Chapter Text
Well… Danny would give them a little bit of credit. These cultists were changing things up a little bit which to be entirely fair had been what he had snapped at whatever group had summoned him last time.
He didn’t think this was the same group. He was also very sure that their unique approach wasn’t entirely intentional. After all, the runes were the same as they usually were, about mid range for legibility and skill. They were also written in blood, because of course the second highest priority part of the whole thing that Danny wanted changed had been ignored again. The incense was store bought and made his nose itch but not in the actually magical way. They weren’t even being useful and minorly listening to the one thing he had gotten several books to actually say, which was to offer him a home cooked meal and he might stay long enough to listen. Instead they had what he was pretty sure was literal living rabbits in that spot which was so bad though still not the worst.
The worst was probably that they were just straight up ignoring his ‘change this if you want to not have a bad time’ list and instead had upped the ante. Specifically they had upped it via abducting the ‘symbols of gotham’ or something like that if he was reading the runes correctly. It might have also been pillars. He probably needed to study more with Clockwork if he was going to be deciphering chicken scratch. Anyway… these symbols of Gotham were going to be sacrificed to him which was most certainly not how he wanted to meet the batclan of Gotham… and Bruce Wayne. They had also gone the wholly unique approach of abducting him in order to summon the ghost king which just was a whole thing.
“Hey uh… cult dudes… a question…”
At least Bruce Wayne was calm, not struggling or wiggling. Rather that was Nightwing and Red Hood who were pretending to be some kind of worms and making the entire group spin around in circles above the summoning array.
“Silence, sacrifice! Be grateful that you shall be such a vital part in-”
“Yeah, yeah, summoning the great blah, blah… I get that part but your runes say ‘Symbols of Gotham’ so… why am I here?”
Bruce Wayne shifted slightly, probably trying to look at him. Not that he’d succeed, he was back to back with Danny… mostly. “You can read the runes?”
The cultist snorted. “Obviously you are related to the Waynes and while it is our great failure that we were not able to capture the blood child… a relation with so many defining traits will no doubt still make the ghost king satisfied.”
So many things wrong with… whatever, Danny would deal with one at a time. “I’m not related. I’m a Fenton.”
“Silence! You bear his black hair, blue eyes, and aura of despair!”
“Hey! Not cool…” That was just insulting to both of them.
“Be silent or we shall offer you to the ghost king gagged!”
“Right… That’s going to make communicating with you guys exceedingly hard, you know?.”
Beside him Red Hood hissed. “Kid, knock it off.”
“You guys know that summoning the ghost king like this is only going to piss him off right? Like… did no one read the updated dos and don’ts of summoning?”
Aaaaaand, he was being ignored. Well, ignored by the cultists anyway. They had taken up positions and started chanting and pointedly pretending he was silent. The vigilanties he probably should have thought more about were clearly interested however.
“There’s a dos and don’ts of summoning?”
“What the hell, kid?”
Danny took a note from the cultists and ignored the questions. Instead he silently judged the cultists' latin. They made a whole show of chanting and he kind of felt the summoning in his core but it felt a bit odd. At best he’d relate it to something between a dial tone, busy signal, and that confused sound some people related with a series of question marks.
The circle itself lit up brilliantly with green fire and frost that spilled across the cultist’s robes. ~Fancy~.
The lead cultist raised his hands, dragging the whole thing out to the point that Red Hood groaned. Danny however just grinned. “Get on with it, cultist guy. Go on, finish it.”
The guy brought his hands down, shouting the last phase which if Danny wasn’t already here would be hella annoying. It was also included in the list of don’t since it was basically like screaming right into his ear while he went Ancients knew where.
The light flashed and… dissipated. “Ooohhh… sucks for you. Now… about how you fucked up the summoning…”
“Silence!” The head cultist dropped his arms while muttering broke out through the rest.
“That should have worked…”
“What went wrong?”
“We followed exactly…”
One of the others stepped forward, puffed up and pointing a finger at the head dude. “He has been deemed unworthy!”
Danny fought between grinning and rolling his eyes. “Oh look, a coup of cultists.” The accusation brought on shouting, although it was mostly lost to the background when Bruce spoke up.
“Chum,” That got the attention of the ‘pillars of Gotham’. “You said you could read the runes?”
Right… he had said that. Welp, too late now, time for damage control. “A little? Like… I’d kind of put it at semi-lit? 2nd Grade Infinite Realms Ghost Speak… oh, although they’re using Ancient Ghost Speak so… maybe 1st year second language?”
“Ancient. Ghost. Speak.” Red Hood had an odd sound in his voice that the modulator of his helmet wasn’t quite getting rid of.
Nightwing was twisting to kinda look at him though. “Are you an occultist?”
