Mrii

Danny wants to walk everywhere, flyings too convenient or something, he wants to do something more adventurous!

Either he’s unaging or in another universe just to train, what execatly? Uhhh? His people skills? Point is if it’s another universe the time conversion rate is inconsiquential, like 100 years is 100 seconds in his home world.

Okay so…basically he walks. Thats the whole premise 😭 stay with me here.

Danny just chatting up or entertaining anyone who want to talk to him and at one point he just goes to Gotham, and commuting is not too unusual. Well, until it is, like Danny will just walk the entire crime alley, the fancy streets, get to a secluded island NEAR Gotham, with no like… flying or transportation or powers that they know of. Somehow.

The bats are just like, ‘hey I’ve seen that guy on my patrol route!’ ‘Oh! Me too!’ ‘Me too…’ ‘uh, yeah, same here??’

Obviously, they research, cause where is this kid even going?? Is he just…walking without a destination!?

Danny is stopping at places, of course, but he has to contemplate a bit and usually circles a city at least 5 or more times, which can take however fucking long.

Right. Anyways, they check all the cities he’s been seen in, not just where he’s been in Gotham, cause he’s so obviously not a local.

And he’s just been…everywhere man…

I’d like to think that he gets acquainted with entire random ass small towns too, the whole population of like three digits or less. Like north, east, south, west? Yeah, the villagers know Danny! Oh, which ones specifically? uh, all of them.

It would be so fun for Danny to get an absolute dompamain rush every time he randomly meets someone on his journey that’s like— a celebrity in their field, maybe not an actual celebrity cause that’s boring. Yawn. Like randomly meeting the director of something of some on vacation/in their home town.

He’d die of happiness coming across secluded scientists in their fields and just getting to hear all the worlds most exclusive audiobooks ever. He’d totally freak 10 times more if it was space related, and I reckon his mini travel phone book he has is the most insane line-up of people he just happened to meet. Walking.

It’s important to me that Danny remains youthful in this fic because the absolute comedy of ‘where the hell is this kids parents??’ ‘he walked here alone?? What. Across statelines?!’ ‘to fucking mexico????’

Sure, the NASA engineers and survivalists in the woods were interesting, but he also wants to learning genetics and cloning from Lex Luthor, firearms from Deathstroke, legal stuff from Two-Face, chemical warfare from [way too many villains]. He trains with the League of Assassins and all of their affiliates, and he purifies the Lazarus Pits to pay for his training.

He finds magic users too, and learns all types of magic. He usually offers some ectoplasm in return, and they happily accept, because ectoplasm is raw power. Many of them try to trap him. None succeed.

I like the idea that Clockwork sent him on a training trip, and time in his own dimension barely passes. Something bad happened in Danny's original universe, like one of his sisters or friends got killed, and he was on the verge of becoming even worse than Dan. Clockwork sent him away to DC, where he can explore freely instead of being surrounded by a world that hurt him.

The DC universe has so many specialists in so many fields, and Danny's bored. He's determined to learn everything he can before Clockwork pulls him out, and he doesn't care who teaches him. This world isn't his own, so he doesn't really care about messing it up.

(Spoiler alert, Clockwork won't pull him out. Danny's on the edge of breaking, and it's much better for him to take it out on the DC universe rather than the Infinite Realms. The heroes and villains here are enough to satiate his need to fight, but not threatening enough to make him spiral further. Clockwork will wait until Danny gets homesick, and learns to make portals himself. No way in hell is he risking pulling Danny back prematurely.)

Basically, I want the OP's investigation to scare the shit out of the heroes. They thought this was just a weird kid wandering, but he's LOA trained, he knows how to make Joker Venom and Fear Gas, he's affiliated with everyone from Black Adam to Brainiac.

The bats almost never voice thier love for one another, instead showing it in a variety of different ways.

Peter sounds insane. No one knows what a "gritty" is, or how to hit it. He has a weird obsession with caps, but he never wears a hat. No one knows what the hell "America's ass" means. Is it a dig at politics? A reference the "do the butt's match?" Meme? No one fucking knows.

I feel like once he’s comfortable enough in the manor (cause where else would he go) he’d probably go around being curious and picking up things.

