A day later, after Dick had delivered the boomerang to Batman and informed him of the dog situation, Bruce decided to do his own research. But first...

Danny was messing with a batarang he found, it was so oddly shaped, Danny wanted to know what it did. Danny sat on the ground in the living room rug, not yet comfortable on the soft couch without permission. When the halfa was bored with the sharp metal thing he glanced up at the chandelier, wondering if he was allowed up there, the white haired child wasn't big in disobeying. He was quite relaxed when it was swinging, it's calming sways were soothing to his near-constantly panicked mind. Bruce was doing bat stuff so Dick was left to watch Danny again, Dick didn't mind, but he had been planning on doing something at the Mountain. Roy said he'd come visit some time soon and Dick wanted to be there when he did.

The acrobat was currently sitting on the couch watching a movie on his phone, one earbud out so he could hear Danny. Captain America just threw his mighty shield but the man in black with long hair and a mask caught it with a wicked metal arm. Dick was so enthralled by the movie he'd seen multiple times (but it was still amazing) he nearly missed Danny jump up and run to the window.

Pausing his movie, Dick sat up and watched as Danny pressed his hands up against the glass, looking with awed fascination as a racoon shambled by. The raven haired boy smiled as Danny's white head moved at the same pace of the rodent. He then frowned, had Danny never been outside before? Dick needed to remedy this.

"Hey Danny, let's go outside." Danny stared at him in shock. Outside? Him? Danny took one last look out the window and nodded.

Dick got up and walked Danny to the door to the manor backyard. He opened the door and a flood of new sights and sounds washed over Danny. He hadn't been outside in over four years, he had basically forgotten everything.

It was warm, but a cold breeze tickled his hair. Large lazy clouds filled the sky as brilliant rays of sunshine found crevices in the cloud cover. The grass bent beneath his bare feet, dirt getting between his toes. Danny breathed out an awed sigh.

He walked around not really paying attention to where he was walking, staring upwards at the large trees that towered over him. Leaves of all different shades of green rustled in the gentle wind, sending the shadows on Danny's face into a frenzy. The dark tree trunks were stark against the light crisp green of the manicured lawn. A few birds flew between the trees, happily chirping as they passed by. It all seemed so surreal, Danny had to be dreaming, of it was, he didn't want to wake up.

The small halfa jumped back as a long bug with four wings hovered in front of him, at first he was scared, then realized it was a dragonfly. Jazzy liked dragonflies. A red bird landed on a branch close to Danny, tweeting its song. Danny looked up at the bird, and was met by startling red eyes. His brows furrowed, birds don't have red eyes, right?

Dick walked up next to him, following his gaze to the bird.

"That's a cardinal, not too common around here." Dick stated, he too noticed the red eyes and frowned, then looked down at Danny who had his own look of confusion.

"I hope you don't mind me asking, but, besides flying, what else can you do?" Dick asked, hoping to get a better answer than a nod or something. Dick noticed the white haired boy was really good at nodding.

Danny looked down, wondering why Dick would ask a question like that. He wasn't the GIW, he wouldn't force him to fight just to figure out what he could do. Determination screwed over his face, he would mock the GIW by letting someone else find out his abilities. Also, because they were getting more prominent and harder to keep secret, but Dick had already seen one, the 'secret' wasn't much of a secret.

Danny turned to Dick and lifted his hand, Dick watched with fascination as Danny's hand burst into a green flame. Well... less like a flame and more like an aura, but it flickered and sparked. Danny let the ectoplasm die away and let his hand go invisible.

Danny had his tongue out, his face hard with concentration. The hand reappeared and instead it went see through, but not invisible. Danny then waved his hand over Dick's stomach as if hitting him. Dick flinched but felt nothing, he looked down in confusion and saw Danny with a small grin on his usually bland or frowning face.

"So, besides flying, you can go invisible, intangible, and glow?" Dick listed on his fingers, Danny nodded, then frowned and shook his head. Confused, Dick watched as Danny made his hand light up again. 

