Reminder! "Bold in quotations" Is talking through thoughts. 'bold in italics' is strong thoughts, but are not meant to be words, but the other can end up hearing.
Bruce had been having a really long night. He needed to get back to integrating their new resident ghost for answers, but instead, he had to go and find out what the problem was with Gordon. It turns out there was some kind of octopus-like ghost that had been harassing civilians and the GCPD.
Batman managed to throw two ecto-coated batarangs courtesy of Red Robin at the ghost. It seemed to have cut one of its -tentacles?- And started dripping ectoplasm on the ground. It quickly disappeared before Bruce could get another hit and try and capture it. At the moment, they had no way to track it. Bruce just had to hope that it had gone home or somewhere else in the meantime.
He crouched on the floor before scraping up the ectoplasm off of the ground using the edge of a Batarang. He lifted it to the light and narrowed his eyes. He stood up and started walking away, he would continue looking for the ghost later. At the moment they had no efficient way to capture ghosts, so the best they could do is scare them off, which seems to be working so far.
But in all honesty, he was wondering why Gordon needed to call him away that urgently. The ghost hadn't hurt anyone yet and had been floating around scaring people mostly. Bruce could have sent Nightwing or Robin to deal with this. But this is a new threat and he had no idea what to be expecting so it is best that he arrived instead.
He had just been finishing up his investigation when his com sparked to life. "Nightwing to Batman." There was a pause. Something was wrong. Bruce straightened up, and narrowed his eyes, ready for whatever Nightwing was to tell him. "Red Robin's been taken."
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Bruce was back at the manor as fast as humanly possible, the moment he sped into the cave he could see Dick, Damian, and Alfred waiting for him. Dick and Alfred looked a lot more worried than Damian did. It could have been because Damian tried to kill Tim multiple times before in his quest for the Robin mantle. Or because he doesn't like showing his emotions, even around his family members. Or perhaps a little of both.
He could see the tension in the boy's shoulders though, so he was worried to some extent. Bruce walked quickly over to them with grace. Dick was wearing his Nightwing suit already but his Domino was removed, his eyes were a little red. While Damian was still wearing casual clothes and had his domino on as he looked up at Bruce with his arms crossed.
"Debrief now." Bruce's voice was serious. He kept the cowl on, but his sons and mentor (practically father) could easily tell he was worried.
Dick sighed, "The ghost we were holding escaped containment." He gestured over to the cage, now powered down and the door swung open. "Tim was the only one in the cave at the time and the ghost possessed him and took his body and escaped, leaving his tracker and equipment behind. He is in civilian clothes, and has left manor grounds. We can't find him."
Bruce nodded, lips in a thin line. So he knows of the manor, and Tim's identity then. Tim is now also kidnapped and is somewhere in Gotham being used as a spiritual vessel. He might have to contact Constantine about that. They can't locate him and have no idea of where he could be. All Bruce could do at the moment would be collect more information. "Did anything happen while he was in the manor?"
Alfred was forest to speak. "I caught him upstairs trying to sneak through the kitchen. He was in full costume. We engaged in light conversation before Master Dick arrived, sir. But the boy did seem uneasy about something."
So he also saw Dick out of costume and Alfred in the house. Alfred continued with a dignified demeanor as always, even though the worry was still on his face. "He seemed mostly like himself, maybe a different tone to his voice but you could pass that up to his lack of sleep or a cold. But he did also act with nervous habits that were not common of him. And didn't respond well to master Dick's signs of physical affection."
"He tensed the moment I touched him." Dick elaborated, his tone was darker than usual.
Alfred nodded before looking back to Bruce. "The giveaway that tipped us off was the fact that master Tim had offered to go to sleep in his room." Bruce raised an eyebrow under his cowl. "In return, I offered him some coffee to which he promptly refused before leaving."
Dick's knuckles were clenched tightly at his side. He was glaring at the ground, his jaw was tight. "I should have noticed sooner. I was the closest to him and I just let a ghost walk away with my brother's body. It was obvious something was wrong and I didn't do anything!"
