Honestly it would be perfect if M’gann does somehow find out Conner is alive in episode 24. At the start of the season in episode 4, that’s when she thought she lost Conner, but 20 episodes later that would be when she finally finds out the truth that he is still alive!
I have no doubt that when the time comes Conner will be happily reunited with M’gann along with the rest of his friends and family… it’s just everything else in-between that has me worried. I’m worried about everything that might happen until Conner gets his memories back as well as what he might do while under Zods influence. I just hope in the end, the Team knows it’s not really his fault due to the current state of his mind after all that’s happened to him.
Danny stared up at the looming brick house in front of him. It seemed nothing like he remembered it, and yet it was exactly the same.
He looked down at the memory container Vlad gave him.
“M’gann? Can you do me a favor?” Danny asked without looking up.
“Sure, what is it?” M’gann asked as she floated forward.
“Can you… look into their minds? Tell me if they’re happy?”
M’gann looked confused for a second, glancing back to the team, only to get clueless shrugs in return.
“Sure..?”
M’gann rose a bit in the air, holding out her hands and allowing her eyes to glow.
“They’re…. watching a movie…. It’s something about… fudge?” M’gann’s eyes scrunched and the glow faded as she lowered her hands, “Yes, they seem happy. Why did you want me to look?”
“I don’t think I can do this. Tell them, I mean.”
“Are you scared of them? Do we need to-?“ Robin started, looking pointedly at the ‘Fenton Ghost Hunters’ sign above them.
“No!” Phantom said immediately with a frantic wave of his hands, “No, nothing like that. I know that they’d accept me. I’ve seen them do it again and again in parallel universes and timelines. That’s not the problem.”
“I’m sorry you’ve what?” Wally said, then flinched when Artemis elbowed him.
“Not the time, Baywatch.”
“So then what is the problem, Phantom? You are their son, surely there is nothing to be worried about,” Aqualad said.
Danny sighed, “I know it’s bad that Vlad took their memory of me but… How can I make them remember me, just to tell them their only son is dead?” Danny looked up for a moment, “How could I do that to them?” He dropped his gaze again.
“Phantom, they are your parents. Of course they want you in their lives.”
“But I wouldn’t be. You heard M’gann, they’re happy like this. Thinking they only have one kid, who’s safe away at college.. How could I make them worry about me, knowing that even when I come back from missions, even when I am here, I’m not even alive anymore?” Phantom shook his head, “No. I can’t do that to them. I’d be haunting them. It wouldn’t be a blessing, it’d be a nightmare.”
Artemis looked at the others of the team, all speechless and contemplative. She stepped forward, “It’s your decision, Danny. We’re not going to force you to do anything. Whatever you decide.”
Danny lowered the memory box and turned away from the house, “I’m a ghost now, guys. Ghosts don’t have families.” He walked towards the camouflaged Bioship.
Danny paused and looked back when a hand was set on his shoulder, it was Kid Flash.
“No matter what man, you’ve got us. And we’re a family all on our own,” Wally said with a bright smile. Danny saw the rest of the team nodding behind him as well.
“Of course, Wally,” He gave a soft smile back, “How could I forget that?”
And as the Bioship flies away, Danny catches one last glimpse of two bright jumpsuits running outside with glowing scanners looking around frantically. Soon enough they are no more visible than a couple of trees.
“Goodbye Mom. Bye, Dad.”
——
When they get back to the Cave in Happy Harbor, Batman orders a full debrief.
Only problem?
He wants it on the Watchtower. Apparently a few of the other leaguers had been brought into the discussion. And a few more were part of the newly ongoing investigation into the GIW.
This included John Constantine as an expert on paranormal entities and laws. Batman would do whatever he could to keep that man contained to one league base at a time.
The only reason having this debrief on the Watchtower was an issue at all was because of the Zeta Tubes.
Mainly that Danny had taken three steps towards them before freezing in place -literally- and going oddly translucent.
His face paled and his eyes glazed as he backed up, eyeing the Zeta with warily flickering eyes.
“Phant-Danny? What’s wrong?”
“I- the portal- I can’t- it looks like-“ A caged look of panic flits across Danny’s face.
“Looks like what?” Batman rumbles.
“It looks like the portal that killed me,” Danny is shaking now, legs gone and spectral tail jittering below him.
“What portal-?”
And I hate to say this guys, but this Fic is officially moving off of Tumblr.
Read any (future, past or present) chapters here on Ao3: Including the rest of this chapter!
But there is simply not enough engagement on here for me to keep posting it as an individual. Don’t worry, it’s not getting discontinued, I’m just only gonna post it in one place. I think most of y'all are reading it on Ao3 by now anyways.
I’m not gonna take down past uploads though, just not gonna make new ones for every chapter. Have fun and hope you enjoy the new chapter!
Oh my gosh, y’know what I just realized? I never posted the full, rewritten first chapter to here. This is mostly so I can link it from future chapters within giving away the major spoilers that were in the drabble idea I originally posted that became the first chapter:
The team has been together for a while now, and they’d thought they’d finally figured out how to live together.
