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It had been a normal meeting for the Justice League, right up until it wasn't. Bruce couldn't even find it in him to berate himself for not seeing this coming.
A laughing, flaming, glowing, robot suddenly crashed through the wall of their meeting room, wielding what looked like a Gatling gun in one hand and a sword in the other. His eyes swept across the room, gliding over Bruce, Constantine, The Flash, and Wonder Woman before letting out another maniacal laugh and declaring, "I found you! Your hides will be great additions to my collection!"
"Is that a robot?!" Barry said incredulously before immediately flickering over and attempting to land a hit on the newly arrived enemy. A cut off, "What the—?" was all they could hear before Barry went careening right into the wall behind, as if he had misjudged the distance. Bruce frowned. Or… as if he had somehow gone through their enemy.
By this point Diana had already crossed the room and attempted to grab a hold of the robot in an attempt to subdue it, but her arms closed over nothing. She dropped back to the ground just as Bruce's batarang sailed harmlessly through their enemy. Diana voiced Bruce's own thoughts with a curt, "We cannot touch him!"
Bruce's frown deepened as a sudden thought struck him and he turned to look at the wall the robot had crashed through, finding it completely whole. He hadn't broken through the wall, he had gone through it.
Bruce had just enough time to have the thought that if we can't touch him, then maybe he can't touch us before the ghost let loose a volley of shots from his gun; shots which most definitely lodged themselves deep within the floors and walls. Bruce deftly upended the table in front of him for cover just as the volley reached him and felt a brief flicker of relief as Barry appeared next to him, dragging Constantine along.
He knew Diana would be okay from an attack like this, but it was proof enough that whoever—whatever—this was; it was able to hurt them. Now they just had to come up with a way to hurt it back.
The robot grinned, an expression filled to the brim with malice. "I am Skulker! I am the greatest hunter in the Realms, you can't escape me." He let loose another volley that thudded into the table, and Bruce could hear several of the shots pinging off Diana's bracelets.
Bruce filed the name away for later and decided that if material objects didn't work, then he would try energy ones. He stood up and fired off his electric gun and watched as it sailed right into, and through, Skulker's face. It seemed to be just as useless in hurting the robot as everything else, but Bruce's sharp eyes picked up on an almost imperceptible flinch as the attack approached him. Was it an involuntary flinch? Or did it have something to do with the electricity?
Diana seemed to have arrived at a similar conclusion regarding energy based weapons as she swiped her whip out. Bruce would never admit it, but seeing the whip that was able to hold down some of the world's most powerful heroes and foes sail through this thing as if it wasn't even there, well… It didn't bode well.
To his right, he could hear Constantine swearing under his breath. "Fuck. I know what this is." He turned to face Bruce and Barry and Bruce tensed up as he took in the other man's wide eyes. "That's not a robot. That's a ghost."
"A ghost?" Flash asked incredulously, following it up with a small laugh "There's no such things as ghosts!"
"Tell that to him!" Constantine said as he muttered out what sounded like a spell under his breath, swearing when it clearly did nothing.
Barry frowned as he said, "We'll see," before launching himself out and around the table only for his punch to go right through the robot's—the ghost's—legs. Bruce watched as Barry and Diana proceeded to successfully draw Skulker's attention, even if they didn't succeed in even touching him. There was no time to waste. He turned to Constantine and gruffly asked, "Well, how do we combat this?"
If he knew what it was, then he should know how to defeat it.
Constantine chewed on the cigarette in his mouth. "I think I can get him to go away, banish him back to where he came from, but it will take time. Time we don't have."
"Then get to work!" Bruce ordered, angry that they were wasting time talking as their colleagues where fighting an impossible battle.
Constantine shook his head. "No, you don't understand! We don't have time." He brought up his hip flask and took a big mouthful before continuing, "Not before he comes."
"He?" Bruce growled out, not liking the feeling of being left out of the loop. Whatever this was, it was big enough for Constantine to feel nervous, and that was never good news.
Constantine took another swig from his flask, waving a hand around in the air as he spoke, "Their King. The Ghost King. He has a bit of a reputation for gathering up his wayward subjects."
"That's a good thing, isn't it? We want this Skulker to go back." Bruce's words were punctuated by another round from the Gatling gun and Barry diving back behind the table with a curse. Diana gave a fighting shout but a quick glance revealed that her attacks still failed to connect.
Constantine drew his attention back with a quick shake of his head. "No, no it isn't a bloody good thing, believe me. You do not want the King of the Infinite Realms in your living ro—"
Constantine cut himself off with wide eyes and Bruce was just about to ask what was going on when he could feel the hairs on the back of his neck suddenly standing up, the smell of ozone and burnt flesh and singed hair reaching his nose.
The cigarette that had somehow managed to stay clinging to the edge of Constantine's lips the whole time dropped to the ground silently as he breathed out, "Oh no. Oh fuck. It's too late. He's here."
Bruce cast a quick glance around the room, not seeing anything new, and had just opened his mouth to ask where exactly this supposed king was when the whole room suddenly lit up in a blinding light; a light so strong that when it died down a split second later it felt as if the whole room plunged into darkness.
Before they had time to even register what had happened the light was followed by an ear-shattering boom, loud enough for Bruce to instinctively clasp his hands over his ears and hunker down.