Alfred stepped up to Dick's side with a concerned look on his face. Damian spoke up. "Tt, you did do something, you asked me to check on him while you went to investigate what was wrong immediately after your conversation with Drake. How is that not doing anything?"
"But if I noticed sooner I- I could have…" Dick pulled at his hair with both hands. "I could have done something, anything! Then maybe he would be in a containment cell and not wandering around Gotham with Tim's body doing who knows what." His voice sounded more defeated at the end.
Bruce stepped forward and placed a gauntleted hand on the boy's shoulder. "Dick we will find him, and you have no idea what could have happened if you had grabbed him then. The ghost could have done something to Tim, you don't know. You didn't do anything wrong. Right now we should focus on finding him, not worrying about the what-ifs."
Dick glanced down at Damian who was staring up at him and then up to Bruce before nodding. "Let's find him."
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"Alright Spooks, now look what you've gotten us into!" Tim yelled into Danny's thoughts.
Danny rolled his eyes under the blindfold that was put on them. "I'm sorry I didn't mean to get us kidnapped." Danny snarked back, keeping it inside of their head so as not to alert their new kidnappers.
"You were the one that walked too close to Crime Alley." Danny could practically feel the boy he was currently overshadowing roll his eyes.
Danny shifted a bit off of his shoulder that was laying against something hard and cold, probably the door to the van, maybe a wall. He was starting to ache. He narrowed his eyes, still only seeing black. "Well maybe if I had some directions! We wouldn't have gotten kidnapped. It's not like I'm from around here."
"I didn't know where you were going!" Tim paused. "You're a ghost, don't you have some way to escape this or something?" He was annoyed, more like the boy felt more like he was being inconvenienced than anything.
Danny froze. Their eyes blew wide. 'That's right! I have powers!'
Tim was in shock for a second. But then quickly snapped back to frustration and surprise. He must have heard Danny's eureka moment. "What! How the hell do you forget that you have powers!?"
"Give me a break! It feels more natural to act human in a human body." That and Danny also had a bad habit of forgetting that he was a ghost sometimes. But then again everything about this overshadowing was wrong. Danny's core didn't even feel right. "I- I might be able to phase us out of these ropes."
Danny pulled a little tighter on the scratchy ropes biting into their wrists behind their back. Danny felt some more panic from Red. What's wrong now? "You can't do anything too robin-y! The last thing we need is them talking about how I beat up a bunch of armed thugs without any problems. I have been very careful to protect my identity and you can't ruin that." He paused. "But then again, you weren't able to fight all those guys before. How would you even escape?"
"Oi! I managed to injure two out of the three of them-"
"-Four"
Danny grumbled in annoyance. "-the four of them. All without powers!"
He shifted again and pulled his tied legs a little closer to his chest. "I could have beaten them." Red Robin added, Danny could feel the annoying smirk. Probably the Robin trademark or something.
"What happened to 'don't fight back and ruin my identity?'" Danny snarked.
Red scoffed in their head. "There is a difference between some self-defense and running away and climbing a fire escape, than escaping a bunch of rope in a random warehouse surrounded by gunmen." They went over a bump in the pavement causing them to almost fall on their side.
"Which is whyyyyy I can get us out of these ropes, and when the door opens we take off the blindfold and run, anyone can get through some ropes if they try hard enough. Once we are far enough away I can go invisible and they will never find us." Danny explained through his half-baked plan.
Tim seemed to mull it over for a second. "Fine."
Danny pulled at the ropes some more around his wrists, he narrowed his eyes. They were pretty tight. Their shoulders were aching more and more. Danny felt the van starting to slow down. He slumped a little more against the -door?- he was leaning on trying to hide his hands from any view.
All he would need to do was phase his hands out and reach forward to phase through the rope at his feet, making it look like he used his hands to undo it. Just in case anyone was looking. "We're near the docs" Red spoke up.
Danny raised an eyebrow. "How do you know?"
"I've been roughly following the direction of the car through Gotham. Also, it's very common for Crime Alley goons to go to the docs. Especially with all of the vacant warehouses there." He spoke with an uninterested tone.
Danny was a little surprised. "You know all of the streets of Gotham enough to recognize the roads?" Sure, Danny could kind of do that with Amity. But it was much much smaller than Gotham. And Danny could also fly so it made it easier to see everything.
