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miscmonstro · 1 year

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The Uno Reverse Adoption Saga 5

First: Chapter 1

Previous: Chapter 4

Next: Chapter 6

Halfa!Trio Au crossover with Batman

Current Characters: Sam Manson, Tucker Foley, Danny Fenton, Jason Todd (brief), Scarecrow

Summary: Forced to attend a gala by her parents as she is every year, Sam Manson was resigned to suffer through the stifling three-night gala until something pulled at her core. The something turned out to be a someone. Just who is Jason Todd and can the trio gain enough of his trust to help him before his struggling proto-core collapses?

👻 {Chapter 5 Below!)

Danny crept forward, thermos in hand. Sam flung out a mental arm and he stopped as though there were something physically holding him back.

“He can’t just disappear off the roof, we need a plan to distract everyone first,” Sam said.

Sheepishly, Danny clipped the thermos to the waist of his suit. “I didn’t even think about that.”

It made everything much, much more complicated.

“Is the hostage ok?” Danny asked instead, eyeing the incoming heroes. There were two of them and as they slowed their approach it seemed they were talking to the two who had already been at the wall of vapor. That made a tally of four.

Sam corrected, “Hostages, plural. And there were at least seven crashers.”

“There are four back there,” Tucker observed, noting a flat section surrounded by the telltale yellow tinged haze, “and one hostage.”

Danny, however, peered closer at the heroes. They were still a good distance away and if it weren’t for their night vision, he wouldn’t have been able to discern them. One of the heroes was the Batman himself, looking quite disgruntled. The shorter figure by his side couldn’t be anyone besides the boy wonder, Robin. On Batman’s other side was, surprisingly, Nightwing. The fourth person, Tucker informed them, was Orphan.

“It looks like they have masks. Why not go through the gas?” he wondered, staring at the heroes.

Tucker turned it over for a moment and Sam scoffed. “It’s obviously the hostages. They can’t get any further or the goons will gas them.”

“Wait,” Tucker said abruptly. “The manor didn’t have anyone in it. Anyone that wasn’t already gassed- no paramedics and whatnot. You don’t think…”

There were specific situations in which paramedics wouldn’t wade into a mess to help people, and considering everyone had masks and that the inside was free of any other danger…

“They’ve taken the entire manor and everyone in it hostage,” Danny realized with horror. The paramedics wouldn’t go in because they couldn’t without warranting retaliation from the crashers.

“And I’m going to bet, from the match that ghost is waving around, that the gas is flammable,” Sam added dryly. “Great.”

Tucker warily shared the ratios of power running through the Wayne property; if the building caught fire, even without the gas, it’d burn down quicker than a building of its size ought to. And with the gas? He wouldn’t be surprised if the manor went sky high.

Sam decided she was going to steal that idea for later, a faded overlay of Vlad’s mansion eclipsing Wayne Manor for a moment.

“Could we revisit plan a? Think I could overshadow that ghost?” Danny wondered, eyeing the being in question, though silently he did agree with Sam’s mental picture. He studied their opponent. The ghost was, visibly, reminiscent of a living scarecrow. Danny was sure they could take him.

“We have to be very careful here,” Tucker thought. “I think we should find the three missing goons first.”

He thought about TV shows and how the villain always had a backup plan. If the ghost was working with the humans, who didn’t seem to be under any ghostly influences, then they couldn’t assume that taking out the ghost would resolve everything.

Even after years of knowing him, Sam found Tucker’s ability to connect anything to electronics and pop culture oddly engrossing, but she pushed that thought aside to focus on the problem at hand. She had seen two of the goons earlier, during her scan of the mansion, however both were alone and had been stationary. With no hostages and no reason to confront them she’d flown past, still searching for the ghost.

“I can go back and knock them out,” she offered, perhaps a tad too eager, after sharing the information.

With simultaneous agreement from the boys she dove through the roof, and a moment later Danny followed, intending to find the missing crasher. Tucker proceeded toward the four crashers on the roof, eyebrows furrowed as he took in the details of the scene. He poked at the other two.

“Uh. Guys? Another problem.”

“Ancients, what now?” Danny groaned as he phased through a wall.

“The hostage up here is Tim Wayne.”

Sam sighed, instantly picking up on the newfound issue. “And that means Jason is on the roof or nearby and unaccounted for. Great.”

Danny nonverbally requested Tucker to keep an eye out for the young ghost and he agreed before gently nudging back, reminding Danny to focus. He then looked back to the goons and their unfortunate victim.

Ghosts were, by nature, beings of emotion. As such, they were in tune to it. The mansion reeked of fear, and now that none of them were stuck experiencing it, it wasn’t bad at all. Still, fear was a reasonable human reaction to the situation at hand, and so when Tucker pushed his celebrity awe aside and realized that Tim Wayne did not feel any fear in his current predicament, he was puzzled.

At most, the young CEO felt slightly nervous, not fearful.

Tucker’s eyes narrowed. It was something he’d have to revisit later. Right now he needed to find out if there was some way that the crashers were communicating with one another and if he could use that to locate the last one. At first glance the crashers didn’t have much, just their spraying devices, the attached tanks, and a gun each, but upon further inspection they had comms as well. They rested on the insides of their masks and disappeared into their shirts.

“Bingo,” Tucker grinned. He reached out, spectral fingers brushing the edge of a wire poking out from the bottom of the crasher’s mask, and followed the frequency it was attuned to.

“And… gottem’,” he said smugly, sharing the general locations of the other comms, and in all likelihood, the other crashers. It was best described as knowing where your hand was in utter pitch black; you knew it was there, even if you couldn’t see it. Sam tapped at the two that she recognized and Danny changed course to head towards the remaining crasher, who was tucked into a dusty attic just below the roof. The last crasher had a visible weapon holster, a tank strapped to her back, and a device of some kind in hand. Unlike the other two, she wasn’t alone. Petrified, just like the majority of the victims within the mansion, were four more hostages. Although they weren’t bound in any way it was clear they would be unable to escape in their current state.

And then Danny felt it.

A tug at his core.

“Oh,” he thought breathlessly. It was one thing to feel the pull secondhand and another to feel it for yourself.

If Tucker sharing the general locations of the comms was akin to knowing your body, then feeling who could only be Jason was like walking into a dark room illuminated solely by a spotlight shining on the man in question- it was impossible to not know where he was.

And he was there, in that attic somewhere.

Danny launched himself at the crasher and with one solid swing, sent the woman sprawling to the ground. With her out of the way he was free to follow the slight pull that was growing in strength. He intended to do so but didn’t need to as the moment the woman hit the floor a figure stepped out from behind one of the stacks of old boxes.

“Jason, I presume,” Danny said, switching to the human spectrum.

“Who the fuck are you?” Jason asked, cocking a gun.

“I’m Phantom. Manes mentioned you, so I thought I’d lend a hand,” Danny introduced while motioning to the unconscious goon.

“I had it handled.” With a scowl Jason slowly lowered the gun and glared at Danny, eyes full of scrutinizing mistrust.

Despite that Danny felt himself grinning, almost against his will. Jason was here, safe and in front of him, and while his little core was struggling Danny knew he generated enough ectoplasm to easily patch up the cracks he could sense even from six feet away.

“Danny,” Sam said sharply at Tucker’s recoil, “no. I can feel your bad decision from here.”

“Please don’t kidnap a child without consent. Don’t be like Vlad,” Tucker helpfully supplied.

He blinked owlishly. Then the implications of what he wanted to do, of giving Jason’s proto-core his ectoplasm washed over him and Danny backpedaled, physically and mentally.

“I’m not kidnapping you,” he blurted.

Sam snorted. “Kidnapping, by definition, lacks consent.”

“What?” Jason questioned, taken aback.

“I mean,” fumbled Danny, “it’s not like I’m a billionaire with a adoption problem?”

Jason opened and closed his mouth once, then twice, then shut his jaw with an audible click.

Tucker, the traitor, just laughed at him.

“He probably thinks you were talking about his dad!” he wheezed.

Even Sam chuckled. “Brucie Wayne has an adoption problem. Danny. Jason was adopted.”

“Oh Ancients, you’re adopted?” Danny asked, mortified. “I was talking about someone else, I swear.”

“You might fit the bill, maybe-billionaire Mr. King,” Tucker said gleefully, sending the impression of a wink. They didn’t know exactly how much of Pariah Dark’s horde had become Danny’s when he’d bested the tyrant, but it was more than enough to fill several rooms of the old king’s lair.

“I’m not Vlad,” Danny muttered crossly, swatting Tucker’s presence. Besides, what was ghost wealth in the living world?

Jason cleared his throat. “So, what are you planning to do?” he questioned haltingly. He spared an obvious glance at the prone crasher.

Danny flipped back into hero mode so quickly it would’ve given most people whiplash. “Status?” he thought, followed by a memory list of important items they’d been keeping track of since the mission started: the gas, the hostages, the ghost, the other heroes.

“The stragglers are out,” Sam reported, feeling quite pleased with herself.

“I can’t take out the four here and free the Wayne without the ghost noticing,” Tucker observed. “So we either need to get rid of the gas or take out the ghost, but Batman and co have eyes on him…”

“We’re going to save the hostage on the roof,” Danny said, both to the other halfas and to Jason. “I can distract the scarecrow and Manes can grab the dude.”

“The gas is flammable,” Jason said harshly, confirming their suspicion. “There are dozens of people who are going to be burned alive if you fuck up-”

“We took out the three inside and the last four are on the roof. We know what we’re doing,” Danny defended. The skeptic criticism of the abilities of team Phantom was constant and yet he still felt oddly ruffled by Jason’s doubt.

“And the remote charges?” Jason demanded.

“The what now?” Sam demanded, followed by a mental meme full of question marks from Tucker.

“Uhhhh. Um, no,” Danny admitted sheepishly. “But we can get right on that!”

Thunder rumbled, rattling the lone circular window nearby, and Jason’s scowl deepened. “Leave it to the bats. They know what they’re doing,” he said, though it seemed to be with a good deal of reluctance.

The thunder gave Sam pause.

“You mean the bats that have been standing and staring at the wall of gas for the past six minutes?” Danny snarked. “Real productive.”

Jason scoffed. “They’re trained for this kid, and the Scarecrow is a menace. Don’t throw your ass into the line of fire when you don’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of making it out alive.”

“Firstly, rude, I can totally handle myself,” Danny said, raising a finger for emphasis. Sam shared a memory from a few days ago of him tripping up the stairs to his room. Danny, like the mature teen he was, nonphysically jabbed her side. “Secondly,” he raised a second finger, “I’m a ghost. As in, not alive. They can’t exactly kill me a second time.”

“Not to mention hell has a good amount of snow…” Tucker snorted.

Jason didn’t seem to know how to react to that. Something sobering seemed to settle over him, something bitter and resigned and agitated. “Being a hero isn’t fun,” he warned. “It’s not a game.”

Oh. He thought the Phantoms were newbies. With an over exaggerated eye roll Danny replied, “I’m well aware, believe me. This isn’t my first rodeo. But if it bothers you that much we’ll just clear a path for Batman and his team and leave the rest to them.”

The rest being the cleanup, which they wouldn’t have been able to handle without compromising themselves anyway given the sheer amount of people around.

Jason, still brimming with misgivings, questioned pointedly, “What can two kids do that the bats can’t?”

Danny’s answering grin was sharp.

👻 {Boo!)

They were nerds.

It wasn’t easy for the other students of Casper High to see- since their freshmen year the trio’s grades had taken a nosedive following the accident. But before that they had been excellent students, and not due to any particular intent. They were smart, granted in different ways, and it showed in times like this where all the little bits of seemingly pointless information came together and culminated in something truly irreplicable.

“Tuck sends a heat blast upwards, Danny sends a cold wave downwards, and bam. Instant rain. It should wash away the gas,” Sam explained. “It’s already pretty close to storming so we shouldn’t have to do much.”

“Huh?” the boys chorused intelligently.

Sam slammed a diagram depicting the water cycle into their heads. It didn’t really help.

“Ow,” Tucker complained.

Consolingly, Danny gave Tucker a mental pat.

“Ok,” Danny said to Sam, “that works for Tuck but wouldn’t I just, like, freeze the clouds? I mean, dropping frozen clouds doesn’t seem like a bad idea but clouds are big and there are a lot of bystanders.”

“Storm clouds can also be several miles tall,” Sam informed him dryly, “but somehow I doubt that would be a problem for you.”

“Wait Danny, do you still have the Spectorly Splatterer Ectoplasmic Energy Disperser?” Tucker asked.

“Er, this?” Danny responded, pulling up the Fenton device he’d strapped to his side before they’d left for the Zone. “What could I-“

Tucker supplied a memory of the elder Fentons talking about turning ghosts into an ectoplasm spray so fine they’d be unable to reform and the corresponding invention. Not that it worked- ghosts could reform so long as their core was unaffected, and while the Spectorly Splatterer was adept at obliterating a ghost’s form it was unable to harm a core.

