DP x DC AU: Danny desperately wants to find the explosion guy. Tim is really good at covering his tracks... he didn't account for ghosts.
The explosions make it onto TV as purported terror activity and most people haven't heard of that part of the world much less ever given a second thought to care about it. The only real reason it gets reported on has something to do with the Justice League and... Danny knows too much.
He's been in training for Clockwork's court (which he's suspicious of- feels like kingly duty bullshit- but Danny is playing along out of curiosity for now) and he's learned a lot about how the living and non-living worlds collide. That means learning about CW's usual suspects- one of which just happened to have a ton of bases around the area Danny was seeing on the news.
It didn't take long for Danny to try to piece together that whoever blew up Nanda Parbat was trying to fuck with the League of Shadows, and was doing it successfully. Less green portals in the world the better, same goes for assassins. But it gets Danny thinking... Maybe he can employ similar tactics on the GIW Bases that keep spawning on the edges of Amity Park. It would at least set them back while he and his friends navigated the help line desk to request Justice League intervention. None of them can leave Amity Park, so outreach is going to have to be creative.
So Danny figures he'll just find the guy. Call up some ghosts who were there, or er, came from there and get a profile and track him down. But the ghosts keep saying it was The Detective. Annoying!
Danny goes full conspiracy theory, gets Tucker and Sam involved, and begrudgingly asks Wes Weston his thoughts.
He hadn't expected Wes to garble out a thirty minute presentation (that had 100 more slides left to go before he cut it off) about how Batman totally trained with a cult and so did his kids. Danny kind of rolled his eyes but... hey, new avenue of searching in the Infinite Realms at least.
The ghosts confirm that Bombs is for sure not Batman's MO- But maybe his second kid would know? The second kid was already brought back to life though, so no way to easily reach him... Danny starts to realize that this might be the work of a Robin now. Wasn't the red one known for solving cold cases? (Sam provides this information- its a social faux pas to not know hero gossip at Gotham Galas- everything she's learned is against her will).
It all comes to a head when Danny goes about the hard task of opening a portal for the guy to come through at just the right time, explain the infinite realms so he doesn't panic and then describe what the fuck was going on with the GIW. It takes months, just over a full year, of random (educated guesses) portal generating- Finally, Red Robin drops into the land of the dead.
"So, you're the guy I've got to talk to about explosions right?" Danny enthusiastically asks.
Tim thinks he's died and landed in the after life following 56 hours of being awake and plummeting off the side of a building into a Lazarus pool. Nothing makes sense about the kid in front of him.
"Yeah, I got a guy for munitions." Tim answers cooly.
"How do you feel about secretly sanctioned government operations that violate protected rights?"
"Gotta get rid of 'em some how. Need me to point you in the right direction?" This might as well be happening.
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Imaginary Friend
Jason Todd had an imaginary friend. Or at least that was his theory, because the other option was not acceptable. His imaginary friend appeared right during the moment of the explosion (in the same place where the fucking Joker had stood) so Jason wondered if what created it was the trauma, maybe his head wished he saw a friendly face before dying.
However that didn't explain why his friend appeared after his resurrection. Jason wondered again if he was going crazy. The day he came out of his grave, with a dizzy head and blurred memories, his friend manifested. The weird thing was that his friend aged (just like him) and his shiny white hair had a floating crown.
Maybe Jason wanted to be friends with royals, who knows. His friend (Danny, because apparently he can talk), showed him where to walk (he seemed to be avoiding something?), unfortunately he didn't listen to Danny, and he ran into Talia. His friend frowned at him in obvious disgust, but how was he supposed to know?
That was how Jason confirmed that Danny was product of his imagination, because Talia couldn't see him. But Danny was strangely helpful, he knew a lot about combat and helped him in the League, when he asked him about it he said that he wanted him to get out of there as soon as possible.
Years later, when he had already left the League and established himself as Red Hood, his friend was still by his side. And Jason was strangely grateful that he'd never left—Danny had helped him so much— his friend had grown up with him. So, the day Dick asked him who he was talking to (Danny, of course), he dodged the question.
In his apartment, he looked at Danny (patient, always attentive) and asked "Are you really imaginary?" Danny smiled sadly, but didn't answer. Jason wondered if it was possible to fall in love with a product from his head.
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Clone^2 danny headcanons and/or facts that i wanted to expand on but didn't have the motivation or inspiration to write a ficlet about. Ultimately most of these are ideas that already exist in canon clone^2 but are only now being expanded on/explored/stated specifically.
Because I'm procrasinating cfau and passively thinking about clone danny and damian again.
1 - As he's liminal, Danny generates his own ectoplasm. He generates it at a slower rate than the casual ghost but faster than the average liminal. It's what gives him an ecto-signature and results in him triggering his parents' weapons and ecto-sensors.