“Nah, my parents were ectobiologists. Ghost hunters. Noooooot the greatest ethics in the world and the ghosts were…are… kinda mad at them but seem to be taking it out via giving me tutoring. Kind of like how the crazy aunt teaches the kids all the bad words so they don’t have to babysit anymore? That kind of vibe.”
“Kid… are you okay?”
“There are so many worrying things in that statement.”
He shrugged off the two vigilanties. “It's like that sometimes. I’m good though. Well… not good. I’d rather not be hanging above a stupid summoning circle but I’ve definitely been worse. Plus! I started college so that’s… a thing…”
“These ghosts… are tutoring you as… revenge?”
“Oh… no there’s other… uhhhhh, I mean sure!” Right, the summoning circle hadn’t actually worked, well it had but it didn’t look like it did so he probably shouldn’t be spilling out all kinds of things. Though he wasn’t sure how exactly to get out of this because by now he most definitely had the attention of the trio with him which would be bad. He’d kind of forgotten since the Justice League generally ignored Amity Park that they might be a threat to him… maybe… He had been working on the whole portal thing and as far as he could tell he could just kind of answer any given summoning and it would pull him out of whatever or wherever he was at the time.
Oh… he should have Sam write up a summoning circle for him and see if it’d pull him out of the thermos…
“Wayne relation!”
It took Danny a moment to realize that the cultist… who by lack of bodies was probably the original leader was talking to him.
“Fenton. Not a Wayne!”
“Yet.” Red Hood muttered. Danny was pretty sure Nightwing tried to kick him but got Bruce instead.
“You have shown knowledge of the occult! Tell us why the circle did not work!”
“Seriously?” Danny scoffed at the guy. “Nah, I think I’m gonna leave you hanging. I’m a little tied up at the moment after all.”
He startled a laugh from Nightwing while the other two groaned.
“You will tell us of this list you’ve referenced so that we may summon the ghost king!”
“Oh? Are you actually planning to listen to it?”
The cultist audibly ground his teeth. “State this list and we shall decide if it has merit.”
“Let us down first.”
“Excuse you!”
“You heard me. Let us down. I’m not cooperating all nice and please while hanging upside down 10 feet in the air tied to a couple of dudes wearing spandex. No offense guys, but that is uncomfortable to be squished against.”
“It’s not spandex…” Nightwing muttered
Red Hood just wiggled. “Yeah well, you aren’t exactly a great cuddle buddy either Mr. skin and bones and sharp elbows in my kidneys.”
“Besides, it’s not like you need us up here. In fact, if you do keep us, or any being inside the circle then it’s not going to work. Giving you that one for free. Call it a show of good faith.”
“Nonsense! The Ghost King must be shown the proper deference and respect!”
“You can show deference and respect by following his rules. Do you want to meet the ghost king or not?” Hopefully not. Hopefully the pair of Gotham knights would figure out how to get them out of this situation before they summoned him again and he popped up in the middle of the circle. Could you summon a ghost from like 10 feet away? Something else to test. Sam was going to have a ball once he got back.
There was general muttering and unhappiness. Eventually though, with clear reluctance, the group was lowered a little less than gently to the ground. They were not untied. Instead they were hauled up and out of the circle and left all bound together but at least upright… mostly… Red Hood kind of got the short stick of everyone else being tilted on top of him while he grunted and hissed what might be insults at Nightwing. It might also be coded messages though? Some of the phrases were really, really pointed.
The cultist stood before them. “Speak these rules.”
“Right, k. Guess I did promise that. Well, you have the first and foremost one.”
He took a deep breath and continued. “Don’t use living or previously living beings in your summoning.”
That got him pretty much the gasps and affront he expected, which naturally he was about to make so much worse. “Hate to break it to you, but rule 2 is no writing anything in blood, don’t care the source. No blood. Actually, no body parts or substances at all! So, you’re gonna have to rewrite the entire circle. Try chalk. It works pretty well and you can use fun colors!”
“Insolence!” Oh the lead cult guy was actually shaking with rage. How fun. “Perh-”
Danny wasn’t 100% sure which of the two moved first. He felt the ropes slack just the slightest amount and suddenly he was rolling out of his cuddle pile while Nightwing and Red Hood lunged.
In the resulting chaos, Bruce Wayne caught hold of Danny and hauled him back and out of the way. Which was kind of unfortunate. At least Bruce didn’t try to grab him again when he ducked out of the hold and beelined for a storage closet. The billionaire did follow him though, and got a mop bucket shoved into his hands as a result.
“Break the circle.” He hissed, nice and low under the current shrieking going on.
Bruce’s eyes widened, and then he, with more seriousness than Danny was expecting, nodded. He grabbed his own bucket a second later. He just left the hose running after half assed filling the buckets and took off.
Red Hood was dropping anyone who tried to start chanting while Nightwing kept between the cultists and the ‘civilians’. A task that got so much harder when Danny skidded through the summoning lines and threw his bucket onto as many runes as possible. Bruce’s bucket followed a moment later while the cultists collectively shrieked bloody murder.
