#make out city

[deep-dark-fears]

Ready to mingle. A fear submitted by Jules to Deep Dark Fears - thanks!

You can find original artwork in my shop! deepdarkfears.com/shop

[brightlotusmoon]

[wanologic]

sorry danny, sam will never think you’re cool

[blueskittlesart]

maryland miku

[wardingshout]

apple season

[uncanny-tranny]

This might seem like an "old man yells at cloud" situation, but it's just wild growing up and being told how dangerous distracted driving is - how, at highway speeds, you can traverse the length of a football field (100 yards, 91 meters) in a matter of seconds - how one split second sending a text while driving could result in a potential fatal crash, and then getting on the road as a driver and being surrounded by billboards. Their entire purpose is to catch one's attention, so they're lining major roads, which tend to be highways. How is it that you're told how important it is to never be distracted while driving, but still being advertised to?

At best, this type of advertising is an eyesore to pedestrians and motorists and a general waste of electricity to light it, and at worst, it is an active danger considering they are there to advertise and therefore, must catch people's attention.

I'm not even against advertising in theory, but this particular mode bothers me so much and I hate how pervasive it is - especially in large cities or highways.

[potofsoup]

Guess who's excited to get their ballot in the mail tomorrow? Me! So I slapped together a quick comic, as well as a map based off of this and this. A list of when same day registration is available is at the bottom of this article.

But also: wow, early voting stuff is so confusing! For example, I get my ballot in the mail tomorrow, and I can immediately mail it back. But if I want to drop it off in person, I need to either go to a special ballot drop box by city hall, or wait for early in-person voting sites to open, which isn't until Oct 22nd for my state.

Or like, early voting in Louisiana is apparently from Oct 16 to Oct 29th? And then there's a week of no voting, and then polls open again on Nov 5th? Or like how the only day you can register and then immediately vote is Oct 26th?

Anyway, best way to figure out the info for your area is to check your state and county's election website. I've found usvotefoundation.org to have clear fact sheets for each state (including ID requirements, polling location finders, as well as direct links to state election websites): https://www.usvotefoundation.org/state-voter-information . You can also jump to each state's election websites via usa.gov, or by searching directly, though some websites are more confusing than others.

Happy voting!

Oh, and here's the voter registration deadlines map from last time, in case you haven't registered and want to register. Oct 7th is the last day for a bunch of states!

[marciaillust]

I added some colours to her :)

[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.

[benevolenterrancy]

May your hardened heart be woken By the soft and distant song Of all you left here unspoken All the shards we keep stepping on - Take this body home Take this body home Call the wind, and let her know Take this life outgrown Take this broken soul Call the stars, call them all And take it high, take it far, take it home

[majorasnightmare]

i love doing character analysis for minthara because shes such a wonderful hypocrite. she has a lot of deeply reactionary political views but she makes it openly known shes willing to suspend just about all of them because youve become more important to her than nearly anything else. deeply opinionated but never pushes you to do something you wont throw your weight behind, and if your her partner shell suspend all the "survival of the fittest" cultural upbringing she finds so much sense and empowerment in to make an exception for you specifically and no one else.

i love her

[mutable-manifestation]

Ghost Chirps AU Part 5

Part 1 & 2

Part 3

Part 4

***

While “Jason” (i.e. Alfred with an empty jet that Jason will meet up with later in order to “arrive” in Amity) hops a private jet, Red Hood is busy searching the Fenton home from top to bottom.

The local police move slowly, and by the time they arrive Jack and Maddie Fenton are both tied up and disarmed in their living room under heavy guard.

They hadn’t been restrained immediately, Batman talking him into giving them a chance to implicate themselves first.

Hood let him take the lead, but he didn’t even get a chance to ask a question, being cut off at the first indication he might want to talk about their “work.” Less than 60 seconds in, and the pair had outright confessed to violating the meta protection acts - and in tedious detail.

The questioning didn’t suffer any from them being tied up.

Far from the mulish silence or crocodile-tear laden denial of most criminals, they instead doubled down, insisting that nothing they had done was illegal, then jumping to the assumption that they were “possessed” - and boy had it been a nasty surprise when the whole house came alive trying to attack them with a quick verbal command.

Well, trying to attack Hood. And only him, for some reason.

One laser also freed the Fentons, who turned out to have even more weapons built into their suits. 

Somehow. 

Despite them being skintight.

That had been a pain, but Red Robin was able to hack the system using one of the couples’ own devices while Hood dodged - and kept the stray fire away from the others - leaving everyone else to recapture the pair. A blessedly simple task once they found out the lasers would splash harmlessly off of their armor (save for a gross film of green goop left wherever they grazed).

They take turns knocking each unconscious to change them in order to properly disarm them - Batman and Nightwing taking Jack first, followed by Orphan and Spoiler dealing with Maddie. 

