In between one moment and the next reality quakes and for the briefest of moments Jason finds himself standing in the remnants of a destroyed Star City. He knows it's not real, that it's just some magical mumbo jumbo overlaying memory magic nonsense bleeding into their timeline but he can smell the smoke in the air from the fires and hear her tired laughter as the static filled image of a red haired woman sits down beside him. He knows her or at least this version of him does as they talk about the little suicide run they were planning in order to hopefully end things for good and Jason can feel how tired his alternate self is as he takes a seat on the ground beside her. It's all a rush of emotions and faint memories that were getting harder and harder to ignore before he's suddenly back on the Watchtower with every other available hero the League could call in stuck arguing about these stupid visions affecting heroes and villains all over the globe if some of Ra's latest movements were any indication. His men were searching everywhere for answers while others like Luthor were making more subtle inquiries. The only upside to all of this was the reactions coming out of Arkham but that didn't mean he wanted to be up here with the League nearly at each other's throats.
With everything he's managing to piece together through a couple of brief check-ins with Dickie and the girls he could see why B wanted answers.
As morbid as it sounded Dick and the others were a few of the lucky ones who were able to be pulled out of their memories faster since they were at ground zero when the Watchtower was pulled out of orbit. The quicker you died the quicker it was over but neither of them were as lucky.
In those jumbled memories him and Bruce were the only two left after Gotham went up in flames since Phantom went after them first and there were still a few lingering effects clinging to that since he could still remember what the older version of himself felt. It was somewhat muted now but some of it was still there and if he focused hard enough Jason could still see the makeshift doctor's office in his mind. He could feel the phantom pain and see her flowing red hair. She seemed so relieved to find him alive and he wanted his own answers but Impulse was in the wind.
The little speedster was gone before anyone could really recover from the sudden onslaught of memories and while Bruce was doing everything he could to figure out a plan of sorts the others weren't as lucky with Superman stuck bouncing between the moments of his own brutal death and worrying about his family's safety. Whoever or whatever Phantom was, he knew exactly where to hurt them with Jon nearly losing it in public after being forced to live through the memories of his mom dying and the man of steel's own death at the hands of some magical Martian whatever.
Wonder Woman seemed the most put together out of everyone but even she was kind of twitchy, her had never leaving the pummel of her sword as Zatara went over what he could piece together on his own since the bulk of JLD was still out of commission.
His own daughter was comatose from the magical backlash of whatever this was while Constantine was just missing, his home a mess of overturned books and hurried scribbles which left them on the back foot for now since the only solid lead anyone had was Impulse and Young Justice was closing ranks around their missing speedster.
With JLD in shambles and Ra's on the move Replacement was running his own investigation into whatever was going on and shutting everyone else out of his systems after the first attempt at locating Impulse through his tracker backfired horribly.
I blame my cough medicine and a love for Fallout for whatever this is turning into but I felt like adding onto Run a little. I wouldn't even begin to know how to explain it but I just have this image in my head of Bart and Danny in a Fallout like world but the whole memory thing could be anything really. I just like the idea of reality shifting to the left just enough that Bart suddenly remembers details about his past he'd forgotten thanks to time travel/reality resetting and he suddenly remembers Danny while the rest of his team remember bits and pieces of their missing teammate Phantom. Everyone else just gets doomsday memories cause I really don't care and mostly think it's funny so I'm either blaming this on the gauntlet from the movie or Clockwork but anyone could add something else if they want.
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 ^^
they're totally inseparable now haha
Danny is gonna have it framed and everything proofed cause it's Martian Manhunter's autograph while all of the other eldritch ghosts and gods/titans are just leaning in really close to get a good look at the only hero their prince/king seems to care about.
I mean with everything his parents can do and Danny being Danny he's gotta have some engineering skills and since he's in love with everything space related I can kind of imagine him building his own base on the moon. He'd just need a little help to get started but with his parents skills, Tucker's tech and a little extra from Sam's allowance it slowly starts to come together piece by piece and the Justice League has no idea what to do.
