Adventures of a Screwed Up Clone (Rewrite!) Chapter 1: Blüdhaven's Police Station Sucks, a Batman + Danny Phantom Crossover fanfic

Adventures of a Screwed Up Clone

The Rewrite

So, I'm here again. Yes, it has been a great many years. No, I haven't forgotten any of my works. I just finally understand why so many fics remain unfinished. You'll get it when you get there, lol. Anyway, this particular fic is one of my absolute favorites. I re-read it every year or so, and I still check comments and views and stuff. But it's old. I wrote it when I was a veritable child. And it was in first person. I've evolved.

I've been thinking for a long while about possibly rewriting it in third person. Then I got a comment last night about how much someone loved this fic, and how they still read it, and I was like, huh. Maybe I should go for it. So I got up at 1 am and started writing, only to realize I hate the plot. There isn't enough hurt/comfort, not enough Jason/Tim/Damian interaction, no Cass, and worst of all, I'm trying to stick to canon! There is no canon, only chaos. Anyway, I'm picking and choosing what I want. This whole thing is going to be a completely different story, with only a few scenes kept.

I also read a lot of Danny Phantom X DC Universe fanfics, and I found a lot of headcanons that I absolutely adore. Like Ghost King Danny? Love it. It's gonna be here. Contaminated ectoplasm as Lazarus Pits? Love it. Jason's a liminal. I have more, but I'll leave it to be discovered. Everything is changing, though, and it's gonna be written in a style that I feel has finally evolved to where I can get the story out as how I envisioned it in my head in the first place.

All that being said, the previous fic is not being deleted. I may cringe at it, but I know how frustrating it can be to lose a fic you love. So nothing is changing there, I'm just going to be reposting a new story, and also crossposting it on AO3, since that's my main platform now. It's under the same name, though.

I'm going to mostly be following Dani's perspective, but I'll switch to others occasionally. That's the joy of third person.

I'm also going to try an upload schedule of once every week/two weeks on Wednesdays. I'm getting my doctorate, but I should have enough free time to get out a chapter every week or so. It's really a matter of if I get sick of writing (I have to write so. many. papers.)

I think that's it...? Oh, and I'm going to paste this at the end too because one thing I noticed when reading my own fics is that I hate when the actual story text goes all the way down to the bottom. I like to read in the middle of my screen, y'know? Anyway. Without further ado.

~Starr

Well, I'm off to a fantastic start, Dani thinks to herself, drumming her fingers on the bench below her. Her nails are getting pretty long, and a couple are chipped or jagged, making the quiet taps of nail-on-metal uneven. Prison in the first hour of entering city limits. Record? Well, probably not in this city.

There's a clang beside her, but Dani doesn't bother glancing at it. She's alone in the cell, sitting just out of reach of the neighboring cell's occupants. Her knee kinda aches, and she absently scratches at it, only succeeding in opening the scab.

It's probably for the best; the blood will disguise the rapidly healing scrape. No need to mark herself as a meta in this city. As much fun as getting kidnapped sounds, it's not. Really.

Dani watches another cop enter from what she guesses is the locker room, uniform sharp and his hair nicely styled. He's young, attractive, and very smiley. The other workers seem to unconsciously part for him as he saunters by. Behind his back, men glare or roll their eyes, while the sparse few women eye his retreating figure.

The newcomer's eyes flit over the whole room, sliding over most things but pausing on others. The criminals in the open-air prison cells catch his interest the most.

His eyes are a remarkable shade of blue. With that tanned skin – a creamy light caramel – and dark hair, the blue is almost out of place. Brighter, somehow.

Oh, he's looking at her.

Dani flashes him an impatient look and half a wry smile before letting her gaze wander, idly kicking her feet to emphasize her boredom. Maybe she should vanish, even if it would put a weird target on her back. The cops knew what she looked like, but the footage should all be corrupt, so they likely won't be able to get a good print of her out.

"What's with the girl?"