Like an empty bottle left unsupervised? He’d shake it around before saying ‘this bitch empty, yeet’ and throw it over his shoulder, which would probably be a perfect hole in one into the trash can.

On comms? ‘What the fuck is assaulting my ears’ in response to the usual chaos of the transition to someone talking in a moderately low voice to a fight that sounds like a freight train in his ears.

At some point his most memorable terminology would probably infect the Wayne house and a few would ‘honest to god’ slip a few out as their civilian counterparts, cause it’s just such a knee jerk reaction, (when they don’t usually in their vigilante personas) especially if Peter’s nearby to hear, he usually lights up when someone makes a reference to the same things he says.

The Wayne’s are basically being watched or filmed in some which way 24/7 so any humor they steal from Peter basically become Wayne memes that obviously go viral, Tim is trying to figure out how this might be a time paradox if Peter got these memes from the future, technically from them, if Peter was also the one who introduced these memes to them??

‘It’s really not that deep, Tim’ is all the little shit responds with, there have been a few times where Peter has almost been lovingly strangled a multitude of times for just having endless smart ass jokes that frankly is impressive, because which ones are just ones he’s mouthing off or things he’s referencing. Nightwing gets a little butt-hurt he hadn’t thought of a few of Peter’s jokes. It’s unfair how many jokes they have in the future!

When Elle comes for a visit and watches a documentary about the North Atlantic right whale, she decides that she is going to join them on their migration to protect them from ship collisions and fishing debris, since those are the two biggest threats to their species. She invites Danny to come with her because they haven't had an adventure together in a while. Danny shrugs and thinks ‘Why not?’ School is out for the summer and the ghosts have been behaving.

So they join the whales. And Elle shows Danny the joys of altering forms for different environments. By the time the whales pass by their starting point, two black, white, and glowing green mers join their pod.

It's awesome. They tear up fishing nets that are left behind and disintegrate plastic waste in the way. They pick off barnacles and other pests that the suckerfish can't reach. They use their powers to gently rock the waves around incoming ships, thereby giving the pod enough time to pass. They not so gently glitch out computers and radar on poachers’ ships.

They also hold onto fins and ride the currents. They play with the calves and juveniles. They nap on their backs. They fully immerse themselves into the pod.

Over time, they even begin to understand the language. Ghosts can understand every language, and Danny and Elle take great pleasure in communicating with a series of clicking, crooning, and singing.

Whale-watching parties pick up on the mers rather quickly, and it isn't long before the whole world knows about them too. The internet is having a field day.

-

Danny’s going blind and has to squint suspiciously at the blinding light of…whatevers happening.

I'm going to be honest with you: I originally intended this fic idea to be a comedy, but I couldn't figure out how to execute it when I attempted to write it, which is why it ended up in the 'From a fic I never wrote' pile. Now that I have attempted to write it out, it turned more into humor angst? Or, Tim being sad while in Danny's POV, it's him and Tucker committing marriage fraud. Hope the change isn't too bad!

Tim has to bite his tongue when Foley once again agrees to go out for drinks with the team, as everyone is heading out for the day. It was the third weekend in a row, and really, how could he leave his husband home alone on a Friday night so often?

If Tim were married to a man like Daniel Fenton, he would never miss dinner or a night in. He would certainly not waste it trying to kiss up to some higher up the way Foley was so blatantly doing.

Tim had half the mind to grab the mid-level employee by the shoulders and scream at him that a promotion wasn't worth his marriage failing. Make him realize what he had before it was all gone.

For all of Tim's jealousy that Tucker Foley was the one married to a man who literally walked out of Tim's dreams, he didn't dislike Foley at all.

Tim asks Danny this later, just cause, Danny acts clueless and is off-handedly like— ‘oh, yeah, sometimes! I guess?’ In an attempt to cover Tucker's ass, assuming he must’ve made something up at work on the fly, he could just imagine his best friend sweating bullets.

Tims unfortunatly is connecting non-existent dots and is reading Danny’s delayed reaction to the claim- as Tucker just one-sidedly cheating and Danny being oh-so in love and covering for him.

The ghost zone doesn't have a formal form of currency. Depending on which part of the zone one is in, a trade could be made, or a Deal can be struck, but coins can rarely, if ever, be exchanged.

