A Story for You...

Right now however? Sam and Danny were watching as Tucker tried, (and failed), to get a boyfriend. Danny had pulled out the camera after the first failed attempt. Tucker was being the worst. Poor Croc.

The video of the second attempt went viral. And neither of them were ever going to let Tucker live this down.

Danny: And here we have attempt four.

Sam: You'd think the man would learn a new approach....

Danny: He thinks Mr Jones needs an aggressive suitor. Something about the guy always being seen as big and scary?

Sam: Ahh. So that's why he's flung himself into his path. Screaming "let me love you".

Then he moves on to foods, whole hogs and sheep, beef back, and exotics like moose and ostrich.

After that Tucker tries giving Croc clothing made to withstand his scaled skin and his rough lifestyle, beautifully designed to match Tucker’s Egyptian wooing-wear.

Red Hood drops in to interrogate Tucker at his flat. Danny and Sam are there for dinner and just look over. Like, oh hey! Didn't you want to see Waylon's parole furry?? Seems he has a parole crime lord instead!!

There was a funky compilation video.

It's HILARIOUS.

Because of course it was. Waylon has a resting Murder Face and muscles for days. He's being hunted for sport by a tiny string bean tech nerd that HAS to be asthmatic and probably reads tech manuals for fun. Itty bitty twig of a man. And here is this HUGE Meta going "EEK~! Not ROSES! Oh NO, weaponized hugging! He might take me DANCING! Run awaaaaaay!" Like the world's most BAMF looking tsundere.

The memes are brutal and endless. Thirst edits too.

Because honestly? The Reptilian Furries (which I can not spell to save my life right now, but are Scale-ies?) Are all going: "Saaaaaaame. Man has IMPECCABLE Taste." And people are Bonk-ing them with horny jail memes and reminders not to fetishize Metas etc etc.

All while Waylon is just? Look he's not even sure if he IS gay! Or Bi! Or ANYTHING! His dating years were spent being hated and feared. And adult years mostly in jail! Cool you jets just a BIT, my guy! He says, somehow folding himself to hide behind (mostly) behind Roy.

Which is fair.

Tucker can respect that. He ALSO didn't have the best time, dating wise. And he didn't even have obvious Meta powers. Does Waylon still want this nice elk he got him? It's juicy!

And just? Roy standing there? Like "you BETTER not pressure my boy into anything he's not ready for. I'm watch you, punk." Radiating Dad Energy.

Gotham would be SO invested in their weird Meme/redemption love story? Its? SO Gotham. You other cities wouldn't GET it. Jones had a hard life, yeah? Made bad decisions. Is trying to turn his life around and find love. It speaks to them. They've all been there. Heck, they even heard Brucie Wayne reached out!

Wants to hire the big guy! Desk job and everything! And yeah, maybe it's some rich guy publicity stunt, but? They hope he takes it. Hope he MAKES it, man.

Tucker is trying to be respectful, and too about this. He swears. But he would really like his crush to give him even one chance? Please?

Roy: We need help. With Jones. Yeah, yeah.... Did you see the latest video? Yeah well.

Hangs up and points sternly at Waylon.

Roy: Stay the Fuck there. We are getting stuff put together. And asking those questions. The fan club is gettin creepy. So we gotta sort this!

Clark: Could you, just for once, warm us when you've adopted another one? So we don't get surprised by children who we think shouldn't be up here?

Bruce raised an eyebrow at Danny in question as he pouted to one side.

Bruce: Hmm. Danny wasn't supposed to be here yet.

Clark: How did he get here then?

Danny: Oh you know. I flew in.

Bruce: Please tell me you didn't fly here from Gotham?

Danny: I could, but I'd be lying.

Bruce: I'm telling Alfred.

Danny: So... No dessert. Dammit.

Clark: Why are all your children like this?

Danny: I mean. I died, I think that's a pretty good excuse as they go.

"How did you know I wasn't Red anyway?"

Clark laughed a little at the kid now he knew who he was.

" Your heartbeat is too slow. "

Danny growled at the floor. Of course. Damn super hearing!

Bruce looked at his latest son and sighed.

"Phantom, why are you even wearing Red's suit?"

Danny grinned, wicked sharp and laughed a little.

" Agent A says he hasn't slept in 3 days. If he doesn't have his suit, he has to stay home. Also, I replaced all the coffee with decafe. But switched the containers. I gave it all to Agent A. don't worry. You just have to ask him to proper coffee now. "

Bruce just slumped a little as Clark laughed at them. And then Flash turned up. Great. Danny slumped into Tim's typical posture and gave his typical greeting. Hmm. Since when has he been practising that? He looked at Clark who nodded. Looked like they were testing the rest of the league then.

Clark smirked a little and ruffled Danny's hair, who acted exactly as Red would have. Hmm. This should be fun then.

