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Jasmine Fenton had moved to Gotham both for her education and to get a bit of normalcy back into her life.
To many people, maybe most people, that would be a nonsensical statement. Gotham was famous for being a crime-ridden cesspit whose only redeeming factor was that a combination of supervillains, mob- and gang-driven gun violence, regular gun violence, and various charitable subsidies mostly driven by members the decades-famous and famously wealthy Wayne family kept the cost of living to one of the lowest in the nation.
That and the highest concentration of heroes-slash-vigilantes in the nation.
But Jazz was from Amity Park, post-Ghost Portal Amity Park, and had lasted only a few months at Yale before the sheer boredom of “normal” actually sunk her grades to the lowest they’d ever been. It wasn’t like she hadn’t done college-level classes, even highly difficult ones, before, either! No, this was a result of the past two years of her life before leaving home having been the absolute chaos of Amity Park post-Ghost Portal Activation and helping her brother with various ghostly shenanigans.
Anecdotal evidence from her classmates and other stories from around town suggested that she wasn’t alone - once the chaos of Amity Park sucked you in, it was hard to readjust to long stretches of peace. Her own Liminal nature almost certainly didn’t help.
So: Gotham, with its chaos, seemed a good compromise.
So. Sophomore year of college - which. Freshman year having finished at Amity County Community College thankfully managed to knock out quite a few General Education courses - and she’d moved in a month before classes started to a tiny apartment in the city but well off campus.
Roommates really hadn’t gone well the first time. Really hadn’t.
The one-bedroom apartment was actually kinda nice, for the rent. Cheaper, honestly, than living on campus, even if it came with online reviews that included which Bat’s territory it was supposedly in (Red Robin, but there was regular overlap) and who the most likely supervillain or mob-slash-gang threats were. /rGotham was surprisingly helpful in her education on this matter, honestly, and she’d gotten a mix of both public responses to her questions about where she was moving as well as private messages. The ones who were brutally honest in an attempt to scare her off were her favorites and she thanked those posters personally.
It wasn’t like she was going to advertise that she was better prepared for Gotham than almost anyone.
But! She was determined to do well at Gotham University, and part of that was, this time, going to be Keeping Busy.
So even though she had more than enough to get through school, between her student loans and Vlad’s, ah, generosity that they’d agreed to once Team Phantom realized just how much blackmail they had on the man and how easily they could actually destroy him? She was looking for a part time job. She’d never pictured herself working at a convenience store in a seedy area of a major city, but the lure of interesting people called to her, so she’d applied.
She didn’t expect to get caught up in a Rogue attack on the very first break of her very first shift.
Huh. The Gotham alerts app she’d installed on Reddit's recommendation hadn’t buzzed. But those sure were Joker goons.
And that sure was the Joker, coming in behind them.
Jazz pulled out her phone to make a quick report in the App, snapping a subtle picture while she was at it, pressed Submit, and, since her break was over, left the Breakroom with her phone back in her pocket and on silent.
Oh, sorry, she didn’t know what to do, Mr. Goon! Why yes, Mr. Joker, I’m absolutely terrified of you. Uh huh.
Jazz had never been on a theatrical stage, but after lying to her parent’s and other adult’s faces for years? This was a cakewalk. Just act how they expect you to, and don’t make trouble, nevermind that her manager was shaking in her boots and sweating bullets.
She wasn’t here to make waves. This wasn’t Amity Park. The local vigilanties did fine.
And then a minor setback - she didn’t catch what - caused something to spark the Joker’s temper and she saw it. She felt it. The Joker’s eyes flashed and all of Jazz’s liminal senses lit up in alarm and recognition .
Suddenly, it was a hell of a lot easier to be scared.
Three hours later, after Nightwing chased the Joker out of the store and having escaped the well meaning clutches of both the GCPD and her manager, Jazz, still externally calm, was emotionally reeling.
Because sure. She knew there were some less-than-traditionally-mortal people around Gotham. More than most cities certainly. Rumors abounded on both the internet and in brickspaces about how weird Gotham could get, and there was a whole Solomon Grundy thread on /rGotham. But zombie’s weren’t Jazz’s specialty - she probably couldn’t help the man - Ghosts were. Liminals were.
Halfa’s were.
The hair on the back of her neck had finally gone down, but she didn’t actually feel better.
Her brother picked up, first ring.
“Jazz? You never call this late, what’s wrong?”
“Danny,” she croaked out. Fuck. She didn’t want to panic him. “I’m not in direct danger right now. But we have a problem. A big one.”
She’d always, on some level, wondered how the Joker was still alive. He’d killed so many people, and in a crime ridden, vengeful city? Jazz wasn’t a killer or a murderer - and she didn’t want to be. But he’d killed hundreds, in a career spanning over a decade, and everyone knew it was him. How had no one simply shot him in revenge yet?
If her senses were right - and she didn’t think they were wrong , but for this she had to be sure - then maybe it was because he wasn’t entirely alive in the first place.
Jazz hoped, fervently, that she was wrong. Ancients, please, let her be wrong.
(She knew she wasn’t.)
Please, don’t let the Joker be a Halfa.
Two weeks, a quit job, twelve phone calls between Team Phantom, buckets of news and library research, a flawed and failed attempt by Tucker to hack Batman that three people yelled at him for, a visit from Dani so they could break into Arkham to put a remote sensor in the Joker’s cell while he was elsewhere in the facility, and too many buckets of carefully controlled panic later, Jazz found herself in Phantom’s Keep for a meeting of the Ghost King’s Council.
Three days ago, they’d confirmed what Jazz had sensed.
The Joker was the fourth known Halfa of the modern era.
He didn’t seem to have a lot of Ectoplasm, fortunately - for a ghost, he was terribly weak. But everyone present knew that that didn’t make him any less dangerous. Especially in the Living Realms. And the histories were always spotty around Halfas, so it was entirely possible that if he was exposed to more Ectoplasm, intentionally or not, he’d grow more powerful. Even more dangerous.
Danny was looking particularly disturbed, growing grimmer throughout the session. Jazz had done a lot of the research on the Earth side of things - hence all the visits to the Library - and she wished she didn’t know the number of human deaths attributed to the Joker and his actions.
She had thought it’d been hundreds. She’d underestimated by a factor of ten. The unconfirmed estimate was even more heinous.
The evidence was supplemented by others from the Infinite Realms themselves, too. Not every person became a ghost after death, of course, but with the sheer number of Dead, there were some very personal statements submitted as Evidence, once word got out as to what the King was looking for.
It was considered rude, taboo even, to ask a Ghost about their death, after all - but like all social mores there were some exceptions. A legal review in the name of justice or vengeance was the most acceptable exception, and definitely applied in this case. Nonetheless, every statement was voluntarily made and uncoerced.
Considering everything, all the numbers, how they could very well be missing statements from an unknown number of ghosts… There were too many. Far too many. Ghosts, after all, were most often made of violent deaths.
Eventually, Danny called a recess. Council meetings usually didn’t have them, but all members were aware he had some of the Living at the table and he used lunch as a desperate excuse for an hour’s break.
It wasn’t only the Living Liminals among them who needed it though, Jazz could see. No one was happy about this, but Frostbite looked particularly disturbed. Even more so, she saw the weight settling on Danny’s shoulders, heavier by the minute as they processed ream after ream of evidence of The Joker’s crimes. He met her eyes, and she knew .
Danny said a couple of brief words to his friends as they left the chambers - Sam, Tucker, Valerie, and even Dani were there today, as representatives for the Living Realms and voices to help explain human ethics, which did not always match up to Ghost’s. He took a brief moment with each of them, comforting them with a hug or a handclasp. Then, he waved Jazz along, and everyone else away, to join him in his private study.
Her heart sank, as if it could sink further. She knew what he needed to discuss with her.
The door shut behind him, and King Phantom deflated, leaving only Danny, her brother, behind.
“I don’t want this, Jazz,” he breathed with a trembling sigh. “I don’t want to have to order his End. I don’t want to ask this of you.”
She gathered up her baby brother into her arms and held him tight.
She already knew.
“Even if you asked me to pass on what I know, Danny, I wouldn’t. I don’t want to do it either, but I will,” she said, and he trembled in her arms.
“I knew what I was volunteering for, little brother. I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to be a killer, but I knew that I’d have to be, if you needed me to be. And I’m not happy about it, but I’m relieved it’s this, and not what we thought we’d need it for,” Jazz made her voice soothing, and her shoulder strong. She held the back of her brother’s head gently, and stroked his hair to calm him.
“Shhh. Danny. My brother, my King, it will be my honor to kill and end the Joker and stop him from doing either Realm any more harm.”
He sobbed. So did she.
So.
The Joker was a Halfa.
The Joker had proven, though reems of evidence, that he was both a continual danger and threat to the lives of others and, despite opportunities and encouragement to change his behavior, that he had no interest in doing so. Not even the inability, Jazz had noted in her research. No, he actively resisted changing his behavior to anything less harmful.
Jazz had read over the notes from his many psychologists and therapists. His treatment teams had consisted of a number of very reputable people through the years. There was an annual review, started about five years ago, of his actions and those of his various doctors, to try to get his treatment and escapes alike on a more even keel. Many of his early therapists notes were completely missing, and as Harley Quinn’s corruption by the man was well known, there could be many reasons why. Active sabotage on his part or hers of the records, the infamous corruption that Arkham had struggled with for decades, or even just normal human incompetence.
So. Early information was hard to come by.
The man wore makeup whenever he was allowed. Repeatedly, it was empathized that he was actually more distressed and harder to work with, more vicious even, without his crutch of makeup, so he was given a consistent supply.
Jazz stared at the one image of the file that was the man’s clean, unlayered face. Apparently, it was taken once a year, when they could. There were many years skipped.
It was scarred, yes, but many people had scars. It was lined, yes, with a bit of age… but. Jazz took a deep breath, and made herself take in the details.
The age lines were wrong. Sure, many people were naturally a bit youthful - Jazz had had a friend in high school whose grandmother, at 70, looked more like she was 45. Her mother, in turn, had looked to be in her early 30s, even on her 55th birthday. While that wasn’t common, especially in a city as stress-ridden as Gotham, it was possible . It was very much within the human norm.
But the Joker had been active, in and out of Arkham, causing mass chaos in Gotham and the world, for, what? Twenty years? He’d been a grown man before that. Heavy makeup use often damaged skin, especially since the man kept it on constantly, even in sleep. The effects of the doses of medication he was on was not well studied in humans but…
All of that put together… Jazz stared at the face. This particular picture was dated - hm. 17 months ago. The face was much too young. She dug through the file, and set it next to the earliest picture of the type, the earliest anyone she knew of had.
