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aealzx · 3 months

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Prologue Next

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“We’ve secured the suspected meta.”

“Copy that. Red Hood, do you have eyes on the last of them?”

“Not yet, but I’m pretty sure she’s in this apartment.”

Several months ago a group of unpredictable rogues had popped up in Gotham. Nothing unusual for the city, other than they appeared to be a group of teenagers who were both criminals and heroes. Stolen goods of various types ranging from common camping supplies, food, and clothing, to an odd assortment of medical supplies and technology. Assaulted police, other heroes and vigilantes given the slip. And yet there were also many criminals dealt with that hero teams couldn’t account for who was responsible. The main lead they had gotten was the suspected meta human. A girl with white hair that could fly, phase through walls, and various other super human feats. She had been the first lead they could latch onto, and from there they had built profiles on the other three. The oldest girl appeared to be in her late teens, another girl just a few years younger, a boy the same age as the second girl, and then the metahuman, younger than all of them. They had been more of a curiosity than a serious threat. Until they had stolen something from the wrong people and painted a target on their heads. Now they were in a cross between a rescue and capture mission as the team only known as The Phantoms were being raided by pissed off crooks.

The three youngest had already been caught by the rest of the team sent by Batman, it was only the eldest girl that remained. And unless Tim could pull off a miracle Jason only had ten minutes to find her before the planted bomb destroyed the building they’d been hiding in.

With Barbara’s help he and a few of the others had searched the entire apartment building, checking each room for the remaining Phantom and placing eyes where they’d been to make sure she didn’t give them the slip and run to somewhere they’d already been. Jason had just slammed through the front door of one more apartment when he’d answered Barbara’s question, a scattering of food wrappers in a trash pile, a small cook top, sleeping areas, and other items for basic needs betraying recent habitation. It was a good hint that this was where the Phantoms had stationed, especially with the scrabbled together computer workstation setup off to one side.

There were only three other doors in the apartment, and Jason moved to the first one quickly. A closet near the front door. Empty. A bathroom across from the front room. Also empty. Which meant the last room, the bedroom, had to be where she was, if she was there.

Jason flung the door open and promptly caught the crowbar that was swung at his face, accompanied by a near frantic screech from the girl he’d been looking for

“Got her,” Jason announced to the comms, deftly yanking the crowbar out of the girl’s hands and tossing it to the side. “Begin evacuation, I’ll be out in - ….. Shit.”

As Jason spoke to Barbara and the rest of the team he decidedly ignored the girl’s demands for him to get out, having to block a fist thrown his way. He’d noticed she was obviously distressed, tears marking her dirty cheeks and a fierce glare directed his way. It wasn’t unexpected considering she was the last of her team they didn’t have in custody; she must have felt any myriad of emotions ranging from despair at failing to fear that they would hurt her. Yet Jason quickly noticed something that made him cuss mid report, and realize the girl's actions weren’t out of defiance, but protectiveness.

“There’s five of them,” Jason reported, finger pressing to his comm and eyes locked onto the new figure that hadn’t been part of any of their intel. And for a good reason. The lad was unconscious on a cot, one of the stolen items in the team’s list, and he didn’t look good. If it weren’t for the shallow, shuddering breaths from him Jason would have thought he were already dead, his skin ghastly pale other than fever flushed cheeks. “There’s another boy, heavily injured. I’m bringing them both out, have someone standing by.”

“DON’T TOUCH HIM!”

Of course the girl heard his report, and renewed her efforts to fight Jason, blocking him from reaching the fifth member. They didn’t have time to converse gently though, and so Jason grabbed her arm and yanked her forward. “Listen! I’m not going to hurt you, I’m trying to rescue you. There’s a bomb! We have to get out of the building, and get him to a hospital.”

The girl was smart. Or at least not dumb enough to ignore Jason’s words completely, for she froze the moment he mentioned the bomb. “...What?” she asked, wide eyes locking onto him, daring him to trick her.

“Look, you guys trying to steal Lazarus water pissed off the wrong people. They planted a bomb, and my team and I are here to rescue you. We can talk about your crime runs later, alright?” Jason explained a little more, really not wanting to have to knock the girl out too just to get the two to a safe area if he could help it.