“Shoot ice at the Spectorly Splatterer and it should be able to disperse the blast, right?”

“Ah,” Danny hummed in understanding.

Sam made an unhappy noise. “We are not calling it that.”

“SSEED sounds cool,” Danny offered as he fiddled with the output on the device.

“That’s just hiding the repulsive name behind an acronym,” she grumbled, though she accepted it a moment later.

“Yeah,” Tucker agreed. “Spectorly Splatterer is way cooler than seeds.”

“It’s SSEED you-“

“Annnnd done,” Danny announced. “I’ve turned the output range up as high as it can go. Are we ready?”

“Do you need me to come with you?” Sam enquired. It would probably be difficult to hold the SSEED and shoot at it at the same time, not to mention Danny was really, really bad at telekinesis.

“Nah, you get to the roof and find an opening to nab the ghost,” Danny said. Lurking beneath his statement was the confidence that he could make a copy last long enough to do the job.

The three split up from where they’d remerged on the roof. Sam got as close to the ghost as she dared while Tucker and Danny flew into the sky, but where Tucker stopped and hovered just below the clouds Danny shot into them, heading high up into the atmosphere.

“Ready?“ Danny asked when he got above the stormy clouds. He made a copy of himself and handed it the SSEED. With a nod the copy flew upwards and held the device down at an angle. Danny charged up an ice beam and Tucker started heating up the air around himself.

“Of course,” he said.

While the boys started manufacturing the weather they needed the bats had finally started to move. Orphan and Robin retreated and Batman and Nightwing stepped up, closer to the dangerous fumes.

“Are you going to see reason Batman?” the ghost called with a grin that revealed his distorted teeth. “Fear is what drives you, fear is what controls you, controls all of us!”

“Enough Scarecrow,” Batman growled, actually growled. Sam was not expecting him to sound so gravely, though perhaps it was due to a throat injury.

“We’re here to negotiate your demands,” Nightwing stepped in. He was nervous, though nothing physically betrayed that.

“There will be no negotiation!” seethed the scarecrow ghost, holding up the lighter. “I-“

“Got it!” Danny grinned in their mind as thunder roared above them. A mere moment later rain began to fall in torrents.

“No!” the ghost screamed. “But I still have a backup!” The four crashers trained their weapons on Tim Wayne.

“Timmy here doesn’t really need his brain, does he?” Scarecrow taunted, though frustration bled into his words. “I also have four unlucky captives hidden inside the manor. One word from me and they’re lost, slaughtered like hopeless, frightened little animals.”

He then dug around his burlap getup and pulled out a rectangular device. “The rain certainly puts a damper on things! But I am more than prepared. How much of the mansion do you think will burn before the rain puts it out?”

Sam knew it was risky but she couldn’t let him do that. She circled him and launched herself at him, telekinetically shoving at the remote and knocking it out of his grasp as she kicked out his legs, making him squawk and flail on the slick tiles.

Suddenly, two of the crashers attacked the other two and seeing this as an opening, Batman and Nightwing rushed forward to secure the Scarecrow and help the hostage, who had scuttled away as his captors had begun fighting amongst themselves. They didn’t know it, but yellow and green were not the natural eye colors of the two goon traitors. Even if they had, the masks obscured the goon’s faces quite well.

Sam silently thanked the other two phantoms and uncapped the thermos as Batman swung at the ghost and was more than surprised when the blow landed. The two began to struggle, though it was clear Batman had the upper hand.

Unneeded as Nightwing was more than capable of finishing off the two disoriented crashers, Danny and Tucker floated over to her, eying the fight warily.

“How are we supposed to separate them?” Danny wondered and winced as Batman delivered a particularly severe blow to the scarecrow’s skull.

“I don’t think he’s a ghost,” Tucker piped up randomly.

Sam and Danny shared in their confusion.

“He’s ghost-like at least,” Tucker conceded, “maybe liminal, but he can’t be a ghost. Otherwise this,” he motioned to everything around them with a broad gesture, “wouldn’t be happening.”

Sam, to be contrary, leveled the thermos at the grappling duo and pushed the button.

Nothing happened.

Slowly, she lowered the thermos in quiet disbelief, thinking everything over. Tucker smacked his head.

“It was Jason,” he realized. “He set off your ghost sense before, right Sam?”

“… that makes sense…” she grudgingly admitted.

“But he looks so ghostly,” Danny whined. “It was an honest mistake.”

“That means we could’ve just overshadowed him from the beginning!” Tucker huffed.

They watched for another minute as the crashers and the not-a-ghost scarecrow were apprehended by the heroes.

“Well, I think we’re done here,” Danny groused, making a show of dusting his hands.

“All in a night’s work,” grinned Tucker.

Sam rolled her eyes and despite the dark clouds blotting out the light above them, everything seemed to be brighter.

👻 {Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed it.)

Taglist time! If you want to be added, just say so!

@depressed-bitchy-demon @dp-marvel94 @birbtails @mr-lancers-english-class @miraculousandmore @iglowinggemma28 @manapeer @azzysflowergarden @notwhat-i-seemtobe @whobee7 @trippingovermyfeet @stormhaven257 @imsociallyanxiousgetoverit @passivedecept @lovetheryu @ever-after-aaa @mysteriousooze @wegetitethan @cyber-geist @t-nayira

Chapter in a nutshell: Assumptions were made!

I wasn't planning on updating so soon. I wanted to post Sunday but I realized that I'll be at work Sunday and if I know myself I'm going to go straight to bed when I get home lol

Next: Chapter 6

#Halfa trio pretty much from DarkNympha's Third Time fanfic #danny phantom #dp x dc #dp x dc fanfic #sam manson #tucker foley #danny fenton #jason todd #Halfa!trio Au #the follow up will include the fallout :3 #fanfiction #miscmonstro writings

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half-deadmagicperson · 1 year

Text

Phic Phight Phic 4

Title: Flamin' Hot Nails

AO3

For @phicphight

Words: 2070

Prompts: The Hot. NEW. Craze of Casper High: Ecto-Nail art! Things start to go awry in...not the usual way. (By @princessfanonanona )

Maurice did not expect to see his son hanging out with a ghost when he walked into Tucker’s room. (By @duchi-nesten)

Summary: Our favorite trio gets their nails done.

Warnings: brief mentions of burns (nothing graphic), fire

This one is kinda crackish in a way, but I hope you enjoy!

It's been about two years since the ghosts started showing up in Amity Park, and things have been great. The ghosts no longer attack as much as they just hang around. (Though there are some who sometimes cause issues. Looking at you Box Ghost.) Life, or afterlife, was good. With the increase of ghosts in town came the increase of ghost-themed trends. Currently, a new trend has taken Casper High by storm.

Ecto-infused nail polish was being sold in droves to ghosts, humans, and liminals alike. The best part about them? They glow in the dark! Students have even made cute little designs including little ghosts, Phantom logos, flowers, and more! So far there hasn't been any repercussions using ecto-nail polish.

"Not gonna lie, with as much as I normally hate trends, the ecto-nails seem kinda cool," Sam Manson mentioned to her friends as they passed a group of girls showing off their new nails.

"I would totally paint constellations on mine! Especially since they glow in the dark!" Danny Fenton beamed. His freckles seemed to glow slightly at the prospect.

"You guys can do that. Nails aren't really my thing," replied their techno-geek friend, Tucker Foley.

"Aw come on Tucker! We could meet up after school and do our nails! It'll be fun!" Danny said, lightly jabbing Tucker in the arm. Tucker smiled at his friends.

"Fine. Just because I want glow-in-the-dark DOOMED logos on my thumbs."

"Alright then it's settled. Which house should we meet at?" Sam chimed in.

"I would say my place, but my parents are detoxing the lab because they exploded some stuff last night," Danny replied.

"Well, we could do it at my place! My parents won't mind," Tucker suggested.

"Sounds like a plan."

The trio proceeded to head for class.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The last bell of the day rang, and Sam, Danny, and Tucker headed over to Tucker's. On the way, they stopped at the store to pick up some polish in the colors they wanted. Each of them greeted Mr and Mrs. Foley before booking it upstairs.

The trio began pulling out polishes and remover and began their work. Sam did most of the designs, since she had more experience with polish. On Danny's nails, she painted various constellations and Saturn on his thumbs. On Tucker's nails, she painted the DOOMED logo as best she could and added some stripes and whatnot to the smaller nails. On her own nails, Sam painted little glow-in-the-dark bats.

While they waited for their nails to dry, the trio sat on Tucker's floor and talked, occasionally testing to see how dry the polish was. They somehow got onto the topic of ghosts, which brought an interesting question to Danny's mind.

"I wonder what my nails look like in ghost form," he stated. His friends looked at him confused.

"Like would they have the stars on them? Would the colors be inverted? Would they be plain? If they're plain I could do a different design as Phantom!" Danny rambled. An invisible lightbulb turned on in his friends' heads.

"Let's find out!"

Danny summoned his transformation rings. In his place floated Phantom who immediately went to take off his glove. Huh. Plain it is. Guess they get to paint his nails again!

Sam pulled out the bottles and got to work.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Maurice Foley was just informed by his lovely wife that dinner will be served in five minutes. She told him to go upstairs and tell the kids there's food. He heard his son's laughter as he walked up the stairs. 'I guess they're having a good time,' he thought.

As he reached the top of the steps, he turned towards Tucker's room. The knob gently turned as he opened the door. He opened the door and stood in minor shock at what he saw. Floating inches above the ground was the ghost boy, Phantom.

Phantom was a local celebrity in Amity Park. Although disliked at first, he slowly grew into a town hero. What was he doing in Tucker's room? Maurice noticed the ghost boy's gloves sitting on the floor. He was doing his nails. Phantom looked rather relaxed and happy while Sam painted little ghosts on his nails. The three of them were so engaged in conversation they hadn't noticed his presence. Tucker and Sam looked as close with him as they are with Danny. Speaking of which, where was Danny? He wasn't in the bathroom because the door was open when Maurice passed it. Either way he should probably tell the kids about dinner.

"So, uh, I was told to tell you guys that dinner was ready," Maurice said, rubbing the back of his neck. All three teens' heads whipped over to look at him. Their eyes widened.

"Well, I, uh, should probably get going," Phantom spoke, "thanks for the nails!"

"Wait!" Maurice called. Phantom stopped.

"Would you like to stay for dinner? We made lot's of food, assuming you can eat human food."

Phantom looked over at the other two and had what appeared to be a silent conversation with them. They must be really close then. The only other person they'd be able to communicate like that with would be Danny.

"I wouldn't want to bother you. I was just here cause I wanted to get my nails done."

"Oh nonsense! You wouldn't be a bother at all! Besides, it's the least we could do!"

"Thanks, Mr. Foley!"

"Now, we should probably get down there before Angela gets impatient."

The three humans walked down the stairs with Phantom following close behind. Maurice rounded the corner into the kitchen.

"Hey honey, we got a special guest for dinner," he told his wife. His wife turned towards him with a confused expression. Phantom floated in from the living room.

"Hi, Mrs Foley," he squeaked nervously. Angela's eyes expressed her surprise.

"I hope you like casserole. I made loads!" Angela said as she placed the dish on the table. The family and guests sat down and began eating. The first few minutes were awkwardly quiet before Maurice broke the silence.

"So, Phantom, how long have you been friends with our Tucker?" He asked in a friendly tone.

"Oh, uh, a while I guess? We've just seen each other around a lot, but we haven't formally hung out like this. They just flagged me down when I was passing by," the ghost rambled nervously.

"Huh. I woulda thought you'd know each other better since you seem so close," Maurice responded before taking a bite of his casserole.

"Yeah. The casserole is really good Mrs. Foley!" Maurice noted the change in subject, but decided to drop it as to not spook their guest.

"Thank you! I'm glad you like it! It's a shame Danny's missing it though. This dish is one of his favorites."

"Speaking of, where's Danny?" Maurice asked. The trio's shoulders tensed. Sam replied, "He's, uh, probably in the bathroom."

"Yeah. You know how his bladder is!" Tucker said, backing Sam up. Maurice arched his brow. Danny was most definitely not in the bathroom. The kids were lying to them. He looked over to see Phantom's nervous expression. It was the same face he's seen Danny make. Come to think of it, the two of them bore some uncanny similarities. Before he could dwell on it further, Phantom had finished his casserole.

"Welp! It's been fun, but I should probably go back on patrol. Thanks for the dinner Mrs Foley! And thanks for letting me intrude into your house!" He said, hands on both his knees as he got up. He placed his dish in the sink and said his goodbyes before floating out of the room.

Not a minute later, Danny Fenton appeared around the corner.