She let the heavy sigh that burned in her chest go. That was confirmation, as if she needed more.
The man hadn’t aged a day.
But his expression had only gotten colder. Cruler.
She already knew what she had to do. They had more than enough reasons. But this… well. It was another reason to add to the growing list.
All Halfa’s were different. Vlad seemed to age at a somewhat normal rate, though no one in their Fraid had brought up the point with the man. They may have a limited truce, but it was just that - limited. Records in the Realms spoke of Halfas from the distant past, though, and implied that some were naturally youthful, unaging. Like stories of an Elf from Lord of the Rings or something.
Those records, when they’d looked, when they found them, were sparse. Dora had scraps that amounted to less than five paragraphs, scattered through three different books. The Far Frozen had more, but most of their records were either on medical treatments or oral legends of the deeds of a few more well-known Halfas. Even those were so old that the names of the beings involved weren’t really names anymore - they were titles or descriptions. Jazz often thought that this was part of the reason why Frostbite still called Danny ‘Great One’ - it was a cultural norm for the Yetis, more than a constant celebration of Danny’s good deeds.
Even Ghost Writer’s library had nothing more than a small tome, slim and ancient, barely a few thousand words of information on Halfas and how they were different from the Living or full Ghosts.
But through all the stories and sources and legends - and what their own evidence had borne out as fact… Somehow everyone agreed, everyone knew:
Halfas could, and had, died . They could end.
But they couldn’t be killed.
And a rogue Halfa, a broken Halfa, a Halfa that’s only out to cause harm and destruction and despair… a Halfa like that would be very, very difficult to stop.
It had been a few days since the Council meeting, and many things were in motion. Jazz herself was one of them, as she ran through Gotham’s streets.
Frankly, she didn’t know why Condiment King had this particular magical focus - and she herself wasn’t sure what the focus actually did beyond look like a giant ruby on a tacky necklace, but here she was, sweating in a literal ski mask and black clothing, feeling like a walking cliche, and running through the streets to get away clean.
Or well. The clothes used to be black. And clean was pretty impossible at this point, but with Dani delaying everyone else and Tucker in her ear on a Fenton Phone, they might get away without being tracked down. They could hope at least.
She knew they’d been spotted by a Bat, on cameras if nothing else, though she didn’t know which one. So far, they hadn’t interfered - Jazz had gone out of her way to make sure they didn’t actually have to fight anyone, even though she’d still managed to Fenton Luck her way into a few unfortunate traps.
Alley, street, alley, street, alley, alley, street - there ! Familiar ground. Jazz lept through the air to make the kick off the wall, a grab of a sturdy pipe, a heave and up , a reach and over and she was on the roof. Sure, she could have used a fire escape, but those tended to be loud , especially if you accidentally let loose the ladder to the ground. The less traces of her passing through, the better.
She crouched in the shadows of an air conditioning unit and caught her breath. Staying as quiet as possible.
It wasn’t long before the black shadow of a Bat - not the Bat, but one of his brood in a dark and armored costume - swept onto the roof herself. The young woman scanned the roof and Jazz reached into her own pockets as the girl approached. Not the ruby, but a different pouch. A different trinket. Jazz pulled out the old compact mirror - what would be a museum piece, if it were from the Living side of things - and concentrated on the ectoplasm in her own system, on making the part of her that made her Liminal flow through it.
She breathed as quietly as she could while the girl searched. She’s not good with Gotham’s vigilanties, but she think’s the one on the roof with her is Black Bat.
“You didn’t see the target come down?” the vigilante asked. Her own comm, Jazz knew. A quiet “Hmm,” sounds, a minute later.
The city was never silent, not truely, but no noise came from the rooftop as the girl looked through the shadows. This particular roof, after all, had no access door. Jazz focuses, keeps her breathing slow, and even, and as silent as possible, even as Black Bat looked straight into the shadow she sat in, invisible to the Living. The trick now was to be - Jazz bites her fist to keep herself from laughing - as quiet as a ghost.
The Bat moves on.
It’s almost two hours later when Jazz slips into the window of her own apartment. Ghost trinkets work wonders for this sort of thing. Not that she really wants to do this more often, she grimaces, peeling off the outer layer of clothing.
It’s crusty.
She may never eat mustard again.
Ellie waves at her, saying hi, from the couch as Jazz makes her way to the bathroom to properly change.
“Can you get me my pyjama’s, please?” Jazz asks.
“Hi, Ellie. How are you, Ellie. Let me get you a drink, Ellie,” her little sister mocks even as she’s moving towards the bedroom.
“Hi, Ellie. I really need to pee, Ellie. I’m not hugging you covered in mustard, Ellie,” Jazz snarks back, her heart so much lighter than it was only thirty seconds ago.
“Why not!” comes the yell back.
“Because you’re wearing my sweatshirt!”
They giggle, even as the small pile of clothes phases through the door.
Two towels land on top. “You reek, sis! Take a shower while you’re in there!”
“Thank you, Ellie!” Jazz yells, and strips down to get clean.
It’s good to hold her little sister. Vlad’s one true gift to their family. Jazz didn’t grow up sharing beds much. Same sex siblings are often discouraged of that, anyway, and she slept on her own pretty well at an early age, so she wasn’t one to crawl into bed with her parents, either.
But here, gently curled next to Ellie in the dark, she can see the appeal.
But what woke her up?
Ow!
Oh. Right. Her darling, little blessing of a sister is also a feral little brat who kicks in her sleep .
Sighing, she looks at the clock. Eh. Breakfast it is.
The bacon is sizzling in the oven - Jazz is the only Fenton Sibling to have figured out cooking well enough to successfully use online recipes, and oven bacon is something she’s trying this month - and she’s checking the back of the pancake mix box again while the griddle heats up, when Ellie groans into the kitchen.
Right. Sounds easy enough.
“Hey El,” she greets, and pours the first two circles of batter onto her largest frying pan.
Maybe if she gets more regular company like this she’ll invest in an electric griddle or something…
“Mmm,” Ellie groans. “Smells good.”
They wake up slowly over orange juice and slightly over browned pancakes. Jazz had never turned into a coffee drinker, and last year they actually found some hard evidence that Liminals in general tended to react poorly or not at all to too much caffeine. Frostbite’s people were pleased with the data, but Tucker bemoaned all of his excuses for more coffee.
“I was pretty out of it after my shower last night,” Jazz finally starts. “What brings you to town?”
“Besides seeing my wonderful older sister and bestest sibling, who makes an amazing breakfast?” Ellie grinned.
Jazz gives her a look, making sure it’s extra sardonic.
Ellie grinned harder. “Stole the latest Component from Vlad, and have a lead on one of the harder ones from Tucker to tell you about,” she shrugged. “It’s not like it’s a hardship to visit you.”
Jazz gave her a little smile at that, and raised her eyebrows. “But that’s not the only reason.”
“Nope,” said Ellie. “Danny’s just worried about you, you know that.”
Trust her family to know that she knew what they were doing. Eh. Worth it, for Ellie’s company.
“Come here,” Jazz says, and drags the young halfa to the couch. She sits Ellie right next to her. “Uncomfortable topics call for comfortable chairs.”
She doesn’t remember where she read that phrase, but it’s not a bad method to enforce when it’s just her and her siblings or Fraidmates.
Jazz wraps an arm around Ellie and holds her close.
“I mean, I’m not exactly happy about it, hon,” she said. “None of us want this to be necessary. But it is.”
“But you’re the one who’s going to have to pull the trigger,” Ellie grimaces.
Jazz squeezes her sister a bit and leans in, smelling her hair.
“It’s a terrible thing. And yes, I wish we didn’t have to do this. I wish we could leave this to someone else. But I was honest, what I said when Danny asked me. It’s a privilege to be the one to stop this man. It’s an honor I won’t give up for anything.”
Ellie snuggles in close, and hugs her back. They both know that all the honor, all the privilege in the world, isn’t even close to why Jazz has taken on this task herself.
They both know that killing the Joker isn’t the honor she’s talking about.
When Danny learned that it was possible for him to take the throne and become the King of the Infinite Realms, inheriting Pariah’s place, Pariah’s artifacts, Pariah’s power … well. Jazz woke up four times that week to his screaming nightmares. Jack and Maddie slept through them, of course - Jack’s snoring was known to wake himself up, so they both wore earplugs through the night. But after the third one, in the dark of his room, the moonlight shining through the window and the glow in the dark stars on his ceiling, when she’d gotten him a glass of water as he caught his breath…
They talked. And that’s when Jazz learned about a future that never happened. That’s when Danny told her about Dan.
“He didn’t stop. He couldn’t be stopped. Jazz… you know I can go through walls. I can go through ghost shields. Two months ago, I did both at the same time . The only thing that holds him is a Thermos that Clockwork has, but he’s still there. And it’s not even the fact that he could get out again that’s the problem!” her brother laughs, but it’s bitter.
He’s sixteen . Sixteen and a hero and maybe, someday, probably sooner than they want it to be, the king of a dimension most people don’t know exists . He’s sixteen and once a week, goes into the Ghost Zone and comes out barely an hour later asking what day it is. Last year, with a lot of help, he beat a terrifying tyrant that was far beyond his own strength. Last week, he beat another Ancient, and looked up at her later and said it was easier than it should have been .
None of them feel threatened by Pariah Dark anymore.
The threat felt much, much closer to home.
It was barely a month after that when the GIW captured Plasmius, and the rumors were confirmed when they got him out… as much as they could be confirmed. The GIW had tried to kill, to end Vlad, for two of the three weeks they’d held him.
Damage the human half? The ghost survives, the Halfa recovers. Damage the ghost? The human thrives, the Halfa recovers.
They were fortunate, more than fortunate, that while what the GIW did broke Vlad, remade the halfa in a storm of experiment after experiment, pain after pain… Vlad broke in a way that left him bereft, a lost man in the sea of existence.
He didn’t desire revenge. He didn’t desire his wealth, or anything beyond the merest, basic comforts. He didn’t even seem to desire Maddie anymore or any power beyond the ability to take care of his most basic needs.
Halfas, they’d confirmed, couldn’t be killed. More and more, day by day, that fact weighed on Danny, made his shoulders hunch a bit more, made the shadows beneath his eyes a little deeper.