"Hey Flash. Need anything?"

Flash grinned at them and pointed at Danny.

" Yeah! I could use a hand from Red. Have an engineering issue. "

Danny looked up, mimicking Tim's dead state and sighed deeply.

"Fine. What is it? Show me!"

Flash happily went of with Danny in tow as Bruce and Clark sighed.

" one down huh? "

"Not everyone has your senses Kal."

Clark laughed again and shook his head.

" Did you know he was that good at acting? "

Bruce shook his head. Thinking it over there had been hints. But...

"Nothing concrete. Hints of talents. I thought I'd have to train it more. This should be. Informative."

Clark shoved his friend lightly in the shoulder .

"You can say amusing you know. It can be both!"

Bruce just shot him a withering look.

" we should tell Diana. She will know either way. This way she won't be as mad. "

Clark grinned and listened out for her.

" Yeah, she's in the second meeting room. "

When they got there Diana was frowning at something in her hands.

Bruce tapped on the table and raised an eyebrow at her in question. Diana set the tablet aside and looked at them.

"Bruce, Clark. Do either of you want to tell me why Red Robin is not the person in his suit?"

They shared a look and both coughed to hide a grin.

" My latest addition to the family. He confiscated his brothers suit to stop him getting killed due to sleep deprivation. And decided to see what the watch tower was like. And how long he could go without getting caught. "

Clark grinned at Diana as her face morphed from worried to amused.

"He forgot to factor in our sense apparently. I could hear him cursing under his breath. Well... Lack of breath."

Diana rolled her eyes. It was such a typical stunt. She looked at Bruce again and raised an eyebrow.

" I take it you two decided to let him have his fun with everyone else then? Ah, and you came to me so I wouldn't ruin the game. Boys honestly. "

Bruce smirked a little.

"It's a good training opportunity for him."

Diana huffed at him and nodded. She couldn't deny it.,

But! He just got a message from B. Time to end this now Tim is asleep huh? B is absolutely going to use this as an objective lesson of some sort. Ah, that's the meeting now please beep B is going to be brutal.

Batman: Phantom. Come here please.

Danny straightened from Tim's posture and grinned a bit too wide. Watching the rest visibly freak out? So much fun. He let himself hover slightly and floated to B.

post moving in zoomies crashout

finished version of this oddly popular wip that took me just like a month lol (actually it took me today but procrastination gonna procrastinate but hey, I just finished the book!) and now we actually have some references for Grace's awesome quilt of good luck but I just can't. so I won't

but hey a similar close up for comparison ;)

When Batman dies he comes back as a ghost nearly immediately. He soon finds a stable portal to cross through, intending to find Gotham as soon as possible.

Is clearly terrified for his family and city but REFUSES to "abandon" Danny! D:> Stop being everything Danny's been praying for! This feels like a TRAAAAAP! He's gonna get attached then something BAD WILL HAPPEN!

*awkward BatHug deployed* its going to be Okay, Danny.

Obviously Bruce has been dead for a bit so Jason is sus until the kid says one of the batcodes

Cue the justice league having to summon or fight someone from the GZ/Infinte realms. They take one look at Batman and just start parenting/baby talking/treating him like a child.

And Batman doesn’t do anything about it! His core is humming happily because he is a baby ghost despite being a adult human.

Danny: Why is Lady Pandora here?

Batman: Realms issue came up. As Earth's resident Realms wrangler? I thought it time to introduce you to JLD. As they didn't even explain that it was a Realms issue until they summoned Lady Pandora.

Zatanna: How do you even know about the Infinite Realms?!

Danny: Cause he's Batman. Duh.

Batman: This is Phantom. The hero of Amity Park. He babysits a permanent portal between the Realms and Earth.

Danny: Urgh. Babysits is right. So! Who are we fighting this time!

Zatanna: Batman? Are you sure? The being running around isn't an everyday spirit! The Ancient of Dreams isn't something for a teen to fight!

Danny: Wait! Nocturn got out again!?! Urgh! What's he doing this time?!

Batman: Phantom has previously fought Nocturn, Undergrowth, Fright Knight, Pariah Dark and Plasmius.

Eldritch being: *gasp* A BABY!! Coochie coo! Coochie Coochie coo! Hello little one!! 😍

The Batman, slightly tilting his head back so the eldritch being can gently tickle his chin with their huge fuckin claws: *deadpan* Hello. It is very nice to meet you. I know that I am a very cute baby, but my associates have summoned you for assistance. Please focus.

📷📸📷📸📷📸

You’re doing amazing sweeties!!

Bruce: I died six months ago. As is protocol it wasn't announced. Since many of us return, one way of another. This time I came back as a ghost. Phantom is the protector of Amity Park's permanent portal. I stayed for a while to mentor him. But had him contact my children. They turned up to help. And likely to ensure I was still myself.

