Chapter Text
“To your left!” He barely dodged the blast before Superman was already on the man who had thrown the grenade, disarming him of the rest of his visible weaponry and dropped him in front of Batman, who was ready with a fistful of zip ties. It wasn’t their usual Justice League level of emergency, but they had been called in to help quell the riots as a favor. Plus, it was slow, so quite a few more heroes had shown up, making quick work of the event.
“Whelp! Come back here so I can turn your pelt into a wall-hanging! You’d look great next to the thylacine!” The unexpected voice from above made Batman look up to see an android with a flaming Mohawk chasing… a child? A young adult at the most.
“You do know how gross that sounds, right?” The teenager(?) quipped back with the same level of spirit one of his Robins usually had in the field. The whine of an energy weapon was all the warning the boy had before he had to dodge a green blast. While the boy dodged easily, he wiped a streak of green (blood?) off the side of his face from a previous wound with the back of his hand absently. “And don’t you have something better to do? I have homework tonight and I still haven’t studied for Lancer’s test first period!”
“You should have already studied then if that was the case!” The android yelled back, aiming his… did he have actual wrist rockets? At the boy. With barely a thought, Batman flung a fistful of his bataranges, hoping to intercept at least one of the rockets. Surprisingly, he missed, the rockets blasting the boy out of the air and driving him into the street, creating a small crater.
“Okay, that’s it! Jazz is gonna kill me if I’m late. Playtime’s over!” The boy pushed himself out of the crater, leaving a streak of blood on the concrete as he rose before pulling out what looked like an old-fashioned white soup thermos. “Bye-bye!”
“Don’t you dare!” Was the last thing the android yelled as a beam of light emitted from the thermos’ open top, pulling the entity inside. Closing the thermos’ lid and clipping it back to his belt, the boy sighed, sinking in the air a few feet before he seemed to just hover in place.
Batman, who thought he knew all of the major players in the vigilante meta scene, wracked his brain to see if white hair, flight and at least a limited amount of durability struck any memories. The closest he could think of would be a Kryptonian, but the boy didn’t have their signature glacier blue eyes. Instead, now that the boy was hovering more or less in place, he could see that they were the same shade of green as his… blood.
“Hey, Kid!” Before he could think any better of it, Batman called out, flagging the boy down. The boy looked around a bit before realizing that He was the one being addressed. Upon realizing who was yelling, a strange mix of excitement and shyness crossed his face. “Who are you?”
“I… Batman…” the boy whispered in awe, subconsciously or not floating closer to the vigilante. “I… My best friend’s a really big fan of yours. Can I… Can I take a picture of you?”
Though his raised eyebrow was hidden by the cowl, the crossed arms and expectant posture got the message across loud and clear. “Who. Are you?” He stated one more time, giving him the same look that he gave his Robins when he caught them doing something they knew they weren’t supposed to.
“Phantom, sir.” The boy realized he was rambling and shrunk into himself. “My, my friends call me Danny Phantom.”
“Phantom, then.” Batman blinked, filing the name and the boy’s physical description away to research more thoroughly back at the cave. “Well, are you going to take a photo?”
Letting out a little squeak of excitement and doing a quick flip, he pulled out a phone that had seen better days and pulled it up to take a picture before thinking better of it. “Sam and Tuck will never believe me… but can I take a selfie with you?”
Batman tilted his head briefly in thought before pulling out a small camera and praying the ploy would work. “Only if I can get a picture of you as well.”
“Oh! Um… sure. I guess that’s only fair, I guess.” Danny blinked in surprise before nodding in agreement. “Sure.” He repeated again to himself, floating within grabbing range. It was his idea in the first place, to take a selfie with The Batman. It was too late to back out now. Armed with his phone, he hovered by Batman’s shoulder and flipped the screen to selfie mode, taking the picture as quickly as he could before flying back out of reach. Checking that the picture was halfway decent, he nodded to himself and put the phone away.
“Your, uh, your turn, I guess. Just give me a moment though. I have to concentrate so your photo doesn’t turn out like shit. Most of the time when people take pictures of me, all they get is this glowing blob with creepy glowing green eyes. It's a little too Eldritch, if you know what I mean.” Danny gave a self-deprecating grin before taking a calming breath. Batman hadn’t realized how fuzzy around the edges that the boy was until he wasn’t. Opening his eyes back up, he gave a half grin and turned his palms out in a silent Ta-da. Batman didn’t waste any time, taking the photo before tucking the camera back into his utility belt.
“So, uh, Batman, do you, ah… need me for anything else? Because, I swear to you, I really wasn’t lying. I do have a test I need to study for. And I need to return Skulker back to the Ghost Zone.” Danny hitched a thumb back over his shoulder, pointing vaguely from where he came.
