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Hell rises up to meet Gotham on a frigid October evening. Jason feels the chill when he wakes that afternoon, and spends those few hours ignorant of what is coming preparing himself for an unnatural cold, and warning his people to stay in.
Sunset brings a chasm rent clear across Gotham’s skyline, acid-green and boiling. Sunset brings phantoms and specters and spirits in a violent flood, ghoulish grins wide and claws stretched long. In takes minutes, not even an hour, before the city is awash in apocalyptic battle.
A cackling body hurtles itself at Jason, limbs flailing unbound by the constraints of the living, eyes a solid neon even as the body’s mouth turns down in a panicked, terrified wail. He flips the body over his shoulder, drives the wind from its lungs, and then bashes it across the temple hard enough that it goes limp.
Possession is…usually more troublesome than this. But the invaders are – manic. Not here for strategy, but for enjoyment. Jason’s worried about the physical damage done to the civilian he just struck, but with people dying and turning and screaming left and right, he cannot take the time to put the possessed down gently.
The invaders are not concerned with efficiency. They’re here to cause pain. They are torturing people before they kill them, tearing them apart bit by bit or killing families in front of each other. They would have already taken the city, if not for –
“Abigail!”
One of the attacking ghosts lunges towards a family huddled together beside the smoking remains of a vehicle. Bright, brilliant green light flares up from the ground in front of them, flashing from nothing into the form of a young girl in an instant. She raises her hands, and the ghost bounces right off of her.
“You can’t have them!” She screams, teeth elongating and body twisting and growing.
“They are mine to protect!”
“Stay the fuck away from my family!”
There are similar shouts from every street, every corner, every incident.
Gotham has ghosts too. And even if they prefer to remain invisible, to not directly interact with their living – they will not sit idly by and watch their own be slaughtered.
Jason takes an instant to nod towards the ghost girl, Abbie, as she sinks her talons into her attacker’s throat, and pushes on.
Crime Alley’s dead call directions to him when they can spare a moment, and the living are quick to follow their lead. Jason’s taken care to cultivate a trustworthy presence in his territory, but he’s still surprised they accept an obviously supernatural connection so quickly. Gotham’s not really superstitious, but it certainly doesn’t want any of its local monsters catching wind of another potential way to grab power. Jason had expected to be shunned at best when they found out, if only for fear that Joker or Crane might pick up on it.
The Bats are handling the outskirts, rushing from individual victim to individual victim. Those that don’t have protection against possession are manning comms or protecting Oracle. And that’s fine, about what he’d expect – but Jason’s capable of taking these things head on.
He’s needed at the epicenter.
“It’s a challenge for the throne.” Old Gregory grunts at him, form flickering as he holds a snarling mass of energy back from his great-great-great grandchildren. The kids are all snarling and hissing at the thing. One of them has a canister of salt the size of her head clutched in her hands, and a second has a bat studded with nails covered in green goop.
“Why the fuck are they attacking Gotham, then?”
“His Highness protects the living. They didn’t think he’d make it in time to save anybody.”
Didn’t think Gotham’s dead would strike back, furious over the intrusion. Gotham had bought time.
“Shelter on Twelfth should be ghost-proof. Last I saw they were setting up a line there.”
Old Gregory nods his appreciation, head nearly sliding right off his neck, and body slams his opponent through the nearest wall. Jason leaves him corralling his kids to safety.
The epicenter is not the rift allowing the dead through, but rather the place where the Ghost King and his challenger have decided to duke it out. Jason turns a corner and finds a flattened field of rubble smoking where a high-class shopping district used to be.
The air is thick with ectoplasm and malintent, a miasma so thick it clogs his helmet’s filters. Jason unlatches it and lets it fall, heedless of his maskless face, and takes stock.
There are two teens, the only living beings on the battleground, hunched over each other not far from him. One is holding a massive gun reminiscent of a sci-fi prop, one end belching black smoke. The other is holding a much smaller weapon, her face pinched tight with stress as she covers her friend, holds back the writhing mat of smaller ghosts around them. Jason assumes the boy is trying to repair the weapon.