That was, apparently, not the case.
At first it’s small things, a moved object or a TV left on even when everyone swears they turned it off.
Then, they start forgetting to call out their shots. Batman gives them extra training, it makes them more efficient, everyone works even better together.
And yet somehow… Robin will still turn around and find an enemy knocked out behind him that nobody will admit to taking down.
Like, he’s glad they’re watching each other’s backs, but let a guy know when he’s getting snuck up on, I mean, really!
Then the pranks start. Well… they start getting bolder.
Robin has his money on Wally doing it, if only because he can never catch them on camera. Next on the suspect list is M’gann, maybe she thinks it’s an earth thing, but there was no other way to get into his room without phasing through it.
Of course, everyone else thinks it’s him. And yes, Robin has pulled his fair share of bat pranks, but why would he purposefully freeze the water heater? It makes no sense, but nobody’s fessing up to any of it.
And despite their mentors best efforts, the relentless pranking starts to turn the team against each other. Somebody has to take responsibility, even Aqualad is sick of the extra training.
The last straw is apparently when Artemis’ entire quiver gets filled with sand and mud. Wally laughs at the sight of Artemis stomping into the main room covered in drying mud cement.
Her eyes zero in on him, “This was you wasn’t it, Kid Mouth?!” Artemis shouts as she shakes the dirty quiver at him.
“Hey! That’s beach sand, so maybe you should ask Fishboy before you start pointing fingers at me!” Wally points harshly as Aqualad enters the room.
“I told you before Wally, I was not the one to soak your suit with saltwater!” Aqualad says with a scoff, obviously sick of repeating it.
“Oh yeah, then who did? Some other water controlling teammate?”
“Perhaps you should ask your own best friend, after all, Robin still hasn’t apologized for-“
“I told you I didn’t do it, Kaldur! Just like I didn’t hack the training bots or the oven just to burn M’gann’s cookies!”
M’gann raises her head from behind the couch indignantly, “Nobody else could’ve done it, Robin! You’re the only one with computer skills-“
“Oh, and you’re the only one who could’ve phased into my room and rearranged everything but you don’t see me coming after you for that, M’gann!”
“Anymore! You blamed me for the flying stuff too!”
The team devolved into arguing, everybody blaming everybody else for increasing ridiculous ‘pranks.’
The shouts are interrupted by an echo of ominous laughter through the cave.
“Robin, quit being creepy!”
“It’s not me this time, I swear!” Robin says with his hands up.
The laughter continued.
Now able to tell that Robin was definitely not the one doing it, the team makes eye contact with each other.
Someoneelse was doing it.
Someone was in the cave.
More laughter echoes through the cave, and the team members are quick to arm themselves, gathering into a tight circle, back to back.
“Who’s there!”
Robin discreetly sends a distress beacon to Batman. One word: Intruder.
“Show yourself!”
More laughter, mixed in with the echos,
“BOO!” Something appears and shouts into Robins face.
He leaps back, brandishing a batarang at the… boy?
The boy in question just rocks backward in the air, laughing. He points at Robin, “You should’ve seen your face!!” He laughs.
He seems to ignore or not notice the several weapons pointed at him.
“Who are you!? How did you get in here!?”
The boy sobered instantly, “Who am I? Who am I!?” His voice grows louder as his eyes glow and he rises higher off the ground, his white hair whipping in an imaginary wind, “I am the Spectral Spectator! The preternatural prankster! I am… Phantom!” His words boom across the room from where he looks down on them. Then suddenly he drops right back in front of team, “Sup guys, the name’s Phantom, I’m a ghost and I’ve been pranking you for the last 3 months,” He laughs again, holding his middle and cackling.
“That was you?!” They shout incredulously.
“Of course! What? I thought we bonded when I painted all your masks pink. Or did you think that just happened naturally?” He flips upside down with that stupid smile still on his face.
[Batman - 02]
The whole room freezes as the team turns to the zeta tubes.
Batman appears, already in a battle stance, though pauses when he sees nobody fighting.
“Robin! Why did you call me?!” He shouts, an edge to his tone.
Robin’s brow furrows, “Because of-“ he looks behind him, only to see an empty space, “Where’d he go?!”
The rest of the team whips their heads around, equally surprised to see the empty space behind them.
Robin looks back to Batman, who’s gotten closer.
He spots a shimmer of light behind Batman as Phantom flickers into view.
“Phantom don’t-!” He reaches out to stop him-
It’s too late, Phantom taps Batman on the shoulder with a grin, only to get his hand yanked when Batman throws him over his shoulder.
Instead of hitting the ground though, he goes through, disappearing.
“Who was that?” Batman barks at the team.
“Phantom. He’s… a ghost? We don’t really know.” Robin answers carefully.
Wally scoffs and rolls his eyes, “Ghosts don’t exist, Rob. They’re not real.”
