Shrouded in fog and shadow, slick with the almost perpetual rain falling from clouded sky. A heist was going down, but in a city known for its obscenely high crime rate, that was nothing new. To the men speeding through those slick streets, there was something that was decidedly all too new.
Getting caught by Batman was a risk every crook took, some had been lucky enough to never see the masked vigilante even once, while others told of multiple encounters. Tommy was in the later group, and never, in all his years of running from the Bat had he been pursued with such ferocity. The added panic pushed his crew to move even faster than they would have normally, and with every second they felt the Bat's anger increase.
They reasoned that whatever they'd lifted from that showy museum had to have been way more important than they'd first thought. Someone had gotten the bright idea of pulling over and letting the loot go, maybe it wasn't worth all the trouble. No one listened when Tommy told them what a bad idea that was and he was left to sprint through the dark alleys in soaking wet sneakers accompanied by the sounds of his crew's screams.
The bat was getting closer and Tommy's lungs were heaving. The screams stopped and he risked a look back. Empty, not even a sign of the idiots he'd been running with. He turned and crashed into wall that definitely hadn't been there before, bouncing off the hard structure and ending up falling on his ass in a puddle of filthy water.
His curse died on his lips when looked up at the figure looming over him.
"Batman." He whimpered, scurrying back fearfully from the fury evident on its face. The bat stepped closer, and Tommy's screams echoed down the alley.
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Batman raced back to the cave at a speed that for anyone else would have been suicidal. Most of the criminals in Gotham had taken the hint to lay low when the hospital had gotten an influx of broken bones and concussions, but there would always be the few that though they could do what they would be the exception.
He had more important things to be doing than tracking down stolen paintings, no matter how much they were worth. If the things hadn't been for a charity auction he would have left them to disappear into the black market. A signal in morse had been beeping in his ear for the past ten minutes, the one signal he'd been hoping he wouldn't have to hear before Nightwing had brought his Robin back from that radioactive world.
The young boy in the Batcave almost fell of his chair when the batmobile tore into the parking bay. The man pushed down the brief flare of irritation at the boy's presence and accepted steaming mug of coffee from Alfred. This wasn't the time or place to have a civilian child underfoot.
"I assumed you'd prefer for preparations for your departure to be underway when you returned, sir." The butler said, tucking the silver tray under his arms and waving a hand at the metallic suit charging powering up near the large clear tube.
"How long before Barbara is available to operate the transporter?" Bruce pulled off the cowl, marginally less comfortable doing so with the boy in the cave, even if his secret identity wasn't much of a secret right then.
"A matter of hours." Alfred said, his shaking hands betraying what his face didn't.
A few hours might not be soon enough. Bruce had been only seconds too late last time, and he was all too aware of the fact that every single one was precious. Just a few seconds more and he would have been caught in that energy explosion along with Jason, his son wouldn't have been blown to another world all by himself.
"I could do it." The boy said, holding a pile of calculations against his chest. He barely flinched at the hard look Bruce directed his way. "I've been reading through the blueprints, I know I can send you through." His icy-blue eyes shone with determination, so much those of two other young boys, boys that shouldn't have been drawn into the world of capes and masks.
"You're sure you're as smart as you say you are?"
The boy, who was already as involved as anyone the moment he'd stepped in to offer his help, nodded solemnly.
Bruce turned to finish preparations on the suit. "Alfred, fetch the energy cores." He didn't look at the boy who he knew was still watching him with wide, hopeful eyes. "Tim will handle the power up sequence."
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Days in Amity park often involved screaming, but it was always more of an, 'Aahhh ghosts are throwing food around!' type of thing, not an, 'Aahhh the bank just exploded!' kind of thing.
As Danny watched caught the live broadcast from where he was busy getting the last few people out of a burning building, with the knowledge that he'd never make it to the bank in time, he felt fury burning his icy blood. There was no need for so much damage, not when any ghost could practically just walk into the bank and take whatever they wanted.
He placed a little girl on the ground next to her terrified parents and flew back into the burning building to make sure there was no one else stuck inside.
His own parents were chasing down the ghosts that had started the fire, and judging by the screams he heard when he touched down a few blocks away, Jack and Maddie Fenton were winning.
In just a few days, there had been more ghost related damage than the last couple of months put together. Instead of dealing with the ghosts doing the damage, all of Danny's attention was focused on making sure nobody was seriously hurt during any of them. He'd spent more consecutive hours in his ghost form than he had since he was the one under Freakshow's control.
