"Do you require assistance?" Phantom perked up at the mans voice. Red Robin was the guy multiple ghosts had recommended to him even though he was still alive. Okay, so they kinda did it in a half joking manner, but Phantom was desperate!
The nine year old came out from the shadows and could immediately feel the man in front of him cataloging everything about his appearance. Wierd. But he had dealt with Weirder. Besides, he was glowing, so he guessed the human had a right to be curious. "I heard you were really good with machines."
Red Robin looked somewhat tense, like he was ready to fight if need be. Why does everyone wanna fight him? He's nine!
Phantom quickly brought out a little silver sphere with an OwO face from his bag and quickly began speaking, "This is my friend Livvi, she started acting wierd a while back and I haven't been able to fix her."
To his credit, Red didn't attack him. He just looked gobsmacked. "You came out to Gotham, in the middle of the night and tracked down a vigilante to ask for tech support?"
"Livvi is different!" He fumed, "She's my friend!"
A sigh escaped from the mans lips and Phantom looked up to see him pinching the bridge of his nose, "Okay, you're probably not going to go away until I fix her. Just promise me you'll try to be safer."
Phantom hummed as if contemplating, "I'll try."
With that, the vigilante took Livvi from him and began working on her from the blanket Phantom had laid out. Red Robin began to look more and more curious about Livvi as he worked on her. He even took out one of Livvis ectoplasm powerbanks to examine it more thoroughly. "Can you explain to me what problems she's been having?"
The kid bit his lower lip, clearly worried about the little robot, "Shes having trouble maintaining flight and producing shields. Her speech sometimes comes out glitch or warped despite me not finding anything wrong with her voice box or programming. A few times she's just turned off mid flight and dropped."
The man looked thoughtful for a few seconds before asking, "Have you ever heard of the Lazarus Pit?"
"I've heard of Lazarus, but I don't know what it is. I've only ever heard of it in passing. Why?" The ghost was genuinely confused by the change in topic
"Can I text a friend about this?"
"I don't see why not. The more help Livvi gets the faster she'll get better right?" The bird wasted no time activating his coms and whispering into it telling some unknown people about "an unknown glowing meta child with futuristic tech that runs on Lazarus water"
Within the next ten minutes a guy dressed as a bat landed on the rooftop alongside a boy around his age dressed like a trafic light and scowling as if he had just been told that he was grounded from ever having ice cream again. The big goth dude introduced himself as batman and offered him a lollipop. "I'm not supposed to take candy from strangers." Phantom said seriously, "Unless its Halloween."
Batman...well he didn't smile exactly but he didn't seem angry. "Do you know where you're parents are?"
"No. But thats okay. They don't like me."
Batman maintained a cool pokerface, "why don't they like you?"
"I don't remember. I think I knew when I was older-"
"Older?" The other boy interrupted, "Is this not your true age?"
Phantom pouted at him, any hopes he had of making a friend he didn't construct himself were flung out the window, "Yeah, but I don't remember it. Appearently I ate a time god and lost six-ish years from absorbing his powers."
There was a beat silence, then: "You ate a time god?!" Red Robin looked horrifed
"In my defense, I have no memory of what was happening at the time. All I know is that the place i used to live is in ruins and I'm dead."
Robin (whichever one of your choice) is platonically soulbound to Danny. When Danny gets electrified they instantly crumble to the ground wracked in blinding pain. It is known that soulbound only feel pain to this degree when their fellow soulbound dies… So why can Robin still feel the soulbound connection?
I’ve seen a lot of posts where there is unhinged science teacher Danny and people compare him to Ms. Frizzle.
But what if it can actually happen?
Like Fenton-Tech is weird enough and Danny (as Ghost King) would have access to all the tech and magic across all dimensions. Not to mention he has a good relationship with someone who is essentially the Lord of Time.
So imagine Gotham Academy Teacher Danny who believes in practical experience and/or first-hand experience.
Mix in a bit of Fenton-tech here, a bit of time magic there and you have a class full of high schoolers who have witnessed things.
It’s a toss up whether people believe them or not because thanks to Clockwork, no time has actually passed when they left.
Danny goes to college after he becomes ghost king and gets bored when his life is no longer packed with chaos.
Sure he could head to the realms and fight some ghosts but that was just regular chaos and he wanted to mix things up a bit.
It’s around this time that Danny learns about the young protégés of the Justice league.
One day while the JL are at the watch tower having a meeting IN SPACE they are interrupted by a teenaged invader.
The whole team goes on the defensive when much to their surprise, the teen passes out his resume and pulls up a PowerPoint title “Phantom:Villain for hire”
He then goes on to explain that he’d been in the hero game for years in a small town where the media actively portrayed him as a villain for years before going completely dark on the matter when Vlad was kicked out of office.
He explains that he’d been in fights with various levels of villains and is incredibly versatile with his power output and fight difficulty.
Which is why he would be the perfect villain to have their protégés practice against!!
He can be their villain of the week that helps them learn valuable life lessons while giving them a very real challenge WITHOUT the risk of death or dismemberment!
he can even create schemes catered to lessons they want to teach their proteges
for a price of course….
years down the line when each of them officially join the league. one by one the team has a mental breakdown when they find the bane of their existence eating a bagel in the league cafateroa
thinking of a peter parker in gotham au where he gets surprise adopted by jason because jason couldn't bear seeing this kid on the streets so often
[From The Amazing Spider-Man (1963) #220]
Never forget that time Marc tried to invite Spider-Man out on a fancy date after they busted a crime ring and then was crushed that he got turned down.