The way the girl’s eyes opened, a horrified gasp escaping her, told Jason she wasn’t a bad person. Or at least reinforced what their actions aside from theft had suggested. That was the reaction of someone who realized they’d made a mistake, and felt the weight bearing down from the mess that had been caused because of it. She stopped trying to fight Jason now, pulling away and rushing to the 5th member’s side, grabbing his limp arm and hooking it around her own shoulders to try and lift him up.

“Is he safe to move?” Jason asked, stepping forward to help. Even though the lad looked fairly small, he was still too heavy for the girl judging by how she was struggling to even get him upright. “His spine isn’t hurt? No broken bones?” he asked to clarify when the girl looked at him with a question half voiced.

“No. Nothing broken, just the-” she confirmed, cutting off when Jason reached forward and effortlessly scooped the frail teen up.

“Hold onto my back. We’re going that way,” Jason directed, ignoring the way she tensed, holding herself back from demanding he not touch her friend, and nodding towards the window.

“WhAT?” the girl sputtered, hands jerking as she internally wrestled with being obedient to him or her own sense of self preservation.

“We’re out of time. Just grab on,” Jason half snapped, roughly kicking the window to shatter the glass, twisting his frame to shield the lad in his arms as well, just in case. “One minute,” he added, repeating what Barbara announced in his comms to reinforce his directions.

It was enough. Pursing her lips and giving a soft whimper the girl rushed forward to throw her arms around his shoulders from behind, clinging to him with a death grip. Jason wished he had a better way to carry both of them, but he hadn’t been expecting there to be two of them in the first place. So he could only hope the girl’s grip was strong enough to hang on as he shot a zip line towards where the others were gathered. After getting the other end secured to the building they were in, Jason latched the clip on the rope and swung over the fire escape, curling his legs up to make sure the lad he was carrying had plenty of support. He could hear a muffled, drawn out squeak from the girl on his back, but didn’t comment.

“Wh- Ja- DANNY! LET HIM GO YOU-” the mid teenage girl caught sight of them first, snarling and trashing against her restraints when she saw who Jason had. Cass refused to let her go though, pulling her back to kneeling and considering pushing her down further if necessary. She didn’t get to finish her protests though.

“HEADS DOWN!” Dick shouted after Barbara announced a second to detonation, and those who had capes were throwing them over their targets and each other, hunching over to bodily protect them from the cascades of blasts ripping through the apartment building the Phantoms had been stationed in. They were far enough away that they shouldn’t get hurt from the collapsing rubble, but there was still the possibility of smaller debris getting thrown at them. So they remained huddled on the ground a safe distance away until the rubble settled, and only when it stopped shifting did they stand again.

“Oracle, status on the inbound units?” Dick was the first to speak, the others giving sighs of relief and partially relaxing.

The two middle teenage children had quieted significantly after the explosion, the boy looking at the rubble in shock as he realized they would have been caught in it if it weren't for the group of vigilantes that had captured them. And the girl held a similar period of stunned silence before she started kicking at Cass again. “Get off me! Get your filthy hands off Danny!”

“Sam, it’s okay.” The eldest girl spoke with a shaking voice, slipping off Jason’s back and leaning her head against him in a moment of despair. Cass’s hand froze where it had been about to knock out chop her feisty captive, blinking and looking up instead. So the middle teen’s name was Sam? And the unconscious lad was Danny?

“The meta is waking up. Should I dose her again?” That was Damian, keeping an eye on the youngest Phantom. She was starting to stir, but the eldest Phantom spoke up before the others could.

“Don’t. Please. They’ve been through enough. Just please bring her over here, I’ll manage her,” the eldest girl directed. Her voice was still shaking, but it had steadied somewhat after Jason had turned slightly while remaining crouched to allow her to sit next to their 5th member, her hand resting on his cheek as she was gathering the breaking pieces of her determination.

Stephanie and Cass only exchanged looks with each other, and also Dick and Tim, before Jason spoke up. “Just bring her over. She might be more docile when she’s near this one.”

They didn’t seem completely convinced, but Stephanie at least complied, moving to crouch on one knee with the youngest girl while Damian hovered nearby with another dose of sedatives.