“Isn’t it a little late for studying?” It was normal bat-hours, but if the kid was still in school, he still needed to sleep if he was going to get any rest before the test, since it was his first period. Danny’s grimace proved that he was right. “One last thing.” Batman decided to push his luck, since the boy seemed particularly chatty. If he was a hero, it was a bad thing, but another if he was just an unknown meta. “Where are you from?”
“Oh, uh…” On one hand, Danny had already talked too much. But on the other hand, it was Batman. The man would find out everything he wanted to about him anyway. At least he was a hero and had the morals of one, right?” “A… Amity Park, sir.” Before he could spill any more of his secrets, like his human identity, Danny flew off, And, with a quick course correction by glancing at the stars, started to fly home. He had chased Skulker halfway across the state and he knew Jazz was already home with a bag of Nasty Burgers that had surely gone cold by now. At least cold burgers were better than reanimated hotdogs.
Batman, having watched the boy fly off, took out one of his swab kits and dabbed at the glowing green blood the boy had left behind. It definitely wasn’t a color of blood he’d run across before, but the shade did remind him of something that made him frown instinctually, not even mentioning the flecks of red that looked like normal hemoglobin. Making sure to seal the sample up tightly, he secured it in an empty belt pouch to deal with later. For now, he had to check in with the rest of the team.
“Checking in. Superman?”
“They’ve moved east of your position, though it seems like most of the rioters have calmed down and either been handled or dispersed. Do you need help getting to our position?”
“Negative.” Pulling out his grappling gun, he fired at the nearest tall building. While this city didn’t have quite the architecture as Gotham did, it still had plenty for his hook to dig into.
“Whatcha doing, B?” Dick Grayson, stil in his Nightwing costume, sans his mask, leaned over the chair that Bruce was sitting at in front of the bat computer. On one screen was the beginnings of a profile labeled ‘Danny Phantom’ with a picture that looked more posed than the usual ones. Most profile pictures when they put together these things were either candid or mug shots. This one even had the subject throwing up a peace sign and grinning.
“Unknown meta. Possible young hero.” He summarized succinctly.
“Ah. Thinking of bringing him in. He doesn’t look like your usual M.O.” Dick murmured, reading over the notes that Bruce had written down already.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well,” Dick smirked, “for one, he has white hair. Not going to make him pull a Jay and dye it, are you?”
Bruce’s retort was cut off by the computer giving off an alert. Clicking on the bubble, test results popped up:
DNA analysis complete. Possible familial match. DNA sample corrupted.
Rerun test? Yes No
“Oh… That’s interesting.” Before Bruce could stop him, Dick clicked on the details of the familial match. “Think he might be another surprise like Dami- huh. That’s not who I expected.” Dick read the possibility match. “You gonna tell him? Or are you going to run the test again.”
“This is the fourth run.”
“Damn.”
The bell over the door chimed, though it was barely heard over the dull roar of the dive bar during happy hour. Jason himself barely paid any attention to it, seemingly entranced by the ice cube swirling in his drink. At least, that was until someone sat down next to him. Out of the corner of his eye, he recognized the pencil mustache and distinct scar down one cheek. “What are you doing here, old man?” He didn’t bother looking directly at the man before calling over the barkeep and ordering the same whiskey on the rocks as he had in his hand.
“Can’t an old man see his kid once in a while?” The older man replied with a broad slums accent. “You missed Christmas. Paw nearly threw a fit when you didn’t show and nearly came to get you himself.”
Jason snorted, ducking his head and touching his lips to his glass in a parody of a sip. “Yeah, well, you know I hate Christmas.”
“Try telling Paw that.” They both knew they would never dare. Bruce, taking an actual sip of his whiskey (Jason had ordered the best the dive had available), fortified himself before pulling out a thumb drive. “Got something here for you.” He put it on the bar top between them.
“Yeah?” Jason looked at the thumb drive, but didn’t take it. “What is it?”
“Turns out, being a bastard in this family isn’t a one-time thing.”
Jason tossed his head, seriously contemplating if he could get away with punching Bruce in the face and not getting kicked out of his favorite bar. “Just because you can’t keep it in your pants, Old Man, doesn’t mean you have to get me involved. Who is it this time? Selena? Some other random one night stand where you never even got her name?”
“This one’s not mine. He’s looking to be more your side of the family.” Great, so something that should probably be handled by the JL Dirty-Little-Secrets but Bruce wants to keep it within the ‘family’ for some unknown reason. He wasn’t near the expert on the darker side of shit as Bruce thought he was, despite calling himself a zombie more than once.
“No, Listen ta me, son.” Bruce, in his ‘Matches Malone’ guise, turned and put a hand on his shoulder. Jason, in a look that froze most criminals in their tracks, stared at Bruce’s hand touching him. “I’ve done what I could, but what you decide is up to you. I, we, will all support what you decide to do with the information on the drive. You tell me to drop it, I won’t go any further, mark my words. All I want is for you to look that over for me.” Bruce tilted his head toward the drive, finished his whiskey and used the hand on Jason’s shoulder to pull himself upright. With two pats and a squeeze, Bruce left, the door bell chiming behind him.
