Short DP X DC Prompts #34

Keep Running

In between one moment and the next reality quakes and for the briefest of moments Jason finds himself standing in the remnants of a destroyed Star City. He knows it's not real, that it's just some magical mumbo jumbo overlaying memory magic nonsense bleeding into their timeline but he can smell the smoke in the air from the fires and hear her tired laughter as the static filled image of a red haired woman sits down beside him. He knows her or at least this version of him does as they talk about the little suicide run they were planning in order to hopefully end things for good and Jason can feel how tired his alternate self is as he takes a seat on the ground beside her. It's all a rush of emotions and faint memories that were getting harder and harder to ignore before he's suddenly back on the Watchtower with every other available hero the League could call in stuck arguing about these stupid visions affecting heroes and villains all over the globe if some of Ra's latest movements were any indication. His men were searching everywhere for answers while others like Luthor were making more subtle inquiries. The only upside to all of this was the reactions coming out of Arkham but that didn't mean he wanted to be up here with the League nearly at each other's throats.

With everything he's managing to piece together through a couple of brief check-ins with Dickie and the girls he could see why B wanted answers.

As morbid as it sounded Dick and the others were a few of the lucky ones who were able to be pulled out of their memories faster since they were at ground zero when the Watchtower was pulled out of orbit. The quicker you died the quicker it was over but neither of them were as lucky.

In those jumbled memories him and Bruce were the only two left after Gotham went up in flames since Phantom went after them first and there were still a few lingering effects clinging to that since he could still remember what the older version of himself felt. It was somewhat muted now but some of it was still there and if he focused hard enough Jason could still see the makeshift doctor's office in his mind. He could feel the phantom pain and see her flowing red hair. She seemed so relieved to find him alive and he wanted his own answers but Impulse was in the wind.

The little speedster was gone before anyone could really recover from the sudden onslaught of memories and while Bruce was doing everything he could to figure out a plan of sorts the others weren't as lucky with Superman stuck bouncing between the moments of his own brutal death and worrying about his family's safety. Whoever or whatever Phantom was, he knew exactly where to hurt them with Jon nearly losing it in public after being forced to live through the memories of his mom dying and the man of steel's own death at the hands of some magical Martian whatever.

Wonder Woman seemed the most put together out of everyone but even she was kind of twitchy, her had never leaving the pummel of her sword as Zatara went over what he could piece together on his own since the bulk of JLD was still out of commission.

His own daughter was comatose from the magical backlash of whatever this was while Constantine was just missing, his home a mess of overturned books and hurried scribbles which left them on the back foot for now since the only solid lead anyone had was Impulse and Young Justice was closing ranks around their missing speedster.

With JLD in shambles and Ra's on the move Replacement was running his own investigation into whatever was going on and shutting everyone else out of his systems after the first attempt at locating Impulse through his tracker backfired horribly.

I blame my cough medicine and a love for Fallout for whatever this is turning into but I felt like adding onto Run a little. I wouldn't even begin to know how to explain it but I just have this image in my head of Bart and Danny in a Fallout like world but the whole memory thing could be anything really. I just like the idea of reality shifting to the left just enough that Bart suddenly remembers details about his past he'd forgotten thanks to time travel/reality resetting and he suddenly remembers Danny while the rest of his team remember bits and pieces of their missing teammate Phantom. Everyone else just gets doomsday memories cause I really don't care and mostly think it's funny so I'm either blaming this on the gauntlet from the movie or Clockwork but anyone could add something else if they want.

don't give up

We don't talk enough about how goddamn funny Tighnari is. That man is unphased by everything.

Cyno shows up at his doorstep with a small child who is traumatized, illiterate, terminally ill, and has an ancient god sealed away in her body, and asks him to help raise her, and Tighnari's only objection is that he doesn't know how to teach preschool level academics.

He eats a poisonous mushroom, passes out, and has a hallucination and just goes "damn that was crazy. Let me write it down for science."

The dudes in charge of the whole country repeatedly beg him to come work for them and he tells them to fuck off.

The second fatui harbinger, said to be as strong as a god, threatens him and he basically tells him to fuck off too.