He didn't take his eyes away from where the source of the light had been however, as in that split second he could have sworn he saw a figure; limbs distorted, twisted, branching, and somehow—impossibly— coalescing into the shape of a man.
Barry let out a yelp and Bruce instinctively flinched backwards as he could feel his skin tingling, hands spasming, muscles twitching, and hear stuttering in his chest as the electricity in the air surrounding them increased increased increased.
"The king has arrived," Constantine choked out through clenched teeth.
The man, the king, the being, flickered in and out of sight faster than Bruce's brain could process; the bright shape of him searing itself into Bruce's retinas with every pulse of light. As the being moved he seemed to flicker as if in stop motion; every time the being came back into blinding, searing, painful, view a new image burned itself into Bruce's retinas, painting a pantomime of movement with horrifying delay.
Even though Bruce couldn't make out a mouth in the brightness of twisting and branching electricity that made up his form, he spoke. "I have come to collect what is mine."
Even without the mouth to accompany it, the voice seemed to lag; arriving a split second after it should. Rolling in like a wave of thunder.
Bruce had thought he had stood face to face with being beyond comprehension before, but he had never before had trouble even wrapping his head around what he was seeing and hearing, not being able to trust his own senses. Not like this.
The being, without regard for his scrambling thoughts, turned its blazing and burning attention towards the robot that had called itself Skulker who, Bruce suddenly realized, had frozen in place as soon as the king had arrived. Bruce didn't blame him; he himself wasn't able to convince his own muscles to obey him. Something detached and analytical in the back of Bruce's brain connected the dots as to why the ghost had seemed to react to the electric attack above all else. After all, the pulsing evidence was right in front of them.
Then all other thoughts fled as the king spoke up again, voice thundering in his ears and seeming to press into his very soul. "Oh, it's just you."
And then he moved.
Between one pulse of light and the next he was in front of the frozen ghost, and the next pulse showed Skulker being sucked into a beam of some sort, and the next he was gone.
Just like that.
The being turned to face them, motion stuttered and limbs branching out. Bruce was suddenly very aware that he didn't even have the beginning of an idea on how to fight this. If that was even a possibility. His brain was certainly screaming otherwise.
There was no insulation that could protect from this.
The only thing he could do was brace for the eventual electrical discharge.
All that was to say that when the room was plunged into darkness and the charge surrounding him suddenly disappeared, Bruce almost stumbled forward in surprise and instinctual relief.
He blinked rapidly to try and acclimate his eyes to what he realized was the normal light level of the room and as he did so he came to realize that in front of them stood a young man—a boy—with a slightly embarrassed grin on his face and white hair.
Bruce's eyes were still showing him the afterimages of the being every time he blinked, and the branching monstrosity was superimposed on top of this boy now standing in front of them with sparkling eyes. "Wow! You're Wonder Woman! The Flash! And John Constantine!" He turned his eyes towards Bruce. Sparkling eyes. Not burning. "And you're Batman!"
Barry breathed out a weak, "What the fuck is going on?"
Bruce didn't have any answers as his brain was still trying to process what had happened, moving too slow for his liking, as it scanned over the room and taking in all of his allies standing blinking in the exact position they had been in before the king's arrival, evidently only now finding it in themselves to move. He didn't take any joy in realizing they had all been in the same boat.
At least whatever it had been was gone now.
Of course that was when Constantine had to straighten up and nod his head towards the boy with a slightly strained, "Your highness."
Your…?
Bruce turned his eyes back to the boy and his sparkling white eyes. Sparkling. Literally.
Small bursts of electricity seemed to branch out of them like Tesla coils, reaching for anything near, as if the being couldn't be completely contained by the innocent form now standing in front of them.
The being waved Constantine off with another smile. "No need for that! If anything, I'm the one who should thank you for distracting Skulker. I'm sorry he caused you trouble. But man, I can't believe I got to meet you guys! I'm a huge fan!"
This seemed to take Constantine by surprise as he frowned, shook his head, and reached for another cigarette.
Barry, eyes glued on the apparent king of all ghosts, stuttered out, "No—no problem. We're happy to—to help?"
Diana lowered her hands to her side and asked hesitantly, "You are the King of hell?"
The boy gave a bit of a grimace before nodding. "That's one of my titles, yeah. My name is Phantom, but you can call me Danny!"
"Alright Danny," Bruce said with as stable a voice as he could muster, "would you be willing to tell us about what just happened?"
He didn't necessarily want to invite this being into staying longer than absolutely necessary, but he also didn't like the glaring holes in his knowledge that had now become horrifyingly apparent. Holes he hadn't even been aware of before today. He made a metal note to grill Constantine about this later.
Danny's eyes lit up, even more so than before. "Oh, like an official debrief?"
Bruce nodded, thrown by the sudden enthusiasm before him. Thrown by how much he could see his own sons in it. "Sure."
"I would love to!" Danny said with a beaming smile and Bruce found himself thinking that maybe he had somehow misinterpreted what had happened, drawn the wrong conclusions in the moment. If he couldn't even wrap his brain around what he had seen, couldn't even put words to it, then all he had to go on for the moment was what was in front of him, and that was a smiling boy who was eager to help.
Sure, Bruce's skin was still tingling slightly, but this child couldn't have been as horrifying as he had thought. There was no way.