An Ancient's Game

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.

We Became Heroes Because You Didn't

The Justice League don't specialize in much. If you ask them, they'd say otherwise. Unless they're one of the Bats, because they acknowledge that, especially with magic. They hate it, but they have connections and will at least ask for more details to deal with the situation at hand. Though they'll need proof.

That's the thing really. Proof. Because how are you going to get proof of something if everything gets repaired by the end? Or maybe you're the villain here according to the public. Or maybe everything you say is just plain crazy that nobody even knows what's going on from the start!

It was only when another group was formed when everything became clear. They were frowned upon, unknown, spoke nonsense, and never asked for help. They were the survivors that played hero. They were the shadowed version of the Justice League.

They were Justice League: Dark

A fanfic (or multiple small ones grouped together?) that isn't really about them joining forces, but more about the discovery of more dangerous territory that's being handled by kids/teens. Lift some weight for these kids. They really want a safe net by now in their hero careers.

Like- maybe a few of these wouldn't be the JL's fault. Maybe it was the government (at least for the US). Like Danny Phantom and Gravity Falls mentions the government, maybe they blocked off those regions from outside connections.

I feel like it would be funny if maybe Constantine just ends up collecting kids like Batman with his.

They're just kids! Itty bitty toddlers. It's supposed to be our job to take care o' that shit, ain't it?

And JLD now has a bunch of young professionals cause what the fuck, kid. Why do you know this??? Ya know? Maybe the JL just randomly finds these things, calls Constantine after Zatanna fails to know wtf is going on, and he just calls over a kid. Or a group of them.

JL: We need a professional, why is there a child here?

Constantine: Cause even when you fuckers ignored their calls for help, they still at least try to help where they can

JL: We never-

Constantine: Shut your traps! School's in session

*Child tries to explain*

JL: You have to be kidding me. ___ doesn't exist.

Constantine: Oh bloody hell-

Child: And they wonder why they get more attention than us.

idk, I just like the idea of Constantine being a father for OP characters and desperately want a Young Justice League: Dark. I read a couple of Danny and/or Billy being adopted by him, but the cravings... And if it's a whole big crossover thing, that would be great. Tag me if you see or write about something like this. I wanna read too :)

Don't put too much hope in me writing it though, I'm seriously bad at continuing/finishing stuff. But if I do, I'll edit this post with links to whatever I write.

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often-daydreaming

8 months ago

Sanctuary

Buzz...

'Hel-' 'I told you I was okay mom, you need to stop texting me so much.' Danny? 'I'm still at the library near Nightingale Drive but I promise I'll be home soon.'

Dinah was out of her chair and hurrying towards the nearest teleporter before he could finish speaking and inadvertently startling a few nearby heroes as she pushed past them.

'Dinah?'

'Dinah, what's happening.' Oliver called out when he noticed her leaving.

'Danny, a kid I've been mentoring just called using one of the codewords we came up with for emergencies.' And it must have been bad if Danny was calling her this late at night but at least he was using the phone she got him so it only took a few seconds to pull up his location through the built in tracker.

Huh...

What in the world was Danny doing in Star City?

It didn't matter. Not right now. She'd ask later but for now she was busy punching in the right coordinates while Oliver ran to grab his own gear.

-_- -_- -_-

It didn't take long to find him. The kid, Dinah's boy was hiding in a coffee shop a few blocks away from the library he was using for his cover story so Oliver stayed back for now and watched from his hiding spot on a nearby rooftop as Dinah hurried into the shop playing up the role of a worried mom.

She was good at it.

Nobody gave her a second glance as she pulled the kid into a hug while muttering soft reassurance that doubled as codewords. He knew some of it meant danger and alone but he was too far away to make anything else out and Dinah angled the kid in a way that kept him and anyone else watching from reading their lips.

And he got it.

He really did.

From his bloodshot eyes to the sway in his every other step it was obvious from just a glance that the kid was dead on his feet. He'd more than likely been running for a while now and was one soft breeze away from collapsing so the last thing he needed was a complete stranger coming out of nowhere and questioning him but that still left Oliver with a dozen different questions as he listened to Roy going over everything they could dig up on such short notice which wasn't much.

It looked like somebody had gone through a lot of trouble to erase Amity Park's existence but a few things managed to get through like news covering the Fenton's home being raided by the government and Vlad Masters' very public, very messy custody battle with the older sister. Both of them were seen accusing each other of everything and anything, screaming insults and overly creative threats, and on more than one occasion the police had to pull Jasmine off of Masters who kept paying her bail but there was nothing explaining the hows or whys behind everything going on.

I know it isn't much but I just had the thought of Danny's parents getting arrested for whatever reason really but I'm going with their change of heart after a reveal gone right for this prompt. They shut everything down and stop making weapons that can actually hurt magical beings and a lot of influential people don't like that leading to a police raid while Jazz is away and forcing Danny to reach out to Dinah who could be his anything really from one of those online therapists to a godmother who tries to help him figure out his powers.

Wishes

"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.