The conversations had previously flowed over Dani's head, but when she hears herself referenced, she focuses more clearly. It's the attractive cop, leaning over the desk of one of the only men in this precinct that didn't make Dani's skin crawl.

"She's someone Walton and I picked up when responding to a 10-50 at the corner of 30 and 12. We weren't sure if she saw something. She said she didn't, but she was the caller and couldn't produce any ID or a full name, so we brought her in."

10-50? Dani wonders what the code means. She hadn't been in America long, so she hadn't looked into any police codes. They'd be cool to learn, though. Like a secret code. Like morse code. She should learn morse code, why hadn't she already?

"- she still here?" The pretty-boy cop asks, probably in response to whatever the other cop said. Dani returns her fleeting attention to the conversation again, tuning out the rest of the white noise.

"We contacted social, but you know how they are. They could be a while."

UGH. Dani hates dealing with the parent police. She glares at the concrete floor, regretting her entire existence. Well, at least she can slip a social worker easier than a cop, if not as quickly.

"Don't, Grayson."

"Don't what?" His name is Grayson, then? That doesn't clue her into what his heritage is. Maybe if she hears the other part?

"Don't let her out. Kids like her are always flight risks. You know that."

Ooh, is he contemplating letting her out? Not-as-pretty-boy cop has a brain, but if Dani is transferred to this Grayson guy, she might be able to puppy-dog-eye her way out of this whole thing.

A sigh. "Yeah." The sound of rustling papers.

"Grayson…"

"Go home, Roland, your shift is over," comes the pretty reply. Dani wonders if that's an accent she detects, or if the words are just carrying a hint of the teasing tone. "I'll finish the paperwork for you tonight."

"You weren't there," the other cop grumbles. "But you already know that, just like you already know I finished that paperwork. Whatever, it's too early for this." Dani hears the sound of fabric, a zipper, and the rustle of keys as they're put in a pocket. "You know, Grayson, if I didn't know you so well, I wouldn't let you within twenty feet of that kid."

Dani stares harder at the floor, trying to keep her eyes from slipping up to look at the two cops. She doesn't want to make it obvious she's eavesdropping, even if it would be impossible to make out the conversation if she was just any old regular girl.

"Oh, you. I would never do anything untoward." He's being dramatic, but Dani can sense the truth behind those words.

"I hate you, Grayson. I hope you're put on meter duty today."

There's no verbal response, just the shifting of paper. Dani stares harder at the cracks. She wants to look up so bad.

SLAM.

Dani flinches so hard that she almost falls off her bench. A high-pitched cackling follows the noise, and Dani turns to glare at the highly-intoxicated man to her right that had slammed his whole body against the bars.

Man, that hurt. Dani rubs at her ears, trying to zone out of the noise and let it wash back into an ever-present buzzing. She was too focused on listening, and that just made the loud noise all the more obnoxious.

Now her attention is too far from her hearing, because she doesn't notice that pretty-cop had approached her cell until she heard the distinct sound of a key disengaging the lock. Dani glances up, cautious, ignoring the swipe of the man to her right as he tries to further get under her skin by trying to reach her. Pretty-cop opens the door – the hinges making the most grating screech as he does – and holds out his arm in an inviting manner.

Dani gives him her best deadpan glare.

He breaks first, the weak noodle. "I'm just going to ask some more questions. Even if you don't feel like answering, we can see about getting you released."

With a long-suffering sigh, Dani gets to her feet. She makes sure to give him a long, hard look, raking over his stance and face. After pretending to contemplate, Dani makes her way out of the cell and stands to the side as Grayson shuts the door behind her. She tries to edge into his blindspot, just to see if she can, but he fluidly moves with her, keeping her in his peripherals.

Hm. This might be a bit more difficult than first anticipated.

He leads the way to the interrogation rooms, never letting her slip out of his sight, keeping up that disarmingly friendly smile. When he goes to unlock the door, though, Dani decides to try a slip and ducks behind him in a dead sprint.

