It was... It was always just a fight but the last one between Jason and Bruce had been one of their worst and things only escalated after he accused Jason of having something to do with the Joker's disappearance.
It was another thing to hold against him. Another excuse to keep the Red Hood at arms length but Barbara knows Jason wasn't anywhere near Gotham when the clown went missing. Bruce checked. Tim double checked, but she knows because it wasn't like Jason was even trying to hide from any of them.
He was just traveling.
At first it was with the rest of the Outlaws for a bit and on and off after for a while afterwards with the rest of his team joining up at different points along his trip across the country.
He'd spent weeks spent on the road from New York to Pennsylvania before anyone even noticed the Joker was gone, then took a detour down to Atlanta and through Kentucky. The weekend after that was spent traveling between Michigan and Toronto and a surprising sighting in Kansas which was one of the only stops she still didn't understand since he'd have to be traveling all night just to get to that small town he'd been spotted in and Jason didn't seem to be in any hurry.
A part of her had been tempted to call Kara and see if she'd look into the matter for her but cases kept piling up and they got busy. If it wasn't the usual villain of the day causing trouble then it was the power vacuum left behind by the still missing Joker or one the guys getting into trouble. So she left it alone.
Jason didn't seem like he was in any trouble. He'd come back sooner or later. He always came back. Except he didn't. Weeks turned into months, then a full year passed them by as sightings of the Red Hood grew less and less frequent and it was only a preemptive notification she sat up so long ago that reminded her of Jason's absence as she stares down at the computer monitor playing a few seconds of footage displaying a small crowd of people, the Outlaws, some of Young Justice and the Titans along with a few other people who were cheering him on as he slipped a ring on some red haired woman's finger. The context was clear enough but she didn't find out more about the what and why until later that night when Roy sent out an update to the rest of the Titans claiming dibs on being the best man.
The above is just something that I cobbled together after reading a few Jason leaves Gotham fics and the thought of Jazz killing the Joker for (insert reasons) so my mind kind of jumped to Jason living out his best Cinderella moment, chasing after, flirting (along with getting threatened by a pair of overprotective parents) and road tripping with his team while trying to find the woman who lost her bloody baseball bat. After they meet he's just doubling down on everything with the intent of marrying her, Jazz getting her own little road trip, telling Jason where they're going next or even making a game out of if he can find her at the next stop on the Fenton family supernatural hunting/cataloging road trip cause I know they love talking about ghost but the image of Jack and Maddie fighting Bigfoot is amazing.
And the Fentons are happy for the two of them. At least he wasn't another Johnny. They had Tucker check just to be sure while everyone else just kind of assumes the rest of the bat family already knew when it was actually a mix of (we're super busy right now) and (maybe things will be a little peaceful if we give Jason some space) leaving Bruce trying to play catch up and depending on if he's reformed having to outdo Vlad who is already paying for everything.
Scaramouche….The Wanderer….The Balladeer…. Kunikuzushi….The Arcane Lord of Wisdome….Scaraboobs…Scaradoodoo….Scaradouchebag…..the man goes by many names
Requested by @altriancloud! :D I’m not the biggest Scara fan out there, but I think it’s HILARIOUS how deligtlyfully campy and emo he is ^^
If you're reading this then click on the link and give it a glance :)
It started off small at first. A robbery in Metropolis. A missing persons case in Gotham. An 'accident' in Amity Park. None of it connected. Nobody thought to connect them. It was just another case after all. There would always be another case so sometimes things slipped through the cracks. It happened.
Even heroes made mistakes after all.
They overlooked things.
But in the end they messed up and someone had to pay and someone did when Clark Kent heard his wife and son’s heartbeats vanish off the face of the earth during a somewhat quiet afternoon while he was handling a disaster in France.
He was the man of steel though, he could have made it. He should have made it but he was a second too late. His family was gone and Metropolis felt the fury of the old gods as a being made of wind and storms ripped its way free of an unseen portal cackling with mad laughter as it devastated the city.
