Burning Text Gif Maker

Guys, I'm re-reading the outline for one of my books (my favourite book, that I've been writing for YEARS), and this is so funny to me.

'She smiles a strained smile, and goes to bed. The next morning she makes a plan where she decides to pretend to have a Talent, in plants. This is not a good plan.'

I LOVE IT, I LOVE MY PAST SELF

I'm sorry, but the fact that Chat Noir's new power is so convenient that Marinette doesn't face the consequences of hiding a terrorist's identity from her own teammates because they MIGHT tell Adrien is the stupidest argument this series has ever presented

And they created the Magical Charms.

I've said a thousand times that the justification for not telling Adrien anything being "we have to protect him, he can't suffer," is horrible, and I disagree. As Alya said in the last episode, no one can decide for Adrien whether he knows or not.

Taking care of him shouldn't be an excuse to lie to him, or to anyone else.

Adrien more than anyone deserves to know who his dad was and the things he did and why. He deserves to grieve for him and hate him if he wants to. Not telling anything is keeping Adrien in a bubble, a little glass box where he's safe.

Ladybug should have told him that Gabriel was Monarch immediately after the fight ended. She doesn't know that Adrien is Chat Noir, so she doesn't know there's a risk of the world ending because Chat went crazy and used his power.

She had the Miraculous at that time, so the only risk Adrien ran by telling him the truth was crying his eyes out. PLUS, he wasn't at risk of being akumatized because Gabriel was dead and Ladybug was there.

She didn't even have to make the information public; she just had to tell Adrien.

So no, I don't believe there was no option but to not tell him anything.

And I'm a little tired of people justifying all this by saying "Marinette is only 14, she's a child."

I get it, but there's a chapter where they tell you that Ladybug is already mature enough to be considered AN ADULT and use her powers infinitely. Even though Mari is 14, she's been Ladybug for about a year, where she's seen more than one loved one die, fought terrorists, adult supervillains, and even faced Su Han and the heroes of New York as an ADULT. Why is it that when it comes to taking responsibility (and almost always around Adrien), she's "just a child"?

But back to the last episode: Giving Chat Noir the power to erase memories is stupidly convenient for the plot. Marinette is safe from facing the consequences for lying and can continue being Alya's best friend and Adrien's perfect girlfriend without any problems because then if it happens again, she'll just find Chat and ask him to erase their memories again because "they know a secret that I can't tell you what it is, but it's bad and they have to forget it."

Only Mari doesn't know that Chat is Adrien, and that's another big problem. Marinette doesn't want to know Chat's identity, so she can't trust him with things because "maybe he knows Adrien and can tell him" is stupidly convenient and only makes me think that Marinette really doesn't trust Chat enough to tell him who the villain they've been fighting since day one is.

At this point, I really can't blame Lila for hating Marinette (look what you've turned me into, writers!) Marinette is really annoying, especially when it has to do with Adrien.

Sometimes I feel like Marinette sees Adrien more as a trophy, something perfect she wants, and not the guy behind it all. But that's the fault of the writers and their annoying need to make Adrien perfect and devoid of personality throughout the seasons. Not even Chat Noir can get a power upgrade on his own; it's Ladybug who has to tell Chat what to do.

And then the episode tries to teach you that erasing Alya's memory is actually giving Marinette the freedom to choose when to tell the truth.

FREEDOM FOR MARINETTE. But never for Adrien to feel ANYTHING.

I'm going to really enjoy it when Lila decides to really attack, even if it only lasts 10 seconds until everyone forgives Marinette for lying and Adrien just says "I love you even though we've been dating for months and you lied to me and hid sensitive information about my family. It must have been really hard for you to hide that my dead dad was the man who psychologically tortured all of Paris and even me, just because he wanted to revive my dead mom who had been hiding in the basement of my house for a year. Do you want to go to the movies tomorrow?"

And I can almost bet that Chat Noir's new power will be used to get Marinette's memories back if she gives up being a guardian, in a very convoluted way typical of the show.