Just when the thought entered his mind to go home and maybe take a little nap, his communicator started beeping.
"Yeah?" He asked tiredly, closing his eyes and leaning heavily against the wall.
"You have to get to the bank." Sam's voice was breathy, like she was running.
"Now?" Danny groaned, but took off anyway. He spotted the smoking building from the air, the streets around it were clear but for the few people running away from it.
"Red's in there." She said. "Tucker and I are on our way."
Danny charged towards the building, not letting the huge amount of smoke slow him down. He was going to tell Sam to stay away when the outstretched arm holding the communicator crashed into a barrier, followed by the rest of the halfa. Danny was bounced back but went intangible fast enough to avoid crashing into the ground.
"Hahahahaha."
Danny brushed aside the trickle of ectoplasm escaping his nose and looked up for the source of the mocking laughter.
Dressed fully in his black and white clown costume, Red smirked down at the hero from the roof of the building.
"You need to be more careful, boss." He took of his hat and tossed it at Danny, the twisted smirk still on his face, and the hero knew that behind the domino mask, blood red eyes would be looking down at him.
Danny caught the hat and used it to wipe away the rest of the blood. His eyes zeroed in on his friends other hand where a thin trail of smoke curled up to mix with that in the air.
"Smoking ruins you lungs, Red." Danny said, spying his communicator lying just on the other side of the ghost shield he'd crashed into, he waved a hand at the bank, the exact same one Freakshow had made him rob last time. "Nice to see Freakshow has no new tricks."
"Why get new one's when the old ones work so well." Red dropped the cigarette, it's glowing tip catching the other boy's eye as it disappeared into the thick smoke.
Danny had to leap out of the way when Red flipped off the building and almost planted his bell-topped shoe on the halfa's face. There wasn't much time to react before Danny had to duck out of reach of one of Red's knives, and even less when the other had came up with another knife. Red got a weaker ecto-blast to his face when and staggered back, giving Danny enough time to get into the air, just out of Red's reach. He shot off some more blasts, keeping his friend from scaling the buildings to reach his level.
Red, dodged most of the blasts, and got a grip on a street light to swing up at the hero, but was knocked back by a powerful ecto-blast to his chest. He was hit back to the ground, smashing the windscreen of a car unlucky enough to be parked there. Danny felt for the strap of the Fenton thermos, and Red went intangible as he stood, letting pieces glass fall chime to the ground around him.
"Freaking dejavu, Boss?" Red smirked, a blade flying from his hands and knocking the thermos out of Danny's hand. "Keep your darn pokeball out of it, huh?" His face went lax, and then scrunched up as he tugged at his hair. "Wanna run while you're at it?" Red took a step back and spread out his arms, as if daring Danny to attack. "Damn head gonna… this is gonna freaking suck."
"You're fighting it Red, you can do it." Danny reached out for his friends. "You're too tough to let that freak hold onto you."
"Yeah sure." Red took a step back, spreading out his arms, but keeping his head bent low. "Unlike Freakshow I do have a new trick, wanna see?" His voice sounded weird, the wavering offsetting what should have been confidence. "Follow me." A glowing green ghost portal swirled to life behind him and he stepped back again, tipping over and falling into the other side.
"Don't!" Danny charged forward catching sight of his friend, already miles down and still falling. Red couldn't fly, he was falling through the Ghost Zone on his own and he couldn't fly. Why would Freakshow tell him to do that? A hand grabbed the back of Danny's jumpsuit and pulled him away from the portal, tossing him across the street. The portal was already closing and the hero launched himself at it, but he was tossed aside again.
"You really are a naïve kid." Richard said, his eyes harder than Danny had ever seen them. He stood in front of the portal, blocking the hero's path as it swirled into nothing.
Danny felt the strength seeping from his limb, his panic giving way to shock, then anger.
"How could you do that?" He swung his fist at the man, but it didn't connect, so he tried again, again, Richard deftly ducking out of the way of each blow.
"How can you not realize how obvious of a trap that was?" Richard asked, sidestepping another sloppy punch.
"Because he's my friend!" Danny said, taking another swing, the only thing keeping him from blasting the guy was the fact that he was Red's brother, and you didn't disintegrate your friend's brothers. "I don't care if it's a trap. Do you even care if your kid brother gets hurt!?"