The only non-weapon laden clothing they own turns out to be pajamas. 

This is around when the police show up, looking hesitant.

They, too, cite the “Anti-Ecto Acts.”

Oracle had debriefed them on the supposed Acts and “Ghost Investigation Ward” on their short drive over. Both were utterly bogus - the Acts had never even been proposed, let alone been approved as law, and the so-called “GIW” had no ties to the government.

The Fentons had been furious and denied the information intensely when told, but the cops mostly just looked relieved.

Apparently there’d been a lot of property damage by the GIW and Fentons both that had supposedly been dismissed under the Acts as “necessary in the pursuit of ecto-scum.”

For the Fentons, half of this damage was in the form of broken fire hydrants, cracked sidewalks, and totaled cars - they’d never been good drivers, before, the cops disclosed, but they’d become even more negligent since the ghosts began appearing, to the point they had to have a news segment warning when they would be on the road.

The lack of fatalities thus far had been nothing short of a miracle, they claimed.

“Of course there haven’t been any fatalities!” Mrs Fenton defends. “Our work is to protect people from those things, not make more! Officers, listen to reason-” Hood snorts disdainfully -”The Red Hood is clearly a ghost! All our systems targeted him the moment they came online - and they only target ecto-entities. He’s clearly taken these heroes under his sway - why else would they be working with a murderer!? You have to do something before he starts up his killing here in Amity!”

The officers look at him a bit hesitantly, but Batman is unmoved and gives the cover story Hood had outlined back in the alley.

Any concerns the locals have are quickly assuaged.

But for the whole explanation, Jason is trying not to shake even as he falls apart in place.

Their little website called them ghost-hunters, making it pretty clear what “ecto-entities” meant. 

Their system supposedly only targets ecto-entities.

The system had only targeted him.

The system only targets ghosts.

Jason had died.

A lot of his family members had died, too, granted. 

But Jason was the only one who seemed to come back wrong - anger sticking in his throat and never quite fading, an inclination towards violence even when he wasn’t angry well beyond what he’d ever felt before, and a sea of other emotions (that he would never acknowledge aloud) and triggers for those emotions that he always struggled to make heads or tails of.

He doesn’t have the meta gene. He knows that. He knew that.

He just assumed that the test missed it, because he knows he doesn’t know magic - the All Blades being the only exception - and he couldn’t think of another explanation at the time.

But he came back wrong.

And as he stands there, he wonders if he came back at all, mind on Solomon Grundy.

Wonders if he isn’t just some ghost, wandering around possessing his own corpse.

He jolts, as the thought strikes him: what about Danny?

If he’s a ghost and chirping is a ghost thing then what about his KID!?

Absently, he notes that Bruce has started interrogating the cops on what they meant by “ghost attacks.” 

He ignores the discussion, hustling for the door in the kitchen down to the lab.

He slams and locks the door behind him - in Red Robin’s face - as he descends, making a b-line for the computer he’d seen when the Fentons had dragged them all down there to start bragging about their crimes.

The only thing Oracle could get out of the whole building was things that were openly available online; direct connections were impossible.

Opening up the screen, he gets to cracking.

Going for the surface level files first, it turns out he doesn’t even need so much as a password to find what he wants.

One of the video game sub-files has an unrelated file in it: ghost notes.

There are plenty of other notes, of course, but he’d only been skimming to start, looking for anything hidden.

The Fenton parents were too open to bother, of course, with plenty of more obvious files strewn haphazardly across the home screen, but it’s always better to check. That there is a hidden file means it was likely made by either Danny or Jazz.

And it’s a treasure trove.

Sub-files for rogues, allies, conditional allies, and “halfas” were what greeted him.

The last being the only term he didn’t recognize, he clicked.

6 files: Clones, Danny, Dani, Dan, Vlad, and Red Hood.

He clicks his own file.

What greets him is a picture of himself 4 days ago, looking just to the left of the lens in an alley that he distinctly remembers searching for the kid in.