"Hey, sorry I'm late, I had to use the restroom," he said as he walked over to grab some food. Maurice noticed he didn't take as much casserole as usual. These three are definitely hiding something.

As the evening went on, Maurice turned on the TV to watch his favorite cooking show. While the chef was in the middle of making a perfect creme brulee a news broadcast interrupted the show.

"We interrupt this program to bring BREAKING NEWS. It seems the HOT, new trend of ecto-nails has really turned up the heat with several reports of fires. As it turns out the combination of ectoplasm and polish is extremely flammable when exposed to temperatures above 70°F. Several people's nails burst into flames while they were cooking dinner. Others have reported fires starting upon entering nursing homes or simply taking a hot shower. At least 10 people have been admitted into the hospital for burns. For your protection, we advise everyone with ecto-nails to please remove their nail polish before it's too late. More at 10."

"Hey kids!" Maurice called up the stairs. He walked over to Tucker's room. Tucker answered the door.

"Wassup, Dad?" Tucker asked and opened the door the rest of the way.

"There have been reports of fires starting because of the fancy nail polish."

"That's weird. Ecto isn't usually that susceptible to heat. It takes a lot to burn it," Danny replied, "maybe it was a hoax?"

"That may be, but I still want you guys to be careful."

The kids all made various sounds of agreement.

"Well now that that's settled, who wants some hot cocoa! I figured it would be nice since it's been so cold out lately!"

The kids stampeded down the stairs. No one could resist the power of hot chocolate.

Angela Foley greeted them with mugs of steaming cocoa. Each teen dawned a cup and began sipping it carefully.

It took about a minute before Sam started to feel a slight burning sensation on her fingers. Tucker and Danny started feeling the same. Uh oh.

"OH SHIT!" Tucker screamed as his nails combusted. Before Maurice could scold him for his language, Danny and Sam started having the same issue. Angela scrambled to try to find the fire extinguisher while Sam ran to the sink to try to put her nails out. The water had no effect.

Angela ran back into the room with the red canister to try to put out the fire. She pulled the pin and began spraying. Unfortunately, the foam that came out also caught on fire and fell to the floor.

"HOW DO WE PUT OUT THE FIRES?" Maurice called over to Danny, hoping his Fenton background would give him a solution.

"The only way to put out an ecto-fire is with something that also contains ectoplasm. Like contaminated water or ecto-ice!" Danny replied. Danny's eyes lit up, but before he could enact any sort of plan, the spectral fire spread around the room. The room filled with a smoky haze and Maurice lost sight of the kids.

By some miracle the smoke started to subside and the fire was reduced. Maurice looked around to see layers of ice covering his kitchen. How was this possible? He glanced over to find Danny covering his friends hands with his own. His eyes were glowing an ethereal blue as he covered their polish with a thin layer of frost.

"How? How is this possible? Where did all the ice come from?" Angela asked, breaking the silence. Tucker and his friends exchanged looks and nods before Danny stepped forward.

"It was me. I created the ice."

Maurice took a look at the boy. He was shaking. The kid was scared. Angela stood with her hand over her mouth. Maurice kneeled down and set his palm on the boy's shoulder.

"Thank you," he said simply. Danny's eyes flitted up showing both confusion and relief.

"You don't need to tell us how you did it, but you saved us. Thank you."

Danny turned towards his friends. Back to the silent conversations. The raven-haired teen turned back towards the Foleys.

"Actually, there's something you should know," he said solemnly. White rings formed at his abdomen and split, changing his t-shirt and jeans into a familiar black jumpsuit. In Danny's place, floated Phantom who couldn't bring his eyes up to meet theirs.

"I'm sure you probably remember two years ago when the lab accident landed me in the hospital," he began and for the rest of the night told the Foleys about his ghostly adventures and powers.

Ecto-polish was banned from all stores after the fire department had over 40 reports of burning nails.

#danny phantom #dp #phic phight #phic phight 2023 #danny fenton #tucker foley #sam manson #identity reveal

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melancholicmarionette · 2 years

Text

(One of many things languishing in my drafts, based on my love for long-form, narrative based journalism and the fact that applying anything close to realism to this show is very fun. This isn’t finished and might not be so I’m throwing it out there)

Kids in the Abyss

Excerpts from Team Phantom’s first post-reveal interview together, a long form profile written by Anne Donnelly for Paranormal Digest.

—

The Fenton’s home is unique, even disregarding the laboratory concealed by a secured metal door just off the living room. Jack and Maddie Fenton purchased and refurbished the building, an abandoned fire house, shortly after moving to Amity Park. The changes made varied in scale, from a subterranean lab of glistening chrome and toxic green, to simply removing the fireman’s pole to prevent clumsy children from “learning about gravity too soon.”

Daniel Fenton is one of those children, known as the clumsier one when compared to his sister Jasmine. One of the first things I ask him when we sit down on the Fentons’ living room sofa is if that has changed since he, for lack of a better term, gained super powers.

“Absolutely not,” he replies without hesitation, “if anything, I’m worse.”

One thing the world seems to agree on about Danny Fenton is that he is the kid people would last expect to be a superhero.

“To be fair, there aren’t a whole bunch of superheroes to ask,” he says of this notion.

He’s right, of course, but it still seems unlikely at first glance. He looks different from his alter-ego, his eyes a clear blue and his hair dark, but upon looking closer it’s very clear there’s more to the sixteen year old than meets the eye. His gaze was very calculating when we first met, assessing if I was trustworthy, if I was a threat, as I’m sure he had to do countless times with varying results.

He hasn’t done any kind of interview since his brief guest appearance on the local news, he and his friends refused requests for interviews from the most famous talk shows in the country.

“I just…” he pauses, looking down and away in thought, “I never really wanted to be…famous, I guess. I think I used to, and I definitely wanted to respected and stuff, yeah. I don’t have a choice over a lot of that anymore, but I still have some modicum of control over what people know about me. By the way, my height is wrong on my Wikipedia page and they won’t let me change it. I’m 5’11”, for what it’s worth.”

(He is, for the record)

—

Sam Manson’s home is opulent, decadent in a way that reminds one of a more refined age—not the sleek, modern home of today’s new money, but adorned with historic decor and chandeliers.

“Grotesque, isn’t it?” Sam tells me when I comment. She’s not a fan of her family’s flaunting of wealth, as much as she enjoys some of the privileges it allows her. Looking at her outfit, an extra long Dumpty Humpty t-shirt and fishnet tights Tucker into dark denim shorts, it’s not hard to believe that she would prefer a more Addams Family aesthetic.

It’s clear from existing comment and from her social media—both personal and a Danny Phantom account—that she is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to her boyfriend, whom she’s known since childhood. I ask her why she and their other friend, Tucker Foley, are behind his verified account.

“Danny’s always been really bad at social media in general,” she tells me, “and we don’t get as overwhelmed by all the comments and messages we get daily. Like…Danny’s fought a ghost king and he’s saved the world but nothing terrifies him more than Twitter.”

—

Never having been above the odd conspiracy theory, considering my career, the first thing I ask Tucker Foley when we gather at his family’s kitchen table is to tell me about r/dannyphantom

“About the subreddit, or what I…” he pauses, “may or may not have done to it?” He grins when he finishes the sentence, in a way that’s a bit sinister.

The subreddit r/dannyphantom was spun off of r/amitypark about a year after the hero’s first appearance, and devolved into chaos shortly before the Disasteroid incident, due to the comments of one u/phantomarchiver on various theory threads.

“You’re all chasing your tails” the user would claim in one thread, and in another a cryptic “if I were you, I would stop looking further into this.”

Tucker recalled how he and his friends came to monitor the subreddit, going in anonymously every now and then to throw off the scent if any theories came too close. He didn’t know u/phantomarchiver’s mysterious but concise comments would eventually cause the members of the subreddit to turn against each other and fight to such an extreme that it now sits nearly empty.

“There are a lot of aspects of keeping huge secrets like this that aren’t fun,” Tucker tells me, “but that. That was fun. It was like a piranha feeding frenzy.”

“Did you intend to take the entire forum down?”

“God, no,” Tucker assured me, “I’m all for discussions, but people were dropping peoples real names, bringing up records of missing people that Phantom could be the ghost of. I’m very pro-free speech, but also very pro-[expletive] around and find out.”

#danny phantom #sam manson #tucker foley #these isn’t even a story idk if they’re even headcanons #i just had fun and it’s just in here #so now you can have it

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brokeitwiththepowerofmathamatics · 8 months

Text

Fanfic - What was Written on my Soul

This was beta read by my friends, Seraph and HeroineofTime. I had been talking about an idea with @eight-bitanarchist and

Danny had always known the Ghost Zone was dangerous, but he never realized just how badly it could be.

Somehow, he didn't die, even after his soul was ripped out of his body.

Ao3 link, ff.net link

Danny knew he had screwed up somewhere in life, but the fact he was now looking at a headless body wearing his jumpsuit really sold him on that. The hand and feet of it, his hands and feet, were being held in place by a creature that shouldn't exist. Barbed pincers breaking their way into the Ghost Zone from some other dimension, certainly not his home dimension.

He should have listened to Vlad, who, when he had found out where Danny, Sam, and Tucker were trying to map out, came and wiped the floor with them. He had beaten Danny so black and blue that he had trouble transforming afterwards. Though Vlad hadn't stopped there. He had also wrecked the Specter Speeder before dragging it back and planting it in the front lawn of the Manson's before calling all their parents.

All of them had been grounded for months.

Vlad had chewed Danny out, telling him not to dare going near that part of the Ghost Zone ever again if he valued his soul.

Danny should have listened.

But now, as a million skittering hooks pierced through space around him, Danny realized he really did know nothing about the Ghost Zone and Vlad was right.

And as the claws tore into his skin, reaching under the flesh to peel him apart, he knew he wouldn't get to ever admit it.

He was just glad Sam and Tucker had listened and ran when this thing came looming out from the spaces between dimensions.

It hurt, but his vision was plucked from him first. He had enough sense of self to think that maybe that was for the best.

He didn't want to see what it tore away to get at its meal.

The pain wasn't as bad as he would have thought, he could still think. That might have been because he remembered what it was like to die, to have his soul ripped from his body in a violent nanosecond.

But he would have screamed if he could, cause he wasn't ready for his soul to be ripped out a second time.

This time, there'd be no recovery. No going ghost, since his soul would no longer exist after this beast devoured it.

And for a brief moment, he knew it was done. He felt so raw, so exposed, so vulnerable as the pain stopped.

And then he knew no more.

***

It took a moment for him to realize what he was looking at. A fog in his head slowly cleared as the white splotches in front of him took on a more coherent meaning.

Polaris, the north star, connected to Baekdu, Kochab, Pherkad, and Yildun. The names popping into his head as he slowly realized what he was staring at.

Ursa minor, the little dipper, glued to a white textured surface.

It was the ceiling of his bedroom.

Slowly, Danny sat up, any thoughts of this being a last second hallucination swiftly and painfully fled as he let out a scream of pain.

He looked down at his hand to see a bright green glow coming from under his skin, it made a cross crossing pattern across his entire arm. He blinked as he processed what he was seeing.

It was familiar but he couldn't remember why.

Oh, there it was.

It was what happened when he got so injured in ghost form he couldn't recover properly before transforming back.

Something hard and cold, yet familiar, grabbed his chin and turned his head away from his arm and he looked into…

Something…

He couldn't quite remember.

"Danny, sweetie, can you hear me?" The voice in front of him was so familiar, so caring, and so worried.

He couldn't believe he had forgotten for a second.

"Yeah, Mom, I can. Sorry, I'm… I don't feel good."

She pulled forward and hugged him gently. The cold material of her jumpsuit crinkled as she pressed herself against him, enveloping him in a hug. "Oh thank goodness. Sweetie, you had us so worried."

"What happened?"

A new voice popped in, "We were hoping you could tell us." He blinked and turned, this time he recognized her as soon as he saw her.

Jazz was sitting in the doorway with her phone in hand. The screen was still on after she had used it. But she was looking at him, her eyes were red, and the bags under her eyes were apparent even in his fugue state.

"I don't…" Danny began. He worked his mouth for a second, realizing that the feeling that he had was parched. His mouth felt so dry and that speaking hurt.

If he could call it that, the recent pain that he had gone through made it a minor annoyance at best.

Maddie took his chin in hand again, and turned his head toward her. She pressed a cup to his lips and said, "Here, drink."

Water splashed into his mouth. He coughed it back out as his body tried to remember how to take this in, but it felt so good.

His mother tried to pull the water away, but he reached his hands up and grabbed her wrists, keeping the precious liquid in front of him, despite how much it hurt his body to move his hands.

Eventually, after two or three tries, he remembered how to drink and he guzzled the glass down. Water dripped down his chin and his mom wiped it away.