He’d made himself into someone who stopped monsters. Who kept people from being hurt. He was more powerful than Vlad, more than Ellie, more than any Ghost they knew or heard of. He was stronger, he knew, than Dan had ever been, and Dan had destroyed almost everything in his own timeline.
Danny stopped the monsters, but with it, he knew he was a liability.
If he turned into a monster, could anyone stop him?
Jazz worried. Danny’d been in so many fights, had survived so much, and thrived through it. But what if this would be the weight that broke her little brother?
She didn’t want that. Maybe… there was something that Jazz could do. Maybe Jazz could carry this burden for him.
When Jasmine Fenton left for college that semester, her side project may have contributed to her classroom problems. Just a bit. Freshman Seminar had nothing to hold her attention - not when she had research to do.
Jazz would find out how to lift that burden from her brother’s shoulders. She’d show him that someone could stop him, if it were necessary. That someone could .
It took another six months after that, but by the time they knew he had to accept the Crown and Ring, the Throne that would make him even more powerful than the strength Danny already held? She had a plan. It wasn’t a simple plan, or an easy plan… but it was one that would be able to stop him. Effectively.
She didn’t - couldn’t - tell him what the plan was.
Jazz learned how to kill her brother, and her brother’s nightmares eased.
Finally, Jazz let her little sister go, and they talked business. She needed to know if plans needed to be rolling before she had class tomorrow, at the very least.
The Component, as Ellie had called it, wasn’t really stolen from Vlad. It’s not like the man cared anymore. But they tried to treat him… well. As similar as possible, honestly. It seemed to help him, more than their first few months of confused coddling did.
It was also much less of a component itself and more of a… framework. The method Jazz stumbled upon - researched meticulously - held a few select and various objects charged with ectoplasmic residue, magic, and sheer power into a very specific configuration. The rest of Team Phantom - minus Danny, on her own insistence - were helping her track down most of the artifacts. Jazz was the only one with the full list.
The lead from Tucker was this: ghostly rumors had it that the Red Hood had been a victim of the Joker. Possibly had died - though the Fraid mostly doubted that. It wasn’t entirely clear how he’d been a victim, but some Gothamite Ghosts seemed pretty sure of it.
Now that was a lead…
The Joker’s most famous survivor was, of course, Harley Quinn. But the woman was dangerously unpredictable and more importantly, currently unreachable. Rumors ranged between some secret government taskforce having recruited her, to her being on a honeymoon with Poison Ivy.
Jazz kind of hoped it was the second. Either way, stealing a deadly weapon from the woman was out.
But if the Red Hood had suffered? By the Joker’s hand? He was known for using guns… Yeah.
Yeah. Time for more research. But - they were getting close. Very close.
Okay so - the problem with ‘staying off of the Bat’s radars’ and ‘stealing a weapon from Red Hood’ was that, at some fucking point the internet hadn’t quite caught onto yet, Hood had started actively working with the Bats.
Even with her bag of Weird Liminal Tricks, this one… might require backup.
It’s a good thing Ellie stayed the week with her.
By Tuesday, they’d managed to find Hood’s current safehouse. The location with the weapons at least. By Thursday, they had a plan.
It’d be most potent if they put a recently used weapon in the Component. The Device? Yeah. Device worked better. Halfa Death Device would probably be most accurate but… nope. Nope. ‘The Device’ was going to have to suffice.
Right! Brain realigned, Jazz congratulated herself. The thing they got from Vlad was now the Device. And now the things they put in it she could call the Components. That made sense!
Right. So. Ellie had spied on Hood a bit, from a distance - and even promised Jazz that if he took off his mask she’d leave immediately, they weren’t after any identities here - and figured out what his favorite weapons were. Unsurprisingly, they were guns. But also, there were two of them.
Jazz was somewhat impressed when she learned that. Dual wielding anything was always much, much harder than it looked.
Fortunately, among the Weird Halfa Tricks that Ellie in particular had picked up was a certain sensitivity to energies. Okay, well. A magnifying glass borrowed from Dora’s people that would show the energies to a ghost or halfa’s view.
Even when two things were made the same way, people picked up unconscious favorites, and in the pre-dawn hours of Friday morning, Red Hood’s favorite gun was stolen, phased straight out of his lockers by Ellie, and delivered to Jazz’s hands.
She only planned on having it for the weekend. She’d keep it safe and sound.
It was the weekend that started Fall Break, and Jazz had been in Gotham less than three months. She really hoped that she wouldn’t be arrested by Monday, but that might be… unlikely. Huh. Maybe it was for the best that she hadn’t really made friends in class yet.
Her apartment would be really crowded this week anyway. They had a plan.
Friday was construction day. Well. Friday night. Ellie was going to be shoo’d out for some Teenager Enrichment - Jazz found her a youth-friendly concert and got her tickets - while Jazz built the Device. Put all the Components into the Framework. Yeah.
Saturday morning, Danny, Sam, and Tucker were expected to arrive. Moral and physical support. Danny and Ellie were going to be babysat - and never allowed to be in the same room as the Device. Sam was getting a hotel room. No pictures of the Device. No information. No hints. No visual or audio of its use.
Danny had insisted, even more so than Jazz herself had.
She wouldn’t sacrifice her brother’s peace of mind so easily.
But she knew he, on some level, also needed to be in Gotham for this. Not for the action itself - no audio or video or visual allowed to reach him - but to help her with whatever aftermath would fall on her. On them.
Saturday Evening, and Sam and Tucker would meet her at a secondary, much cheaper hotel room - the kind you pay for in cash. Seedy wouldn’t be the wrong description. But they weren’t planning on sleeping there.
It was probably too bad, Jazz thought, that Valerie couldn’t make it, too. She was talking about Gotham for school herself a few months back, wasn’t she? But despite Danny now wearing the crown, the weaker ghosts did come up fairly often in Amity Park, and someone had to hold down the fort.
Well. They had the materials, the Components. They had their Liminal and Ghostly abilities. They had several fancy artifacts from the Realms, which like the little mirror that hid her before, had their own tricks in their hands. They had things they’d built or made themselves - Fenton Tech, Tucker’s devices and skill with codes, Sam’s ability to weaponize growth . They had a plan - one made through video calls that Danny and Ellie were carefully, again, absent for - to quietly get into Arkham itself. To get Jazz into the same room as - well.
Most importantly, they had four years of hard won experience with fights and flights and plans gone wrong .
Hopefully, Jazz thought. Hopefully, by Sunday morning, The Joker would be gone.
But for now, it’s Friday, and classes are over for the week, and Ellie takes the concert ticket with a hug and a smile.
It’s not hard, really, for a Fenton to put together a weird-ass weapon.
Jazz learned engineering at Jack and Maddie’s knees, even if it was never her primary interest, and while Vlad never had the wild creativity of his friends, he had a very practical bent to him, which was extremely useful when she couldn’t tell him too many details of what the Device would have to hold.
First though: the walk-in closet she’d repurposed as a mini-workshop - what she’d originally thought would be a home office - she’d gotten the Framework on the desk. The desk would work as a workbench, here, topped with a bright light, various tools and magnifying glasses in easy reach, and various clamps at hand. The Components they’d gathered were drawers of it, carefully stored in protective boxes, and she started laying them out.
A sealed box, from Fenton Works, that she’d brought to Gotham with her. A crystal. A very vivid, somewhat unique crystal. Ectoplasm, made solid. Power, given shape. Given form. It was incredibly rare for ectoplasm to solidify. Jack and Maddie had found this one ages ago, studied it for nine days, and then filed it away when the latest discovery came to their doorstep.
Last year, Jazz had taken steps to shape it into something like a lens. Something that would magnify.
Most people wouldn’t call ghost tech a mundane thing, but the Fenton wrist ray she was cannibalizing for this project was probably the most simple Component besides the Frame itself.
A nice bit of power.
Another focus - that ruby. The magical focus. Something that wouldn’t necessarily provide the oomph needed in the weapon, but would surely help it’s aim .
Red Hood’s gun, a Jericho something, set to one side. She knew it’s proper model number somewhere, but more importantly, she had a good, professional schematic for it. She’d already cleaned it once, to know it better, too.
Last week, before Ellie arrived, there’d been a package at her door from Illinois. Something they wouldn’t, couldn’t trust a Halfa to be near. Not even to deliver. Tucker had found it for her, last year when she’d finalized her research - a very unusual crystal. A significant shard from Freakshow’s staff, hunted down from a ravine next to a train track.
Halfas could die . They couldn’t be killed … The one thing left to Vlad, after the GIW ripped him to pieces over and over and over again, was his will to still exist. The shard glinted at her dangerously, reflecting the overhead light of the room - it’s razor edges the least dangerous thing about it.
Danny resisted Freakshow, even when he was weaker. But even now, Jazz could feel the power of the shard scratching at her mind through her own Liminality. They have the numbers. They have the data. Danny is excessively powerful now, and was from the start - the Realm’s ectoplasm flowing through him in his accident set the tone for the rest of his development, and his consistent access to it while his ghost half developed and grew only made him more . Danny’s resistance to Freakshow wasn’t simply that he wanted to fight, that he was more willful than the other ghosts under that man’s control.
Danny’s a hell of a powerful ghost. Full stop.
The Joker, they know, from the readings they’ve gotten from Arkham, isn’t . There’s no evidence of him using ghost powers, beyond what’s probably a significant healing factor. One of Frostbite’s people, Dr. Icefang, said that his core was likely both starved and malformed. Whatever made him a halfa? He didn’t have much ectoplasm when it happened, or afterwards.
Jazz shudders to think of what might happen if he did.
So. She has her power. Her magnifier. Her lens. The… ah, removal of will. And - her eyes fall to the gun - the trigger. To start the body’s death as well as the soul’s.
She looks over the components, the Framework - yeah. She can do this. It may have taken her a while to aim an ecto-weapon - especially when she hadn’t wanted to hurt anyone - but those days were long over. Maddie Fenton's daughter had been on gun ranges since she was eight. And Jack Fenton’s daughter could and would build a deadly weapon out of little more than scrap.
In retrospect, she’s pretty happy that they found Red Hood and his favorite gun. She’s able to keep that weapon whole - hopefully Ellie can return it to the man - even if it’s going to make the Device harder to actually fire.
It’s too quiet. She puts on her Schoolwork Playlist, looks over the bench of materials and tools to make sure she has everything she needs, and shakes her hands loose.
Yeah. She’s got this.
The problem, she quickly remembers, is something her parent’s had never quite put together - everything to do with Ghosts, with the Realms, is heightened by intent . Ghost weapons could never reliably be manufactured - a robot, mechanical or flesh, on an assembly line isn’t performing each action with the goal of death or harm. They’re just doing what they have to for their own reasons.