The traveler gets possessed by god and then comes back to tell him that the sages are building a false god and he's like "Damn that's fucked up. Anyways I gotta go check on my patient."

Dehya and the Traveler basically say "Hey we are helping Cyno overthrow the government" and he's just like bet.

He get's struck by lightning and is just like "Oof. Anyways gotta go check on my patient, good luck fighting a god".

He finds an illegal sentient robot crab and just adopts it and tells the matra not to worry about it.

He passes out from heat exhaustion in the desert and is just like "Damn. I'll need to bring some sunscreen next time".

Finds out Cyno has a long lost brother/cousin and is just like "Cool. Why don't you come over for dinner, meet the family".

The craziest shit can happen to this man and he's just like "Allright why not. This might as well happen" and I love that about him

I will have ORDER

You know the thing about ghosts and their obsessions, well what about Walker's obsession? He'd have to be going crazy with so many villains breaking into, breaking out of or just attacking supposedly state of the art prisons like Belle Reve and Arkham. From what I've seen and read the majority of the supervillains treat any kind of sentence longer than a week like a joke so I can imagine Walker growing more and more angry about it until he finally snaps. His obsession forces him to do something and he does. His first step is forcing some of the other ghost to help him improve things. He's learned his lesson after dealing with Danny so he gives them no other option but to help him and they do cause they can tell his obsession is controlling him and right now Walker wants a prison that can hold anything and everything. It doesn't matter who it is, he wants a prison capable of restoring order and with all of the different ghosts currently under his control or still on the run after Danny's jailbreak he knows who to get in order to make it happen.

Next is the easier part where he grows as big as possible, probably even a little eldritch cause he's beyond furious with so many rule breakers getting away with anything they feel like and he simply drags every major prison holding supervillains through a portal deep into his part of the Ghost Zone. He's not playing around this time. His men are raiding hideouts and hitting bases all over the country. Nobody sees it coming, the heroes aren't given any time to react and the villains never even get a chance to get away from their 'rightfully deserved judgement' since Walker is doing what he did in Amity Park but on a much larger scale. He will restore order by any means necessary.

Danny is kind of on the fence about the whole issue while everyone outside of Amity Park is freaking out about Arkham getting dragged into hell (from their perspective).

Hectic

It was just a rumour at first, an unbelievable one since no one really believed it at first but it slowly grew a little bit more every day as the hero community and more importantly Gotham's underworld noticed the changes in Red Hood.

He was all over the place.

One day he was in Metropolis. The next he was in Coast City. Then Star City and so on. Him and his team were hunting something or someone but the biggest change was the fact that Jason wasn't killing anymore.

He wasn't breaking the big bad bat's golden rule but he was hurting them. It didn't matter if it was an everyday rogue or one of those strange men in suits, Jason was breaking his enemies just enough that they weren't getting back up as quickly as they usually would. If anything the rogues and street criminals seemed to have it easier when compared to whatever group the Outlaws were dismantling.

His family thought he was spiraling again.

They couldn't find anything on the men in white or why Jason was targeting them so there was always the worry that his Pit Rage was somehow getting worse and Batman himself was seen stalking the shadows of Red Hood's territory in search of his wayward son except he couldn't find a trace of him, only the aftermath of his attacks against the group.

He stood before burning buildings and broken bodies night after night but was still somehow just a step or two behind his son.

Nightwing couldn't even pick up a trail and Oracle's ever present eyes were blinded by someone or something able to erase Jason's digital presence whenever he was out on one of his hunts.

After weeks and weeks of searching they were only whispers and rumours and they were close to asking for help when the alarms in Arkham went off.

It was a massive breakout.

Multiple rogues.

More importantly Jason was in the area and quickly responded with a huff of annoyance and a promise to be there and while they never saw him the Bat Family heard Red Hood's presence through the comms. "He's barely even using his guns." Barbara's voice echoed through a private channel.

"He's faster."

"Maybe he's picked up a couple of new tricks?" Dick suggested, sounding almost hopeful until Jason accidentally stumbled across the last person he ever wanted to see.