Danny remembered the question Jazz had asked. "I don't remember…" It was obviously not the answer that Maddie wanted to hear as she visibly deflated.

Jazz on the other hand tapped her phone against her hip. "Nothing at all? Sam and Tucker-"

Just like that, he remembered. The feeling of wrongness as they made it deeper in the Ghost Zone, further than they had ever gone before. The hollowed out ghosts, congealing ectoplasm with no will behind it.

The distortion of the world as something pierced into it, and the sight of thousands of sharp and gnashing pedipalps.

Him turning and telling Sam and Tucker to turn and run, and them wisely not even questioning it.

"Oh my god, Sam! Tucker!" Danny shouted, swinging around to try and stand. The moment his feet touched the ground, his entire body was wracked with pain, a deep slashing and tearing feeling deeper than almost anything he had ever felt before.

Almost.

He stood up, despite his mother and sister crying out. “Where are they? Are they alright?”

Jazz was roughly pushed into the room as his father came running in. “Danny! Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Danny brushed off, adrenaline filling his veins. “Sam and Tucker, where are they?”

“They’re fine,” Jack said, placing his giant palms on Danny’s shoulder and pushing him back down onto the bed. “They’re grounded, probably forever, but they’re fine.”

“It’s you we’re worried about.” Jazz said, stepping further into the room.

Danny put a hand up to his head and breathed. “They are? Really?”

Jack sat down on the bed next to Danny, and put a hand on his back. The physical contact hurt, his body was raw, and felt so weak, but the feel of his Dad's hand on him was comforting. “They are, they came back in the Specter Speeder and then they found us, told us you three had been exploring the Ghost Zone and that you had been attacked by something… it… didn’t sound like a ghost.”

Danny shook his head. “No… No it wasn’t. It was…” he shuddered as the phantom pain of his everything being torn apart. “It was definitely something else.” He rubbed at his throat, where the thing had torn his head from his body. “I’m… really alive?” he said, looking directly at Jazz.

Maddie noticed this, and followed his gaze to Jazz. Jazz nodded slowly. “You’re alive.” The statement was firm, and allowed no arguments.

“How?” Danny sputtered out, looking at his arms, the glowing hadn’t faded in the slightest, in fact, it had grown brighter, now casting a bit of light about the room and coloring everything in a slight green tinge.

“That’s… a really good question,” Jazz said, looking at Maddie.

Maddie took a deep breath. “When we got home, there was a lot of sound in the basement, we ran into the basement and found a bunch of pots and pans strewn about, and before we could do anything, you came out of the portal… Danny… you were bleeding ectoplasm.”

Jack and Maddie grimaced. “Ectoplasm in the body… that should have killed you. Especially so much that it was pooling underneath you.” Maddie turned and looked at Jazz, “Jazz and your friends gave us advice, and we stitched you back together, but…” Maddie turned back and ran a finger along the glowing lines all along his body. “This many wounds? You shouldn’t be alive regardless, no human could survive that.”

“That’s it? I just came through the portal, bleeding all over the place?”

That wasn’t the answer Maddie wanted. She leaned forward, “Danny! You were barely in one piece!”

Danny stared at his mother, the fuge state that he had been in hadn’t quite left him apparently because he couldn’t quite understand why she responded that way.

That frustration grew, and then Danny sighed and just exclaimed, “Exactly! That thing was tearing my soul out of me!”

Everyone in the room recoiled.

Danny continued, completely ignorant of their horror at what he was saying, “It tore me to shreds, and I was thinking about what I never got to say and then…” Danny indicated the bed. “I woke up here.”

Everyone looked at each other before Jack sighed and started rubbing Danny’s back. “Dan-o, can you be honest with us? Why were you in the Ghost Zone?”

Danny froze. It felt like the world had just completely stopped. If it weren't for his dad's gentle ministations on his back, he'd have thought that Clockwork had stopped time for him again. A thousand thoughts ran through his head, hundreds of possible lies and excuses. Some were believable, most not.

But one thought surfaced above all the others.

Danny should have died in the Ghost Zone, and his parents would have never known what had happened to him.

Or worse, they'd have charged in, guns blazing and ready to fire at some ghost, and would have fallen to the same thing that was going to devour Danny.

Danny hummed and leaned into his dad. “Because me, Sam, and Tucker have been trying to map out the ghost zone.” Jack’s hand stilled but Danny kept going. “We’ve gotten a lot of squared… er… cubed miles mapped out, and it’s a little rough because the islands in there are always moving, and I’m not entirely sure what they’re circling, probably nothing. That’d be fitting. But yeah, we’ve been mapping it out for the past couple years.”

Jack began rubbing Danny’s back again as Maddie leaned forward and gently put a hand on Danny’s leg. He winced and she went to pull away. He reached out and grabbed her hand, so quickly it made her jump, before putting her hand back on his knee. The pain was nothing, and there was nothing he wanted more than to have his family close.

Well, maybe having Sam and Tucker here too.

“Danny,” Maddie began softly, “Danny, that’s so dangerous.”

“Trust me, I know,” Danny chuckled. “I thought I had it handled, I mean, I’m scarier than most things around the portal and-”

“Danny, ghosts are dangerous.”

Danny looked up at his mother. “Mom, I know.” He pulled on that coldness inside of him, that was so easily spread through his body right now and threaded it behind his eyes, and he saw his mom lean back as his eyes flashed neon green for a moment, before setting into a glowing blue, before he pushed the cold back down and let the warmth of life return.

The two of them stilled, and Maddie got off her chair and knelt down in front of Danny, running her hands along him, trying to make sure that he still existed. Her hands ran along his arms, carefully squeezing and pressing her gloved hands into his skin, as if she'd find that suddenly he no longer existed in front of her. “Danny, there’s no way you can be dead… You have a heartbeat, you’ve grown, you’ve-”

“I know,” Danny interrupted, “I know I’m still alive, but… I’m dead too.” He reached out and squeezed his mom’s hand. “When I died? It didn’t stick. The portal killed me, but it brought me back to life too, at the same time. I’m both a ghost, and a human. I can be one or the other if I want to.”

The next few seconds were filled with silence. The idea of telling his parents before had left a feeling of dread in him. He never doubted they wouldn't accept him, he had seen them accept him before. However, there was always a fear that instead of being proud of his ghost hunting, they'd want to step in, take over this one thing that was uniquely his.

That fear was gone, replaced with a deep bone tired weariness. It sat deep in his stomach, aching so much more than the pain his body was in. It seeped through his entire body, chasing the pain away and distancing it, leaving only numbness.

“Phantom,” Jack said, rubbing circles into Danny’s back. His father's touch chased away the numbness with pain as it rubbed against the wounds underneath his skin, but more than pain, it filled him with warmth as he felt his father's care. “You’re Phantom, aren’t you?”

Danny nodded.

“That’s… that’s impossible!”

“It isn’t,” Jazz said, speaking up for the first time in a while. “He’s been changing back and forth for a while.”

“You knew about this?” Jack asked, looking up at Jazz. Danny didn’t need to look up to hear the hurt in his voice. That something so important was kept from him.

“I did.”

Maddie shook her head, squeezing Danny’s hand harder, causing pain to run up his arm like lightning. “That’s impossible!” she repeated louder. “I shot at Phantom! I shot at him!”

Danny smiled and shook his head. “Yeah, uh… you’re pretty good with that blaster.”

“I shot at Phantom! I shot at… I shot at YOU!” Maddie wailed.

Danny pulled his mom into a hug. “It’s okay, it’s okay.”

“No! Honey, sweetie, I tried to-”

“You tried, but you never did.” Danny said, mimicking his Dad and rubbing her back trying to calm her down. “It’s… it’s not gonna happen again. And… I don’t care.”

Maddie recoiled. “Danny!”

“Mom, I thought I was never gonna see you again. I don't care about that anymore. I just want… I don't… I need you guys…"

Jack took a deep breath. “We should do some tests.” Maddie and Jazz whirled on Jack, but he continued. “I know that it’s probably the last thing you want to do, especially with how many times I shouted I would tear you apart molecule by molecule.”

“But I shouldn’t be in one piece,” Danny said, looking at his arm. “I’ve only seen a few cuts glow like this… I don’t… I don’t know how I made it back home.”

“It’ll be okay,” Jack said.

“I know,” Danny lied.

***

The rest of the weekend was spent with Tucker and Sam having a sleepover with Danny. Their parents had protested at first, but when Jack and Maddie had told them that Danny had died for a bit, their complaints were silenced pretty quickly.

That the death had happened a while ago, back when Danny was just fourteen, was still true enough.

Sunday night though, everyone had gone home.

And Monday found Danny standing at his locker, and staring at it, wondering if any of this was really worth it.

He couldn’t bring himself to believe it was.

Why was he even here? It was so utterly pointless. Nothing here would ever actually matter for him. His dreams of being an astronaut had long been dead, ever since he turned that stupid machine on. Even if he had kept his grades up, there would have been no way to hide his ghostly nature during the recruitment process.

Not with a core of ice sitting in his chest.

There was no point in going back to school for him, he'd never graduate. With the ghost attacks every other day, the destroyed homework, the unstudied-for tests, he was lucky the school hadn't just declared him a lost cause outright.

They only just whispered it.

All he wanted to do was go home, and curl up against his parents, because who knew how long he'd be able to do that.

Assuming that this isn't all just a last minute hallucination… he thought to himself before the sound of heavy footfalls approached him, and he turned to see who it was.

Sam walked up to Danny, taking in the glowing lines across his body. Each line had faded since he had been torn apart, looking more like faint scar lines than the glowing ectoplasm that was trying to stitch his splintered body back together.

“Anything?” she asked.

Danny sighed and placed his hand against the door. His hand faded in and out of visibility, never quite getting all the way there to completely invisible, and the longer it went on it strayed further and further from being completely invisible.

Honestly, it was better than even a few hours ago.

“Not really, but it's coming back quick,” he said, sighing. He placed his head against the locker and huffed. “The tests all came back, I should definitely be dead, but I’m still alive. There’s no explanation for that. My blood is thicker than it should be, it’s an equal measure of blood and ectoplasm. It should be exploding.”

“Well… don’t do that.”

Danny chuckled. “But… also, I can’t transform right now. My parents are hypothesizing that my ghost form is keeping my human form alive and isn’t letting me transform in order to keep me in one piece.”

Sam nodded and leaned against the lockers. “And that’s based off what evidence?”

“The evidence is that I told them that’s what I thought was going on, and nothing else.”

Sam scoffed. “Figures…” She shifted. “So… if you can’t transform, then… what do we do?”

Danny pulled away from the locker and started putting in his combination. When the lock popped off, he opened the door to his locker and pulled out a couple books he left in his locker, and then put his backpack inside.

Then he pulled out an ecto-gun out of his backpack, a rather small one that would fit inside the palm of one’s hand. “My dad calls this the Fenton Cricket.”

Sam looked at it with a side eye. “Uh huh… what does your mom call it?”

“Overkill.”

Tucker ran up to the two of them. “Hey… hey guys…” he panted.

Danny turned toward Tucker and nodded. “Tucker,” he acknowledged. He tilted his head. “You good?”

“Gonna… be… late. Slept… in…”

Danny shrugged. “I really don’t care if Lancer gives us detention…”

Sam’s lips curled into a frown and she reached over and gently pulled on Danny’s sleeve. The soft movements still hurt, but no more than standing…

Or sitting.

Or existing.

“I know you don’t, but me and Tucker do, ready for class?” Danny shrugged, but turned down the hall anyway. Tucker fell into step next to him and Sam moved herself between Danny and the lockers. (After all, for all Dash’s faults he wouldn’t lay a hand on a girl, so Sam being between Tucker or Danny and the lockers was just common sense at that point)

The bell rang just as Danny and the others walked into the classroom. Mr. Lancer sighed and put his book down. “You three are late aga…” he trailed off as he looked at the scar-like patterns around Danny’s body.

“Sorry,” Danny said, not sounding sorry at all. “I died over the weekend.” The room was dead silent as Danny walked to his desk. He pulled out his chair, the feet dragged along the floor making an awful squeaking sound that made everyone wince as it pierced their ears. He sat down at his desk and put his books inside it before looking up at Mr. Lancer. “I got better.”

Lancer stared at Danny for a good five seconds before clearing his throat. “Yes, uh, well, Mr. Fenton, should you be at school? That… looks like it was serious?”

“I mean I died so…”

“Daniel.” Mr. Lancer's patience was already cracking at Daniel's commentary. He didn't seem to believe him at all, which frankly Danny didn't find too surprising. Sure there were ghost attacks every couple days, but no one was seriously hurt… usually.

Because Danny stopped that, but who was counting?

“Mr. Lancer, didn’t you have a parent teacher conference with my parents saying if I missed one more day of class I’d be held back? Kinda can’t skip, even if I should be.”

