The viscous liquid drip…drip..dripped off of the tip of a clawed finger.
Landing on the bricks below, it sounded incongruously like rainfall.
The acid green substance defied gravity with its tendrils creeping out and then into the porous surfaces of a badly maintained sewer system. His hands were covered in tight fitting gloves, still glowing white even amongst the filth. They lay lax, palms up, and fingers loosely curled to create a small divot in the center.
It took a long time, and it hurt this waiting.
Slowly, though, his patience began to bear fruit.
In his slightly cupped hand pooled the unnaturally rippling ectoplasm.
Danny laboriously, in fits and starts, managed to bring his hand to his chest and tipped the meager liquid directly into his organs. He whined softly with relief as he felt this new world’s ectoplasm nourish him. He didn’t know what would happen if he had a direct source to guzzle from, though. He couldn’t even really describe the difference that he felt. he just knew that it was present and almost alien.
Although Danny smiled slightly, he supposed at this point, he was the alien life-form.
He grimaced then at the feeling of the restrictive plastic that was still strapped to his face before he was forced back to stoicism when it cut painfully into his skin. It wouldn’t be pretty if he had to try and projectile vomit through the thin metal bars that pierced his skin. He finally heaved a deep breath and gingerly wrapped his arms around his torso, doing his best to avoid any sutures, before he pillowed his head on the sinuous length of his tail. Curled into as tight of a ball as his battered body would concede, Danny finally allowed himself to start crying. Tears streamed down his face, and if he had had the ability, he would have screamed.
At the loss of everything.
His jaw wouldn’t move, held in place by some sort of wire that wound its way through his gums and bones held in place by the plastic of the muzzle. Whatever Fenton invention they had used on it made it nearly impossible to remove. It refused to phase through walls with him and was strong enough that he couldn’t manage to snap the wire into pieces.
They had learned their lesson early on with him.
They hadn’t wanted to hear what he had to say anyway. Had only cared about what they could discover next. What they could find as they tore through him with methodical, scientific patience. He was a ghost. Long dead. Why would they waste the supplies on feeding him? They had tried something different.
This shallow pool was a slow method of collection, but it also gave him time to recover his strength, and it didn’t hurt anyone else. He wasn’t being forced to harm anyone just to survive. He couldn’t remember when the portal had started to fall to pieces around him. Cobbled together as it had been, a mixture of human and animal blood used by his friends in a desperate attempt to free him from the laboratory that he had been imprisoned in.
Danny had appeared amongst the clouds and didn’t have the strength to stay afloat. Danny’s ghost half was supernaturally hardy, but even he needed time to recuperate after plummeting from that high in the air. He had tried to control his fall, but he had just been so tired. Normally, floating felt more natural to him when he was like this than walking. But his injuries even before he had escaped had left him weak. At least he had managed to avoid skewering himself on the steeple of a church. Had felt something close to horror at the thought of being killed (again? fully?) by the sharp points of a metal cross.
A sudden noise distracted him from his agonized sobs.
Danny growled low in his chest as he heard something splashing through the sewer water. Gross. That water couldn’t be sanitary. Seemed questionable to him. He wanted to disappear away from whatever was making that much of a ruckus. Sure, he could technically still turn himself invisible, but that wouldn’t hide the trail of ectoplasm that he had left in his wake. Better to make himself as scary as possible. At this point he’d probably have trouble fighting off the ghost of a fly, let alone whatever monster was roaming through near pitch black tunnels with apparent ease. He couldn’t bare his teeth anymore, but he let the sonic rumbling coming from his chest turn up a gear. There was another splash, and this time, it was followed by a curse. Someone had just fallen face first into that foul water.
That helped the fear a little bit.
Danny let the growl ebb away with a quizzical chirp. He’d have to be even worse off than he currently was to not recognize that “ Mother Fucker!!” that echoed off the brick walls for a moment. The tinny sound of some sort of earpiece let him hear the faint sound of the feminine laughter of whoever was on the other line.