Just below is text.

~~~

??? Name: Red Hood

Species: probably a halfa

Status: Nnnneutral? I think? I know, I know, heads in bags. But Valerie tries to kill me all the time! And we’re allies sometimes! Hood- uh- looked for me? Okay I guess I can’t really judge this yet but please read the first met section before you judge please you guys?

First met: Aug 17, 2005, was in Gotham to bother Batman, stopped to think a bit on some fire escape - decide on the first prank yknow - but then my ghost sense went off. It felt like a halfa so I thought “oh cool, must be Dani” so I chirped, but then Red Hood - who was chasing some guy down an alley at the time - froze and looked around. I dropped visibility and chirped again and yeah, he definitely heard it. Humans can’t so he’s definitely a halfa - no glow so he can’t be a full ghost and it felt nothing like an overshadowing. 

Ended up following Hood around the rest of week - forgot to prank Batman, damn - and playing hide-and-seek with the chirps. It was really funny. But he very obviously doesn’t know he’s a halfa. But the guy is, like, scary levels of smart, so I’m sure he’ll figure it out on his own now that the chirp thing made it clear that something is up. Hopefully.

I figure I can go back in winter break - he should have it figured out and let his emotions process enough by then to at least hear me out when I explain the AEA and GIW and everything, then it won’t matter so much if he can, like, track me by voice or something if I talk since we’ll have MAD by then.

Despite his reputation, the people living in his haunt seem to love the guy. I can see why. On top of the whole smart he’s actually really nice to people he’s not shooting in the knees (which only even happened one time in the week I was there? It was actually pretty relaxing - most quiet week I’ve had since the portal opened THANK YOU TUCKER for hacking the portal hatch to be inoperable for a week). 

Where was I? Oh yeah, he’s actually surprisingly nice to people? So like, I think he’ll probably hear me out if I go back and be polite? I hope. Hate to leave the guy in the dark and him end up on the GIWs dissection table for “lots and lots of painful experiments.”

Not that those guys could even catch the Box Ghost. But uh, Hood doesn’t seem to have powers either? Or if he does he doesn’t know about them I don’t think - he only used the chirp the whole time I was their - not even to cheat with moving around.

Seriously. That guy's acrobatics could make Freakshow’s contortionist green - er, red??? - with envy. Actually wait, aren’t contortionists and acrobats different things?

SAM NOTE: help^?

Powers: 

?

~~~

Jason leans back, breathing deeply.

“Not a full ghost,” “not 'overshadowed'” - a term that sounds likke some kind of cousin to possesision - “definitely a halfa,” “humans can’t hear chirps.”

Halfa. 

Half. 

Ghost. 

Half Ghost.

It should sound absurd - you can’t be half alive and half dead.

But Jason has seen the Lazarus pits, has met Solomon Grundy, has met aliens and bullshit magic and can pull magical swords out of his own damn chest.

Half alive. Half dead.

Hopefully not just a fancy way to say possessing his own corpse.

He doesn’t have time to deal with every file - he’ll “confiscate” one of their USBs with a copy of everything for himself before leaving the rest to Batman & co, of course, minus the halfa files (a small part of him wants to shove his condition in Bruce’s face and demand he kill the clown again even though he knows it’s a futile hope, but the rest - the same part that snapped and denied and refused to say he was a meta less that a day ago now - cannot stomach the thought of even more rejection. Of a Bruce that believes he’s a monster. Of a Bruce that mourns him even while he’s right there. Or at least, more than he already does.) - but while the files copy he take the time to look at Danny’s.

The image has two people, Danny Fenton on one side and a version of the kid in a black hazmat suit with white hair, tanned skin, and painfully familiar green eyes. And floating.

~~~

Human Name: Danny Fenton

Ghost Name: Danny Phantom

Species: Halfa (half-human, half ghost)

