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Going Ghost! (Young Justice) Chapter 74: Iceberg Lounge (3)
🕑 Added 2025-06-20 14:52:17 +0000 UTC[Third Person's PoV]
With just a glance at The Penguin’s smug, battered face, something snapped inside Klemper.
"You hurt my friend!" he bellowed, his deep voice trembling with unfiltered rage.
Without hesitation—without even a second thought—Klemper opened his massive mouth and unleashed a furious blast of frigid air, the temperature in the room plummeting as the wave of ghostly frost surged forward like an avalanche.
Danny acted immediately. Reacting on instinct, he raised his hands and summoned a thick wall of glowing construct of spectral energy, planting it firmly between the incoming freeze and everyone else. The translucent barrier solidified just in time, absorbing the freezing blast—but it didn’t last long. Frost quickly coated its surface.
Then, with a ground-shaking roar, Klemper charged headlong and shattered the frozen wall with a devastating punch, shards of ice erupting in every direction like ice shrapnel.
Batman and Robin sprang into motion. Their capes flared as they flipped backward, using the fabric to shield themselves from the icy debris. Each moved with precise acrobatics, dancing around the chaos as they dodged stray frost and jagged projectiles.
“Klemper, you doofus! Watch where you’re attacking! You could’ve hit me!” The Penguin shouted from his position, shaking a furious fist.
“Sorry!!” Klemper yelled back sheepishly, his face twisting into a goofy expression as he awkwardly redirected himself—right into Danny. He tackled him full-force, arms wrapping around him as they tumbled across the room.
Suddenly, the smaller ghost sprites that had been floating aimlessly began reacting to the surge of conflict. As if triggered by Klemper’s rage, they spun in erratic patterns, their tiny forms glowing brighter. In a blink, they started firing wild jets of green ghost energy in random directions. The beams ricocheted off walls, scorched the floors, and scorched through the edges of furniture.
Batman and Robin moved methodically, weaving and leaping between the erratic blasts with fluid, trained grace. Robin whipped out his collapsible staff mid-flip, spinning it at high speed to deflect incoming rays. Then, with a press of a small button on the handle, the staff’s ends pulsed with a brilliant emerald glow—charged with anti-ghost tech.
Meanwhile, Danny was being tackled toward a steel wall at full speed, but he caught himself just in time. Twisting his body, he planted both feet firmly against the surface and absorbed the impact, crouching low with a grunt.
His eyes flared brightly with ectoplasmic light, twin beams of spectral energy erupting from his pupils and blasting Klemper square in the chest. The ghostly brute let out a surprised grunt as he was thrown backward by the force of the attack.
“Robin!” Danny called, tossing the ghost containment flask into the air.
Robin spotted the flask immediately. Using a nearby couch as a springboard, he launched himself into the air, flipped once mid-leap, and caught the thermos in one fluid motion before tucking into a roll to dodge another stray energy beam. He landed behind a scorched desk just as it exploded from a missed shot.
Back on the move, Danny wasted no time. He bolted toward Klemper and tackled him once again, their bodies phasing through a nearby wall—both of them becoming intangible as they vanished from sight.
Batman, meanwhile, had set his sights on Cobblepot. The Penguin was crawling away frantically toward a hidden panel in the wall. Batman sprinted after him, ducking and weaving through erratic ghost blasts. As he ran, he retrieved a set of metallic knuckle dusters from his utility belt. With a single press, they lit up neon green, humming with concentrated anti-ghost energy and crackling with raw power.
In the room beyond the wall, Danny and Klemper materialized in what appeared to be a hidden treasure vault. The entire room gleamed with gold—literal stacks of bars crammed into carts, priceless artwork leaning against the walls, duffel bags stuffed with bills, and all sorts of stolen items laid haphazardly across polished floors.
But more notably, scattered among the treasures were weapons—familiar weapons. Experimental gear. Ghost-tech prototypes. Several clearly marked with the WayneTech insignia.