Every subculture that forms in the zone can eventually develop its own currency, but it will only have value within its territory. An example would be the credit crystals that the Far Frozen have developed, with a corresponding amount of funds floating inside their iced rocks. Still, if a Yeti were to travel even a foot outside their snowy mountains, the stones would become an interesting clothing choice and nothing else.

Or does he buy one of those archaeologist kits for kids and use the ridiculously tiny tools to dig to the gold he pre-phased into the ground and say he could just smell the gold right there…as proof that his money was all natural

Perhaps saying he got in good gracious with like a lot of old people before they died and got a piece of their will which added up into amounting to the billions. Somehow. Its so fucking absurd it might be believable.

The first thing Bruce does when they return to the cave is warn everyone not to attack the boy. The poor thing has been clinging to his cape, trembling slightly, as they drove further into the cave system. But he wished he could ask him what was wrong; whatever was acting as their translator had vanished when they passed the old Brown Bridge.

Bruce was eighty-five percent sure that it was his great-great-uncle by that point because that was where his body had been flung into. He'll have to stop by the man's grave with the nicest stone he can find along the Wayne property. If the man can't reach his grave, he'll see about petitioning the city to let him place a small gravestone near the river for him when he gets a chance.

He'll think Uncle Tom will like that.

Regardless, communication had broken down between them because it seemed the boy could not read or write in Bruce's language. He likely had just been copying the symbols that their translator was pointing to.

AKA "Danny Fenton accidentally hits the Joker with the GAV during a livestream. It quickly becomes a Gotham meme." DCxDP prompt! TW: Brief description of vehicular assault.

Pro tip: Don't drive while on the phone. You could hit somebody.

Okay, so Danny does ghost-hunting livestreams (endorsed by FentonWorks) and tours the most haunted cities in America. Gotham happens to be in the Top 10 Cursed Cities of America, featured by youtubers like Buzzfeed Unsolved and Netflix true crime documentaries. Danny just... capitalizes on that a bit. He needs to make money, okay?? His "ghost hunting" is mostly debunking supposedly haunted places, doing side quests for ghosts with unfinished business, and interviewing interesting people.

Anyways. Gotham City is confusing. The streets make no sense, half of the city is blocked off due to the latest Rogue attacks, and he's pretty sure he saw an ambulance smash through a barricade with zero hesitation followed by several cop cars. Danny's livestream chat is blowing up, begging to see what just happened, and he's fumbling with the dashboard phone holder when several groups of people in clown masks start swarming the street. They're surrounding the truck, actually shooting at him, a couple swinging baseball bats and crowbars. He takes his eyes off the road for one second just to check whether the GAV has its shield deployed.

One second is all it takes. He feels more than hears the thunk of something particularly human-shaped hitting his front bumper. And his stomach drops. Heart-stopping panic grips him and all he can do is grip the steering wheel and drive forward. He can vaguely hear shouts all around the GAV but shock blurs everything together until he's frantically driving away. He somehow ends up in a quiet one-way street that looks half-abandoned. His livestream comments are a mess of what just happened?? and r u okay?? and, notably: WAS THAT THE FUCKING JOKER?!

As Gotham finds out, Daniel J Fenton did, in fact, commit a hit and run on the Joker. The GCPD dismissed a vehicular assault charge as the livestream showed Danny being shot at during the time of the assault; judges would absolutely categorize the case as self-defense. The Joker unfortunately didn't die. Also unfortunately, screenshots of the livestream got leaked and now Danny's absurdly baffled and horrified expression post-hitting the Joker is trending on Gotham News.

A new trend of "Get Ready With Me to Hit The Joker With My Car" circulates, much to Danny's utter horror and mortification. Gothamites adore Danny. There's something hilariously ironic and slightly endearing about some out-of-towner hitting the only person in Gotham that everybody agrees should be dead with their car. Unintentionally, too. Even the Bats begrudgingly can't even be mad about it. The situation for the kid was clearly traumatizing and horrific.

Dpxdc

I am deeply enamored with the prompt where Danny gets mistaken for (or correctly identified as) some kind of pit creature—god, angel, demon, mermaid, eldritch problem, take your pick.

The rules are simple:

• Danny is a gremlin.