Apparently getting the idea of what they were doing Red Hood happily joined in spreading the water around, using a cultist as a mop. Nightwing continued his self appointed guard duty while Danny and Bruce ran back for more water.
All in all, he got about half of the circle erased before the fight was over. A pretty good amount really, and while the vigilanties got things nice and tied up with a bow for the cops, Danny sat against the wall panting. Well, at least this time he didn’t have to fly all the way home. Ah… filing the police report might be interesting though…
With two of the city's vigilantes on the scene he wondered if he’d be able to sneak away without tapping into ghost abilities.
At least things went fairly quickly when the police did arrive, although in good part that was because the press came with them and absolutely everyone wanted Bruce Wayne’s attention. Somewhat to Danny’s surprise, Nightwing helped him sneak out the back once he showed an inclination to do so. Rather, he started sneaking away and while he was trying to figure out how to get out the back door without ghosting through it, Nightwing had appeared and picked the lock.
Danny spent a good few minutes a few blocks away in an alley debating on how exactly to get out of Nightwing’s somewhat aggressive insistence on escorting him back to his home. Ultimately though… he figured the cat…bat?... bird?... was out of the bag. He’d drawn the attention of the city’s heroes though not for a reason any of them had bet on.
Maybe they would just check him out for being occult, find out he was the kid of ghost hunters, and leave it at that. That was the best case though and that still involved looking into him which meant they’d have his address anyway.
Danny sighed and accepted the escort which had Nightwing grinning in honestly… kind of a really nice way. He grinned even brighter when Danny told him it came with conditions though, like a selfie together and them stopping to get food. Sue him, being kidnapped took a lot of time and he may or may not remember the last time he ate something considered real human food. Perks of being half ghost, the ghost king, and going to college in Gotham.
He wasn’t quite expecting for Nightwing to go above and beyond…
By the time he got back to his apartment he had a selfie with Nightwing in the alley, one with a whole order of Batburger, one with ice cream, and one headed into his apartment to prove he had gotten home safely. That last one might have been due to him sending the first one in the alley to the groupchat with something along the lines of ‘First Gotham kidnapping /and/ first photo op with a vigilante! Go Gotham bingo card!’. Jazz could analyze it all she wanted later that he’d let Nightwing into his apartment.
Maybe he’d be able to distract her by how genuinely surprised Nightwing seemed to be about that. Surprised and cautious. Danny just stared at him, and pointed at the Batburger bags. “Were you just going to eat those on the roof?”
“That’s pretty typical of us, yeah.”
… Right… well…
Danny gestured into his apartment again and left the final decision up to the guy. He had been keeping things kind of cleanish. Partially in case a bat or bird or other rogue did end up in his apartment and partially in case something or another happened and he managed to get something like a date. Neither were super likely but then again… his luck had always been a bit odd. Now, it was paying off in that while his engineering homework and invention parts scattered over the dining room set up and used more as inventing space none of it was questionable. Now, if someone looked into the locked and alarmed cabinets hidden behind the mobile desk that might be different but currently no one had reason to. Especially since he dropped his food on the coffee table in the living room.
“Your roommates won’t mind?”
“Nope.” He popped the p, debating for a moment but… the ride had already begun and it would take maybe 20 seconds for Tucker to find out if someone did or didn’t have roommates. Currently he was going to go with if Tucker can find it in under a minute, the bats and birds of Gotham could probably find it in the next few days. He’d listened to Tucker be both envious and such a fanboy enough times for the never seen but apparently very famous ghost (hah) computer wiz of the Gotham vigilantes known only as Oracle. He rather assumed that they would also be getting involved. “Don’t have any roommates to mind it.”
“You live alone?” Was that a bit of concern? Which was valid really. He glanced back to see Nightwing investigating the locks and door frame. That might be interesting. There was the building security that just came with the apartment and was par for the course for Gotham. Would the probably trained by a professional Nightwing pick up on the secondary measures?
“Mn, got super lucky in terms of stipends and stuff.” Which was true enough. He’d been able to cobble together a few actual grants and scholarships and with Tucker’s help he may have added a few more totally ‘real’ ones that hid what he was bringing in from Pariah Dark’s stash of gold and jewels. Add in that his parents had outright surprised him with a modest but actually existing college fund and sure the apartment wasn’t great but he got it all to himself within walking distance of the school and the observatory.
“Looks like the building has security, at least a little. Are the windows done too?”
He shrugged, gesturing towards them. “The lease said all around security.” The windows did. They also had his own security measures. Not that it had mattered for the kidnapping. They’d already gone over that he had been nabbed while walking back from class.
