REVERSE TROPE WRITING PROMPT BY @out-of-jams
ACCIDENTALLY KIDNAPPING A MAFIA BOSS
In Tucker's defense, he thought he was doing someone a favor. A life saving favor, in fact.
"What the fuck-!” The red helmeted guy yelped as a deceptively strong Tucker yanked him onto the bike and sped away. Before Tucker could explain, the GIW agents behind them got in a lucky shot and hit the helmeted liminal with a strong blast to the head.
Clearly, his gear wasn’t equipped with anti-ecto protections, because the guy slumped over on Tucker’s arms. This was bad, because Tucker now had to maneuver about 230 pounds of Gotham muscle while speeding away from government agents. He flicked on the jammer so they couldn’t track his and red helmets’s ecto signature.
“STOP!”
“Ah, shit.” Tucker cursed as he somehow managed to gather up red-helmet’s body and stabilize the bike. “C’mon, Tuck, you can do this.”
Blasts of anti-ecto tech slammed into buildings around him. Luckily, Gotham was used to this kind of shit so people just moved out of the way before going back to their day. Tucker wove around traffic, trying to lure the agents into slamming face first into some signposts.
“Stop damaging the local infrastructure!” Tucker yelled back at them, speeding up.
“WELL REIMBURSE THE PEOPLE AND THE CITY LATER! TELL US WHERE PHANTOM IS!!”
“Over my dead body, you jerks!” Tucker took a sharp right, catching red helmet before the man could slip off. He sped up and took the ramp downwards, heart beating loudly in his ears as he strained his senses to figure out- ah, they took the ramp upwards. Good. Now, all he has to do is bring red helmet back to home base.
“Oh my god. I kidnapped him,” Tucker groaned, slapping at his face before quickly placing his hands back on the handle bar once the bike teetered over with red helmet’s weight. “I’m a criminal. Oh my god.”
Then, as he found his way back, “…Well, it’s not like I wasn’t a criminal before, with the whole resisting arrest thing.”
——
Tucker dumped the red helmet liminal onto the couch of their shared apartment and went to take a shower. When he got out ten minutes later, he found Danny and Sam staring at the helmet guy. Tucker pushed up his glasses (after letting them defog from the shower) and greeted them.
“Hey, guys! I found him while I was running away from Agent L and J.”
“You okay?” Danny asked, eyes immediately flicking over Tucker for injuries.
“Yeah, I’m good. They’re horrible shots.”
“I thought Danny was the one who brought home strays but you…?” Sam commented, arms crossed and a purple painted nail tapping at her arm. “Wait. Isn’t this… that crime lord? What was his name?”
“Red Hood?” Danny offered, turning back to look at the guy on their couch.
Tucker paled. “Oh, no.”
Guns? Check.
Red Helmet? Check.
Bat-Symbol? Check.
Shit.
They collectively stared at the guy in silence.
“…Tucker,” Sam slowly said. “Did you accidentally kidnap a crime lord?”
“Hey, I didn’t want him to get killed! He’s liminal! Even more than us, except for Danny.” Tucker grumbled. “Man, this is why I leave the hero-ing to Danny. I do one good thing and suddenly I have a crime lord on my couch.”
“My couch,” Sam corrected, as she was the one that furnished their apartment.
“What do we do now?”
“Eat dinner,” Tucker said. “I’m famished.”
Sam nodded. “Wait for him to wake up and hope he doesn’t shoot us the moment he wakes up. Then, we explain.”
Danny grabbed all the visible guns he could see. Tucker went to start dinner. Sam supervised, because her boys were idiots and now she had a crime lord in her apartment.
——
Jason groaned, head swimming in a sea of dull throbbing pain as his eyes fluttered open.
Then he remembered he was abducted, and bolted up right. He paused as a series of quick observations made its way to his consciousness.
One. He’s not tied up. Weird, because everyone knows that he’s a weapon even without his weapons.
Two. His weapons were right there, just in reach.
Three. He was surrounded by teenagers and/or young adults who were all scrolling along on their phones.
“Oh, hey, he’s awake! Hi!” The Wayne bait said, electric blue eyes fixing itself on Jason. “Were you aware you died?”
