Bruce clenches his jaw, feeling like he needs to Glare at something but feels Dick elbow him, roughly, and holds it back. He instead makes a quiet grumble that is ignored.
In all his years of being a Father of many (and he means many) children, you'd figure he'd get better when they got older and started dating.
He was fine when Dick and Barbara dated on and off, when Jason brought Roy to the Manor and Bruce was hit with the realization he could possibly have Oliver Queen as an in-law. He stayed quiet when Tim and Stephanie dated, and even when Cassandra had that moment with Kon (he nor Clark like to bring it up).
But Damian just turned 15, he should be focusing on his art, his hobbies and interests.
That's why, it was a surprise when Damian requested Bruce and Dick meet him down at the Batcave one random day.
Bruce wasn't even sure where to look when they made their way down and an eldritch being, who kept changing its form every second, revealing something only one who deals with The Scarecrow on a monthly basis could fantom looking straight at, was down there.
Instead, Bruce is staring at the tall, strange eldritch being in his Batcave, in his Manor (it really belongs to Alfred) as his youngest walks to it and holds hands with.... whatever was in the Batcave (was it an it?)
"His name is Daniel, and he is my Beloved." Damian says, as if perfectly in tune with his Father's train of thought and Bruce was proud of how his son knew just when to swoop in.
"I'm sure Daniel seems like a swell guy!" Dick says, and Bruce really has to give him credit for being the calm one in this situation.
Damian gives a small puff of his chest and leans in just the slightest bit closer to... Daniel.
"Beloved, this is my Father, Bruce Wayne. And my... other parental figure, Richard Grayson, who's also my eldest brother." Damian says to Daniel with a hand wave gesture towards Bruce and Dick.
Daniel only let out a small screech-like sound that would haunt Bruce's ears for years to come, Dick's smile strains a bit.
Damian, on the other hand, looked absolutely delighted at whatever Daniel confirmed.
How lovely, it would seem Daniel approved of them.
Tim meets Danny when he leaves the Wayne family after seeing that they didn’t see him as family, only a stand in. He gets stuck in Amity Park with its lock down and information black out. Whether Tim ended up in the city by accident or he went looking for it when he noticed that a city just suddenly stopped existing a few years prior is up to debate. Either way Tim does what he did years ago, bully the resident vigilante into letting him help. This time though he promises not to make the same mistake of trying to be anything more than teammates, not wanting to set himself up to more disappointment. Unfortunately for him Danny is very intrigued by this fellow vigilante, and thinks he would be a good Living friend. Ancients knows he needs more of those after the fallout with Sam and Tucker.
When young ghosting are extremely tired or have exhausted their core too much, whether it be from fighting or just using up too much ectoplasm, they can merge with their parent in the ghost zone. The core of their parent and the welcoming warmth it gave often allowed for fast recoveries. Dani was too weak even with her eco-shots and Danny allowed her to rest inside him until she was one hundred percent again.
One minor thing was that even with the core, there's still a bit of a change that's physically noriceable. And while ghosts and those of the Infinite Realms understood, humans often didn't.
Which was why Danny was met with mortified and angry gazes when he appeared to the next Justice League meeting with Dani resting inside of him. It didn't help with how bad he explained the situation either.
Ellie wasn't sure how to feel when Danny excitedly animated her to accept Arthur's invitation to live in Atlantis.
"Just if you want of course, but you'll get a stable home, and Frostbite said living underwater might be good for your water cores stability."
She had already been planning to accept the offer. Once she gave the guy an opportunity to have some sort of conversation, the guy was pretty chill, and the castle was pretty cool. So yeah, she was going to accept the offer.
But for some reason Danny's eagerness for her to go with Arthur hurt. It felt like he was trying to get rid of her.
She knew that was ridiculous, she didn't even live with Danny. He looked out for her, and was always a call away but, as much as Danny parents her, he was just a child like her. It made sense he was happy to give away the responsibility of taking care of her.
So when Ellie moved into Atlantis, she was expecting to hear less from Danny. After all, she had settle down, and he didn't need to worry about her adventures anymore. That was Arthur's and Mera's job now.
Weirdly enough, it was the complete opposite.
Now that Ellie was living with adults, Danny seemed MORE worried for her. They went from a call once a week or so, to almost daily calls in the afternoons. He would be more insistent about her telling him if anything was wrong.