~~~

It’s the section after that that makes Jason’s breath catch in his throat.

~~~

Death: The Portal Accident

So like, there was no audio (thank GOD I do not want to hear myself screaming) so. Details: When the portal didn’t work when they plugged it in mom and dad left for fudge, Jazz went to try and talk them into a more realistic career choice than ghosts. Sam and Tucker came over and Sam dared me to climb in and check it out - it was broken anyway so no harm. Except it wasn’t broken, just that my parents put the on button inside. Which I caught myself on when I tripped on a wire.

Anyway, electrocution! 

(T - Danny for the love of god be more serious, the cheerful tone is creepy)

(D - Hey! I’m the one who died! Shouldn’t I at least get to write my own epitaph)

(S - …Danny this is not an epitaph. You don’t even HAVE a grave)

(D - wow way to rub it in Sam)

(T - yeah Sam)

(S - ugh! Whatever, just stop with the chatting in official files)

(T - “official”)

(S - Tucker.)

(T - shutting up now)

Electrocution! I got zapped to death, but the ectoplasm from the portal was also opening up on top of me and a lot got bonded to me I guess (S - probably because of the electricity with how you ended up with some of Vortex' powers for a little while) at the same time said electricity was reviving me? - probably getting my heart beating again or something, I was a little busy screaming to pay attention (T - yeah okay we're going to Nasty Burger after this. And playing Doomed) - not that it would’ve mattered without the ghostification preventing me from melting me all the way to death.

Status: Me!

Powers:

Chirps! (ghost echolocation of some kind! humans can't hear em - halfas can, of course, in either form)

Form Change (really Sam? This barely counts)

Human form

Ghost form (no need to breathe)

Flight (last clock speed 210mph) (T - and climbing. Dang dude)

Invisibility (S - don’t forget shareable.) (Shareable. sigh)

Intangibility (Shareable)

Ecto Rays (eyes & hands) (T - and butt) (D - dude! I’m deleting that. Tucker why can't I delete it. TUCKER) (T - bow down in awe of my ksill) (S - ksill) (D - ksill) (T - yeah okay it’s permanent now) (D - aw man!)

Ghost Sense (S - why do we never test your range?) (D - no need? They always make themselves obvious or are being sneaky specifically to annoy me so *shrug*) (S - I still think we should test it)

Power Absorption (that time with Vortex’s weather powers)

Cryokinesis (Wayyyyy to much ice. NOT testing max output on that) (T - yeah frozen city was enough, let’s not cause an ice age. Tech needs some cool but too much is still bad and I just upgraded Patricia)

Ghostly Wail (cone of destruction, very exhausting - always at max output. Not to be used)

GHOST FORM ONLY (but really just never)

Cartoon Body (D - what???) (S - Freakshow literally turned you into a puddle and you just turned back and were fine. I don’t know what else to call that) (D - okay fair. but:)

GHOST FORM ONLY

Physical Enhancement (better strength, speed, stamina, durability, reflexes, balance, etc much better than human) (T - why does this look like dnd knockoff stats haha)

GHOST FORM ONLY (S - obviously mr last place in PE)

Resistances (pretty solid on the overshadowing, avoided being taken in by Ember until targeted, didn’t get turned to stone during the Medusa thing) (S - which was pure luck! Be careful!)

Ecto Electricity (ghost stinger, but I really don’t think this counts Sam. I mean I just. Make my ecto zappy. But it’s still just ecto) (S - so is your ICE and you don’t just call that "just cold ecto") (D - fine, but it feels overly specific) (S - maybe writing it all down will make you stop. Forgetting. POWERS!) (D - come on Sam that was a lucky hit! I was distracted! And it turned out fine!) (S - Fenton…) (D - oop okay doing fire now)

Ecto Fire (made Dash’s shoes melty that one time by make the ecto hot) (T - really needs more testing)

Tech possession (chasing Technus into computers, not very tested)

Ghost form only, i guess?

Overshadowing (control people, copy their voice, invade dreams - the control one erases the person’s memory so they don’t know they were overshadowed just lost time. I hate Walker. SO much) (T - rip Danny’s reputation, you’ll be missed)

Probably ghost form only

Duplication (T - That’s optimistic) (D - I’M WORKING ON IT OKAY!?) (S - pretty sure it just falls under cartoon body until you can actually separate) (D - :( betrayal)

Probably ghost form only

More? (D - ugh I hope not) (T - hey don’t say that, maybe you’ll get a power to make the JL give a crap about Amity) (D - honestly I’m getting pretty close to letting Boxy loose in Gotham) (S - Danny, don’t stoop to their level!) (D - it's only box ghost!) (T - I mean he has a point)

~~~

Jason changes his mind, seeing the commentary, and deletes the entire hidden file from the computer as soon as his copy is made. He can go over everything and bring any important info to Bruce separately, the bat’s can just chew on the parents’ files for now.

Once the original files are thoroughly and irretrievably removed he pockets his shiny new USB, makes a second one with all the official files, and heads back up and out - carelessly brushing past a thoroughly irate Red Robin with a pair of firemen and broken jaws of life. And not a scratch on the door; impressive - just in time to get Oracle’s text that he’s got 2 hours and 16 minutes to be at the location on his HUD so he can “arrive” to Amity.

And a fresh set of civilian clothes will be waiting in the plane, Alfred as reliable as ever.

“Files,” he says, tossing the safe USB to Batman and interrupting his interrogation of the police officer.

He catches it effortlessly of course, but the officer stops paying attention to him to jolt at Hood’s reappearance - even outside of Gotham his reputation is fierce.

“I sent a copy to myself. I’ll review them and give you an overview, but other than that consider this the end of my involvement in this little shitshow,” he says, continuing smoothly to the door. “I’m heading back to Gotham.”

Now, he has a little over two hours before Jason Todd needs to arrive in Amity Park. He only needs to lay hands on a laptop that he can isolate from Babs’ influence and he should be able to review the Halfa files in full before he "lands" - after he figures out just why the kid has a grudge against the JL.

[homoesia]

[lizzybeeee]

DATV explaining the 'Regret Prison'

A REGRET PRISON IS STUPID AND I'M TIRED OF PRETENDING THAT ITS NOT

TL;DR: a prison can serve as a metaphor but it shouldn't be entirely comprised of a metaphor.

From what I understood from what the game gave us: Solas has made a new prison to move the God's too - since bringing down the veil would free them from the Black City. This new prison is separate(?) from the fade or so far removed/contained that bringing down the veil would not compromise it...apparently. We interrupt his ritual, Solas gets sucked into the new prison he made, and the elven gods are free.

