Chapter Text
The only thing worse than going to a boring gala with the Manson’s was running into a ghost problem at a boring gala with the Manson’s.
“You’d think we’d have problems with some of the actual rogues from Gotham, but no, it had to be ghosts,” Sam hissed to Danny quietly.
“You’re just mad that it isn’t Poison Ivy,” Danny muttered.
Sam spun around, the pastel pink dress her parents had forced her into swirling around her ankles. The pink bow holding back her perfectly curled, black hair seemed to shake with the anger that was emphasized by the scowl on her face. She pointed one manicured nail (thankfully she been able to choose the clear polish for it) in his face and leaned in close enough that he was forced to lean back. Her violet eyes blazed with rage.
“Want to repeat that?” It was less of a question and more of a threat.
Danny raised his hands in surrender. “Nothing, I said nothing.” When Sam lowered her finger Danny dropped his hands and continued, “It’s not like I want ghosts to draw Batman’s attention.” His blue eyes scanned from the crowd of people all dressed in expensive suits and dresses to the walls that were just as fancy with paintings and carved wooden mouldings. “We have no idea if he’ll agree with my parents that ghosts should be torn apart ‘molecule by molecule.’ It’s hard enough to hide that I can turn into a ghost with my parents. There’s no way I’m hiding it from the Batman.”
He tugged at his dark blue tie, uncomfortable in the dark suit the Manson’s had shoved him into so he wouldn’t ‘embarrass them.’
Sam batted his hand away from his tie with a roll of her eyes, having done that to him multiple times already. “And I think he’s smart enough not to fall for their stupid ‘research,’” she argued, spinning on her heel to march off into the crowd again.
Danny hurried to catch up, scowling at Sam’s back, and then attempted to lead the way. His ghost sense wasn’t something he had a lot of control over, but it was what had warned them about their current problem.
Not that it was obvious what the problem even was.
“Why is it so crowded? I can’t see anything with all these people,” Danny complained.
“Where did you even sense the ghost the first time?” Sam asked as she leaned in close to his side.
“I don’t know.” Danny sighed. “I was trying to find you after coming back to the bathroom. I think it was somewhere over here.”
“Are you sensing it now?”
Danny held back a groan. “I would have told you—” he felt a cold tingle build in his throat and turned towards where the sensation was coming from.
Sam turned with him as he spotted a tall man with styled, short dark hair and broad shoulders. He wore a black suit with a white dress shirt and a green tie. The man grinned and tossed his head back with a laugh, wrapping an arm around the man next to him.
“Please tell me you aren’t staring at Bruce Wayne,” Sam said, her voice filled with despair.
“Isn’t he the guy who owns that company around here?” Danny asked as he watched the man, apparently Bruce Wayne, turn towards a woman who had just slunk up to his side.
“Danny! He’s the man who’s hosting the whole gala!” Sam smacked him on the shoulder and he winced automatically, even though it hadn’t hurt. She leaned closer to hiss in his ear, “If you make Damian Wayne hate me by going ghost on his father you won’t live to regret it.”
“What part of not getting caught is so hard to understand?” Danny complained as he moved through the crowd towards Mr. Wayne. “I don’t want anyone to know about ghosts, we just can’t risk that one is controlling him or going to hurt him.”
“I just wanted to go to one event planned by Damian Wayne to support environmental issues in order to talk to someone I can actually stand at one of these things. Instead I’m forced to chase down ghosts that aren’t even in Amity Park!” Sam seethed as they watched the woman in a pretty green dress draw Mr. Wayne away from the group he was speaking to.
“Why force your parents to take me along then?” Danny grumbled as Mr. Wayne grinned down at the lady who led him out of the room.
“Is the woman the ghost?” Sam demanded as they hurried to catch up.
Danny looked her over from her short, dark hair to the deep green dress that hugged her body. Even the short glance had his eyes skipping back to Mr. Wayne.
“No, it’s definitely Mr. Wayne,” Danny answered, and Sam said something under her breath which he didn’t bother to pay attention to. The two they were following had stepped through a doorway and it was making him anxious.
“You’ll need to be invisible to get the ghost,” Sam pointed out.
Danny held back a sigh. “I know that Sam. Keep an eye out for somewhere I can go ghost without drawing attention, I don’t want to lose them.”
“The bathroom isn’t far,” Sam pointed out as they rounded the corner, thankfully he could see Mr. Wayne and the woman headed down the hallway.
“I’ll change and come back. You’ll have to follow them in case I need a distraction,” Danny told her in a rush.
“On it,” Sam said.
He quickly walked to the bathroom and into a stall that was almost as big as his bathroom at home. Ignoring how excessive it felt, he locked himself in and muttered, “I’m going ghost.”
A circle of light formed around his waist, then split in two so that one could travel up and the other down his body. The rings changed his fancy navy suit into a black hazmat suit with white gloves, boots and a white collar that climbed up his neck. He blinked his eyes as he felt them change and brushed his now white hair out of his face.
After taking a deep breath (which he no longer needed in ghost form) he turned himself invisible and intangible. Phasing out of the stall without opening it, he flew back towards where he had left Sam. With a bit of searching, he found her looking around a doorframe into a quiet room.
He snuck past her to where Mr. Wayne and the woman were (ugh) flirting. Desperately tuning out the words, Danny flew closer to Mr. Wayne.
He didn’t seem to be controlled, not that he knew what Mr. Wayne usually looked like. Maybe he was being…influenced? Something about him wasn’t right. Danny looked at what he was wearing. Maybe it was the stupid fancy suit he wore or…
Danny’s eyes fell on the edge of a chain peaking out from one of Mr. Wayne’s pockets. The woman with him had her hands on his hips so there would be no way she wouldn’t notice if he took it but…
Danny flew back over to Sam and whispered to her (which made her jump), “Distract them for me.”
