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luxaofhesperides · 11 months ago

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Can I please have meet cute/weird with mistaken villain! Danny (but really just a engineer and or chem student) and the one being put on investigation cause Danny is a day villain(not really)! Duke

Technically, Danny Fenton is innocent. Technically.

Duke wants to give him the benefit of the doubt, especially since he’s having so much trouble finding solid evidence that Danny is stealing from a wide variety of people, but he’s been burned before by trying to see people as better than they were. It doesn’t change the fact that Oracle’s cameras keep spotting Danny right before a building on the street is broken into and something stolen. He’s always just walking down the sidewalk; no one has spotted him entering or exiting a building, but he’s around far too often to be unconnected to these burglaries.

It doesn’t help that strange, petty crimes have been on the rise since Danny first arrived in Gotham.

So.

Danny Fenton is technically innocent.

Duke is trying to prove that he’s not.

Maybe I’m looking too closely, he thinks, going over Danny’s sparse file in the Hatch. Maybe Danny’s only one person in a bigger operation.

He could just be the lookout, the runner, the information gatherer who marks which buildings to hit. He may even be the scapegoat, the sacrificial lamb; Danny has no support in Gotham, no family, no job. There would be no one to help him if he got arrested or injured in a fight. He’s a freshman college student from Illinois who should be unprepared for life in Gotham but is somehow managing to survive like a native.

There’s a lot about Danny that doesn’t add up.

Duke has seen plenty of different people since he first went out as the Signal. He’s tried to be kind and give people the benefit of the doubt, but it leads to his loved ones being put in danger. Some people are truly evil, some working on a malicious agenda, some are misguided in their beliefs, and some are desperate people who see no other way to move forward.

He’s not sure yet which on Danny is, but he’s hoping Danny is just desperate and needs a little help to get out of a life of crime.

Which leads to the next problem: Duke has no idea what Danny is steal, or why. He hits both rich and poor folks, civilians and members of the mob, and once, notably, stole something right out of Cobblepot’s office. Allegedly, at least, since no one saw him enter or exit the office, not even the security cameras.

But added to the whispers going around about a new group in Gotham snatching people up from the streets, and some strange green substances found in warehouses often raided by police for the frequent drug labs that pop up in them…

It doesn’t look good for Danny. Especially when a few of the items he stole were found where people either vanished or where that green substance has been found.

A week of analysis in the Batcave and they still don’t know what it is.

Both Damian and Jason suspected Lazarus water, but the composition was completely different. By the look of the molecular structure, it shouldn’t have been in a liquid form at all.

All these findings lead back to one person who may have answers: Danny Fenton.

According to Tim, who’s already broken into Danny’s dorm room and checked over all the labs he has classes in, Danny has some concerning items in his possession. Various inventions and little metal knick-knacks put together by a practiced hand. He was also the one to find all the information that went into Danny’s file when it was first being made: social media posts, school report cards, news articles about his parents… everything.

And then he had an emergency mission to take with the Titans that swept him out of Gotham leaving Duke to tackle this investigation on his own.

He doesn’t have Tim’s natural skill in stalking and invading privacy. He hates breaking into people’s spaces and following them around, but needs must and he has to force himself to work through the discomfort.

It’s a good thing he did, too. Danny’s leaving his dorm after his last afternoon class, hood up to hide his face and something held in the front pocket of his hoodie. He ducks around people on the sidewalk easily, almost as if he’s gliding through the crowd instead of walking.

Duke follows from above, bending the light around him to hide him from sight.

He walks for some time, weaving through alleys and streets as if he’s been in Gotham his whole life, leaving behind the university campus to head towards Otisberg. There’s something strange about the way Danny walks, as if he’s moving around people who aren’t there, guided by something Duke can’t hear. Even using his meta abilities doesn’t do much beyond show him where Danny’s going to be in the next few seconds.

He continues to follow Danny on the rooftops, walking along the edge to keep him in sight.