"You kind of get it while growing up here. When I was much younger I used to run around Gotham with my camera at night to try and take photos. I knew lots of the streets inside and out," Tim said. Danny could feel him shrug.
Danny was surprised. "You were running around Gotham when you were a kid? I've been here for not even a day and I've already been kidnapped twice! Why the hell would your dad be letting you run around like that?" Danny didn't think that Batman would let his kids run around Gotham by themselves like that, especially that young. But then again, he does dress them up in bright suits and train them to punch people.
Tim sighed. "Well, my parents… weren't really around most of the time. Normally out of the country so I would just, go out. They were kind of neglectful, They didn't notice."
"Tell me about it." Danny chuckled dryly in his head. "My parents aren't exactly the best either. My sister had to raise me."
Danny felt like Tim was going to go on with another question but froze. "Phantom we're stopping, get ready now." Danny simply nodded and pulled on the ropes behind his back. He breathed out and pulled into his core on his intangibility and tugged. Danny froze. He tugged again.
His breath was quickening, the van slowed to a stop and he could hear the men moving around. He tugged again. Red must have sensed his panic because he spoke up. "Phantom, what's wrong?"
Danny tugged again. His eyes widened. "Crud. It's not working." Danny could feel his core, he could feel his powers. He could feel his ectoplasm flowing around him. But for some reason, he couldn't phase out of this rope! Was it the body? Could he still use his shields and blasts? It felt like he could. He probably couldn't fly or go invisible if his intangibility couldn't work, but maybe other things will.
He heard a door open from across from him, "Wakey wakey pretty boy, did you get your beauty rest?" Danny snarled in the direction of the voice.
He heard another man cackle. "Looks like he woke up on the wrong side of the van." Danny felt the van shift under some added weight before his arm was grabbed tightly and he was roughly hefted to his feet.
He couldn't walk wearing the ropes around his ankles so he almost fell over when the man started moving him. He tried to struggle against his hold and the other man reached and grabbed his other upper arm and placed his palm behind his shoulder blade, holding him still.
Danny wasn't panicking, he wasn't! He has been kidnapped multiple times before! There is no way this is any different. These are just a bunch of humans who probably wanted money. So why was he worried!?
Was it because there was someone else here with him that could also be hurt? Or was it that he couldn't use his powers to protect himself and the human with him? Or was it just because it was so different and everything today was weird and scary?
"Phantom you need to calm down!" Danny could feel waves of reassurance coming from Red. "It's okay, I've done dozens of these before. They won't hurt you too badly, they just want money." He paused. "We will get out in no time. Don't panic. It will make things worse." Tim sighed. "You just need to follow my lead, can you do that, Phantom?"
Danny closed his eyes tightly and took in a deep breath. Suddenly he realized that he had been pushed to a chair and that he had been tied down to it. How did he not notice!? Suddenly his eyes were bombarded with light. As someone ripped off his blindfold harshly. Here we go.
Authors Notes
Ooh, longest chapter yet by far! I am so excited to be writing this and I am so happy when I finish each chapter! And I haven't even introduced Jason yet! XD
Here we have some of poor Dick blaming himself for Tim's kidnapping! Now he is coming back with a vengeance, Danny better watch out. Damian is trying not to be worried. And who knows what Alfred and Batman are gonna do. Sorry about the first scene with Bruce, I was stuck on it for a while. I had another plan for it with some more reveals but I figured that I would need to move that to a later chapter in the story. He would have only been gone maybe an hour or two, so it couldn't have been very big for that timeframe. Hope you enjoyed it anyway.
Also, Danny and Tim's interactions are so much fun to write! XD I love them so much! Now we find that Danny can't turn things intangible anymore, and he probably can't fly or turn invisible either. This is a whole mess for Danny and he has been holding down his panic pretty well so far. But this situation is so different that it is bound to mess with him. Good thing he has Tim in something like this. Now they just need to escape. :)
Thanks so much for reading! I love comments and they always make my day when I read them! Love you all. Please tell me what you thought of the chapter! and what do you think will happen next?