Robin opens his mouth with a retort, Aqualad steps forward to cut off the argument, “Either way, it does not seem to wish us harm… but it did admit to pranking us throughout these last few months.”
Superboy growls, “Which we got extra training because of,”
“Team. If this entity is responsible for the pranks, how long has it been following you and known about the cave? Are other locations compromised?”
The team stays silent, aside from a covered snicker from Robin and KF. Their eyes glued to the space in air above Batman.
He looks up to find the entity- Phantom- floating above him with a grin and mimicking his cowl with two fingers on his head.
Phantom grins, “Are any other locations compromised,” he says with a over-deepened voice and a fake, mocking scowl, “I’m Batman, I eat gravel for breakfast and have never experienced human joy,” he bobs his head back and forth with the joke.
He finally breaks character, falling back in the air laughing.
Batman throws a batarang-net at him, surprised as it goes through and falls to the floor harmlessly.
This could be more dangerous than expected.
“Dude, that was kind of rude! I’m just having fun!”
“Did he just call Batman dude???“ Artemis whispers incredulously to M’gann.
She shrugs helplessly but flys up to meet Phantom in the air regardless.
“Miss Martian, get back, he could be dangerous!”
The figure laughs, “I mean, I’m killer with a water balloon but don’t give me too much credit,” he grins and waves at M’gann as she gets close.
“Hello…” She hesitantly waves back, “Are you.. going to try to hurt us?”
Phantoms smile drops, and confusion replacing his mirth, “Why would I? I mean, I’ve been protecting you just as much as I prank you, why would I try to hurt anybody?” He says it as if the thought hadn’t occurred to him at all. As if, even though he’d basically broken into a secure and secret base, he’d never even considered using the opportunity to do anything but harmless pranks.
“Wait,you’ve been protecting us? Are you the one taking the snipe shots that no one calls out on missions?!” Artemis shouts with realization.
“The very one,” the kid preens with a smile.
“Why?” Batman asks, though it sounds like an order even with only one word.
Phantom rolls his eyes and lowers himself closer to the ground, “Gah, so serious, you need a laugh bat guy. I dunno,” Phantom shrugs, “Just felt right. I saw them in danger, and I didn’t want anybody to get hurt, so I protected them.”
Batman raises an eyebrow that makes Phantom shrink under its scrutiny.
“It felt right and it helps me remember, well a little bit, at least now I know I was a hero before,”
“Before? What do you mean, remember?” Batman asks, interrogation in his tone.
Phantom looks at Batman like he’s asked an obviously stupid question, “Yeah, I mean, I’m a ghost, but it’s not like I remember who I was before I died.”
–
Despite his unorthodox introduction, Phantom settles into the team with incredible ease.
On missions, he’s the first line of infiltration, with invisibility and intangibility that outrank even Robin’s skills. Nothing they’ve come across seems to be able to stop him.
That alone should be worrying, if it wasn’t so overshadowed by his steadfast persistence to protect everyone he can.
Civilians, teammates, senior heroes even.
When a mission- inevitably- goes wrong, Phantom is usually found flying above, taking shots that cover a teammate’s blind spot or protecting them from behind.
They do have to have a couple talks with him about self-sacrificing, but the reaction to jump in front of danger for his friends, it’s almost instinctual.
At least, that’s what he tells Black Canary. Even after several sessions with her, he can’t remember anything new. The team could almost believe that he’ll never remember more.
Almost.
It was just…
Sometimes Robin would hack into something particularly hard, and Phantom will reflexively say, “good one Tucker!,” or, “nice job, Tuck!” as if standing on the tip of a new memory.
They assume Tuck and Tucker are the same person, but no one on the team is really sure, none of them know a Tucker. And when asked about it, neither does Phantom. He just looks confused for a second and then moves on like they’d said nothing at all.
Unbeknownst to everyone but himself and Batman, Robin keeps a record of these instances. Along with a collection of times Phantom’s started an enthusiastic story about a ‘Jazz’, or even occasionally his parents, before suddenly losing his focus and moving on.
Once, during a lull in available missions, Phantom had followed Meghan to school.
He’d seen some goth kid in the hallway and started to yell something starting with S, then vanished.
They didn’t see him for a few days that time.
And when he came back, he wasn’t… completely.. there.
That’s something else the team’s learned about Phantom’s habits.
Sometimes they’ll find him just floating around the cave, vaguely fading from room to room, or pacing high in the air above the main room.
M’gann tried to reach him once like that, early in their friendship.
Her hand went right through him, like he wasn’t there at all.
Occasionally, and only at its worst, he’ll mutter something under his breath.
“I wasn’t fast enough.”
“I shouldn’t have cheated.”
“I can’t be late for school, not again.”
“I want to be an astronaut when I’m older.”
It reminds them all what Phantom really is. Just a dead kid. A dead civilian kid at that. A failure of what they’re trying to protect.
And it’s because of this that Robin keeps a record of everything Phantom says.
