Danny's In His Last Year Of High School, Only A Month Away From Graduating. No More Overdue Assignments

Danny's in his last year of high school, only a month away from graduating. No more overdue assignments or late-night cram sessions. No more crowded hallways and after-school detentions. No more stress.

He's so close he can almost taste it.

But then Dani shows up, injured and whimpering and collapsing into his lap.

He may or may not have scared the daylights out of a few lower years and almost body-slammed Dale trying to get Dani out the door and to the nearest location with first aid supplies.

So what if he spent almost an hour holed up with Dani in the nurse's office patching her up while Mr Lancer and the paramedics he called tried to coax him into unlocking the door. So what if his Obsession slipped up after not seeing Dani for more than six months, only to have her show up looking ready to destabilise and melt into a puddle of goo.

The worst part of it all is that suddenly everyone's got the wrong idea.

Over the course of his high school career, Danny's endured a lot. He's gone from being a promising student to a school-skipping degenerate with barely passable grades and a weak bladder. It's bad enough he'll always be the Fenton kid, but now he's the Fenton kid who's secretly a teen father with a kid he's been hiding since freshman year. Now he's the talk of the town and he can't escape the pointed whispers and invasive questions.

He was so, so close.

Prompt 257

Now Danny loves space. He loves everything about it, to the point his core quite literally is space. And he’s also a baby ghost, even if he could argue he’s not in human form. But see, being baby has an honestly great consequence once it’s noticed- despite the Observants’ best attempts at hiding it, the assholes. 

Of course he would be far more worried- and even a bit pissed- if his caretaker wasn’t who it was. Look, he’d never met Clockwork’s siblings before, but apparently everyone was really against Clockwork himself adopting. 

But Clockwork as his uncle is fine. Besides, his caretaker is Space! Space itself is holding him, cooing gentle words in the sounds of the very cosmos. And they’re huge, like parts of their body going through portals so they can fit outside Long-Now sized big- and apparently Clockwork can get just as big and they can get even bigger- 

Okay, he needs to take a breath- even if he doesn’t need to breathe- to stop his squealing because holy Realms this is so cool. 

Space is awesome! And he’s getting so much more rest than he did in Amity- and even if Space sort of shrugged at the idea of school at first, they did help him set up online schooling. So there’s that, and it’s just the start! 

He gets to learn so much about space and it’s honestly kind of… nice? To be taken care of? And he can do whatever he needs for his Core and Obsession with only a few interruptions to take care of his living needs. Erm, sort of living needs? 

But even that gets turned into a bit of play or even a lesson too! He’s honestly having such a good time right now! He’s learning so much about spaaace! And dimensions! And interdimensional portals and- oops! No one saw that. 

Ahem- But he’s learning so much about space and getting to explore other dimensions with Cosmos! And sure he no longer looks as human as he once did and all that, but he’s seen so many people who also don’t look human that does it really matter? 

Of course it doesn’t, and he matches his sort-of-dad! Even though the streaks of color in their hair are more of a brown-red like they’re literally bleeding out the cosmos around them instead of it fading to void and space like his own. But still! They match and it’s fun! 

And they’re going to go on another trip from the in-between to one of the dimension realities! He’s going to start a game of tag this time he thinks! But no cheating with portals or bending space! Tag! 

Look, the Justice League? Not paid enough for this. In fact, technically not paid at all due to being volunteers (not that it stopped them from finding money in their accounts) but still. 

There is some sort of figure… being… thing… zooming around the asteroid belt, about the size of Earth itself. Let them repeat themselves. A planet-sized creature (are those hands or paws? Tail or simply its body stretching? Hair or the Abyss-) is currently darting around the asteroid belt like a child running through grass. 

That is, without noticing or caring if something bug-sized might be crushed. And they are very much bug sized, as the governments are concerned about. Like really concerned about. Like talking about trying to nuke the entity if it wanders closer sort of concerned. 