Like: "The akuma caused Marinette to have to give up the box and lose her memories. If we use the Chat Noir Miraculous, we can erase the consequences of the akuma and Marinette will get her memories back."

Or much worse.

Paris found out that Ladybug lied and they hate her. We're going to use the Chat Noir Miraculous to erase their memories so they won't mistreat her anymore :D yeii freedom

They Have AO3?!?

So apparently AO3 is cannonical to the DC universe, in which it is called Tales of our own or TO3!

WHY AM I CRYING OMGG

DPxDC prompt #15

Demon Twins Fic

But!

Okay, so something I've seen floated a time or 2 from DC is that when using the Lazarus Pits to revive, a person emerges completely healed of all previous injuries or illnesses. Including scars.

Now obviously fandom often plays fast and loose with this rule, given how we like to give Jason an autopsy scar and some folks also like to make him keep the J from the Joker. But let's lean into it a bit here and make it play nice with the DP side of things.

Let's say that it's the ectoplasm, even the rancid stuff in the pits, that heals all scars except Death Scars.

So if Danny was, say, revived in the Pits by Talia before she disappeared him away to an orphanage in Illinois? The Danny that shows up in Amity Park wouldn't be covered in scars from his time in the League. He'd only have the one, the Death Scar.

Similarly, the Danny that stumbles out of the portal wouldn't have any scars from his time in Amity Park. He'd only have 2, the original Death Scar and the new Lichtenberg Death Scars.

Now I've seen it done many times where the Bats/Damian realize that Danny isn't a clone because you can't clone scars. So if Danny doesn't have those scars, and if his DNA is too messed up from the ectoplasm in him to check for any "regular cloning markers"...

Danny, fresh from an autopsy table, runs to Gotham to hide. And because of his inability to walk away from someone in danger, gets found by the Bats. Whether or not they know about Damian's twin beforehand, they are quite confident that Danny is a clone. An exceptionally good clone with nearly perfect implanted memories, but a clone nonetheless. Damian is particularly enraged about this

And poor Danny, already all sorts of fucked up from growing up Damian's lesser, then Dash's punching bag, then an experiment; in the face of Bat certainty and lacking any tangible evidence to the contrary; Danny starts to believe them.

Writing Prompt #12

Bruce is reading the paper when the pour of Tim's coffee goes abruptly quiet. It would be hard to pinpoint why this is disturbing if it wasn't for the way the soft, tinny sound the vent system in the manor makes cuts out for the first time since being updated in the 90s. The pour, Bruce realizes, has not slowed to a trickle before stopping. It has simply stopped. And there is no overeager clack of a the mug against the marble counter or the uncouth first slurp (nor muttered apology at Alfred's scolding look) immediately following the end of the pour.

Bruce fights the instinct to use all of his senses to investigate, and instead keeps his eyes on the byline of the article detailing the latest set of microearthquakes to hit the midwest in the last week. Microearthquakes aren't an unusual occurrence and aren't noticeable by human standards, which is why this article is regulated to page seven, but from several hundred a day worldwide to several hundred a day solely in the East North Central States, seismologists are baffled.

Bruce had been considering sending Superman to investigate under the guise of a Daily Planet article requested by Bruce Wayne (Wayne Industries does have an offshoot factory in the area) when everything had stopped twenty seconds ago. That is what he assumes has happened (having not moved a muscle to confirm) in the amount of time he assumes has passed. His million dollar Rolex does not quite audibly tick but in the absolute silence it should be heard, which confirms the silence to be exactly that—absolute.

While Bruce can hold his breath with the best of the Olympian swimmers, he has never accounted for a need to remain without blinking without being able to move one's eyes. Rotating the eyeballs will maintain lubrication such that one could go without blinking for up to ten minutes. But staring at the byline fixedly, he estimates another twenty seconds before tears start to form.

These are the thoughts Bruce distracts himself with, because he doesn't dare consider how Tim and Alfred haven't made a (living) sound in the past forty-five seconds. About Damian, packing his bag upstairs for school after a morning walk with Titus that was "just pushing it, Master Damian".