When Rook gets kicked into the fade they're physically there - which means it's a physical place in the fade, like how it was a mixture of physical/thought when we entered it in DAI. Which makes sense - the gods are real and living beings, they need to be in a place, there must be some aspect of physicality to it.

Alright, cool, it's a Black City 2.0 - I assume it's better defended to prevent people breaking in/out again?

NOPE.

We get there and it's a 'regret prison'?? It's tied to the regrets of those within it? Composed of regrets??? Solas had to wait for the right moment for Rook to be sufficiently 'full of regret' that they could switch places?

So is the prison tied to Solas's regrets? If so, how can Rook escape? The prison seems to work around the idea that it relies on the regrets of the person it's holding to work - which is how/why Rook was able to be trapped and later free themselves (along with whatever remains of the team apparently being able to do something on their end, not that we hear about it).

WHICH IS STUPID!

Are you telling me the prison intended to hold to megalomaniac elven gods was going to imprison them based on their own regrets? Is Solas assuming that Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain are as self-pitying as he is? They'd break out quicker than Rook did! He made a time out corner for the elven gods to sit in and gave them an out if they reflected on their emotions/regrets or decided that they don't regret what they did. Elgar'nan, a spirit of tyranny, is not going to 'regret' his actions - he is going to justify them by telling himself and others that he knows what's best.

We can come across some of Solas's regrets in the prison if you run around a bit and explore:

Remnant of Failure - talking about the orb from Inquisition.

Remnant of Parting - talking about Mythal

Remnant of Reflection - more vague, talking about the Titans I believe.

So maybe he altered it - maybe he intended the prison to be 'locked' with his own regrets because after a millennia of having a pity party he still can't bring himself to self-reflect and look to the future. But what if Solas died? Or if his guilt lessened - would it diminish the strength of the regret prison?

We already have pre-established lore (though DATV has shown they don't really give a crap tbh) that once the being that has claimed/altered an area of the fade is slain, it's influence diminishes both in and outside of the fade. So if the prison was tied to his regrets then it would require Solas to basically live forever to keep it stable - especially if he brought down the veil and removed the one barrier that kept the world and the fade apart.

Rook and Solas needed some assistance to exit - but it doesn't seem like it was much! Solas used his dagger and Rook just...got out through a fade tear? This is Solas's 'more secure' second prison? It has a worse track record than the Black City! If Rook - who is not an elven god - managed to escape the regret prison what is to stop anyone else from breaking in and out of the prison?

And what did Solas intend to do with the blight - the bulk of which is apparently in the black city?? If bringing down the Veil would free the gods in the black city doesn't that mean that the blight would also be released?! Did he have a plan? Why does he go fully ahead with bringing down the veil at the end if the black city is still there and filled with blight?!

I get it: the 'regret prison' is a metaphor for how Solas holds onto the past and how Rook can move past their regrets and grow. He's trapped by the past - it's a prison. Cool. But this prison is supposed to by a physical place to contain the gods - not just to solely contain Solas. The mission is literally called 'A Cage for Gods'.

The Black City is an actual place that's so far out of reach of anywhere else in the fade that no mage can ever reach it while in dreams - let alone physically, which was only done once and took tremendous effort/blood sacrifices. It made sense - it was cool to see floating in the sky in DAO!

Though it's not said specifically, it's strongly implied that Arlathan is the Black City. You can see in the concept art that floating elven city is exactly the same as the black city in DAO! It's this foreboding thing just lurking in the sky - a constant reminder of the sin that led to the horrors of the blights and darkspawn. A real place with lore and history that also serves as a metaphor for the hubris and destruction of those who call themselves gods and act as tyrants -> for both the evanuris and the magisters.

I WANT TO UNDERSTAND THIS BIOWARE!

WHAT IS THIS KINGDOM HEARTS NONSENSE???!!

[spacedace]

Got inspired by the below tiktok and the idea of the Rogues killing the Joker in revenge for Jason instead of Bruce and had to write about it.

Here, have probably way too many words (with more to come most likely, this really won't leave me alone) of the Rogue's feelings about Jason's death at the Joker's hands and everything that followed.

(also I know the timeline is a bit screwy, shhh just go with it, we're going on vibes with this one lol)

-

Childhood was not held universally sacred in the dark streets of Gotham.

The city was hard and cruel and she didn’t care about the ages of those that were ground up and spit out in her oily black heart.

A kid could slit your throat as easy as a man grown in a place like their fine city, maybe easier even for those who still fell for the ideal of children being incapable of anything but innocence and sweetness. Children learned from the world around them though, they learned from the savagery that filled their world, the hard scrabble desperate attempts to survive. They learned what dark corners to avoid, which ones were safer to skitter down.

It didn’t mean there weren’t still some rules of decency to be honored though.