Jason went rigid, hundreds of way to-
“Danny!” A scolding tone cut of Jason’s immediate panic. Two couch pillows slammed into Danny’s face, courtesy of goth girl and nerdy but strong.
“Dude, why do you start with that? Why are you like this?” His… possible kidnapper? asked, exasperatedly flinging his hands into the air as he rolled his eyes.
Goth girl scowled. “Boys. Crime lord, couch, remember?”
“Hey, in my defense, I died too!”
And that- as Jason remained dumbfounded in this circle of tomfoolery- was what snapped Jason out of his daze.
“You what?” He rasped out.
And when he saw them open their mouths at the same time, Jason just knew his headache was going worse.
——
Tucker, effortlessly plucking the actual red hood from the streets: and I whoop-
Jason, whose type is strong, nerdy, and tall: *heart eyes* *but not really because he’s unconscious*
——
Sam: “this is my boyfriend Danny and our other boyfriend Tucker.”
Jason enters chat:
Sam: “this is my boyfriend Danny and our other boyfriend Tucker and his boyfriend, the Red Hood.”
——
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(DCxDP) Drowning in formaldehyde (Pt. 2)
—
Tw: canon-typical violence (Batman), emetophobia at one point
Will be crossposted to AO3 eventually
(Pt. 1)
(Masterlist/subscription post)
—
Danny sat in the back of one of the transport trucks currently on the way to Arkham, his hands in his lap.
So far, everything was going to plan.
About a quarter of the team had gotten themselves admitted into Arkham in the days leading up to the raid, carefully sneaking in supplies and weapons for both themselves and the rogues they were going to free.
Half of the team was on trucks, ready to storm the building with their fancy new tech. A couple others were keeping an eye out for the Bats, and the last one was holed up in a recently condemned building, ecto-modified sniper rifle in hand, ready to fire.
Danny’s hands were cold.
He hadn’t always run cold, from what he remembered. Even after he died—hell, even after he started developing his ice powers—he had always been warm.
Now, though, his body was freezing.
Maybe it was because of the ecto siphoning he and Derringer had done the day before.
He couldn’t make the ecto guns work without fueling them, after all, and the only ectoplasm he had access to was the stuff inside his body. So, he had Derringer hook him up to a GiW machine and filter the ecto out of his blood.
The process was excruciating.
Not only did he get light-headed from the loss of fluids, the machine also chilled his blood considerably during the filtering process, and when it was pumped back into his body, it was freezing. Derringer had to cover him with heating pads and thick blankets to get him to stop shaking.
Still, that had been a little over eighteen hours ago, so that probably wasn’t it.
Maybe it was just another side affect of his time with the GiW.
Overuse of his ghostly wail, he had realized earlier, was the reason that he had lost his voice permanently. Maybe he had accidentally used his ice too many times the same way, and now his body was irrevocably changed. Maybe warmth was just another tiny privilege he had taken for granted, that had now been lost forever.
Danny stared down at his hands.
Maybe his body had just given up entirely on keeping him warm, on pretending to be human.
“Kid, you alright? We’re almost there.”
Derringer’s voice snapped Danny out of his thoughts.
“Yeah,” Danny signed, “just tired. And cold.”
“We’ve got to get you a jacket, kid,” Derringer said, “it’s not even winter and I already have to worry about you freezing to death.”
“I died a long time ago, it’s fine.”
“No,” one of the other men in the truck drawled, “it means you’ve got to be extra careful. You’ve got a second chance at living, so you better not screw it up.”
“What did he say?”
“Danny thinks that because he’s died before, he doesn’t need to worry about freezing to death.”
The truck went quiet for a few moments. Most of the guys in there didn’t know he had died before. He didn’t exactly like to advertise the fact.
“I have a cousin who had a heart attack, and it only made his heart worse,” one of the guys near the front of the truck offered.
“See, kid?” Derringer said, “I’m right. As soon as this is over, you’re getting a jacket.”
Danny crossed his arms, slumping over in his seat with a huff.
A few moments later, a loud clang echoed through the truck. Danny jolted, almost falling out of his seat.
The door opened, the driver looking at them with boredom written all over his face.
“Alright, up and at em. It’s go time,” he mumbled, smacking the door loudly for emphasis. “The sooner we’re done, the sooner we can leave.”
