Chapter Text
Understandably, Sam and Tucker were tired, the flight to Gotham City wasn't that long, only a little over two hours, but it was already getting dark when they left. They were all sitting in the back of a taxi, with Danny being the only one to still be wide awake in the middle while the other two were drifting off as they drove through Gotham traffic.
It was hard to believe that they were staying, that it wasn't some kind of weird vacation. Though not many would ever consider going to Gotham to be any kind of vacation.
Thankfully, along with about ten thousand dollars on a debit card, pulled straight from Sam's savings, her parents also set up a small private plane to take them there, letting the trio bring a lot of Fenton Works tech with them uncontested.
Convincing their parents was an arduous task to say the least about it, it took weeks for Sam and especially Tucker's parents to even consider it.
But they managed, the trio warned the ghosts in Amity Park about the incoming GIW and captured the ones who didn't leave willingly, only closing the Ghost Portal afterwards and made sure it would never open again. It felt...
It felt wrong. But there was nothing they could do, the massive increase in government funding to the organization had spurred them to arrive in full force, along with an update to the Anti-Ecto Acts.
Guilt came to him from the fact that Sam and Tucker were liminal now. In hindsight, how couldn't they be? Constantly being around and fighting ghosts, being overshadowed by powerful ghosts and wielding powerful artifacts, even being in the Ghost Zone without hazmat suits. 'Ecto-Contaminated' people were far easier to catch than a ghost for a government agency, they had records. If designated as Liminals by the GIW, they would be effectively hunted wherever they go. All of them had to get out of there.
Danny closed his eyes and leaned back, he thought back on his words to Clockwork, before the timeliness were compressed and the world at large forgot he was Phantom, "Not gonna lie, being accepted by my city after all this time has been amazing..."
"But if anyone's gonna unite the Ghost Zone and the human realm, it's gotta be me. The new me."
"Even if that makes me a pariah again."
He didn't think it would be this bad.
He didn't think he'd make his team pariahs with him.
How could he do this to them?
The transport jostled to a stop, startling the other two.
"Come on guys, we're here." Danny gently nudged Sam and Tucker, while glancing at the actually decent looking apartment building they were parked next to.
As they got up, Sam sluggishly gave the driver a fifty as the boys got their luggage from the back.
As he lifted his luggage up and out, Danny saw from the corner of his eye the door of the building opening. Jazz stepped outside, her smile wide and eyes flashing a small green glow in excitement.
"Danny, Sam, Tucker!" Jazz ran at them and pulled them into a bear hug, with her opening her arms for Sam to join in a moment later.
"Hi Jazz." Is about all that Danny could wheeze out with the crushing hug she was giving him.
She let go just a little and looked them up and down, her eyes watery, "I missed you guys so much!"
"We missed you too," Sam smirked, "Glad you weren't there though. It was stressful, to uh, say the least about it."
Jazz's smile dropped slightly as her eyes darted around like always when talking about a touchy subject in the open, "You guys can tell me more once we're inside and dinner is on the way."
She led them inside and quickly walked to the elevator to call it down, clearly eager to show them around.
Opening the door, Jazz stepped inside the apartment and felt around for a lightswitch. The trio following just behind stepped inside to see a mostly empty living room attached to a kitchenette that had just enough space for a table, a dark hallway leading to three more rooms. Several cardboard boxes, both empty and full were scattered around.
"I uh, had to find a new apartment so we could all fit," Jazz stepped into the hallway and turned the lights on, "My room is the one at the end of the hallway, next to it on the right is the bathroom. Sam, your room is the second door on the right. Danny, you and Tucker are gonna have to share the room on the left side, sorry."
Tucker and Danny looked at each other and shrugged, "That's ok, I don't imagine finding a four bedroom apartment on relative short notice was possible."
Jazz muttered, "Not a nice one..."
She raised her head back up, still smiling, "Anyway, go put your stuff down, and then you guys have tell me everything. I'll order us pizza."
Sam punched the air, "Nice! Veggie for me please?"
Jazz nodded while getting her phone, "I remember Sam."
"That'll be $30.55"
Jazz passed him the money and took the pizza's in one hand at the same time.
"Thank you." She said as she closed the door.
"Pizza's here!" She called down the hallway as she passed it on her way to the kitchenette.
It took less than a moment for all three of them to drop whatever they were doing and come out of their rooms.
"Finally! Thought it would never get here." Tucker was first to grab a plate, and a slice.
As Sam was last to get her own slice from the veggie pizza Jazz ordered, Jazz herself was slightly tense with some excitement.
