Creepy Carl
Danny is not fond of his parents' old ghost hunting friend that's come to pay them a visit for the week.
For the prompts: Jack and Maddie invite an old ghost hunting buddy (not Vlad) to stay in their guest room for the week. Expecting to catch up with their good ole pal, they're a little confused when this ghost hunter just keeps asking questions about their son, Danny [from @ectoblastfromthepast], and After the accident, Danny no longer has a shadow, and he isn't the first person to notice its absence. [from TheSilentBard]
Fair warning, Danny calls the old ghost hunting buddy 'Creepy Carl' for a reason. It may not be sexual in any way, but he is still very much creeping on a child, and I think y'all should be aware of that going in.
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[Warning for uncanny valley elements, and (non-sexual) inappropriate behavior by an adult toward a minor]
How many 'old ghost hunting buddies' did his parents have? Danny wondered as they introduced them to one Anderson Carl. First Vlad, and now this guy?
Apparently, after college and before Jazz was born, the two of them had gone on many a ghost hunt with Mr. Carl. Now, he had his own paranormal investigation blog with a pretty decent readership, and he had come to Amity Park to do a piece on the town, which of course meant he needed a place to stay in town while he was doing research.
Luckily, he had a couple of old buddies with a guest room who happened to live right where the action was, and when he told them he was coming to town, they eagerly invited him to stay in said guest room for the whole week he was planning to stay. They thought it would be a great chance to catch up with their good ole pal, but Danny was wary the second he laid eyes on the man.
Anderson Carl wasn't as tall as Jack, as hardly anyone was, but he still loomed over Danny at a solid six feet tall, probably a few inches taller than that. He had close-cropped, dirty blond hair, and dark gray eyes like angry storm clouds, they even seemed to light up with electric curiosity as Danny watched the man, and the man also watched him.
"Welcome to Fenton Works," Maddie greeted him cheerfully. "That's our son, Danny. Our daughter Jazz is out tutoring right now, but she'll be back in a few hours."
"Nice to meet you, Danny," Mr. Carl said, and smiled.
The smile was perfectly ordinary, but Danny couldn't help feeling a sinister chill when it was directed at him. Maybe it was to too-white teeth, or the way it stretched his chapped lips so tightly they looked like they might crack, but Danny didn't like it.
"Uh... sure," Danny said cautiously. "Sorry, but I've got homework to do, so I'm gonna go."
He could feel those dark eyes following him all the way up the stairs, and when he closed his bedroom door behind him, he felt like Mr. Carl couldn't be leaving town soon enough. A whole week of this already sounded unbearable.
The next morning, when Danny got dressed and left for school, Mr. Carl was already awake, and sitting at the kitchen table, typing on his laptop. The laptop, too, was a dark grey, but it had a sticker on it that said UncannyCarl.com in bright red letters designed to look like they were partially obscured by smoke.
"Good Morning, Danny," the man greeted, with that same unsettling smile from the day before. "Off to school?"
"Yeah, it's Monday, so..." Danny trailed off. He took an orange out of the bowl on the counter for breakfast, not taking his eyes of the man before him. "Is that your blog, Mr. Carl?" he asked. "Uncanny Carl dot com?"
"That's right," the man confirmed. "Uncanny is something of a synonym for paranormal, but really the name is based on... are you familiar with the uncanny valley effect?"
"Never heard of it," Danny said.
"The uncanny valley effect is when you see something that looks human in most respects, but it's just slightly off enough to make your brain send out warning signals that it's not human, and you shouldn't be fooled by it," Mr. Carl explained. "Often times, you aren't consciously aware of what detail your brain registers as wrong that's causing the uncanny valley effect, whether it's that their arms are just slightly too long, the shape of their face is abnormal, or they don't have a shadow. Your brain notices it, even if you don't."
Danny couldn't help thinking that this guy was a little uncanny valley himself, but he thought it would be rude to say out loud, and he didn't want to piss off his parents' creepy guest.
"That's fascinating Mr. Carl, but I gotta get to school."