It’s part of what kept the GIW in check back home. It’s part of what made Fenton Work’s weapons so effective - Jack and Maddie’s passions were always close to the surface with them. One of the only reasons they’d never actually Ended a ghost was that they didn’t even think that was possible.
So. Intent.
She’s Jasmine Fenton, and she’s building a weapon to kill.
She remembers the council meeting, and adjusts the Framework on the table, and starts putting pieces together.
Gotham is a city of tragedy. A city infamous for its crime levels. Highest murder rate in the United States. Almost certainly the highest in the world .
Power source in the back. Let’s start there.
There was a ghost, in the afternoon session, after she’d already held Danny in that little room and knew what she would have to do now, who’d testified.
Clamp here. Clamp there. Is it secure? Yes.
The ghost was one of those souls who remembered their death vividly , and yet drew no power from it. Only pain. Nonetheless, she spoke.
A wire here. Oh. She’d need a bit of solder there.
She’d been nineteen. Nineteen and a Gothamite, through and through. She’d known the dangers. She’d grown up with them. So she told the Council how she knew she was in deep shit, before the Joker even did anything to her - the newspaper article of how he’d targeted Commissioner Gordon’s daughter, the rumors that flashed through the city after the second known Robin disappeared. Both just months before it happened to her.
Mask. Goggles down. The flair of the soldering iron.
It’d been a week before she was going away from Gotham, even, the ghost thought. Her family - faces she couldn’t remember in death, voices without names - had wanted her to get out if she could, and she’d gotten a scholarship. She thought she’d been in college out of state, but she couldn’t remember where.
Put the tools down and breathe for a moment through the cold fury that filled her veins. Deep breaths, Jazz thought, as the ectoplasm in her system raged in the type of vicious feedback loop unique to ghosts and Liminals.
She couldn’t afford mistakes.
The ghost, the girl who had been, had wanted to aim to be a veterinarian. Exotic animals, she hoped - not for zoos, but things like pet snakes and reptiles. Things hard to find a specialist for. A few of her ghostly friends had accompanied her to the trial, an iguana meeting Jazz’s eyes the whole time while it hung off of her shoulder.
The Joker’s laughter had echoed in her ears in the attack. He liked to use gasses, they all knew before then, but the ghost’s description of what it did, how it felt, as he hovered over her in very personalized attention, how his glee grew with her fear? It was visceral in a way so much in the Infinite Realms wasn’t.
Steady now, raging, Jazz picked up the next piece.
The ghost couldn’t remember her living name, of course - she’d been going by Squamama, a play off of the order Squamata, the scaled reptiles. Sam, grim faced, had managed to match what the girl remembered to a specific case. Jazz had read the autopsy that Tucker had dug up.
Grim faced. Grim hearted. That’s how this whole thing had made them all feel. Troubled and sad and rage and bereaved. That’s why Jazz was doing this, wasn’t she?
No one else deserved to die. No one else deserved to suffer for the Joker’s perverted joy.
And it was crystal clear that he wouldn’t stop .
Jazz flitted through the memories of the files she’d studied to prepare for this, set herself to remember another tragedy, and let the grief of a Liminal of the High King’s Court flow through her as she continued her work.
It’s easier, honestly, than she thought it would be. It certainly helps that the target she’s been given isn’t the target she’d prepared for.
When she had told Danny about her research, before he was crowned, he’d protested - he knew how much it would weigh on her.
Of course, the goal of the research? The thought of it? Was to target her little brother.
They had a fight about it. A pretty big one, actually, possibly the biggest they’d ever had. Danny was, after all, a protector at his core. Asking anyone under his protection to turn themselves into a weapon for him, against him? It wasn’t simply unthinkable to him, it was almost anathema to his own nature.
He would have held himself tight and borne all the nightmares of a future world where he’d become the worst of all monsters, where no one could stop him and both sides of the coin suffered . He would have kept himself under his own fearful control until he cracked .
As his big sister, Jazz couldn’t let that happen. She wouldn’t.
Someone else then, he begged. Anyone else. Not you.
“Who?” she’d asked. Knowing there wasn’t anyone who was an option.
He listed off people and she knocked them all down like dominos. A full ghost? Not when they knew he’d soon be Crowned. A fully dead ghost had certain limitations, even if most of the living and even Liminals didn’t understand them. Pariah had ended now, but he’d had to be beaten before it happened - he’d had to be unCrowned, unmoored from the Throne, for that End to stick . If there was any hope of Ending an out of control Halfa- King , it laid in the hands of someone Living.
Non-Liminal humans were also completely off the field. They literally couldn’t provide the ectoplasmic oomph necessary for the task.
Jack and Maddie, despite all of their hatred, were somewhat liminal, but before Danny could even begin to suggest them, she’d swept that off the table. “Molecule by molecule? If this has to be done, I am not setting you up for torture, Danny!” she’d shouted.
There were a smattering of others in Amity Park who had Liminal potential… but potential wasn’t proof , and it would mean teaching whomever they picked how to use what they had and probably become more . Which, besides the ethical and information control choices in that, finding the balance to give someone informed consent on the choice while also trusting that the information they gave wouldn’t screw Team Phantom over? Wouldn’t screw Danny over? No.
It comes down, in the end, to a member of the Fraid. It has to be one of them.
Sam and Tucker both shared… something with each other, and with Danny. They were there when the portal opened - on the edge of a rift between Realms. Sometimes, the echo of sparks flow when the three of them are together - a feedback loop of electricity bolstered by ectoplasm. It’s not talked about, yet, but the looks, the emotions that flow through the Fraidbonds, as weird as they are for the Liminals among them, means that they all know there’s something there.
She’s not going to make anyone’s chosen life partners, romantic or otherwise, have that burden.
Valerie… they both made a face, even as her name came up. She was a friend. She was part of the Fraid now, and Danny had long understood and forgiven her early anger. But Valerie hadn’t forgiven herself . No.
Ellie was a Halfa, same as Danny. If something turned him into what he fears, how did he know it wouldn’t turn her, too? And neither of them could bear the thought of their youngest sister taking this on, and they both knew it.
There were no other choices.
“I know why you don’t want me to do it, little brother,” Jazz said, at the end of the argument. “I know you want to protect me. But I’m your big sister. Let me protect you, from just this one thing, and I’ll let you protect me from everything else.”
He looked at her, and saw her resolve. It was a false promise anyway, they both knew. Jazz had other things she’d never give up protecting him from, too.
“Deal,” he sighed anyway, defeated, and they settled in close as she wrapped him in a bear hug.
Friday night had been long and grueling, and Jazz slept through her alarm in the morning.
But it was done. At the end of it, the Device shone in her senses, ringing with the intent of a powerful Liminal, ready to do the job it was made for, and Jazz had packed up and slept and slept hard .
So it was almost two in the afternoon when Jazz’s phone would not stop ringing , and she finally answered with a grumpy “Hello?”
“Is our best operative finally awake?” Sam teased from the other end of the line.
“Huh?”
“We made it to Gotham hours ago. Ellie’s with us. You’ve been asleep, Jazz, it’s the middle of the afternoon.”
“Oh,” Jazz yawned. “Okay. Uh. Give me half an hour for coffee and consciousness,” she mumbled, “And call me back?”
“Deal,” Sam let out a little huff of a laugh. “See you soon, Jazz.”
“Yeah, see you soon.”
Saturday evening. They’d had a nice dinner, all five of them. Sam treated them to Indian food - hard to find in Amity Park, plenty of vegetarian options for her, and spicy as hell options for Tucker. They all ribbed gently when Jazz ordered “white girl mild” and a lassi with a self-deprecating smile, but Tucker was the only one to go above Medium heat anyway.
It was fun. It was good.
But now, Jazz, Sam, and Tucker were suiting up in the seedy hotel. It was carefully chosen - not too far from Arkham, but definitely far enough that they’d be able to lose a tail.
Danny and Ellie were having movie time, Fenton Phones in their ears. Tucker would loop them in when things were done, or if they ran into trouble the Liminals alone couldn’t handle. They all knew Danny wouldn’t relax until he knew they were safe . Ellie probably wouldn’t either.
The Device was with Jazz. It was bulky and ill-fitting, and they’d adjusted a duffle bag to sling off her back rather than ruin one of her shoulders. Sam carried her own small backpack - stuffed with trinkets and artifacts like the mirror Jazz had used to escape from Black Bat after her theft of that magical focus. Tucker’s backpack held his tech and security trinkets. His PDA was highly modified, but for a job as specialized as this, he’d put in the effort for more data power, and some extra batteries for oomph. They shouldn’t need them. But if they did, they had them.
They were dressed in dark clothes. Sam passed out masks - not a traditional vigilante domino, but something more like a theatrical mask of Tragedy or Comedy. More like the type of mask a Goon of the Joker’s would wear. They were ghostly - affixed with a bit of specialized ectoplasm, and a Liminal nudge would enable them to be removed quickly. If the Liminal or ghost didn’t want the mask removed, though, there’d be no budging it.
One of Pandora’s people had made them. A skilled ghost in her craft, the expressions of these masks were complicated, but somehow easy to read.
The masks were grieving, but firm, an awful imperious resolve in every inch of expression.
It seemed fitting for the task ahead.
They slipped through the back window of the hotel room at dusk, and into the night.
Arkham - formally “Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane” - was easy for three trick-laden Liminals to break into.
Not as easy as Ellie planting those sensors a few short weeks ago had been, obviously. None of them could easily go invisible or walk through walls. But probably easier than it should have been.
Then again? Liminals in general are incredibly rare. Ectoplasm forms from death, yes, and things die all the time. But it’s a challenge to keep ectoplasm in the Living Realms. It almost always slips along and through to the Infinite Realms the very moment that it’s formed, taking the emotions of the scene with it to feed whatever spirit created it.
Coaxing any small amount to the Living Realms and keeping it there has been a challenge of the tiny field of ectoscience for the past century.
Most scientists would never keep any type of sample in the same fridge as food. Jack and Maddie’s flouting of this rule, of keeping it in the same fridge as their groceries, could easily be brushed off to the uninitiated as negligence. But ectoplasm only stuck near a corpse of something that had lived, near something dead.
And, well, human food had been alive once.
Even so, it was work to keep those samples. Jack and Maddie always thought they were keeping enough eyes on things to be worth the storage issues. Jazz and Danny sat through twice yearly safety briefings on it until Jazz was twelve, when she recited the entire thing by memory, and left the room with Danny.