Because maybe, if they write everything down, they’ll be able to find a pattern, maybe, if they write everything down, they’ll be able to find who Phantom was, maybe they’ll be able to find what killed him. Maybe they can help him move on.
The mental walls slam down between them and their teammate with a deafening silence.
“Do we… help him?” Wally says hesitantly.
Robin already has another batarang between his fingers, poised to jump in.
Aqualad stays silent, looking torn between getting the team to safety or disobeying orders again.
“I do not know how to help him, we have tried but-“
“Aqualad! We don’t have time for this! Do we help him or regroup and come back?” Artemis says.
Aqualad glances behind at the team, “We don’t-Batman is going to be so disappointed in us,“ he sighs and turns back, “M’gann, you and Superboy make sure the AMITy teams got out and rendezvous with us back at the high school. The rest of us… I imagine Phantom could use some backup.”
Aqualad lunges into the dust cloud with his water bearers out, already latching onto agents and throwing them into each other.
“Woohoo! Now that’s what I’m talking about!” Kid Flash says as he shoots forward, smoke whooshing as he goes past.
Artemis and Robin are already in action, using the smoke as the cover of darkness they were trained in. He throws down some more smoke bombs just to make sure.
Even with all of them fighting, none of them can seem to get close enough to Phantom, still only catching glimpses of his silhouette with each blast.
A stray shot illuminates the smoke as it hits Phantom. He barely flinches before his own ectoblast is meeting its target.
“I’m dead and I still manage to be a better person than you!” Phantom shouts with a growl and another blast.
Robin has to pause in the chaos of the fight. This is personal for Phantom. So much more than just not wanting to back down. Than being stubborn.
No, this is Phantom avenging himself.
Phantom dives at the agent who’d shot him.
He pulls him into the ground, letting him go halfway through. The cement cracks and shifts to trap its victim. Phantom continues looping through the battlefield with ease. He uses the quickly dissipating smoke to catch a group of agents by surprise and throw them into the side of their vans with a slam. Then pulling another into the ground. Or shooting more down with ruthless accuracy.
Kid Flash zooms past the stilled Robin with a whoosh, quickly taking down an agent behind Phantom.
He barely gets a nod.
When the smoke finally clears to wisps along the ground, the team is still outnumbered.
They’ve been able to orient themselves behind Phantom, but in front of them is still almost two dozen agents.
Phantom’s glow seems to pulse at the sight. He clenches his fists, “You want a ghost?!” He shouts, “Fine!”
Robin sees Phantom inhale and immediately rushes to brace himself, hoping his team is able to do the same.
Phantom wails.
Waves of power and sound,
regret and emotion,
pain, loss, and burning depressive fury press down on the agents.
It’s nothing compared to the medbay or his fight with Vlad. If those were a leak, just small droplets of everything Phantom has experienced… this is the breaking of the dam.
Time goes sluggish with the ringing in his ear, and Robin forces himself to lift his head, to open his eyes, to-
An agent stands behind them. Just one. With one ecto-gun.
Aimed solidly at Phantom’s back.
The green blast fires moments before Robin’s batarang hits the agent’s hands.
There’s nothing he can do as Phantom’s wail cuts off into piercing scream.
The damage is done and both sides go still.
Kid Flash rushes to catch Phantom before he hits the ground, pulling him away from the jagged ground left behind.
The rest of the team pulls themselves together and follows.
The ectoblast is seared across Phantom’s side, matching a few others on his shoulder and leg. It’s all a mess of bright green ectoplasm.
Phantom is wincing heavily as he weakly fights Kid Flash trying to stop him getting up.
“I’m fine. I need to finish this. I’m not letting them-“
“You’re not fine, Phantom. You have a holein your side and-“
“I’m dead! It’s not like it’ll kill me!” He shouts at them, finally able to wrench himself from Wally’s stunned hands. Only to find himself still cornered by the team members. “I’m not done, I can’t let them get away, not again, the GiW has to pay for-“
“It’s over, Phantom!” Artemis says with a wide sweep of her hand.
The front driveway of Vlad’s mansion is no more than a crater now, littered with GiW agents and the crushed remains of cars.
Something Phantom said makes Robin’s eyes widen, ‘can’t let them get away.‘ He snaps his head to the side but the lone agent is already gone.
It’s a problem for another time. One that’s almost certainly going to be a problemthough.
“-There’s nothing left to fight, so let’s end this and head back.” Artemis continues.
Phantom wearily looks at his team, then nods, finally allowing Kid Flash to help support him with an arm over his shoulder.
The action makes him groan in pain.
“Phantom, are you sure you’re okay?”
“Oh you know….” Danny chuckles weakly, “Tis but a flesh wound,” he coughs into his elbow, then winces at the ectoplasm that’s left splattered on his arm, “…’tis but a very deep flesh wound.”
“Phantom!”