He would ask specifics about the food she was eating, and her activities of the day, and her room, and the castles security...
Sam had told her that it was because he used to be able to monitor if she was eating well through the transactions of the debit card they had given her. Tuck had told her that he used to evaluate how safe she was through the phones location, and the hotels receipts.
And well, maybe she underestimated how much attention Danny put on her before, but the way the calls went made it seem like he thought she might be in more danger now that she had a stable home.
Which made no sense, because unlike him, she didn't even need to hide her ghostlines. Anything that was out of normal for Atlanteans was excused with meta-abilities, she didn't need to worry about being classified as a non-sentient species.
That was when it caught up to her. Danny was worried now that she was in a stable home because his stable home had always been dangerous for him. It isn't even a think of it being dangerous now that his a ghost, it has been dangerous ever since he was a child. She remembers all of Jazz's rants about how unreliable their parents have always been.
The food has always been contaminated. The security now attacked him directly, but there had always been a possibility of it malfunctioning and hurting the residents. Him and Jazz had always had the responsibilities of not only keeping the house clean, but the lab as well. If she tops it with the house security system attacking him, and his parents been ghost hunters...
Ellie hadn't found it too dangerous back then, Danny mocked Jazz rants with her, and Jack and Maddie were kind when they interacted with her in her human form. The Fentons neglect seemed liberating in comparison to Vlad overly controlling nature. But thinking about it now, after two months living in Atlantis, she doesn't like the picture.
She doesn't like the idea of Danny being somewhere so unsafe, but where would he go? He doesn't have a water core like her, and even if he had gotten sorta used to shapeshifting, he isn't good enough to live in a second form, which isn't recommendable either way. So he wouldn't be able to move underwater with her.
More so, she doubts that Danny would like to leave his Amity, he had taken the sole responsibilities of dealing with the whole humans - ghost conflicts. With the anti-ecto acts, there's no way he would leave the portal unsupervised.
What should she do now? Should she talk with Arthur about it? He said he was part of the heros friend group, what if they already know about the anti-ecto acts and are okay with it? What if they change hoe they act with her when she tells them she isn't actually an atlatean meta?
The sound of John Constantine’s incredulous voice entered the meeting room before his body did. “Fight an Infinite Realms ghost? Are you insane?! Do you want to get us killed?”
Zatanna spun and almost snarled at him. “What would you have us do then, Constantine? Maybe you’re okay with sacrificing people sometimes, be we’re the heroes. We can’t just let it keep wreaking havoc. There’s no reported deaths yet, but we don’t know how long that’ll last.”
He leaned against the wall nonchalantly and lit a cigarette. “Well, what’s it yelling about?”
“What?”
He took a long drag before continuing. “Realms ghosts– they’re basically immune to our magic, but they’re easy marks if you know how to deal with ‘em. They all have some sort of Obsession. Just work with that and they’re remarkably simple to manipulate.” His voice turned to a grumble, “Doesn’t mean they can’t be a huge pain in the fucking ass sometimes though.”
Tapping some ash off his cigarette, he looked straight back into the room again. “So… what’re they yelling about?”
Danny, after his parents turned from Ghost hunting to being the first official Ghost Anthropologists, decided to repurpose some of their weapons.
And, well, there was a contest being run by Wayne Enterprises; whoever can design a robot that will help the environment got prize money and a grant.
Danny, in all his mechanical engineering prowess, was bored. So he designed a thing. Repurposed the Fenton Guns into a cute robotic tortoise that would clean the beach.
It spiraled from there, and now Fenton Works is the leading name in green technology that's cleaning up the Earth bit by bit. Sea Dragon robots that clean oil and trash from the ocean; beach tortoises that clean the sand and beach and deposit their hoard of trash into designated receptacles that Danny uses as material to make more robots; Cryptid "stalker" robots with long legs that delicately patrol forests to perform "fuel management" and clear out the underbrush to help manage wildfires; moving gargoyle robots that sit on top of skyscrapers to help clean the air with huge sail-like wings, etc.
Basically, Danny pulls a Doctor Elisabet Sobeck, but with less world ending and more actually helping. (Not that the world ending was Elisabet's fault, of course, but different franchise)
And due to the number of times aliens try to attack and rogues send their own robots to attack people, naturally Danny installed self-defense protocols, along with one single golden rule written into the very OS of every single robot; Save Humans Whatever the Cost.
