DP x DC Prompt
…
There are no more heroes.
Well, okay. Rewind a bit.
Danny has been doing the hero thing for a while now. He’s had a big reveal; everyone has accepted him (including his parents), the GIW disbanded, the Anti-Ecto acts repealed, and generally, everything is going great. Some of the A-Listers are even training as junior ghost hunters to help give him a break from his rogues! (Being Ghost King makes things hectic sometimes, and he just needs the extra help. Sue him!)
The point is, literally nothing is wrong with Danny Phantom’s afterlife.
And then Valerie Gray, the Red Huntress, disappears in front of his eyes.
Danny is baffled! She’s just…gone! Valerie just popped out of existence, like she was never there. But no matter how hard he searches in the Ghost Zone, he can’t find her soul anywhere. His core isn't broken in grief. So she’s not dead. Which is good. So then, where is she?
Some of the others come forward with ideas on how to find her. A few ghosts volunteer to go out into the mortal realm, an area Danny had declared off-limits, to see if she was out there. Danny approves it. He rounds up some of the friendlier (i.e., discreet) ghosts and Amity Parkers and demolishes the outside travel ban.
So everyone spreads out, looking for their dear frenemy and teammate. But it becomes apparent very quickly that something is wrong with the rest of the world.
There are no more heroes.
Every single living superhero on the face of the Earth has just…vanished. Villains are running amok; the countries are in chaos! Some aliens are invading Earth, mythical deities are trying to take over, and society is crumbling to the ground. Everything is on the brink of collapse.
Well, Danny was still there. And so were his people. They were pretty spread out, so could they just…take up the mantles? He also knew where to find the souls of dead heroes in the Zone; surely they wouldn't mind coming out of retirement for a little bit, especially if they couldn't die again. Oh! And that skeleton army leftover from Pariah Dark's reign might be useful in repelling those invading forces.
Honestly, there were more than enough hands to go around! And with the heroes gone, Danny didn't mind letting everyone out for a little break, as long as they followed his rules. They wouldn't stop the search for the other heroes, but hopefully, when they found them, the heroes wouldn't mind Danny's intervention too much. :)
In other words:
Someone fucks up, and all of Earth's living heroes are either wished out of existence or are whisked away to some far-off realm where Danny hasn't checked yet. In the attempt to figure out what's going on, Danny lets the dead run amok over the Earth as they search for clues. The skeleton army repels the invading armies, the souls of dead heroes deal with the world leaders, and his rogues and other Amity Parkers set up shop in place of famous heroes, trying to get the cities under control again.
Basically, they just do their best to keep everything from imploding until the Justice League and others are back.
(And why is it that Danny hasn't disappeared? Well, whatever caused everyone to go poof! only affected living heroes. Anyone heroes that were dead in the first place, or even just half-dead, stayed behind.)
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Okay but consider: Cat Café AU
I AM CONSIDERING SO VERY MUCH!!!
Anddd you never said no magic involved and I'm frigging sick and tired of the real world right now, so...
Julie is the proud owner of a small cat cafe in Los Feliz. Lots of great drinks, super sweet cats, plenty of comfy places to sit. To the outside viewer, it seems like a pretty standard setup, if surprisingly well funded. What is less common knowledge is that shapeshifters are also a thing and Dahlia's Sip and Purr also acts as a sort of safe house for many.
Reggie and Alex are the main two other front employees, with Flynn working there too on the business side of things. They take turns working the front counter and taking care of the cats, Julie hopping in with either job when she can. Everything on the menu has silly cat pun names, most of them courtesy of either Reggie or Carlos, Julie's little brother. (She regularly gets texts from him with no context, just a cat pun drink name. They've gotten more frequent since he moved out for college.)
About half the cats that come through the cafe are shelter cats, who are healthy and mostly adoptable but don't have proper homes. They have a board on the wall of which cats people can adopt. Julie has a great relationship with the folks at the nearby animal shelters, cause she takes great care of the kitties and often finds them good homes after a bit!
A couple of the cats are a bit older and have just been with the gang for long enough that they've gotten attached and Julie or Reggie and Alex (they live together) have officially adopted them. Julie lives in a studio over the shop, so she just kinda takes her babies up with her at the end of the day.
And then the last handful of cats... aren't full-time cats. Shapeshifters aren't super common, but they tend to find each other. Most of them have 3-5 forms, depending roughly on age. The first two forms (human and some animal) usually are based on genetics or whatever, and the shifter has no control over what the animal form is. But when they get a grip on their first nonhuman form and start learning a second one, a lot of folks will go for some kind of domestic animal. Both because they're generally small and easy to get away from bad people, but also cause no one is gonna ask weird questions about seeing a housecat in their backyard. At least not like they would if it was like a wolf or something. So most shifters have some kind of house pet form by the time they're teens/young adults.
Given both the high percentage of shifters who have a small cat form, plus the high population density of LA, plus the fact that being a shifter isn't always genetic and often comes out of nowhere... there's a fair amount of unhoused/exhausted cat shifters around Dahlia's. So when Julie and Flynn were daydreaming about running their own cafe in high school, Julie was like, "Okay but if we do the cat thing, we gotta have a way we can help out shifters somehow."