Most folks, even those in the circle of the Rogues, largely left kids out of the equation. Crossfire happened of course, hitting busy city centers always meant some kind of collateral. But there wasn’t much that they got out of purposefully hurting kids outside a black mark on their name in most levels of the grungy underbelly of the city and one hell of a big target on their back. Both from the Bat and those criminals in the dark with them that took offense to those kinds of things. They were crooks, but with few exceptions they weren’t complete monsters.

Robin had always held an interesting place in their grungy little ecosystem. Anything to do with the Bat was generally ruled as gloves-off, do what you do without hesitation. And Robin - both of ‘em - had no problem hitting hard and being ruthless. The first one in particular had a feral sort of rage to him that was a terrifying thing to be on the business end of.

But they were still kids.

Defending yourself from any kid swinging on you was fair game, a person had the right to defend themselves. Grabbing up Robin to hold hostage or bait Gotham’s local cryptid, that was all fine and dandy. You could even get away with roughing the kid up a little here and there, so long as you made sure not to go too far and always kept hits to where the kid’s armor was the thickest. No hard and fast written rules, mind, but general rules of thumbs. Lines indistinct due to the shaky ground a child dancing through the night as a vigilante left all of them on, but ones clear enough that you knew when you were at risk of going too far.

Besides, the Robins were good kids. Fucking feral little shits, of course, able to leave you bleeding just as easy from a kick as they were a sharp word. But good kids. Even most the Rogues in the Gallery liked em. It was hard not to be at least a little fond of a gutsy little punk like that.

Though they were all maybe a tad less nervous around Robin II than they were the original.

Robin I had a lot of anger burning in him, a lot of anger in him, but he was still a cheerful boy with a bright attitude that was refreshing in a world so bleak and dark as the one they all lived in. It was up in the air which was scarier about the kid: The smiled he gave when he was about to give a hands on demonstration about how much force a tiny ten year old could put into a kick when they had half a dozen spins shoved into a flip to wind up to 80 miles an hour, or the flash of his teeth when he was demonstrating the knife sharp brilliance of his belief that Batman was only as frightening as Robin was hopeful.

They weren’t sure if he realized that sometimes they felt a helluva lot more hope at the sight of the Bat when the little bird was putting the hurt on them, or if he’d simply folded that fact neatly into his core philosophy without issue.

Robin II on the other hand had this kind of quiet shyness to him - even as he was shouting the most inventive swears ever heard by human ear at someone while he kicked them in the balls hard enough to make ‘em see not just the face of their own god but a few dozen besides. He was just as unhinged as the Robin before him - seemed to be a requirement for the job really - but there was a distinct different in how the two birds flitted about the darkened skyline of the city. Where the first Robin’s smile was as much danger as it was dazzle, a fanged declaration of victory against the dark, Robin II’s was a sunny, stubborn declaration of perseverance. Kid was sassy and smart, and never - ever - flinched away from extending a hand to those he thought in need of it.

Even if the folks he offered that hand to were in the middle of an attack on some fancy Gala or Wayne Enterprises or whatever target of the week it was. Even knowing the offered hand was likely to be slapped away and followed by a right hook. Kid still always tried.

They all knew why.

The Bat was big on offering chances, on rehabilitation rather than damnation. Some of Robin II being the way he was came from the broody cryptid he followed around. But Batman couldn’t claim to be the sole reason for Robin II being the way he was, couldn’t even pretend to be the cause of most of it. Nah, they knew why the little bird was the way he was.

That unmistakable thick accent. That frame that was always a little too thin even as he got older and stronger. That unshakable, headstrong spirit.

Robin II was an Alley Kid.

A true child of Gotham.

Her polluted waters in his veins. Her smoggy air in his lungs. Her shadows clinging to his edges less like a beast looking to swallow a small bird up and more like a protective mother hiding her hatchling. He understood the world most of them came from. The one they all lived in. Knew it in a way anyone who hadn’t been swallowed up by the dark never really could.

Everyone had their favorite, but even those that claimed the first Robin as theirs couldn’t deny that Robin II was someone to be respected. Nor could they deny a fondness for the chain smoking, classic lit referencing, perpetually baby-faced little shit. They’d all had knock out drag out fights with the kid and knew how fucking unhinged the puny motherfucker could be in a fight, but he always tempered it with offers of resources, of a listening ear, of understanding.

He visited them after they’d been arrested sometimes. In Arkham, or Blackgate or wherever else they’d been locked up in after being stopped by the Dynamic Duo. The little bird would make the rounds whenever he had a broken wing or was stuck waiting as the Bat interrogated someone else or for any other reason he wasn’t out flitting about the city skyline at night. He’d bring cookies or snacks and even cigarettes from his own secret stash on the rare occasion, mask unable to hide the furtive glances around to check for the living shadow that was the disapproving Bat.