Danny looked around for a suitable target, Dick, having no idea what Danny was doing, just stood there. Danny shrugged and aimed at a tree and threw it like a ball. The blast hit the tree with a resounding 'crash' as the leaves shuttered and the wood was scorched.

"Oh." was Dick's smart reply, he was going to say more when he got interrupted by Danny's shivering. A puff of blue air arose from Danny's throat, both of the boys observed it dissipate into the warm air. A few birds and the cardinal fled from the trees.

"And that, what is that? It has to be related somehow, because I've seen you do it once before." Dick pointed to where the fog used to be. Danny shrugged as he tried to think of an answer, he himself never really knew what it was.

He took a deep breath and tried to explain, he wasn't the best at English though. "I-I-I can-can't c-con-con-" he frowned as he tried to find the right word.

"Controlează?"(Control it?) Dick offered. Danny stared in shock, his mouth agape and eyes as wide as dinner plates.

"Tu-tu vorbesti limba romana?!"(You-you speak romanian?!) Danny exclaimed, obviously surprised by the development. Dick noticed he didn't stutter as much when he spoke his native language.

"De când eram mic."(Ever since I was little.) Dick shrugged with a smile, happy he could make Danny feel more at home.

"Whoa..." Danny sighed, putting a hand on his white hair, overwhelmed with the knowledge that he wasn't the only one who spoke the language. At some point during his early years with the GIW he thought he made it up. Danny swayed, a random gust of wind stronger than the rest pushed at him.

"Don't get too overwhelmed, it's better to just be whelmed." Dick smiled and crossed his arms, reverting back to english, seeing how the little halfa would take his vocabulary.

"Wh-whel-whelmed?" Danny asked, confused beyond reason.

"Yeah, like overwhelmed is too much, underwhelmed is too little, and just whelmed is just right." Dick said, trying to put it in simple terms for the boy to understand.

To Dick's amusement, Danny agreed with him, nodding his head with a thoughtful look on his face. Dick held back a laugh, it's the first time anyone has agreed with him on his words. A little thing he liked to call his Dick'tionary, wich -of course- held his legendary aster, whelmed, and trought as the main words.

Dick eyed the boy again, wondering if this question would be too much for him. "Out of curiosity, how long were you with the GIW?"

Danny's face grew dark, his hair shadowed his eyes as he looked down, a frown prominent on his face. The atmosphere seemed to drop and the wind died down. As if the whole world had a moment of silence for the traumatized boy.

He held up his hand, four fingers spread out, his thumb folded over his palm. Dick sucked in a breath. Four years.

"You were with those monsters for four years?" Dick asked softly, Danny nodded and put his hand down, face still hidden in the shadows of his own hair.

"Have any idea why?" Dick asked hesitantly, hoping he wasn't going to far.

Danny seemed to shrink, curling his shoulders in and taking a step back. He shook his head violently, a tear streak reflected through the mass of hair. Dick's frown softened, he did know, he just didnt want to tell Dick.

"It's ok, you don't have to tell me if you don't want to. No pressure, you can tell me when you're ready." Dick said, hands raised in surrender. Danny relaxed a bit but still kept himself facing away from Dick.

Dick was about to turn to the house again when Danny spoke up.

"H-ha-halfa. I-I'm... jumătate fan-fantomă." (half gh-ghost) He said, just above a whisper.

Danny resisted the urge to shrivel up into a ball or even run away, what would Dick do now? Would all of his demented fantasies come true? Dick saw the struggle within Danny, he was so scared that they would hate him if they knew. Dick's heart melted, Danny should never be afraid to tell him or Bruce anything.

Dick ran to the cowering Danny and enveloped him in a hug.

Danny let the tears slip from his closed eyes, not for the first time Danny was astounded by the blind love that Dick and Bruce were giving him. He was reminded of Maddie, Jazzy's mom, when she found him under the bed. Gently wiping away his tears and telling him everything would be alright, saying that she didn't care he was half ghost. That she loved him, for him.

