First Chapter: Dwindling, fading
In the blur of the remainder of the King's memories, in the small list of students of the class of Casper High School, Tucker Foley had been the first to go.
All the adventures they had lived together had scarred his memories and made his heart fragile, rendering him weaker, and leading to condemn brought by old age. He died eight days after his sixty-third birthday, his wife Valerie Grey by his side until the very end.
The next one had been Dash. Having become a popular sports star, he of course was led to use illicit substances for competition. Which, too, led him to his end.
And so went on the list, small stars in the sky fading one by one, leaving behind memories and regrets. Of all these people, none became ghost, the King remembers. Not that he was surprised, they all accomplished their dreams.
And here, alone on his throne, he sat. The only sound being the Ghost Zone's eerie call. Looking around, the King pulled his cane as he stood up and walked outside.
The green swirls of His sky greeted him, pale mist wandering around the castle. He hummed lightly. Another day, another night...
Batman frowned (If he could frown deeper than his usual face) as he studied the documents Nightwing had extracted from The Light. Most of them were simple information on the Justice League's members, but there were also various projects, most of them doubtful experiments or possibilities. One of them especially caught his attention, titled "Ecto-Powered Units". Batman had heard of ghosts; dead people coming back to existence, formed in ectoplasm and pure will. About fifty years ago, a treaty was secretly made between the government of USA and the King of Ghosts, assuring peace, but also forbidding walking into one another's world without special authorizations.
Ghosts were never heard of again. The only known portal to the ghost realm was shut, and the two children of the creators of the portal had passed away. Another portal was found, in the basement of a long-forgotten house. It was shut down too, and days later the only thing that remained of the mansion was ashes and embers.
Batman started reading the files with great interest. They mentioned test subjects – Hopefully not humans – infused with ectoplasm, most of them becoming gurgling and convulsing corpses for a few minutes before dying painfully. Some pictures were attached to it, depicting the horrors of the tests. The Dark Knight went on in the files. Next one mentioned where they found ectoplasm and what their aim was.
"Recreating the 'halfas'". The documents talked about how they located a half-ghost, half-man – Batman pondered a moment on how it was physically and spiritually possible – and how they captured the 'creature' and spent lots of time with analysis, discovering the ectoplasm-coated DNA of the man. He never spoke, not even once. He didn't quite cooperate either, having attempted escape multiple times. The Light had used old components from a now-banned Government organization called The Guys in White to keep him in their claws, without harming him – too much – in the process.
Then one day the subject mysteriously disappeared. No traces, no records, no sound. He vanished. Plain disappeared.
They then experimented on animals. And then on humans. Kidnapping different types of people, they emptied syringes full of ectoplasm in their veins, leading to a painful demise.
Batman now had an aim. Find the still alive subjects, put a halt to kidnappings and experiments, and save the people. As well as locate the "Halfa" and find a way to send him back to the Ghost Zone. There was only one family in the world able to help him with that – Camille Tabitha Fenton, daughter of Jasmine Fenton. She was perhaps too old to help, as a sixty-seven years old grandmother, but her two sons should be able to help. The legacy left by their family was a lot of blueprints and information in manner of books and recordings.
Madeline and Jack Fenton were two brilliants scientists, yet in their time, nearly a century ago, they were merely laughed at. Nowadays, even the Justice League was thankful that they discovered and explained ghosts.
Batman simply hoped that The Light would never come to be able to use the Ghosts' tremendous power.
"Fright Knight."
Said Knight looked up and answered his liege's words by a simple "Yes, my King?"
"Could you fetch me Vladimir? I have a few things to ask of him."
"Yes, my liege."
A few minutes later, the ghost came back accompanied, surprisingly, by a human.
"What do you want, Daniel?"
"Don't call me that. I had Fright Knight bring you to ask you if you feel like you can return to the human world safely."
Vlad held gaze with the King for a few seconds before speaking again.
"I think so. And if I happen to be caught again, I bet our world's 'Heroes' - He added a sarcastic tone to that word – wouldn't take too long to come free me. But you wouldn't take too long either, would you?"
"Oh, shut up. I only freed you because you're our only tether to the human world. You have no more value in my eyes than that."
"Perhaps being the last member of a rare species adds some value, too?"
The King didn't answer, and simply gestured for his Knight to accompany the guest outside.
"We'll meet again, Daniel. Be sure of that."
All he got as an answer was a shaky laugh.
Vlad landed in the middle of the town of Gotham City, infi-map in hand. He looked around, taking his surroundings in sight. No one seemed surprised by seeing a man pop in the middle of a street – Not that it was really uncommon considering how many meta-humans and other aliens ran around the planet in futile attempts to clean it from villains.