She shot a glare at where he was but straightened up.
He zoomed into the room as she fell down in the hallway with a loud smack.
The couple jolted, the woman drawing away from Mr. Wayne. Danny took the opportunity to grab the chain (which turned out to be a necklace) and turned it invisible and intangible too. He hid it in his hands and flew out of the room. Once he was back in the bathroom stall he changed back and let out a relieved sigh.
Curious about what he had grabbed, he opened his hands. It was a thick chain made of glossy black links. The pendant was metal, in a matching glossy black with a perfectly round sphere of crystal held in the center. He lifted the chain to look at the crystal. It was clear except for the cracks all through it which shone green and red in the light, making it so he couldn’t see through it. It glittered as he moved it.
The entire thing had his ghost sense tingling coldness at the back of his throat.
With a shake of his head, he stuffed it in his pocket and left the stall.
Once he was out of the bathroom Sam crowded into his space. “Well? Did you get the ghost?” she hissed.
“It wasn’t a ghost,” Danny answered, tugged her on the arm back to the main room. “I think it belongs to a ghost though, so we better get out of here before it tracks the necklace down.”
Sam groaned. “Fine. I know where we can sneak out so we can go back to the hotel.” She jerked her arm out of his grasp and stomped away.
Thankfully, the hotel wasn’t too far from the building that had held the gala, otherwise the chill from the fall air combined with the drizzle would have been unbearable for Sam without a jacket. The building itself was made of the same grey stone as everything else seemed to be in Gotham. High arched windows somehow looked far more forbidding in the dark with grotesques sneering down at them from above.
Inside was done with a rich red carpet and gold coloured paint on the walls. It felt overdone and gaudy but at least the paintings on the walls were landscapes that broke it up.
They were able to make it back without any ghosts jumping them before they reached their room. It was a suite that had two separate rooms along with a bathroom. One had a big bed for Sam’s parents and a door that connected it to the room with two beds that Danny and Sam were sharing. They had been given a lecture of proper behaviour along with the “privacy” of a separate room, which the Manson’s had threatened to come into at any time.
They often had more privacy in the big mansion the Manson’s owned.
The room had the two double beds, two dark wood dressers and a matching desk with a chair pushed into it. There was a TV on the wall and a painting above each bed. The windows were large but the view of Gotham city at night was drowned out by the drizzle, which acted like a thick fog.
Sam immediately escaped into the bathroom to change, muttering about ‘pink crimes against fashion’ as she slammed the door shut.
Danny winced, then stripped out of his own clothes as fast as possible to change. He could hear Sam turning on the shower, so he had time.
Once he was in his pyjamas, he pushed dark clumps of wet hair out of his face and settled onto one of the beds to examine the necklace.
A closer look showed that there was some sort of writing on the pendant, which was shaped like a diamond. The symbols for the writing weren’t letters he recognized. Strangely, there was text on both sides so he couldn’t tell which side was the front or the back. The sphere of crystal protruded from each side equally so that didn’t help.
Sam came out of the bathroom with a cloud of steam. She was in a dark purple top and loose black pants for her pyjamas.
“Is that the ghostly thing?” she asked, walking over to his bed.
“Yes, it says something, but I can’t read it.”
Sam leaned close, reaching to take it but Danny pulled it away. She glared at him. “I want to see it.”
“We don’t know what it does, you shouldn’t touch it.”
She crossed her arms. “You’re touching it.”
“I’m already part ghost. I might be immune,” he argued.
“Fine,” she huffed, then grabbed his arm and pulled him closer.
“Hey!” he exclaimed as he scrambled to not fall on his face.
Sam ignored him as she moved his hand around to look at the pendant. “I don’t think I recognise this either. Are you sure it’s writing?”
“Yes.” He didn’t know why but he was certain of it.
“It’s pretty,” she said begrudgingly, letting go of his arm.
“Very gothic,” he said with an eye roll.
“We are in Gotham.”
Danny sighed and then his breath came out as a cold fog. Both of them stiffened, looking around.
A giant black bat with green and black wings rolled in from the window and phased through the ground. They both stared at the floor for a moment.
“Was that—?” Sam started to ask and then it burst up from the floor.
The black bat was easily six feet tall with wings that were almost twice as long as his body, which took up a terrifying amount of the room they were in. A bat shape glowed ghostly green in the dark fluffy ruff of hair that extended down from his neck onto his chest. His glowing green eyes locked onto the necklace in Danny’s hand, dark pupils dilating with intent. His large, flat green nose that was shaped like a teardrop twitched, the green insides of his ears pointed forward. He then bared fangs in his equally green mouth before he dove to grab the necklace.
Danny instinctively dove out of the way as the bat came at him, rolling off the bed to stand with Sam beside it. A green wing with black fingers whipped towards them, claws gleaming in the light. Danny grabbed Sam and used intangibility to throw them both back through the wall behind them, into the room Sam’s parents had taken. They landed on the ground hard and rolled away in different directions. The wing missed them and phased downward as though following the rest of the bat through the floor again.
They both scrambled further into the other room and watched the wall warily but nothing else happened.
“Is the bat gone?” Sam asked, staring at the wall that led to the other room.
Danny concentrated on his ghost sense. “I think so.”
The door to the room rattled and then both spun to face it, bodies tense.
The door opened and Mrs. Manson flounced into the room. “Just what are you two doing in here?” she asked shrilly.
Sam and Danny shared a look as she began to lecture them. They’d have to discuss the ghost later.