‘Of course… it all makes sense now,’ Danny thought grimly. ‘He’s using the ghosts. He’s weaponized them. They’re the perfect thieves—intangible, hard to trace, impossible to imprison…’
But his revelation cost him.
Klemper, rising with a grimace, thrust his hands forward and released a concentrated blast of frost energy. The beam hit Danny square in the chest before he could react.
"Argh!!" Danny grunted, his body arching from the impact. The biting cold spread instantly across his ghostly form, encasing him in thick ice. Frost spider-webbed around his limbs and torso, locking him in place. The force of the attack slammed him back against the wall with a brutal crack, where he remained pinned by the sheer pressure.
Struggling, Danny gritted his teeth as ghostly green energy began building up around him. His aura ignited like wildfire—heat pulsing through his frame as the spectral flames melted the frost inch by inch, steam rising from his skin.
Across the room, Klemper stood trembling with anger, clenching his fists. “You hurt my friend,” he growled, “I won’t forgive you!”
He brought his hands together, forming a snowball of condensed frost energy, then hurled it at Danny with an echoing roar.
Danny pushed off the wall and rolled to the side just in time. “He isn’t your friend!” he shouted.
The snowball exploded against the wall, and in its place, massive icicle spikes erupted like deadly spears, piercing through furniture and splitting the floor beneath them.
“He’s clearly using you, Klemper!” Danny tried to reason, but the ghost was deaf to logic now. He launched another barrage—snowball after snowball, glowing blue-white with raw freezing power.
Danny answered with his own assault, conjuring a roaring emerald flame between his hands and launching it forward. The blasts collided mid-air. Heat met cold—ectoplasmic flame against spectral frost—resulting in a thunderous shockwave that rocked the entire room.
The chandeliers above swayed wildly, the golden chains groaning. Desks and paintings rattled, a few even tumbling over as the lights flickered violently from the surge of power. The room felt like it might collapse under the weight of the opposing ghost energies.
“So what?! Mr. Penguin is my friend!” Klemper bellowed, his voice shaking with emotion. “Friends help friends out!”
His body trembled with rising ghostly power as he drew in a deep, freezing breath. Then, with a thundering roar, he released a titanic blast of Arctic wind. The air became a violent vortex of frost, rapidly consuming the entire room in thick layers of snow and glistening ice. The floor cracked beneath the pressure. Furniture was buried in a white tide. The chandelier above froze solid, shards of icicles beginning to droop from its metal arms.
Danny barely managed to raise a protective force field in time, surrounding himself in a shimmering dome of ectoplasmic energy. But even that was quickly encased in ice, the frost crawling over its surface like a living thing. The temperature dropped so sharply it hurt to breathe.
Thinking fast, Danny phased through the frozen shell and shot forward, tackling Klemper with ghost-enhanced force. The two spirits surged through the wall, out of the room, and out of the Iceberg Lounge altogether—bursting into the cold night air above Gotham City.
The world opened up around them—skyscrapers, rooftops, glowing billboards, and the faint sounds of traffic far below.
“That may be true!” Danny shouted over the rushing wind as they flew upward in a spiraling ascent, “But he’s taking advantage of you—of your desire to make friends! Friends don’t manipulate each other! The relationship you have with the Penguin… that’s not friendship! That’s servitude!”
Determined not to repeat his past mistake—like what happened during the incident with the dragon—Danny pulled Klemper higher into the night sky, far from civilians, far from potential collateral damage.
But Klemper wasn't going to be led like a puppet.
With a roar of resistance, he wrenched free and swung a massive punch. It connected, knocking Danny back violently. Danny tumbled through the air, spinning end over end before steadying himself, his ghostly aura flaring.
“Mr. Penguin was the first person to accept me as a friend!” Klemper screamed, his eyes beginning to tear up, ghostly mist curling off his cheeks. “I don’t care if he’s using me! I’m finally… happy! If I help Mr. Penguin, then he’ll keep being my friend! That’s all I’ve ever wanted! No one else has ever treated me like a friend!!”