He chuckled at that thought. A world purged of evil. That only existed in children's happiest dreams, if said children hadn't been confronted to reality yet. Since he didn't have much to do, he decided to take a walk around. He had never been to Gotham City before, only heard rumours of it, mostly due to the Dark Knight's presence. He had only been walking for a dozen of minutes before the sound of an alarum pierced his ears, the loud shriek hurting his sensitive senses.
He simply looked as some simple thieves attempted to rob a jewellery of it's content, probably to sell it on the black market. And he kept looking when the Robin arrived on the scene, soon followed by Batman, who arrested the snatchers, who proved themselves to actually be a bit more than your everyday bank-breaker if they got the attention of the Bat.
Vladimir didn't get to see who the 'criminals' were, as they were immediately taken to a car and headed straight to the police, as the Dark Knight and his acolyte evaded the scene.
What a beautiful scene, of justice and crime fighting. Criminals, who often have their own reason to commit. But a crime is a crime, and in the eyes of people it had to disappear.
The last halfa sighed again.
Batman sighed once again as another of his clues proved to be useless. Still nothing that helped locate the mysterious "Halfa" that vanished from The Light's laboratories.
Now, the last clue he had was a vague rumour on a person randomly appearing and disappearing in the dark streets of his town, in a way akin to that one of a Ghost. Ghost that, he reminded himself, hadn't appeared in nearly a century, and so pretty much no one really knew how a ghost behaved or looked. Or even less what their powers were.
But the people were worried about this vanishing and appearing person, so the Batman had to investigate. With Robin and Batgirl, they were roaming the streets of Gotham looking for their mystery. Communicator on his ear, the Bat went on to the most likely next place where the being would appear.
From all the previous locations, they had managed to pinpoint where he would most likely appear, and all three of these places were covered by the Batman, Robin and Batgirl.
The Dark Knight was focused on his thoughts about the "Halfa" when suddenly, out of nowhere, in the dark, wet street, appeared a man. He seemed in his late forties, or even fifties, with his bright grey hair tied in a ponytail, small, tired blue eyes and tall stature.
"Well, it would seem I am not alone."
The Bat twitched oh-so-slightly, not admitting to himself that he was caught yet.
"You can come out, you know. I know you're looking at me."
And so the Dark Knight came out of his hiding place, revealing himself to the sarcastically surprised man.
"The Batman of Gotham City. How honoured should I feel?"
Clearly, the man's voice was dripping with more and more sarcasm, for no apparent reason.
"I am here to investigate rumours of a randomly appearing and disappearing man. Looks like I found my target."
"Seems so, indeed."
Batman took a second to tell Robin and Batgirl that he found the man, before turning back to said person.
"Who are you?"
"Why, already in the big questions! My name is Vladimir. Vladimir Masters."
"Vladimir Masters? Wasn't that, like, one of the richest guys that ever existed?" Robin, also known as Tim Drake, asked while walking towards the scene.
"That'd be me, indeed. Although I guess there isn't much left of my fortune, after all this time."
"How would that be possible? He lived about a century ago..." Robin cut himself off and raised an eyebrow.
"Why, I believe if you are here and knew where to find me, then you most likely already know the answer."
Batman looked at Robin, who looked back, and finally asked.
"Well then, Vladimir Masters, we'll be clear. We're looking for a man, supposedly gifted with ghost powers, who somehow disappeared from labs that belongs to the Justice League's enemies. So I won't ask twice; Are you a 'halfa' ?"
The King of all Ghosts looked outside the window of the Throne Room, admiring the green and purple swirls that decorated the world's sky. A whisper, like a soft hum, came to grace his ears quietly.
"A wind of change is rising..."
And there is chapter one complete! And here begins a story that hopefully won't be too long. About 1800 words in this chapter, kinda proud of that as it's my first crossover and GODDAMN BATMAN YOU'RE A PAIN TO WRITE.
Ahem. There is a slight timeline alteration to adapt the universes together. Danny Phantom happened in the early 2000, and Young Justice starts in 2110-ish. This story is around the end of YJ show (2116 ish), and DP is complete. Phantom Planet never happened, but the Disasteroid did exist. What happened with it will be explained, but it didn't happen right after D-stabilized (The DP part of this fanfiction ended right after this episode.). I have yet to situate exactly on which episode of YJ I set this story, and I'll say it in next chap hopefully. Updates will most likely be pretty slow as I have lots of stuff going on IRL. Till next time, next chapter!
! 11/04 Edit: Added transition lines and corrected some typos.