Then Danny stops behind an apartment building and tilts his head back to look up at it. He tilts his head to the side, then nods and looks around the empty alley. Duke crouches down, keeping his eyes on Danny in the hopes of catching him in the act—

Danny disappears.

Duke curses under his breath and jumps down from the roof, putting more strength into his abilities as soon as his feet touch the ground.

The space where Danny was has a faint outline, oddly enough. He’s never seen that before. From it is a semi-transparent trail, smoke-like and a pale green leading into the building. It goes straight into a wall, as if Danny walked through it.

He can’t go in and search the entire apartment, but he can grapple up and take a look into the hallways to see where Danny’s heading. If he was looking up, then that’s where he should be heading.

It doesn’t take any effort to scale the building. There are ledges and windowsills and plenty of handholds for him to propel himself off of, and paired with his powers, Duke is able to find the correct floor in just under two minutes.

The green smoke slowly dances through the air of the ninth floor, on the east side of the building. If he’s been counting the rooms correctly, then the target of tonight’s burglary has to be apartment 924.

The curtains are drawn on the window he makes his way over to, and his abilities don’t show him anything helpful for the immediate future. He hates going in blind, especially to a civilian’s home, but capturing Danny takes priority. Duke picks the lock and slides the window up slowly, making sure it stays quiet, then slips into an empty bedroom.

He makes his way out into the hallway on silent feet, keeping a wary eye on the thin smoke strands of green, curling along the walls. The rest of the apartment is empty as well, pale sunlight slanting across the floor through the blinds.

Everything is still and silent. Danny’s nowhere to be found.

Did he miss Danny leaving, somehow? Was this a misdirect to get him out of the way while Danny stole from another location? Did he know Duke was following him?

But no, his ears pick up on the faint sound of clothes rustling.

Cautiously, Duke turns towards the front door, where the door to the coat closet is open. He focuses on what’s going to happen in the next twenty seconds and sees Danny panic, then disappear from sight again, but a transparent outline of his body is visible just enough to show him where he runs to. Best not to spook him; Duke pulls at the light around him and bends it to hide him from sight.

Then he moves along the wall, getting around the open door without bumping into anyone or anything.

A figure in front of the coats, shoving them to the side roughly, flickers in and out of view, almost like a reflection in water, distorted by ripples on the surface.

Danny pops back into visibility suddenly, scowling at the coats. “Are you sure it’s in here?” he asks the empty air.

There is no answer, but Danny acts like there is. He rolls his eyes and says, “It’s a favor. That I’m doing for you. I can literally stop right now and you wouldn’t be able to stop me.” He shoves aside another heavy winter coat, then sighs. “Why don’t you look for it, and then tell me where it is.”

He steps back and bumps into Duke.

Danny whirls around, eyes wide, and blast of green light has Duke crashing back into the wall, trying to blink spots out of his eyes.

“Wait!” he yells, grabbing for Danny before he can run off. “I just wanna talk!”

“Standing right behind me like a serial killer does not make you look like someone who wants to talk!” Danny yells back, slipping through his hands like mist.

“I just have a few questions!”

“Well, I have a question: why?!”

“Will you hold still, we’re being too loud!”

Danny escapes to the other side of the apartment, next to a window looking fully prepared to fling himself out of it. But he does stop yelling, so Duke is counting it as a success.

“Why is the Signal coming after me?” Danny asks, glaring at him suspiciously.

“Dude,” Duke says, “You’ve been seen outside of every single building that’s had a burglary since you first arrived in Gotham. All the Bats are after you, they just sent me because I’m the only one active during the day.”

“All the Bats?” Danny repeats, losing what little color he had in his face.

He looks legitimately scared, pale enough to be concerning, and Duke drops his guard and tries to relax the tension in the apartment. “I’m not gonna turn you into the cops or anything. I just had questions and you seem like the most likely person to have answers. That’s it.”