Pursing his lips, Jason eventually pocketed the drive, just in time for his mark to come in the back door. Time for some stress relief.
He’d nearly forgotten the thumb drive until he was emptying his pockets that night. Along with his keys and some crinkled dollar bills, the small device clattered across the table and laid there innocently, as if it didn’t have the potential to change his world. On one hand, Bruce was the one to hand it over. If it was a case, he would have had Oracle hack into his com line (again) to demand his cooperation (ha!). He did say that who-whatever was on that drive was family. And, unlike Dick… and Bruce, he had long ago made sure his swimmers could never go up stream.
Oh, what the hell. Selena would be proud of him. ‘Curiosity killed the cat’ and all that bullshit.
Grabbing the drive, he unburied his laptop and booted it up. It took only seconds, since Tim and Barbara refused to let him keep anything but the latest bat-modified WayneTech model. In the bare minute that it took for the computer to finish loading, Jason had flipped the switch on his electric kettle and had measured out a serving of his favorite tea into the strainer Alfred had given him last Christmas. They all assumed that he drank his coffee black like the replacement did on his insomniac binges, but he had more class than that. Though, He never would say no when one of the family brought him a thermos straight from Alfred for longer nights on patrol. That man knew how to make a good cuppa, whether it was coffee or tea.
Settling in for a good read, Jason finally clicked on the only folder on the drive. Immediately at the top was a photo of a smiling teenager with white hair and green eyes, wearing what looked like a vigilante costume. Next to it was the basic data sheet that Bruce filled out about all the meta that he knew of, though half of the sheet was either blank or only estimates applied. The only definite was that the kid went by ‘Danny Phantom’.
The next file was where things got interesting. A corrupted blood sample analysis had been put through the computers, where, along with a whole host of unknown compounds and chemicals, the DNA pinged several alleles, proving a potential familial match. A familial match to him.
It couldn’t be. No.
But the boy looked to be about the same age as he would have been, after Jason did a quick bit of mental math. But the hair and eyes were all wrong.
Pursing his lips, he continued on to the next sub-folder, titled ‘Amity Park’, where there were several links to the local newspaper and tv reports, as well as, oddly, a copy of the local high school yearbook.
The next file, labeled ‘Danny Fenton’ started off with a facial comparison scan with the black and white school photo, matching 97%. Basic stats filled out on his profile included a more accurate height and weight (thanks to the school nurse and a touch of hacking, though, worryingly, there were no hospital records past the age of 13 ), along with stating that he lived with his Mother, Father and one older sister. That he was adopted in a closed case that had a suspicious amount of missing information from the birth parents, seeing as he was estimated to be around four at the time of adoption.
That… that tracked. Even with the photo now being in black and white, he could see that Danny actually had dark hair as a civilian.
According to the school records, Danny had been in the top tenth percentile, ready to fast-track it to the junior NASA program when his grades and attendance suddenly tanked when he was 14, approximately two years ago and soon after starting high school. His grades had improved, but they were nowhere where they had been previously.
Alongside this page was a timeline of Phantom spottings that lined up with the dip in his academic record near-perfectly.
The last file, and the longest, was about the Fenton family. Drs Fenton and their published articles, labeling themselves ‘ecto-biologists’ and their studies of ghosts. Twenty years of published articles, studying ghosts, only to switch from theoretical to more concrete ‘evidence’ in the same two year period that Phantom had been around.
Jason pursed his lips. If he was reading between the lines here, and, knowing Bruce, he was, The kid needed to be pulled out of whatever situation was going on there.
Somehow making it to the end of the reports, the last one made him stop cold. He had no doubt that Bruce put it last, just to make him read the whole damn file. There, on the cover of Women in Science magazine and framed by two red headed women- mother and daughter, he noted absently. He assumed it was Dr. Madeline and her biological daughter Jasmine- was a boy staring back with the same blue eyes that looked back at him in the mirror every day.
“Tanner.”
Scrolling back to the top, he stared at the picture Bruce had taken only days ago. And now that he’d seen it, he couldn’t not see it. They, while Danny’s was Lazarus Water green, shared the same eye and nose shape, though Danny’s jaw was still rounded with the remnants of baby fat, it looked familiar as well.
Without taking his eyes off the photo, Jason pulled out his phone, his thumb hovering between Bruce and Barbara for a time unknown before he finally hit the latter’s name. Less than two rings later, despite it being -yikes- four-thirty AM, she answered.
“Oracle, I’m going to be out of town for at least the next few days. Tell Bruce not to wait up for me.”
“What-“ He didn’t even let Barbara finish her question before hanging up and stuffing the phone into his pocket. Though thinking twice, he turned it completely off and tossed it onto the couch. He had some packing to do and an early morning start to a long drive. Amity Park wasn’t exactly a trip to Metropolis.