Even in the lab they built specifically to catch and keep ectoplasm, where Jack’s collection, in the walls, was filled with weapons that had killed people and kept the ‘plasm clingy - the stuff sublimated within hours unless something dead was there. Unless enough of something dead was there.
So the fridge it was, and the Fenton family grew more and more Liminal as the years went by.
Danny’s accident only highlighted it in Jazz - not even in the lab at the time, but upstairs reading a book - her Liminality was already there. And in Danny? It almost certainly helped jumpstart him into the Halfa he was now.
So Jazz was probably the most Liminal human alive, with Sam and Tucker right there with her, years of hanging out with Danny and the threshold of the Portal flooding them more . Valerie was after them, Technus’s suit flowing through her on a daily basis these days. And then Jack and Maddie.
They were all almost certainly more Liminal than any human had been for centuries, if not millenia. And the Fraid knew how to use it.
So maybe it wasn’t unusual that with their Liminal skills and a few Infinite Realms artifacts, not to mention their experiences as Team Phantom, that a place built to contain the fully living, metahuman or not, was pretty easy for them to slip into unnoticed.
Tucker had hacked the cameras and alarms long before they’d gotten in the building. This late, on a weekend? The halls were deserted. The only hesitation was Tucker, at their entrance - a kitchen side door - pausing for a moment and touching the ground. After a minute, he’d told them to move in, shaking his head. He’d tell them later, probably.
Arkham, thankfully, had private rooms. Well. Cells. There’d been some kind of upgrade done a few months ago, with a grant from Wayne enterprises - the doors of each cell had had video cameras to one side to check on inmates before entrance for the orderlies' safety, but recently there’d been some alien technology they’d adapted to make the entire wall transparent before entry.
They’d done enough reading to know that too many of Arkham’s ‘improvements’ over the years were a direct result of something their target had done, and this was one of them.
But the doors were closed tonight. The halls were blank. With Sam scouting ahead and Tucker in the middle - eyes on his PDA for the cameras and tech - Jazz periodically kept the lookout behind.
It should be quiet. It wasn’t.
Someone’s nightmare could almost be expected, in a place like this. Or sorrowful sobbing, even.
The laughter was eerie, because of that. Especially as they all knew the source.
The Joker had been restrained, overnight, even in his cell. Tucker’d seen it, on the cameras. They weren’t sure why, exactly, and the point was almost moot now.
Jazz knew they surely weren’t following any of the protocols of the place as Sam jimmied the door with a skeleton key. (Not The Skeleton Key, of course, but one from the Realms, certainly.) She and Tucker slipped in the room before her, with Jazz bringing up the rear.
The laughter never hesitated. Never halted. Just the far too human moments of someone taking a breath, and then using it to laugh again. And again. And again.
The room was dark, save for emergency lights in the baseboards. Save for the moon, a true Waning Gibbous tonight, weak through the thick window, made of old fashioned little leaded squares that let no clear view in or out even on the brightest of days. The room was dim.
The three Liminals let their ectoplasm flow - they were not here as humans, but as members of the Court of the High King of the Infinite Realms. They were here for a final Judgment, and their eyes shone with it.
“You are the one known as The Joker,” Sam said to the laughter, purple eyes shining. No, it wasn’t Sam who spoke, not really. It was the Nightshade of the King’s Court, the sunborn poison that would protect her own from predators of any type. Her voice was the heat of the midsummer sun, the rumble of a thunderstorm in the distance. Growth , yes, but one with thorns.
Jazz hung back, and began unpacking the Device.
“What’s it to you?” the man’s smile grew just a bit wider, “Have you come to see me for a good laugh?”
They didn’t laugh. They didn’t scoff. He looked disappointed.
“The evidence against The Joker has been reviewed. The Testimonies of the Dead have been willingly taken. You are the one known as The Joker,” Tucker’s statement was an implacable fact. But like with Sam, it wasn’t Tucker. This was the Warder of the King’s Court, the Inscriptor, the one who protected with runes and code alike, the one who wrote how magic and ectoplasm and electricity alike should flow and respond to him. His voice was the chime of a bell in the dark, the flash of a CRT powering off. Guidance .
He laughed in their faces. “Isn’t it obvious who I am? Aren’t I famous?”
“Your identity isn’t in question. You are The Joker,” Nightshade’s voice cut the air like the snap of a tree branch, one you might hear breaking in the dark while camping in the depths of a forest.
“You are the Joker,” Warder agreed. “You have been judged by the Realms.”
There we go. Jazz had finished setting up the tripod, the brace she was using to hold the Device. To ensure her aim was true.
“I’ve been judged by many, I’m sure,” the man drawled. “Qualified or not! But I don’t know these Realms. What are they?” he laughed.
“It no longer matters to The Joker what the Realms are. Only that he is subject to their Judgment.” Nightshade was implacable.
“For the Peace of the Unquiet Dead, the Joker has been Judged.” Warder was resolute.
“The dead? What tosh!” The grin might have been scary. For a normal human, it was probably terrifying. “Why do they have anything to do with little old me?”
“The High King of the Realms sends his Mercy for The Joker. Will The Joker accept Mercy of the High King of the Infinite Realms?”
Had Sam and Tucker practiced? They’d spoken together, Warden and Nightshade overlapping, braided power building in the air.
The Joker laughed again, harsh and cruel in the air.
“Mercy? Sure! I’ll accept this mercy ? Where is it?” he grinned as if he was in on the joke.
If he had been, he might not have been so accepting.
“Then I, Mercy of the High King’s Court, will answer!!” Jazz feels the words torn from her, like a prayer. Let this do the job.
Nightshade and Warder stepped aside, and Mercy of the High King’s Court pulled the trigger on the Device. The power in the air, the ectoplasm in her own veins rang with her will like the fall of a gavel in a courtroom. Mercy willed The Joker to end .
The Joker fell, his grin still plastered on, even as the bullet from Red Hood’s Jericho entered his heart, even as the magic-laced ectoplasm found his ghostly core and pulled it into the real world for it to shatter in time.
Two body shots, center mass. Two headshots.
Mercy of the High King’s Court always knew what her job would be, and she ensured it’d be done properly.
Arkham’s alarms sound only once the Device is back on Jazz’s back and they’ve left the room.
They slip away even as they hear tennis shoes running their way.
A slower response than they counted on, honestly.
They’re outside of Arkham when Tucker phones Danny and Ellie, reporting the success.
It was easy , at the end of it, Jazz thinks. Easier than it should have been.
But then, she’d been ready for the hardest task of all.
Arkham’s on an island, and Tucker hesitates at the end of the bridge,
“This’ll be quick,” he promises, “Minute or less.”
He takes out some device Jazz doesn’t recognize - Tucker and Danny occasionally, in rare moments of peace, go all out and imitate Jack and Maddie to a degree that would be scary if what they made wasn’t so useful.
They don’t make weapons.
Tucker and Danny mostly make sensors. Different ectoplasm can give off different types of readings, and the specialization is beyond Jazz’s grasp of physics. She knows he has one in his hands. A quick soil sample, too.
Sam is looking at the bridge itself, examining the pylons where it meets the main road.
Jazz doesn’t know what they’re looking for, but something about Sam and Tucker, with or without Danny, makes them work in tune with each other beyond the levels any of the rest of the Fraid has. Maybe it’s because as different as they are, as much as they’ve shaped their abilities to be uniquely theirs - their Liminality comes from the same source, the same instant. The same moment that Jazz was upstairs in her bedroom with her headphones on and didn’t hear a peep from the lab - finding out later that there’d been something . Some accident.
Finding out later that her brother had died , even though he still walked among them laughing and smiling and alive.
It really is less than a minute, though, and they’re off - through the gate, running down across the bridge. It’s not a particularly long one, but the water below is always swift and deep as it nears the Atlantic - so crossing the bridge is a necessity.
It’s been nine minutes since the alarm sounded. Ten minutes since the first shot.
“Bat!” Sam shouts, even as their footfalls hit from the bridge to the ground of Gotham.
It’s the purple one, Jazz quickly realizes. The current Batgirl.
“Glow!” shouts Tucker, and their suits, dark until now, begin to radiate with glowing ectoplasmic lines as he puts in the command.
Jazz would think someone took inspiration from Tron, there, but when she made that joke Danny just looked tired - “Yeah, you’d think so,” he’d grumbled.
Either way, the ectoplasm within starts to radiate. Not enough to hurt them, as Liminal as they all are. A fully living human might start to feel a bit sick, but nothing more than facing the Lunch Lady down in Casper High. But the three of them would be harder to look at and see properly. Harder to get a description from memory, even with their masks on.
And most importantly, almost impossible to capture on a camera or sensors or anything that isn’t ectotech of some kind.
“Time to split up!” Jazz shouts, and they go.
Danny’s in their ears, the Fenton Phones working on their own ecto-signals. He and Ellie are on their way to play escort.
The three of them laugh in the dark, eyes flaring, and they run .
Jazz takes the leftmost street at the end of the bridge. Sam, the middle. Tucker the right.
It’s dark, and the job is done, and now it’s time for a race .
The Bats join in the chase, one by one. Someone’s definitely running cameras for them, Tucker reports, tracking them by the blank spots they’re leaving. But even he can’t backhack and run at the same time.
Jazz keeps her pace nice and even, steady. This won’t be an easy sprint - they all know that - but a potential marathon. With all their various work as Team Phantom, Jazz started running regularly last year, after first leaving Amity Park. The adrenaline rush, what some people call a runner’s high, is part of it. The other is the need to be prepared for anything these days.
Liminals, they’ve found, do get some extra physical boosts, which also helps. It’s not usually much , and like everything else with Ectoplasm, extremely individualized.
Sam is more flexible, a lot of the time. Her last human doctor visit looked concerned at the ways she bent, and muttered something about connective tissue disorders they wanted to check for. Sam never made the specialist’s appointment, and went to Frostbite’s people since.
Tucker wasn’t so much stronger as he was more sturdy . If the kid didn’t want to move, he wouldn’t. He wasn’t fully grown yet, but it was clear that he was a much more normal height than Jack Fenton was. Nevertheless, Jazz and Danny both had a shock last year when Jack ran straight into Tucker while chasing a ghost and bounced off and to the ground. Jack rolled with it and stood up, clapped Tucker on the shoulder with an apology, and ran on.
If they hadn’t gotten it on video, they might have thought they’d dreamed it.
Jazz though, she’d gotten speed .
She wasn’t using it right now. She didn’t have to.