Danny still looks wary, ready to run at a moment’s notice, but he doesn’t leave when Duke approached casually, leaning his weight against the couch.

“So,” he begins, “What’s the deal with all the thievery? It’s rarely something super rare or expensive.”

There’s a long few minutes where Danny doesn’t answer, looking anywhere but at Duke. Then he twitches a bit and glares off to the side, and says, “I taking items that are contaminated with ectoplasm to help ghosts move through the veil and leave Gotham.”

That tells him nothing! That just gives Duke more questions! But at least it’s an answer, the first one any of them have got.

“I think you’re gonna have to explain a little more.”

“Ghosts are real, alright?”

“Yes.”

Danny stops. Squints at him. “What do you mean, ‘yes’?”

“Ghosts are real,” Duke repeats, “There are a few who help heroes or are heroes themselves, but that’s more on the magic side of things so I’m not super familiar with it.”

“Magic,” Danny says slowly. “Sure, alright. Um. Yes, ghosts are real. And there are a ton in Gotham who need help moving on, but they’re too weak to get past the veil. Something about Gotham has made the veil super strong, so they need a little boost to get through. Additional ectoplasm bonded helps with that.”

“And that’s why you’re stealing random things?”

“The ghosts I help can kind of sense ectoplasm-infused things, but they need me to grab them since they can’t hold anything without a physical body.”

Duke nods slowly. “Okay, that’s starting to answer some things. We have found those objects in the last places missing people were seen. Any idea what’s going on with that?”

“Yeah, those people were already dead.”

The way Danny says the most concerning answers as if they’re nothing is really throwing Duke off his game. He was expecting to be calm and serious to keep Danny from freaking out too much and look like a legitimate hero. But as soon as Danny started talking, all his nerves fell away and Duke is left grasping for composure.

“They were…”

“They were ghosts, yeah. And they needed to get through the veil. But they were also able to possess their own bodies and didn’t realize they were dead until I had to break the news to them, which is why it looks like living people just up and disappeared.”

“Okay… What about the green stuff we’ve been finding?”

“Ectoplasm.” Danny holds up a hand and a neon green light surrounds it. Except it looks more solid than light, as if it can be touched, and it moves on its own like fire around Danny’s fingers. “It’s what ghosts are made of.”

Oh. If Danny has ectoplasm, does that mean…

“Are you dead?” Duke asks, heart dropping.

Instead of looking upset about the question, or even disturbed by it, Danny just shrugs and waves his hand back and forth. “A little.”

“Okay, so let me get this straight,” Duke says, trying to resist the urge to rub his temples. It’s a habit he didn’t mean to pick up from Batman, and it would just look silly with his helmet in the way. “You’re just doing all this to help ghosts?”

“Yeah. Basically. They asked for help man, of course I was going to help them.”

Danny’s a good person. He’s just a good person to ghosts. But this is good news either way, and he can let the others know that Danny isn’t the next Catwoman and is entirely unconnected from any drug production. Everything that made him look like a criminal is just the fault of ghosts.

“Speaking of,” Danny continues, “Looks like they found what they need, so I’m going to grab that real quick.” He pushes off of the wall and heads for the closet again, moving past Duke without any fear. Duke follows, keeping a few feet of distance between them so Danny doesn’t feel trapped, and watches as he shoves aside the coats again and pulls a shoebox out of the depths of the closet. From it, he takes a single intricate lace headband and holds it up.

It looks normal, if a little old, but when Danny sends ectoplasm through it, the lace lights up and holds the glow.

He pulls some strange contraption out of his pocket and holds it up to the headband. It makes a few beeps, then Danny mutters, “7.4 millisieverts. That’s enough to get you through the veil.”

Another concern Duke can let go of: Danny’s not creating weapons like his parents have, he’s just measuring ectoplasm through his own inventions.

Maybe he could talk to Bruce or Tim about getting Danny an internship at the R&D lab in Wayne Enterprises? That way they could keep a closer eye on him while seeing what he can create in some of the best laboratories in the country.