Lancer worked his jaw a couple times as his brow furrowed. Eventually, he obviously decided not to push it. He turned to grab his books and start teaching. Before he could get much farther, the school P.A turned on.

“Students, starting today, the school will be taking part in an experiment to try and help the learning process, and we’ll be playing music all day.” Immediately after, a soft quiet classical song started playing on the intercom.

Lancer let out a hum. “Right, that was starting this week…” he mused. He already had spoken very quietly but with the music going, it was even harder to hear.

Paulina raised her hand. “Mr. Lancer? How long is this gonna go on? Classical is so not my thing.”

Lancer stroked his beard. “Well, for a couple weeks at least, probably a bit more though.”

Danny frowned as he stared at the P.A. speaker in the classroom. Each and every line on his body itched as the notes played through the speakers. He leaned over and tapped Sam on the shoulder. “Fenton Phones.”

Sam blinked, before her eyes widened and she reached into her backpack and pulled out the devices. As she slipped the devices on, Danny leaned over to Tucker and repeated himself.

“Mr. Fenton, something to share with the class?”

Danny blinked, looking up at Mr. Lancer. Out of pure habit, Danny started shaking his head before stopping. What was the point of lying? It was all pointless anyways. He was keeping this stupid secret because… why exactly? ‘Cause he was weird? He was weird before all this happened to him, and now he'd never be normal.

At this point, all his cares were torn up and shredded. Just like he had been, ripped into tiny pieces so small that no one would ever find them.

“You know, what? Yeah, actually.”

Mr. Lancer raised an eyebrow and indicated with a wave of his hand that Danny should continue.

“Right, so I got ripped apart by a ghost over the weekend, and that’s why I’m all scarred. The music is making ‘em itch. I think that there’s something ghostly going on with that.”

Lancer didn’t know what to say about that, but someone else in the class sure did. “Yeah, right.” Dash shouted from his part of the room. “You’re just being a freak.”

Danny turned and stared at Dash, his eyes unblinking. “Dash, how many times have you shoved me into lockers that I’ve gotten out of? I think you’d know by now that when it comes to weird shit, I know what I’m talking about.”

That sent a ripple through the class. A collective intake of air as everyone flinched. The open secret was more open now. Danny felt rather than saw Mr. Lancer flinch at the open admission that Dash was a bully. Everyone knew it, even Mr. Lancer. He turned a blind eye to it enough times that it couldn't just be happenstance anymore.

But no one cared to admit it before.

Now, Danny didn't care to hide it.

“Alright alright, settle down,” Mr. Lancer said. “Daniel, this experiment has been discussed for several months by the teachers. I assure you, there is nothing ghostly about it.”

“Uh huh, and how long was the hiring process for Spectra?”

Mr. Lancer frowned. "The school psychiatrist from a couple years ago? What about her?"

Danny worked his jaw for a moment before slowly putting his head in his hands. "I need a moment…"

The sound of a chair scooting back made everyone turn to look at Valerie as she stood up. "Wait, are you saying that lady who kept telling me that my only value was my possessions was a ghost?"

"She did WHAT?" Mr. Lancer shouted.

Sam winced and muttered, "Oh, that… explains a lot." She leaned back behind Danny to look at Valerie better. "Yeah, do you remember later she showed up on TV doing a cooking show? Yeah, she had possessed some execs to get that air time."

Danny felt his breath freeze in his throat. Yes, he no longer cared about keeping this secret, but he didn't think Sam would follow his lead. Sam who wasn't dead. Sam who hadn't lost all her future prospects. Sam who wasn't enemy number one with the Guys in White…

Mr. Lancer turned toward Sam. "I'm sure there's a perfectly logical explanation that doesn't involve ghosts. But Valerie, what did-"

Sam turned to look at Mr. Lancer and gave him the most deadpan look she could. "And a few days later she was seen discussing plans with Ember McLain, who is a ghost, and Kitty, who is also a ghost. You know, in case you forgot ghosts actually exist."

"Oh Huckleberry Finn… Are you trying to tell me my coworker was a ghost? Let's be realistic, kids." Mr. Lancer gave a hard look at Danny and Sam before trying to turn back to the blackboard.

"Wouldn't be the first time someone didn't notice someone was dead," Danny scoffed to himself. He raised his hand. "Yeah, so may I be excused?" Trying to bring forth the same bravado he had just a few minutes ago.

It was easier than he thought it would be, to fall back into not caring.

Mr. Lancer raised an eyebrow. "The musical experiment has been planned for months, and as you said yourself, you can't miss any more classes." There was a coldness there that wasn't there before Danny brought up Dash's bullying. Danny could practically see the walls of authority come back up as Mr. Lancer continued, "No. If you're that worried about the music, I'll let you call your parents and they can come do… whatever it is they do in order to find out what's a ghost and isn't."

Danny scoffed again, but put his hand back down. "Yeah, no, I know exactly how much damage they'd do. I think that's the same reason you’re not calling them yourself."

Mr. Lancer sighed and pinched between his brow, obviously counting to ten before turning back to the blackboard. "Let's just get started, shall we?"

Danny put his elbow on the desk and sighed as Mr. Lancer started putting notes up on the blackboard. Only to start when he heard a sound behind him.

"Pst!" He turned to look and see Star leaning forward. "Are you serious about the music being from… like… a ghost?"

Danny leaned back. "I’d bet the lunch money Dash stole from me, it is."

Star looked over at Paulina who was watching the two of them. Usually if Star talked to Danny, Paulina had this face like she was smelling Dash's gym bag. Right now though, her eyes were slightly widened, and her lips turned into a frown. "When Spectra was the school counselor, it was one of the worst weeks in Paulie's life." Star turned to Danny. "If you think that's a ghost, why aren't you calling your parents?"

Danny shook his head. "My parents will come in guns blazing and it might wind up with someone else getting hurt."

Star frowned and leaned forward. "Let me ask a different question then," she hissed, "aren't you worried?"

Danny blinked at the sudden hostility. It took him a moment for him to realize it was that she was worried. He looked around the class and noticed the tension in the room that he had unleashed.

Dash might have put him down before, but Danny had a point. Everyone knew Danny was Dash's punching bag, even Mr. Lancer. But that also meant that everyone knew that Danny had some way of getting away with it. Danny never had a bruise from Dash, not since the accident. Danny didn't get bruised, period. And he had helped enough fellow nerds out of lockers for everyone to know that he had some unique way with them.

When Danny said weird shit was going on, people did listen.

And now all of them were worried because he didn't think to have any tact when speaking to Mr. Lancer.

Danny shook his head. "I mean, a little bit… but if a ghost did spend months setting this up, they're not gonna make a move soon." Danny gave Star a smile. "I'll call my parents at lunch."

***

"You're not actually calling your parents are you?" Sam asked as the bell rang for the next period to start, and Danny had yet to make a turn toward the lunch room.

"I mean, I am, but not for the reason you think," he said as he stopped at his locker. Danny quickly undid the lock before pulling out his phone. He waited a moment while the phone rang. It felt like ages, and he was hoping his parents would answer, but he wasn't that lucky. After the beep, he said, "Hey, Mom, I'm guessing you’re in the lab. Something ghostly is going on at school, so expect a call from the principal after I fight it."

Danny then put his phone back into the backpack and pulled out his thermos. He slammed his locker shut and turned around. “Alright,” he said, “time to do this.”

Sam narrowed her eyes and looked him over. He started walking towards the office where the intercom was located. It was about three steps later that she realized what was bothering her. “Danny!” she shouted, chasing after him. He glanced over his shoulder at her but didn’t stop. She caught up and gently placed a hand against his chest. “Danny,” she said, dropping into a whisper. “You can’t go ghost!”

Danny raised an eyebrow. “Uh, yeah? I told you that earlier…” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the Fenton Cricket. “That’s why I have this.”

Sam looked around the empty halls, checking to see if anyone would turn the corner. “But… they’re gonna fight back. Aren’t you worried about someone finding out? It’s not like you can disappear right now…”

Danny laughed mirthlessly. “Sam… I am so far from caring right now.” He paused and looked down. “Sam… It’s… I died. I-I know Jazz said I was 100% alive, just like before, but I have never ever been in as bad a situation as that before.”

He pressed his hand against his chest. He felt his flesh give just slightly, and logically he knew it was just his skin having some give, between his flesh, muscle, and fat that composed his body. But it still felt like he could jam his fingers in the cracks marked over his body and tear it all away and leave his soul exposed to the open air.

He shuddered and shook his head.

“That thing, it tore me apart, I saw my own body in third person. And it didn’t stop there, it ripped me apart until there was literally nothing left, just my soul. I couldn’t see, but I felt it. I felt myself get exposed, I was just laid bare with nothing protecting me.”

He looked Sam in the eye. “There was nothing protecting me, I should be dead and gone… I don’t really care about keeping this a secret anymore. I almost died without my family ever knowing what I was doing…”

Sam pursed her lips and then nodded. “Okay,” she said firmly. Danny turned to continue on his path, before Sam continued. “I’m coming with then.”

“No!” Danny shouted, whirling about. Sam jumped and took a step back. “No way, Sam, no! You can’t!”

Sam folded her arms. “Excuse me? You-”

“Sam, no!” Danny said again, putting his hand on her shoulders. “Sam, I… I can’t let you do that.” He shook his head. “If you get hurt… I won’t be able to live with myself.”

Sam pulled Danny’s hands off her shoulders. “Danny, I can take care of myself, you know. I’m not some damsel in distress. I’ve fought a LOT of ghosts with you.”

“Yeah,” Danny said nodding, “but that was before I nearly died, and before I’ve been having nightmares about you and my parents running back into that thing and it doing to you what it did to me…”

Sam opened her mouth to argue but then Danny turned her around. “Please, Sam,” he said, pushing her towards the lunch room. “Just… not today, okay?”

Sam turned around again to face him, but started walking backwards. “Okay, Danny, but I’m not gonna let you do this for long. You can’t shut me and Tucker out.”

“I… I know, Sam. I’m sure I’ll get over it eventually,” he said, trying to be as convincing as possible. He gave her a smile and waved goodbye as he started walking again.

It didn’t take long for Danny to make it to the office. He opened the door to find a young woman sitting at the intercom system. She was young, short for an adult, though still a few inches taller than Danny. The large blue sweater she was wearing added to the illusion of youth. “Oh, hello!” she said, sitting up. She folded her legs and put her hands on her pleated skirt. “I’m surprised to see anyone come in. Can I help you?”

Any idea that she wasn’t a ghost left the moment the words left her mouth. His injuries practically sang with pain as the words bounced around in his head. The pain washed over him and through him, trying to drag him down in a foggy haze and drown out her words. It almost made it difficult to understand what she was saying.

He had dealt with much worse, especially recently.

“What are you doing?” he demanded. The woman flinched at his voice and glanced in the corner behind Danny. It was enough of a hint for him to realize that her partner in crime was back there too.

Once again, he felt it more than anything, an itch on the tears of his body that felt like they were resonating with a ghostly energy behind him.

The woman smiled, though there was a distinct nervousness in it. “I think we got off on the wrong foot. I’m Dr. Specht, but you can call me Tracy. Doctor makes me feel old.”

Danny looked up at the ceiling and sighed. “Normally, I wouldn’t do this. We’d have this back and forth over the next couple days, but you know what? I really can’t be fucked right now.”

“Uh oh” was ‘Tracy’s response.

Danny pulled out his weapon, pointed it at her, and pulled the trigger. The recoil of the weapon made his arm snap up as a beam of energy a full six feet wide and six feet tall burst out from the deceptively small weapon.

The blast had completely destroyed the wall along with the hardware running the intercom. The PA system screeched with a burst of static before going silent and Danny lowered his hand and turned to the side.

Spectra and Bertrand were staring at him with horror and were holding onto each other, eyes wide and their bodies trembling in a fear that couldn't be faked. Spectra recovered first. “Are you crazy!? You could have killed me with that!”

Danny huffed air through his nose. “Doubt it, I’ve hit you with worse before.”

Bertrand raised a finger. “Point of order, I can say with absolute certainty that you have not. Thank goodness, I’ve heard stories of what your wail can do.”

“Well, first time for everything,” Danny said, brushing off the complaint. He held up the thermos and shook it. Something sloshed about inside, easily heard in the dead silent room. “Now then, we can either do this the way that shows I do in fact follow in my parents footsteps, or you can get in the thermos willingly.”

The ghosts looked at the massive hole in the wall, which had attracted the attention of the principal and a few other teachers. Before turning toward Danny, Spectra scowled. “You know what? Fine, I shouldn’t even be the one doing this. She just had to cancel at the last minute.” She started floating away, only to freeze when Danny pointed the weapon at her. “Hey, hey! I’m leaving!”