Which they are all very concerned and very much like, against. Because it isn’t seeming to notice the asteroids it’s knocking into their area. It’s like… not a space whale or eel or anything like that but also is something like that. 

And they would also maybe like to see if they can attempt to talk it down first maybe and-

oh. 

Oh. 

That creature is the baby. And mama just arrived, stretching across the entire galaxy, from them to Pluto and beyond, like something took the cosmos and shaped it like clay into some sort of form. Like reality itself has wandered into their galaxy with what they are suddenly realizing must be a very young child. 

Shit, they really have to make sure no one tries to piss either of these things off-

#toootalllly won’t be haunted by the ghost of a husband that I may or may not have killed to fund my lavish lighthouse life

can someone hire me as a lighthouse keeper. my grip on reality is soooo stable and i will behave so normally under conditions of extreme isolation. and i promise i wont try to fuck the light

"taken" style action movie where a man searches for his wife. as he fights baddies in gunfights and hand-to-hand combat, it's slowly revealed that:

his wife hasn't been kidnapped

their marriage is not healthy or functional

this guy isn't rescuing his wife, he's hunting her down

his wife is a crime boss, those are her henchpeople he's fighting in a john-wick bloodbath

the tension builds until, drenched in blood, our protagonist steps forward for the final showdown. he pulls a manila envelope from his bullet-torn jacket and throws it at his wife's feet. he's just spent an entire trilogy biting & killing & maiming....all so he can deliver his shit wife her divorce papers

I love the idea of Danny being just Some Guy.

Like yes he’s Phantom, yes he has ghost powers, yes he’s the King of the Infinite Realms. But to the BatFam? That is just Some Guy. A random dude - if you will.

They are positively baffled by him. Like he’s completely normal as far as they (and the background check) can see. Yet, he. Is. EVERYWHERE. (Not actually but it sure feels like it.)

The kids have a running bingo card of where he’ll turn up. Outside a warehouse they’re raiding? Check. Stopped a mugging? He was the one being mugged. Tim’s favorite coffee shop? He was just hired as a barista.  Seriously it’s like everytime they turn around he’s there.

Which wouldn’t be such a problem if he REACTED NORMALLY. But no. He doesn’t flee in fear, stare in awe, he doesn’t even try to say thank you. This man looked Batman in the eye and called him the furry vigilante - TO HIS FACE! He casually referred to Dick as “the flying monkey one” to Red Robin while also calling Tim a literal walking Red Flag. When he crosses paths with Duke he doesn’t always speak but he does always give him a snack. (Sometimes it’s candy, sometimes it’s fruit but it’s always food. And he only gives them to Duke.)

He once told Jason that he didn’t care that he was a crime lord and built like a brick house, Danny would kick his ass and drag his “rotted milk soul” too hell if the gun fights kept going on past midnight. (He had exams in the morning damnit.)

He will only call Damian “baby ninja” no matter how many times the kid insists that his name is Robin.

Spoiler and Orphan? The only ones he’s respectful to but even they get the occasional random comment. (“It may be a Tuesday, but if the universe is gonna make me the human equivalent of a pin cushion then I have the right to keep the knife.”) (It was actually a Friday but who were they to argue with a man bleeding out in an alley.)

Eventually the Batkids start keeping score of who has had the most out of pocket thing said to them by this random white boy.

I just had a thought: Joker doesn't actually look like a clown, he looks like a ringmaster. Oh sure, he's got the white face and red lips, but he doesn't have the nose, the colorful eye make up, he's wearing a proper (if weird colored) suit rather than a silly get up, he has normal sized shoes. He doesn't really give off clown vibes, yanno? But his henchmen do, they wear proper looking clown masks at least.

So in short: ringmaster.

And the thing is: Danny doesn't hate clowns, he hates Freakshow. And Freakshow is Circus Gothica's ringmaster.

I'm just saying Danny totally punches Joker on sight, but later when it's brought up he gets confused. "I never punched any of the clowns? I punched their ringmaster???? What are you talking about?"