• Danny either has no idea who the hell keeps bathing in his pool, or

• He knows and is doing something specifically to be annoying.

Now consider this:

Danny discovers the Lazarus Pit.

Naturally, everyone else assumes he’s a creature of the Pit. A guardian. A god. A cursed spirit. A mermaid (he got the look). Danny does absolutely nothing to correct this.

But instead of the usual routes—destroying the League of Assassins, adopting Damian, picking a moral side—Danny just… starts chatting and continues to do so for centuries in their world.

Ra’s al Ghul becomes his pool buddy.

They talk while soaking in the Pit. Ra’s gives long, dramatic monologues about destiny, immortality, and the decay of the world. Danny listens politely, floating upside down, occasionally splashing, responding through some kind of ghostly translation magic that turns his very normal thoughts into something vaguely ominous and prophetic.

Ra’s: “The world must be cleansed to be reborn.”

Danny (meaning): “Yeah, stagnation sucks. You ever try bubble filters?”

Danny (translated): “All cycles end in rot, and rot demands renewal.”

Ra’s is thrilled.

Danny just thinks his pool buddy is neat.

Then one day Danny sees Ra’s with the Batfamily.

Danny, with complete sincerity, assumes this is Ra’s trying to invite his other friends to pool time.

So Danny tries to help.

He attempts to guide one of them into the Pit. It does not go well. There is screaming. There is grappling. There is Batman shouting about unknown entities and containment protocols.

Danny is confused. A little offended.

Still, every time he sees them after that, he tries again.

Not aggressively. Just:

• appearing out of the Pit like a horror movie mermaid,

• holding out a hand,

• ominously intoning (via broken translation magic):

“Enter the waters. The pool is warm. We are bonding.”

The Batfamily is convinced this is a recruitment ritual.

Ra’s is delighted.

Danny is just trying to get his friends to hang out.

——————-

POV: Ra’s al Ghul

In his first centuries, when Ra’s al Ghul was still learning what immortality cost, he met the creature.

Back then, the Lazarus Pit was wilder. Less refined. Less… tamed. Ra’s had only bathed a handful of times when, during one resurrection, the waters did not still.

They shifted.

Something surfaced with him.

Ra’s woke choking on life and madness, and found himself face to face with a being already awake, already watching him with mild curiosity—as if Ra’s were the strange thing in the pool.

The creature was young-looking, but not young. Luminous in the Pit’s glow, hair drifting like ink in water, eyes reflecting death without fear. It did not recoil from the Pit’s frenzy. It was not consumed by it.

It belonged.

Ra’s understood immediately: a child of the Pit, born from death repeated too many times.

The creature spoke.

Ra’s heard:

“You return too soon. The waters remember you.”

What it meant, in a voice filtered through strange translating magic:

“Wow, that was fast. You good, dude?”

Ra’s laughed. He could not help it.

From then on, Ra’s was never alone when he resurrected.

In those early centuries—before the League, before empires rose and fell beneath his feet—the creature would join him in the Pit. Sometimes already there, sometimes arriving halfway through Ra’s rebirth, as if checking on him.

It asked questions. Strange ones.

Why do you do this?

Does it hurt every time?

Do you ever take breaks?

The Pit twisted these into riddles and warnings. Ra’s heard prophecy. Doctrine. Judgment.

Ra’s answered honestly.

He spoke of saving the world, of cleansing corruption, of shepherding humanity forward. The creature listened, chin propped on its hands, occasionally nodding.

It responded with statements like:

“Endless renewal without rest fractures the soul.”

(which meant: “That sounds exhausting.”)

Ra’s took this as sacred counsel.

Centuries passed.

Ra’s refined the Pit. Controlled it. Built rituals, safeguards, entire philosophies around it. Through it all, the creature remained—unchanged, unaging, eternally informal.

Sometimes it vanished for decades. Sometimes centuries. But whenever Ra’s returned to the Pit, there it was again, greeting him like an old friend.

Back again?

—rendered by magic as—

“The cycle resumes.”

When Ra’s finally formed the League, he spoke of the guardian with reverence. He warned his followers not to disturb the waters unnecessarily. It was watched.

They obeyed.