“What?? I bit my tongue, it’s not like I can d-“
“-anyone-…….-hear-…..” Crackling breaks through the comms in their ears, followed by Tucker’s voice covered in static, “-the GiW—…. -get out-…..-return base-….. -eyes on-… -hero team-…”
Robin reaches up to tap the comm, more static, then, “Anyone have eyes on the hero team, I repeat-“
“We’re here.” He cuts the teen off.
There’s a sigh of relief before Tucker’s voice comes back, “Do you have Phantom? The GiW is on the way, I tried to delay the call but Vlad’s signal got through, you need-“
Artemis cuts in this time, “The GiW are no longer a problem. And we’ve got Phantom. But he’s injured, we need transport.”
“On it,” There’s a pause and the sounds of a keyboard clacking, “hang tight and out of sight, pickup will be there soon….stay safe, Danny.” The last part is whispered, and Artemis, Robin and Kid Flash share a look as the only ones with surviving comms.
They slowly move towards the edge of the grounds and try to hide behind a large hedge as much as they can.
It doesn’t take long though, barely 15 minutes of stiff silence until a quiet rumbling comes up the drive.
No headlights. Slow. Aqualad nods at Artemis to notch an arrow as they emerge from the bush with a lunge.
The minivan screeches unnecessarily to a halt in front of them. A scared looking 15 year old sits in the drivers seat with white knuckles on the steering wheel.
Artemis loosens her bow but doesn’t lower it until the window rolls down completely and a wavering voice trails out.
“Are…? Are you guys th-the sideki-kicks? I was told-“
Robin’s shadow lurches from the bush and slaps a hand over the teens mouth, “Yes, we’re the hero team with Phantom. Stop broadcasting our presence and don’t call us sidekicks.” Robin slips into the back of the van, allowing Aqualad the front as Artemis and takes the middle.
The kid looks hesitantly at the glowing ectoplasm leaking out of Phantom’s side.
“That’s not gonna like.. stain or anything right? ‘Cuz this is my mom’s car and we have to use it for the game this weekend-“
“Sorry, I’ll try to not to bleed to much then,” Phantom says with a deadpan look and a wince as Wally gracefully dumps him in the backseat.
The kid clears his throat, “err.. Well.. I’m Jake.”
Artemis smiles falsely and leans forward, “Nice to meet you, Jake,” the smile drops, “Drive.”
“Right,” Jake ducks his head and exaggeratedly checks the mirrors before slowly, slowly inching their way away from Vlad’s Mansion. The doubtful silence lasts all of 5 minutes before-
“I appreciate your service, Jake, but is there any way we could go faster?” Aqualad says, pointedly glancing at the single digit speedometer reader.
Jake chuckles, “I can’t go higher than like 10 man, I don’t even have my license yet-“
Robin moves forward and clamps a hand over the kids shoulder, “Just drive.”
“Mhmm” Jake nods and hymns nervously, glancing at Robin’s insignia before hesitantly looking forward and pressing down on the gas.
This turns out to be a mistake because the moment Jake gets a taste for speed… he’s taking turns at 45 with a smile.
Artemis looks nearly the color of her costume when they stumble out of the van behind the school. It’s almost a moving stop with how fast the mom-van’s tires are squealing out of the parking lot.
“Something wrong, Greenie? Can’t handle a little speed?” Wally goads.
“Oh you’re one to talk, don’t start thinking I missed that scream you gave when he hit 60 on-“
“It was Phantom-!”
“Sure, it was-“
The two of them get in each other’s face as Danny floats next to the pair, hand plastered over his side and ectoplasm leaking between his fingers. The wound is already smaller than it was, but it’s still deep.
A door opens with a slam behind them, and everyone’s heads snap in the direction to look just in time to see a black combat boot sailing through the air heading straight for Phantom’s head.
He catches the boot with his not ecto-bloody hand and gives a hesitant grin as he leans around it to look.
“Your name was Danny?” Wally says in his mind, “Really?That’s what your parents named baby-you?”
Phantom gives him an affronted look, “No need to sound so disbelieving, man. It’s short for Daniel and it’s not that bad,”
“It kind of is. You just don’t really look like a Danny, Phantom -sorry- Danny-sorryphantom-wait, which do you want us to use now?” Artemis stumbles over her thoughts as they run.
“Phantom in the field, as always,“ he thinks with a roll of his eyes, then looks away a bit, “But when we’re back at the cave, yeah… I think it would be kind of nice to be called Danny again,”
Red Huntress flies a little closer to the group and leans in, “I don’t know what the hell kinda weird ghost mojo you’ve got going on that’s got you so distracted,” She gestures at the whole team, “But cut it out, Phantom.”
“Wait, do they not know?!” Artemis says in their mind.
Phantom shushes her out loud, then says mentally, “Huntress doesn’t know anything about the Halfa situation, except that Dani is one.” Phantom pauses, “Oh, and Vlad too.”
Wally speed trips over his own feet, falling to the ground rolling, as does Artemis, though more gracefully. Even Robin and Aqualad stumble and screech to a halt.