Cause he's obviously in love with their orbiting watchtower but it's not his and he knows better than to just invade someone else's haunt/territory without an invite so Danny settles for admiring it as he flies back and fourth with thousands of pounds worth of equipment.
And the Justice League is sort of stumped cause there's a kid making multiple trips to the moon nearly every weekend but what can they really do. He's not hurting anybody. He isn't breaking any laws either but his 'friends' who are easily the size of the moon are giving every magic user on Earth a heart attack.
Governments are calling. People are worried about another invasion. Amity Park doesn't care and nobody in the know wants to ruin Danny's fun.
Meanwhile Danny is having the time of his life building a base the size of his hometown. It helps with his obsession and sort of evens him out which is good for everyone so he doesn't see the problem with calling in a few favors from Undergrowth and Vortex in order to make his little corner of the moon habitable for his friends and family.
I've read countless prompts and fics talking about how the Anti-Ecto Acts affect Danny, Dani, Dan, the heroes, etc, but what if it was just a random bunch of people coming up with a work around in order to finally get rid of a lot the supervillains that were protected by the law.
Like Ben (I don't know why I came up with Ben for this) and a couple of his friends start talking about how certain supervillains can get away with just about anything only to get a few months in prison when one of them brings up the Fentons who are one step away from being mad scientists. Anybody who ever went to school with them is bound to bring them up at least once but they get brought up and eventually everyone ends up joking about how many heroes have 'come back from the dead' since the everyday civilian would probably think they were on a vacation or doing some sort of undercover work whenever they aren't seen out in public for a while. Ben adds on to the idea by bringing up how many supervillains have come back from the dead and it kind of snowballs from there until it finally gets to the dumbest idea any of them have ever had.
How would you kill a ghost, zombie, whatever?
What would someone like the Joker even be considered since he's apparently died on a number of different occasions and is somehow so insane nobody can give him the death penalty. Wait... What was that about the Fentons... Their research... Huh??? Let me see that for a second... That could work... It could actually work. We just have to word it the right way, maybe make up a couple of things to make it sound scary but it could work.
It doesn't even have to be about the Joker. With the number of enemies Luthor has you can't tell me there isn't at least one rich person willing to jump on the chance of legally having a way to get rid of him for good. Cause he's faked his death before, been dying only to transfer his consciousness into a clone body and probably pulled off even more crazy things I don't know about and this insane idea might be just the thing they'd need to finally get rid of him since he'd no longer have any rights if the Anti-Ecto Acts pass.
But then they start hearing about a supposed ghost kid and what's this about a hunter in a mech suit and a biker with a sentient shadow. Obviously he's just a meta. The mech suit guy simply had way too much time on his hands and the biker has to be magic. Just look at the baby hero and his rogue gallery roughing each other up but the Fentons are screaming about ghosts again, they're even on the local news now so we have to double down on everything if we want this to work. Quick, grab a couple of guys and go act like Team Rocket until we've handled things over here. You're O, that's Q. He can be Z if he wants. I don't really care who does what just shove the alien squid whatever back into the portal before a Green Lantern shows up complaining about some sort of space law we've probably broke then go around telling everyone you destroyed it or something. They can't prove we didn't.
Remember, we're supposed to be the 'bad guys' people.
'Umm..... Wha-' 'Shhhh.' Glaring at an amused looking Kon, Tim was shushed again by yet another Titan when he tried to bring up the civilian in the tower who was currently using his favorite pillow and some of their better blankets. Bart was even in there curled up next to him and judging by the occasional snoring sounds Gar was somewhere under the mountain of blankets probably in one of his dog forms or something small enough not to get knocked off the hoverboard they were all sleeping on which was just great.
There was a civilian he didn't recognize. Tech he didn't know anything about and another mystery to hide from the rest of his family because the kid looked like a mini Bruce and he didn't need the headache of another Damian trying to kill him.