Problem is, Batman has never seen robots like this not be used for evil purposes, and he knows that their power source (a closely guarded Fenton Works secret) is some sort of liquid that glows green.
He really only knows of one liquid that glows green.
So he's determined to find everything he can about Fenton Works, because there's no way that Daniel Fenton isn't actually a villain in the making.
Danny's just thrilled for the chance to work with Wayne Enterprises.
What if....
Damien and Danyal Al Ghul are twins. Danyal takes heavily after Bruce but Damien is a perfect mix of their parents, and he came out of the artificial womb first, so Damien is decided to be the heir.
Growing up in the League is hard, but Damien excels in a way that Danyal doesn't, because for all the potential Danyal has, he hates the killing and there is a rebellious streak evident even as young as they are. A rebellious streak is a...very dangerous thing to have. Grandfather won't kill Danyal, for as ruthless as he is he doesn't kill his own lineage. But that is not to say that the additional "training" Danyal goes through is merciful.
Damien and Danyal love each other, not just as brothers but also in the way partners do when they don't even have to blink to anticipate the others actions in the midst of action. Which is why Damien, not even yet six, can see the way Danyal is being broken down under the burden of their joint legacy.
So many times, in so many of the universes in which he exists, Danyal Al Ghul is or is seemingly killed, of which is the catalyst for his escape from the League of Assassins, and his brother is left behind thinking him truly dead.
In this universe, when the Demon Twins are out on a training mission (an assassination of a target so easy it's beneath the League for anything other than the simplest of first training missions) a massive earthquake occurs.
They are alive at the end, but both their communication devices are beyond repair. Damien is more roughed up than Danyal at the end, but both are dirty and bloodied.
This is an unprecedented opportunity, of which Damien knows deep down he will never get again.
He loves his brother deeply, but Danyal is weak, always hesitating before the kill, hands shaking. Damien loves his brother and fighting side by side, but he values more the quiet moments when Danyal is looking at star maps and trying to match them up with the sky above their home or making snarky comments about their trainers under his breath. (After when they can't hear Damien doesn't laugh but Danyal always knows he agrees and is amused.)
Grandfather's and Mother's additional training to bring Danyal up to Damien's level is making Danyal go quiet and emotionless and Damien is selfish.
(Damien convinces his twin brother to leave the League of Assassins.)
Damien drags himself to the rendezvous point and returns home alone, reporting the target dead and his brother lost under rock in the quake, body unable to be recovered. He is colder, furious at the world and himself. He pushes and pushes and PUSHES himself. He is the last remaining of a set and he will prove himself perfect to carry the title of Heir perfectly and without reproach. He is more loyal day by day, the guilt his selfishness and betrayal of his family a deep sting he can't ignore.
Talia does search, but so many bodies were lost or unidentified inside mass graves. She grieves and then refocuses on her remaining son without looking back. Grandfather laments the loss, but cares little for the spare in the long run.
Meanwhile, Danyal hid himself long enough to sneak onto one of many transports filled with foreign aid. He is small and sneakier than any average stowaway, and remains undetected all the way to the US.
He doesn't go to Gotham to find his father, but picks a direction at random and leaves, until eventually he's picked up and put in the system. Bouncing around until one day, not long after he turns seven, the Dr.'s Fenton and their young daughter are visiting in their search to adopt their second child. (A combination of genetics and radiation from their earliest experiments in college leaving the pair with low fertility rates and very high risks if they ever did get pregnant. The two get procedures early on and adopt Jazz when she is still fairly young, but wait until she is a bit older before adopting again.)
Danyal Al Ghul had an older twin brother.
Daniel Fenton doesn't think he could handle having an older brother again, but an older sister is acceptable.
Danyal left to go full civilian, and when Damien had sent him off decided he would carry that knowledge to his grave if he must. He tells no one, and does not even mention ever having a twin when he goes to live with their Father in Gotham. If Mother did not tell Father of the deceased son, then neither will Damien.
Danyal Al Ghul is dead, and Damien will keep it that way.
.
.
.
.
(The greatest secret is this: The two have never lost contact. It is very easy, during a natural disaster, to steal a pair of burner phones, each with one number only on them and prepaid with enough stolen funds to last years. Danny smuggles his with him in one piece, Damien smuggles his in pieces, ready to be hidden and repaired when necessary. He checks it scarcely, but every few months is enough to make sure his twin is alive. When he goes to live with Father in Gotham, they communicate a bit more frequently. This remains his most fiercely protected secret.)
