Radiating Energy Like A Good Vibes Chernobyl

Ryland Grace, the resident aroace: They are literally professionals??? That’s not going to happen???

Dubois and Shapiro: Just fyi we are fucking 😌

Random guy: No, sorry.

Danny: That's alright. Would you mind taking a flyer?

Random guy: Of course.

Danny moving to the next table over: Excuse me, have any of you seen this boy?

Barbara: Hmmm. Yes.

Danny: What?

Dick angrily: I've seen him too

Danny: When!? Where?! He's been missing for two weeks!

Barbara cautiously: How do you know this boy?

Danny glancing between them: I know I look suspicious. He's not my kid or anything. Jason is just my best customer. I don't know what the deal is at his house- nothing good, I suspect- but in Crime Alley, CPS is a death sentence, so I never called them to check. I know he's been having it rough since his mom passed. He used to come every day for a chili dog at my cart. Two weeks ago he suddenly stop coming around. He's missing.

Dick: Maybe he didn't want anymore chili dogs

Danny, shaking his head: That's what the police said, too, when I tried to file a missing person report, but I know the streets. Kids like Jason vanish all the time because no one is looking out for them. No one notices when they stop showing up. Jason came by every day, even when he didn't order anything, because he felt like I would notice if he vanished. And I did. He's gone.

Barbara: Hmmm. I saw the kid at the beginning of the month. I haven't seen him since.

Dick: Me too. It was at the public library. He was reading some books to younger kids dressed as a wizard.

Danny, disappointed: I see. That was the last time I saw him too. He got a dog after he finished Todler Tales on his way home. Will you take these flyers and call me if you remember anything else?

Barbara: Sure. I hope he's found soon.

Danny: Thank you. Me too. *Moves to next table* Excuse me, have you seen this boy?

Barbara watching him: Should we tell B?

Dick: That the kid he replaced me with has a worried dad? Nah, let them figure it out. He can be charged with kidnapping for all I care.

Barbara: Stop being so immature. The man is obviously worried out of his mind about Jay.

And my manager was like no!!!! If that happened, I would drive to find you guys in my truck and we could eat stuff from my wife's garden and I would make sure everyone I know survived!! I would carry you all on my shoulders away from the zombies!!

Day ONE of filling this with aro and/or ace characters

"You just need to find someone to be brave for."

I’m sorry but that’s thinking way too small, hear me out:

We need to have Miss Piggy as Odysseus, and Kermit as Penelope.

Think about it… who’s the more fickle, prideful, warlike one in that relationship? Who is absolutely ready to go ham, at a moment’s notice?

This is all great til the jl somehow ends up there, Danny recognizes that they as re not regular players, but keeps up the creepy act, and follows them with occasionally ominous comments until they get out, ending with "you should try the game when you're back to the human realm, Id just *love* to play with you all for real~" and when one of them, probably flash, actually tries the game, instead of the usual opening message all players get their first time playing, he gets "ooh, you came back! I promise it will be much more fun from the real world, but I cant promise I'll play nice, even if you are a hero"

This got long, I thought on this too much, just Danny making a horror game where he is the monster, partly for fun partly for money and partly because he needs to let a but of his eldritch side loose every once in a while or it starts to bleed over a bit, and then the jl ending up there, him acknowledging that they aren't players, and then greeting them when they play the game in the human realm.

Also unconnected, but I feel at the start it would let the player type some messages when in dialogue with "the monster" while most of the game is preset dialogue but there are moments where you can chat freely without preset dialogue, and Danny responds in kind, which in turn make players even more confused, because how does he have a response for anything???

Tldr: Danny big horror monster, jl enter game, Danny knows they arent players, jl go home and are freaked out.

Holy shit.

...

Backstory stuff.

Danny escapes the GIW into the internet. He gets bored and hungry so he starts hopping into live service games but the connection isn't personal enough to feed off the other players emotions.

When some players get to those rare sections where you can freely talk to the 'monster,' and once people realize the monster actually directly responds to whatever you type, people are gonna start asking questions. Digging for 'lore.'

And Danny, bless, still isn't very good at coming up with stories on the fly. So the first time it happens, someone asking "What made you a monster?" he can't help but let something a little too true slip out. "Scientists poking at something they shouldn't."