Nightwing investigated the windows while Danny pretended that he wasn’t a heathen and got napkins and things for the food. So far Nightwing had been pretty chill and really kind of easy to talk to. Light conversation with a few info gathering questions here and there. Nothing too serious or that stood out a huge amount.
Danny had been willing enough to provide answers. He was a college student, studying mechanical engineering. He was doing okay at it, and the physical side of things was great but the class structure killed him. He’d done a lot of the basic classes at community college but wanted to go to Gotham U due to its robust and definitely recognized engineering department. A byproduct of WayneTech giving out so many scholarships and pulling its interns primarily from there, Nightwing had explained. Danny wasn’t interested in joining WayneTech exactly. He would if it came up but he’d most likely go his own way inventing things. He already had the first steps of a patent on a desk air filter. He was pretty sure that Nightwing shoulder nudging him and asking if he needed to watch out for a new inventor rogue was a joke. He’d laughed and assured that he had no interest in being on Nightwing’s bad side.
Actually, while Red Hood had been the one predominantly getting physical, it was Nightwing Danny was more leery of in a fight. Nightwing got the closest to pretending that gravity didn’t affect him, could move in frankly astounding ways, and perhaps most important of all, had weapons that dealt with electricity. Danny’d had enough of that for a lifetime… after lifetime?
“Security isn’t terrible but you might consider adding your own system.” Nightwing joined him on the couch and after a moment leaned back with a groan. “Sweet, beautiful cushions.”
“Right?” The couch looked as old as it actually was under all the blankets he kept draped over it but really, it had that nice broken in without sinking thing going on. “Yeah, it’d been a debate. Was thinking about building one.” A sort of truth. He had put a lot of thought into building the system. No need to elaborate the timeframe and that the planning stages were long since done.
Danny ate like a feral goblin who hadn’t eaten in days. Nightwing wasn’t quite as bad but he still rapidly cleared his bag of food. After, he settled into actually looking serious. Danny eyed him, slurping on the soda.
“Earlier… during the whole kidnapping thing. How serious were you about knowing what those runes said, and… and being tutored by ghosts?”
Danny obnoxiously slurped more, thinking about how he wanted to answer. “Kinda sorta? I’m really not that far into learning the whole thing though, and those guys… is it handwriting in this case?... ehhhh… legibility was definitely in question. Oh, you don’t have to worry about it though, it’s really just because of my parents. I swear I’m not like trying to get the attention of ghosts or cults or anything like that. I’m certainly not going to be drawing any kind of summoning circles or anything. I do not need that kind of annoyance.” Especially when he was pretty sure he could just call a ghost and they’d show up? He could also portal to them or if he was feeling vindictive tell Cujo to go fetch them. All of those seemed viable. Not that he'd actually want to summon a ghost. He usually had enough trouble getting them to go away.
Nightwing drew in a deep slow breath. “Okay… but you do know occult things, even if you’re only being… being tutored for revenge… do you realize-”
“Trust me, I know how weird it is. I wouldn’t really say I know occult stuff, just when it comes to dealing with ghosts I guess.”
Nightwing nodded, “Okay. Thank you for being willing to share that.”
Danny shrugged. It hadn’t exactly been his intention, he’d mostly been looking to annoy the cultists but hey, maybe he could get out of this without too much annoyance.
“If you’re willing to, I… we … that is if it actually exists, the does and don’ts of summoning list you mentioned…”
Oh, well… that might be helpful to the vigilanties. At the very least it would make it clear that the Ghost King was not interesting in whatever the fuck the cultists were doing which seemed like a good idea. “Yeah! Sure, sure. Give me like… hold on I think I have a hard copy in the other room. It would actually be super helpful if you could like… I don’t know… maybe Batman can get it to the Justice League or something? It’s still kind of new so pretty much everyone is still using Pariah Dark’s preferences which are just yuck.”
Truthfully, he didn’t have a physical copy or maybe he always had a physical copy? Eh, another Schrodinger's cat instance of his life. Mostly he just needed to get to the other room and out of Nightwing’s line of sight in order to summon the list. He waved it a bit, willing it to just exist rather than be glowing and ready to poof out of existence. Once it had settled, he came back out.
“Here you go!”
In all, the list was two pages long and included a lot more don’t than do. It was also done in a very simple bullet point list.
Nightwing took it, giving him a look that Danny gleefully ignored. This might actually be super nice if Nightwing could get this to Batman who could get it to the Justice League. That way, if the Justice League did need his kingly interference then they’d hopefully do it correctly and he’d know and be willing to actually answer.
For now, Nightwing read through it. “This is only for the ghost king?”
“Well… the ghost king kind of sets the precedent so… it’s something to consider for a lot of ghosts. Oh, probably only ghosts though. I think… I have no idea how something like a demon would react to someone offering it cookies.”
“Thanks, for this.” Danny nodded along while Nightwing rose. “I’ll get it to everyone else officially.”
“That’d be great!”