs, guiding Duke through the halls. There’s no time to look around at Superman’s secret base. All his focus is stuck on staying conscious for another few hours to see if this gathering of heroes is able to find a solution to the world breaking apart.
Batman stands besides Superman. Both nod at Duke when he enters the room. Wonder Woman is watching over John Constantine as he writes something on the floor, muttering under his breath. The rest of the Justice League lean against each other, visibly exhausted as they wait for Constantine to finish up what he’s doing. A few other heroes are here too, and Duke goes to join them where they lean against a wall, fighting to keep their eyes open.
“Hey,” he greets, voice low. “Hanging in there?”
Wonder Girl sighs. “Somehow. I don’t know how much longer we can do this. There’s just too much…”
“We’ll get through this. I mean, even without us out there, plenty of civilians have formed rescue and relief groups to help with keeping things under control,” Speedy says, gently knocking her arm against Wonder Girl’s. “We just gotta keep going. No giving up.”
“What’s this plan, anyways? I just heard that they needed me here to some attempt to fix things.”
“Well, without the speedsters, you’re kind of the only one who can help with time and power related stuff,” Speedy says.
“That’s definitely a stretch. My powers don’t really have anything to do with time. It’s all just light and shadow.”
Speedy shrugs. “Well, you’re here, aren’t you? Too late to complain about it now.”
Duke doesn’t get a chance to say anything else when a loud clap catches his attention. The entire room goes still and silent as Constantine stands up and surveys the circle and symbols he’s written, taking up an entire corner of the large room.
“Alright,” he says. “Time to get started. Remember, let me do the talking. If you have to speak, it’s only to back me up or when a question is directed to you.”
Batman nods to the other Justice Leaguers, and suddenly everyone is falling into formation behind Constantine. Duke hurries to join them with Wonder Girl and Speedy, taking a place on the edge of the group where he’s a little closer to the circle than the others.
Constantine begins chanting. His voice is steady though none of the sounds make any sense, refusing to form themselves into recognizable words, and the air the in the room feels heavier. The chalk circle glows a blinding white and Duke can see magic swirling through the air, his power kicking in the let him watch as reality tears and a glowing star in the shape of a boy comes out of it.
Duke blinks, forcing his power down. The hypnotic swirls of magic fade from sight, but the boy still glows, bright and terrible as he floats above the circle and surveys them all. A crown engulfed in blue flame hovers above his head and the fabric of the cosmos is draped over his shoulders as a cape.
Just from presence alone, Duke can tell that this figure is now the strongest existence in this universe. He hopes this boy king is kind; no one, not even Superman, would be able to beat him in a fight.
The boy king opens his mouth and speaks, but it’s not words than comes out. A strange static like sound emerges, but light and almost melodic.
His left hipbone burns.
Duke gasps, hand flying down to it, and the boy king’s gaze snaps to meet his.
The world stands still. No one moves. No one dares to breathe.
And then the boy king drops to the floor and walks out of the circle.
“I thought you said that would hold him!” Batman hisses at Constantine, who is looking more and more distressed.
“It was supposed to! I wrote it specifically to hold the King of the Infinite Realms!”
The boy king glances at Constantine. This time, when he speaks, it’s in smooth English. “Did you name the king in your circle?”
“Yeah, I named Pariah Dark… Bloody hell, you ain’t him, are ya?”
“No,” the boy king smiles, “I’m Phantom.”
The cape and crown fade away, and suddenly it’s not an all powerful, terrifying king standing before them, but a young man with white hair and green eyes who looks Duke’s age. Like he could be any other new generation hero in the room.
“Phantom,” Duke repeats lightly, just under his breath, but it makes Phantom look at him again.
He walks forward, ignoring the other heroes’ aborted attempts to stop him, coupled with Constantine’s frantic back off motion happening behind him. Phantom leaves the circle and the Justice Leaguers behind to stand before Duke, a soft smile on his face.
“Hi,” he says softly, “I dreamed of you.”
“You—what?”
“I dreamed of you. I have for years now. To think that being summoned was what made us meet—” Phantom breaks off into a breathless laugh.
Duke swallows, then drops his had from where it had been pressed against his hip. “So we’re really—? You have my first words too?”
In the corner of his eye, he sees Batman stiffen up. Maybe he should have just told them the day after his birthday, but in Duke’s defense, this is the definition of extenuation circumstances.
“First words?” Phantom repeats, “Is that… Do we have different soulmate connections?”
“I think so. Here, everyone gets the first words their soulmates say to them appearing somewhere on their body.”
Phantom’s gaze darts down to Duke’s hip, then back up. “Oh. I get dreams. Where I’m from, we dream of our soulmates, and the closer we get to meeting them, the more we remember the dreams.”
“And you dreamed of me.”
“I did.”
“As touching as this is,” Constantine interrupts, and Duke gets to watch as Phantom rolls his eyes, “We summoned you here for a reason. Our world is falling apart at the seams and we need someone powerful, from the Realms, to help us fix it.”
“Okay.”
“...What do you mean ‘okay’?”
“I’ll help,” Phantom says.
“Just like that? No deal to be made, no price to be paid?”
“Just like that. I’m not one for deals anyways. If I can help, then I will. But I do want to see what the problem is with my soulmate by my side, if you don’t mind.”
Batman steps in, fixing Duke with a steady gaze, a barely noticeable tilt of his head. “Signal?”