"Oh, and you can drop the 'Mr', by the way," he said. "Everyone just calls me Carl, even though it's my last name. In school, people used to joke that my parents must've but my name backwards on my birth certificate."
Danny just furrowed his eyebrows, shook his head, and left the kitchen, along with Creepy Carl, behind him as he headed out the front door to school.
Between classes, he caught Sam and Tucker up on his new house guest.
"Great, because all you need is another ghost hunter living under your roof," Sam said sardonically.
"I know, right?" Danny agreed. "At least this one's only staying until Saturday, but he's already creeping me out. I feel like he's constantly watching me whenever we're both in a room together. It's weird."
"Do you think he noticed something about you?" Tucker asked. "I mean, you don't know anything about this guy. What if he's actually a better ghost hunter than your parents?"
"It's not hard to be," Sam scoffed.
Danny ignored her, choosing instead to answer Tucker's question. "I'm not sure, but... maybe? He was talking about something called the uncanny valley effect, which he explained as being able to recognize when something that looked human wasn't, I guess. Something like that, anyway. He was just explaining the name of his blog, but he might've meant it as a warning that he was onto me.
"If you ask me, he's the uncanny valley one, though."
—
Jack and Maddie had been excited to show their old friend around their (relatively) new lab, especially the Fenton Ghost Portal. Carl seemed suitably interested in all of it, and he listened as they caught him up on their lives since he'd parted ways with the couple, but the whole time he seemed a bit... distracted.
Back when they were fresh college graduates, Carl had been an eager note-taker, his pencil hardly stilling on the pad of yellow lined paper he always carried with him. But now, he was hardly taking any notes at all. Even when he was staring at the portal between this world and the next, he only scribbled down a few sentences before twirling his pencil idly between his fingers.
They asked him about what he'd been up to since they last saw him, and he told them, but he was remarkably brief. He mentioned that he'd gone solo for a bit before deciding to start a blog, and he'd been running that ever since, writing the occasional opinion piece for local newspaper to get some supplemental income.
He'd finished talking about himself in under a minute, and even when asked, he didn't seem keen to elaborate on any particular investigation of his over the last sixteen years. All he said was that they could read about it all on his blog.
That wasn't the end of his strange behavior, because the next thing he asked about was Danny.
Jack and Maddie were of course very eager to brag about their kids, especially Jazz, but when they started to do so, Carl said they were getting off track, and he was really curious about Danny.
He asked them how old Danny was, if he was at all reclusive, or short-tempered, if they'd ever noticed him acting particularly odd or cagey.
They answered of course, seeing no reason not to. Carl was their friend after all, and they trusted that he didn't have any bad intentions when it came to their son—and if he did, they wouldn't hesitate to beat his ass and hand him over to the police—but surely he didn't. They were still confused though. Especially because, since the conversation turned to Danny, Carl's pencil hadn't stopped moving even once.
"What's with all the questions about Danny?" Jack asked. "I thought you came here to investigate ghosts."
"Oh, no real reason," Carl replied with a casual shrug. "Just... a bit of a hunch. I won't bother you with it unless I happen to find proof." Then he asked, "Have you even noticed that the air feels colder around Danny, or that standing next to him gives you an uncomfortable buzzing sensation under your skin?"
It was a odd question... but even odder was that neither Jack nor Maddie were actually sure of the answer. They worked with ghosts all the time so of course they felt sensations like that, but... neither could remember if they'd felt them around Danny... nor could they say for sure that they hadn't.
As Carl continued his line of questioning, a feeling of disquiet settled in on top of their confusion. After a point, they asked if he might want to hear about some of the recent ghost incidents around town, rather than just spending all day talking about their fourteen-year-old son.
Carl looked at them in silence for a moment, his eyes narrowed as if he might challenge them and insist. But then his lips quirked up in a smile, and he agreed to the subject change without resistance.
It wouldn't be the last time he asked about Danny that week though. He would stop, when asked, but by and by, the topic of Danny would always come up again, and when they told him about Danny's accident with the Fenton Portal a few months before, he seemed particularly intrigued.