“You’re doing the right thing kid. When the cops get here with the paramedics they’ll get Danny taken care of. You don’t have to worry,” Jason encouraged the eldest girl, grateful that she was getting her team to behave.

“They can’t take him,” she rejected, catching the rest off guard.

“What? Look if it’s about money don’t worry, it’ll be taken care of,” Jason insisted, hoping it wasn’t because of a different possibility he was quickly starting to consider. He’d thought it was just his imagination, but Danny was unusually cold to the touch. Almost like ice. There was another common reason he knew people avoided hospitals despite being this injured.

The eldest girl shook her head again. “It’s not that it’s….” she paused, seeming both reluctant to tell them but also not sure how to tell them what was going on. She wasn’t even sure what was wrong. But when the youngest teen groaned and started to shift the eldest looked at her and found her answer. “Danny is like Danielle. Doctors can’t help them. They’re too different.”

That’s what Jason thought, but it didn’t mean he wanted to hear it, and it earned an understanding but frustrated groan from him and some of the others. “Shit. Alright,“ Dick took charge of the situation, hissing slightly and reaching to his own comms. “Oracle, where’s the nearest safe house? The 5th member is another potential meta, unconscious, and heavy bandaging over the whole torso. Can you contact home and have Penny-one or The Doctor on standby?”

As Dick took care of directing the team, Jason took care of keeping their tentative ally willing to listen to them. “We might have some contacts that can help. We have friends that also need more attention that the regular doctor can give them. Do you kids have names we can use?”

It was more of a lead than they’d had since they’d gotten stranded there, so the eldest teen seemed hesitant but hopeful to grab onto it. After a moment of thinking, her other hand reaching out to Danielle as she started to blink her eyes open, she responded. “My name is Jazz. This is my little brother Danny, my little sister Dani with an I, and our friends Sam and Tucker.”

“... Your parents gave your little siblings the same name?” Jason couldn’t help asking after hearing the relationships. That also explained a lot about why Jazz had been so frantically protective of Danny, aside from her being the oldest of the group.

“It’s… a long story,” Jazz admitted, grimacing a little. “Danielle… was unexpected.”

Looked like Jazz didn’t quite trust them enough. That was fine, they didn’t need a whole backstory right off. Oracle could probably figure it out easily now that she had names and relations. “Fair enough,” Jason dismissed with a grunt, ending his conversation as Dick approached them.

“Hey. There’s a whole mess of stuff going on, I know, but right now we’re going to focus on making sure everyone is taken care of, and then we can figure out the rest of the mess later, okay?” Dick started, leaning low with his hands on his knees and speaking gently. “The police and paramedics can take care of the criminals that were hunting you, but since he’s a special case we’re going to move to a different location where we’ll give everyone a check up. Sound good?”

Jazz didn’t jump at the offer, but they could see she saw promise in it, and hesitantly nodded. “My friends and I stay together at all times. Got it?” she demanded.

“Sure,” Dick agreed, not seeing any issue with that. “But we’ll keep the restraints on if necessary, alright? You all still have charges of assault after all.”

It was easy to see Jazz’s expression fall significantly at the reminder, as though her soul had been slightly crushed. “Yeah… okay,” she agreed, swallowing some nausea that had churned her stomach at being reminded they were criminals. Then, before Danielle could fuss too much, Jazz turned to rest a hand on the small girl’s arm. “Dani, these guys have agreed to help us. So behave and don’t pick any fights unless I say otherwise, alright?”

The fist that Danielle had prepared to punch her holder didn’t move, and after a moment Danielle groaned in reluctant relent. “Guhhhh can I at least punch the guy who drugged me? I feel awful.”

The comment earned a weak chuckle from Jazz, and she patted Danielle’s arm. “I’ll think about it. Just rest for now. We’re moving to a safe place.” She hoped she wasn’t lying to Danielle, and that these people would actually, finally give them the help they needed.

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I guess I go here now =v=;;;

Partially inspired by this post. But not including everything because there's a lot of stuff I don't understand. |D This just got stuck in my head so hard I couldn't work on anything else.

#my art #dpxdc #dcxdp #dc x dp #dp x dc #I dunno what to tag this with #do people get mad if the main tags get crossover stuff in them?#phantom rogues #nervous about posting #but yolo

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