They all stood, hopping out of the truck and making their way to the fence line.
Danny moved his hand to the bandolier on his chest, fingers brushing against the small ecto-bombs he had attached to it.
There were five of them, their bodies made of tempered glass and black steel, and they glowed a sickly green in the night. They were designed mainly for combat; he had a few larger ones meant to blow a hole in a wall in his backpack, which was securely zipped shut.
His hand then drifted to the holster on his left side, and the ecto-gun nestled securely within it.
Most of his parents’ inventions were far too big and bulky to be practical in any real combat setting, so he had downsized them considerably. The weapon he had was modeled after a standard glock pistol, matte black paint covering the GiW white of the gun’s body.
The gun should be able to fire around fifty shots a minute without overheating, which was more than enough for Danny. Hopefully, he wouldn’t have to fire a single round tonight. However, for whatever reason, the words should and hopefully didn’t inspire much confidence in him.
Danny followed the group as they snuck up to the facility, Derringer by his side.
Originally, neither of them were going to go on the raid, but someone on the patient list had caught Danny’s eye, so he decided he would investigate in person. Derringer was just along for the ride because Mr. Cobblepot wasn’t willing to lose an asset as valuable as Danny.
Danny would make it up to the bodyguard later, he decided.
Entering Arkham was, all things considered, pretty easy. Mr. Cobblepot had connections to a few of the orderlies, and it was all too easy to convince them to “forget” a few steps in setting up the security system for the night.
However, since nothing can ever just be simple, they ran into an unexpected patrol of nightshift guards just a few minutes after all splitting up to find the rogues.
Danny and Derringer were able to take them down pretty quickly, but not before they sounded the alarms. And, according to a few guys on the comms, they weren’t the only ones to run into guards where they shouldn’t be.
“They must have changed their patrols,” Derringer huffed, spinning the pistol in his hands, “c’mon, let’s go see about freeing our good friend Victor Fries.”
Danny nodded, scampering after the man as he sprinted through the halls.
The inmates, who had woken up from the loud alarm’s continuous blaring, shouted at them from their cells. Danny’s pulse was loud in his ears, drowning everything out.
Distantly, he wondered if those guards were going to die. Maybe they were dead already.
He supposed that it didn’t really change much if they were.
Soon, they were at the cell. It was custom-built to hold Mr. Freeze, constantly kept at subzero temperatures to avoid killing him.
Derringer hefted his bag off of his back, pulling out the suit and freeze gun that Mr. Cobblepot had procured. As he did so, Danny took a few of the larger ecto-bombs and placed them on the joints of the door.
They carefully moved away, putting some distance between themselves and the door, and Danny detonated it.
The explosion was loud. It shook the entire building, the shockwave knocking Danny to the floor.
Danny brought his hand up to his safety goggles, yanking a small piece of metal shrapnel out of them and dropping it on the floor. He was dimly aware of more pieces sticking out of his kevlar suit. Derringer was similarly peppered with metal, luckily uninjured as well.
They had come from the body and mechanism of the bomb, he realized. He’d have to fix that later.
Mr. Freeze emerged from the cell a few moments later, a scowl on his face. Derringer quickly shoved the suit and freeze gun into his hands and he retreated back into the cell for a few moments, getting dressed.
“I could have died from that, you know,” he hissed. “Killed by some amateurs with shoddy explosives.”
“The Penguin sent us,” Derringer said, ignoring the man’s clear annoyance, “our getaway car is outside. If you’d come with us…”
Mr. Freeze nodded sternly.
“Hurry up, then.”
Derringer and Danny hurried out, Mr. Freeze right behind them. Then, at a certain hallway, Danny paused.
He had to check.
“Kid,” Derringer barked, “we have to go.”
Danny shook his head.
“You go,” he signed, hands trembling, “I have to check.”
“Oh, what’s the problem now?” Mr. Freeze asked, his frown more pronounced by the minute.
“Danny…” Derringer sighed, “Danny thinks his sister might be in here. He hasn’t seen her in years. It’s the whole reason he was a part of the Arkham raid, actually.”
Mr. Freeze paused for a moment.
“Well, lead the way, then,” he said, clearly regretting his words as soon as he said them. Danny just nodded, scurrying forward, the other two men close behind him.