There is a knife to his right, if memory serves (it does). In the next five seconds—

"Your wards and guardian are fine, Mr. Wayne," the deepest voice Bruce has ever heard intones. For a dizzying moment, it is hard to pinpoint the location of the voice, for it comes from everywhere—like the chiming of a clocktower whilst inside the tower, so overpowering he is cocooned in its volume.

But it is not spoken loudly, just calmly, and when he puts the paper down, folds it, and looks to his right, a blue man sits in Dick's chair.

He wears a three piece suit made entirely of hues of violet, tie included. He has a black brooch in the shape of a cogwheel pinned to his chest pocket, a simple chain clipped to his lapel. Black leather gloves delicately thumb Bruce's watch (no longer on his wrist, somewhere between second 45 and 46 it has stopped being on his wrist), admiring it.

"You'll forgive me," the man says with surety. "Clocks are rather my thing, and this is an impressive piece." He turns it over and reveals the 'M. Brando' roughly scratched into the silver back. He frowns.

"What a shame," he says, placing it face side up on the table.

"Most would consider that the watch's most valuable characteristic." Bruce says, voice steady, hands neatly folded before him. Two inches from the knife. To his left, there is an open doorway to the kitchen. If he turns his head, he might be able to get a glance of Tim or Alfred.

He doesn't look away from the man.

"It is the arrogance of man," the man says, raising red eyes (sclera and all) to Bruce, "to think they can make their mark on time."

"...Is that supposed to be considered so literally?" Bruce asks, with a light smile he does not mean.

The man smiles lightly back, eyes crinkling at the corners. He looks to be in his mid thirties, clean-shaven. His skin is a dull blue, his hair a shock of white, and a jagged scar runs through one eye and curving down the side of his cheek, an even darker, rawer shade of blue-purple.

The man turns the watch back over and taps at the engraving. "Let me ask you this," he says. "When we deface a work of art, does it become part of the art? Does it add to its intrinsic meaning?"

Bruce forces his shoulders to shrug. "It's arbitrary," he says. "A teenager inscribes his name on the wall of an Ancient Egyptian temple and his parents are forced to publicly apologize. But runic inscriptions are found on the Hagia Sophia that equate to an errant Viking guard having inscribed 'Halfdan was here' and we consider it an artifact of a time in which the Byzantine Empire had established an alliance with the Norse and converted vikings to Christianity."

"The vikings were as errant as the teenager," the man says, "in my experience." He leans back in his chair. "I suppose you could say the difference is time. When time passes, we start to think of things as artistic, or historical. We find the beauty in even the rubble, or at least we find necessity in the destruction..."

He offers Bruce the watch. After a moment, Bruce takes it.

"The problem, Mr. Wayne, is that time does not pass for me. I see it all as it was, as it is, as it ever will be, at all times. There is no refuge from the horror or comfort in that one day..." he closes his hand, the leather squeaking. And then his face smooths out, the brief severity gone. He regards Bruce calmly.

"You can look left, Mr. Wayne."

Bruce looks left. Framed by the doorway, Tim looks like a photograph caught in time. A stream of coffee escapes the spout of the stainless steel pot he prefers over the Breville in the name of expediency, frozen as it makes its way to the thermos proclaiming BITCH I MIGHTWING. Tim regards his task with a face of mindless concentration, mouth slack, lashes in dark relief against his pale skin as he looks down at the mug. Behind him, Bruce can see Alfred's hand outstretched towards the refrigerator handle, equally and terrifyingly still.

"My name is Clockwork," the man says. "I have other names, ones you undoubtedly know, but this one will be bestowed upon me from the mouth of a child I cherish, and so I favor it above all else. I am the Keeper of Time."

"What do you want from me?" Bruce asks, shedding Wayne for Batman in the time it takes to meet Clockwork's eyes. The man acknowledges the change with a greeting nod.

"In a few days time, you will send Superman to the Midwest to investigate the unusual seismic activity. By then, it will be too late, the activity will be gone. They will have already muzzled him."

"Him."

