Chapter Text
Forget dying, finals week is the worst thing Danny’s ever had to go through.
You’d think, as a senior, that the teachers would go easy on Danny. But no, thanks to his ‘numerous inexcusable absences’ and ‘borderline failing grades,’ he needs to pass all his exams if he wants to graduate.
The thing is, Danny would love to do that! To simply sit down and study, to pore over his (admittedly lacking) school notes and impress his teachers with the high marks he knew he could achieve. But, no. Life is never that simple for him.
Instead, he was forced to play king for an entire dimension.
When he was first thrust into the gig, Clockwork had assured Danny that he wouldn’t be expected to do much until his royal training was through. Considering the, well, infinite nature of the Infinite Realms and long absence of a monarch, all official duties were at a standstill until the Ancients and a few other influential names approved of him. Frostbite and Dora were all for Danny asserting himself as the High King immediately (as well as Nocturne, weirdly enough), but luckily most others had enough sense to not want him to become omnipotent quite yet. He was still plenty powerful, mind you, he just couldn’t command all ghostkind to do his bidding or whatever. Not that Danny would ever use such a power, but it was the principle of the thing.
However, no one had told him that by taking on the title, he was effectively allowing himself to be summoned wherever, whenever by any nutjob who happened to learn his sigil.
As far as he can tell, Danny is no longer in his home dimension. First off, he’s on some sort of space station (!!!) overlooking Earth, and second, he appears to have been summoned by a bunch of costumed weirdos, again. Granted, the costumes are more colorful than usual, so maybe Danny’s just being prejudiced and this is a Halloween party. He really hoped it was a Halloween party; those were usually kinda fun. Plus, they had candy.
“Not to be rude,” Danny began flatly. “But you guys aren’t some kinda space cult wanting to bring about the end of the times or something stupid, are you?”
The blond one directly in front of him grimaced. A man dressed in blue…spandex…chain armor?? Stepped forward, raising his hands in a placating manner. “Ah, no. We’re trying to prevent that, actually.”
Danny raised an eyebrow. Huh. People didn’t usually summon him to do hero stuff. “Alright, I’ll bite. What’s up, who’s dying, and why do I need to be here for it?”
A lady in golden armor, one that reminded him strikingly of Pandora, stepped forward this time. Her lips were twitching as if she couldn’t decide whether to laugh or to grimace, which, fair. “We have come into possession of a powerful artifact that vanishes all who touch it. They come back after twenty-four hours, but are often shell-shocked and in a perpetual state of terror afterward.” As she spoke, her mouth slipped into a definite frown. “It cuts through any binding we’ve tried to contain it with, so we were hoping that you could take it off our hands.”
…that sounded an awful lot like the Soul Shredder. Did Fright Knight have more than one of those lying around? Danny didn’t think so, but if anyone knew what to do with fear-based weaponry, it was probably him. Or Clockwork. But Clockwork knew everything, so that was a given.
“Yeah, okay, I can do that,” Danny acquiesced. He’d just drop by his Keep and pawn it off to Frighty to deal with. All in all, this was among the most benign requests he’d ever received from a summoning. Most of the time, he had to deal with the freaky cults who wouldn’t take no for an answer. Luckily, the summoning circle didn’t actually force him to do anything. It was more or less a ghost pager he had to follow.
He saw a dark shadow move out of the corner of his eye and turned to find a giant bat. Or, well, more like a guy in a black cloak with a bat-like helmet (cowl?). Danny eyed him suspiciously. He was the most cultish-looking person in the room. He also reeked of ectoplasmic waste.
“Hey, uh, no offense,” Danny coughed awkwardly. “But, um, shadow-bat-guy, have you had any contact with contaminated ectoplasm recently? I don’t know if you have Zone portals here, but I’d recommend changing the ectofiltrator before it, y’know. Blows up.”
Some dude dressed in a red onesie with a lightning bolt on his chest (what was he supposed to be, even? Some alternate version of a Teletubby?) choked on a laugh that cut through the tension in the room like a knife. Danny relaxed a little. He hated the stone-cold seriousness that accompanied summons the most. Well, outside of being pulled randomly from whatever he was doing, of course.