The Purple Bat had chosen her to chase, sure - probably because she had the biggest bag - but this Batgirl wasn’t really hot on her heels. An attempt at stealth, probably, and some basic endurance tricks, but Jazz had made sure to have room for a Fenton Treadmill in her apartment for a reason.
Gotham wasn’t always safe for joggers, and her ten mile runs would cause more attention then it was worth. Thank goodness Sam helped cover the shipping, though.
WIthin five minutes there’s Bats on all three of them. Sam reports what’s probably Red Robin, while Tucker has the Black Bat that had found Jazz last week.
Ellie reports motorcycles keeping up, through her position in the air. Danny makes some thoughtful noises on his end of the line.
“You got a plan we’re going with, dude?” Tucker gasps out.
“I think we’re going to do the Park Place plan,” Danny replies.
“Please tell me you didn’t choose that one just for the alliteration,” Sam begs.
“No,” Danny’s amused. “But here, Princess? Guide Mercy to the place we found. I have Nightshade and Warder.”
“On it,” Ellie replies, and Jazz soon feels her presence close, flying above her. She goes visible, glowing in the dark sky for Jazz to follow.
Batgirl, behind her, swears in surprise.
A few harsh minutes later, and they all converge at the same time - some elementary school’s field for baseball or recess. The fence doesn’t stop any of them.
Ellie goes invisible again, on Danny’s order. The other three converge on home plate. There’s no backstop - just bare ground.
Tucker’s panting, and even Sam’s a bit winded, but - they’re here. The mission was a success. There’s no indication that any of the Bats have ectotech, so with the two Phantoms here, invisible above their heads, escape is almost guaranteed.
The only thing left is whatever Danny wants to say to Gotham’s vigilanties.
A loose half-circle of Bats starts to form. The three Liminals stay relaxed. They’re not here for a fight, after all, even if the Bats are tensed for one.
There’s a rumble two motorcycles pull up - ah. Nightwing. Red Hood hot on his heels. The Batmobile screeches up too, Batman and Robin themselves quickly exiting.
Tucker’s gotten his PDA out and a bored demeanor already, even as the Bats adjust and form a not-quite-full circle around the three people visible.
“Why’d you stop?” Batgirl asks. “You all could have run farther. You’d split up already. Why stop here? You at least,” she points at Jazz “were going easy on me. You could have gotten away clean.”
“An easy opener, huh?” Sam’s skeptical attitude is clear. “Well - the honest answer is this: someone wants to talk to you.”
“Well we’re here,” Red Robin replies. “Who are we speaking to, anyway? I’ve often been told that introductions are polite.”
“But you haven’t exactly introduced yourselves, either,” Tucker points out. He’s almost cheery with the relief of their success. “Anyway, it’s not one of us who wants to talk.”
“Who, then? Will we be waiting long for them?” Nightwing grins. It isn’t friendly, really. It’s not yet outright hostile, either. “I’m Nightwing,” he pointedly introduces himself with a bow.
The Bats are clearly used to working as a team. They don’t talk over each other. They don’t hesitate, don’t trip.
“Oh, it won’t be long,” Sam says. “Call me Nightshade.”
“The alarm for Arkham went off, and you ran from it. But you weren’t prisoners there,” the big Bat himself observes.
“Dude,” Tucker laughs, “That’s neither a question nor an introduction. I’m Warder.”
“Fine - a question: What were you doing in Arkham?” Robin sounds frustrated.
They wait a beat, Tucker giving a knowing smile to the kid.
“I’m Robin,” he huffed, “I refuse to repeat myself.”
Jazz chuckled a little. “If you haven’t found that out already, you aren’t the detectives your reputations say you are,” she observed. “I did my job tonight, for I am Mercy.”
Something about that makes Red Hood jerk, just a bit, and look at her. His helmet is on but - oh - the edge of something is in the air. Surprise.
Ghost-flavored surprise.
Shock echoes through the Fraid and all three of them look at Hood in unison.
“What the hell was that?” Hood snaps. The rest of the Bats, just barely edging off from ready-to-fight to guarded-but-listening all tense in time.
Danny swears loudly from above, and a gun is swiftly aimed right at the sound.
None of them expected to find another Liminal tonight.
“Please don’t shoot. It likely won’t hurt him anyway, but god only knows where that bullet will come down,” Jazz says. “We’re happy to give some answers. We don’t want a fight.”
“We don’t like dealing with cowardly metas!” Robin sounds pissed. “Show yourself!” he demands.
“All in good time,” Sam says for them. “We really do mean you no harm.”
“But you killed a man tonight.” Batman was unyielding.
Red Hood snorted derisively over Jazz’s own firm and weighted answer to the question that wasn’t asked.
“Yes,” she said. It wasn’t, really, a statement of guilt, or a confession. It wasn’t laced with hatred or joy or anything else. It was just a statement of fact.
Most of the younger bats in the circle seemed surprised at her easy admission. Maybe even shocked.
“ What ?” said Red Robin, “When did that come in?”
“During the chase. There seems to be some interference with both comms and cameras near these individuals.”
“Court,” Danny must have practiced a trick of some sort, because they only hear him through the Fenton Phones, “Princess says there are rumors about Red Hood being a victim of the deceased. Attempt to confirm what type, please.”
Interesting… why would Danny need to - no.
That’s when Black Bat walks up closer to the three of them. Her body stays open and ready, but she’s broadcasting peace, so they stay calm.
“Why?” she points at Jazz, asking directly. “You ran, before, hid. On the roof when you smelled of mustard. Now you answer. Why?”
“You knew that was me?” Jazz is surprised.
Black Bat shrugs. “Same body. Same way of moving. It was you. Knew you hid - smelled the mustard,” she smiles, “but I couldn’t see where.”
“I had to throw out those clothes,” Jazz grimaces. “But I needed what I took that night to do this tonight. Or else it wouldn’t have worked. But now that job is done.”
“Who died?” Hood almost shouts. “B’s avoiding answering, which means he’s worried it’ll piss me off. Who the fuck died tonight?”
He sounds desperate. Desperate, and eager, and - oh. A thin flare of hope .
Of long-banked grief .
The type of grief they most often felt from ghosts. The grief of lost opportunities, of roads shut to them. The type of grief they’d walked Danny through, time and time again, sometimes one on one but sometimes all of them together.
This wasn’t simply the grief of a victim, though. They’d all met a few unlucky people who’d been too close to a ghost attack at the wrong time. Carl Smithers, back in Amity Park, had been paralyzed by one, and while the Fraid couldn’t do much regularly… well. High School Senior projects in Illinois often called for a certain number of volunteer hours, and the Fraid was Danny’s Fraid for a reason. They were all called to help .
Not simply a living victim. Grief like a ghost’s .
Knowledge runs through the Fraid again, Danny’s acknowledgement backing it up.
Fuck .
Danny lets out a thoughtful, resigned sigh from above, and fades into visibility. He’s picked up more than one trick - Jazz expected Danny Phantom, but no, this makes sense.
The regalia of King Phantom of the Infinite Realms is impressive, and Danny hates it - but tonight was never about his own comfort, but the duty he wore as heavily as a weighted blanket made into a robe. She’s seen it before, of course, but it’s still somewhat impressive. She wonders what the Bats think. The Crown is no longer that of fire, but an aurora of color above him, frozen in ice. His robe is starlit. He radiates power like this, even when it’s reigned in.
“My apologies for your distress. It seems we have many things to say, but I will not allow this to become a hostile interrogation of my people. We believe our actions tonight have been not only beneficial to many, including some present, but necessary even as we acknowledge our distaste for their necessity,” he begins.
The circle of Bats falls intensely silent.
“I am King Phantom of the Infinite Realms, and my Fraid and I mean you no harm. We do not wish to fight, or conquer, or anything of the sort. We are willing to answer questions about our actions tonight, but none that might lead to my people being harmed. We will not allow recordings of tonight’s discussion, either. I promise you, no harm will come to you from me or my people unless it is to keep ourselves from harm. We would endeavor to escape unharmed before harming you ourselves, as well,” Danny introduces himself.
“So,” he grins, and that’s all her mischievous little brother under there. The one who discussed rewatching Pirates of the Caribbean with her last week, and suddenly, she knows what he’s going to say as he brings out a little white flag on a stick. “Parlay?”
“First tell me who the hell died tonight,” Red Hood demands.
Jazz can’t really blame him.
“My apologies for the delay,” Danny floats down so he’s not literally above anyone to float a few mere inches off the ground. He’s grown a lot, since he was scrawny and 14. He’s filling out, coming into his own. He’s still growing, really, and hit 5’10” when they measured last month. He might have some of Jack Fenton’s bulk yet.
He’s still almost small compared to Hood. Jazz thinks Hood might be slightly taller and broader than Batman himself, but the two haven’t really stood close enough for her to be sure.
“The individual known as The Joker has been found to be under the jurisdiction of the Infinite Realms. Since this was discovered, a mere few weeks ago, his deeds have been reviewed, and his danger assessed. Rumors in the Realms have led us to believe that you, Red Hood, were a victim of his, though now we are reassessing how badly you’ve been hurt.”
Hood stood frozen, as if in shock, even as other Bats around them reacted in various ways that the one they’d killed was The Joker.
“In the name of the ghost known to us as Squamama, tentatively identified as the former human Nellie Ives Vasquez, the ghost known as the Playground Prince, the ghost known as Jewelsmith, the ghost known as Grandmother Grace, the ghost known as Lanternlight Lady, the ghost known as CopyCat. In honor of the ghosts who chose not to testify to the King’s Court on their remembered deaths, or did not hear of what testimony we were looking for in a timely manner. In honor of the ghosts who died from his hands or actions but either did not remember their deaths or know the one responsible. In honor of the fallen souls who died by his hands or actions and did not become conscious ghosts themselves, who found their peace despite the violence of their final moments. In honor of the victims still in these Living Realms, from where we gathered public records but could not gather testimony: The evidence against The Joker’s foul actions and his willingness to change his behavior was reviewed.”
They could hear Hood’s breathing, harsh and hard, through his voice changer. Red Robin was typing something on his wrist computer - Jazz was impressed it still worked - but even Batman was frozen in uncertainty.
“The Joker was found guilty, Red Hood, and on my order, Mercy of the High King’s Court followed through on her job for the first time. While we found no hard evidence that people had attempted to kill The Joker before now, he came to our attention when he was revealed to be what’s known to the Realms as an extremely rare type of ghost, known as a Halfa. In all of the Infinite and Living Realms, the legends say that a Halfa is unable to be killed. When we learned I was to be crowned, Mercy took it upon herself to learn how, for a Halfa in full command of their powers is nearly unstoppable. Their destructive potential is unfathomable to many of the Living, and even Ghosts can be disturbed by it.