Neither Tim or Barbara could piece together the beginning of their conversation but every single one of them heard the Joker's rage filled screams as the madman mocked the little bird fluttering around their wayward bat and it caused them to freeze for just a second because no one was anywhere near Jason at the time. Batman and Robin were on the other side of Arkham dealing with Ivy at the time and Red Robin was busy with the Riddler so who was shadowing Red Hood?

Most of the cameras in the area were down so they didn't have much to work with when they started looking into it later. The few that weren't were heavily compromised leaving behind staticky images and blurry video that they watched again and again.

Bruce watched it the most, the brief confrontation as his son walked into frame, barely even glancing at the Joker, the only rogue still locked in his cell for some strange reason trying to goad him into responding and almost succeeded. He could practically see the green creeping into Jason's eyes as he stared down his tormenter before it vanished just as quickly as the blurry image of a hooded boy around Damian's age ran past on the upper floor urging him to hurry up with a shout of, "Come on old man!"

They'd apparently had a game going, a bet to see if the kid could take down more criminals than him and that had been more than enough for Jason to turn away from the Joker with a small shake of his head and an amused smile.

He didn't hear what his son said in response but Bruce watched that moment again and again as Jason walked away leaving the Joker pounding on the door to his cell screaming threats at him and the kid, trying to get some kind of response out of him since the electronics in the door were fried.

They'd been lucky there. A sudden power surge moments before the attempted prison break had left him trapped in his cell and out of the way. Reports claimed it would be weeks before a technician could get it open and Bruce was keeping an eye on it in case anyone from his gang tried something.

He read every report.

Tracked every log in and watched through a dozen different monitors as the Joker grew more and more annoyed about his recent turn of bad luck but his gaze always drifted back to the brief footage of the unknown boy that danced around Jason as they worked together to clear their part of Arkham before backup could arrive.

They had the bare bones of a file, brief moments of footage that showed he could fight, possibly had some kind of League connection judging from the style but nothing else. No alias. No other sightings. Nothing. The kid was practically a ghost and they still couldn't find any trace of Jason anywhere. He was back in Gotham. Reports had him and his new partner patrolling Crime Alley and beyond like nothing happened but soon enough there were news reports and theories and speculations and conspiracies all slowly starting to spring up about a black and grey bird fluttering around the dark red bat.

After months of nothing there were suddenly pictures of Jason and his new partner sitting on the edge of a rooftop eating burgers and fighting rouges along with grainy footage from Star City showing Roy helping the kid do a handstand while Jason watched on with a rarely seen smile.

"He looks happy."

The news labeled this new unknown Sparrow, they speculated over who he was, could he be Batman's newest bird, a sidekick or maybe even an Outlaw but Bruce was more focused on everything the news wasn't reporting.

Jason wasn't killing anymore.

He hadn't even come close in nearly two years now and while there were some concerns over his new approach to handling criminals even that was slowly fading away with every new piece of information they were able to piece together.

-_- -_- -_-

"He was expanding." Tim explained as he pulled up a map of Jason's old territory next to the new one that was easily twice as big. "Those weeks of unexplained rage we were concerned about was really just Jason pushed the mob families out of the areas surrounding Crime Alley."

Well them and the strange groups always dressed in all white. They still didn't know anything about the group or why Jason had been so hell bent on hunting them to the ends of the Earth but he'd pushed them out of Gotham before they could even begin to set up shop.

-_- -_- -_-

"Come on Roy. Please..... I'll beg if I have to."

"No."

"Please."

"No. He's asleep right now and I'm not gonna wake him up."

"You mean Sp-" "No, Jason. Danny's at school right now." Because Jason had thought tooth and nail for the kid to have a somewhat normal life and his definition of normal meant setting Danny up in a safehouse in Star City and quickly having a mini freakout over behaving like Bruce whenever he caught himself coming up with contingency plans to make sure no one could disrupt that. It was kind of funny to watch.

"Then send me some pictures."

-_- -_- -_-

"You must be the revenant. I'm here in search of the Great One."

Jason stared at the yeti standing out in the middle of the hallway blinked and slowly closed his door.

"Danny!"