Au where the Fenton parents shenanigans cause the entire city (minus Vlad) get transported to the dc universe.
Everything is not fine as now Phantom has to keep human crime out of his city instead of the ghosts. The portals are still open but nothing can pass through without getting fried. Rip Skulker. So Danny can't escape or transport his city back home. Sam was away attending a gala in another state with her parents and Jazz was at collage, luckily Tucker and Dani were able to back him up.
More bad news, Superman appearently keeps "overhearing" things, more specifically the things his parents say, which, yikes.
The real kicker is after talking about the batfamily in an mid superhero fight interview where he was cornered by Lois Lane one (1) time there became a sudden influx of Phantom/Red Robin fanfiction. Mostly coffee shop aus at first but then there came the Phantom/Robin shippers and before he knew it there was a massive shipping war going on
Phantom makes the mistake of sending a note to both of them asking them to "please stay away from me" and adding a candy bar or something as a bribe. Now the bats are curious.
Their portal flickered out before they could see the kid's death, or try to help.
They were left, instead, to wonder who that hero was. They'd only seen a brief flash of him, but it was only right to pay their respects.
They were a teenager. They were using advanced technology. The emblem was kinda pointy.
Like.
Like a sideways batarang.
Oh shit.
Had Batman lost another bird?
It wasn't much to go on, but it was all they had.
However, Batman didn't act any different. There were no reports of a Gotham hero disappearing (permanently). When they branched out, there were no reports of any other hero going missing that matched that criteria.
When Zatanna used a spell to recreate an exact drawing of the emblem, there was no hero that used it.
So they were left with an uncomfortable reality; they'd witnessed the death of a future hero.
But.
They hadn't seen the whole fight. Maybe the teen had won, against all odds?
They had to find them and prepare them. Give them as much of an edge as they could.
So they waited. And waited. And waited.
And no one using that emblem came.
Zatanna, frustrated, found herself doodling the emblem...right as Superman came up behind her.
"Oh, are you trying to find the Kryptonian House that belongs to?"
Zatanna froze.
No.
No way.
The teenager was a Kryptonian? There was another Kryptonian running around?
How the hell was she supposed to tell Superman that he wasn't the only one left, and that on top of that, she'd seen the future death of the other one?
Jason is in civilian clothing absolutely plastered at a Crime Alley bar when Joker breaks out of Arkham, and while still drunk he abruptly decides he’s sick of all this dramatic bullshit and just. kills the Joker. tracks him down, kills him without any fanfare, and ditches. it was executed flawlessly, incredible really considering his intoxication levels at the time. he only slipped up a teeny-tiny amount.
because he got seen leaving the murder scene. in civilian clothing. and then got caught once more via a security camera as he was disappearing back into Crime Alley. and the bats fucking saw that footage.
Bruce Wayne, an emotional wreck, just found out that Jason is alive, apparently just murdered the Joker, and is now living alone in Crime Alley (and who knows in what conditions?! he’s legally dead, there’s no legal way for him to make money, his poor son might be homeless.) and for some reason he isn’t coming home. Bruce is in despair, getting worse the longer they can’t track Jason down. finally, at his wits end, he decides to ask the help of the one other vigilante figure that seems to know Crime Alley better than the bats, and that might have some less-savoury contacts that could be of better help tracking down a legally dead boy.
the Red Hood, struggling not to laugh hysterically in Batman’s face, has never been more excited to accept a job in his LIFE. he has no plans on how he’s going to fuck with Bruce just yet, but by god is he going to do something.
Danny knew he had screwed up and that he was going to be in so much trouble as he flew hurriedly through the streets of Gotham.
"Old man is going to be so pissed...." he muttered as he zigzagged through the buildings. He had just gotten back from a side mission with Clockwork when he learned that one of their villains had gotten their hands on portal technology. Not his parents mind you, no one could read their chicken scratch besides Danny or Jazz. No but Vlad's, who was supposed to be a redeemed man but apparently some of his inventions still managed to get onto the black market.
Danny hat been in the Ghost Zone when they had that found out and the old man pinged him to get back sooner. And oh boy was Danny in for a portal mess when he got back to Gotham. He instantly went out to help the old man. Batman was out on his own and Danny had been trying to give him support when he got tangled up and ended up thrown through a portal.
Yeah, he knew his the old man would give him a good lecture, like the day he had gotten taken under the other mans wing. So now after Danny finally made his way back to Gotham he flew through the streets in search of the old man, it looked like the portal problem had resolved while he was trying to find his way back but still Danny had a weird feeling about Gotham now.
"OLD MAN!" He yelled as he spied Batman on top of a building. Grinning brightly he came to an stop directly in front of the other waving happily. "Sorry it took so long but I am back and in one piece! No injuries! See!"
Danny grinned brightly despite not getting an instant answer or lecture back. Though he paused when he noticed the kid in colourful clothing and others like one with a red face covering helmet, one themed in blue and one in black and red. "Did you get help from others? And I thought you didn't like kid playing hero?"
He tilted his head confused as he studied Batman before his eyes widened. "Hey, since when is your insignia not red...?"
It was in that moment that Danny realized he messed up big time somehow and slipped up as he uttered his next words. "You're not old man Thomas...?"
Tim: good cop
Damian: bad cop
Dick: you better fucking be interrogated by my brothers