Well, it might take having them meet Danny before they trust him enough for that, but Duke is sure he can make it happen.

“I better go see this through, then,” Danny says, shoving the contraption back into his hoodie pocket. He gives Duke a small awkward wave, then pops out of visibility. “I’ll see you around, I guess?” he disembodied voice hedges, and Duke smiles.

“I’m sure I’ll be able to find you again.”

“Cool. I gonna go now!”

He doesn’t see any sign that Danny’s left, but he gets a feeling that he’s alone now, the apartment suddenly emptier than it was before.

As strange and concerning as Danny and all his bizarre actions were, Duke is glad he was able to finally talk to him and get some answers. Knowing how Gotham pulls people him in, it’s only a matter of time before the other Bats are exposed to Danny’s kind of strange. He’s already looking forward to it.

For now, though, he has a file to update in the Hatch; POTENTIAL THREAT will be removed and replaced with GHOST HELPER.

If anyone goes snooping into his files and gets confused, then that’s their problem. Duke’s explained enough. And Danny can take care of the rest, once they go through the effort of tracking him down. Duke's done his part, he's ready for the rest of them to step up to his level.

He can’t wait to see what other kind of trouble Danny can get it into.

#ghostlights #dc x dp #dp x dc #dcxdp #dpxdc #prompt fill #my writing #could not do a meet cute/weird in this prompt so i made it a meet disaster lol #heres danny trying to focus on his education!! and then ghosts start popping up asking for help bc gotham wont let them leave #so danny has to make a few contraptions to be able to help them (mostly ecto tracking/measuring/containing) and it looks SOOO sus #the ghosts also have a weak ecto sense which is how they find him bc hes FULL of ecto #and that means hes robbing houses during the day/late evening bc the night is for homework and stress #duke is just... trying his best lol.#sorry if the last part of this is rushed or confusing i am slightly sick and can Not focus #anyways i hope u enjoy!!#thanks for the prompt!!

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hoshiina · 6 months ago

Text

pairing: narumi gen x gn!reader (no prns)

summary: he's always thought that anyone would do if he just wanted to find love but he realizes you're the one he wishes for, inspired by pop song by yonezu kenshi

warnings: some profanities from narumi

wc: 1300

Narumi Gen hated a lot of things, but one of his least favourites of all time was "true love". He despised when people would describe their love for another as "true love". It couldn't possibly be that serious. Just say you loved your partner. That was probably the extent feelings got to anyways— you just so happened to like each other at the same time. To him that was plenty of a feat alone, why would you have to make it sound like more than it is? For the sake of love? Ridiculous.

To him, that was truly all love was. If there was someone who liked him when he happened to like them too, that was enough. No need for years of pining, no need to get attached to some unrequited love. All that noise about love and destiny surely wasn't all that necessary.

Now, this wasn't to say that he didn't wish to find love— because he did. Like any other person, he truly wished to be loved. It was just that what he had in mind wasn't some deep pure love that'd last forever, nor was it a promise for eternity. He just wished for a light-hearted "I love you" here and there with someone he found special.

And for that, anyone would do. He'd find someone who fancied him along the way, and hopefully he'd like them back. That was all there was to it.

This meant his plan for finding his partner was sitting around and waiting. As horribly lame as that sounded, because he was Narumi Gen, this wasn't that hopeless of a plan. So, that's what he did. He'd go around saving people and doing his duties (to the absolute bare minimum) while making sure he was constantly trending, hoping that one day, someone would like him.

Today he was standing around for a solid five extra minutes after he defeated the honju with ease, hoping the media would snap some nice pictures of him, or he'd finally charm someone this time.

"Captain, you ought to stop that," you said. "It's rather embarrassing, you look desperate now."

"Oh, would you shut up," he said. "You're ruining my good name!"

You snorted. "What good name," you scoffed.

