Chapter Text
Normally it's something small, like the spelling of something being a couple of letters off of what he thought it was, or a popular brand's labeling being a completely different color; Easily ignored and written off as human memory being inherently faulty.
The first time he really took notice was when one of his favorite shows was essentially wiped off the face of the earth. While it's not unheard of for older programs to quietly fade into lost media, it tends to not happen when it comes to things popular enough to spawn 4 spin offs; a moderately successful trio of movies; and an infamously unpopular and short lived children's comic book series.
After a deeply unpleasant 3 weeks doing research in the House of Mystery's libraries trying to figure out what had gone wrong, he came upon a satisfactory answer. Apparently holes in the very fabric of the universe WEREN'T as uncommon as he initially thought, but that typically they were small enough and repaired quickly enough that no one would notice.
Anyone with a hint of magical ability might experience a brief moment of confusion before attributing whatever changed to the Mandela effect, but the world at large would be completely unaware of any changes.
John wasn't sure he was more aware of this because he had a high level of magical ability, or because he slept in sentient house that technically exists in it's own pocket dimension; but he eventually learned to live with it. It's not like there was much he could do about it either way, after all he can't change his own biology, and the House of Mystery didn't make him pay rent.
Besides most of the time it's something small, like alternate spellings, or largely ineffectual, like a lost tv series.
Unfortunately this was not one of those times.
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Like most of his headaches, it started with a call from the Justice League.
While he did have a League issued communicator, between his own magical aura and the House of Mystery, it only worked about... 5% of the time on a good day.
While it certainly put Batman's knickers in a twist, they quickly learned that it was easier to get in contact with Zatanna, Zatarra, or occasionally even Doctor Fate if they needed a magical consultant on something. While they had similar issues with advanced technology, they tended to be easier (and more willing) to get in contact with when needed.
Unfortunately on this occasion, Zatanna and Zatarra were away on business, and Dr.Fate had once again been a sufficiently naughty boy that his League membership was under review. Which is how a simple trip to restock on beer, cereal, and various "ingredients" resulted in him waking up to various founding members of the league arguing in a warehouse god knows where.
According to Supes, the plan had been to ask for his help *nicely*, but Batsy had gotten "impatient". Why flying out to London, kidnapping him, and then waiting about three hours for him to recover sufficiently to be of any help was faster than just talking to him, but he was a little too busy nursing a bottle of water and an intense migraine to actually ask.
Eventually things had stopped throbbing enough that he was able to figure out *why* they wanted his help. Apparently there was some sort of bubble of influence causing people to go on some sort of rage filled rampage near Arkham. The reasoning behind this was that people tended to regain their wits once they left the magical radius. To make matters worse, this had been going on for about a month before Batsy had decided it was important enough to let the rest of the league know, which meant it had expanded past the warehouse districts surrounding Arkham, and into residential districts.
To make matters worse, the bats had not only been dealing with this mess, but keeping some covert government agency out of gotham that wanted to "handle" it by gathering anyone who had been affected and carting them away for study. The reason the League had decided that they needed JOHN specifically was that (from what little the bats could gather) said big bad government agency was dedicated to the study of ghosts, and of course, the other members of Justice League Dark were unavailable.
Now that the world had stopped spinning, John could recognize the distinct Gotham™ stink he'd grown accustomed to from what visits he'd had to the city, as well as a something he was more familiar with. Ectoplasm.
Any exorcist worth their salt knew what ectoplasm smelled like. How could you not? Once you'd smelt it enough to pick it up from the normal background odors of the typical haunted house, the tangy staticky odor was about as obvious and hard to ignore as stench of cat urine. Normally that wouldn't be too concerning. The only thing the scent of ectoplasm means is that there's a ghostly influence in the area that can affect the living. If John were lucky, it would just be a particularly powerful imprint of all the suffering and madness experienced in Arkham. Emotional Imprints like that were easy enough to deal with, typically all he needed to do was preform a minor exorcism, and give instructions to whoever was in charge on how to do a cleansing every couple of months. It was one of the most common things he had to deal with, to the point where he usually had a few pamphlets on him at all times.
Of course since the league was involved, that meant that it couldn't be that easy. Once he'd managed to get his legs under him enough to leave the warehouse to get a better look at what he was dealing with, one of the first things he noticed was that he was in a nicer section of Gotham he didn't recognize. The second was that John squinted, he could see Arkham Asylum off in the distance. This meant that whatever was causing that ghostly zone of influence was strong enough that he could smell it from the opposite end of the city. Which of course meant that this was something that would require more than an exorcism to get rid of.
Which was a problem.
While John had dealt with strong ghosts before, he had never dealt with an Ancient of the infinite realms before, at least not without Zantana, Zatara, or Fuck even Boston with him as back up.
Smart Magicians did not pick fights with Ancients without back up, and whatever this was, it was either an ancient, or something close enough to be dangerous. Currently all he had in terms of backup was a man so obsessed with logic that he probably still thought that Boston Brand was an alien, and two demi-gods, one of whom was so easily possessed that he was more of a liability than any actual help.
After he finished cursing, John mentally went through the list of entities he knew *how* to summon that he didn't already have a contract with, and hadn't royally pissed off yet.
It was a short list.
Especially when he considered that the reason he *hadn't* pissed most of these entities off yet was that they were either too dangerous or too volatile (even for him) to work with.