"Nu vă îngrijorați puțin fantomă, vă voi iubi mereu. Nu contează ce ești." (Don't worry little phantom, I will always love you. No matter what you are.) Dick said to Danny, meaning every word. A warm yellow spread across their cores, engulfing the fear in Danny and the worry in Dick.

The tears came full force, Danny couldn't keep from sobbing. They were so nice! He was so tired of the GIW tricking and hurting him, he thought he could never trust again. That he could never love, or be loved.

He was wrong.

-0o0o0o0o0 tic...toc...tic...toc...tic...toc 0o0o0o0o0-

Batman closed his stinging eyes, he'd been looking at the bat computer for too long. But something didn't quite add up.

The boomerang was locked onto Danny like a homing beacon, the dog was still a mystery, and another thing that got on the Dark Knights nerves were the GIW agents themselves. After he had put Danny to bed that first night, Bruce quickly made his way to the batcave to deal with the agents.

But they were gone.

Not even a lick of evidence that they were ever there besides a few scuff marks on the floor. Grown men can't just disapear. Well.. Batman could... but that's because he's Batman.

Another oddicy was the GIW themselves, the corporation was a weapons facility, designed to deal with paranormal threats. Like Men In Black wannabes. Batman had been suspicious of them for a while, it wasn't until he got a tip from Dr. Fate that he really looked into it.

Then he found Danny, and his whole point of view changed. These were not just weapon manufacturers, they were scientists. Evil scientists.

After a bit of digging, Batman found that they were developing weapons that could seriously hurt ghosts. Why ghosts of all things had Batman confused but it didn't look good for any spectral forms. But what worried Batman more were the weapons they were creating, they were creating weapons that gave humans ghost-like powers.

Batman remembered when the agents had come for Danny, the boomerang showed they knew how to find him. The disappearance and intangibility pointed to the fact that they were well on their way, although it did glitch when Danny didn't also become intangible. With that kind of power they could change the tide of history, their goals did not seem so spectral centered. If this technology were to get out, chaos would erupt, villains would use this new source for gaining power, and the most concerning part was Batman had no idea how to stop it.

The GIWs biggest project was a portal, and an experimental guinea pig, specimen G-01, witch Batman figured out was actually Danny. Batman had started going into the details of Danny's experiments but he found them too gruesome for the Caped Crusader to handle. How had the child survived these experiments? The notes plainly say he is a ghost, and that ghosts should not be able to feel pain or have emotions.

This was obviously false, Danny seemed very much alive, albeit a slow heart beat and lack of necessity of food. He felt pain, sorrow, terror. They could not be so blind to the pain they caused, thus must know and still do it, it made the vigilantes insides crawl with anger and unease. The longer Batman dove into Danny's files the more disgusted and angry he became.

At one point they had splashed acid onto his face just to see what would happen, they would strap him up in an electric chair for days on end. They forced him to fight robots much stronger than him, they impaled him with rods of electricity. They DISSECTED him... ALIVE. They cut off a finger just to watch it grow back, they forced him to use his ghost abilities while he was dying of blood loss. They never cleaned up after their messes, never once helped Danny heal from the wounds they caused.

What was worse was that he found evidence they would test their ghost weapons on him after nearly every experiment.

Batman was so furious he had to throw a few batarangs into the wall to keep him from punching the screen. Beyond his anger, Batman was incredibly impressed by the small boy. He may be been dead but he survived every last one of their experiments and beatings. The strength of the little ghost was astonishing.

The GIW used the information they gathered from Danny to improve and make new weapons. And there were so many, it was as if they were supplying an army. A watch, when twisted the right direction, would give the wearer invisibility or intangibility, both able to fool heat sensors. A sword was able to slice through ectoplasm and scifen it off the ghost to charge itself.