"He is your friend." Richard said, his featured softened and he held out his hands. "And because he's my brother, I know there's nothing that could hurt him more that being used to hurt one of his friends."
"He can't hurt me." Danny glared at the man, but he did lower his firsts. Red wasn't half as strong as most of the ghosts Danny had fought, he was just a kid that could go intangible and throw up a shield or two. "I can deal with him."
Richard shook his head. "That you ran headfirst into that portal says otherwise. He's trained to fight things stronger that you'll ever be, kid." He settled a hand on Danny's shoulder and bent a little lower. "He knows how you fight, your weaknesses, and he's smart enough to use that against you."
"You're telling me to just leave him?" Danny asked. The image of Red tugging at his hair and telling Danny to run fluttered through his mind.
"I was actually going to tell you to wait for backup." Richard said with a sad smile. "But this all reminded me how much trouble that little brat can be." He looked at the still smoking bank and shook his head like he was thinking about something else completely. "We might not have time to wait." He started walking away.
"We?" Danny asked. "What are you going to do?"
"Get your friends together and I'll come up with something." Richard smiled at Danny over his shoulder. "It'll all work out."
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They couldn't have known when Jason would strike next, but that didn't really matter. He was just bait for the bigger prize that was Danny Phantom. All he had to do was show up and make sure he was seen, he didn't even really have to cause trouble and they'd come after him, the stick of dynamite in his hands was completely unnecessary, but Freakshow wanted trouble.
Just Jason's luck he had to be mind controlled with one of those revenge fueled idiots, it really made his own jokes about being a vengeful ghost seem ridiculous. The building that had been a pristine white just minutes ago was covered in scorch marks while it's agents fired blasters from behind their ghost shield. It kept them safe from the ghosts surrounding them, but…
Too bad for them those things were useless against anything from the real world. He tossed a stick of dynamite into a broken window and watched half a dozen agents run out dive out of all the other windows before the explosion knocked them all off their feet. They landed in a pile, like a bag of upturned marshmallows, and they tripped each other up trying to get to their feet and away from the blob monster that tried to drag them off.
Jason laughed at the fear and confusion on their faces, doubling over and clutching his sides. What kind of government agency only had a defense against one type of enemy? They were setting up some machine on the roof, but Jason chose not to notice it and lit another stick of dynamite.
The explosive was knocked into the sky almost as soon as it left his fingers and the resulting BOOM packed much less of a punch when it went off in the sky with nothing to blow up. Jason watched it go off, then turned to the frowning halfa hovering between him and the agents of the roof.
"Crap." Jason said, an unwanted smile forming in his lips. "Was really hoping you wouldn't show." His knives were in his hands a second later and he pointed them at the stupid kid that didn't know when to run. "You stood me up Boss." He leaped into the air, using a few ghosts poffs as stepping stones to slash at the halfa.
"I didn't like the venue." Danny quipped, ducking under one knife, but getting a slash on his shoulder from the other. He hissed at the burning pain and a hand clamped over the shallow cut.
An ecto-blast struck Jason's chest, knocking out him out of the sky and forcing the breath from his lungs. He spun and landed on his feet before he caught his breath.
"Not good enough." He charged at the other boy again. Danny's cocky grin infuriating him, the kid really didn't know what he was in for, and the next slash would most likely hit something much worse than an arm if the halfa didn't take the fight seriously, the giant ghost blob turned away from the terrified agents and reached a grabbed at Danny. "Watch out for the other guy!" Jason called out when his instinct to jump between them was over ridden.
Pain stabbed through his head and he grabbed at his hair in a desperate attempt to lesson it. He heard the ghost's screams and Danny's battle cries, but looking up was really too much effort.
"My parents are on their way here." Danny said. "Follow me."
The headache disappeared as soon as Jason began chasing after the halfa. Danny laughed as he flew away from the building, always just out of reach while Jason couldn't fly. At least the kid was running, Jason tossed his last few wingdings at the half ghost, almost sighing in relief when the last one left his fingers.
Jason leaped across the trees to get closer to Danny's level. "You gonna ice me in the woods, Boss?"
"What are we? The mob?" Danny grinned over his shoulder and sped up, leading Jason deeper and deeper into the woods, away from the GIW building and any of the agents.
Jason laughed and sprang off a tree, reaching out a hand to pull Danny out of the sky. There was a headache building up again, nagging him to go faster try harder. He caught a glimpse of red out the corner of his eye and smirked, that would work.