The ectoplasm he generates actually has a use, and he tends to burn through his supply while he's fighting because of all the physical energy he spends + the use of his scary eyes requires (albeit really minor amounts of) ectoplasm to use. It also has health benefits, as using his ectoplasm keeps his heartbeat steady and lessens the risk of his arrhythmia flaring up due to all of his physical activity and adrenaline.
It does happen occasionally that he uses up more ectoplasm than he can replace, and this has the expected negative effects on his health as all that adrenaline and stress catches up to his heart without a buffer to mitigate it. He carries a canteen full of diluted ectoplasm with him in order to give his system the boost it needs in order to stabilize itself, which he can usually tell when he needs due to excessive fatigue/chest pains/dizziness/other arrhythmia symptoms he gets that means he's low on ectoplasm.
2 - Danny's arrhythmia is a form of bradycardia (which is a slower heartbeat) -- what type? Unspecified / Unknown thanks to it being ectoplasmic in nature.
3 - In that same breath, Danny also has to burn that ectoplasm off in some form or another because if he doesn't it builds up and causes him the same issues as if he was too low. It also causes him to become more emotionally volatile, restless, irritable, overstimulated, etc, which the stress of that then makes his heart condition worsen. If too much ectoplasm builds up, it'll cause a physical electrical shock/shortage. This is rare however, and usually is the equivalent of giving someone a painful static shock. At best it makes the lights flicker or technology fritz out for a few seconds.
While it doesn't have much effect on the physical world, it does expend a good chunk of ectoplasm. Think like dumping out a heavy bucket of water that you've been carrying for a while, or getting into a hot shower after being outside in the cold for hours. It's emotionally draining but very relieving.
4 - Danny can replenish ectoplasm or generate ectoplasm faster by resting, eating, consuming other ectoplasm (fastest), fulfilling his interests / doing things that makes him happy, or by being exposed to high amounts of ectoplasm in the area. He can also rapidly generate it by being in a volatile emotional state, but that drains ectoplasm almost as quickly, and runs the risk of causing flare ups in his arrhythmia.
5 - this is actually canon to the au but I figured it wouldn't hurt to expand more on it / clarify / confirm, but Danny post-Damian has chronic pain in his hands from the nerve damage he sustained. He has daily physical therapy exercises he's supposed to do that he does in the mornings/evenings and whenever his hands hurt/feel stiff. He wears compression gloves in his day-to-day life and gets Sam and Tucker's help to brainstorm ideas about how to make compression gloves for Phantom that can include his knuckledusters. His grip and hand strength is weakened.
He has bad hand days where his hands hurt more than usual. This can happen at random, but is more common after he's overused/strained his hands either the day before or earlier in the day. His fingers stiffen up for similar reasons, and he gets tremors. It's happened before where (for example) he's braiding his hair and unbraiding it, only to need someone else to finish the braid because his fingers stiffened up and don't want to work like he wants them to.
Massages, heat, pressure, etc. helps soothe the pain, and since Danny's a fidgety person his friends and family can usually tell when he has a flare up because any hand movements he was doing prior ceased/slowed suddenly, or he starts massaging his hands / stretching out his fingers.
Damian very stubbornly insists on massaging his hands for him when this happens, he has a lot of intense guilt for being the reason for Danny's chronic pain so he wants to alleviate it in anyway he can.
6 - Danny has what I like to call "Bruce-isms", a word I came up with just now that means he has Bruce Wayne mannerisms that come from the fact that he's still Bruce's clone. A Nature vs. Nurture thing. His Bruce-isms include the Bruce Grunts Of Ambiguous Tonal Meaning ("hm", "hrm", "hn"), his workaholism, his paranoia (on a milder scale), etc. They're small, relatively non-defining things that are quirks but don't make up his personality.
He's got what Sam and Tucker like to call "Bruce Wayne Moments" which are essentially Bruce-isms but only ones that Danny and his friends are aware of considering they only know Bruce as Brucie Wayne and not Batman. "Bruce Wayne Moments" include Danny being clumsy, doing something air-headed, being oblivious, etc. It's not a common joke among the three of them since Tucker and Sam know that Danny's still pr sensitive to the whole clone thing. So they only bring it up when he's done something stupid but hilarious.
7 - while clone^2 focuses more on Danny and Damian's relationship and Danny helping Damian develop his identity beyond just "Damian Wayne's Clone", Danny still suffers from his own identity crises. He sometimes gets jealous of Ellie and Damian for being "lucky" that they always knew they were clones, rather than finding out later in life.
He's aware that this is not fair to think and that Damian and Ellie both have their own struggles as clones, but he can't help it sometimes.
He tries not to think about it too much, but when things get too quiet or when he's not busy, Danny can't help but wonder how much of himself is things he's learned on his own and come from him, and how much of it comes from being Bruce Wayne's clone. He has to stop and count how many things are unique about him specifically when he starts to emotionally spiral. It's not rational, but it's not supposed to be.
