Chapter Text
"Why weren't we notified of a breakout?" Batman growled, as the batmobile raced towards the carnage. Between the panicked screams of the usually stoic Gothamites - seasoned veterans of many a rogue attack - fleeing the scene, the flashes of neon green accompanied by manical laughter, & the vast sheets of ice forming between buildings, he fully expected to be about to confront the combined chaos of the Joker, Scarecrow, AND Mr Freeze, & it would've been nice to have been given more than a few minutes to prepare (though there were a few things that weren't quite adding up, his detective's mind informed him).
"Because there hasn't been one." Oracle's calm - if somewhat confused - voice in his ear, said.
"What? Joker? Scarecrow? Freeze?"
"All acounted for. I have eyes on them all, safe & soun- actually, it looks like Dr Crane may have got his hands on a few things he shouldn't have..." the faint sound of fingers moving over a keyboard accompanied the screech of tires as Batman flung himself around one last corner & exited the vehicle, leaving it where it - hopefully - would be safe from flying debris. He was silent a moment, giving Oracle time to - presumably - inform Arkham's staff of the unfolding situation.
"But he's there, he's in his cell?" Batman pressed, as he grappled to the nearest rooftop.
"Yes."
"Then what the hell are we dealing with?"
He swung in to land atop the building, giving him a bat's-eye view of the ever-expanding incident, & stared.
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Danny fully, 100% regretted ever leaving his hotel room.
It had seemed like a good idea 20 minutes ago, after a full day stuck in the GAV, forced to listen to his parents' impassioned rants about their research & what this latest breakthrough - that they were sure to make, no question abut it - would mean. All the ways it would allow them to persecute Danny Phantom & his kind. A day spent desperately hoping that none of his parents' notoriously unreliable inventions went off unexpectedly (the close quarters of the GAV - & it's lack of escape routes - adding an extra edge to that ever-present possibility). As soon as they got to the hotel, he just had to get out for a while, just breathe in silence (or at least, the chaotic sounds of a seething - but impersonal - city). He'd telegraphed his intentions to Jazz, making sure his sister was okay with him leaving her alone with Them, then ducked out the door, calling that he was going to go find a corner store & grab snacks. (He didn't think his parents even heard, they were too caught up in their own little world of excitement, but at least he could honestly say that he'd told them if, by some miracle, they happened to ask where he'd been later.)
Of course, Danny wasn't foolish enough to openly wander around Gotham, one of the world's most dangerous cities, alone, at night. - Especially given that the hotel his parents had chosen was in far from the best neighborhood; their situational awareness & self-preservation instincts had never been very good, but they seemed to be getting worse. He slipped into a side alley & allowed invisibility & intangibility to wash over him, before floating through the crowded streets as if they were empty.
He was just about to allow himself to drift upwards, hoping to find a convenient rooftop where he could lay back & possibly glimpse a star or two through the smog, when a powerful blast hit him from behind, sending him pinwheeling through the crowd, & splattering dozens of innocent bystanders in ectoplasm. Given that unidentified glowing green chemicals are pretty much universally bad - doubly so in Gotham, with it's seemingly endless parade of scientifically-inclined rogues - the crowd, predictably, began to panic.
A shrill cry of "show yourself, ghost" was accompanied by another, bigger blast from an even bigger than usual rocket launcher on his dad's Jack's shoulder (Danny vaguely recalled his Dad ranting, about some upgrades he &Maddie had made to their weaponry, during the drive from Amity Park. - A rant Danny had been too keyed up to pay attention to at the time, but had apparently remembered in spite of himself - his dad did have a tendency to repeat himself, after all, especially when he was excited. "The Fenton Boo-zooka, Dan-o, our biggest & best yet. It's really quite stunning!") Yeah, stunning, Danny thought, sluggishly. Something extra in the mix was affecting him, slowing his reactions. He did his best to shake it off, weaving through the fleeing crowd as quickly as possible, hoping to divert danger from them.
Blast after erratic blast tore through the crowd, following his meandering path, cutting him off at every turn. It sent Gothamites scrambling this way & that, ripping chunks out of concrete walls & asphalt, punching dents in cars, & shattering windows. As Danny dodged & wove, just barely avoiding having more chunks punched out of him, he realised 3 things:
1) his parents' latest weapon was apparently a lot less non-lethal to non-ghosts than most of their previous efforts (for people who hated ghosts with such passion, they sure did a lot of things that were liable to create them),
2) they'd updated their tracking &/or targeting tech again (some of these blasts were WAY too close for comfort) though how quickly they'd found him after he left the hotel - in human form, no less, even if he was using his powers - should've also told him that,
3) he was going to have to reveal himself.
He balked at the last one. How he was going to explain Phantom's presence in Gotham to his already overly-ecto-thirsty parents was a mystery, but that would just have to be a problem for future Danny. Current Danny just couldn't ignore his need to protect the innocent (or as innocent as one gets in Gotham) civilians from his parents' mad rage.
Swooping in low & close, he dropped his invisibility & transformed right in front of them, hoping the blinding flash of light his transformation inevitably produced would blind them just enough to allow a few more people to escape (whilst also protecting his identity). Summoning his ice powers as he did so, he temporarily sealed his parents in a solid dome of ecto-ice. A dome which remained intact for all of 5 seconds before a blast - fired blind - tore through it.
Jack's head appeared in the hole, blinking away dazzle.