They came to the right cell quickly. Danny looked in through the glass, and he felt a piece of himself shatter.
That was Jazz, his sister, sitting in a padded wall wearing a straightjacket and a muzzle.
She didn’t bother looking up at them as they arrived, not stirring even when Danny slammed his hands on the door to get her attention.
Shakily, he attached an ecto-bomb to the door, hoping with all his might that she wouldn’t get hurt.
The door blew open, and Danny rushed in.
Jazz’s head swiveled to look up at him, her eyes narrowed.
He slipped the goggles up and his bandanna down, exposing his face as he came to kneel beside her.
Slowly, her expression shifted to shock.
“Jazz,” he creaked, his broken vocal chords cracking painfully as he spoke, “it’s me.”
She looked at him like a deer caught in the headlights.
“Danny?”
He nodded, pulling her into a hug, careful not to let the shrapnel dig into her skin.
“I thought you were…”
“Very heartwarming,” Mr. Freeze snapped, “but now isn’t the time. We’ve got to go, now.”
Jazz nodded, leaping to her feet. Danny stood as well, slipping his mask and bandanna back on, and grabbing onto one of her arms for support.
They left the cell, Danny doing a double-take as he saw the frozen-over pathway that they had just come from. He looked to Mr. Freeze, tilting his head questioningly.
“There were guards,” he said flatly. “Now hurry up, we need to get out of here.”
Derringer grabbed the two of them, dragging them along as he sprinted through the hallways. They had to take a bit of a detour, coming out of the main entrance instead of the side one they had entered.
Unfortunately, there was an active gunfight going down.
Danny was roughly pulled behind a desk, just barely dodging a few rounds.
His hands shook as he pulled a small ecto-bomb from his bandolier, priming it and throwing it at a small grouping of night guards. They cried out as the pure ectoplasm collided with them, covering their bodies in burns.
The smell, while familiar to Danny, was still horrific.
They took a few shots off at the night guards, trying to take them down. Their group was efficient, but with the rate they were going at, it wasn’t going to be enough. Only adding to that, the gun Mr. Cobblepot had prepared for Mr. Freeze had broken after just a few uses, leaving them unable to create an ice wall.
Then, Danny heard the sound of a gun’s safety being turned off behind them, and his vision went white.
He grabbed onto Jazz and Derringer, making them intangible right as the night guard opened fire.
Waves of nausea hit him all at once and he doubled over, his vision swimming. Danny was only dimly aware of Jazz taking the guard down with a high kick right to the head, and Derringer pulling him into a protective hold.
Ignoring everything, he pulled the last of the large bombs from his bag, throwing it into the air, pulling everyone behind the desk.
The entire room went white.
Danny’s ears rung as he scrambled out from behind the reception desk, dragging Jazz with him.
Luckily, none of the hired hands on his team had gotten injured, but the guards…
Danny looked away, trying to ignore the taste of bile in his mouth.
It was fine. He was fine. Everything would be okay.
The next few minutes were a blur. He knew that he had puked only a few seconds after they had left the building, and that Derringer had picked him up afterwards, carrying him to the truck with Mr. Freeze and Jazz in tow.
Danny’s entire body was wracked with tremors, an unbearable phantom pain passing through the still-healing surgical wounds in his head and torso like lightning. He dry-heaved, shivering uncontrollably.
They drove off soon after. Luckily, no one had been left behind. Someone, probably Derringer, helped Danny rinse out his mouth and got him a bottle of water to drink, wrapping him in his jacket.
As soon as the truck doors were opened within one of Mr. Cobblepot’s safehouses, Danny became aware of the sound of wailing.
Hopping out of the truck, most of his mind still far away, he saw a man being rolled out of the room on a stretcher. He was one of the people who had been on the other truck, Danny realized.
Beside him was a teenager, probably only a few years younger than Danny, who was screaming and crying uncontrollably. They wailed at Mr. Cobblepot, who only stood there with an uncomfortable expression on his face.
“Oh shit,” Derringer breathed. Danny pulled on his sleeve, tilting his head at him questioningly.
“The guy on the stretcher, that’s his sibling.”
Danny just stared, a hollow feeling deep in his chest.
Jazz, her arms now freed from the straightjacket, pulled him away from the scene. Danny let her.
—
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