"Two & A Half Raditz's"
Here it is!! My short slice-of-life comic about Raditz and Nappa being roommates. I started with the final punchline ("Shut up and eat your Raditz") and worked entirely backwards from there.
Plus: a bonus epilogue strip!
(A side note: I'm sure I'll pick up doing more Raditz comics if the whim strikes me, but if you like roommate comics, I have a years' worth of strips over at @dibbitandboo-two )
“Hey. Hey Tuck. Tucker. Tuck look. Look.”
Tucker looked over the edge of the screen lazily, the half interested words on his tongue dying as he let out a wheeze of laughter. “Oh my Ancient Sands, dude, how did you manage that?”
Danny had, for the last near year, been trying to mix shapeshifting, thank you Amorpho, with duplication. Something he’d apparently succeeded in today, if the massive fuck-you hydra standing before him was any indication. The very pleased looking, well did it count as a hydra if it had wings too?
“You need to show Sam. Oh my Sands we need to show Val too. And Wes. You did it dude!” He floated up to look at Danny, who did a little twirl to show off. He shook his head, flecks of gold and sand falling from his hair as he laughed.
“Do you think,” Danny lost it in laughter as several other heads echoed his words, from whichever the main him was. “Holy ancients that’s great- do, do you think we can make a dragon club? Hydras are totally dragons right? Do you think we could pull a Tiamat?”
He landed on a head, taking a selfie to add to the groupchat labeled Preparations. “Dude, we should, but let me send this to the others first… But I am so down.”
They can, in fact apparently, pull a Tiamat- with a little help from Princess Dora, practice in front of Frostbite in case something goes wrong, and some advice from Pandora on controlling extra limbs. Honestly, who is going to want to mess with Amity when there’s a giant dragon? And hey, maybe they can break the barrier now!
The heads for those wondering who I was thinking of for each lol And perhaps what they might all get ((1) Kwan, Pressurized Water) ((2) Wes, Sonic Blast) ((3) Sam, Poison Gas) ((4) Star, Plasma) ((5) Danny, Ice Breath) ((6) Paulina, Acid) ((7) Tucker, Electricity) ((8) Valerie, Fire Breath) ((9) Dash, Pressurized Wind)
Danny was sitting in the living room watching a live Justice League fight. The fight was big enough that danny thought the camera was way to close to the fight. Then Fright Knight phases into the room through the floor.
Fright knight: My liege
Danny: Fright knight what is it?
Fright knight: I wish vengeance against my abusive father.
Danny: I can understand that, But who?
Fright knight points to the tv showing the justice League fighting a figure in all black armor with glowing red eyes.
Fright knight: My father Ares, greek god of war.
Danny: Wait that make you Pho-
Fright knight: DO NOT SAY THAT NAME!
Danny: ....
Fright knight: I apologize for yelling.
Danny: its fine i understand. You must hate him quite alot.
Fright knight: More than you hate Plasmius.
Danny: Are you sure about that?
Fight knight: Yes
Danny: So you have a brother. The god of... Panic?
Fright knight: He is the god of dread, also the royal assassin.
Danny: i have assassins?!?
Fright knight: ...
Danny: Right... If you want to fight your father you're gonna have to work with the Justice League, and not kill anyone.
Fright knight: You do not desire the head of the god of war?
Danny: Eww no. I dont want to kill a god and i dont want war with Olympus. I dont want to fight Zeus.
Fright knight: But you have already beaten Zeus. He disguised his form and called himself Vortex.
Danny: ...what... Well i may be able to beat him, but there are too many women who are important to me. You know how Zeus is.
Fright knight: Ah indeed. You are wise. ... thank you.
Danny: for what?
Fright knight: It is nice to be reminded that you are not a war hungry tyrant. You care for others. It is refreshing. It is good.
Danny: *blushing* yeah yeah. It looks like you're late.
Fright knight looks at the TV to see the Justice League have already beaten Ares and the Villains.
Fright knight: I wish to go meet and congratulate my aunt on her victory!
Danny: remember to be polite.
Fright knight: i also wish to go to Gotham.
Danny: No
Fright knight: To stab a Clown and a Scarecrow.
Danny: ... Be quick and don't get caught. If anyone catches you you're on your own.