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Danny touched down in a small clearing and turned to face Red. He just stood there with his arms crossed and smirked at the boy chasing him. He crossed his arms and put on his most cocky grin for the boy who stopped at the tree line.
"Come on Red." Danny called, making a come-hither gesture. "What are you waiting for?"
Doing their best to keep hidden, Sam and Tucker held ghost shields behind the trees. Red looked at Danny for a moment then tensed up and shot forward, but couldn't escape the shields that sprung out from the trees on either side of him. He tried to push them away, but his arms were crushed to his sides. He screamed as he struggled to free himself, and Danny had to keep himself from telling them to let him go.
Richard slipped out of the shadows, the Fenton thermos in his hand and Red forced out a shield of his own, wedging it between him and the other shields, he pushed them less than an inch apart, but it was enough to get out from between them and drop to the ground. He struck out with a kick at his brother's hand, but Richard just ducked out of the way and retaliated with a palm strike to Red's head. Red went down, and let the fall carry him into a role to put as much distance between them as he could.
"Your friend'll go easy on you Red." Dick said the name like it was a taunt, and the boy tried to knock the thermos out of his hand again, but was kicked back to the edge of the barrier. "You know I won't." Richard settled into a fighting stance, the thermos in one hand and an electrified stick in the other. "Now would be a good time to fight that control."
Richard activated the thermos and covered the distance between them in less than a second. Red dodged the containment device, but ran right into the weapon. His screams filled the forest, and Danny was about to fly over the ghost shield when his friend pushed away and stumbled back from his brother.
"Bastard." He said, eyes flickering again to the tree line as the shield he was leaning against started jerked forward, knocking him back to the ground again. In the second it took for him to get back to his feet he already felt the pull of the thermos. In the second it took him to get back to his feet the thermos was trained on him again. "Stop it!" Red charged at his brother and ducked behind the man, out of the thermos's path. "I need to get back to the Ghost…!" He was struck by the electric weapon again and another pained scream tore itself from his throat.
Danny rushed forward, he didn't want his friend screaming in pain, even if it was to save him, there had to be a less painful way of doing it. A blur swept by, pulling Red off the ground and carrying the ghost off past the trees. The halfa rushed after them, catching sight of them before they disappeared beneath the treetops.
"Valery!" He called, but she just sped up. He got close enough that he heard the girl talking, but not what she was saying. Red's arms were wrapped tightly around her waist, his head buried in her armored shoulder. The last time they'd been together, Red had been kidnapped by Vlad, Danny didn't know where she was trying to take him this time, but he wasn't going to risk it. His friends and Red's brother were following not far behind when caught up to her.
"Get away from him!" She spun around and fired her ecto-blaster at him while Red fell to his knees on the leafy ground behind her. "I won't let you hurt him anymore!"
"Us?!" Danny stepped forward, fists clenched at his sides so tightly they hurt. "You don't know what you're doing!"
They didn't see Red's hands slipping behind his back.
"I know what I saw." Valery countered. "He trusts you, and you're just as bad Masters!" Her voice cracked as she glared at the halfa and squeezed the trigger again, when Danny tried to get closer, hitting him just under the burning cut left behind by Red's knife.
"We have to stop him before he does something that hurts him even more!"
She didn't see Red floating off the ground, his feet coming to a stop just above the ground while he hovered behind her.
"It didn't hurt that much Val." Red said, his face twisted into something between a smirk and a grimace. "I just wanted to get your attention." He moved as if he was going to hug her, but pushed her roughly away instead, revealing the weapon he now held in his hand. "Thanks for the help."
Sam and Tucker broke through the tree line, ghost shields ready to contain Red again. There were two loud BANGs and the devices were laying in pieces on the ground. Sam's violet eyes were wide as saucers as she gaped at the thin trail of smoke drifting up from the muzzle of the gun in her friend's hand.
"You said you lost it." She whispered.
Red's didn't even look her way, holding the gun steadily, keeping it fixed on Danny. "Stop me." He said softly, the cracking of his voice the only outward show of emotion while he jacked the weapon. "Please."
Danny hesitated just a second too long. Red pulled the trigger and a loud another loud BANG cut through the quiet forest. There wasn't any pain, and Danny was lying on the ground, sharp twigs and rocks digging into his face.
"These are your friends Little Wing." Richard was kneeling on the ground in front of Danny. "You don't want to hurt them, remember." A trickle of blood slipped out of his mouth.
Red screamed.