#when it reaches the point of spontaneously generating natural portals for the spirits that won't be moving on yet

[1001aus]

It starts with a rave in the Cauldron. It's not the usual part of town for wild parties, but it's not weird enough to draw extra attention, either.

With the Sionis steel mill abandoned since Black Mask burned his family company to the ground with mismanagement and turned to crime, it and the surrounding industrial area is a frequent meeting ground for people looking for less illegal kinds of trouble.

The Bats keep an eye on the party, but don't interfere. By the time they turn in for the night, it's still going strong.

Duke doesn't report anything from the area the next day, so when the party picks up again at sundown they don't think yet that anything is wrong.

But the second night, the party doesn't stay in the Cauldron. It spills out into the Bowery and the Narrows and stops just short of Crime Alley. With the party so big they can see fights breaking out and getting resolved almost faster than they can step in.

The third night, Red Hood changes his patrol route to hit that border of his territory.

He stops at the top of an apartment building and looks down on the party. There are people watching him back. For a second everyone on the street belowing him seems to be waiting. Then Red Hood turns away to continue his patrol.

As long as the party doesn't make trouble for the people under his protection, he doesn't care.

That night it spills over into Crime Alley, too.

Not that the rest of the Bats can dedicate any time to investigating. Something is going on at Amusement Mile and no one goes into Joker's territory alone.

Somehow, the power is on at the abandoned theme park and there's a carnival going on.

Between the rave taking over the east end and the carnival on the North Island, the combined crowds have too many people. It's not enough to make up the entire population of Gotham, but it's too many for how many people aren't there. There's people that only seem to exist at night and disappear during the day.

That is when the investigation starts in earnest.

Every single one of the Bats can recognize a few people in the crowds. People they know for a fact are dead. People they couldn't save, people who just disappeared one day, people they lost before they started.

(On the forth night Thomas and Martha Wayne are seen walking arm in arm through Crime Alley. They stop, occasionally, to dance or talk.)

The partying spills into the Diamond District and moves into the Iceberg Lounge. It creeps toward Bristol and the Historic District, but it's the Diamond District where the real trouble starts.

Three jewelry shops and a bank are robbed that night. The cameras are perfectly in focus except for the blurry spots that make up exactly the locations where the perpetrators happen to be. Oracle does her best to clean up the footage, but the quality is just to bad to get much out of it.

The next night it continues. Two more banks, another jewelry store, and five high end clothing stores. Two Face is personally caught on camera at both banks.

Designer accessory shops, boutique chocolatiers, a couple of mega chain superstores.

If Red Hood happens to notice that a lot of the stolen food and homegoods make their way to Gotham's less fortunate citizens, well, he doesn't consider the Waltons to be innocent victims. The rest of the Bats will be willing to look the other way on that one, too.

Except, of course, that it's part of a pattern.

Then one of Two Face's coin tosses comes up heads and he shoots someone in the face.

Not that he wasn't a priority before, but everyone'd been distracted with everything else going on. Plus, bank robberies are less concerning than whatever a rogue might do with the money they steal.

Batman and Robin reluctantly break from the chaos to answer the bat signal. When they get there Commissioner Gordon gives them the news: an hour after killing a hostage, Harvey Dent was found unconscious in the GCPD lobby. That's one rogue off the streets. Now, if only they could figure out who started this whole mess.

It's not as violent as they'd expect from Joker, but otherwise the chaos is just like him. The problem with that is that Joker's been in Arkham for half a year without breaking out and when Nightwing checks in with the staff, Joker is more neurotic than ever. Jumpy and paranoid and barely sleeping.

He's not the only one, either. Scarecrow is also on edge.

If that's related to everything else....

By a week and a half in Oracle's ruled out any kind of technology that could be having this effect on such a large scale. Red Robin checked on the Lazarus Pit and the Dionesium mines and found both untouched. Red Hood and Black Bat have run down every dealer in Gotham and made sure nothing new is on the streets.

As much as they hate to admit it, it's time to call in outside help.

DP x DC

So I have an idea. After high school, Danny goes around helping ghosts either move on or get to the Ghost Zone. Helping them get whatever they need in order to leave Earth one way or the other.

When he goes to Gotham, he finds a slew of ghosts, going back to the city's founding, that died young and just want one more party, one more dance, or to experience how the nightlife has changed since they died.

No problem. Vlad can foot the bill for some of the condemned buildings, Danny can fix them so they'll stay up for at least one night, and everyone can have the rager to end all ragers. Music from across the ages. Entire floors, dedicated to a specific kind of dance. The best music system currently on the market.

Then, he comes across a bunch of ghosts that want to experience the high life just once. Like in the good old days when you could literally throw money at people and be treated like a king instead of attacked by your rivals. Where booze flowed more freely than the river, and if you wanted to experience a vice, you could.

Bit harder. That'll take more time and possibly more run-ins with the law, but there's no reason it couldn't be done at the same time as the other party. And it'll help the ghosts that just want to pull off the perfect heist.

This all ends up attracting the fight club crowd. Underground fighting has been a Gotham City tradition since before the city was called Gotham. Legend says that the first public works built were a fighting ring and a hospital. A ton of ghosts just want to win one more fight. They can't possibly move on if they're losers.

Now we're getting somewhere! There's a huge cave system under Gotham with no bystanders! Just try to stay intangible around cavewalls and stay west of Bristol, and the Really Underground Fight Club can get as wild as you want!

Now imagine as many Batfam and/or Justice League members as you want trying to deal with what is essentially an out of control, supernatural block party