Bat guy didn’t lose even a smidge of his rigid posture. “Ectoplasm? As in fictional ghost residue?”
“Fiction—buddy, who do you think you summoned?” Danny asked, bewildered.
“The High King of the Infinite Realms,” the blond guy interjected. Danny hadn’t noticed at first, but he was the only normally dressed one here. Odd. “We’ve seen ghosts before, but none o’ them look like you.”
“Must not have been powerful ghosts, then,” Danny retorted. Well, okay, that was mean. Danny was well aware that he was very much an outlier.
Blondie’s mouth twisted. “I’ll give ya that, mate. Bloke can’t even be seen without some magical help.”
Danny’s face screwed up. They were comparing him to a shade? Now, that was downright insulting. “I’m the Ghost King, man, give me some credit.”
“The sword, Your Majesty,” a voice interrupted from his right. Danny twirled to find the muscled woman from earlier depositing the blade at his feet. It didn’t look a whole lot like the Soul Shredder, but it did give off a similar vibe. Yeah, he was definitely chucking this at Fright Knight and never thinking about it again.
“Thanks,” Danny nodded at her. Wait, why was he thanking her? He was doing them a favor, not the other way around.
“You’re welcome, sire,” she returned gracefully. She looked amused.
Danny cleared his throat, grateful that he had no blood to warm his face right now. “Anyway, uh, right. Ecto-contamination. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then how about this: have you seen any green, glowing pools of liquid sludge that produce weird effects?”
Everyone visibly snapped to attention.
“What about them?” Bat Guy growled.
“Oh, so you have. That’s…not good, actually, but I can take care of that, too, if you want.” Danny shrugged, trying to appear as non-threatening as possible. He didn’t think it worked all too well, what with the menacing floating crown and inhuman visage.
“Why? What would it cost us?” Bat Guy interrogated.
“Dude, chill,” Danny chastised. “I’m just trying to be nice, damn. Look, you guys are pretty okay. Y’all treated me to a view of space, and the sword thing isn’t really that big of a deal, so consider it your lucky day or something.” Sheesh. That’s what he got for being nice.
Growing impatient (he seriously needed to study, okay?!), Danny closed his eyes and concentrated. Shortly after, he let out a small groan.
“Okay, so some bad news. All your puddles are on Earth, or at least I’m assuming y’all call that Earth, which means that I can’t get at them from up here,” Danny explained tiredly. He just wanted to get this over with by now. “I don’t really want to be here any more than you want me here, so how about I purify anyone who’s contaminated, then I’ll go? No charge, again, just being nice.”
Bat Guy rankled like a cat, then stalked forward before he was abruptly halted by Blue Suit putting a hand on his chest.
“And, uh…what would you do if we refused?” He posited carefully. “Not that we’re rejecting your goodwill! But you understand why we’re hesitant to trust you, right?”
Danny felt his temper abate. “Oh…yeah, sorry. You’re right.” He chewed his lip nervously. Man, if he’d summoned Dracula and got offered a blood cleansing or something, he’d be suspicious, too. Maybe it would be better for everyone if he just left. “Well—”
“Oh my god, B, you will not believe what Oracle—ACK, HEY!” Hollered a new voice from the entryway to the room. The awkward atmosphere broke as they all turned to behold a black and blue-striped figure and a red-helmeted boxer guy who was…kneeling?
“Um,” Danny said intelligently. Then his core started humming. His eyes narrowed. “Wait a second—”
“Greetings, High King Phantom of the Infinite Realms,” Red Metalhead intoned mechanically. While Danny couldn’t see his eyes, the small jerks in his movements made it clear that the guy was clearly not in full control of his body and was freaking out about it. “May your reign be immortal.”
Danny waited for him to finish before coming forward and circling his subject. He heard gasps all around him, and oops. Forgot that I was supposed to be ‘trapped’ in the circle, haha. Oh, well.