"Soooooo... Anyone want to fill me in on the exact details of what happened back home?" She was giving a nervous smile, not wanting to bring down the mood but desperately wanting answers.
Tucker tried to start explaining with a mouth full of pizza but was quickly shut down by Sam.
"What Tucker is trying to say," She started for him, "Is that when he was hacking the usual GIW goonsquad patrolling the town, he found out they were getting reinforcements, and lots of them."
The tech wiz swallowed his pizza to continue, "Yeah, and they weren't kidding! The town felt like it was under martial law just before we left."
Danny nodded, "I managed to warn the nice ghosts in town and others in the portal before they arrived though, so most of them should be ok."
Jazz's eyebrows furrowed, "Most of?"
He grimaced, "We know they captured a few animal ghosts, or... Maybe they were blob ghosts?"
Sam nodded sadly before continuing, "We couldn't really tell, they were just puddles on operating tables and inside test tubes by the time we snuck in, and just barely snuck in at that. Obviously we had to shut down the portal so none our usual ghosts got through and caught. Even with a warning, they'd be too..."
"Stubborn." Jazz understood, it was a common trait among ghosts, even in her little brother.
She finally grabbed a slice for herself, "So, how did you guys shut it down?"
"Well first, we pressed the off button." Danny, Sam, and Jazz gave Tucker a look as he took another large bite with a smug-ass smirk on his face.
"We also took the physical blueprints for the portal, and smarty-pants here corrupted the digital copies of them." Sam continued before taking another bite and motioning for Danny to pick up the story.
He sighed, "I fried the portal. Used a few jumper cables and did my little Ghost Stinger trick."
Jazz squinted, "And that did it in? Completely? Won't they just replace the burnt out parts?"
Tucker spoke up now, his mouth free of pizza, "Nope! Because if that didn't destroy it, the fire that it caused did. We put dead batteries in the smoke detectors in the lab so your parents would just think that they forgot to replace them, we figured they would totally buy that."
She nodded, they would.
"By the time Mom and Dad put out the fire, the portal was wasted. Everything inside of it was melted." Danny said, suddenly looking a little disinterested in his slice.
"They didn't take it well, huh?" Jazz said, knowing that look on his face.
"No..." Mom and Dad were devastated, so much research came after opening that portal, even if they didn't know the half of it. Frankly, he was just as bummed about destroying it as they were.
Jazz leaned across the table slightly to put her hand on his shoulder, wishing to reasure him, "It was the right call."
"I hope so."
An awkward silence hung in the room as they ate. Only ending once Tucker cleared his throat and asked, "Sooooo Jazz, how has Gotham University been?"
She perked up immediately, "Oh, it's been surprisingly great! Especially the psychology classes. So many interesting case studies!"
Sam smirked, "You talk about anyone specific yet?"
"Assuming you're talking about the 'rogues', the only one the class has begun to study is Mr. Harvey Dent."
Tucker quirked an eyebrow, "You mean Two-Face?"
"No, I mean Mr. Harvey Dent. Psychiatrists should not encourage our patients psychosis. Honestly, the Two-Face name the media gives him doesn't help attempts to get him better."
Sam passed Danny her pizza crusts as she got up from the table to wash her plate, "What makes you say that?"
"Two-Face is the specific name of his other personality. The media loves to focus on the Two-Face name so much that it is honestly all anyone ever hears when talking about him. It definitely doesn't help to have a whole city acknowledge his other halves existance and make it harder for any psychiatrist so much as attempt to help him understand th-"
"OK. Jazz, we get it. Encouraging his psycho-whatsit is bad." Tucker quickly interrupted before Jazz went on a rant.
"I'm just saying, maybe the news should focus on some of the random acts of kindness he does too. It's always a fifty fifty whether or not he does something good or bad after all. Just a bit of positive attention might help."
Danny gave her a look, "He's killed people Jazz. Little hard to portray him in a nice light after that."
She scoffed, "Well... Maybe so, but at least he can probably be helped, not like that clown! I swear, I don't even think he's psychotic..." She muttered the last part under her breath.
He grimaced while thinking of the clown prince of crime, "Ugh."
"If only he was a ghost, right Danny?" Tucker said, a smirk on his face.
Danny gave a dry chuckle, "Then I could kick his butt and throw him headfirst into the ghost zone. With any luck he'd end up in front of Walker."
"He'd just get out anyway. Wasn't exactly hard for you," Sam dried her hands and grabbed a kitchen lighter from a drawer.
