Short DPXDC Prompts #654
The eerie cries and screeches fill the air. Grating trills and chuffs that make the ears ring and ache. Tim expects a fight when he approaches the source of the sound but to his shock and horror, he finds a boy roughly his age curled into a ball sobbing into his knees.
hreh. pushes up my glasses and cracks my knuckles, dusting off the cobwebs of this blog.
~~~
There's a boy in the alleyway.
Well, that's already been established. There's a boy producing inhuman sounds that crack through his skull like a baseball bat, and he's in an alley by himself. Statistically speaking, in Gotham, this is a normal night. Children wander, especially in a city as violent as Gotham. He might not have parents.
The screeching and trilling and crying is a new one, so Tim checks it out.
He's not Robin tonight, having gotten out of a meeting particularly late (he hated going to investment meetings, he always had to convince the shareholders that sometimes being helpful was more important than profit), but the drive to protect a kid by himself is too strong to ignore. He comes closer, but doesn't get far in at all before the boy's head snaps up and wild red eyes bore a hole through him.
Immediately the boy pushes off the ground, his legs fusing into a long, winding black tail. He hisses, his white hair crackling like a flame and his teeth bared with impressive looking flames. He's in Tim's face in a flash, a growl reverberating through the alley.
What the hell.
A little thrown off, Tim and the boy (who, now that he's got a better look at him, looks around sixteen or seventeen) stare at each other for a few seconds. The boy---meta(?)---unsure why Tim hadn't fled, and Tim stunlocked by the sudden shift in behavior.
"Haven't you got the memo, runt?" His voice is low and crackly, thick with rage and choked with tears. "Scram."
"Uhhh," Tim starts, nose to nose with a snarling blue creature that probably shouldn't be this close to him, "Dude. No offense but if you didn't want anyone to come find you why were you screeching like that."
The boy blinks, his face still keeping its sneer, and then he huffs, the sound echoing. "Who's asking?"
"Me? I'm right in front of you. Look, I've had a long night, man, so like... I don't know. You seem like you're having a worse night than I am. Feels bad to just leave you when you're, uh, doing whatever you were doing." He can feel a headache building behind his eyes. He's unsure of why he's still talking to this thing, but he's admittedly kind of curious what's going on.
The creature-boy-meta-thing narrows its-his eyes, the flames of its hair calming. "And who are you?"
"...Tim." He doesn't think it's particularly important to give his full name here, and might even be counterproductive. In his experience, scared kids usually don't react very well to the presence of a billionaire.
"Tim. That's a stupid name. Tim. No. I'm gonna call you Scalpel. Way cooler name. You're welcome." The boy's sneer morphs into a wide, sharp, frankly terrifying grin full of dagger-like teeth.
"Scalpel. Okay. I can work with that. Sure." He feels like he's getting somewhere with this. He just has to play his cards right. "Do you got a cool name I can call you?"
The creature turns over to float on his back, brandishing claws covered by thick, white hazmat gloves.
"Phantom. Dan Phantom."