'Who is he?' Tim outright bat glared when Cassie tried shushing him.
'Oh, you're no fun. That's Danny.' Not Daniel or Danyal or some other haughty name that meant he'd have to worry about some stupid League indoctrinated holier than though birth right nonsense.
'He's a friend of Bart's who started taking over a few of the nighttime patrols in Central.'
I know it's not much of a prompt but for this I'm just imagining the Fentons moving to stay under the radar after everything with the portal, Vlad and the GIW pushing things but Danny is still Danny and he tries to help people. There isn't a lot he can do in Central but he could take a bit of the pressure off the speedsters and again with his friends help and his parents skills it wouldn't take much for them to come up with a working hoverboard. He can't run around as Phantom anyway, not yet so Danny reinvents himself slightly (kind of Phantom two steps to the left) makes some new friends through Bart and Wally and unintentionally gives a majority of the bat family issues cause Jack looks a lot like Bruce Wayne.
If you've seen The Sandman episode A Hope in Hell then you already know what I'm talking about but what if when the Justice League tries to summon the Ghost King for any number of reasons only they get Clockwork instead who forces them (or any hero really but I'm thinking of one of the Flashes or maybe Wonder Woman since Constantine has his own game planned for him) to play his favorite game, the oldest game and they have to win or else. He could genuinely be angry, I actually want to see a furious Clockwork more than ready to undo the very existence of the planet for daring to summon his protege but I can kind of see him messing around a little and playing up the whole titan of time, father of Zeus thing with the heroes as payback for messing around with the timelines so much.
It doesn't matter either way. What the Justice League wants isn't worth mentioning since Clockwork erased it from existence with barely a fraction of effort.
The biggest concern that has the entirety of Young Justice worried is the fact that the only person who got a free pass during that mess of a summoning was Bart and nobody can figure out why. Clockwork was more than willing to end the man of steel. He despised the other heroes and seemed annoyed at the sight of so many speedsters gathered together but after surveying the meeting room they used for the summoning he looked surprised then a little amused at the sight of Young Justice, smiling at Bart like he was genuinely happy to see him back there with the rest of his team. There wasn't even any mention of erasing his existence or anything as colorful as the threat against Constantine which was just rude. He could be a threat if he wanted (even if he kind of puffed up like an angry kitten when Clockwork started treating him like he was one of his grandsons) but he doesn't know (can't remember) that all of the Ancients and at least a dozen different pantheons have him on a very short list of people the Ghost King would gladly end the multiverse for after everything his past self/alternate did during the whole Dan problem. In Clockwork's eyes Bart has more than earned a free pass across the wider multiverse.
Cause, the thing is, the rest of the heroes might have died fighting for the world but the Bart from the darker timeline, the one who helped Danny traverse a literal apocalypse and pointed out way too many holes in Vlad's little monologue died saving Danny's life when Dan was trying to mess with the timeline which meant he unknowingly has the Ghost King's blessing and anything and everything on the more darker side of the supernatural can see the enormous 'Do Not Approach' sign that was basically Danny's mark (a necklace, pen, invisible magic whatever or something small he keeps on him without knowing why) claiming Bart as off limits.
Go mess with any other hero if you want, but this speedster, this little guy right here who has Clockwork treating him like a grandson has the Ghost King's blessing, the only blessing he's ever given out, permission to race across the crossroads of Infinity and the protection of a lot of powerful eldritch gods.
FremiMay Day 21: Inazuma
Vlad could totally pull off the whole wine aunt role with Jason or whoever really thinking he's the normal one until he offhandedly mentions the best way to kill a wendigo during one of the Fentons discussions about the supernatural.
It was, it was always just a fight but the last one had been 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 after for a while afterwards with the rest of his team joining up at different points along his trip across the country.
Weeks spent on the road from New York to Pennsylvania, a detour down to Atlanta and through Kentucky. A weekend 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.