“Both the Living Realms and those of the Infinite have been exceedingly lucky that The Joker appeared to have little command or knowledge of his ghostly nature, and a review of both his crimes and his noted ability to resist any methods of redirecting his harmful behaviors led to this decision. We do not know what made The Joker what he was, but as few in the Living Realms can recognize that of the Infinite, much less contain or fight them, the decision was made to step in. You have my personal sorrow for how badly you’ve been hurt, Red Hood, and if it’s as badly as I now think, I offer my voice to sing with yours in memorandum.”
That was confirmation enough, for Jazz. For the Fraid. Whatever Red Hood was right now - resurrected? Liminal? Another Halfa? Danny had reason to believe that he was of the Dead.
For ghosts who shared with others, memorial songs were a tradition on the Realms, and to sing with another for their song was to shore them up and support them in all they’ve lost. An offer of a memorandum song from the King himself was an honor few shared. It was intensely personal.
“He’s really dead?” Hood gasped. “You killed him?”
“Oracle’s report was that everything she’s seeing from Arkham indicated that the deceased is indeed The Joker,” Robin’s tone is factual and even, “She has started the confirmation process.”
“It was him,” Danny confirmed to Jazz’s slight surprise. She didn’t know how, but he said it with a firm certainty. The way he knew a ghost had entered Amity Park, the way he’d easily turn and greet Sam and Tucker or even her or Val when they walked up behind him. “But we’ll take no offense at you wanting your own certainty.”
Red Hood removed his helmet. He had a domino underneath, but he looked… lost.
Like everything about his world had changed in an instant, and he was finding his footing again.
“He’s dead?” the man repeats.
“Hood -” Nightwing reaches out, but Danny’s already there, had been right there - and Jazz suddenly understands that whatever happened to Hood, whatever he is now, he is the only reason that Danny decided to speak properly with the Bats.
Danny easily catches the man as he slumps. As he sobs.
Hood’s arm lashes out towards Nightwing, and the man catches Hood’s hand, and squeezes in comfort.
“You haven’t felt safe for a long time, have you?” Danny asks gently - and that voice is all her little brother. Not the King. “I know that feeling. It’s okay.”
“You have evidence that The Joker fell within your jurisdiction?” Batman asks. He sounds stiff. LIke he’s holding himself too tight, unsure of what to do.
“We do,” Tucker confirms. “We didn’t exactly plan on talking to anyone and sharing it, though.”
“Being mysteries in the dark seemed more fun,” Sam added.
Danny lets out a brief Hmm, even as he pets Hood’s shoulder gently.
Oh. He already likes the man, somehow. Hm. It’s not romantic or sexual , Jazz knows, but it’s definitely personal. Something about Hood has captured his attention - and Danny’s attention is always focused on how he can help.
But then, that shouldn’t surprise her. Jazz knows how much it weighed on Danny at the beginning, never having answers to what happened to him, struggling with the instincts and powers that were beyond her as a Liminal even now - and Jazz knew how much of a struggle it was for her to act inconspicuous among regular people.
Whatever Hood’s deal was - and Jazz had heard many of the stories. She knew he’d killed people. But she also heard of his protection, his kindnesses - Danny would support him in figuring things out.
“Well, the plan obviously changed,” Danny says, edging between boy and king. “However, the methods used for our confirmation are those that could put myself and my people in danger. We’ll require a bit more… trust, before they’re shared.”
“What changed the plan?” Red Robin’s question is sharp and quick, as if he had to get it out before someone else spoke. “It’s pretty clear you led us here, and chose to stop and talk.”
Danny smiles a bit at that. He’s begun to appreciate smart questions. “Two things. I had my Fraid stop to speak because Warder is particularly sensitive to certain magical energies, from both the Living Realms and the Infinite, and sometimes one can mask the other. He hadn’t stepped foot in or on Arkham before now, and we wanted to be sure that the locals were informed that he sensed some heavy magic there. As we were wondering how the place held The Joker at all, it seems likely that there is some kind of curse or old wards there - ones that are tied to the Infinite Realms, rather than just Earth, and we wanted to inform the local protectors.”
Several bats murmur at this.
“And the second?” Robin asks, pressingly.
“Well. I said earlier that I thought Red Hood here was hurt more than we’d assumed by that- that-” Danny struggled. He didn’t actually like insulting people. The fact that he wanted to was clear. “Anyway. It’s something I’d like to discuss with him first. I can appreciate that you Bats all work together, but I’m unfamiliar with your personal connections and it’s both personal and somewhat delicate.”
“You said ghosts before. In relation to the Infinite Realms,” that was Nightwing, still holding Hood’s hand. Meeting Danny’s eyes dead on. “If - you were talking like The Joker was a ghost. A dead person. But everything we had indicated he was a physically healthy and living human. How does that work?”
Danny hesitated.
“They know I died,” Hood rasps out. Jazz thought that the man wasn’t listening, that whatever he had going on in his head right now - a panic attack? A rush of relief? Of joy? - had him unable to follow the conversation. “And yeah, The Joker killed me. They know all that.”
Danny looks at Hood, even as the man starts to pull away from him and closer to Nightwing, who himself looks like he’s restraining himself from giving a hug.
Danny assesses a bit, and nods, straightening up. “This is information that could hurt those under my protection. That could hurt you. It could be used against my throne, against my person, and against my people . You might also regard it as extremely personal. I would like your assurance, Red Hood, that you trust those present, and your understanding that we still do not have time to share all the information tonight.”
“They’re my family,” Hood replies, and Jazz doesn’t think she’s imagining more than one little jerk of surprise, nor the shocked joy that radiates in an instant, from several Bats.
Oh. Possibly more Liminals? Not strong ones, though.
“They’re worth your trust, King Phantom. I - I trust them. They do their best not to hurt those that don’t deserve it.”
Danny looks at him again. “And will they think you deserve it?” he asks. It’s almost too quiet.
Jazz flinches at the question. A grim trill of memory , of fear runs through her and her Fraid. She wonders if Hood can sense it.
Danny stands firm, even as Hood looks up. Fury rises, and his eyes flare to match Danny’s own bright green.
Ectoplasmic green.
“Your family hurt you.” Hood’s statement rings through the air. Jazz doesn’t know how it’s so flat, not when the air around them is charged with his leashed fury. Sam and Tucker, she knows, feel it too, as does Ellie above them. The Bats shuffle nervously.
Danny stays even too, as steady as a rock on the ocean’s shore during a storm.
“Yes and no,” Danny confirms gently and how her little brother can sound so evenly, earnestly kind standing so close to the storm Hood’s barely containing? Jazz doesn’t know. “But this is not simply about my own safety.”
“Why would you care about mine?”
Tucker and Sam snort in unison. Jazz does too, just a little behind them.
“He’s never needed a reason to care about others,” Sam begins.
“It’s what he does, dude,” Tucker adds. “He protects.”
“If you didn’t care about him, why would you have asked about our family?” Jazz supplies thoughtfully. “Caring for others isn’t limited to the living,” she takes the time to insist, to point out - because she knows what’s coming now, what ‘research’ the Bats will find if they look in the right places, what opinions on ghosts they’ll see. “Just like those that go out of their way to cause harm aren’t solely ghosts.”
Danny raises his hand a bit, and the Fraid falls quiet, relaxing again.
They’re viciously aware that the Bats are judging them, reading them, just as much as they’re judging the Bats.
“You’re related?” purple Batgirl blurts out, and then waves off Jazz’s look. They don't bother answering her yet.
“If I deserve it, they have plenty of ways to hurt me already, Phantom. But you talk like The Joker was somehow a ghost. You’re acting like I’m somehow a ghost. And I'd appreciate answers sooner rather than later. If you want my word on it, then fine: You can trust them, and I trust them not to hurt me with what you say.”
Danny gives him a nod, and then looks around, pained.
“There are few of the Living Realms who know of the Infinite Realms, but the ones we interact with most call themselves either ectoscientists or ghost hunters. A ghost is made of ectoplasm in similar ways to how the living are made of carbon. Ghosts are indeed mostly people who’ve died, though not all are human, and not all of the dead become proper ghosts. Very rarely, fully living humans, like my Fraid,” Danny gestures to the three of them, “Come into significant contact with ectoplasm and develop abilities along ghostly lines, similar to metas. My living Fraidmates are the most Liminal humans that we know of, and by the time any of us found out ectoplasm would change them it was too late - we were in fights deep enough that we needed their abilities as soon as they developed, and the social bonds we’ve all formed with ghosts are no small thing. When you first drove up, Red Hood, I thought - we thought - you were a strong Liminal.”
“But I’m not, am I?”
“No. There is a type of person who winds up in an… unusual relationship with death. But you said you died.”
“I did. Crawled out of my grave.”
A wince of horrified sympathy ran through the air.
“Ah - I - That’s unusual,” Danny stumbles, and the awkward teenager seeps out. “Most Halfa’s don’t, uh. Have graves.”
“What’s. A. Halfa,” Hood’s patience had clearly run thin.
“We thought there were only three of us,” Danny takes a moment, and steps back into a clear space so he’s easily visible to all.
Concern flashes from Sam. Uncertainty from Tucker. Jazz isn’t sure what she sends herself, but she thinks it’s trepidation… Dani’s is trust .
They all know Danny. They know what he’s going to do.
His Reassurance , strong and steady flows through them, even while they feel Sam’s eye roll at his dramatics. Or, well. They know it’s there.
They all know each other pretty well too.
“This’ll be bright,” Danny warns, “And then you’ll probably see me less clearly.”
Tucker sighs. Yeah, Danny’s doing this.
The light of transformation floods the schoolyard, and then - darkness . Well. As dark as a streetlamp city gets, but certainly darker than before.
Jazz always forgets how bright Danny can shine.
“A Halfa is a colloquialism for someone who lives on the balance between the Living and the Dead. Who is either at any time, and neither, and both. Fully ghost, fully living, more resilient and powerful than either. Someone who exists on the line of the Veil, going to one side or the other at will. I’m a Halfa,” he says, and his eyes glow in the dark.
“I think you’re one too,” and having both feet on the ground makes Danny look so small, compared to Red Hood. So scrawny. So easily overpowered.
