Chapter Text
Danny was really kicking ass at all this family stuff. He wasn’t sure if his previous experiences would really apply here, given how weird his family was even in an already ghostly town. But turns out he didn’t need to worry because after the calmest breakfast he’d ever had (the sausages he’d been served didn’t try to attack him even a little bit) he and his fraid were sitting on a picnic blanket in an expansive rose garden. The sun was warming his shoulders and the wind was gently tussling his hair to create a peaceful atmosphere that made the benign constriction on his core easier to forget. The conversation flowed fairly easily, with Danny noting Tim asked a lot of questions but didn’t offer as much about themselves. If they were really as rich as the luxurious interior of their home would suggest, perhaps they were famous and just assumed he recognized them all? Amity’s relation to the rest of the world had always been tenuous and so he wasn’t too surprised to not recognize them however. But he was having fun, and didn’t begrudge Tim for wanting to know more information about the kid now living with them, and so before he knew it he’d told him his hometown, his parents names, and strangely enough- his favorite cereal brand? To which he of course complained about fruitloops in a rant that bordered on manic and the subject was dropped to looks of puzzled bemusement.
Danny was halfway through telling an anecdote about how Ember once threw a concert in the park and- for a brief period of time- brainwashed enough people to get elected mayor before Danny stopped her. He was mid sentence telling them all how he let it go on a little longer than usual because it pissed off Vlad who was the mayor at the time when Tim interjected.
“And where did you say Amity Park was again?”
Danny looked away from his wildly gesticulating hands as his story's momentum was cut short.
“Amity? It's in Illinois. It's a pretty small town so it's not surprising if you’ve never heard of it.”
Tim looked up from his fancy looking phone after typing in something to say, “I’ve been looking up Amity Park and I can’t find it anywhere. I just looked up Amity Park and there’s no town by that name anywhere in Illinois.”
Danny’s brow furrowed as he took this in, though he wasn’t terribly worried. Everyone who lived in Amity had noted that it was hard to find information about the town when you left but had just chalked it up to ghost nonsense and left it at that. If anyone really needed to be able to find it they just told people to go to the Elmerton community college and keep going down the highway.
“Yeah, people never seem to be able to find Amity on the internet- try looking up Elmerton, we’re the next city if you get on the highway past the college.”
Tim frowned and looked back at his phone, while Danny marveled at the crazy increase in mobile technology since he’d gone to sleep (Tim was touching the screen and it somehow just knew what to do!!!).
While Danny oohed and aahed in his mind about the complete lack of buttons on Tim’s phone and how it seemed to be able to use the internet, Tim’s frown was growing more prominent and his fingers typing faster on his phone by the second as he seemingly could not find what he sought.
“Danny, there is no town called Elmerton in Illinois.”
Danny’s sunny disposition was clouded as he let out a puzzled, “huh?”
“The closest I can find is Elmwood, but there’s no college in that town.”
Danny, clinging to hope that this was all some misunderstanding, relayed more and more information about the surrounding towns. Yet time and time again, Tim could find nothing until finally his fingers stopped typing and he looked up at Danny as if to console him. But that would be ridiculous, because Danny didn’t need to be consoled because this was all clearly a misunderstanding. Perhaps in the time Danny wasn’t there to stop him Technus finally figured out the internet and wiped all info that could lead to Amity off the web. Anything else was simply inconceivable to Danny, who had only recently been returned to awareness after years of being asleep.
“Well where am I now, what’s the name of this town?”
Duke, who had until now been a fairly passive observer of Tim’s little interrogation, chimed in with a concerned look to Danny’s flustered state, “We’re in Gotham, New Jersey.”
Danny looked down and racked his brain trying to remember if he had ever heard of Gotham. The longer he thought and was unable to find even an inkling of a memory, the quicker his breaths came until his breaths started to sound more like pants. His hands came up to tug on his hair, and he jolted up when he felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up to see a concerned Cass. He tugged himself from her loose grip and turned to face everyone on the blanket behind them.
Danny interjected his voice with all the desperation he felt at the moment to receive a good answer, “And this…..Gotham, surely it's a small town if I’ve never heard of it.”
Danny didn’t believe it even as he said it, and when everyone turned to each other with confused looks his hope dwindled even further.
It was Dick who broke the silence as he said, “Danny… Gotham is the largest city in all of New Jersey, you would be hard pressed to find someone who didn’t know what it is.”
Danny tugged harder on his hair, hoping the sharp sting of his tender scalp would draw him from what surely must be a terrible nightmare. His breathing grew rougher as he sat on the blanket, spiraling further into delirium the longer the nightmare went uninterrupted.
Danny, deciding that he must verify this for himself and still clinging to the idea that the strange information blockade of Amity park was the cause of all this- Danny was transformed and shot off in the sky before anyone could so much as blink.