The halfa gave her a look, "What's that for?"
"Need it for some candles. I'd prefer to cleanse my room at least once before sleeping in a city as cursed as this one."
Danny hesitated a moment before nodding, "You know, if you told me that in any other city I probably would've rolled my eyes, but now? I completely understand."
"Good to know I'm not the only one," Tucker added as he took his own plate to the sink, "This place just... Feels different than home did, and Amity was haunted as shit."
Jazz chuckled, "It's probably just homesickness. I was the same way when when I first got here."
Finally, Danny cleaned up and washed his own plate and followed Tucker to their room. It wasn't much for now, just two unfolding bedframes with mattresses and two cheap, albiet wide plastic drawers for their clothes. It was pretty minimal for now, but both of them figured it was nothing they couldn't fix later.
"Hey Danny, you mind opening the window? It's hot in here."
Danny nodded, though he himself didn't feel the same. Undoing the window lock, he opened it and let a cool breeze into the room. He leaned out the window for a moment, letting the night breeze blow against his face. As his eyes slowly opened to see the north beautiful and ugly architecture of Gotham, he saw something else in the distance.
A small, ectoplasm green streak phasing through the building just across the street from them near the top floor.
"Tucker. Tucker!" Danny waved over to Tucker, who quickly noticed and came running.
"What?" He peaked over Danny's shoulder, not seeing anything.
"Pass me the thermos!" Danny kept watching, wondering if it would come back out the other side.
Tucker reflexively snatched it from his bag before finally thinking out loud, "...Danny, what are we doing?"
He looked back at him, a little lost for words, "What do you mean?"
Tucker sighed, "We don't even have a portal to throw the ghost into. Plus, you don't even know if the ghost is doing something bad."
Danny thought for a moment before countering, "Well 1, we don't know the ghost is doing something bad until I check it out. And 2, I could just beat up the ghost till they phase back into the Ghost Zone the hard way. They've done it before."
"But... Didn't we come here to hide? Last thing we need is to lure the GIW here. Especially with the good thing Jazz has going on here."
Danny was conflicted, hesitating for a long moment before taking a steadying breath and going ghost, "I have to help. If they don't need it, fine. But if they do... I have to."
Tucker sighed, but he did have a small smirk on his face, "I was worried you'd say that. Just be discreet, please. One sighting of Phantom and the GIW will come running."
"I'll be careful, I promise." Danny disappeared from Tucker's vision and phased through the wall. Flying straight to the room where he saw the ghost.
He stopped short just a few inches from the outside wall, where he could see his breath for a moment. He leaned slowly over as his invisible face went through the wall, of course, it was dark, but as his eyes adjusted slightly he could see that he was peeking into a living room with a kitchenette much like their own. Pushing himself through the wall, he looked around for any hint of the ghost he saw.
A quick, albiet hesitant, peak into the bathroom revealed the only place it could be in now: the bedroom. Danny slowly phased through the door, his fists balled up and his attention sharp, ready for anything.
The sound of a strange sobbing came from a large bed in the center of an otherwise plain room. Directly above the writhing person in the bed was a single, rather plain looking ghost who's face he couldn't see yet, looming over them as it caressed their face with one hand and hovered their knife-like fingers over their lips.
The person was asleep, but clearly in some horrible nightmare as the ghost tormented them, it reminded him of Spectra, feeding off of misery.
Not wanting to look at this a second longer, Danny lunged at the ghost and grabbed it by the shoulder and made it intangible with him as he flew up through the ceiling and made his way towards the roof.
The ghost writhed in his hands as they flew through the building, it scratched from behind at Danny's hand, trying to make him release it. Only managing to get a good cut on his hand once they reached the rooftop.
Danny pulled his hand back and zipped backwards, becoming visible as ectoplasm dripped from a small cut on his hand for a moment before healing over.
Looking up, at the ghost he finally saw the face of it as it floated before him now. He felt his core hum louder as made a sudden realization.
"Why do you look like that clown?!"
It was the spitting image of the Clown Prince of Crime. At least, the outline of him. It still looked like most animal and blob ghosts, like someone took raw ectoplasm and shaped it like clay into the Jokers shape. Danny knew it couldn't be his ghost, Joker was still alive and well, unfortunately.
A horrifically high pitched laughter came from it, only to be silenced a second later as Danny punched it across the jaw. Ectoplasm splattered across the floor as he saw its jaw come half off as it bounced across the rooftop from the sheer force he hit it with.