But none of that changes the shocked devastation on Hood’s face, the wave of loss/confusion/grief that batters the Fraid, and it feels like more than one person but Jazz can’t tell who .
“There are few of us. After some historical events in the Infinite Realms,” and there Danny goes, brushing the Cataclysm they’d learned of as nothing , “there were none . For centuries. The first Modern halfa we know of began his change about twenty years ago and was firmly a halfa about fifteen years ago. The second modern halfa formed in an instant. The third was artificially manufactured by the first. And that was it. That was all the halfas we knew of.”
“You said The Joker was one,” Batman growls.
“Yes. We’re certain of that, now. But we don’t know how he became one, if that’s what you’re after. Early information on him was hard to find . We don’t know how he changed, what triggered it, or why by all accounts he never fully accessed his ghost powers.”
“Ghost powers,” Red Robin sounded a little faint. “The Joker could have had ghost powers .”
“Yeah. None of us wanted to find out what he’d do if he figured that out.”
A thin vein of horror ran through the group.
They’d been here long enough, the night had been long enough, that Jazz was starting to feel herself fray. Adrenaline was wearing off, and playing up their liminal otherness was starting to be not worth it.
Danny’s eyes flicked over to them.
“My friends are tired. Are you going to make us fight to escape?” he asks Batman.
“We’d like more information before finalizing that decision,” the man begins, but the younger members immediately start denying that.
“B they did us a favor ,” purple Batgirl argued, and Black Bat nodded agreement.
“They’re also giving us a lot of valuable intel,” Red Robin added.
“I’m like The Joker?” and oh, Hood sounded horrified.
Danny waved offhandedly towards the Fraid and with that signal, they powered down a bit - releasing their ectoplasm from the fore for it to hide within until they called it again. Jazz felt the edges of fatigue seep into her bones, and hoped this wouldn’t go on too much longer. Her senses dulled too, which was a bit of a relief.
Her brother turned to Hood.
“Only so much that you are the same type of being,” he reassures. “Whatever made him a Halfa didn’t make him a mass murderer. I’m dangerous,” Danny shrugs. “But I didn’t order his end because he was dangerous. I’m sure you’re dangerous, even with whatever’s holding you back from your ghost powers. But the Joker’s actions are what made him into a threat. I don’t think you’re one.”
“This is kind of a lot,” Nightwing states. He sounds a bit overwrought.
“I know it is,” Danny reassures, “Some of this is stuff that took us years to learn. One last thing, a warning, and then my Fraid has to rest.”
“A warning?” Batman asks.
Danny’s eyes flick towards Batman but rest back on Red Hood, steady.
“The Joker’s murder was technically legal in the United States under the Anti-Ecto Acts, as he would have registered as an ectobeing using sensors from the Ghost Investigation Ward. Sure, we could probably still be prosecuted for it, but we also could have handed him over to the GIW. After their experience with the first modern Halfa, I’m sure they would have loved another subject to vivisect repeatedly.”
A moment of stunned silence fills the field.
“What the hell .”
“How is that-”
“But the meta protection acts -”
Danny raises a hand. “They wrote in a loophole. Ectobeings are legally non-sentient under the Acts, a completely different category they carved out. We weren’t sure, at first, where the Justice League and their allies stood on them, and in case it fell in the wrong direction, we were reluctant to bring it up. A large part of the safety and integrity of the Infinite Realms, I’m told, lies in how little information the Living Realm has on us. As we’re now known to Batman himself, the communication exchange is worth pursuing.”
“Are you safe?” Hood demands, immediately.
Danny shrugs and smiles. “Safe enough,” he says, and that’s something Jazz has long disagreed with.
She’s too tired to correct the impression, in front of all the Bats of Gotham.
“You have enough information to find us,” Danny smiles. “Ellie!” he cries, and Jazz feels her sister’s hand on her arm, the wave of invisibility.
Danny transforms, flying over to Sam and Tucker and grabbing them, too, to disappear.
“We’ll answer your questions when you do,” his voice, the king’s voice, rings out. “But do be wary of threatening my Court and my people.”
The USB drive, probably both prepared beforehand and thrown by Tucker, lands in the field.
And they go.
It’s a day and a half later when Jazz gets a knock on her window. Just after sunset.
The rest of her Fraid had gone back to Amity, for now, even though Danny was making her wear a necklace that had a - well. It wasn’t technically a panic button, but it worked like one. If she broke the right piece, he’d show up really quickly.
Red Hood was opening her window. No helmet at the moment, but yeah, his domino was firmly in place.
“I need more tea for this, but yes, come in,” she says, before he can start anything. “You want a cup?”
“... you’re awfully calm about a masked man breaking into your house.”
She just looked at him. “I did a lot of research when I moved to Gotham,” she points out. “This wasn’t exactly unexpected after the other night.”
“ You’re Mercy?” he sounded surprised.
“When I’m acting as a member of my brother’s Court, yes,” she smiles, turning on the electric kettle. “No, really, tea? I like Constant Comment, no matter what face Ellie makes about Bigelow, but there’s a few options? Or a bottle of water or something?”
“No, thank you,” he said. He sounded baffled.
“All right. You figure out what questions you wanted to ask first, then?”
“Why you? I get why it was ordered, but why would your brother ask you? Why did you do it?”
Jazz sighed. “Please sit down at least,” she gestured to the couch. He shrugged and did.
“Halfas were mostly legends in the Infinite Realms - and outright unknown in the Living Realms. There’s not a lot of historical information on them, so after Danny had his accident, we found out a lot of things piecemeal. When Danny earned the Crown? None of us, not even him, knew that was what he was doing. We were simply fighting Pariah Dark, the last king, a tyrant who sucked our town into the Infinite Realms themselves. Danny only won because of an invention that boosted his powers temporarily, but he won . In single combat. He thought he was going to die, that day, die permanently in that suit, but he did it to protect us.”
Hood made a “Hm?” - unsure of where this was going. Jazz got out the tea.
“And when he found out he was in line for the throne, he was terrified. I found out why a bit later… Pariah was a tyrant, you see, but he’d been hidden from the wider parts of the Infinite Realms for over a millenia, since the Cataclysm. Shut away to sleep, trapped by several Ancients, because he’d become a threat to the very people he’d ruled over.”
“Okay…”
“Pariah Dark was a full ghost. The Sarcophagus that held him sleeping would never hold a Halfa. And the year before, Danny had met… an older version of himself - a different timeline.”
Hood groaned. “Alternate evil future self bullshit?”
Jazz chuckled as she stopped the kettle just before it boiled. “Alternate evil future self bullshit,” she agreed. “Last chance on tea?”
“Nah, so then what?”
“By then we’d heard some of the legends about Halfas, a little more of the history of the Realms. But there isn’t much out there, really. And with everything that happened both at home in Amity Park and Danny’s adventures exploring the Realms, he’d learned how to escape almost anything. I don’t know what you’ve found yet, but intangibility is a basic ghost power - he can go straight through walls. In the Infinite Realms, where everything is made of ectoplasm? He just goes to his human form. Some… ghost hunters in Amity Park even put a ghost shield around a room they put him in, to trap him - and he figured out how to get through that . So. We’re pretty sure that almost nothing can keep Danny contained, long term, if he wanted out.”
“And that scared him?”
“I thought it might break him,” Jazz admits, softly, as she bounces the tea bag in the mug of water to brew.
She got a bottle of water out of the fridge and put it before Hood, and grabbed a kitchen chair to sit across from him at the coffee table. He watches her.
“Halfa’s can’t be killed,” she states.
Hood frowns, “But - “
Jazz holds up a hand, “Everyone in the Realms knew that there weren’t Halfas anymore, so that they could End was kind of logical. But all the legends agreed: Halfa’s can’t be killed .”
“I’m confused.”
“My brother is a protector, Hood. And the thought of himself, broken, hurting others? Unable to be contained? Unable to be killed? That thought was breaking him. So I spent months doing research in both Realms, developed a plan, and told him that I would take the title Mercy in his Court.”
“... You’re his contingency plan? ” he sounded shocked. “Against himself?”
“Yes. Most of the components in the Device have been rehidden, by the way, and there are a few ways for the Liminals of the Fraid to access my research if something happens to me. But I chose this burden, and I will not be sharing it with anyone else.” She knows her eyes are glowing. She doesn’t bother to try to stop it. “I won’t let anyone else threaten him.”
“The Device,” he snorts.
“My family isn’t great with naming things,” she allows. “But yes. I said most,” she reminds herself. Her tea is still too hot. Damn. “Wait here a moment?”
She doesn’t wait for his reply, but goes to the fire safe hidden under her bed.
She hands him the box that was in it.
“I believe this is yours. A victim's favorite weapon was too powerful, in Realms terms, to pass up.”
His gun is inside. “ What the fuck? ”
“Ellie, Danny’s clone, stole it for me. Sorry. Like I said, it was too useful for me to pass on using it.”
“And you’re just giving it back.”
“It wasn’t like it’d be useful on any other halfa? So…. yes?”
He stares at her for a moment, and then puts his head in his hands. “I just ordered a new one,” he groaned.
“Sorry,” she admits. “It’s been a bit busy here.”
“Yeah, no shit.”
She smiles as he finally gives in, reaching for the water bottle and cracking the seal.
“The big Bat is going to want to talk a lot to you, too.”
“I know,” she offers. “Danny knows, too. We’re happy to arrange something that meets everyone’s schedules.”
“You all turned over a bit of a hornets nest, too, with those laws you mentioned. I don’t think Red Robin’s slept for a few days, he’s been on a research binge.”
“ Good ,” she hisses. “If we can get them quietly repealed and the GIW taken out? Better .”
He stares at her, brow creased, like she’s a puzzle he has to figure out.
She takes a sip of her tea.
“I’ve killed people too,” he says clumsily. “And uh, if you want to talk about it…?”
She raises her brows. “I appreciate the offer, but no. It was an easier job than the one I signed up for, and after hearing the testimony? After doing half the research that we presented to the King’s Council, doing the math to try to figure out how many damned people that man had hurt, had killed?” Maybe she’s being too harsh, but she can’t stop now. “I don’t like hurting people. I don’t want to hurt people, and I never wanted to have to kill. But to be the one to stop that madman? That was an honor.”
He looks at her. She can’t read his eyes very well, through the mask, but -
Is that awe ?
“Jasmine Fenton, known as Mercy in the Infinite Realms,” asks Red Hood, weirdly formally, sitting on her ratty sofa in her tiny one bedroom apartment in Gotham, “Will you go out with me? On a date?”
The tea spills everywhere in her shock.