The Rogues and their Goons always had a soft spot for the Robins. And Robin II made it especially easy to let fondness bleed out of them from time to time. He was a good kid.

But childhood was not held universally sacred in the dark streets of Gotham.

Bad things happened to good kids all the time.

And some of the monsters that lurked in the city’s darkest shadows took the black mark of a kid killer as a point of pride.

Robin II disappeared one day. Just after that piece of shit Garzonas took the fast way down from the top of a tall building. There were a lot of Rogues with doctoral degrees to their names but even those Goons that dropped out of school before they learned to spell their own names could do that math.

The big bad Bat had benched the boy after the fierce little bird had done what any decent member of the criminal underbelly would have. There were those that thought maybe it’d been an accident, that the kid was pulled off duty because of being too upset at unintentionally crossing the heavy line the Bat drew in the sand. Those voices were drowned out pretty quick though.

Sure, Robin II was all about second chances, of doing better, of redemption. But Garzonas had chances to spare and only ever spat in the face of those offering them. Doubled down on being a monster in a way very, very few of the Rogues Gallery would. The kid was a sweetheart, but he wasn’t no push over and there were some things so heinous that there was only one way of handling them. Crime Alley had its own kind of justice system, and when faced with a monster that was beyond even Batman’s jurisdiction, Robin II did what he always did: fell back on his roots.

Or so the rumors said, at least.

That was the thing about Gotham’s seedy underbelly. It was a grimy, wretched nest of vipers and cut-throats, but it was also worse than any beauty parlor when it came to gossip. No one actually knew anything other than that piece of shit motherfucker took a dive while Robin was chasing him and that he’d not been seen on the streets since. But most had a fondness for the kid, and a distaste for the kind of cruelty Garzonas reveled in and there was no proof that Robin hadn’t gone and done the world a favor by drop kicking that barbaric sack of shit off a roof. So as far as most in the Gallery were concerned, the little bird had stepped up and been a hero.

Time passed. Not a lot. But enough. The Bat disappeared too, popping up on an entire other continent in a way that was awfully tempting. Even with other Masks playing baby sitter while the local cryptid was away. Rogues were scrambling to set plans in motion, Goons getting hired en masse, weapons and weird chemicals getting delivered to shady places across Gotham by the truck-full. The criminal underbelly was abuzz with the same excited energy of children the day before a big birthday party.

And then the news came in.

There were people in the dark who made their living finding things out. Knowing things that no one else did or could. Some even specialized, keeping tabs on Batman and Robin better than anyone else in the business were able. And when the information they found wasn’t anything handy to have tucked into a back pocket or a secret they were paid extremely well to keep? They held on to with the same tenacity a sieve clung to water.

Robin II had run off across the globe and ended up in Ethiopia. Something to do with a doctor doing aid work, the same something that had the Bat end up there was the assumption. Kid ran off to handle things himself or was sent on a separate path on purpose for some plan or other the Bat had cooked up on his hunt.

Whatever the reason, the kid crossed paths with the Clown.

Alone.

Childhood was not held universally sacred in the dark streets of Gotham. The city was hard and cruel and she didn’t care about the ages of those that were ground up and spit out in her oily black heart. But Robin II was hers, the child of her heart, an exception to the rule. And besides, most folks - even those in the Rogues Gallery - largely left the purposeful harm of kids out of the equation.

The Joker wasn’t most folks.

And the little bird was a long way away from the protective shadows of his mother city.

The Rogues and their Goons always had a soft spot for the Robins. And Robin II made it especially easy to let fondness bleed out of them from time to time. He was a good kid.

When the news broke, it broke most of them right along with it.

Plans stalled. Schemes ended. Gotham, for an unnervingly quiet stretch of time that neither its civilians or the world at large understood, went still. Crime continued, of course, but the big names weren’t seen. It was only right, by the standards of those that lived their lives in the dark, that they hold off and give the man that fought them all so relentlessly over the past years the time he needed to focus on hunting down the monster that killed his son. He didn’t need the distraction, and they all owed it to Robin II not to interfere while the Bat at last put a final end to the Clown.

And the hellish cryptid would need his full focus on this one. The Joker wasn’t one to take lightly at the best of times, but he’d set himself up neatly in the middle of a nasty bear trap. Ugly and complicated in the way everything with the Clown was. Interference from the CIA, from the UN, from Superman.

Shit went down. People heard about the Bat and the Clown throwing down in a helicopter plummeting from the sky in one hell of a water landing. Big Blue fished Batman out of the drink before he could drown but there’d been no sign of the Joker.

But the Bat would find him.

They all knew the relentless bastard would find him. It was just a matter of time. With the hellish drive of a demon straight from Gotham’s darkest shadows, the Bat would track the grinning, child killing ghoul down and make right the terrible wrong the evil motherfucker had done. Batman would hunt him to the ends of the earth and enact the justice he held up so fiercely. Robin II would have the vengeance the kid so rightly deserved.