"There is a boy with the power to rule the realm I come from. Your government has been watching him. The day he turned 18, they took him from his family and hid him away. I want you to retrieve him. I want you to do it today."

"Why me?"

"His parents do not have the resources you do, both as Batman and Bruce Wayne. You will dismantle the organization that is keen on keeping him imprisoned, and you will offer him a scholarship to the local University. You and yours will keep him safe within Gotham until he is able to take his place as my King."

This is a lot of information to take in, even for Bruce. The idea that there could be a boy powerful enough to rule over this (god, his mind whispers) entity and that somehow, he has slipped under all of their radars is as frustrating as it is overwhelming. But although Clockwork has seemed willing to converse, he doesn't know how many more questions he will get.

"You have the power to stop time," he decides on, "why don't you rescue him? Would he not be better suited with you and your people?"

"Within every monarchy, there is a court," Clockwork. "Mine will be unhappy with the choice I have made," he looks at Bruce's watch, head cocked. "In different worlds, they call you the Dark Knight. This will be your chance to serve before a True King."

Bruce bristles. "I bow to no one."

"You'll all serve him, one day," Clockwork says, patiently. "He is the ruler of realms where all souls go, new and old. When you finally take refuge, he will be your sanctuary." He frowns. "But your government rejects the idea of gods. All they know is he is other. Not human. Not meta. A weapon."

"A weapon you want me to bring to my city."

"I believe you call one of your weapons 'Clark', do you not?" Clockwork asks idly. "But you misunderstand me. They seek to weaponize him. He is not restrained for your safety, but for their gain."

"And if I don't take him?" Bruce asks, because a) Clockwork has implied he will be at the very least impeded, at worst destroyed over this, and b) he never did quite learn not to poke the bear. "You won't be around if I decide he's better off with the government."

"You will," Clockwork says, with the same certainty he's wielded this entire conversation. "Not because he is a child, though he is, nor because you are good, though you are, nor even because it is better power be close at hand than afar.

"I have told you my court will be unhappy with me. In truth, there are others who also defend the King. Together we will destroy the access to our world not long after this conversation. The court will be unable to touch him, but neither will we as we face the repercussions for our actions. I am telling you this, because in a timeline where I do not, you think I will be there to protect him. And so when he is in danger, even subconsciously, you choose to save him last, or not at all. And that is the wrong choice.

"So cement it in your head, Bruce Wayne," the man says, "You will go to him because I tell you to. And you will keep him safe until he is ready to return to us. He will find no safety net in me. So you will make the right choice, no matter the cost."

"Or, when our worlds connect again, and they will," his voice now echoes in triplicate with the voices of the many, the young, the old, Tim, Bruce's mother, Barry Allen, Bruce's own voice, "I will not be the only one who comes for you."

"Now," he says, producing a Wayne Industries branded BIC pen. "I will tell you the location the boy is being kept, and then I would like my medallion back, please. In that order."

Bruce glances down and sees a golden talisman, attached to a black ribbon that is draped haphazardly around the neck of his bathrobe, so light (too light, he still should have—) he has not felt its weight until this moment.

Bruce flips the paper over, takes the pen, and jots down the coordinates the being rattles off over the face of a senator. By his calculation, they do correspond with a location in the midwest.

"You will find him on B6. Take a left down the hallway and he will be in the third room down, the one with a reinforced steel door. Take Mr. Kent and Mr. Grayson with you, and when you leave take the staircase at the end of the hallway, not the elevator."

The man gets up, dusts off his impeccably clean pants, and offers him a hand to shake.

"We will not meet again for some time, Mr. Wayne."

Bruce looks at the creature, stands, and shakes his hand. It feels like nothing. The Keeper of Time sighs, although nothing has been said.

"Ask your question, Mr. Wayne."

"I have more than one."

"You do," Clockwork says. "But I have heard them all, and so they are one. Please ask, or I will not be inclined to answer it."

"What does this boy mean for the future, that you are willing to sacrifice yourself for him?"

There is a pause.

"So that is the one," Clockwork says, after a time. "Yes. I see. I should resolve this, I suppose."