“Shut it, O. It’s your fault I’m down here anyways.”
The voice was raspy, but it also didn’t sound completely natural. Some sort of mechanical modulation that gave him the heebie-jeebies.
“ I told you. Cameras caught something falling out of the sky. I found the furrow that it left.”
In the goddamn cemetery.”
“ Yes, but you saw the same thing I did.”
“Yeah, something dragged itself away from the impact site.” “
Satellites saw whatever fell. They literally survived a fall from low atmosphere space and then had the strength to pull themselves into the sewers.”
The damned muzzle meant that there was no way for Danny to run away from whoever was looking for him. Every other piece of clothing went intangible with no issue; but the Fucking Fenton Wire™ made it literally impossible for him to get his face through anything. Forcing himself through would probably end with him missing a bunch of teeth and a good portion of skin from his face. It might be worth it; Danny had taken enough blows to the head that he knew his teeth grew back eventually. Maybe he’d get lucky and the man would give up after his impromptu dip in sewage.
Has he ever been lucky in his entire life?
The abrupt blast of light as the man held up a small penlight felt like it pierced him solidly through both of his eye sockets.
“Hmmm, I’m seeing some sort of liquid.”
“I mean the splatter marks. They match up to what I’d expect to see if someone managed to drag themselves through Gotham city water.”
"But this shit is looking a hell of a lot more like Lazarus Water?”
There was a long buzzy pause that came out of whatever kind of earwigs these two weirdo’s were wearing. Danny forced himself to lay even flatter to the ground. He took in a deep breath and fully stuck himself into the corner. Maybe his ratty old hazmat suit would let him pass as a pile of dirty laundry or a trash bag. It wouldn’t work, but Danny hadn’t had too many great ideas about how to talk to a man without showing off his wired. shut. teeth. He also seemed familiar with ectoplasm. Though it didn’t seem to be a happy association. His modulated voice had dipped into an even lower register.
When a hand forcefully landed on Danny’s shoulders, the tips of his gloved fingers caught against the concrete of the floor and threw out sparks as he was dragged backwards by ungentle hands.
“ Wait! Hood, be care…!! ”
Danny had had more than enough of being manhandled in his lifetime (afterlife?) and he didn’t even let the woman on the other side of the microphone finish her warning before he whipped his body around and smacked his clawed fingers across the face of his unknown attacker. It wasn’t exactly like a hot knife through butter, but Danny could feel the way the tips first caught in the metal of the full face helmet that the man was wearing and a push of ice into those cracks shattered the rest of the man's headgear. In a normal situation (for Danny) this would be the point where the person, ghost, being of unimaginable power, etc, etc would either turn tail and run in the other direction or at least shrink away from whatever had just ripped apart what looked like it had been a very expensive piece of body armor. This time, though, he didn’t even have time to react before being punched straight in the nose.
His head snapped back hard for a moment before he twisted sinuously around and launched himself at whoever had hit him. Only for the much taller man to nimbly spring away from where he had been and leaving Danny crouched in the grotty water that was already up well past his shins. At least his feet had decided to reappear. Small favors and all that. Danny swung out in a wide arc with his claws bared rather than in a fist and let out a little growl of frustration as he hit nothing but air. The other man was quicker on his feet than Danny was used to and he didn’t want to put his full force behind the blow anyways.
He’d gotten into plenty of fights with ghosts, in their form of rough and tumble play, and a little less regularly by humans that meant business.
This felt like a combination of the two and that was fucking weird man.
It's time to try and actually fight his way out of this situation since this asshole wouldn’t just leave him alone to sulk in the sewers.
Danny instinctively tried to open his mouth wide both to show off his sharpened fangs as well as to hopefully wail into his attacker's face. Of course, the wire cut that off hard, and he had to pull back with a sharp, frustrated whine as he pawed at his face for a moment. Scrabbling to get that stupid mask off so that he could defend himself. His claws caught on the edge of the plastic, but it didn’t budge. He only managed to snag a finger through a small loop of the metal before it shocked him hard enough to drop him completely in the water, the muzzle sparking and pulsing in punishment and making it impossible for him to keep on his feet. He could feel the way the water around him electrified and was relieved when the other man had the good sense to jump out of it.