Danny got in closer to splatter it before ecto-blasts could get involved, hoping to end this before it becomes too flashy and noticeable. When it started laughing again, he rushed in to silence it once more, only for his fist to stop mere inches from it's face.
Except it wasn't laughing. It tilted it's head at him, it's already high cheekbones rising higher, smiling harder despite it's lack of a bottom jaw.
A green shape passed by the roof. Then another, and another, again and again. Danny looked up as he saw about several dozen more exact copies of the Joker ghosts swoop down, the copy he was fighting joining them while he was distracted. All of them giggling.
Like a school of fish, they swarmed around in the sky, going in and out of invisibility. A quiet, unnatural and deeply unsettling cacophony of laughing voices came from the collection. Danny felt like the wordless voices were worming their way into his head, giving him a headache as he looked at them with some concern. He was moved to act when he suddenly felt the urge to laugh, and was horrified the moment he even considered it.
Danny charged, going right into the center of the swarm. His punches connected no matter where they went, several of the Joker ghosts were outright splattered, though Danny was getting scratched at for every punch he threw. His head was reeling from the laughing, trying hard not to use his more loud and obvious powers to deal with this. Again and again he swung wildly, hitting any and everything he could, making the swarm ever so slightly quieter with every one he took out.
Eventually the swarm withdrew, going invisible as the the strange laughter lessens until it became a mere distant snicker. Danny floated down to the rooftop, covered in globs of ectoplasm. The roof being similarly coated in said globs.
He wiped the bits off of himself as he went invisible and phased through the roof, down to the room he saw the ghost in. The second he was back inside the bedroom, he noticed the sobbing. They were still crying... Why? The ghost was gone.
Danny got up close to them, finally getting a good look at the somehow still sleeping person, who was a definitely a man in his early twenties. He noticed the long scars on his cheeks, like the kinds you would see after a surgery. His mouth was seemingly forced into a smile, and now that he could hear better, Danny shivered involuntarily as he realized the sobbing occasionally, subtly switching to a pathetic, dry laugh and back to a sob at a moments notice.
He had heard of people surviving Joker Venom before. The Gotham paramedics had a general cure for most Joker venom, what with the many different versions of it there were. While much less people died from it these nights, a not small collection of unlucky people were barely saved from it, and now had permanent scaring.
Danny felt so much then. Angry at what it was doing. Concern that there was so many of them. Shame that the ghosts got away. And sad that chasing them away didn't even help.
As he phased through the apartment wall and flew towards his sisters apartment to grab the thermos to suck up the remains, he muttered under his breath.
"I fucking hate clowns."
"Oracle, any contact from Constantine?"
"None B. He hasn't used the communicator you lent him. And the tracker you put on him is still at the apartment he rented, I imagine he found it."
"Hn."
Frustrating. Always so damn frustrating whenever he and magic gets involved. Bruce always felt a headache around the magical nonsense he could do little about himself. He loomed on top of a tall building, overlooking a busy street. Thankful at the least that it was a quiet patrol so far.
"The magician did not explain why he came, correct?" Damian was sitting crisscross on the ledge, glancing slightly at Bruce but otherwise also looming over the city street with him.
"Barely. He mentioned that something happened in Illinois and something else moved here. Claimed that he needed to investigate before saying anything definitive." Bruce doubted him, John had a bad habit of not saying everything he knew, usually not until it became a immediate problem.
Barbra chimed in, "It's barely been a day B. Let him investigate, we have other things to worry about."
Bruce noticed smoke whirl around his head, cigarette smoke. He turned, knowing full well who was there.
John Constantine stood several feet away from them atop the roof, his lit cigarette making a trail of smoke unnaturally leading straight to Bruce.
"Hey Bats, and bird. You particularly busy at the moment?"
Bruce got closer before speaking, "No. Why?"
The unkempt man took the cigarette out of his lips for a moment as he put his arms behind his head and yawned, "No reason. I just wanted to fill you in a bit more of you had any questions."
"...Why?" He usually didn't elaborate so soon. Maybe he finally learned not to withhold details with him?
He shifted around, uncomfortable, "No reason, just... This investigation might drag on for a bit."
Bruce withheld a sigh as again he asked, "Why?"
John took a drag of his cigarette, "Not much to go on just yet. And it doesn't seem malicious, yet anyway."
Damian rolled his eyes and went next to where his father stood, "Get on with it."
John scoffed, "You know, I liked the other Robin better. But fine. Anything specific you want to know Bats?"
"What happened in Illinois? And where specifically?" Bruce wanted to keep this brief.