And in front of them are two titans.
One, wreathed in emerald flames, a king crowned and adorned with the symbols of his reign. The other –
Jason’s not sure it’s a ghost. Not anymore. Black scaled, flesh cracked and scabbing, oozing ectoplasm from its wounds, the thing stands on two hind legs and unhinges a second – third- jaw as bristling claws swipe for the king’s midsection.
The king’s own maw falls open, and he wails.
The teens flinch and cover their ears, but do not fall. The ghosts attacking them drop, writhing and screaming soundlessly in agony. Jason does not fall either.
It’s a call.
The sound reverberates, thrums in the hollow of his chest. Jason’s not dead, hasn’t been for a long time, but he is still of death.
He answers before he makes the conscious decision to. His hands flex, and his fingers settle around familiar leather. The All-Blades slide free of his spirit soundlessly, their pale yellow light casting odd shadows on the smoky, acid-green glow of ectoplasm and ruin.
The Ghost King isn’t pure evil. But the thing that would slaughter a city to mock him, that dares challenge the dead’s rightful ruler? That fights with mortal bodies impaled on its spikes and mortal blood staining its claws?
The All-Blades come into existence with a thrum to answer the Ghost King’s own. The very air around Jason shudders, as the challenger’s aura itself rears back.
Two titans turn to him, still caught in a violent embrace, and Jason’s lips draw back in a snarl. The challenger’s jaws snap, teeth clattering viciously as a piercingly high-pitched cackle splits the air.
“So weak to need an interloper, Phantom?”
“You come into my city, lay waste to my people, you enrage my kin, and you have the audacity to think I’m not going to pass judgement on you?” Jason barks.
He could have saved the possessed in an instant with these. But the All-Blades feed, and he cannot risk wielding them long enough to race through the city in its entirety before facing down a wannabe god. Will not do his teachings the dishonor of expecting the All-Blades to bend to his desires like that.
“A knight who answers his King’s call is no interloper.” The Ghost King’s voice – echoes. Wavers, as oddly and intensely as his wail had, just out of Jason’s hearing. His Highness’ eyes are hazy, as unfocused as they are cold. It’s disconcerting, to have that weight, that attention, entirely on him when the Ghost King is still locked in combat with a nightmare beast.
“Do you answer my call, Jason Todd?” The Ghost King asks, softer, and ice presses against Jason’s elbow.
He recognizes her scent, the sharp tang of herbal brews and metal that still means home, that still clings to her even in death. He does not turn, does not so much as look to his peripherals. It’s as much in terror as it is grief.
“Don’t you have one, already?” Jason rasps. The Ghost King’s eyes slide from him to Jason’s side, and her laugh is the same – raspy and low even without a cough to follow it.
“Do I not deserve retirement, grandson?”
If she were alive –
Jason had let her groom him to take the Caste over for his love for her and for Essence, Essence who railed and fought the very idea of taking her mother’s place. He had accepted the responsibility of the All-Blades and the All-Caste’s mission, made its enemies his own – and he had let Ducra groom him into an heir she could be proud of.
Assuming she had only ever groomed him for one position, he realizes, was his own error.
“Is he worth honoring?” Jason asks. He can’t look away from the Ghost King, standing titanic in the ruins of Gotham’s heart. Cannot tear his focus from the fingers tapping rhythmically at his elbow, the unnatural chill and faint green glow cool against his skin.
There’s a flash, in the Ghost King’s eyes.
“I believe so. That decision is one you must make on your own.” Ducra says quietly, fondly.
And he should consider what it is he is doing in the entirety, but Gotham is his and that makes her people his too, and her people never stop being people merely for the accident of a beating heart.
“You would dare grant titles to a living soul!?” The challenger hisses, voice as odd and disconnected as the Ghost King’s, but when it presses the attack – the All-Blades are there to meet its claws.
“I’ll honor my Grandmother’s pact.” Jason says shortly, when the Ghost King simply looks at him.
His Highness smiles.