It was another distraction though.
A massive distraction that drew the Justice League's attention away from the real prize as nightmares descended on Gotham like shadows. They morphed from the darkness slipping out through the cracks like ghosts and only Oracle saw the fight as they swarmed the youngest Robin, the Dark Knight's youngest son vanishing under an endless tide of nightmares as Nocturn took control of Gotham's nightlife.
More distractions followed as more and more of the old gods, Ancient beings long forgotten returned to Earth.
Storms raged.
The ground quaked.
Creatures of myth and legend were free to run wild as reports of everything from dragons to even yetis flooded the Watchtower.
In the end it was Diana who found their first and only clue when one of her mother's messengers appeared warning them of Themyscira's fate when a portal was opened for Undergrowth deep within the island's jungles. They fought. They fell. Then they were turned into mindless puppets bent to the monster's will as the sounds of war subsided into silence within a matter of days.
Her losses gave them a name.
Undergrowth, a creature of the green who cheered the being known as Clockwork while Constantine explained its origin.
He told them of Cronos, of the pieces of him that had formed into a new life deep within the endlessness of Infinity.
And Fate opened the way.
The first thing the gathered heroes saw was a massive clocktower surrounded by gears and pistons twisting in every direction as they spilled out into an endless void. Each tenth of a second, the hands on the clocktower click one step forward.
A single tooth on one of the smaller gears is easily the size of the Watchtower and no matter how far anyone looked there was no beginning or end to the clocktower.
There was nothing except the click, click, click of endless clocks as they stormed the Titan's lair.
Nothing stopped them.
There were no enemies or traps.
In fact the doors were left wide open as if welcoming the Justice League inside and they soon discovered why when Shazam found them. Superboy stood on a scale across from Luthor, the same with Robin and Waller. They were frozen in time, trapped in a single second of a moment while in the very middle of the massive room was a kid, easily Jon's double sleeping on a throne made out of the void of space but that wasn't what had him worried.
What worried him was the silence, the sudden nothingness in his mind as the voices of the gods empowering him faded away in the presence of the cloaked figure of Cronos suddenly standing beside the throne.
Even as the other heroes flooded into the room he couldn't hear anything besides a soft click, click, click as Superman was waved away forced into a loop of repetition that began and ended with his first step forward.
Green Lantern fell next, rapidly aged into an old man unable to match a Titan's will.
Then Constantine collapsed clutching an invisible wound on his chest. It was his contracts forcing him to obey while Fate eventually faded under time's cold embrace.
There were only a few heroes left when Flash made a move blitzing the throne only to suddenly lose his speed. The others simply glitched, like static on an old tv leaving only Shazam, J'onn and surprisingly Lois Lane standing in front of Cronos as he declared a game to decide Earth's continued existence.
'Convince each of them you're worth another chance and I'll restore everything.'
'Who's them?'
I don't really know what I was going with here. I was just listening to some of the songs from Epic and figured why not let an enraged Clockwork have some fun. I'm blaming Vlad for everything cause I can and he's done it before and caused a ton of problems for everyone else so I'm just picturing something he did or tried to do backfiring badly enough that Danny got seriously hurt so now everyone's gotta pay.
don't give up
"I just wish I could help him."
Tim sighed, tired eyes staring at the rows of monitors searching for any kind of change as he recalls the last thing he can remember Bart saying to him before everything went to hell when a barrier appeared around Central City cutting it off from the rest of the world. It had taken three days before anyone even realized what had happened and that was only after Barry returned from a mission in space and ran face first into the glowing green monstrosity trapping his friends inside some sort of otherworldly magical nonsense.
And it was kind of depressing that, that was all they knew after two months.
It was pure magic, old, ancient magic that had his friends living out the kind of picture perfect high school drama you'd find on tv and they only figured out that much after Cyborg accidentally picked up a weak signal being broadcast to anyone who got close enough.