John took another drag, this time exhaling the smoke through his nose, where it formed a small ball of smoke in the air. He moved next to Bruce and Damian so he could look with them. With a wave of his hand a a dim glow coming from the center of the smoke, it suddenly was like a screen as it showed a city.
"Amity Park. A place where the veil is very thin, has been considered one of the most haunted places in the world about a few years now. Over that time, there have been several incursions and many attacks by Realms-Beings, or more colloquially known as 'Ghosts'."
Damian raised an eyebrow under his domino mask but otherwise stayed quiet. Bruce himself had met Deadman, so it wasn't a hard pill to swallow.
"While these attacks happened rather often, they also had a pleasant tendency to solve themselves. A few times now the JLD has prepared itself to deal with an incursion, only for us to be surprised the situation handled itself by the time we were done getting mobilized. From what we've seen, the place has somethin of a guardian spirit, and a right powerful one at that, considering some of these incidents."
The smoke showed an image of the city overrun with massive vines that could have been considered megaflora.
"The spirit itself is know by the city as Phantom. We've only seen glimpses of him, as well as the blurry and staticy videos and images taken. But we've left him alone for the most part, even protector ghosts can be real territorial, didn't want to stir up trouble where there was none by buttin in on a ghost this powerful."
The smoke shifted to one such image, John was right, it was too obscure to see any normal defining details of the ghost as its body was like a shade, just the bright, glowing green eyes staring back at him from the darkness, as well as a white bit of what was definitely hair was notable.
"What changed?" Bruce said, a little annoyed by the his lack of any deeper investigation of Amity and it's apparent protector.
"Bout a week or two ago, the veil there hardened very noticeably. Very few ghosts were coming to and from their realm and ours, and while not necessarily a bad thing, rapid changes are concerning. Shortly after, a government organization came to Amity, with what is apparently proper ghost hunting tech. And I don't mean like the kind used on those fake TV shows where they try to get them to talk, I mean tech used for hunting ghosts."
Bruce nodded, "So the Realms-Beings anticipated the coming danger and left. What about the organization? Do you have a name?"
"They're called the GIW, also known as the Ghost Investigation Ward. Granted, they don't so much as investigate as they do try to blow'em away and ask questions later." The smoke zoomed in, showing large white vehicles patrolling with what looked like soldiers wearing full body white armor and glowing blue energy guns.
Bruce drunk in the details before asking, "What does this have to do with Gotham then?"
"Not much admittedly. Most ghosts near Amity are in their realm, we think, and whatever stragglers are still there are currently being hunted by the GIW, so likely most of them will go home too at some point. However, we did notice a decent bit of ecto-energy coming this way on a little... 'Device' we have over at the JLD. Now, it might some collection of ghost stragglers, or it could even be GIW goons with some samples coming here to investigate, with the sudden lapse in activity in Amity, I imagine they're looking to prove their continued existance to the government."
"Shouldn't you know? You said this device you possess can track their energy. Couldn't you have found it today?" Damian asked, his arms folded.
John rubbed the back of his head, "Ain't the kinda thing you can carry around with you Birdy, plus, it's doesn't work that way. We use it to measure said ecto-energy shifting around the world. If more powerful Realms-Being or a decently large group of them travel, we can see them. Problem is, most larger cities have a large amount of energy from their own local ghosts, where everything kinda blends together into a hotspot."
"So their signal is lost with the others." Bruce finished.
John nodded before taking another drag, simultaneously swiping the smoke ball away with a hand. "I'll search around the hard way for whatever it is, most likely scenario it's just stragglers. Hopefully they behave and I don't have to send'em back the hard way."
"What about the GIW, is the rest of the JLD looking into them?" Bruce asked, concerned about the human element, the existence of the GIW was concerning tk say the least about them.
"Course we are Bats. Most of the us in the JLD aren't happy about their existance, the last thing we need is some government stooge pissing off beings even we barely understand. And that's a real possibility with how trigger happy this lot is."
"Aaaaanyway, for now, don't worry so much. We'll take care of it, we always do. You deal with the normal problems here... Well, as normal as the problems in Gotham can be. Heh."
He put up an arm to wave at the two of them as he left, "See ya around Bats."
He didn't hear anything for a moment, it's not like he was expecting a goodbye but he did expect for Bats to get the last word in, he usually couldn't help himself. He turned around, seeing that the two of them were long gone without so much as a sound. Not even a shadow in the distance.
He smirked for a moment and mumbled, "Still wanna know how that big bloke does that."