"Resolve what?"

"It is not his future I mean to protect," the man says. "It is his present."

"You want to keep him safe now..." Bruce says, but he's not sure what the being is trying to say.

"I am not inclined," Clockwork repeats, stops. His expression turns solemn, red eyes widening. In their reflection, Bruce can see something. A rush of movement too quick to make heads or tails of, like playing fast forward on a videotape. "Superman reports no signs of unusual seismic activity. With nothing further to look into, you let it go in favor of other investigative pursuits. You do not find him, as you are not meant to. He stays there. His family, his friends, they cannot find him. His captors tell him they have moved on. He does not believe them, until he does. He stays there. He stays there until he is strong enough to save himself."

Clockwork speaks stiffly, rattling off the chain of events as if reading a Justice League debrief. "He is King. He will always be King. He is strong, and good, and compassionate, and he is great for my people because yours have betrayed his trust beyond repair. He throws himself into being the best to ever Be, because there is nothing Left for him otherwise. We love him. We love him. We love him. My King. Forevermore."

The red film in his eyes stall out, and Bruce is forced to look away from how bright the image is, barely making out a silhouette before they dull back to their regular red.

"I am not inclined," Clockwork says slowly, "To this future."

"Because of what it means in the present," Bruce finishes for him. "They're not just imprisoning him, are they."

"They will have already muzzled him."

Clockworks is right in front of him faster than he can process, fist gripping the medallion at his neck so tight he now feels the ribbon digging into his skin.

"Unlike you, Mr. Wayne," and for the first time, the god is angry, and the image of it will haunt Bruce for the rest of his life, "I do not believe in building a better future on the back of a broken child."

"Find him," the deity orders, and yanks the necklace so hard the ribbon rips—

Clack!

"sluuuuurp!"

"Master Timothy, honestly!"

"Sorry Alfred!"

Got inspired by a Danny is Bruce's clone post I saw but my mind went in a totally different direction from almost every part of it (including: Danny's parents don't Vivisection Suck and he was always fully aware he was a clone, because there's Shenanigans leading up to his creation and beyond). Anyway. Tally-ho onto fic...

--

There's a teenager by the bat-signal.

Taken alone, this fact was not worthy of notice. Many pre-teens, teenagers, and adults of varying ages have stood by the bat-signal over the years. These days it fell into something of a mild disuse. Their comms were secure enough that if Gordon needed them urgently, he'd reach out that way and if the bats needed him, they'd drop silently behind him and wait for him to notice and then deny they'd startled him on purpose. The bat-signal was, in this new era, more of a symbol.

Which meant they still couldn't ignore it when it turned on, though Tim heeded Gordon's warning that it had not been him. That much would have been obvious at a glance. Perpetrator was a lone humanoid, possibly male-identifying based on the cut of clothes, tentatively classified as young (body build, clothes, a general Stressed Teens Recognize Stressed Teens energy Tim would deny using as part of his deduction) though unconfirmed with the hood pulled up, pacing besides the large bulb with the blocked-out bat. It took Tim mere seconds to make these observations, his grappling hook still raising him to the exposed steel beams of the abandoned construction site.

In that same second, when the hook's rope sunk almost silently back into place, the teenager stopped pacing and looked straight at him.

Superhuman hearing range, Tim noted down, because he had not been spotted just like that. Still, spotted he had been, so he swung down to the same platform the suspicious teenager and the bat-signal were in. They sized each other up.

"You're too short to be Batman," was the first thing the suspicious teenager said to him.

"You're barely any taller than I am," said Tim. "I'm Red Robin, one of Batman's associates."

The teenager clicked his tongue against his teeth. In the shadow of the bat-signal, his face was all darkness. "You guys come color-coded now?"

"That joke isn't as original as you think it is," said Tim, because the bats did indeed come color-coded these days.

"Whatever," the teenager pushed his hands into his hoodie pockets. "I need to speak with Batman."

"Even more original," Tim replied drily. "Whatever you need to tell him you can tell me."

"I really can't," said the teenager. "It's... personal."

