Curate, connect, and discover
Hey, where are my DC x DP people at?
What if Jason came back wrong because the GIW had his little ghost self captured for 6 months?
Imagine it. The warehouse in Ethiopia happens to be on some powerful crossing leylines and a GIW agent is stationed to keep an eye on the area. She sees the Joker and his men. She sees Robin enter the building. Maybe the place is bugged and she even knows what's happening and she realizes... This is their chance. The GIW could get data on a ghost as it forms! This is unprecedented!
So, she waits and watches and records data.
And when the warehouse explodes, when the Batman has come and gone, when the response team has put out the fire... She searches. She finds Robin's ghost as it begins to form. She captures it, the scientific find of the century.
And six months of inhumane, dehumanizing experiments later, the ghost of Robin seems to shred itself as it's ripped violently through all the anti-ecto restraints and containments.
Maybe there's a perfect sphere left behind and Jason doesn't realize that he's missing his core. Maybe the recorded experiment logs are out there, waiting for the right hacker to release them. Maybe Team Phantom rescued the core and are searching for the being it belongs to.
Just some thoughts~
ERRORS WILL BE MADE BECAUSE I’M AN OVERWORKED PERSON
“What?” The Ghost King of the Infinite Realms hissed out in rage.
Danny stared down at where his Spymaster, a liminal who willingly stood up to take on the title to keep an eye on the human realm for him— was kneeling still as they waited for Danny to process their report. The silent in the throne room was deafening and yet his Spymaster— Lucero Castillo continued on to stay defiantly at him to showcase the seriousness of the situation.
“He’s called the Joker, he’s killed and caused more harm than I’ve realized. The person tasked at keeping an eye on him had failed and the man got away from landing in the realms for his trial longer than I’d like to admit.” Lucero said with a bitter tone, their anger obvious in the moment. Danny could understand, seeing the countless ghosts who landed in the realms because of the Joker grew.
Knowing that the Joker managed to defy death and kept inflicting it? It made Danny’s blood boil as he remembered the death of one of Lady Gotham’s Knights, the boy was young— so young that Danny wept to himself in the shelter of his own keep because that was a young boy who despite everything still tried to save his own mother. Danny felt like he was looking to a mirror every time he saw the Robin, purely because they were both teenagers— kids who had died. It was a limited time that Danny spent with Robin- Jason but enough that Danny missed him when the boy disappeared.
“You’ve kept tabs?” Danny rumbled out, his words echoing with authority that caused the ghosts in the throne room to straighten and Lucero to give a grin, their fangs glinting in the light of the ghost flames that lit up the room.
“Once I realized, I made sure to keep tabs on the clown. I figured it’d be a good premise for a hunt.”
A hunt… Lucero wasn’t wrong. A hunt would be good, it’d allow those who had been harmed by him. The ghosts will enjoy the thrill of hunting down their own killer, he’s sure Gotham’s shades and lingering ghosts would enjoy it as well. Lucero would keep an eye on the hunt, put a stop to any ghosts who stepped out of line and protect any humans.
Danny’s fingers drummed against the arm rest of his throne, the crown above his head flickering wildly as he thought it over.
“I approve of this hunt, it’s been too long.” Danny said as he gave a crooked smile before gesturing to Pandora who immediately began to speak the hunt in existence with another ghost besides her writing it down so a missive would appear before every victim of Joker that had died and lives in the realms.
“Under the orders of High King, the Hunt of the human named Joker the Maddened False Clown, the man who has denied our Mother’s embrace and who has cruelly ended lives of others before their ended time. The Spymaster has been deemed the Watcher of this Hunt and those who had been harmed by him may indulge in the hunt. The hunt will begin in a week’s time.”
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Jason felt that something in Gotham was different, the air felt charged in a way he never felt even before his death. He was more in tune with Gotham than any other person, he knew Gotham at its core just as she knew him at his very being. It’s why he claimed Crime Alley as his when he had come back, why he dug his roots and kept digging them even if people tugged him and tried to make him change his tune about the Alley.
They didn’t understand.
Nobody understood the fact that Crime Alley is the very heart of Gotham, how she thrives on its very essence and how even at her weakest she relies on it to protect the rest of Gotham. The City Spirit loomed over him from the shadows, her hands placed on his shoulders to keep ahold of and giving a motherly croon whenever the Bats came into his haunt.
The leylines that Gotham lived on seemed to beat along as the excited trills and chirps of various ghosts were heard as he walked through the Alley, they sounded like a murder of crows in the death infested city. Shadows and blurs of greens and blues darted around, seeking. Hunting.
A soft croon from shade caught Jason’s attention, watching it peer shyly up at him with a wide childlike gaze. The shade was in an alleyway, one that Jason knew the kids around used to run after stealing some food that he knew Mrs. Jimenez purposely put on her windowsill for to take. He debated on ignoring it, wanting to head home because his skin felt too tonight, his pulse thundering in ways even adrenaline rush never could.
The shadows beckoned. Jason followed.
“Do you guys feel that?” Steph asked at family dinner of the month, her eyes darting around to catalogue the Bats reactions. Everyone looked on edgy, as if a single pin needle could drop and it’d shatter every peaceful pretense they had. Jason however looked at ease, as if he didn’t feel like he was a prey at the moment.
“Yeah, it’s made a lot of things brighter. I had to be careful during patrol because I’d start getting migraines from the lights.” Duke said as he poked his fork into his pasta, eyes hidden behind sunglasses that he wore to prevent his lingering headache from flaring into something worse.
“Oh it’s probably cause of the Hunt.”
A silence occurred before chaos erupted.
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NOTE: I am a firm believer that while Jason doesn’t remember anything from during his time dead, he knows ghost culture because its ingrained into his very being and has been aware of all the shades/ghosts of crime alley because its his haunt and he is protective of them as he is of humans. He’s basically Lady Gotham’s disgruntled feral cat and she’s basically throwing him at the shades as exposure therapy to the ✨other side ✨
also Jason casually dropping the fact of the Hunt is so funny cause he’s just reading a book while eating. Like hahaha yeah it’s cause of the Hunt :) we all had died or had brushed with death enough that we feel the excitement of the dead ! Jason is also very much unaware that the hunt is AIMED at Joker and pretty much. has a dead joker dropped at his feet by excited kiddo shades because !!! PRESENT FOR PAPA !!! before it gets yoinked into the infinite realms by Lucero.
morally grey danny because he is balance !! HE IS A KING !! he has the right to choose who dies !!! tbis was done at 2am again and scheduled to post at 7am
Danny denying kidnapping arrow