#if his son is sufficiently tithed to (read: bribed) at each summons

[mutable-manifestation]

After it works the one time, they do their best to interrupt all such rituals going forward.

Of course, the league can't be everywhere at once.

And word spreads.

It only takes a few weeks for another cult to be sneaky enough to complete the ritual.

Word has also spread about the first, smaller ghost that came before the king. And about him talking Pariah out of destroying everything.

Clearly an offering to the first is the way to go - perhaps if they please the small one, the king will be willing to listen.

Unfortunately, cults have a tendency to offer up human lives.

The JL rescues the first one before they can be murdered right in front of Danny's eyes, and then they focus on cleanup while dutifully tuning out a repeat of the Kid(TM) talking down the Ghost King from burning their planet to dust.

Batman is also there, patiently waiting to apologize for the inconvenience (aka make a good impression on at least one of them so he'll be less inclined to burn the whole world next time. Maybe just inclined to burn down That Warehouse In Particular. Still not ideal, but far better than the Whole World) once the kid has successfully talked the ghost down.

(Or, if the kid is unsuccessful, to delay and distract while the JLD tries to set something up to kick the guy back to his own dimension. Pariah Dark has proved reasonable one (1) single time so maybe he can be talked down again, but Batman wouldn't be alive if he didn't have backup plans for his backup plans' backup plans.)

Of course, the guy doesn't give them a chance to interacting, scooping up the kid and disappearing the moment he stops looking actively homicidal.

The next few summonings pass in a similar manner, and how close they skirt to disaster makes the JL's skin itch every time.

It's the seventh summoning where things go to a near-disaster.

Their just a little to late to the party, and they arrive to see a human child bleeding before the summoning circle while The Kid (Phantom, they heard Pariah Dark call him once) flew around beating the absolute tar out of the cultists with Pariah Dark cheering him on silently from within the circle.

The only saving grace was that Phantom wasn't killing them.

They move to assist, restraining the downed cultists and fighting the ones that were trying to flee through the holes in the ice that the JL had to make to enter the place.

Zatanna runs through the chaos to the bleeding child, healing him under the cold gaze of Pariah Dark.

Phantom abandons the fight to be at her side in an instant.

Not that it makes much difference since all of the cultists are downed by then.

"Is he okay!?"

"He will be fine," Zatanna assures. "The injury was severe, but I have healed him completely, save for the blood loss. He will need to recover from that on his own, mostly, but the magic will keep him in full health in the meantime."

Pariah takes little convincing, this time, needing nothing more than Phantom's quiet "can we go home now" to abandon their dimension altogether.

The next two incidents return to the usual drawn-out argument required to talk Pariah down, but upon the third Phantom is different.

They can all see how tired he looks, how irritated. And, Batman notes, when it comes time to talk down Pariah he hesitates.

He does it, all the same, but he hesitates. And his words are far less passionate.

The convincing takes twice as long.

(Listen Danny knows it's a whole world in the balance. He's trying but he's tired. It is finals week. Just how many cultists can One world even have?? He's getting summoned like once a month now, give him a break.)

The next time they're too slow to the show, Batman tosses him a pair of binoculars set to function like a high-quality telescope, hoping the pajamas have some meaning.

The Kid spends two hours grilling him for details while everyone (including Pariah Dark) just kinda stands around awkwardly.

He practically drags Pariah Dark out of their universe by his elbow, chattering excitedly about Alpha Centauri.

Pariah Dark squints threateningly in their direction just once before he's pulled from view.

Prompt 149

Danny is not the ghost king. In fact, he’s never going to be the ghost king. 

However, that doesn’t stop him from getting summoned, which is stressful. First of all, he has school to deal with, second of all, he’s just a lil baby ghost so shouldn’t even be able to be summoned, and three, his new ghost-dad gets a… tiny bit upset. Not at him, but he can only talk him out of destroying a world thanks to some idiot-cults so many times before there’s the temptation to let him do so.