“He’s a what!?” They shout out loud.
Red Huntress swoops down and sweeps them all into an alley.
“What the hell was that?! You nearly got us all caught yelling like that!”
“Vlad’s a halfa?!” Robin whisper-yells.
Huntress furrows her eyebrows below the mask, “You told them?”
He hadn’t even told her, in fact, he’d told her she had to keep it a secret when she found out, so why now-
“Phantom, Huntress, this is pertinent information that you should’ve shared with us before we set out.” Aqualad says. Not quite angry, but scolding, upset at least a little.
“What if we had encountered him? We would have been caught off-guard and unprepared! This could’ve put us in danger, Phantom!” Robin says, more visibly upset.
“Vlad’s identity as Plasmius was always a secret, guys, I didn’t think about it.. ” Phantom says, then pauses and adds in his mind, “Me and Vlad had a mutually assured destruction agreement to keep each other’s secrets. Now that I’m not a halfa…”
A look of understanding crosses their faces, though they still don’t look happy.
Aqualad steps up, “This has to stop. We are trained for these situations, as are you Phantom. I can no longer just let us run blindly into a situation we know nothing about without a plan.”
“Aqualad, I told you-“ Huntress starts angrily, Aqualad holds up a hand.
“I’m not saying we can’t go through with it, but I am saying we need to be organized about it. You have the rest of your Troupe meeting us there?”
Red nods skeptically, “Squads Ducky, Rubber & Maximus, at least. Squad Yellow had a history project due and Squad Five is still out of town for the mathlete tournament.”
“Good enough,” Aqualad turns to his team, “Kid Flash, you run ahead with Red Huntress and Robin. The three of you get as many AMITy people into the mansion, replace guards etc, get Robin inside. Robin, take down the security systems and get cameras, you’re our eyes and entry. The goal is to stay as undetected for as long as possible.”
The three nod, Wally scooping Robin up and running off. Huntress holds back for a second to jab a finger at Aqualad, “You better not mess this up,” she says harshly then flips her hoverboard out and soars after the blur of yellow lightning.
“What about us, Aqualad?” Artemis asks.
“We’re going to be the front team. Phantom, you think you know enough to get us there swiftly?”
“For the opportunity to get back at Vlad? Absolutely.” He says with confidence.
“Let’s hurry then, I’ll communicate the rest of the plan once we’re closer.”
Phantom nods and grabs Superboy and Aqualad, turns them both invisible and rises into the air again.
Knowing how close they’re getting makes his senses tunnel to one objective. Find Vlad and make him pay.
He barely notices Artemis running on the rooftops next to them or the concerned looks M’gann shoots him under her camouflage.
Robin’s voice through the bond pulls him out of it, “I’ve got his defenses down, and something called ‘Ecto-Repeller-Glamicus-Wall 3.0’ is offline as well.”
“That’d be the Ghost Shield, ghosts can’t get through it.”
“Oh, didn’t know that existed, that’s helpful,” Robin hums.
“Good job with the infiltration, Robin. Phantom, when we get in sight, drop us and fly ahead. We need to get inside fast and without being detected. Kid Flash, is there anyone around the building who will see us when we lose Phantom’s invisibility?”
Wally’s thoughts rejoin the bond, “We saw some civilians around the building, all acting strangely. There was also a few mail-order security guards and some private guards in white,”
“Did AMITy take them out?”
“Some of them, I mean geez, that blond kid and his friend tackle like a wall of bricks, hell, like a Kryptonian.But I think there’s a few of the ones in white suits still lingering around.”
Danny flickers a bit, hands tightening. He’s lucky both his flying passengers have superhuman durability.
Sure enough, as Danny comes around the bend to Vlad’s mansion, he spots the telltale bleached fabric of the GiW agents scattered around the edges of the property.
He drops Aqualad and Superboy, both of them landing and rolling into taking down their target. M’gann and Artemis appear as well, finding their own to take down.
There’s still six or so agents left standing obliviously on the perimeter.
Danny smirks without humor, “Hello anger management.”
The mere minutes it takes him to beat the suits into ground are well worth the looks he gets from the team for being late. Clean white suit? How’s half buried in the ground for ya?
All the same, the team moves on, stalking through the halls, taking out cameras permanently and avoiding the intensely focused eyes of various strangers.
Some of them seem to be dressed in various levels of fancy. As if they’d been pulled straight from a party.
Hadn’t Tucker said there was a rich people gala tonight? Was it somewhere near here?
Either way, they end up fighting more and more of them. Civilians thrown into those fight like they didn’t matter. Like Vlad didn’t care about their lives.
He probably didn’t.
The number of overshadowed people keeps rising, and the Team is at a disadvantage, they can’t hurt the people they’re fighting.
The ghosts possessing them have no such qualms.
Ignoring the occasional GiW agent being beat and thrown to the side, they’re losing.
It’s hard to fight multiple enemies. It’s dang near impossible to fight so many and not hurt them.
