DP x DC prompt. ~“Unstable connection”~ Dead on main.
Part 13. Hungry Ghost Festival 2
or Unplanned Criminal Lord’s Vacation with uncle John.
Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6. Part 7.
Part 8. Part 9. New: Part 9.1. Part 9.2. Part 9.3.
Part 10. Part 11. Part 12. Meme break №1. Part 13.
~~~~
Jason looked at the phone screen and didn’t believe Danny has really decided to entrust his safety in the haunted lair to one drunk and unrequited Phantom.
He had enough. Jason jumped up and grabbed his helmet off the table.
‘Where do you think you’re going? Patrol’s coming soon.’ Tim took his eyes off the documents.
‘None of your business.’ Red Hood quickly found keys to a jet and ran for an exit. ‘Cass, while I’m gone, you’re in charge of the alley.’
~~~~
Demons, spirits, and ghosts swung around as if in a dance. And Danny, whom Jason easily spotted entering The Gambler’s Den, did not seem foreign at this festival of death. The red light gently illuminated his pale skin, which almost fused with color of his white kimono. The flowing fabric made his silhouette as blurry and elusive as most visitors.
One second without looking at the boy, and he was in the opposite corner, where the crowd were much smaller. VIP zone? Otherworldly creatures, deserving special treatment, were rarely friendly to humans. And Jason was tense about it for a moment. But after noticing waving with enthusiasm teenager, a man in white clothes rushed to respond to the gesture and a ghost with an eye patch sitting in the chair nodded to him, ringing with silver earrings.
Jason let his guard down a bit.
Another man in the black robe was not distracted by Danny. He threw the bones and glanced at them in disappointment. Then ghoul banged the table with fist. He rose, grabbed from a nearby bowl a mantou and bit. The next second his face was distorted by awareness and disgust.
He abruptly removed the triangle-shaped headband from Danny’s head and spat out a bite into it. Then ghoul fell to a floor. Well, nice carpets have softened it.
Jason shook his head, trying not to laugh at the strange situation.
At the same time, Danny boldly stepped over the fallen player and sat in a chair in front of the ghost in black and red clothes. The man began to demonstrate a technique of throwing bones, with continuous ringing after moving of his hands. Danny seemed passionate about this.
Constantine, who did not come with the Red Hood voluntarily, decides for the first time in the evening to speak out.
‘That’s weird.’ Constantine said with an intonation that spoke of his distrust of the situation.
‘What is it now?’ Jason took his eyes off the object of interest.
Fenton must be watched for his safety. Why did the warlock distract him? Jason completely distrusted Danny’s promise not to use his body parts as a bet.
‘His clothes.’ Constantine looked at the boy with discomfort. ‘Boy, are you sure your lover is alive?’
‘Don’t be rude. He looks great,’ said Jason ‘Maybe Danny wanted to dress up in a traditional costume. And it's not polite to ask people if they are alive. He’s always pale in all the photos. ’
Jason didn’t think costume selection was such a big deal.
‘No.’ Warlock shook his head ‘Kimono is Japanese national costume, not Chinese at all. And it’s on the left side which means your boyf..’
Unfamiliar to Jason spirit came up and patted Danny on the shoulder. The spirit and the boy bowed to each other.
‘I see.’ The puzzled expression on the warlock’s face is gone. ‘Your lover has interesting friends, Hood.’
‘Who is this guy? Explanation. Now.’ Jason barked irritably. Why did he always have to pull every word out of John?
‘Nurarihyon. Don’t be so nervous, he’s not dangerous to people. I just realized your boy here after a walk with Hyakki Yakko. Which explains the clothes.’ Сonstantine exhaled cigarette smoke and continued. ‘Your love doesn’t waste any time. In one evening, he met three ghost kings.’
‘Hyakki Yakko?’ Jason asked a lot calmer.
‘The night parade of one hundred demons when all of the yōkai, oni, ghosts parade through the streets.’ John shrugged his shoulders and shook the ashes off the cigarette into the nearest ashtray. It was also red and black. Warlock winced. ‘But your boyfriend feels like a fish in the water. Whoever his protector is, he is respected enough here. Let the guy have a drink and have some fun, he’ll be fine.’
‘God. Danny’s like a sheep in wolf’s clothing’ Jason sighed anxiously. ‘His parents are ghost hunters but he’s here as a plus one for Phantom, a ghost from Amity Park.’
‘More like a wolf in sheep’s clothing.’ Constantine muttered to himself. But when he saw a silver butterfly nearby, he decided that revealing other people’s secrets was not his problem. ‘I know who the Phantom is. Everyone has heard about Pariah Dark.’
Jason has not heard about him, but decided to keep quiet so as not to make a fool of himself. He will ask Danny about it.
Constantine took a brandy from the bartender. Then he took a big sip and looked at Jason. ‘You know, I always thought Little Red Riding Hood was incredibly stupid to let a wolf eat herself.’
‘What’s this about, Constantine?’ Hood rolled his eyes under the helmet.
And immediately he was glad that John did not see it. In the end, he helped him a lot not to scare Danny. Without the old man’s comments, he could have easily carried the boy away from the local ghosts on his shoulder like a caveman.
Jay didn’t want to spoil a first impression of a face-to-face meeting because of a kidnapping. Although, looking at how comfortable Fenton was among the nonhuman creatures, Jason doubted that Danny would have been screaming and panicking. But he wouldn’t be happy about being distracted from the fun. Hood shook his head in disappointment.
‘Nothing important.’ John brushed the silver butterfly off his shoulder. ‘You know, I’m in debt to the owner, so..If you don’t need my favors anymore, I’m leaving.’
‘Wait. Help me find Phantom.’ Сrime lord stopped him. ‘I need to make sure he doesn’t leave Danny here alone.’
John turned and looked at him as if he were terminally ill. ‘Phantom is in this room now. Only an idiot would have missed him.’ John spoke slowly and clearly, raising one eyebrow. ‘A conference of four kings. No joke. Stop poking around and messing up international relations, kid.’
Jason looked around the room again. ‘I don’t see him.’
‘Because you’re an idiot, kid’ John patted Jay on the shoulder and left. ‘Good luck explaining to Batman why you stole his jet.’
‘Heck.’
1K notes
·
View notes
This is coming up with Orym, and it came up with Yasha and to an extent Keyleth too (as well as many other characters; see tags). Anyway: there is never going to be a moment when those characters are not grieving. If you wait for them to stop grieving, you will wait until they themselves die - and to be clear I do not mean this in the sense of “the grieving spouse clearly seeks death so that they may be reunited”; I mean “that loss will always exist in their lives, and they will grow around it and find other joy and love, but there is no moment when the hole that person left closes and is gone.” You can interpret where those characters are in their grieving process, which is a complex and nonlinear one, and you may perhaps feel they’re not ready, but if you do, it’s worth asking yourself what “ready” would look like because it will not look like an absence of grief. More specifically to Orym, if you are rethinking this because there was a scene at Will’s grave, that’s a big part of the nonlinear aspect - how someone will speak about the death graveside, or how they may speak about it in specific places, or on anniversaries, is very different to their day-to-day experience with grief.
Which isn’t to say you can’t interpret Orym as still in, for lack of a better term, the full mourning period; I’m noting it both because it is a pattern in the fandom for characters who have lost spouses, and because within that pattern, the discussion seems to treat life after the death of a partner as a dichotomy of “grieving” and “not grieving”, in which romantic love is only possible when one is in the "not grieving" state, which is fundamentally untrue to life.
351 notes
·
View notes