“You’re a revenant, aren’t you?” Danny asked, intrigued. “I’ve never actually met one of you before. Well, not a proper one, anyway.”
“Get away from him!” Bat Guy roared, pushing himself between Danny and the revenant.
“Woah, hey, this again? Dude, I said chill.” At the last word, frost flowed from his breath and coated Bat Guy’s armored feet. He immediately tried to break it, but of course, that ice wasn’t going anywhere until Danny willed it.
Immediately, Black-and-Blue spun into action. In less than a second, Danny was pressed against a firm chest with a baton (??) at his neck. Huffing a breath, Danny let his intangibility wash over him and stepped out of the chokehold. “You know what? I take it back. You guys are officially meanies. How does it feel to be worse hosts than a renaissance frat party hosted by lizard people? At least they were polite about wanting to eat me.”
A whimper came from the direction of Red Helmet. Sure enough, when Danny turned his head, the poor dude was prostrated at his feet. “A-apologies, my Liege. We did not, d-did—”
He’s learning how to fight it, Danny thought, feeling amused, then a bit sorry. I’d better put him out of his misery.
Quickly, before he got interrupted again, Danny summoned some purifying ectoplasm in his palm and plunged it into the revenant’s chest.
There was a huge commotion, as half the room went to support Red while the other pounced on Danny. Well, they tried to, anyway. He simply kept up his intangibility (he hadn’t dropped it since the chokehold earlier) and allowed them to dogpile each other at his feet. Rising above the mass of bodies, he turned corporeal, simply so he could softly land on their backs. Just to be a bastard, he mimed a yawn. “Y’all done?”
“Red Hood? Red, buddy? JASON, talk to me!” Black-and-Blue shouted, shaking his comrade. Danny felt a twang of remorse. Wait, screw that. I’m the good guy here!
“Pipe down, Dick, you’re giving me a headache,” Red Hood (Jason?) grumbled. “Wait…huh. Actually, scratch that.” He turned to Danny, his body language both fierce and bewildered. “What the hell did you do to me, and do you take appointments?”
Danny rolled his eyes. “I cleansed the ghost sewage in your body. You’re welcome. You’ll probably feel extra docile for the next few days as your body readjusts to not having to fight your emotions dialed up to an eleven all the time, but you’ll be fine after that.” Probably. “You also won’t be able to make ecto-constructs anymore, sorry, but at least you won’t feel compelled to obey me. Which, uh…sorry about that, dude.”
“Ecto-what now?” Jason demanded.
Danny raised an eyebrow. “Bro. According to your imprints, you were summoning blades and junk when your emotions and Obsession were in harmony. What did you think was happening?”
“...super advanced, Lazarus-only martial arts?”
“…dude.”
“HOLD IT!” Black-and-Blue yelled, raising his hands up dramatically. “You mean that you cured him? Like, really, truly, cured him?”
Danny frowned. “Well, yes and no. I removed the polluted ectoplasm from his body, which gives him more control over his compulsions and feelings, but I didn’t really ‘cure’ anything, per se. I’m not a doctor.”
Rather, it was a trick he used to push ghosts out of humans they’d overshadowed. It worked like a charm with Walker’s goons, so taking care of non-sentient ectoplasm was a cakewalk in comparison.
“Okay, so. This has been weird, but I’m gonna dip now, so, uh. Bye. Have a Happy Halloween or whatever,” Danny flashed them the peace sign before using the Ring of Rage to tear a hole in reality and escape into the Ghost Zone. He’d find a way back home eventually.
Meanwhile, in the universe he’d left behind, the Justice League stood around, stunned by the turn of events. Wonder Woman was the only one who looked remotely satisfied with how the evening had turned out.
A loud slamming sound jolted the gathered heroes. They turned in unison to find Constantine doing his damnedest to put his head through a wall.
“Ya little shits are right lucky he didn’t kill us all on the spot,” the con man groaned. “Christ, I needed to be hungover yesterday.”