"What, your mother tell you she had a one night stand with the bat and you're his secret love child?" The teenager made an odd, surprised noise, and then the silence grew awkward - something about the angle of his shoulders - "Oh my god, she did, didn't she?"

"No!" said the teenager, at the same time the comms in Tim's ear exploded with crackling laughter and digs at B for being such a slut. The man himself was stoically silently throughout it.

Ignoring the laughter, Tim turned on 'Red Robin comforting a civilian' mode. "Listen," said Tim, soothingly. "You aren't the first to be told this, or to come here claiming it - "

"He's not my dad!" The teenager's voice cracked and he spent a single, humiliated moment staring over Gotham in embarrassed despair. "I'm his clone, okay?"

Behind his mask, Tim blinked. "Okay?"

The teenager muttered a muffled curse, then pushed back his hood. The first thing Tim focused on was the bruise around the left zygomatic, green and purple, made stark by the bat-signal's sickly yellow light. Then the blue eyes, staring warily at him, the bowed lips pursed together, the chin tucked in defensively. There was leftover baby fat in his cheeks, and a shock of white in his messy hair, but Tim spent far too long stalking the Wayne Family to not recognize a teenage Bruce standing in front of him.

"Damn, he actually looks the part," said Oracle, watching through his mask camera. Her shock faded into business. "Running analysis now."

The teen's lips pursed further. Superhuman hearing, Tim remembered. He might be able to hear the comms. What exactly had they blended Bruce - Batman? - with?

"You see why I need to talk with him," said the maybe-clone, scowling Bruce's youthful face at him.

"I really don't," said Tim, mouth working a step ahead of his brain. He earned a contemptful look for this, but forged on ahead. "Lets say I believe you. What would you want? Child support? To murder and replace him? Sorry to tell you but you're too young to pass as him."

"Why would I want to kill him?" Pure bewilderment. If someone had trained the guy to be a weapon, they'd never taught him to control his emotions properly. "And I don't want to be him," there was disgust there, some complexity Tim could not instinctively pin down, but which would corroborate the clone angle. Almost reluctantly, the teen forced out, "I need his help."

"With what?"

"I told you. It's personal."

"Oh, you're going to be a delight to deal with, aren't you?"

"Like you're any better," said the teen. He crossed his arms. "Are you going to help me or not?"

Damian gets it from Bruce, Tim realized and sighed. "Yeah, sure, whatever. Do you have a name so I can stop calling you Batclone in my head?"

The maybe-clone made a face. "It's Danny. Don't ever call me... bat clone... again."

Tim was an asshole on purpose when he wasn't an asshole on accident. He made no promises. "Well, Danny, let's see if we can actually help you."

And if this turned to be a ridiculous hoax or murder plot... well, it wouldn't be the first time. Tim doubted it would be the last.

~~

"I wouldn't be here if I didn't need to," said Danny. They were sitting on a rooftop with burgers and fries. Danny swirled the straw of his milkshake and didn't take a sip.

"Promising," said Red Robin, who did take a sip of his shake. He'd been eating Jokerized Fries (a suspicious meal item Danny did not order) without a care in the world, like stalling a guy claiming to be a clone from meeting Batman was an average Tuesday for him.

Maybe it was. Danny couldn't actually judge, on account of his everything.

"You should eat the burger before it gets cold," said Red Robin, who had paid for the food while they 'waited for B to show up'. If Danny tried to actually eat he'd probably throw up.

Danny's senses strained, but the chatter on Red Robin's comms had been silent since the guy sent them a text that resulted in a 'What, is he half Kryptonian too?' before the entire line went dead. Danny, who was disappointingly not half-Kryptonian (his parents could do it, but they had zero interest in aliens), had glared at the skyline and wondered what gave away that he could hear everything they were saying. All he had now was silence, the anxious ballet of his stomach, and Red fucking Robin crunching fries between his molars.

"Is Batman going to actually come?" Danny bit out. "I'm kind of on a time limit here."

"You didn't say that earlier," said Red Robin.

"I thought you'd actually take me to him instead of buying me dinner," said Danny.