This time when a hand came down to grab him the stranger had at least gone for a limb a little further away from whatever fuckery was happening on his face and he felt now much gentler hands wrap around his ankles. They gently dragged him up and out of the water, plopping him relatively softly on the cement again before relinquishing his hold and backing up with his hands in the air. Danny flopped onto his belly and pushed himself away as quickly as he could. He ended up on all fours with his forearms flat on the ground so that he could hold his head up away from the ground but not have to try and hold onto his teetering balance.
Electricity flashed through his face and left him seeing stars and smelling burnt flesh.
Air he knew that he didn’t really need anymore, but it still felt so necessary.
Deep inhales and slow exhales to try and calm himself down and to get the equipment on his face to stop fucking zapping him. It took several long seconds before he was able to get the courage together to look over and see what the stranger was doing while he was having an electricity induced panic attack. He hadn’t heard the other man leave but that didn’t mean much when this sort of stuff happened. He couldn’t hear much of anything with the way it felt like electricity jolted through his brain. It brought back not only recent memories of this being used as a punishment but older, harder memories from his deathday. But no, the stranger hadn’t had the decency to leave. Instead he had just taken a seat across the stream of water from him and was watching him carefully from behind another smaller mask that still hid a good majority of his facial features.
He could see the black hair with a shocking patch of white, turned a little brown gray from the muck of the sewer water.
The sight made his core hum inquisitively.
That was a very distinctive sort of mark to have. Danny cocked his head a little further and, this time, let himself reach out with tendrils of inquiry from his core to see how the other man reacted.
Didn’t seem to have any sort of idea about what was happening, and then Danny felt the first flutters of a very, very new core as it responded with a stressed chatter of noise. It said don’t hurt me…I’m just a baby…Just a baby . Be calm. Safe. safe. Danny’s eyes blazed green as he reacted to the placating emotions the man was obviously sending his way unintentionally. Even after everything he had gone through, Danny didn’t want to be a bully. Sure his face, hell his entire body, fucking hurt, but he had all but face planted into the other ghosts territory. He hadn’t known where the portal had been going to take him. All he had been able to gather from the abrupt conversation that he had had with Jazz was that it was somewhere the GIW would never find him.
A dimension far far away, where he would be safe.
He had grabbed onto that with both hands and hadn’t let himself think about what he might be losing. So he had managed to get away from an evil government agency, lose his remaining friends and family permanently, only to land smack dab in the middle of some powerful baby ghosts haunt.
Jason wasn’t often at a complete loss for words.
Profanity laced, but still, available for use at all times.
When the call had come through from Oracle, he had felt cold dread start to creep down his spine. Some thing had landed in Crime Alley and walked away from the impact. It was late enough that he had been considering turning in for the evening. When he had heard the subtle ping of his earpiece. Jason had almost considered declining the call. Whatever it was that Oracle needed at this time of night wasn’t going to be good. Even the criminals went to bed eventually.
He clenched hard on his motorcycle's handles before he accepted the call with a gruff. “What is it?”
“ We’ve got something or someone that just landed hard in the Gotham cemetery.” “
Why aren’t you sure if it’s a person or an object?”
“ They fell from literal space. Some sort of portal ripped open the sky and dropped something through it. I’d say the only person that would be able to survive that kind of a fall would be Superman.”
“But it’s not him because?”
“ Because Superman is currently working a case with B, and he was the first person I called. Present and accounted for.” “
And you don’t think it’s a random object falling from a portal because?”
“ First. When has it ever just been a random object?”
“Hn.” Jason grunted in agreement.
“ Secondly, it’s not there anymore. Camera’s went a little fuzzy, but somebody pulled themselves out of the impact site and slid through a sewer grate.”