They keep trying to keep pace with the relentless civilians. But every time they go down, they get back up. It’s right when the overshadowed crowd really starts pushing them back that Danny gets worried they truly might not win, then the lights go out and the room fills with smoke.
He vaguely catches a figure dropping from the vents with a cackle.
“Robin?”
There’s a flash of a smile as a GiW agent goes down, “Yep.”
Danny almost gets thrown to the side, startling him enough to speak out loud at a harsh whisper, “Aren’t you supposed to be taking care of Vlad’s tech?”
“He had a little help from the Tuck-Meister” A voice speaks in everyone’s ear.
“Tucker? Did you hack into our spare comms?” Phantom asks, looking up to where he knows there’s a security camera, one of five not blasted from the fight.
“Yep. I hacked a superhero team’s comm system, dang, I really am pushing the limits of your justice league-adjacentness here, aren’t I?” Tucker pauses, and there’s the sound of buttons clacking while the rest of the team still looks shell-shocked. “Oh well, they couldn’t stop me if they tried. Like I was saying, I’ve got this, so Robin can enter the fight, you guys keep going.”
“Thanks man. I’m always glad to have you at my back.” Phantom says to the camera with a smile before he zooms off down the hallway with the team.
There’s a quiet pause and a sigh, then, “Thanks man, me too.”
And the fight continues.
A hit there, a punch here. Covering each other’s blind spots and the Team working in sync with barely a word.
Well. Barely a verbal word. Wally still hasn’t stopped complaining about missing dinner. It starts a debate about meal times in the ghost zone. And still they fight on.
Like a well oiled machine. Except this machine has been running a bit too hard for a bit too long.
Wally lags first, catching a stray laser on his calf. You’d think his speed would make him harder to hit, but apparently aiming tactics for ghosts transfer remarkably well to hitting speedsters too.
He stumbles a little bit, enough to distract M’gann, who nearly gets jumped by an agent, only to be tackled by an angry Superboy.
From there it starts devolving.
It doesn’t help that Red Huntress is backed into the room as well by a hoard of possessed party-goers.
It throws yet another wrench in the fluidity of their movements.
Nobody knows how to intrinsically fight with her. Except Phantom, who’s style changes so quickly they are left with larger gaps in their defenses than they’d even known.
“Where is Dani with those weapons?!” Phantom says as he blocks a hit heading for Aqualad and goes down with a grunt.
“Here! I’m here!” A voice echoes from the sky. Sure enough though, in her arms are at least four bags of Fenton Gear. She drops them to the team, “I’m not alone though, I brought company!”
The Fenton GAV roars down the street behind her.
“I thought you said you never got caught!” Phantom yells with panic.
“I’m here aren’t I? I didn’t get caught, I got seen!”
“That’s not much better right now!” He yells. Ancients, Dani makes him want to rip his hair out sometimes! But before that, he’s got more people to fight.
“Oh Danny, by the way, you’ll never guess who I ran into!” Tucker says in his ear, and it must be just his comm because nobody else seems to react.
“Who?”
The comm crackles interference, “You and I are gonna have words, you self-sacrificing, ghost-huntingidiot!”
Phantom falls through a punch at the sound of Sam’s voice.
“Sam!? You’re here?!” He says as he regains tangibility.
“Of course I’m here! I’ve been here all night! I was stuck with my parents for months Danny! Months! I wore a primary color! I attended a Gala!”
“Danny, this pretty serious, man, I think her face is turning a primary color-OW! Sa~am..” the sound of a thump is followed by Tucker’s pouting whine.
Danny wants to laugh. Then he catches sight of another GiW agent and the anger flairs back up again. Danny punches the agent with a wicked smile on his face. Whoever said he couldn’t multi-task?
Phantom spots Plasmius step out from a newly collapsed janitor. It was probably just a duplicate, a clone, but even that could lead him to the real one. This was his chance.
Somehow, the duplicate sees him coming. He turns with supernatural speed, firing off an ectoblast and rising into the air.
Phantom dodges and goes after him. He has to get closer. His own ectoblasts are still burning him, so the only option is to simply deck the man.
He can’t wait.
This excitement is halted by the sound of his name being yelled, “Phantom! Watch ou-“
Everything moves
Slower.
He turns in time to see tendrils of electricity reaching towards him from GiW agents gun.
And then a flash of pink in his peripheral vision. Vlad. An ectoblast hurling towards him.
The man-made lightning hits him first, striking his side and back, throwing him into the burning force of the ectoplasm blast flying at him.
It hits within a millisecond, burning hot against his front, sharp lances in his back, colliding against each other, pushing, pulling, yanking, screaming-
He gasps, freezing in the air as memories flash behind his eyes.
The feeling of air against his skin, wind in his hair and then-
Pain
Electricity shot through his veins from his back. He fell out of the sky, crumpling into himself on the ground.
Blearily, Danny pried open an eye to look above him, “Plasmius? Wha-?”