An ecto-net that Batman had encountered before, the rope made of ecto-ranium, a rock that acted like a ghost's kryptonite. Blood Blossom bombs were innocent red pouches that exploded into the air, any ghost in the area would immediately be incapacitated then die a slow painful second death.

Lots of other weapons were listed and all of them were at one point tested on Danny. Ecto-ranium gun; bullets made of ecto-ranium. Ecto-Brass knuckles; incase you wanted to get down and dirty with the ghost. Plasmius Rocket; odd rocket launcher that blows a powerful blood blossom blast like a nuclear bomb.

And millions of others named weird names that had no meaning to Batman; Skulker's claw, Technis' ghost vision, Walkers wulf, Amorpho-shifter, the Specter Deflector, the Phantom Thermos, the Ghost Gabber, and more. Batman was beginning to wonder about the sanity level of the person who named all these weapons.

Batman was scrolling through all the weapons when he got to the bottom.

Percentage useable on humans?

84%

Batman stared at the number. 84% of all those nasty weapons they tested on Danny were able to hurt humans as well as ghosts. Batman narrowed his eyes, how did they know they worked on humans if they did not test them on a human as well?

Batman's heart plummeted. Danny.

He pulled up Danny's file again, on it written that he was fully ghost. He frowned, that can't be right. Batman nearly growled with frustration, then paused to think.

If he were a weapons factory and started doing something illegal, he wouldnt document it. Or at least, he would stretch the truth to make it seem not as bad. Batman smirked, he had these guys all figured out. Danny was not fully ghost, he must be some sort of clash between living and dead.

The next question was why? Why build and test all these weapons? It's not like the world is being overrun by ghosts. Dr. Fate himself said that he'd met a few pleasant ghosts before. What worried Batman is why the GIW would need Danny back. They got a bunch of weapons tested and made almost directly from their experiments on Danny.

The new information seemed to raise more questions than it answered, but Batman was relieved to know at least how the agents got into and out of the batcave. But Danny was probably not safe anywhere, not if the boomerang had anything to say about it.

Batman was still confused by one thing.

The dog. How did the dog get in the house? The dog could not have been trained, Dick said it was a puppy and yapped and ran around a lot. It was glowing green and had red eyes, not normal dog traits. Did they infuse ghost powers into a dog? Is that how Danny became half-ghost?

Batman pinched the bridge of his nose, he was overthinking this. What he needed was more, concrete, information. They could have lied about half the stuff they did on these files, he needed an insider. Batman wouldn't dream of sending Danny or Dick there, he needed to infiltrate and gain the trust of the GIW. He needed to know their plans.

Batman had no idea how to infiltrate the GIW.

-0o0o0o0 its only a matter of time 0o0o0o0-

Clockwork sighed as he looked at the future.

So many moving parts, so many things that could go wrong, so many ways to fail. But that was the way of success. With a million things that could go wrong, it takes time to account for them all to find that one path that leads to success. Failure is only final after you quit, and Clockwork refused to stop looking for a way.

Clockwork thought he found that path.

But his vision was skewed, his sight blocked, again for the two thousand thirty six hundredth time, Clockwork was blocked.

Clockwork backed up, more like rewinded, the path. Clockwork had to deal with one problem at a time, it did no one any good by overthinking and over planning. As much as Clockwork hated to admit it, there was such a thing as being too involved in the time stream.

But first, Clockwork needed to deal with the ghosts at his doorstep. An image of Walker and a few dozen of his guards appeared on the screen. Walker stood with his signature frown, hands clasped behind his back, rule book in hand.

"Let's go see what the warden wants." Clockwork said gravelly to himself. Of course, he knew what the prison guard wanted, he was Clockwork wasn't he?

But this was the first step in a series of events that always led up to the future being blocked. Clockwork had to play his cards right if he had any hope for a future at all. Clockwork floated to his front doors, not yet ready to finally start his plan to save the future. It all started here.

Clockwork was nervous.

The future was not bright for the ghost of time.