Only much later—much later—did Ra’s bring outsiders to the Pit.

The bats.

——

Ra’s al Ghul has faced the Detective many times.

This encounter is no different: steel, smoke, accusations, inevitability. The Bat stands between Ra’s and the Pit, his allies fanned out behind him, tense and prepared. Ra’s is already calculating angles, exits, casualties.

Violence is imminent.

Then the waters of the Lazarus Pit ripple.

Ra’s freezes.

Slowly—deliberately—the guardian emerges.

Pale glow first. Then eyes. Then the familiar, impossible calm of a being that has watched Ra’s die and rise more times than any mortal ever should.

The Pit-spirit floats at the surface, blinking as it takes in the scene.

The bats.

The weapons.

Ra’s, poised to strike.

The creature tilts its head.

“Oh,” it says—though what Ra’s hears is something closer to:

“Conflict stains the waters before it begins.”

Ra’s does not move. He does not dare.

The bats, unfortunately, do.

One of them shifts, weapon raising half an inch.

The creature immediately misunderstands everything.

Its expression softens. Brightens. Recognition dawns.

“You brought friends?” it says, pleased.

Translated as: “The circle widens. New souls approach the threshold.”

Batman reacts instantly.

The creature reacts faster.

It glides closer to the edge of the Pit, extending a hand—not threatening, not aggressive, just inviting. Like one would gesture toward warm water on a cold night.

“Careful,” it says gently. “First time can be rough, but you’ll feel better after.”

Ra’s closes his eyes.

Of course this is happening.

Chaos erupts.

The bats scatter. Someone swears. Someone fires a grappling hook. The creature recoils, startled, nearly slipping back into the Pit.

“Huh,” it says, confused.

Rendered ominously as: “Fear resists transformation.”

Ra’s snaps orders, retreating—not from the bats, but to shield the Pit. He positions himself between them and the guardian, blade lowered but ready.

The creature looks at him, baffled.

“They don’t want to hang out?” it asks.

Ra’s exhales, slow and reverent.

“They are… unprepared,” he says carefully.

The guardian considers this. Nods. Withdraws a little, sinking back into the waters.

“Okay,” it says. “Next time, then.”

The bats escape.

Silence returns.

Ra’s kneels by the Pit, heart still racing—not from battle, but from relief.

“I apologize,” he says quietly.

The creature shrugs, already relaxing.

“It’s fine. You tried.”

And Ra’s al Ghul—immortal, feared, unwavering—accepts, once again, that he is not the most dangerous being in the room.

AKA "Danny Fenton accidentally hits the Joker with the GAV during a livestream. It quickly becomes a Gotham meme." DCxDP prompt! TW: Brief description of vehicular assault.

Pro tip: Don't drive while on the phone. You could hit somebody.

Okay, so Danny does ghost-hunting livestreams (endorsed by FentonWorks) and tours the most haunted cities in America. Gotham happens to be in the Top 10 Cursed Cities of America, featured by youtubers like Buzzfeed Unsolved and Netflix true crime documentaries. Danny just... capitalizes on that a bit. He needs to make money, okay?? His "ghost hunting" is mostly debunking supposedly haunted places, doing side quests for ghosts with unfinished business, and interviewing interesting people.

Anyways. Gotham City is confusing. The streets make no sense, half of the city is blocked off due to the latest Rogue attacks, and he's pretty sure he saw an ambulance smash through a barricade with zero hesitation followed by several cop cars. Danny's livestream chat is blowing up, begging to see what just happened, and he's fumbling with the dashboard phone holder when several groups of people in clown masks start swarming the street. They're surrounding the truck, actually shooting at him, a couple swinging baseball bats and crowbars. He takes his eyes off the road for one second just to check whether the GAV has its shield deployed.

One second is all it takes. He feels more than hears the thunk of something particularly human-shaped hitting his front bumper. And his stomach drops. Heart-stopping panic grips him and all he can do is grip the steering wheel and drive forward. He can vaguely hear shouts all around the GAV but shock blurs everything together until he's frantically driving away. He somehow ends up in a quiet one-way street that looks half-abandoned. His livestream comments are a mess of what just happened?? and r u okay?? and, notably: WAS THAT THE FUCKING JOKER?!