Danny uncapped the thermos. “No, I don’t trust you enough to let you go back to the Ghost Zone on your own. You get in the thermos, or I will make you regret not listening to me.”

“Spectra…” Bertrand warned, holding up his hands. “I think the boy is serious this time.”

Spectra frowned, and her eyes wandered over Danny’s face. “You know… I think you might be right…” She approached Danny slowly. Stopping just outside his reach. Danny raised the weapon and pointed it right at her face, but she just stared at him over the weapon. “You ran into an elder thing, didn’t you?”

Danny didn’t answer, instead just holding up his thermos.

“Poor thing,” Spectra said, “you got very lucky.” She then reached up and pressed the button on the thermos herself. Danny turned and looked at Bertrand who huffed.

“I’m going, I’m going,” he said before taking a dive into the thermos. Danny put the lid back and on and sighed.

"Uh… Mr. Fenton?" Danny looked up to see Mr. Lancer taking a step through the giant hole that Danny had made. The teacher adjusted his tie nervously and looked about the room, keeping Danny in his peripheral at all times. "Was Dr Specht… uh…"

"A ghost?" Danny finished. He waggled the thermos about in the air, and the sloshing from before sounded much heavier. "Yeah, I took care of her. Figured I could check it out before getting my parents involved."

"Oh… I think that's still gonna need to happen," Lancer said, finally looking back at the hole.

"Well, now they won't cause any property damage."

"Mr. Fenton…" Mr. Lancer began, exasperated. He indicated the hole with a tired wave of his hand. "May I direct you to exhibit A in the case of, 'You most definitely are a Fenton.'"

Danny folded his arms and huffed. "Hello? Caught two ghosts here? Pretty sure ghost hunting is more-"

"No. No it is not."

They made Danny sit in a chair in the principal's office while they called. When the principal told them that there had been an incident at school, Danny could hear his mom respond with, "Ghost attack, ghost hunt, or bullying?"

"Uh… ghost hunting?"

"Well, did Danny catch them?"

"I did, Mom!" Danny shouted.

The principal barely reacted, instead staring off with a thousand yard stare at the hole into her office. "He… uh… he did. We saw them literally put themselves in a… I believe you called them a Fenton Thermos?" The principal sighed and closed her eyes. "Ma'am… I really don't want to ask this, but did you know that your son terrifies ghosts? The… the um… prevailing theory amongst the staff was that he was terrified of them." Danny couldn't quite make out the response but the principal straightened up. "Oh… you did? Well, okay, yes, we can talk more when you arrive."

They sat there in silence for forty minutes.

"Mr. Fenton?"

Well, thirty five.

Danny looked up at Mr. Lancer from his phone. "Yeah?"

"How often have you gone out ghost hunting when you were asking for the bathroom?"

Danny thought for a moment. Tapping his phone against his chin, "Well… I think there was one time when the school was doing the fall play that I actually went to the bathroom?"

"Oh…"

Danny nodded. "Yeah, I remember, because that renaissance stuff you had us wearing was actually kinda hard to get out of? So I didn't get a chance to go between classes."

The principal looked up. "Daniel, the Romeo and Juliet play was last year…"

"Yeah, I think that was the last time."

Mr. Lancer leaned forward and put his head in his hands. "Oliver Twist…"

It was around then his parents walked into the office. Maddie walked over and gave Danny a kiss on the forehead. Before all of this, such affection from his mom would have embarrassed Danny.

But that was before.

Now, Danny couldn't ever get enough of that.

Jack came in and clapped Danny on the back. "Your mother says you caught a couple ol' ghosts!"

Danny nodded and produced the thermos. "Yeah, they're both in there."

Jack laughed and grabbed the thermos, tossing it in the air. "Ha! Great job, Dan-o!"

His mom snatched the thermos out of the air. "Yes, yes, you did good, Danny. But, we can talk about that later." She put it back in Danny's hands and placed a hand on his shoulder. "Now then, what exactly happened?"

The principal just pointed behind them. Both parents turned and looked at the hole. Maddie let out a soft, "Oh…" before turning around. "Yes, well, we can pay for the repairs for that."

Jack leaned around Maddie to look at his son. "You used the Fenton Cricket?"

Danny shrugged. "I'm still not feeling well," he said, twisting his arms about. The marks on his body were already looking somewhat better, less harsh white lines cut into his skin and more like pale traces of old wounds. He frowned, thinking about the feeling he had when Spectra started her whole plan of… something… and just the feeling of… despair? Frustration? Of just being plain done with whatever bullshit the ghosts were coming up with. "I can't be bothered to do the whole back and forth with them right now…"

Maddie and Jack both frowned. And Maddie nodded. "That's quite understandable, sweetie."

The principal cleared her throat. "I'm sorry, but well…"

Mr. Lancer spoke up next, taking over as the principal trailed off. "We'd very much like to understand why young Daniel is ghost hunting?" Even he didn't quite seem sure what to do at the moment. "You can understand that this is very unusual."

"Oh believe us," Maddie said, nodding. "We understand, we only found out on Friday night."

"You mean he's kept it from you this whole time as well?"

"Yes, well, there was… well, to call it an accident would be to downplay it…" Maddie turned toward Danny and even through her goggles and with the hood covering her eyebrows, Danny could see the confusion on her face.

He realized as the rest of the adults in the room turned toward him that they were waiting for his input. Maddie and Jack were obviously supporting him, but they didn't quite know where the boundaries were.

Danny's boundaries.

Did they tell the whole truth? That they found out Danny had died over a year ago? That he had been trying to live as a human and as a ghost at the same time? For whatever definition you could call that living, between the lack of sleep or the lack of recognition in his family's eyes when they saw him.

Because Danny Fenton was alive, there was no way he could be Phantom.

The convenient falsehood that kept him safe from the likes of the hunters that wanted him ended, which, up until a few days ago, included his parents.

"We recently found out that Danny has been ghost hunting," Jack said, reaching over and gently, oh-so-gently touching Danny's back. Carefully touching him and trying not to aggravate his wounds.

Apparently Danny had been taking too long to answer.

Jack chuckled. "Turns out he's a lot more like his old man than I had ever thought. I remember sneaking out of my house as a teen to go ghost hunting too. But unlike his old man, Danny-boy here is good."

"Too good," Maddie agreed. "I'm just thankful that Danny was able to get Phantom to take most of the burden."

Danny's head swiveled between his parents, as they began to spin a story, not a single lie told, but the truth hidden behind careful phrasing and clever manipulation of expectations. The same thing that kept his parents from recognizing Danny as Phantom now weaponized against his teachers.

There was no hesitation, no second guessing. His parents stepped in and put just as much effort as Danny had to protect his secret.

Their son was in danger, help him.

It was as simple as that.

And it was all Danny could do to not break out in tears right then and there. He had kept this secret for so long. He had long since chafed under the bindings of it that he had tied around himself, and it had all been pointless. He could have had his parents support this whole time. He was their son. He knew his parents weren't perfect, no one ever was. But while there were days it seemed his parents blind obsession with hunting ghosts caused more faults than most had, there was one core tenet that Danny sometimes forgot.

His parents loved him.

"I'm sorry," Mr. Lancer's incredulous voice tore Danny out of his thoughts. "Can you repeat that?"

Maddie sighed. "I know what it sounds like, but for the safety of everyone at the school, if Danny says he needs to leave class, he needs to leave class."

Jack leaned forward. "Danny and Phantom have… some kind of bond. We have no explanation for how that happened, theories yes, but a real scientific explanation? That we don't have." Because the fact of the matter was that there was no scientific explanation for ghosts. "But it's… undoubtedly true."

Maddie nodded. "The fastest way to get help in a ghost attack is to let Danny leave to find Phantom." She looked at Danny and gave him a sly smile. "Phantom usually appears where there's not many people, but he does hang close to Danny, just on the other side of an ectoplasmic state until Danny finds him."

Jack laughed and rubbed Danny's shoulder. "Which explains why our sensors kept going after Dan-o here!" He blanched after a moment and sheepishly rubbed the back of his head. "Err… sorry about that Danny."

"It's fine…" Danny said and leaned into his father's touch. It really was- for all the troubles his parents' inventions gave him, they never finished the job.

He could live with that.

The principal and Mr. Lancer looked at each other before frowning. The principal leaned forward, placing her elbows against her desk. "This… puts us in an awkward position. Mr. Fenton here is barely passing his classes as he is, and now you're asking us to help with that?"

"We're aware, but as we said, Phantom is one of the few actual protections the school has."

"What about the Ghostly Investigation Ward?"

"No." The simple word out of Maddie's mouth froze the room solid better than Danny ever could have. The sheer venom in that word made Danny jolt, but she wasn't finished. "After what we've discovered this weekend, we have found that the Ghostly Investigation Ward is a danger to those in the student body."

Mr. Lancer sighed. "Can you back up these claims?" he said, waving his hand all about.

Jack leaned forward and frowned. "We'd love to, but going back to the beginning here. We only know about this because things had gotten so dire, Danny's friends were forced to tell us."

"Sam and Tucker?"

Danny chimed in, for the first time in a long while. "I did say I died, Mr. Lancer."

Mr. Lancer and the principal's eyes widened. "Excuse me?"

Maddie breathed out slowly. "Sam and Tucker came and found us, told us what had happened. They had been exploring the Ghost Zone, with the help of Danny and Phantom, but they came across something, something other than a ghost, and Danny and Phantom held it back while they ran."

Danny scoffed. "We held it back? Not in the slightest…" He looked Mr. Lancer in the eye. "You know how some prey animals will leave their young behind in the case of a predator's attack? Phantom couldn't stop it, it just didn't feel the need to chase prey."

The room was silent, the only sound that could be heard was the school's air conditioning running. Which meant when Mr. Lancer muttered under his breath, "Fuck…" everyone could hear it.

Danny couldn't help it. Hearing the actual swear from Mr. Lancer made him giggle.

Mr Lancer coughed into his hand. "Well, then, ummm…" He paused, "Is… is Phantom okay?"

Danny shook his head. "He's just as bad off as I am. That's why I was hunting today, instead of him."

Jack rubbed Danny's back, again, gently to avoid aggravating Danny's injuries. "And doing a bang up job of it!"

The bell rang, indicating that Danny's lunch period was over. Maddie reached over and patted Danny's knee. "Well, it's less than ideal, since I don't think you had lunch, but why don't you go on back to class while we discuss fixing up the school a bit with the principal." She looked back at the Principal and said, "We're currently discussing a contract with a construction crew to remodel our entire house; we can pay for the school's renovation as well."

Danny turned toward his parents as the faculty's eyes bulged. "We're doing what?"

Maddie turned and rubbed Danny's hair. "Jack said it, our devices have been going off with you because of Phantom. After what Phantom did? We're removing everything from our house that can target him. At this point, it's best to just start from a clean slate."

Jack gave a big thumbs up. "Also, the Guys in White have been using Fenton tech for a while. We have a BIG lawsuit coming up and the best lawyers that we can find. Uncle Sam is either gonna pay up, or pay through the nose trying to fight us."

Mr. Lancer turned toward Jack. "Didn't you interrupt a school assembly to try and get an autograph from Agent Alpha?"

"Yes…" Jack growled through gritted teeth. "Yes, I did. And when we gut the house of everything that could ever hurt Phantom, I’m using that to start the fires burning the whole pile."

"Off to class, Danny," Maddie said, dismissing him, since the principal seemed to be blue screening at the moment. "Can't afford to miss any other classes."

Danny held up the thermos. "What about this?"

"Keep it, in case any other ghosts come knocking."

Danny slowly stood up, giving Mr. Lancer or the principal enough time to protest him leaving. When neither did, he made his way to the door before stopping. He turned and walked back, gave his mom a hug and then his dad, before going back to the door. "Bye guys, see you at home."

He made his way through the halls that were now very empty. He broke out in a light jog and barely made it to his class in time. Everyone in the class stared at Danny with wide eyes, something he felt very acutely considering the fact that up until lunch a soft music had been echoing throughout the school.

And now it was dead silent.

Tucker however, saw Danny and burst out in a bright smile. "Hey! Danny! You got it taken care of?"

Danny looked down at the thermos in his hand before holding it up and shaking it. The sloshing sound of Spectra and Bertrand in there was heard clearly in the room. "Got two of them at least."

"That's Phantom's thermos…" Paulina uttered, which then resulted in a set of gasps from the other kids.

Danny looked Paulina in the eyes and laughed. "It's a Fenton Thermos. Where did you think he got his?"

***

Privately, Danny thought the idea of doing homework right now was ridiculous. Just like school, it was just so… pointless. He should have died just a few days ago, and now he was expected to study whatever it was Pythagoras had come up with a millenia ago. Openly, Danny thought it was bullshit that after saving the school from a ghost attack, he still had to do his homework.

But neither of those two things were what he was thinking about right now.