—
It had been three days since Creepy Carl took up residence in the Fenton guest room, and Danny could confidently say that he hated the guy. He'd suspected as much from day one, but now that it was Wednesday, Danny had confidently confirmed that Creepy Carl almost never looked away from Danny when the two of them were in the same room, and it was seriously freaking Danny out.
At home, Danny was spending almost all his time in his bedroom to avoid running into the guy. Unfortunately, his bedroom shared a wall with the guest room, and just knowing the guy was right on the other side of the wall was causing Danny to lose sleep.
Still, Creepy Carl never did anything more than just watch him. At least, not until very late Friday night, or very early Saturday morning. Danny never did know which was more correct. His discomfort proved to be well founded when, around one in the morning that night, he awoke to a bright light being shined on his face.
Danny put a hand up to block the light and sat up to see what was causing it.
He wasn't sure if she should be surprised or not when he made out the silhouette of Anderson Carl shining a flashlight directly at his face. Danny was pretty sure his bedroom door had been locked. Ever since Carl started staying the room next door, Danny had been making sure to lock it. Obviously that had been a futile endeavor.
"What the hell, Carl?" Danny groaned. "Just... just what the hell?"
"What are you?" Creepy Carl asked creepily.
"What do you mean what am I? I'm a freshman."
"A freshman without a shadow?"
"What?"
"Look behind you?"
Danny was hesitant to take his eyes off the creep in front of him, but curiosity got the better of him and he turned.
On the wall behind him was a circle of light from Carl's flashlight. For a moment, Danny didn't register what he was supposed to be seeing, then as the tiredness in his brain started to lift slightly, he realized. He was supposed to be seeing his shadow behind him.
It wasn't there.
He snapped his head back around to look at Carl, and jumped with a start when he realized that the man had taken several steps closer to Danny's bed when he wasn't looking, in absolute silence, and without any movement of the flashlight in his hand. He was now knelt next to the bed, scrutinizing Danny with wide eyes.
"What are you?" Carl repeated.
He was close enough now that Danny could feel the warmth of his breath and lurched backwards in vague disgust and alarm.
"Uncanny Valley, right?" Danny said. "You would know better than I would. What are you?"
Danny had thought that Carl wasn't moving, but then he suddenly froze, and Danny realized the still he'd been a moment ago had been jittery and trembling, but the still he was no was statuesque and cold. He said nothing, and narrowed his eyes like he wasn't sure if he should, or if he should keep holding his cards close to his chest.
"I'll be honest, I never actually noticed I didn't cast a shadow until you pointed it out," Danny admitted. "But I've noticed plenty of uncanny valley around you."
"Like what?" Carl asked, though his tone didn't carry any doubt, just curiosity.
"Like... your smile is wrong. You teeth are too straight, and too white. Kinda like a TV news anchor, except I'm pretty sure there are too many of them." Danny saw Carl run his tongue over his teeth like he was counting them. Then he added, "And also, your lips are all cracked and gross, which isn't uncanny valley, but it is weird that you'd take such good care of your teeth and not even bother with some lip balm."
"Is that all?"
"Your eyes are weird, too," Danny continued. "Nobody's eyes are that color, and even if they were, they wouldn't spark like yours do, just tiny flashes of light. Human eyes don't do that. And your skin is too thin, I think, because your veins and stuff are all weirdly visible, even though you're not that pale."
Carl nodded slowly.
"And... how many teeth are people supposed to have?" he asked.
"I dunno," Danny said with a shrug. "I think, like, thirty, thirty-two, somewhere around there."
"Thanks for the tip," Carl said. "Your eyes flash, too, you know. Bright green. When your emotions are running high."
"Yeah, I know. I've been working on that."
"You're really not going to tell me, are you?" Carl stood, evidently resigned to not getting an answer. "I know you're not a human, and I know you're no ordinary ghost. You sure you won't even give me a hint?"
Danny gave him a derisive snort. "Will you?"