“Yeah I’ll go with him. Of course I will. The sooner the better, in fact, because everything’s gone to shit.” Duke turns to Phantom, taking hold of one of his hands. “It is really bad out there,” he warns, “If you need help—”
“I’ll ask for help from others in the Realms,” Phantom says. “No offense or anything, but if it’s really that bad, I doubt living mortals will be able to do much to fix things. It’s why I was summoned, right?”
“Right. Let’s get to it, then.”
There’s a flash of mischief in Phantom’s eyes, and cheeky grin stealing across his face for a moment, before he says, “Aye aye, captain!” and picks Duke up like he weighs nothing and flies up through the ceiling.
Duke is able to hear everyone’s surprised, panicked shouts before they’re outside the Fortress of Solitude and Phantom is flying them away. He only needs a few directions from Duke before he finds the first of the large fractures in the sky.
“Yikes,” is all he says, which is not a great thing to hear. “I think I know how to fix it, though. We’ll need to do a little investigating as to who, exactly, started messing around with reality, but once we find the source, it’ll be an easy fix.”
“That’s the best news I’ve heard all week.”
“Even better than meeting your soulmate?”
“I haven’t slept for more than four hours all week. Knowing there’s an end in sight beats everything else.”
Phantom laughs, throwing his head back and Duke can’t help but drink in the sight of him, so ethereal and bright and full of life. “Fair enough! Got any ideas as to where we should start?”
“I’ve got an entire crew of detective vigilantes,” Duke replies. He’s not taking any more chances. No more waiting to talk about important things; he messed up by keeping his soulmark to himself, so he needs to make sure everyone meets his soulmate before shit goes south again.
“Let’s go find them, then!”
They take off again, soaring through the skies that are barely holding themselves together.
The world is still ending, and every hero is being stretched thin, but held carefully in Phantom’s arms, racing head first into a solution, Duke can’t help but feel that everything’s going to be alright now.
He’s had enough bad luck. Now, his soulmate with him, bearing the title of King with grace, things are finally starting to look up.
1K notes
·
View notes
i am in love with your sollux i think
sollux love party :]
if you’re interested heres some of my personal fondness thoughts on him..
big warning for the mega long read ahead aye
as we alr know sollux's rejection of participation somewhat mirrors dave's rejection of heroism, but even without getting cooked to completion i still find sollux's character v compelling beyond the fourth wall
as someone who doesnt get a pinch of that Protagonist Sparkle to begin with, he can openly say he wants to leave anytime…. and unlike dave, he actually Can leave the scene anytime. but he can never be truly Free from the story via permanent character death like the other trolls.
his irrelevancy is indeed relevant - he’s there so u can point him out.
while his image is intended to be a relic of past internet subculture, his role is not only about hehehaha being a Chad or a 2000s cyberforum 2²chan haxxor ragequit gamebro.
his continued existence also happens to add a Bit to the overarching themes of homestuck! a Bit that gives him longer-lasting thematic relevance compared to the trolls who could’ve had more character potential but didnt get to survive beyond the main story.
the Bit in question:
his defiance contributes to the illusion of agency (treating characters = people with autonomy). he’s “aware” of it, and that recognition is worth noting enough to forcibly keep him alive as both reward and punishment.
considering how his personality & classpect is designed its definitely a very haha thing for hussie to do LOL. he’s made to be op asf so he's resigned to doing dirty work, gradually deteriorating along the way but never truly dying. as fans have mentioned before, him openly rejecting involvement after a while of grim tolerance is like if the sim u were controlling suddenly stopped, looked up and gave u the finger while u were step six into the walkthrough for Every Possible Sim Death Animation.
but since he’s just a sim… the more he hates it, the more you keep him around. if ur sim started complaining abt your whimsical household storyline you’d definitely keep that little fuck.
but yeah i like that sollux is just idling. the significance of his presence being that one dude who's always reliably Somewhere, root core Unchanged, no individual ambitions (possibly due to fear of consequence?), and design-wise: a staple representative product of his time.
compared to dirk's character, who has aged phenomenally well into the present (themes of control + AR + artificial intelligence, clearer exploration around navigating relationships/sexuality, infinite possibilities of self-splinterhood and trait inheritance), sollux's potential is really... contained. bitter. defeatist. limiting and frustrating in the way old tech is.
the world continues moving on to shinier, brighter, more advanced automated things - minimalist and metaverse or whatever but sollux is still here 🧍♂️ going woohoo redblue 3d. (tho personally i imagine his vibe similar to what the kids call cassette futurism on pinterest mixed w more grimy grunge insectoid influences eheh)
conceptually-speaking,
at the foundation of it all, the rapid pace of modern development was built off the understanding of ppl like sollux in the past, who were There actively at work while the dough was still beginning to rise
thats one of the cool things abt the idea of trolls preceding humans! the idea that trolls like sollux excelled back when lots of basic shit still needed to be discovered, building structures like networks and codes from scratch, and humans will eventually inherit and reinvent that knowledge in ways that become so optimized it makes the old manual effort seem archaic, slow, and labour-intensive.
but despite information/resources/shortcuts being more accessible now, much of the new highly-anticipated stuff released on trend still end up unfinished, inefficient, or expiring quickly due to cutting corners under severe capitalistic pressures
meanwhile, some of the old stuff frm past generations of thorough, exploratory and perfectionistic development still remains working, complete, and ever so sturdy.
those things continue to exist, just outside our periphery with either:
zero purpose left for modern needs (outdated/obsolete)
or
far too important to replace or destroy, bcs of its surprisingly essential and circumstantial usefulness in one niche specific area.
which are honestly? both points that sum up sollux pree well.
dramatic ending sorry. anw are u still on the fence or are u Sick abt him like me </3
1K notes
·
View notes