He'd rather not be thinking at all. He didn't want to think, he wanted to just… exist. He wanted his parents home, he wanted Jazz to be here nagging him about his homework. Or at least, that he should be doing his homework at a table.

He was just glad that his flight powers had come back, even if he still couldn’t transform.

His parents had taken him floating around the house in stride, only pausing to tell him to be careful and to watch the house as he read his math text book on the ceiling of the living room.

But they had to go talk to the contractors who'd be updating the school, and someone needed to get groceries, so Jazz volunteered.

Leaving Danny in the house.

Alone.

He thought he'd be fine.

Instead, his thoughts were wandering and disjointed. Everything circling back to a few key things.

He should have died. He had his entire body ripped apart, in a way that no one had ever experienced before and been able to live to tell the tale. His soul was exposed; visible and vulnerable to anything and anyone.

He missed his family and friends. He wanted them here. He knew that there was a chance that he'd never see them again. Life felt so very fragile. They weren't half dead like he was. They didn't have a ghostly core that could keep their bodies together if they got injured like he apparently did.

But the last thought was very different than the others.

"She just had to cancel at the last minute," Spectra had said. That meant there was supposed to be another ghost involved. And other than Spectra, ghostly activity had been very quiet. There usually was a bit of a dip around the time that big ghost attacks happened, but…

This was different.

He knew it was different.

Danny frowned and let go of his pencil. It fell 'up' from his position as it landed on the living room table. It bounced around a couple times before rolling off the table and landing on the floor. Danny slowly followed it, turning half way down so that he could land on his feet.

His parents had basically sealed the lab as they tore apart everything they knew about ghosts. Rather than trying to piece the puzzle that was Danny into the picture they had, they chose to scrap the entire project and start over.

But Danny had been able to walk through walls for a while now.

Danny walked down the stairs into the darkness of the lab. The sound of the portal whirling behind the foot thick metal doors made the lab sound like there was a sleeping dragon down here.

Danny pulled on the coldness inside of him, and his eyes began to shine in the dark. He found a piece of paper with some theories typed up on one side, with red marks all over it. His mother's writing all over it. Pointing out where she knew she was wrong.

Wrong. False. Proven incorrect.

Clean concisely written pieces, where she excised her biases and incorrect assumptions out of her theories, like a scalpel cutting out tumors.

I shot my baby…

Danny flipped the paper over and grabbed the same pen his mother used to mark the papers. "There's something I need to check out in the Zone, NOT going anywhere dangerous. Be back soon," he wrote down, before going back up the stairs and phasing it most of the way through the door. It hung there, stuck in place where, hopefully, his parents would see it when they got back. Then he went back to the portal and opened it.

The room was bathed in an ethereal green glow. The light shifted as the surface of the portal swirled, making it look like all the bits and pieces, flasks, beakers, and torn apart tools were dancing if you looked at their shadows.

Danny let out a slow breath and stepped forward.

The ectoplasm felt cool on his skin. He could feel it seeping deep into him, filling the cracks and holes that were left by the wounds. He breathed a sigh of relief for the first time in a few days as the pain faded.

But that wasn't why he was here.

"She just had to cancel at the last minute."

Spectra hadn't been acting alone, and music wasn't usually her forte. But there was one ghost that he knew who lived and breathed (as much as any ghost lived and breathed) music. She had even worked with Spectra in the past.

So with a destination in mind, Danny flew towards Ember's lair.

It didn't take him long. He was relatively unaccosted on his way. A few wayward specters here and there had tried to bother him. But, in this dimension, humans were the ghosts who could pass by unimpeded if they so chose. So a five minute flight left Danny floating in front of a door with a giant treble clef embedded on it, and a guitar strap in lieu of a door handle.

And dozens of scorch marks.

Danny rubbed his hand along the door, feeling the burned… matter. (It felt like wood, sounded like wood, but most definitely was not wood.) The pockets left by ectoblasts and dents left by blunt instruments were new and weren't here the last time Danny had flown by this place. Just to be sure, Danny pulled on the door to confirm that yes, it was indeed locked.

But he didn't think she'd be far.

He was right.

She was a little ways off, hidden amongst a small series of floating rocks, sitting with her guitar laid out next to her. Flaming hair that usually was a full ponytail that flared and twisted in the air like a bonfire was burnt down to almost bare ashes, looking more like a pixie cut than anything else.

When he approached, her head tilted up to look at him. She gave him a wan smile and her eyes crinkled. "Hey there, Dipstick, you're still in one piece I see?" she asked, before rubbing her eyes. It really didn't help hide the fact that she had been crying, especially with the way her makeup had begun to run down her face

"Hey, Ember," Danny said, touching down next to her. This was the closest he had ever been to her without her swinging at him. But he knew that probably wouldn't ever happen again, though he wasn't sure why. "I think I have you to thank for that?"

"Good thing you know that," she huffed. She curled up again. "That… that was terrifying, Phantom. You have no idea."

Danny frowned and turned away, getting the feeling she didn't want to be stared at right now. "Yeah, well, I was the one torn apart, so I think I might have a bit of an idea."

"No," Ember interrupted. "No, you don't." She shuddered. "Don't you ever go in that part of the Ghost Zone again, you hear me?" There was too much desperation in her voice for it to be mistaken for anger, as much as she tried to pretend that it was.

"Cross my heart and hope to die," Danny said, making an X across his chest. "I don't want to go through that again either."

"Good," Ember said. The two of them fell into silence. Ember quite content to leave it at that.

Though, Danny wasn't. "Why though?" Ember whirled on him, and he turned to face her. "Why did you help me?"

Ember opened her mouth and then closed it again. She repeated that several times before looking away. "Can't a girl help someone out if they see them about to die?"

"You know I'm stronger than you," Danny said, bluntly. She glared at him but didn't argue. "I've beaten you multiple times, but that thing? That was beyond anything I had ever seen before."

"Kshkspsp ths psp xhch xlhchks," Ember whispered. It sounded more like the sound of rustling air than a sound that came from her mouth, but Danny understood it all the same. It was the name of the thing that had attacked him. "It means 'that invisible thing which flays souls'."

Danny scoffed and rubbed his chest. "Other than the invisible part, I'd call that a little on the nose."

"If you had seen it before it popped up on you, and you still went in, you're a bigger dipstick than I realized." Ember sighed, and looked up. "You're not stronger than me. Not all the time." She rubbed her face again. "Do you know what the difference between a spirit and a ghost is, Phantom?"

Danny shook his head. "Not… really? I can guess but-"

"A ghost is someone who died, like you or me, but a spirit is more than that. They're a concept, they're not bound by existence the way that we are. A spirit's power is only limited by the domain of what the spirit is tied to."

"So a spirit of time…" Danny began.

"Would have all the powers that one could think of when one thinks of time." Ember finished. She turned to face Danny and gave him a bright cocky smile, that somehow wasn't ruined by the black tear marks running down her face. "I'm the Spirit of Rebellion, Baby Pop." Even as she said it, her hair, which was burnt down to almost nothing, flickered and rose.

Danny believed her. The fact that he wasn't gone was proof of her words, but still… "Didn't you say that you and I were ghosts?"

Ember scoffed and pushed him with her shoulder. "I'm the Spirit of Rebellion. You think I'm gonna let myself stick to one label? Nah, fuck that shit. I'll be whatever the fuck I want to be. That's what being the Spirit of Rebellion means, it means when the world says, 'No, you bow,' you put both fingers up in the air and yell back, 'Make me, bitch'..." She leaned forward, pressing her cheek to her knee, keeping her eyes on Danny. "So when I see a thing that tears apart souls tearing into someone I don't want to see gone and the world would write them off as gone, I can tear an eldritch god a new fucking asshole, and when I'm holding that soul in my hands and everyone would say 'you need to let them go', I can tell them, 'hold my beer and watch this' and put them back together with bubble gum, spit and a paper clip. Good as almost new."

Danny looked at the faint scars on his arm. "Uh… did you put me back together with bubble gum?"

Ember chuckled sadly. "I wish I had some on me, it might have helped." She frowned and reached out. Running a finger across his arm, following the line. "I had to find you, every piece of you, and stitch you back together. You were torn into so so many pieces…"

"How did-?"

"I told you, when the world says ‘no’, I say ‘watch me.’"

Danny paused and let that sink in, Ember's fingers continued their dance along his arm, like a weaver inspecting their craft. Slowly Danny reached up and put his hand on her arm. "You still haven't explained why though."

Ember froze. She bit her lip and looked up at him before looking away. "You've never seen a soul before." It was a statement, not a question. They both knew that the answer was no.

But it wasn't an answer either.

"It's not about that. You said it yourself, when you see a thing that tears apart souls tearing into someone you don't want to see gone… You can't deny you'd want me gone. I ruined your plans multiple times."

"No,." Ember snapped. "No, there's a difference between wanting to see someone go away and seeing someone gone." She glared at Danny for a heart beat before she huffed and shook her head. "But… you're right… I'm just… scared."

Danny chuckled. "The Spirit of Rebellion is scared of me?"

"No…" Ember whispered. "The Spirit of Rebellion isn't scared of you, the ghost of Madeline McClain is."

Danny sucked in a breath, as he processed what he heard. That wasn't a name he had heard before, and he doubted he ever would hear it again. Because, it was the name of a girl who died long long ago.

Danny held his breath as long as he could, he refused to break the moment, to try and let Ember finish her statement; to move on from the secret she just shared. He wouldn't call her Madeline, that girl had long since died and became something new. But the fact that he knew her name was… incredible.

His lungs began to burn and he was forced to let the air out. Slowly, as to not disturb the moment. But even after he had emptied his lungs of their air, she hadn't moved a bit.

So he was forced to break it himself. "What reason would you ever have to be scared of me?"

Ember smiled sadly. "I saw your soul, Phantom. I saw what you are underneath everything. It's… it's not a thing I can truly process – to see a soul is to see something we're not meant to. I-I can't even really explain it with words. I could write ten thousand songs and I wouldn't even come close to being able to describe what it is. But… there was one thing…" Ember trailed off at that, chewing on her lip and staring at their intertwined arms.

"What thing?"

"My song…" Ember whispered, "when I saw your soul, I saw my song inscribed on it. I never ever believed I would see a person's soul, that someone would trust me so completely that they’d be willing to show me theirs, and if I did they'd never be marked as mine…" Ember took a deep breath and looked Danny in the eyes. "I saw that you were my soulmate, so I fucking killed a thing that cannot die." Danny's jaw dropped. "What?" He wasn't sure if that was in response to the knowledge that Ember was his soulmate or that Ember killed the thing that was going to kill him.

Ember shuddered. "I didn't even know I could do that, but I just… I saw my song on your soul, and I knew right then and there, that I couldn't let that thing have you. I would never let it have you."

Danny reached over and put his hand on Ember's shoulder. "If I am your soulmate, which I'll admit, I didn't believe in those before today, then why are you scared?"

Ember shook her head. "Phantom… I said you're my soulmate, not that I'm yours…" She pulled away, or rather tried to, but Danny held her firm. She didn't seem to mind. "It's… it's not always the case that it's reciprocated."

"Then… how do we find out?"

Ember froze, but Danny refused to take the words back, because he wanted to know. Because maybe she was right, and this soulmate thing only went one way.

But if she wasn't…

Ember sniffled and Danny realized she was crying. He startled and began to pull away. But Ember's hands tightened on his arm. "It's okay, it's okay. I'm just… I'm scared. I'm really really scared. I'm scared you'll see something, and you'll hate me forever. That for an eternity, I'll long for you, but you'll hate me."

Danny blinked as he processed what she said. He wanted to interrupt, to say something but what that would be, he had no clue.

Ember continued talking, trying to fill the time and not let either of them sit there in silence. “There’s… it’s possible, I know you haven’t been one of us for long, but I remember more about being a ghost than being a human now. I could… I could show you it, my soul that is…”

“You made it sound like it’s serious to do that…” Danny muttered.

“It is.”

Then the silence came, leaving them to their thoughts. Danny felt like a pilot trying to keep a plane from crashing. A million things were screaming to grab his attention, and he was trying to find the important thing. That being, what he needed to say to Ember. He was never really good at this kind of thing, it was something he relied on Jazz for. Hell, he was D+ student in English.

But well, Ember said he was her soulmate, so maybe he couldn't screw it up too badly.

"If that was the case, and the world said that you weren't my soulmate, then it's up to you to hold your middle finger up in the air and scream 'I'll make it work anyways'…'' He stopped there, before another word popped into his head. "'Fuckers'," he added.

Ember stilled for a moment and tears began to form in her eyes. Danny felt his heart stop and he started to curse himself for not thinking. When Ember suddenly pulled him off the rock they had been sitting on and into the open air of the Ghost Zone.