There were a couple of minor demons he *might* be able to bind to his will, if he were lucky, but that was just as likely to blow up in his face once they actually faced~ whatever this was~. Demons weren't exactly loyal, and he wouldn't put it past them to figure out a way to screw him over and make this thing more powerful.
There was a chance that he could convince Dr.Fate to help, after all whatever was happening in that bubble was chaotic enough that he would want it dealt with, but that came with it's own risks. The last he heard Dr.Fate's current host was on it's last legs, and he wasn't exactly keen on spending the rest of his life trapped in his own mind. Things were urgent enough that he was seriously considering it (there had to be some way to break free of the stupid helmet's control that it didn't already know about right?) when he remembered something.
He remembered reading something in the House of Mystery about the king of the infinite realms. Apparently no one'd been able to actually summon him for centuries, but if you played your cards right (and carefully enough) you could gain enough access to get a temporary magical power boost. The only trade off was that even if you succeeded it typically took a few years off your life.
Currently it seemed like the best option at the moment, and if John was being honest it wasn't like tearing his soul into piecemeal via contracts was good for his health anyway. After taking a deep breath and desperately wishing he had a smoke, John turned and looked at the surrounded superheros.
"Alright you lot, what we currently have here is fucking mess. I have an idea. It's risky, you won't like it, I won't like it, but It's probably the best we have at the moment without summoning Dr.Fate, but since we all know how that worked out last time, we'll just have to put that on the back burner for now."
The assembled members of the league shuddered. Bats was the first to actually reply.
" What exactly are you planning on doing that Dr.Fate is the better option?"
John didn't exactly smile, but the effect was the same.
"I'm glad you asked, I'm going to try summoning something worse"
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The past year hadn't been too bad for Danny, as far as things were considered.
School was still a pain, but now that he knew Jazz was in on his little secret, she'd started helping him study.
As it turns out, Jazz was involved in about a dozen extracurriculars to increase her chances at getting a Harvard scholarship, and as such she'd gotten very good at studying huge amounts of information in a very short of amount of time. It was actually kind of scary how quickly his grades had improved once he finally relented and started letting her help. That said, he'd also noticed that ghost attacks had slowed down significantly over the past year.
That's not to say they'd stopped completely. He was still dealing with about one to two fights a day, but it was a huge improvement to having to duck out of class a couple of times every hour.
Sam and Tucker thought that it was probably just that he had more experience handling ghosts, but he wasn't so sure. Granted he wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth, especially with everything he'd had to deal with last summer.
Now that school was over, he was looking forward to having a summer that was actually relaxing for once. Since things in Amity were starting to slow down, his parents even felt comfortable enough to plan a vacation. Granted it wasn't somewhere exciting like New York, Gotham, or Metropolis, just a week long camping trip at Aunt Alicia's Farm, but he didn't mind going somewhere boring.
Boring places rarely got attacked by ghosts or super villains, which was just fine with him.
Fenton luck being what it was, he started to feel the tug right as he finished packing for said camping trip. After two years of hero work, he'd thought he'd gotten a decent level of control over his powers, so the involuntary shift into his ghost form came as a surprise. What came even more as a surprise was when the tugging sensation increased to somewhere between the pull of the fenton thermos, and what he thought being spaghettification via black hole would feel like.
Even though it probably only lasted a couple of seconds, the process of being stretched whisper thin and shot off somewhere like an errant rubber band seemed to last forever.
When he reached his destination, the first thing he was aware of was the ache.
It was like he'd somehow managed to overwork every muscle in his body. While it didn't hurt persay, it definitely felt like he was more limited than he normally was in ghost form.
Once he'd managed to blink the stars out of his eyes he realized he was standing inside some sort of summoning circle, which was a new one for him. He knew some of the ancients had rites of summoning, but he wasn't aware that there was a ritual that could pull a lower level ghost or a halfa. His first thought was that he REALLY hoped that he wasn't summoned by some sort of cult trying to pull someone more powerful, like nocturne, or god forbid clockwork. When he could see well enough to actually register who was standing around the summoning circle, he realized it was actually worse.
Somehow the justice league had managed to summon him.
And not just anyone from the justice league.
The founding members.
His heartbeat started to pick up as he looked for flaws in what he assumed was a containment spell. He hadn't really seen one outside of that unfortunate trip to witch trials era Salem last summer, but maybe he'd be able to remember enough that he'd be able to pick out what was an important flourish and what was a smudge.
It HAD to be an accidental summoning right? He remembered from one of the horror movie rants Sam had gone on that you have to be careful when preparing a summoning because if you screw it up anything could take it as an invitation. Maybe they were trying to summon one of the ancients, did it incorrectly, and he just happened to be the strongest ghost adjacent schmuck in the area.
There COULDN'T be a ritual specific to him, and if there was, he'd been very careful when he used to reality gauntlet; He shouldn't even be enough on their radar that they'd even WANT to summon him right?
Right?
He suddenly became aware of another presence in the room, there was someone closer to the summoning circle, probably whoever actually summoned him. This calmed him down a little.
Of Course.
None of the founding members of the Justice League knew how to use magic, hell Batman HATED magic, and if he was remembering correctly Superman had some sort of magic..... allergy?
Maybe this *was* a cult thing..
Maybe the justice league had broken up the cult thing, and they'll be busy enough dealing with the summoner, that he can find a way out, or bullshit is way into one of them breaking the circle so he could escape.
He could work with this.
He'd gotten away from them before and he could do it again.
But then he finally looked at the summoner.
He realized with mounting dread that he recognized the summoner.
and to his horror, the summoner recognized HIM