His bleary form smirked, “Why hello, little badger. How nice to see you again. Feeling tense, are we?”
Danny groaned, flinching as electricity sparked under his suit, “What did you-What did you do to me? The Plasmius Maximus?”
Plasmius held up a glowing taser, only this time, the electricity coming off it is pink, not green.
“Something like that, yes? I don’t quite have a name for it yet, but it’s the Anti-Plasmius Maximus. You won’t be able to transform back for at least a day with each shock. Maybe longer, I don’t know quite yet, I wasn’t able to test it.”
“You trapped me in Phantom form? Why? To make me leave my parents?” It was the first thing he thought of, after all, how could he explain to his parents who he was if he couldn’t prove it.
“Hmm, no, although that would be a good idea. No… I’ve trapped you as this so our secret doesn’t get out to some rather unfriendly individuals when they come pick you up. Surely you’re familiar with the Guys in White?”
Danny’s eyes widened, and he tensed more, feeling sparks run through his muscles, “You called the Guys in White on me? Why? You know what they’ll do. Where they’re going to take me.”
“Why, dear Danny-boy? Well because I’m going to rescue you from them. Making me..,” he poised a hand over his chest, “Your savior. Forever in my debt. Forever thankful.”
Danny scoffs as best he can, “Then why the hell you’d tell me that, you Fruit Loop? Now I know it’s you.”
Plasmius smirked again, now so much closer, so much harsher, “Because it’s not as if you’ll remember this. I made sure of that.” He stabbed the device into Danny’s side. Danny screamed as the pink-tainted electricity tore through his body, raging and raking against his cells, burning and sparking in his ectoplasm.
That same burning that blanks out his mind, that follows his nightmares in green, of a portal, a stupid dare, a picture-
He screams again, and again and again, every time there’s a moment of clarity, electricity reminds itself in his core.
Until finally, he’s being pushed into a container, it’s all he knows, the sparks still crackling along his suit.
Heaviness starts to fill around him, he pulls away, it’s wrong, wrong so wrong he can’t touch it, there’s no-
Electricity screams again, him with it and the heaviness weighs on his skin, under his suit, into his being, his plasm, his core.
It seeps deeper and deeper, urged on and bonded with the sparks still lingering.
Until finally it has wrapped itself around, strangling his core.
Trapping that electricity in the very center of his being.
Danny gasps and jolts forward from his place on the floor.
Everything in his mind starts to clear. It clicks into place with a snap and a spark.
Electricity that has been held against his core for so long finally releases, mixing with what had been renewed.
It jumps across the outside of his suit, his second skin. It lingers further.
That’s fine.
He’s not quite done with it yet.
Danny feels it at the edges of his awareness as the temperature drops dangerously, but ignores it.
He only cares about one thing now. Now that he knows. He’s going after that duplicate, and it’s going to lead him to Vlad. Whether it likes it or not.
He’s already back in the air when he hears,
“Phantom, wait!” M’gann calls after him.
“You need to be careful, stay with us, we’ll go to together! You can’t handle Plasmius alone and there could be Guys in White still down there!” Artemis says, trying to convince him. To reason with him. She knew the dangers of acting on anger, on revenge.
Phantom slows for a second and looks back to them, eyes glowing bright with fury and electricity still crackling along his skin,
“And what? What are they gonna do? Killme?”
“I’m already dead,” He sneers. “I’d like to see them try.”
the fact that zatanna and m'gann tricked artemis and they didnt really summon wally as a ghost means its still possible that hes alive and stuck in the speed force. i will keep saying this until i die. even if they explicitlytell me im wrong. i dont care.
u know i like the ‘last of his kind’ backstory Martian Manhunter has sometimes (e.g. in the DCAU) but I also really like M'Gann so I’d like to propose:
- if left alone for a long enough period of time Martians can spontaneously reproduce
- she’s his daughter
J'onn, showing up to a Justice League meeting: everyone, I have wonderful news. I am pregnant.
The rest of the League, who have many questions: that’s?? great?? when is the baby due?
J'onn:right about now
The rest of the JL: say what
J'onn:here goes
*bloop*
M'gann, climbing fully formed out of his chest: hi guys!! I’m brand new!! :D
The rest of the JL: ……………………………………what
bcos Martians are psychic they Absorb language & other information from their parent before they’re born and this extends to like emotional connections w their parent’s family so she comes out like !!!! it’s you guys! the justice league! my dad told me all about you! I know all your names & I love you all already!! :D
& the rest of the league are like
…
Wonder Woman: You created a fully formed, combat ready child, which burst from your chest-
Martian Manhunter: Yes
Wonder Woman: if you don’t name her Athena I will become violent.
Martian Manhunter: unfortunately she has already chosen a name for herself
M'gann:i could have Athena for a middle name though!!
Remember that theory about all the characters in the intro of Young Justice Phantoms being holograms cause that’s the way the League honors the fallen ones, so it was possible they were all going to die?
Well, I laughed at that theory… But I’m not laughing anymore.