"Phantom," he roared, firing off yet another blast that must've been deafening to a man not wearing ear protection (come to think of it, his always-booming voice did seem to be even louder than usual). The ricochet caused the Boo-zooka to slam against the roof of the ice dome, bringing more of it crashing down in glittering shards. Maddie sprung from the debris, rolled, & somehow came up holding not one, not two, but three weapons: two ecto-blasters clutched in one hand (fingers on both triggers), & what looked like an el-ecto-fied cattle prod, which she flung at Danny overarm. He dodged, then lurched forward as it ricocheted off a lamppost & buried itself against his side, where it stuck. Phantom screamed as ectoplasmically-charged electricity coursed through him, his shudders eventually dislodging the prod, leaving behind a scorched wound burned through the side of his suit. Semi-congealed ectoplasm sluggishly leaked from the wound, hissing & spitting against the pavement below. Danny's screams cut off abruptly as he bit down on the panicked Wail rising desperately from his panicked core. He grimaced, tasting the far too familiar bile & blood that rose in his throat in response. Shudders still coursed through him, in spite of the prod's absence, only some of them due to the residual electricity it left behind. He did his best to ignore them. There wasn't time to deal with the trauma caused by his death right now (Jazz could yell at him for suppressing his emotions later, when he was safe). He swivelled to follow his parents' movements, keeping them as far away from the bulk of the crowds fleeing the poorly-constructed buildings surrounding them as possible.
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It took Batman a few moments to process the chaotic scene below him.
Two rogues, clad in some kind of jumpsuits - clearly modelled after hazmat suits, but leaving far too much skin - not to mention vital facial organs - uncovered to provide any kind of real protection - lurked in the street, apparently oblivious to the carnage - & fleeing citizens - that surrounded them, firing some kind of energy weapons with single-minded intensity.
Facing them was a small figure, pale & glowing, with hair that seemed to move as if floating in an underwater current. It- He. He had the general appearance of a teenage boy, & wore a jumpsuit of a slightly different sort to those of the two rogues. It put Batman more in mind of the costumes many of his colleagues wore, right down to the stylised symbol in the center of the boy's chest (currently partially obscured by various small burns & stains). He was covered in injuries. A large hole had been punched through his right shoulder. It leaked greenish blood, which dripped down the adjoining arm hanging uselessly below. A painful-looking burn seared into his left side, leaking yet more greenish fluid. Dozens more small cuts & burns littered his arms & legs, probably made by a combination of shots fired by the smaller of the two figures' guns, & flying debris. Fortunately, the boy's suit remained mostly intact, but Batman suspected his skin would be littered with bruises from the impact of the blasts, & unless his suit contained some kind of heatproof properties, most of the burns would carry through as well.
The boy - clearly either a meta or an unknown alien - was using some kind of ice powers to hastily throw up a series of translucent barriers between the rogues & the bottlenecked Gothamites trying to escape down too-narrow streets. Blast after blast from an oversized bazooka, wielded by the larger of the two rogues - a mountain of a man - ripped through the fragile shields, which could only do so much to slow or deflect blasts of such power & magnitude. The smaller Rogue - a woman, from her figure, which her skintight suit showed off almost as effectively as Catwoman's - was at least making some effort to conceal her identity, unlike her bare headed partner, wearing a snug hood that covered the upper portion & sides of her face. A pair of tinted goggles lay over it, possibly affording her some targeting advantage. She was crouched in the protective shadow of her much larger companion, using twin guns - smaller than the shoulder cannon her partner held, but still oversized - to fire smaller, vicious-looking, blasts, that sizzled as they flew towards the floating boy or melted through his icy shields. Both Rogues appeared to be screaming at the boy, accompanying their physical attacks with some kind of verbal assault.
In addition to the sheets of greenish ice, the young meta also seemed to be capable of summoning pulses of glowing energy, which coalesced around his hands. (Or perhaps they were simply different forms of the same power or substance, given the similarities in colour? That was a question that would have to be saved for later.) The boy used this energy to deflect the concentrated, equally greenish, blasts the female rogue flung at him. His movements were sluggish, possibly due to blood loss, or perhaps as a result of some element of the Rogues' attacks. In spite of everything, he seemed to be smiling & talking - possibly throwing out some sort of witty banter in response to the Rogues' apparent vitriol, much like Batman's Robins did - though it was impossible to hear anything over the sounds of destruction & fear that filled the air.
It was clear that the boy - who looked younger & younger the longer Batman looked at him; not much older than Damien, though he could just be small, like Tim - was doing everything he could to protect the people, & even property, around him, at the expense of protecting himself. Every time an errant blast landed in the midst of a knot of stragglers, causing fresh cries of pain & fear to errupt, he flinched as if it pained him worse than his own wounds. Fortunately the rogues didn't seem to have noticed this achiles heel - or just didn't care. Batman had no doubt that had they tried to fire directly on the thinning crowds, the boy would have thrown himself directly in the path of the blasts.
Hearing the zip of grappling guns & soft thuds as the rest of Gotham's vigilantes swung in to land, Batman turned to marshal his troops. The whole clan was there - including Signal, who'd been about go off-duty when the early evening call came in - any & all minor crimes temporarily forgotten in the face of the much bigger threat of an unknown Rogue or Rogues. Even Red Hood had shown up, apparently deciding the destruction came too close to his territory for comfort.
"Robin, Red Robin, & Nightwing, I want you to disarm & contain the smaller Rogue. Go carefully, she appears to have some kind of training,"
("Yeah, careful, Robin, she looks almost as vicious as you."
"When I require your advice, I will ask for it, Brown.")
"Spoiler, Red Hood, you're with me. We will take care of the larger Rogue; disarming him will be the first priority.
"Black Bat & Signal, I trust you to make contact with the meta - as discretely as possible - & bring him to a safe location." "I wish to talk to him afterwards," went unsaid, but was clearly understood by Batman's charges as they nodded.
"Right. Let's move out." Eight vigilantes swung into action.