(AKA Danny is stuck in the internet like this until he can feed off enough emotional energy to heal his core, that the scientists cracked during experiments.)

Anyway, naturally this response gets posted about and blows up on the forums and now Danny just has to kinda roll with it. And while he mostly tries to dodge the really revealing questions, bits and pieces still slip out from time to time for different players.

Which ultimately leads to the player base thinking there's some kind of massive, ARG kinda thing going on where lots of different people have to play to get lots of different clues for everyone to work together to figure out the underlying story.

This is what really draws Tim's interest. He's a mad lad who wants to 'solve' the whole thing with minimum input from other people, and thinks using Bat tech to "run every possible permutation of the game" to gather all the 'clues' himself is a great idea.

Unfortunately, Danny knows the difference between a bot and a real player — bots don't generate emotional energy to eat : ( — and he's very much not interested in wasting his time or precious energy playing with a machine that can't even feed him.

Tim comes back to check his permutations program, only to find every single bot iteration got locked on the start screen with a big overlay message saying "WHY WOULD I PLAY WITH YOU IF YOU DON'T ACTUALLY WANT TO PLAY WITH ME?" Also, something is poking around in the Bat files. Holy shit, is there spyware in this game? Oh no. Oh no no no. B is gonna have his suit when he finds out Tim accidentally downloaded a trojan onto the Batcomputer. Shit shit shit. Better shut this down and fast. Hopefully Babs hasn't caught on yet.

(She had. And was carefully, remotely steering Danny away from anything actually confidential. The only reason she hadn't already booted Danny out is cause she actually dug into the code itself and realized pretty quickly there was something... alive about it. Alive and thus far relatively harmless. No need to potential hurt what could be a new kind of life form to them. Besides she wants to see what it'll do with it's new access and information.)

Danny meanwhile just learned about vigilantes, other heroes, other superheroes, the Justice League, metas, the meta protections act, other ghost superheroes, and not a single hint that the GIW was legit and plenty to suggest that they weren't. He'd never even questioned... Never thought to question...

Oh, Bot Kid finally noticed and kicked him out. That's fine. He needs to retreat to his nest for a bit and think. And. Maybe try to play with some other heroes soon. Actually play with them. Not Bot Kid's bots trying to exhaust his program. He needs to get a feel for these other heroes themselves. Who they really are. Maybe they'd help him. Or maybe they'll think he's malicious and try to trap him in his game forever. Playing with them should give him a good read on them though. Danny has long since learned by now that how people play, their emotions and how they react to them, says a whole lot about a person.

Dpxdc

I love the trope where Danny becomes the Ghost King, but I was thinking about a phrase I read in a fic some time ago where he says that, as Ghost King, he is the judge, jury, and executioner.

It got me wondering: has there ever been a fic where he was literally the judge of souls?

We know Pariah Dark declared himself Ghost King by force. He conquered the Infinite Realms; he wasn’t chosen. So what if the Ghost Zone already had an actual judicial system before Pariah took over? A court responsible for judging newly arrived souls, determining unresolved obligations, deciding whether crimes committed in life still carry over into death, and settling disputes between ghosts.

Then Danny defeats Pariah.

Everyone assumes he’ll become the new king…

…only to discover that the position of “Ghost King” doesn’t actually exist in any legal sense. Pariah made it up.

What does exist is the highest office in the Realms: the High Judge.

And, thanks to his absolutely ridiculous résumé—former Protector Spirit, defender of both the living and the dead, countless world-saving feats, repeatedly choosing mercy over vengeance despite every reason not to—Danny is unanimously appointed to the position almost immediately.

Now he’s the one deciding whether a soul deserves redemption, punishment, reincarnation, or release.

The DC universe eventually finds out.

Maybe the Justice League requests an audience to argue that Constantine’s soul should be considered off-limits because of all the deals he’s made.

Maybe Jason Todd gets summoned to testify after the Joker finally dies, because no one is better qualified to speak on the impact of the Joker’s crimes.

Maybe a villain tries to exploit a loophole by dying before sentencing, only to discover that earthly justice is no longer the only court with jurisdiction.

Or perhaps Batman is horrified to learn that the final appeal for every soul isn’t before a god…

…it’s before a twenty-year-old in a black-and-white hazmat suit eating a burger while reading through centuries of case law.

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