Julie learned about all this as a kid, cause her dad is a shifter (first form was a black bear, which caused some chaos... now his most commonly used ones are a big grey cat and a raven), and Carlos inherited those genes as well (first form was a badger, these days he spends his animal time mostly as an orange and white tomcat). So while Julie and her mom didn't actually change shape themselves, it's just kinda a part of life.
Alex and Reggie are both shifters and met Julie and Flynn in college. Julie sorta found out by accident when she came into their dorm room and saw zero human boys and two cats curled up together in a sunbeam. But now they're her employees/coworkers, having a good time working and also having a safe space to cat in. (Alex's first form was actually a cat, a jet black shorthair. Reggie's first was a hampster, but he much prefers being a dapper tux tomcat). They also know all the signals and stuff to let other shifters know that it's a safe space, which Julie really appreciates.
So yeah, some of the cats in the cafe are humans some of the time. These include :
Luke, who is also best friends with the main gang but absolutely hates customer service so he splits time between the cafe and writing music for a couple of indie bands in the area. Or sometimes both at the same time.
Willie, Alex's boyfriend (yes his first form was a raccoon) and another bestie of the gang. He teaches art classes for adults, but those are mostly in the evenings when people are off work, so he'll hang out as a cat and play with silly humans in the daytime (also skate around getting into trouble but that's fineee).
Bobby, who happened in one day in their first couple weeks of business and lowkey never left. He's a security guard officially for a museum or something nearby, but he mostly works the night shift, and well... the sunbeams are nicer at Julie's cafe than his tiny apartment. So he hangs out a lot and has gotten adopted into the gang. He and Alex are great nap buddies and customers like cooing over their lil yin and yang cuddle pile.
Coming along with Bobby, we have his twin sister Carrie, who is not a shifter but was kind of freaking out about her brother disappearing so much (she knew about the shifter thing) and ended up following him to the cafe about six months after he started going. Cue drama and chaos, but eventually things settled and it all got straightened out. Flynn and Carrie are dating now, so she's around a decent bit.
She also introduced Kayla, one of her dancers who was also a shifter, to the cafe. Kayla had gone for a dog form when she was younger, but started working on a cat after hanging at the cafe a bit cause it's just so cozy.
And well... the shifter community may be quiet, but it's got its rich people too. After finding out about the whole thing, Willie's adopted dad started subtly pushing business Julie's way, along with sponsorship deals and stuff. And well, when Caleb absolutely cannot get ahold of his kid, he usually knows where to go. Even if he's not actually there, Julie or Alex have usually seen him recently and can pass along a message. (Caleb is absolutely a shifter btw.)
And well frick this got WAY too long, I'm sorry!!! I shall shush now and leave you in peace!
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i lied. i dont actually like sex. put your clothes back on. im going to explain to you how one weird little kid changed the lives of tons of people for the better and at the end of of the series everyone he's helped and changed comes back to help him and return the favor. Let me explain to you the parallels between each of their arcs with the last few episodes. Let me tell you about how his brother finally realizes that it was all him. Every part of that kid is him and they all need to learn to live with it and accept and love him and help him not repress himself because that's what caused the problem in the
first place. Let me rant about how his friend/one-sided rival uses what he said when they first met back to him. (about not using powers to hurt other people) Let me scream about how the friend's first fight with him and last fight are direct parallels. Let me scream about how he shows how much that boy has changed him by opting to protect civilians instead of himself. I'm going to tell you about how after the former terrorist he saved finally realizes that instead of sacrificing himself to save the city he should survive and be there for his son and try to make amends and continue to be better. Let me talk about how even though the people he works out with KNOW that really they're no match for him and they don't really know what's going on, they still try to help him anyways. Because they're friends. That's what friends do and they love him. They just want to support him in every way they can. Let me scream and cry about how his mentor, the man he's known the longest, the man he trusts the most in the world finally admits that he lied to him and he's been lying to him and he finally tells the truth and that's exactly what that boy needs. He needed the truth. It shocked him back to reality, and everyone he's talked to up until that point, INCLUDING HIMSELF, shows him that everyone loves him, and they all accept him, the only problem is that he's unable to accept himself. He's been refusing to forgive himself since he was a little kid for something he didn't even mean to do, and he's been repressing and hiding important parts of himself because he's afraid. And he doesn't need to be afraid because he has people that are there for him and they all love him. LET ME THROW THE BIGGEST FIT YOUVE EVER SEEN WHILE I EXPLAIN TO YOU JUST HOW IMPORTANT THAT TALK BETWEEN HIM AND THE PART OF HIMSELF HES BEEN TRYINF TO REPRESS IS AND HOW MUCH IT CHANGED HIM. HE FINALLY ACCEPTS HIMSELF FOR WHO HE IS AND HES FINALLY ABLE TO FORGIVE HIMSELF AND MOVE ON AND GROW
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