His anguished voice echoed through the skies as they began to circle each other like a predators.
Klemper flung his arms forward repeatedly, firing a relentless barrage of freezing energy. Like a living artillery gun, he hurled concentrated snowballs and icicle-laced bursts of ice, his sorrow bleeding into his power.
Danny responded quickly. With a flash of green light, he summoned spectral energy to form blade-like constructs along both arms. He darted and twisted through the air, slashing at the barrage with sharp, fluid movements. Each snowball he cleaved split apart and detonated in bursts of ice, sending waves of cold air washing over him. Still, he pushed forward, weaving between the blasts with the grace of a warrior.
“Then I’ll be your friend!!” Danny shouted, his voice rising above the winds. “Your true friend! And as much as you try to tell yourself otherwise—I know you can feel it! Deep down… you know Penguin doesn’t really consider you his friend!”
“Shut up!!” Klemper roared, voice cracking with grief. “Shut up! Stop talking! Stop talking bad about my friend!! Mr. Penguin is my friend!!”
Fueled by heartbreak and rage, Klemper charged again. His fists were like hammers, flailing with wild power. Danny didn’t want to hurt him—not truly—so he shifted the energy from his blade constructs, wrapping his fists instead in glowing, crackling rings of spectral energy. He met Klemper’s onslaught head-on, deflecting and redirecting each blow.
"Wake up, damn it!" Danny growled, blocking one punch and landing a powered uppercut that sent Klemper soaring back.
Danny flew after him, fist pulled back, then slammed it downward into Klemper’s chest. “That desperate need for friendship… it’s blinding you! It’s making you ignore every warning sign! You’re letting yourself be used, and you’re calling it happiness?!”
Grabbing Klemper by the front of his night gown, Danny stared directly into his eyes and forced him to stop.
“Look… I don’t know how the Penguin treated you,” Danny admitted, his tone softer but still firm. “I wasn’t there for all of it. I’m not going to pretend I understand your whole life… But nobody deserves to have their feelings played with. Not you. Not anyone. I will not let it happen if I have anything to say about it”
Klemper’s breath caught in his throat.
His arms, raised and ready for another strike, slowly began to fall. His glowing eyes flickered uncertainly.
“…Why?” he asked quietly, almost a whisper. “Why are you trying to help me?”
Danny scratched the back of his neck, awkward but sincere. “I guess… I don’t really discriminate when it comes to helping people. Or ghosts,” he added with a chuckle. “If I see someone who’s hurting—someone who needs help—I just can’t sit still and ignore it. I have to do something. I don't really need a reason to help someone that needs help”
Klemper stared at him for a long moment. He blinked slowly, his expression unreadable as he looked down at his own hands. His fingers trembled. His shoulders sagged.
Then, finally… he lowered his arms slightly.
---
Meanwhile, in Metropolis…
High above the glowing skyline, Superman hovered quietly, arms folded as he scanned the distant horizon. His gaze lingered to the east—for a moment—toward Gotham.
He smiled faintly.
“Seriously,” he muttered to himself, amused, “where does he find these kids…?”
There was no envy in his voice, just a warm, good-natured admiration.
“I’m starting to get a little jealous here,” he added with a chuckle.
Memories flickered in his mind—Danny in Star City, talking a mile a minute about how he’d totally call Superman for backup when things got dicey. That same voice now echoed in his ears, calm and brave as it tried to help someone.
‘For someone who planned on constantly calling my name,’ Superman thought with fond amusement, ‘he seems more than capable of handling himself.’
Comments
trey hill
Thanks for the call back to that guys comment lol
KingSpy25i .
Thank you for the great chapter 🙏 I wonder if Danny can better help Superman care and understand his clone son. Maybe even be a mediator between the two and act like a big brother to Conner. It would even be extremely funny if after a big disagreement between Superman and Danny, over how disappointing and childish Superman is acting with this whole situation, Danny decided to bring Ma Kent into the discussion 🤣🤣🤣