As a result Danny kinda, hm, clings to his identity as the Phantom, just a little bit? He thinks it's one of the few things that he has autonomous control over as "Danny Fenton", rather than it being a result of him being Bruce Wayne's clone. Because Bruce Wayne isn't a vigilante! Right? Right?
Consequently this becomes one of the reasons that Damian keeps mum about Bruce Wayne's identity. The original reasons were because Danny asked not to know much about the LoA beyond what Damian already told him, and Batman was technically "apart" of the LoA, and secondly because he just didn't want Danny to get involved with Batman and co and Danny knowing about Bruce Wayne's identity could potentially cause that.
But as time goes on Damian kinda notices like, just how being a clone is affecting Danny even if he hides it from Damian pretty well. He can't really comprehend what it was like for Danny to grow up thinking he was normal like everyone else only to find out he was a clone, but he does see the hurt it's causing his brother. And he does notice that Danny was holding onto being Phantom quite a bit, and figured that if he found out Bruce Wayne was also a vigilante, it would hurt him beyond belief.
8 - So Danny's creation has been kept relatively,,, mmm,,, vague? considering I've been struggling for a time how I could plausibly have his creation happen without Bruce finding out about it immediately. And my conclusion is that around the time Danny was created, Bruce met up with the Fenton parents again for some reason or another -- checking out their tech under the guise of wanting to catch up with them.
And I can imagine that, due to being close friends in college, the Fentons literally just outright told him, "Hey we wanna 'nother kid but don't want to go through the risk of pregnancy again, so we're gonna make a clone of one of us instead"
and in true Bruce fashion, he mentally went "wow i should learn Everything And Anything About This Thing Specifically. Just In Case." and outwardly went "woah cool! ahaha how does it work"
and since the Fentons consider Bruce a close friend and are also incapable of Not Talking About Science, turned and went "OH WE CAN SHOW YOU" and showed Bruce their entire cloning process up to and including how they (safely) extracted the DNA they were gonna use. of which they already had. they were gonna just extract Jack's DNA a second time as an example, but it was Bruce who said "hey you should try me instead" in order to gauge how exactly safe this was and if there were any symptoms he would need to recognize in cloning.
so with his consent they did, and then showed him how they were going to use the DNA to make a clone without actually going through the process. Without prompting from Bruce, the Fentons went "we're gonna throw your DNA away though since we don't want this lying around and because we have no use for it" and visibly showed him that they were disposing it.
Bruce came to the conclusion that the Fentons weren't planning anything nefarious, they just really wanted another kid, and (reluctantly) left afterwards. The mixup comes when Maddie, surprisingly, misplaces the cartridge with Jack's DNA in it and while they could have always gotten another sample, it was better and safer to just try and find the original before that.
Jack finds Bruce's in their disposable. In his excitement, he forgets that it was Bruce's DNA, and manages to get it out safely. Maddie wasn't looking when he found it, and in her excitement also forgot to ask where Jack found it. They used that cartridge instead.
When they found out they used the wrong DNA, Danny was already about year old and while Jack and Maddie are morally dubious, they're only morally dubious towards ghosts. Danny was their beloved human baby, they would never do anything to him.
That being said, they were still horrified when they found out, and really, they genuinely did consider reaching out to Bruce to tell him. They thought it was something he deserved to know since it was his DNA that got used instead, and they felt awfully guilty after he trusted them enough to let them draw DNA from him. The only reason they hadn't is because, at the time, Bruce had been really busy with something in his public life and they didn't want to bother him during such a stressful time.
So they were going to wait, and in Fenton-like fashion, forgot to tell him. When the subject came up again sometime later, they assumed they already told Bruce and went about their day.
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I'd shine up the old brown shoes, I'd put on a brand-new shirt
Rated t (pretty much just for the penis talk here hahaha) // 3,565 words
“No, I need, like-“ Eddie sighs so hard it almost sounds like static. “I need… guy help. Will you just come over?”
“Are you-” Buck turns away from Natalia and kind of hunches over the phone, making his voice quieter. “Are you having a penis problem?”
“What?” Buck’s never heard Eddie that high pitched. Loud, too, enough that Buck yanks the phone away from his ear and Natalia snorts with barely contained laughter behind him. When he brings the phone back in, Eddie is making a lot of blustery sounds, which Buck waits out until he finds words again. “Wh- No! No, I don’t have- I’m not having a ‘penis problem,’ Buck!”
Buck shrugs at the air in front of him. “Okay, Eddie, you’re the one who’s hiding in a bathroom and said you needed my ‘guy help,’ what was th-”
“Oh my god, Buck, I need relationship advice, okay!”
—
Chris is going on his first date. Eddie calls Buck for backup.
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