As Gotham finds out, Daniel J Fenton did, in fact, commit a hit and run on the Joker. The GCPD dismissed a vehicular assault charge as the livestream showed Danny being shot at during the time of the assault; judges would absolutely categorize the case as self-defense. The Joker unfortunately didn't die. Also unfortunately, screenshots of the livestream got leaked and now Danny's absurdly baffled and horrified expression post-hitting the Joker is trending on Gotham News.

A new trend of "Get Ready With Me to Hit The Joker With My Car" circulates, much to Danny's utter horror and mortification. Gothamites adore Danny. There's something hilariously ironic and slightly endearing about some out-of-towner hitting the only person in Gotham that everybody agrees should be dead with their car. Unintentionally, too. Even the Bats begrudgingly can't even be mad about it. The situation for the kid was clearly traumatizing and horrific.

Batman: *punches Phantom in the face*

Phantom, instinctualy: Cute, but my godfather hits harder!

Dpxdc

I am deeply enamored with the prompt where Danny gets mistaken for (or correctly identified as) some kind of pit creature—god, angel, demon, mermaid, eldritch problem, take your pick.

The rules are simple:

• Danny is a gremlin.

• Danny either has no idea who the hell keeps bathing in his pool, or

• He knows and is doing something specifically to be annoying.

Now consider this:

Danny discovers the Lazarus Pit.

Naturally, everyone else assumes he’s a creature of the Pit. A guardian. A god. A cursed spirit. A mermaid (he got the look). Danny does absolutely nothing to correct this.

But instead of the usual routes—destroying the League of Assassins, adopting Damian, picking a moral side—Danny just… starts chatting and continues to do so for centuries in their world.

Ra’s al Ghul becomes his pool buddy.

They talk while soaking in the Pit. Ra’s gives long, dramatic monologues about destiny, immortality, and the decay of the world. Danny listens politely, floating upside down, occasionally splashing, responding through some kind of ghostly translation magic that turns his very normal thoughts into something vaguely ominous and prophetic.

Ra’s: “The world must be cleansed to be reborn.”

Danny (meaning): “Yeah, stagnation sucks. You ever try bubble filters?”

Danny (translated): “All cycles end in rot, and rot demands renewal.”

Ra’s is thrilled.

Danny just thinks his pool buddy is neat.

Then one day Danny sees Ra’s with the Batfamily.

Danny, with complete sincerity, assumes this is Ra’s trying to invite his other friends to pool time.

So Danny tries to help.

He attempts to guide one of them into the Pit. It does not go well. There is screaming. There is grappling. There is Batman shouting about unknown entities and containment protocols.

Danny is confused. A little offended.

Still, every time he sees them after that, he tries again.

Not aggressively. Just:

• appearing out of the Pit like a horror movie mermaid,

• holding out a hand,

• ominously intoning (via broken translation magic):

“Enter the waters. The pool is warm. We are bonding.”

The Batfamily is convinced this is a recruitment ritual.

Ra’s is delighted.

Danny is just trying to get his friends to hang out.

——————-

POV: Ra’s al Ghul

In his first centuries, when Ra’s al Ghul was still learning what immortality cost, he met the creature.

Back then, the Lazarus Pit was wilder. Less refined. Less… tamed. Ra’s had only bathed a handful of times when, during one resurrection, the waters did not still.

They shifted.

Something surfaced with him.

Ra’s woke choking on life and madness, and found himself face to face with a being already awake, already watching him with mild curiosity—as if Ra’s were the strange thing in the pool.

The creature was young-looking, but not young. Luminous in the Pit’s glow, hair drifting like ink in water, eyes reflecting death without fear. It did not recoil from the Pit’s frenzy. It was not consumed by it.

It belonged.

Ra’s understood immediately: a child of the Pit, born from death repeated too many times.

The creature spoke.

Ra’s heard:

“You return too soon. The waters remember you.”

What it meant, in a voice filtered through strange translating magic:

“Wow, that was fast. You good, dude?”

Ra’s laughed. He could not help it.

From then on, Ra’s was never alone when he resurrected.

In those early centuries—before the League, before empires rose and fell beneath his feet—the creature would join him in the Pit. Sometimes already there, sometimes arriving halfway through Ra’s rebirth, as if checking on him.