She gets about two steps before a hand shoots out in a blur to scruff her by the back of her hoodie like some unruly kitten. Listen, she's not that light, gravity is just a little more lenient to her than others. Dani kicks out, but the cop is quick to set her down and gently push her into the badly-lit room.

Dani accepts her fate. She pulls out a chair and sits, shooting him a disgruntled glare.

"Sorry I grabbed you like that," Grayson apologizes earnestly, his eyes big and gentle.

"No problem," she sighs, propping her elbow on the table so she can rest her head in her palm. "It was worth a shot."

Pretty-cop raises an eyebrow. Just one, actually, which is pretty impressive. Danny can do that too, but Dani never figured out how to do it herself. She spares herself the indignity of trying it out right at that moment.

"Would you like a drink?"

"Scotch on the rocks with a twist," Dani responds immediately. Pretty-cop levels her with an unimpressed look. "Fine. Water, neat, without a twist." She catches the quirk of his lip as he exits the room, presumably to grab her some water. What did "with a twist" mean, again? Added alcohol, or like, juice?

It's not like Dani drinks. If she even ended up with liquor in her possession, she's sure Danny would rip his way through the fabric between dimensions and slap it right out of her hand. The mental image brings her some amusement, and she distracts herself for a moment wondering if she should try a sip of wine and see if she'd be caught.

The door is unlocked, and Dani focuses again as pretty-cop enters with a plastic cup of water. She stops swinging her legs from where they'd been idly kicking and accepts the water. It takes her less than three gulps to empty it; she hadn't realized how thirsty she was. She places it upside down on the table in front of her, just because.

He's still watching me.

"What? Do you want a thank you? Because water's free, and a plastic cup's like… four cents."

He valiantly wrestles with the responding amused smile. He sets down his stack of papers and sits across from her. "I'm Officer Grayson. It's nice to meet you."

Yeah, it is. Dani is a delight.

"This is the part where you introduce yourself."

Dani just smiles serenely. The silence stretches. Her smile doesn't drop. In fact, her mind has already wandered to possibly seeing Jurassic Park later.

"We'll come back to that, then." He sounds about ten years older. "What happened with the accident?"

"Some dude got hit by a car. Mans was just walkin' along, and bam." Dani slapped her hands at an angle like the motion of a passing car. "He was roadkill." She was repressing the memory, a little bit. It was pretty gruesome, to be honest.

"Was he dead when you called 911?"

"Almost," she replies, thinking back to the rattling breaths from blood-filled lungs. "He was choking on his own blood." She was allowed to go to the restroom and wash her bloody hands, but she can still see red under her fingernails. "Couldn't have made it to the hospital."

"He didn't," the officer confirms. Dani already knew that, but she still grimaces and feels a sense of failure. "Can you provide me any details about the car?"

Dani feels more snappish now, so she answers, "It was wet. Because it was drizzling. It was black, because it was night. It had wheels, because it was a car. It was outside, because we were outside."

Grayson responds with a grin, "It was outside for a while, if you noticed it was wet when it had only been lightly raining. Dark, meaning they had their headlights off, making it very possible that this was deliberate. And thank you, we will take a look at the tire tracks."

She gives him a mildly impressed look.

"Did you happen to know the victim?"

"Nah."

"So what were you doing on that street at two in the morning?"

"I just got in town like an hour earlier. I hadn't even figured out where I was yet."

"Is there a reason you arrived in the middle of the night?"

"Yeah, it's the time when I finished traveling."

"Why are you in Bludhaven?"

"It was on my list."

"What list?"

"My list of cities."

The officer huffs, though Dani senses it is more amusement than frustration. She's amused, at least.

"Alright, let's go back to your name."

"No."

"Do you have a last name with that?"

"No Way," she replies with a smirk.

"Unique," is the dry response. "Is that a family name?"

"It's Irish," she quips.

He lets out a long sigh. "Can you at least tell me why you won't tell me your name?"

"Because then you'll have it," Dani says.

"Now you're just being difficult."

"You're just realizing this now?"