"I'm starting to think its your fault I'm not charming anyone. Perhaps if you didn't stop me every time, someone would have found me by now," he said.

"Yeah, right. Captain Ashiro seems to be having no issues charming people and I've never seen her try to," you said.

"You little shit," he said.

"Besides they're going to be utterly disappointed if they think this is what you're like and then they find out what you're… actually like," you said, and he was starting to think you wanted him to fire you. "It's okay. Someone will see how you're actually lovely at times soon."

"What?" he asked, shocked by what you said.

"What?" you replied, confused.

"You— you said lovely," he said quietly. Suddenly he felt flustered.

"Oh," you said, looking away and avoiding eye contact. It wasn't like you didn't mean to say that, but you didn't think it was that big of a deal. Rather, how flustered he sounded took you by surprise. “Well, you’re a little lame but you’re a good guy. Like you pretend you only do it for the media, but I know you’re always checking the alleyways that don’t have as much surveillance just in case, and checking alleyways isn’t something a captain has to do. And we both know the media isn’t writing about anything you do there. Things like that.”

“You never know!” he said, and you snorted.

“Alright then,” you said. “You do you, Captain.”

“I will!” he said back, trying to sound proud.

A week had passed and here he was, doing what he always did after arriving fashionably late to the scene and taking all the kaiju out in a matter of minutes: standing around trying to look good. Because he wanted love, and anyone would do. Anyone who liked him was supposed to do.

...

And yet he wished for you.

He wished that when he woke up, the first thing he would see was you. He wished that you'd smile at him everyday with love and genuine joy the way you did to others, and he wished that you’d smile that way to him alone. He wished that after a long day, he was the one you came home to. He wished from the bottom of his heart that you would always be safe and no harm would ever come your way. He wished that your days were filled with laughter and smiles and he knew he would risk his life to protect that.

It was so unlike him in a way he absolutely hated. True love was supposed to be nonsense and someone being ‘the one’ was supposed to be some dramatic line in a movie. It upset him, that he was so utterly fond of you. Yet, no matter how much it upset him, it didn't change the fact that he was, and he couldn't deny it anymore after trying to ignore it for the full week.

So here he was, acting stupid again, hoping that you’d scold him again or tell him he’s embarrassing himself, because that’s what it’s come down to. He just wanted another reason to talk to you.

But you wouldn’t come to stop him after 10 whole minutes.

“Why aren’t you stopping me?” he asked, irritated.

“Pardon?” you asked, utterly confused.

“Why aren’t you telling me to stop?” he asked again. He was aware how silly he sounded, but he was pissed off that you meant so much to him so he had to take it out on you.

“Because you told me to stop last time??” you replied. “I thought you were going to keep this up until you found yourself a partner.”

“You’re the one who told me to find someone that saw how I was…. lovely…. at times,” he said, but said the lovely very quietly. Remembering that you had described him as lovely made his cheeks burn and he’d rather die than let you see that.

“I mean, yeah. I do think you should,” you said.

“Don’t you notice, though?” he asked quietly, avoiding eye contact. There was a moment of silence.

“I do,” you said, and immediately he looked up to face you. You had a grin on your face and you looked so proud— you looked like you had won a game. Oh, how he hated you.

“You’re so annoying,” he said, and you raised an eyebrow.

“Rich coming from you,” you said.

“So, do you—,” he started to yell before cutting himself off. Carefully, he tried again. “Would you please… uh… be mine…?”

Oh, this is so embarrassing, he thought. Perhaps you’d laugh at him, but he wanted to do this properly, or at the very least try to. He’d be far more than just stupid to mess this up now. He was finally in love.

But your laughter never came. When he looked up your eyes were wide and you looked so flustered, but soon you had the most beautiful smile on your face.

“I would absolutely love to,” you said.

So he kissed you right then and there, because there was nothing he wanted to do more at the moment.

He laughed a little.

“What’s wrong?” you asked.

“No, nothing,” he said.

There was no way just anyone would do— it had to be you.