It asked questions. Strange ones.

Why do you do this?

Does it hurt every time?

Do you ever take breaks?

The Pit twisted these into riddles and warnings. Ra’s heard prophecy. Doctrine. Judgment.

Ra’s answered honestly.

He spoke of saving the world, of cleansing corruption, of shepherding humanity forward. The creature listened, chin propped on its hands, occasionally nodding.

It responded with statements like:

“Endless renewal without rest fractures the soul.”

(which meant: “That sounds exhausting.”)

Ra’s took this as sacred counsel.

Centuries passed.

Ra’s refined the Pit. Controlled it. Built rituals, safeguards, entire philosophies around it. Through it all, the creature remained—unchanged, unaging, eternally informal.

Sometimes it vanished for decades. Sometimes centuries. But whenever Ra’s returned to the Pit, there it was again, greeting him like an old friend.

Back again?

—rendered by magic as—

“The cycle resumes.”

When Ra’s finally formed the League, he spoke of the guardian with reverence. He warned his followers not to disturb the waters unnecessarily. It was watched.

They obeyed.

Only much later—much later—did Ra’s bring outsiders to the Pit.

The bats.

——

Ra’s al Ghul has faced the Detective many times.

This encounter is no different: steel, smoke, accusations, inevitability. The Bat stands between Ra’s and the Pit, his allies fanned out behind him, tense and prepared. Ra’s is already calculating angles, exits, casualties.

Violence is imminent.

Then the waters of the Lazarus Pit ripple.

Ra’s freezes.

Slowly—deliberately—the guardian emerges.

Pale glow first. Then eyes. Then the familiar, impossible calm of a being that has watched Ra’s die and rise more times than any mortal ever should.

The Pit-spirit floats at the surface, blinking as it takes in the scene.

The bats.

The weapons.

Ra’s, poised to strike.

The creature tilts its head.

“Oh,” it says—though what Ra’s hears is something closer to:

“Conflict stains the waters before it begins.”

Ra’s does not move. He does not dare.

The bats, unfortunately, do.

One of them shifts, weapon raising half an inch.

The creature immediately misunderstands everything.

Its expression softens. Brightens. Recognition dawns.

“You brought friends?” it says, pleased.

Translated as: “The circle widens. New souls approach the threshold.”

Batman reacts instantly.

The creature reacts faster.

It glides closer to the edge of the Pit, extending a hand—not threatening, not aggressive, just inviting. Like one would gesture toward warm water on a cold night.

“Careful,” it says gently. “First time can be rough, but you’ll feel better after.”

Ra’s closes his eyes.

Of course this is happening.

Chaos erupts.

The bats scatter. Someone swears. Someone fires a grappling hook. The creature recoils, startled, nearly slipping back into the Pit.

“Huh,” it says, confused.

Rendered ominously as: “Fear resists transformation.”

Ra’s snaps orders, retreating—not from the bats, but to shield the Pit. He positions himself between them and the guardian, blade lowered but ready.

The creature looks at him, baffled.

“They don’t want to hang out?” it asks.

Ra’s exhales, slow and reverent.

“They are… unprepared,” he says carefully.

The guardian considers this. Nods. Withdraws a little, sinking back into the waters.

“Okay,” it says. “Next time, then.”

The bats escape.

Silence returns.

Ra’s kneels by the Pit, heart still racing—not from battle, but from relief.

“I apologize,” he says quietly.

The creature shrugs, already relaxing.

“It’s fine. You tried.”

And Ra’s al Ghul—immortal, feared, unwavering—accepts, once again, that he is not the most dangerous being in the room.

Whenever someone asks Peter how he took a picture he's like "Oh! I uh-, climmed a flagpole. Totally"

And very mortal, normal-human Jimmy is like "See, Clark, is not that weird"

I mean, look at this nutjob.

The world could be ending, lava on the streets and Jimmy would be out there photographing away. No powers, no sense of self preservation. Just khakis, a camera and a dream.

I like to imagine Peter meeting Jimmy and immediately being mortified about it.

Jimmy: –and so luckily I was able to take the picture before the building collapsed on me... Superman was super pissed at me but, photographer to photographer, it was totally worth it.