“Hn.” This was not a grunt of agreement. This was a grunt of displeasure. Oracle had worked with enough bats and birds throughout her lifetime to be able to tell the difference immediately. “
Yes. I literally mean through. It looked like liquid, but it moved under its own power.” “
“ Don’t whine. It’s not befitting a crime lord.”
Jason didn’t even bother to respond as he pulled in through the cracked open gates of the cemetery. Better to park his bike here rather than on the street. B would actually never let him hear the end of it if someone tried to steal his tires.
It didn’t take him long to find the impact site. There were spatters of sinister glowing green liquid, and the sight of it made Jason’s gorge rise. There was no way that was what it looked like. As he circled around the deep divot in the earth, Jason could make out what looked like handprints in the earth.
Whoever had landed here had hit the ground with enough force to dig several inches into the loamy soil before it looked like they had crawled out with clawed fingers digging deep divots into the dirt as it dragged itself towards the slim opening that led into the Gotham sewer system.
“Yeah, there’s no way I’m fitting through that opening.” Jason drawled. “We’ll have to call in one of the Robins. What a shame.”
“ Nice try. There’s a manhole less than 50 feet from where you’re standing.”
Jason let his face drop forward with a dramatic sigh before he strode over to the manhole. With a grunt of effort, he pulled the thick metal up and to the side before he peered down into the darkness. Thankfully, his mask helped him see through the pitch black, and he was able to locate a ladder without trouble.
He curled his lip a little with disgust before dropping down into the muck. The ladder was made out of a sturdy metal, but he could still feel flakes of rust coming off underneath his leather gloves, and his boots slipped a little on some sort of slimy algae. Jason could hear Oracle breathing quietly in his ear, but they had both gone quiet as he had gotten closer to whatever fresh horror had arrived in Gotham city this time. The water was as disgusting as he had feared when he finally hit the floor, but it was still less slippery than trying to walk on the slick sides that slanted inwards to direct the water. Hood’s mask would have had trouble distinguishing the dark stain of normal blood from the filth that coated the surfaces around him but the bright neon of whatever this creature was dripping stood out in stark contrast to everything around it.
His impression of danger only deepened when he felt his chest rumble like he was standing next to a speaker thrumming with bass. He was so focused on following the small trailing drops that when Jason tripped over some sort of submerged trash he didn’t have the wherewithal to catch himself.
Thankfully his mask was sealed tightly enough that none of the disgusting water actually got into his mouth or eyes but he knew that as soon as the mask was taken off he was going to be able to smell himself. Hell, regular civilians would be able to smell him coming before they heard his motorcycle. The thrumming noise came to an abrupt halt when he hit the water, and then Oracle's laughter rang out across the line. Jason had to grit his teeth hard to hold back an annoyed snarl.
“Shut it, O. It’s your fault I’m down here anyway.”
“ I told you. Cameras caught something falling out of the sky. I found the furrow that it left.”
“ In the goddamn cemetery.”
“ Yes, but you saw the same thing I did.”
“Yeah, something dragged itself away from the impact site.”
“Satellites saw whatever fell. They literally survived a fall from low atmosphere space and then had the strength to pull themselves into the sewers.”
“Hn, I’m seeing some sort of liquid.”
“I mean the splatter marks I'm seeing. They'd match up to what I’d expect to see if someone managed to drag themselves through Gotham city water.”
" But this shit is looking a hell of a lot more like Lazarus Water?”
Jason had been feeling more and more sketched out as he stepped past what felt more and more like he had stepped into an evil Jackson Pollock painting. He could see handprints in the smears of green that looked almost human. But there was something wrong with the edges. Like whatever had made them didn’t have just normal fingertips. Little indentations in the brick marked the spaces where claws had dug in a little too forcefully to be human.
When Hood finally turned a corner in the sewers and found the source of the Lazarus water he barely even paused when he saw the dirty frayed edges of some sort of black rubbery suit and just reached out to drag whatever the hell had been stupid enough to show up right on his fucking doorstep out of the darkness.