"That's what they all say," Red Robin swallowed his fries and rubbed finger grease onto a napkin. "But see, you are not the first time we've ran into someone claiming to be B's kid. The clone angle isn't new either, though you admittedly don't fit the profile of the usual crowd. If we indulged every lunatic and opportunist, we'd never get any actual work done. B's not gonna come running just for that, and until you actually tell me what you're after we're stuck here. Might as well eat."

"Can't you just run my DNA as proof?" Danny asked, exasperated. "You've got to have the tech for it."

Red Robin smiled a slimy bureaucrat's smile. "Well, if you're offering..."

"I'll only give it to him," said Danny. "As far as I know, you might not even actually be one of his 'associates' but a delusional LARPer who's really into method acting."

Red Robin's smile dropped. It was hard to tell with the mask covering most of his face, but he looked briefly insulted. Good.

"I'm serious, I have a really good reason to ask after him. Life or death. I will be out of your city when I'm done." Danny swirled his milkshake once more and then grabbed the bag with his burger, because why waste free food? He'd eat it later, after he found his gene template. "So, thanks for the food and no thanks for wasting my time - " he turned and ran straight into a solid wall of black. "Fucking- " Danny stumbled back, almost slipped off the edge of the roof, but the solid wall of black grabbed his jacket and stabilized him. Danny looked up past the armored pectorals to a chiseled jaw and - yeah, that was Batman.

"How did you sneak up on me?" Danny blurted out.

"...Practice," said the Batman (holy shit), dropping his grip on Danny. The deep gravel of his voice nearly sent Danny in another dizzy twirl off the roof because that - that did not sound like Danny. That sounded like a chain smoker who hadn't quit after twenty years. Was the Batman a chain smoker? Did Danny have a hitherto unknown predilection for smoking? That was so unhealthy. He absolutely refused.

"You shouldn't have doubted me," said Red Robin, reminding Danny the guy existed.

"...Are you really Batman?" Danny squinted up at him. At least this provided an estimate end result to the growing pains.

"What proof could I offer?" said Batman. Danny shuffled a few more steps away and to the side, leaving the bats on one end of the roof and himself on the other.

"I - I didn't think that far," Danny admitted. What had he expected? To look at the bat and see himself, just like with the unstable clones? To instantly recognize each other as the same person? That hadn't happened with Dani. And yet, somehow, this total disconnect - this pure, simple understanding that this was an utter stranger - was not what he'd planned for.

Where was Jazz when he actually wanted some psychoanalysis?

Batman studied him. Red Robin did the same, for all the guy hid it behind greasy fast food and quips. Danny's shoulders threatened to hunch and he forced them back; chin up. Impossible to meet Batman's eyes, but the mask lenses were good enough.

When the silence stretched long, Danny bit his cheek. "So, will you help me? Once you're done with the whole suspicious identity verification or whatever you've been up to this past hour."

"I need a sample of your DNA first," said Batman, bluntly, that deep voice like rocks tumbling down a river.

"How funny," said Danny, crossing his arms. "That's exactly what I need from you too."

The menacing observation sputtered out at his easy admission.

"Seriously?" Red Robin crushed his greasy food wrapper into a ball and stood. The wrapper sailed over the edge of the roof and dunked perfectly into a trash can. Danny's ears focused on it so intently that when the wrapper settled, the background noise of the city slammed back in and forced him to reorient.

"I told you I'd tell Batman," said Danny, and despite his stomach foregoing ballet to do extreme sports, smirked. "Shouldn't have doubted me."

Red Robin scowled at him.

Batman's statuesque stillness only became noticeable when he started moving again. It set Danny's instincts on edge, senses telling him that's a human when only ghosts were so quiet and frozen. At least it gave credence to this actually being The Batman (Danny's gene donor The Batman, holy shit) instead of a LARPer in an armored suit.

"Why do you want my DNA?" asked Batman.

Here came the tricky and awkward part. "I... do you want to do this here?"

Batman grunted an affirmative. Danny was both disgusted and intrigued by this simple action.