I don't know what would fit better for this but I was stuck on two main ideas for how it could happen. Either Danny's parents hired the Outlaws to handle the GIW while they had to go on the run or Clockwork meddled and made a deal with Jason that he couldn't refuse. Either way Jason gets help with the pit, gets a kid who can curse the Joker with bad luck and calls some friends to help take down a rogue, badly run black ops group trying to destroy another reality and kind of forgets to let his family know what's going on so they're stuck learning about it through the news. It's not his fault. He asked Roy to keep them up to date. Roy just assumed they already knew and Starfire thought Roy said something since he was the responsible one.

A deaged Danny on the other hand, cause I like the occasional gremlin kid Danny fic is more than happy to let the adults handle things. Clockwork and or his parents trust Jason and he could finally put some of his fighting skills he picked up while time traveling to good use. League? What league? Oh, they're calling me Sparrow now. It's better than Invis-o-Bill so why not. Can I curse the clown? Please, please, please, please. It'll be so funny.

10 posts!

A Quick Chat

'Absolutely not!'

'I'm just gonna talk with him!'

Following the quickly escalating shouts down to the Batcave Bruce found Dick and a heavily armed Tim at each other's throats while their siblings oh so helpfully egged them on.

They were arguing about Wally and their last universal saving mission for some reason and Tim had nearly every contingency he could think of to handle a speedster on him.

-nna talk, that's it!'

'Then you can leave the gear here!'

'What's going on?'

All of his children froze, finally realizing he was here before they started shouting over each other.

'You remem-'

'-ick's trying to-'

'Father Dr-'

'-ng crazy, just because the universe re-'

'Enough!'

'Now, can someone tell me what's going on or do I have to get Alfred?'

And Jason was happy enough to tell him. 'Replacement's pissed because we finally discovered a pretty big difference with the universe after the League hit the reset button.'

Multiple screens on the Batcomputer held information on new heroes, a Junior JLD and everything Tim could dig up on two individuals. The first one was Phantom, a new addition to the Titans and had a number of detailed conspiracy theories tracking his appearances through time while the other held the detailed background information of a recently graduated Daniel James Fenton. Tim had dug up everything from his kindergarten grades to... Oh... Oh no... That explains why they were arguing about Wally.

Most of Daniel's latest online post covered his move to Gotham, his new job offer working in their engineering department and his new boyfriend Bernard. Looking at it all made it painfully easy to piece together that... 'They stole my life!'

And Dick and Tim were arguing again but Bruce knew it wouldn't get too heated and focused his attention on the gathered information. It was easy to see that a number of encounters his kids (mainly his oldest three) should have had with the Titans were adjusted just enough to fit Phantom now and Tim's involvement with the Children of Dionysus had been shifted around to involve Daniel in this new universe.

'-e universe reset doesn't mean you can ruin their lives. Phantom seems like a good kid.'

'Dowd would have left you eventually.'

Dick had to hold Tim back from launching himself at Damien while Jason and Steph stood by egging the two of them on, but then Tim got that look in his eye when Duke brought up the idea of reintroducing himself and everyone noticed.

'No.'

'Come on. Tim, you don't need another restraining order.'

'But it didn't happen in this universe so it doesn't count.'

'It counts if we still remember it!'

But Tim wasn't listening, too busy changing out of all of his gear as a plan quickly started forming together in his mind.

Why waste time with Wally when he can just as easily win over the new couple while ignoring everything else he's learned from his friends.

He'd figure it out one mess at a time. After he won Bernard back he'd figure out the situation between Red Robin and Phantom.

-_- -_- -_-

Reading over the sticky note Danny couldn't help but wonder what Clockwork meant when he wrote 'Have Fun'.

Again, I blame my medication for this, but this came from a couple of different prompts about Tim, Bernard and Danny and I just sort of went with it. Basically the main roster of the League has to stop (Pick a threat) and end up resitting the universe again. The problem is they still remember the old universe so they spend a week or two looking up any big changes and a sleep deprived Tim starts believing he barely knows Bernard in this universe when he's actually dating him and Danny. He just hasn't dug deep enough to figure out his own connection.