"Is it because you don't want a name attached to the fingerprints we took?" He looks up from where he was likely confirming that tidbit of information on his files. Dani shrugs, essentially confirming it. "Why not give an alias?" Dani picks at her nails. She should really wash them more thoroughly. Maybe clip them. "Are you hiding from something?"

He sounds so sincere. Dani is getting irritated. "When can I go?"

The sincere look fades into something more sheepish and uncomfortable. "Well, you're a minor, with no identification…"

Although she already knew where this was going, Dani still dejectedly asks, "You called the parent police?"

Pretty-cop tilts his head in affirmation. "Unless you have parents we can call…?"

Dani sighs. "Nope." She's beyond frustrated, now, and she just wants to go exploring. "Can't you just let me go?" she blurts. "It's not like I committed a crime or anything! I'll just leave whatever foster home you put me in anyway!"

He raises an eyebrow. "Ignoring that comment, you're the only witness. How are we supposed to reach you if we don't have any of your information? Besides, it's not like we can just let a twelve-year-old wander around in what is literally one of the most dangerous cities in the world."

Dani chose this city specifically for its crime. Well, for its vigilante. Same dif. But nooo, she had to suffer the good side of the law. She'd honestly prefer thugs. "I'm thirteen, thanks," she chooses to correct. She's physically thirteen, anyway. "Practically an adult."

"Wait until you actually are an adult, and you'll finally understand why we all call you literal babies." Dani rolls her eyes. "I can take a more personal interest in your case, if you'd like, set you up with a good foster? My father has connections."

"No thanks, I like the streets."

"Really? Why?"

Dani shrugs. That question has a very complex and ambiguous answer. She's not even sure if it's true. She likes the freedom to move, loves the independence of being on her own, and lives for the adventure of exploration. Does she like the streets, though? They're a means to an end. "I know my options. Fosters, group homes, orphanages, if those are even still a thing here. I even have people who would take me in if I wanted. I chose this, though. There's nothing wrong with it." Yeah, she had places she could go. To Danny, obviously, or even one of his friends. She even had a room in Phantom's Keep, full of her treasures and primed for her return. But even though she's not entirely sure what she wants, she knows she certainly doesn't want either of those options long-term.

Pretty-cop regards her with mischief in his eye. "Loitering."

Dani barks out a laugh. "Seriously? Blüdhaven, and every other city in the world, for that matter, have way worse to worry about than loitering!"

"I mean, it's still a crime."

"Then trespass me," she retorts.

He looks ready to shoot back an answer but is interrupted by a sharp knock on the door. With a sheepish grin, he heads out the door and closes it behind him. Dani focuses on the sound of them talking outside.

"Yeah, Sarge?"

"Come on, Grayson, I need you to head out to the upper west side. We've got some reports about a possible drug deal."

"Ah-"

"Don't worry about the kid, Ms. Reyes is here to take her to a group until they have a more permanent placement for her."

"I have a lead on this case, though, if-"

"No, Grayson. You're a police officer, not a detective. I need you suited up and out in ten minutes. Take Johnson with you."

There's a brief pause. "Yes, sir." Dani watches him look back at her with regret, and she smiles and waves goodbye. He lifts his hand in departure with a grimace, then stalks off to do as his Sergeant says with decidedly less pep than before.

The door opens again and allows a very plump, sweaty woman through with a manilla folder in her hand and an irritated glint in her eye. Dani lets her expression fall into a scowl. Something tells her this woman will be significantly less fun to deal with than pretty-cop.

"Let's get going," the lady – Ms. Reyes, presumably – snaps. "It's already getting hot and my car has crap air conditioning."

Dani follows, but only because she knows it'll be a piece of cake to slip out of her care later. She's already walking in her blindspot, though she wouldn't make a run for it in a room full of cops.

She catches the eye of pretty-cop and smirks. By his critical look, she knows he can tell exactly what she's thinking.

He doesn't call her out on it, just rolls his eyes and grabs his squad keys.

Dani decides she likes this guy.

I'm going to mostly be following Dani's perspective, but I'll switch to others occasionally. That's the joy of third person.

~Starr