Marvel: Uh, question Mr Batman. How did you damper your aura like that?!?

Bruce: Phantom created the device. It users electromagnetic fields manipulation to scramble and hide Ecto signatures.

Zatanna: Wait! The kid?!?! How?!

Bruce: He is incredibly intelligent. And the son of mad scientists. He used their work on reading Ecto signatures to work it out.

Clark: Why did you hide it from us?

On the other hand, you know who would have been in real distress? His kids, for those two months or so between his death and Danny’s phone call.

Bruce died as Batman, from an injury in the field. He was still alive when he was brought back to the Cave and died in the presence of his family. Though he didn’t regain consciousness and they didn’t get to say goodbye, there was no chance for the body to be swapped; there is no doubt that Bruce is dead.

They all get very drunk for a night or two. Even Jarro, who, as a telepath, is basically getting drunk by proxy.

They had a drawn-out knock-down fight over what to do about Bruce. Tim and Damian were in favour of attempting a resurrection (Pit or Apokalips). Dick and Jason and Cass were very much not. They’ve reached a compromise; they are not actively working on it but the body is in frozen storage with a lot of alarms on it.

Jason, who’s doing a lot better these days, took the cowl. Cass will take over eventually, but for the moment Jason is the best at maintaining the illusion of continuity. They have a cover story ready to go for Bruce Wayne’s death.

And then Jason receives the phone call, to his Oracle-secured batphone from an unknown number.

That usually means one of the other Bats on a burner, which usually means trouble, so he answers.

“Um, hi?” Not a voice he recognises, at all. “Is this Jason?”

Young. Male. Midwestern. Asking for Jason on the Batphone. Could be real trouble. “No, this is Mark,” he says. “You’ve got the wrong number.”

“He said you’d say that. Um, Jason? I have a message from your dad.”

Jason gets angry and breaks code. “My dad is dead.”

“I know,” says the voice. “He says, recognition code bee zero one, whisky delta india hotel mike… no, sorry, hotel sierra mike kilo, circumference, um… flange, uh… requirement? Requirement.”

Jason can’t say a word. Can’t breathe. It’s B’s code all right, no coercion, not compromised, and he felt the need to specify no time travel. But what he really can’t get over is the way it sounds like the kid is listening to someone prompting and correcting him, someone who’s standing there with him.

“And he says, contingency four two seven gee and… three one five? Yeah, three one five bee.”

Jason doesn’t know these from the top of his head. He rouses enough to drop Tim a quick text. Tim knows all the contingencies, the little freak.

Jason: contingencies 427g and 315b

Tim: !!!!!!!!!

Jason: what are they?

Tim: holy shit

Tim: moving to group chat

Jason swipes over to the batchat group.

Tim: jason just texted

Tim: b’s come back as a ghost

Tim: and he’s adopted again

Jason: Yeah, yeah I'm still here. So, B's a ghost huh? How'd you meet him?

Danny: Oh, um, there's a portal? To the Infinite Realms in my city. It's um, it's in my basement? My, my parents built it. I accidentally turned it on. So, so it's my job to keep everyone safe. Batman heard about it. He wanted to get back to Gotham. Um, but he um, he felt I needed help. But, I'm not, not always there. So...

Jason: Its ok kid. Take your time. Sounds like B has his hands full over there. He asking for Justice League backup?

Jason heard the muttering start again. Why wasn't B using the phone? Maybe it was a ghost thing? Something to ask the kid.

Or maybe a neon green suit with the eye-searingly pink symbol/belt. Which would obviously be irritating for him in the human world. Neon green and pink are very attention grabbing. But then in the realms he would retain his nature and ability to slip into the "shadows". The shadows here more or less just being the ambient environment which Ghost Batman still blends in to.

In a way, it would be like the Universe itself telling Batman, "No, you don't belong to this world any more. Batman belongs to the Infinite Realms now. Go back to the new shadows you fit into." Not that Bruce is going to heed that message.

Which generally leads to Bruce’s body getting “weekend at Bernie’s”-ed by his children.

I was on a train here in Denmark with my boyfriend at the time and we randomly got into a conversation with a very friendly young American guy. At some point he said he enjoyed how religion played a very small role here and mention growing up Christian and going to a mega church in the US.

We had no idea what he meant by mega church. He seemed equally surprised that we didn’t. When he explained it I remember feeling like he was explaining an alien culture to me. What do you mean it’s a church with room for thousands of people? Aren’t churches supposed to be close knit communities where people know each other? How can they hear the priest? Speakers? Yeah okay that makes sense. But can people even see the priest? Giant screens!? Okay that seems a bit much. What do you mean stage show!?