That was the only real way anyone had to check up on everyone trapped inside and in a way Tim was kind of glad it was mainly focused on his friends and the meta kid Bart had been trying to introduce to everyone cause he had constant proof they were alive. Everyone else wasn't as lucky.
He was also mostly annoyed though cause the League couldn't even damage the stupid barrier anymore. They'd cracked it once, but that just seemed to annoy whatever was powering the thing because it spread out for miles in every direction in response to the Justice League's attempts at forcing open a door and ended up swallowing dozens of government agents and heroes who couldn't escape the danger zone in time.
"Any changes?"
"None." Like always.
He knew Dick was just as worried as he was about everyone trapped inside but the glowing green eyesore wasn't reacting to anything anymore.
Science didn't work.
Magic annoyed it.
They'd finally started looking into some of the more off world solutions that were available to them but so far nothing anyone tried seemed to affect it and he should know since he hasn't stopped monitoring the situation.
He's offered up rewards, called in every single favor he's ever been owed as Tim Drake and Red Robin and read up on everything magical he could get his hands on.
He's even hacked every government agency on the planet on the off chance there might have been a possible answer hidden away somewhere and was nowhere near as professional or gentle as he usually was while doing it. He was tired, worried and more than a little angry and didn’t care about how much damage he did to anyone's computer systems as he ripped even the slightest bit of information out of any server he came across taking anything and everything from Waller's own notes on the matter to research material from a rogue sect of the government calling themselves the GIW.
That had led him down a rabbit hole of government conspiracies and cover ups that would have normally kept him busy for weeks but he had passed on the worst of it to the rest of the League and focused on the handful of files they had on an off the books company called Fenton Works.
They apparently had a functional portal with more than enough power to punch a hole between dimensions so hopefully an investigation into them would keep him busy while they waited for a response from the Green Lanterns.
-_- -_- -_-
"You need to stop this Desiree."
"Why, Phantom and his paramour are happy aren't they?"
She already knew the answer since it was her magic warping such a large area and her grin only grew as she watched Undergrowth's little champion twitch at her words.
Because that was thing, Phantom was happy.
He was the happiest he's ever been in a very long time and well out of the way on a long overdue 'vacation'. So what if everyone was taking his absence as an excuse to run a little wild. Amity would survive. They always did. The avatar of the Speed Force didn't even seem to mind and Clockwork wasn't interfering with her latest wish either so she wasn't overstepping anywhere that really mattered since the Ancient of Time usually erased anyone who went too far with his favorite student.
He hadn't even popped in to deliver any of his usual threats when she overheard the little speedster's heartbroken wish so she banished the girl back to Amity Park without a second thought.
They couldn't force her to grant wishes anymore, not after Phantom went out of his way to help alter her curse and their constant whining was starting to get annoying.
If it wasn't Undergrowth's champion then it was the Pharaoh or Phantom's sister.
None of them could take the hint and leave well enough alone.
Cause, the thing is, she left more than enough wiggle room in the wish for Phantom to get free if he ever really wanted to get free and she wasn't sure he did.
Oh, on some level he was probably well aware of something being off but he was purposely ignoring that feeling.
He was happy in the world she shaped around him and his little speedster and Desiree wasn't about to ruin that for either of them.
She'd just head back to her lair if anyone tried.
No one could get to her there, not without wasting a lot of power so maybe she'd finally have a little piece and quit to enjoy her favorite show in peace.
It's not much but I wanted to try and think up a way for Danny to experience his very own version of WandaVision.
Essentially a sad Danny from any kind of reason really but for now I'm just blaming his entire life for this one and a desperately trying to be helpful Bart who has vague memories of a future with Danny get a starring role in a new life that was perfectly prepared just for them at the cost of pretty much everyone else.
I don't remember what it's called but there was a Disney movie about a superhero school so I'm kind of imagining that and a lot of really cheesy musical moments thrown in somewhere while everyone outside of the barrier is left worrying about their friends and family.
I know it's weird, but my mind just comes up with really weird ideas when I'm tired.