"No, I suppose not." Carl smiled then, and though it was dark, Danny could almost swear the number of teeth in his mouth had changed. "I guess we'll both just have to suffer in disappointment. Goodnight, Danny."
With that, he turned around and walked out of the room, not waiting for an answer.
Danny got up and went to check his door, to see if Carl had broken the lock to get in or something.
Not only was it not broken, it was still locked. Danny had seen the door open and close. He'd heard the doorknob twist. But it had somehow remained locked the whole time.
"Goodnight, Creepy Carl," Danny whispered.
He went back to bed, but didn't get a wink of sleep.
Creepy Carl left the following afternoon, much to Danny's relief.
He hoped that he would never have to see the man again, but somehow, he had a feeling he would. Someday, somewhere... when he least expected it.
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Trope blender strikes again!
Since the formation of the Justice League Dark to deal with supernatural threats, Diana had been acting as the team's 'Superman' for lack of a better term.
It was, however, not a position she was entirely suited to, as ironically enough when engaging supernatural threats she was better suited to the same role that Batman played in the Justice League, engaging with superior training, tactics and specialised tools while also acting as battlefield tactical command.
With the lack of any other candidates however, she made do. But not for long.
Thanks to a wandering little girl, Diana had gained a new cousin and uncle who were refreshingly free of the hubris of the Greek pantheon, as well as an unexpected (and terrifying) meeting with her Grandfather who was far different from the stories, she supposed death and a few millennia would calm someone down. She was pleased however to add some paternal family members she could enjoy calm moments with.
Her Uncle was willing to help, however his backlog from the previous King in addition to the repairs and ongoing negotiations for reparations with the United States government made her feel guilt for placing further demands on him.
Her younger cousin however was more than happy to "get out of the house", her Father's comments about the expansiveness of a TARDIS castle completely ignored.
Ellie was already training with her old friend Pandora (So many happy reunions) so Diana was more than willing to take her to Themascerya for an initiation to the Sisterhood of Amazon's. Danny was ecstatic that his daughter was making friends.
Now Ellie as Banshee is JLD's front line fighter and Diana is the tactician, a dynamic duo of their own. Diana is so proud of her little cousin.
Which is why today was very..... Strange.
~
Basically the JLD have to head to the Watchtower for some threat, Ellie is super pumped because SPACE and Diana is excited to take her smol bean cousin to the Watchtower for the first time.
Batman and Co arrive and Drama TM occurs because "Holy shit that little girl looks like a Talia with blue eyes", Damian starts accusing and mouthing off, Ellie freaks because her Dad has warned her about the League of Assassins, so she freaks and bails.
Diana is explaining who Ellie is, how they're related when Uncanny Valley Danny in human form comes out of a portal in his "Royal Casual" work attire. Loose jeans,button up with vest, fluffy slippers with a coffee mug in hand. He's facing Diana, paying 0 attention to who else is there beyond "cool space station".
"Hey niece, why is my daughter running through my castle screaming about killer birds?"
"Ah, I believe she is referring to Robin being a former member of the League of Assassins." Diana replies.
Batman and the rest of the Justice League are tense, assessing this possible ally who RADIATES power and death. Anyone affected by death can feel it like static in their teeth during a lightning storm. Those who have been into the Lazarus Pits feel safe yet the overwhelming urge to KNEEL BEFORE YOUR KING.
"Well shit, someone actually escaped from the Fruit Loop Supreme? Anyone who gets away from my asshole grandfather is alright by me." Danny replies as he turns to look at the various heros, taking a sip from his mug.
"Danyal?" A faint hopeful whisper as Damian takes his mask off to look at his Brother (HOW, HOW? HE LOST HIM HE'S HERE HOW?) His dead twin somehow here and changed so much.
*Slurp*
"Well shit, didn't expect this."
This entire time Bruce's brain is making crunching noises.
It's not the extra son that's apparently God of the Afterlives. It's not the granddaughter.
Diana is his son's niece. Bruce had sex with his grand niece. Barbara is right, he needs therapy.
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