Whatever else the challenger wants to shriek is lost beneath the slicing of Jason’s blades and the rending of a king’s fury.
X
Jason staggers, crumples to one knee, and the All-Blades vanish. He scrapes his palms on rubble, smears spilt ectoplasm along his punctured side, and sags back against a mound of concrete and metal.
The challenger is a pile of dissolving ectoplasmic goo. Its hordes are fleeing, a ghastly green waterfall rising up above the city into the chasm from which they came.
Gotham is oddly quiet. There’s still battle raging across the city – not all the invaders are so cowardly or sane as to flee with their master’s defeat.
There’s a squeak from somewhere behind him, and Jason forces his head to lift and turn enough to see those two teenagers, battered and bruised, staring at him. They’ve still got those strange guns with them, even if they aren’t holding the weapons at the ready anymore.
“You’re bleeding.” The girl says critically.
“’S not like it’ll kill me.” Jason snorts. He can’t really feel the pain. He thinks it’s the ectoplasm in his wounds.
“You’ve spilled blood in defense of my throne.”
Jason turns away from the teenagers, and…blinks.
The Ghost King is still…otherworldly. Still more concept than being, still crowned and armed with the symbols of his claim, still with a presence strong enough to crush a man. But he is also – mortal.
Young.
“And you mine.” Jason answers a beat too late, off-kilter. The Ghost King smirks, something all teeth, savage and fanged, and his form solidifies. There’s a brief flash of muted light, and a flesh-and-blood body holds a hand out to Jason. He takes it. Lets his – ally – pull him up even if it agitates the boy’s own wounds.
“The dead stick together.” The boy says seriously, gravely, kindly, and then he’s bowled over by the other teenagers. His friends, Jason thinks, and it might be stupid but Jason lets the last of his tension drain away. He sways a little on his feet. By the time he’s regained himself and his focus, the Ghost King too is back on his feet.
“He’s not a halfa.” The teen with the fuck-you sized gun says, squinting at Jason, and Jason scowls.
“He had some help.” The Ghost King says, and smiles at Jason as if they are sharing some kind of secret, and Jason does not even try to hide the way that makes his skin crawl.
“You’re not going to fuck with my people, are you?” The subject change is effective, if apparently startling- the Ghost King looks absolutely bewildered.
“What are you talking about?”
“The dead here are here because they want to be. If any of them choose to go with you that’s their own business – but if you try to order them to abandon their homes and families, we’re going to have issues.”
The Ghost King is shaking his head before Jason’s even finished speaking.
“No, of course not. I wouldn’t – well if they were…” The Ghost King waves a dismissive hand at the challenger’s remains. Jason shakes his head sharply.
“Gotham takes care of its own. We’re more than capable of handling any assholes.”
Gotham’s punishment may be cruel by this King’s standards, Jason suspects, but it’s something they all accept by choosing to stay, and Jason makes sure to handle those sorts of executions himself. He doesn’t like forcing others to do it.
“You’re a Knight now.” The girl says, stressing her words oddly.
“You’ll come when I call.” The Ghost King says softly, before Jason can ask for elaboration, and Jason nods. Reaffirms.
“Don’t know how fast my response will be.”
“I can show you the way between worlds. Portals. You’re liminal enough that they should answer to you, if you learn how to ask.”
It’s an offer, as much as it is a sentence; distance will not offer Jason any sort of leeway. He doesn’t know the enormity of what it is he’s agreed to – what other constraints he will have to adapt to. He cannot afford to say no.
“Let me make sure my people are alright, make sure they have clean-up handled.”
“Of course.” The Ghost King says, immediate, understanding, and some of Jason’s apprehension melts away. This, at least, His Highness understands – what it is to be protector, the responsibilities and duties owed for it.
Jason hesitates, a moment, and then sticks out a hand – scraped bloody, red and green with his blood and ectoplasm.
“Jason Todd. People here call me the Red Hood.”
His Highness’s grin is boyish and young, and his grip firm when he takes Jason’s hand in his own.
“Danny Fenton, but people back home know me as Phantom.”