“ Wait! Hood, be care…!! ”
The clawed hand that whipped out of the darkness shone off-white even in the darkness of the sewers, but Hood didn’t have time to dodge before they caught hard in the alloy that covered his left cheek. He felt the fine cracks as they started to form before he was hit with a sudden icy cold that burned ferociously for a moment before he felt his helmet completely shatter. Jason could only see a vague shadow of whatever had just hit him, but it was more than enough, and he aimed a hard punch directly where somebody's nose should be.
He felt cartilage snap under his knuckles and smirked when his opponent's head snapped backwards. And continued backwards further than any human spine should be able to bend. It twisted sinuously around and sent another swiping blow in his direction. This time Jason had enough time to dodge the uncanny blow, and he leapt backwards to give himself some space. He heard a low growl of frustration from the man across from him, and Hood’s eyes widened as he caught sight of the other man's face for the first time. The clear plastic of the bite mask was deeply embedded in the skin around the stranger's face.
The edges were sewn into his skin with what looked like a thin wire. Where the metal bars that would usually be in front of his lips had instead been wound through them. Sealing them completely shut. The young man’s eyes glowed the same neon green as the Lazarus water. Eerily similar to his own eyes when the Pit rage took over; but brighter, almost incandescent. His hair swirled in violent waves around his head as though taken by an unseen riptide, glowing white in the gloom. His skin was almost as pale as his hair; though the filth of the sewers had spread a disgusting film across his face. Jason could see the tear tracks that had sloughed off the dirt in ghostly pale streaks.
The rumbling growl that Jason had heard was coming from deep within the man’s slender chest. He could see the way the man’s jaw clenched hard as he strained to open his mouth against the tortuous contraption that was entrenched in his face.
He hoped, God did Jason hope, that the mask was a new fixture because whatever he had been trying to do, the young man jerked his head sideways and pawed ineffectually at the edges of the plastic. Clawed fingertips caught and held but weren’t able to pull the fucking muzzle off of his face. With a newly frustrated growl, the man changed tactics and looped a finger through the metal x’d through his lips and pulled. Jason couldn’t see where the electric shocks that started to spark across the mask came from. There didn’t seem to be any sort of electronics attached to the mask itself but wherever they had come from the shocks were enough to drop the man where he stood.
He was nearly covered by the sewage that he had fallen into, and Jason had years of training to thank for the fact that he managed to get out of the water before it became dangerously electrified. He scrambled up into the tunnel that the other person had emerged from while he tried to figure out how he was going to help this poor fucker without getting electrocuted for his troubles. After several long seconds Jason finally managed to reach out and snag the, hopefully rubber, tattered ends of the guys pants and dragged him up and out of the water with a grunting heave.
Jason curled himself away from the sparks that were still coming off of the guy.
Were the electronics in the man’s mouth?
It took several heaving breaths, nostrils flaring and chest racked with silent coughs, before the guy managed to get up on his knees and elbows. He rested his forehead on his fisted hands for several long seconds as they both tried to decide how best to handle the situation going forward. Green eyes slid over to him, and Jason felt a completely foreign crash of emotion sweep through him in a wave. The top notes of whatever this being was sending his way were aggressive!mean!GETAWAY! But underneath that was a wave of agonized terror that left him nearly breathless.
Jason held back a snarl of fear when he felt something shift in his chest and respond without his conscious permission. Something that felt a little bit like the Pit but a lot like when he was trying to sooth his siblings after a hard night. Safe…safe here. Jason slowly slid further down the wall and took a deep deep breath to try and calm himself down.
They both lay, covered in filth, as they tried to recover from the sudden cessation of violence and stared into each others eyes. “
Jesus, now he’d have to talk to Oracle about everything that had just happened in the space of several silent minutes.
He’d have to explain what happened to Da…Batman.
Jason let his head fall back against the dirty brick and groaned aloud.