"Okay," said Danny. "I... am not the only clone of you. I mean I am. But I'm also not." Great, fantastic explanation Mr. Fenton. Real A+ material.

Batman and Red Robin just kept patiently waiting for more. What even was the relationship here? Red Robin wasn't his sidekick, that was Colorless Ordinary Robin (currently on iteration like, five or something, if the forum threads could be trusted). The silent grew vaguely incredulous as they processed Danny's babbling. Danny should have come in a mask so no one could see his cheeks pink beneath the bruising.

"Anyway," said Danny, "the other uh... clone... that shares your DNA... is not... stable. Like I am. And my DNA is - it wasn't enough to help. So I was hoping I could have a sample of yours?..." He trailed off awkwardly, because even though he'd been practicing this little speech the whole flight from Illinois it didn't actually get less painful when he actually said it.

Hey, dude, fun fact: you have a nonconsensual genetic copy out there! And he also has a nonconsensual genetic copy too! Funny how that happened! If it happens again its probably a curse tied to your ribosome!

The silence stretched on. If Danny could die again he'd probably expire out of sheer anxiety. Red Robin, after a moment, shifted his body to the side in a pretense of discretion and pulled his phone out. His fingers blurred with how fast he was texting. Unbelievable.

Danny refocused on Batman, once more as still as any ghost save for the steady beat of his breaths.

Their staring contest resumed.

Danny cracked first. "Please say something."

"...DNA test first," said the Batman. "And then you will expand on your story with more detail."

Danny's tight grip on the burger and milkshake loosened so much they almost slipped from his hand. A wave of relief made him dizzy. "Yeah, sure, okay that's." He swallowed. "Thank you for believing me. I know this is." Shitty and weird? Maybe Danny should ask after their nonconsensual clone protocols, they were handling this with much more aplomb than he felt. But. "...Thanks."

Batman, after a hesitant moment, said, "Even if you are not my clone and just do this to get our attention, we will still try to help when we can."

"I guess I can believe that," said Danny. "But it's not that simple. Trust me, I wish it was."

"Don't we all," said Red Robin, once again startling Danny with his existence. Seriously, what was it with the bats and fading out of his senses? "I've called the car. I'll drive us - clinic good? Or are we taking him to the cave?"

"Cave," said Batman.

Red Robin was obviously surprised about this, and yet not. His eyebrow ridge shifted above the mask. "Cave it is."

Danny looked between them. "Do I get a say in this?"

"No," said Red Robin, at the same time Batman said, "Yes."

"Forget I asked," said Danny. "As long as your cave isn't a creepy villain lair underneath a mansion I'll be fine."

The two bats stared at him for an awkward, paused moment. Red Robin coughed and diverted his attention back to his phone. Batman started looming a bit more ominously than before.

"Oh, jeez," said Danny. Of course his parents chose a gene template with Vlad-type fruitloop-ness, but he was in too deep and this was his last hope. "You better not be a weirdo about this."

"You're his clone secretly created without his consent asking for his DNA to save another clone secretly created without his consent," Red Robin pointed out. "How much weirder can it get?"

"Never ask that," said Danny and took a few sips of his milkshake to shut his mouth before he started accidentally deducing more of their secret Vlad-ness.

The Batman just sighed.

Miraculous Ladybug - Kill Them with Kindness

So…Miraculous Ladybug has been disappointing for quite some time now.  I can barely even watch the show any more.  What started as a fun, sweet cartoon with a great premise has been all but run into the ground by bad writing, erratic characterisation, and very lazy setups.  As such I’ve mostly been inhabiting the salt fic corner of the fandom, since their out of character scripts and personalities are at the very least, intentional.

However, after reading many, many ‘Marinette-snaps’ regarding Lila’s lies, I wondered how I would have written Marinette handling the situation. For me, I think it would involve slightly less salt, more spite, and a whole lot of petty vengeance on Marinette’s part as their ‘Everyday Ladybug,’ without turning the class into an obsessive anti-Marinette-mob.  

This sort of ended up part fic/part summary, so apologies for that…

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