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Phantom had been hit, hard, five minutes ago, and he still hadn’t gotten back up.
In between punching the… death god? Eldrich horror? Alien? that was attacking Nothing, South Dakota, Superman shot horrified glances at his teammate. The heavy hitters of the League had been called out by the Flash to take down the creature, Phantom included. He’d been doing just fine, albeit completely baffled that the creature wasn’t going down under the combined might of the League, when he got-
Obliterated was probably the nicest word to describe what happened to Phantom.
The creature’s limb-tentacle-arm had punched right through the ghost, sending ectoplasm flying in every direction. Phantom’s body had split into ragged halves, the edges dissolving into green goo. His head was only a misty outline, just enough ectoplasm to be fairly sure he had a head, no way of seeing the expression on his face. His legs compressed into a tiny wisp of a tail, cradled protectively around the mess of green that had been Phantom.
But he was still moving.
Superman slammed his fist into the general area of “face” on the creature and risked another glance back. Phantom’s halves had roughly phased back together, the man appeared to be re-shaping his torso back into a more torso-y shape. His head, now more solid, was bent over his work as he squished his body back into shape as quickly as possible.
Superman shuddered. The man may be dead- he was fairly cavalier about the fact- but it was one thing to know your teammate was dead, that he could take hits that would kill (ha) the average person like they were nothing. It was another thing to watch him get nearly discorporated and be practically back in fighting shape not ten minutes later.
He’d been distracted too long. As Wonder Woman shouted a warning, Superman re-focused on the fight just in time to get slammed in the side with a tentacle-limb-thing. He went flying, completely discombobulated as he tumbled head-over-heels, and only managed to reorient himself over a mile away from the fight. By the time he shot back, the fight was over- Flash explained to him in super-speed that Capitan Marvel had done some kind of magic, aided by one of his patron gods, to banish the demon (apparently it was a demon) back to its dimension. According to the Capitan, they wouldn’t have to worry about it any time in the next three millennia or so.
Sometimes Clark missed the good old days when he was just an alien refugee pretending to be a human on a farm in Kansas. Life was simpler.
“How’s Phantom?” Superman asked as he and Flash returned back to regular-time. The pair went over to Phantom, still hunched over himself some thirty feet away. He looked to be regrowing his legs now, the tail slowly extending and splitting as the ectoplasm that had been sprayed across the field was reabsorbed into his body. Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel were also moving toward their fallen teammate.
“Phantom? Buddy, how’re you doing?” Flash asked, arriving first as always.
“Just great,” Phantom groaned, still engrossed with his work. There was something off about his voice, Superman noticed. It was higher pitched- probably from the way he was reshaping his body. Getting bisected had to hurt, ghost or no. Phantom didn’t look up as his teammates gathered around him. “You know how it is. Demons from Hell, get cut in half. All in a day’s work.” Phantom glanced up and grinned at his teammates.
Superman’s heart stopped.
“Uh, what are you guys making those faces for?” Phantom said, worried. “I didn’t switch my arms, right?” He looked at his hands. “Left?” He flipped his hands over, and, satisfied, looked up again. “What’s wrong?”
“You’re like, twelve,” Flash said in shock.
Captain Marvel started coughing hard. Wonder Woman slapped him on the back with enough power to drive him an inch into the dirt, not taking her eyes off of her teammate.
Phantom didn’t look twelve, but he looked much, much younger than normal. He had introduced himself to the team over a year ago, and his features hadn’t changed from an approximately twenty-five-year-old in that time. He didn’t age. He was dead. But now he looked nearly a decade younger, sixteen at the absolute oldest.
“Oh,” Phantom said, startled. He glanced down at his still-reforming legs like he would be able to tell his age from those alone. “Well, shit.”