It was just a matter of time. So they waited. And waited.

Days.

Weeks.

Months.

The Clown still lived.

The world, impossibly, began to move on. The Bat returned to his lurking in the night, picking off gangs and petty crooks and no-name gangsters as if nothing had happened at all. More vicious, more savage, but failing to turn that rise in brutality into the killing blow against the one figure that so rightly deserved it.

No one knew what was happening. There were rumors and theories, as there always were in the underground. Some thought that it wasn’t the Bat at all back in Gotham but someone else pretending for awhile, looking after his neglected city while he continued his pursuit of the Joker. Other held that it was the Bat but the whole thing was a ploy to draw the Clown out into the open. A pretense at not caring meant to get under the Clown’s skin, make the asshole mad enough to get stupid and sloppy and reveal himself.

That the man simply had given up was beyond comprehension. Beyond what any upstanding Rogue could accept. So it simply couldn’t be true. There was a trick being played. Some brilliant game of 4D chess that none of them had been able to parse out. It’d be revealed in time, and they see the brilliant trap that had been set. The Clown would be lured out, the Bat would put him down for good, and then they’d all at last raise a glass to the little bird that had been shot down far too soon and smoke shitty cigarettes and quote literary masters and mourn the loss one of Gotham’s own true children.

They just had to play along. Stumbling forward back into their usual habits, pretending that it was a choice and not the world just forcibly dragging them along. It’d make sense, eventually. The Bat had a plan. Robin II wasn’t forgotten, his killer not left free to roam and ravage unpunished for what he’d done.

And then one day there was a new bird flitting across the rooftops.

Chasing the Bat’s looming frame like a reverse shadow. Bright flashes of color in contrast to the bleak darkness of Gotham’s grimy nights. Small and thin and young.

Not the first Robin. With his showman bright grin and bloody rage and unwavering belief in the terrifying power of hope. Not the brilliant, vicious little boy that they’d seen grow over the years into the fierce and fearless Nightwing.

Not Robin II either.

Not Gotham’s soft hearted little bruiser with his unshakable belief that people could be better if given the chance, shinning so bright in the dark as he held out a hand that even the Rogues had no choice but to believe right along with him sometimes. Not the tough little songbird they’d never get to see grow up. Unavenged and unhonored. Put in a box and buried in the ground with a name none of them would ever know carved into a stone they’d never be able to visit.

No.

It was a new Robin.

A new child with the R emblazoned upon his chest.

Sharp and quick and young in the way the birds always were when they started flying at the Bat’s side. Every inch of the boy’s tiny frame a tragedy and an insult. One very, very few of Gotham’s vicious underbelly were willing to tolerate.

Childhood was not held universally sacred in the dark streets of Gotham, but there was a damn big difference between holding something sacred and not giving a damn about it at all. There were rules unspoken but understood, a way things were done. Nothing so solid or concrete as a code of conduct, more a collection of time honored traditions. Blood for blood was among the oldest and truest, and the more precious the person taken the more vital and vicious payment was to be made in kind.

The Clown had killed Robin II.

Beaten the kid half to death and then finished the job with a bomb.

Everyone knew he’d done it laughing all the way.

The Bat should have done the same in kind. Done worse. It was justice, it was what was right. You kill a kid you’re marked forever. You kill one so well liked and kill ‘em like that and you’re destined for a cruel and cold death. The Bat had first dibs. It was his kid. It was his right to put an end to that awful laughter and let his son have peace at last.

But he never did.

Nightwing had. For a bit. For a moment.

Robin I, who half the time had scared them all more than the Bat ever could. Dazzling and dizzying and dangerous. Gave back the pain and hurt the Clown had forced upon him with clenched fists and bone shattering hits. They were glad for him, that he was able to beat the monster who had taken his little brother from him to death, that he was able to have such justice.

And then the Bat stepped in.

Revived the fucking Clown.

A slap in the face. The snapping crack of a spine beneath one straw too many. The final, unforgivable insult the man had dared visit upon not just the child taken from him but the entirety of Gotham.

The Rogues and their Goons always had a soft spot for the Robins. Respected their ferocity, admired their moxie, marveled at their ability to keep shining in the dark like they did. Robin II made it especially easy to let fondness bleed out of the city’s dirty criminal underbelly from time to time.

He was a good kid.

He deserved better.

Better than the silence and peace he should be granted in death to be marred by the mad cackles of his killer still running around alive and unpunished. Better than his father giving up, returning to the same old routine as if nothing had happened at all. Better than the Bat snatching up a new bird less than a year later.

Gotham and her Rogues had given the Bat time enough to do what needed to be done.

It was their turn.

[bacchuschucklefuck]

gukgak specifically from my typing (man w/ three jobs & a creeping sense of dread)