She didn't pull him far, just deeper into the asteroid field of rocks, before tucking the two of them between a couple. The Ghost Zone was a desolate place to begin with, but here there was no chance that anyone would see them. Ember straightened up before wiping away a tear. "Eyes on me, Baby Pop…"

And then placed a hand against her chest, and she started to burn.

It started at the edges of her form, the shapes and curves of her body burning away like she was made of paper. Danny sat there, transfixed as Ember turned to ash in front of him, leaving just a few bright flames in her place.

Her soul was… impossibly bright. It felt like not just his eyes but his mind was getting overloaded just looking at it. If it weren't for the fact that blinking didn't produce any of those afterimages like when one looked at a flash, he'd have worried about going blind.

It took effort to focus on her, and even then when he did, he felt his stomach drop as he realized he wasn't sure what he was looking at.

It was circular, a whirlwind of glowing red and bright white ash circling a series of scattered flames. The red glow pulsed like a heartbeat, while five flames flickered in place.

He bit his tongue and looked over her soul again. Trying to make sense of what he was looking at. To find something, anything, that showed a reflection of himself in Ember. That he hadn't just set her up for disappointment.

And then It clicked.

Polaris, the north star.

It was connected to Baekdu, Kochab, Pherkad, and Yildun. Each of the names clicked as he looked at the flames amongst her core.

Ursa minor, the little dipper, sitting in a nebula of ashes.

This was Ember, the remains of Madeline McClain, burned away till nothing but ashes remained, the Spirit of Rebellion, the one who when the world told her to move she planted her feet and told it, no. The girl who did not die when her time was up. The one who had the world screaming her name because she wanted to be remembered.

She was beautiful.

Carefully, slowly, like someone reaching out for an injured creature, Danny reached toward Ember, and he gently scooped up her soul into his hands. "You're my soulmate…" he whispered, right into her soul.

Then it was gone, the details of her soul that he'd never be able to put into words already fading from his mind. It'd forever be burned there, even if he could never fully recall it. Instead, he found Ember pressed against him, her arms wrapped about her neck and his hands about her waist. "And you're mine."

Danny squeezed her tightly in his arms and breathed out slowly. "This… is gonna be one hell of an explanation to my family."

"Taking me to meet the family already, huh? Baby Pop?"

"Yes," Danny said firmly. "I… I was almost gone, Ember. I refuse to keep more secrets from them. I almost never got to tell them who I was or what I was doing." He looked down at Ember who was looking at him with understanding. "I want to tell them."

Ember nodded and placed her forehead against his and closed her eyes. "I get it, Baby Pop, I… I died, and I left so, so many things unsaid, so many songs unsung." She opened her eyes and smiled at him. "Plus uhh… my lair might not be safe anymore? First thing I did after killing kshkspsp ths psp xhch xlhchks was take a bunch of its finger things and chuck them at Skulker telling him that I was a better hunter… and then broke up with him."

"Well, no time like the present…" Danny said, taking a step back and pulling Ember out of the crevasse they had jammed themselves into. Then he gently guided her to take off with him.

Danny had hoped that when he had made it back, he'd have beaten his parents back and they wouldn't have worried. But that wasn't the case. He stepped through the portal, hand in hand with Ember, to find his parents plus Jazz waiting in the lab.

Jack had been pacing back and forth, and Maddie had thrown herself into working on some weapon. Jazz was sitting on a chair, holding onto the Fenton BOO-merang.

Their feet hadn't touched the floor before all three of them had abandoned their stations and were crowding the one and half ghosts. Danny held up his hands in surrender, which only made him easier to be hugged by each of his family members.

"I'm alright! I'm alright!" Danny shouted, which did nothing to actually appease their worries.

"Sorry, Baby Pop, gotta take your lumps when you do stupid shit."

"Who said I did stupid shit?"

"I did, because I know you."

Maddie looked up at Ember and gave her an appraising look. "He went into the Ghost Zone, alone, without any weapons, and just left us a note saying he'd be back soon."

Danny folded his arms. "Hey, I said I wasn't going anywhere dangerous!"

"Baby Pop, you're enemy number one for every ghost in a thousand miles from that portal," She shrugged, giving him an evil smile. "So, uh… everywhere is dangerous."

"Speaking of," Jack said, "who're you?"

"Mom, Dad," Danny began, "This is Ember, she's…" Danny paused. There were a lot of things he could say here, but there was one thing his parents would care the most about right now. "She's the one who patched me together after…"

"Kshkspsp ths psp xhch xlhchks," Ember supplied.

"Yeah, that guy, tore me to shreds."

There was a brief moment of silence, before Maddie took a step towards Ember. Ember instinctively took a step back, but Maddie enveloped her in a hug. "Thank you, my dear."

"You're… welcome…" Ember whispered back, unsure on how to react to being hugged by Maddie, Danny's mother.

It had probably been ages since she had been hugged from a mother figure.

Jazz, who probably remembered the effects of being brainwashed the best out of everyone, let out a hum. "Not that I'm complaining but… how did that happen?"

Maddie took a step back and Ember bashfully rubbed the back of her head. "It's… a bit of a long story."

Jack clapped her on the back. "Well, come on in." He laughed joyously. "Thanks to you, we have a long time to talk about it."

#danny phantom #dp fic #ember mclain

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pransesdp · 2 years

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surprised no one’s asked yet, but Sam Manson for the ask meme?🦇

Headcanon A: realistic

She has a pet black cat named "Pumpkin", whom she found as an abandoned kitten one day while walking home from school. While the lil fuzzball isn't always the nicest to those like Danny or Tucker (or, really most people in general), Sam sees the kitty as her lil baby no matter what~

Headcanon B: while it may not be realistic it is hilarious

One time as a dare/joke, Sam decided to sign herself up for cheerleading not too dissimilar from when she signed up for that pageant in "Beauty Marked". Little did she know that she'd actually end up passing the try-outs with her agility/athletic skill... so cue her grumpy disposition for the next few football games she's stuck waving around pom-poms with Paulina & Star lol.

Headcanon C: heart-crushing and awful, but fun to inflict on friends

Way back in the day, little Sam actually used to get along pretty well with her mother Pamela (constantly spending time doing makeovers, hosing tea parties, taking part in ballet & beauty pageants, etc.). It was only when she became more independent-minded that Sam started to realize how... "controlling" her mother was, and how anything they bonded over was solely the things Pamela enjoyed, nothing Sam actually wanted to do...

Being the first time her daughter ever told her "no" to any of their activities caused a huge rift between Pamela and Sam from then on... only becoming more strained now that Sam's a goth (and thus Pam can't help trying to "recapture" old memories with pushing those girly dresses on her, oblivious to the fact that this was what drove Sam apart from her to begin with...).

Headcanon D: unrealistic, but I will disregard canon about it because I reject canon reality and substitute my own.

While she and Danny come to terms with their feelings much like the end of the canon series, the two of them don't actually start to "date"-date for real until a little later in highschool (once the dust settles from ghost-fighting for them to have more free time together). In college the two of them would have a brief break from eachother so they can focus on 'finding' themselves better (as any young adult would at that age). By their later 20s they’ll be back together for good though ❤️

#danny phantom #sam manson #dp headcanons #pamela manson #dp ask meme #ask meme #danny x sam #dp asks #(Ever since I watched 'Turning Red' I can't help seeing Sam & Pamela's dynamic being lowkey like Ming & Mei's in a way)#(That as much as Ming (aka Pam) meant well with pushing her daughter to 'success')#(It only caused further tension since Mei (aka Sam) has grown into her own person by now :( )#(Idk how likely itd be for Sam & Pamela to make amends as Ming & Mei did... but idk its still kinda fascinating in a 'sad' way yknow?)

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finestkind4077 · 1 year

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@marley-manson tagged me to post a snippet of a WIP, and since I have but one MASH WIP (though it should be finished soon, G-d willing and the creek don’t rise), here’s an excerpt from Vietnamfic, in which Hawkeye goes of the deep end and reenlists. I’m posting it here rather than main since it’s MASH-related. Here, we have one Hawkeye Pierce showing up at Indoc 2.0 after a series of poorly-considered life choices:

January 1965

The first real inkling of regret, surprisingly, doesn't come when Hawkeye goes for his physical or signs his paperwork or even when he shows up at Fort Sam Houston for the second time of his life, only to discover that his uniform issue contained not the Captain's bars he'd expected, but a Major’s oak leaf clusters (though that was a bizarre moment, and he'd actually dragged the supply sergeant in to try and demand, to no avail, that his rank be changed). It comes while Hawkeye is sitting in a dingy classroom, surrounded by other doctors, most of them a solid ten years younger than himself, listening to some colonel lecturing everyone about cold weather medicine. In preparation, allegedly, for deployment to Vietnam.

Hawkeye looks around the room, fully expecting to see someone- anyone- that appears as perplexed by this as he feels, but everyone else is gazing impassively at the instructor, stone-faced and seemingly fully invested in learning how to practice cold weather medicine before deploying to a tropical environment where the temperature, last Hawkeye checked, was currently 75 degrees. In January. By now, the colonel has been droning for a solid twenty minutes, starting with the dangers of hypothermia and has just launched into a treatise on the ravages of frostbite. Hawkeye wonders if maybe he's actually dreaming or having a stroke or something. How are all of these people sitting here and listening to this like it makes any kind of sense?

For one, brief moment, Hawkeye considers just continuing to sit there, maybe leaning back and taking a nap until it's all over, because he's not really the same guy that he was twelve years ago, he doesn't think, and even if he was, getting into an argument with some colonel about his stupid cold weather medicine briefing requires energy that Hawkeye can't remember having in years. But almost unconsciously, Hawkeye is getting up from his seat, grabbing his notebook and pen, and turning to leave, congratulating himself and his claustrophobia for getting a seat on the aisle.

Hawkeye's already taken several steps towards the classroom door when he hears the colonel barking at him. "Major! Where do you think you're going?"

Jesus, he thinks, this Major thing is going to take some getting used to.

"Wherever they're teaching warm weather medicine, given that we're going to a tropical country," Hawkeye replies, not pausing in his walk towards the door. There are low murmurs starting, and he can feel the other doctors' eyes on him, but he doesn't care. What are they going to do, he thinks, draft me?

"But- listen, you can't just leave, this is the military! You haven't been dismissed! These are valuable lessons learned in Korea!"

Hawkeye doesn't pause or turn around, giving an audible snort as he opens the door, raising a hand in farewell, and exiting the classroom. He half expects the colonel to come after him- Potter probably would have, he thinks- but he doesn't. No one does.

#mash #fic #vietnamfic #hawkeye pierce

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ao3feed-brucewayne · 29 days

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Interviews & Liminality

read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/fbyW41M by Mythic_Robyn After a brief period of recovery Sam is ready to begin life again in Gotham. New family, new city, new school, same troubles. The Wayne’s are just a little more famous and a little more important than the Manson’s however so before renewal can truly start there’s a few problems. With the Justice League tackling the GIW full force and the anti-ecto laws into question Sam decides to establish a new order here. Unfortunately the Wayne family has to establish her presence on top of that. Words: 2288, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English Series: Part 2 of Spector's of the Present Fandoms: Danny Phantom, Batman - All Media Types Rating: General Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Categories: Gen Characters: Sam Manson, Vicki Vale, Bruce Wayne, Jason Todd, Damian Wayne, Cassandra Cain, Dick Grayson Relationships: Danny Fenton & Tucker Foley & Sam Manson, Batfamily Members & Fenton Family (Danny Phantom), Danny Fenton & Jazz Fenton & Tucker Foley & Sam Manson & Danielle "Dani" Phantom, Sam Manson & Ember McLain, Sam Manson & Damian Wayne, Sam Manson & Bruce Wayne Additional Tags: Interviews, Good Parent Bruce Wayne, Ecto-Contaminated | Liminal Sam Manson, GIW is an Acronym for Ghost Investigation Ward (Danny Phantom), Mentioned Guys in White | GIW (Danny Phantom), Protective Sam Manson, Protective Danny Fenton, Protective Batfamily (DCU), Ghost Zone Culture (Danny Phantom) read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/fbyW41M

#IFTTT #bruce wayne #batman #the caped crusader #the dark knight #dcu #ao3 #ao3feed

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lexosaurus · 2 years

Text

Thank you @esmeralda-anistasia for the prompt.

---

Malfunctioning powers were the worst, Danny decided, sitting back and groaning in his chair as he dropped his pencil for the seventh time that morning.

“Vlad?” Sam whispered.

“Yup,” Danny said, popping the ‘p’. “Fucking rich asshole.”

“Billionaires suck,” she agreed.

“Mr. Fenton! None of that language in my class please,” Lancer shouted. Rumor had it, the man had taken to learning the curse words of every language that his students spoke, which was something Danny believed wholeheartedly. “Care to read the next passage?”

Danny rolled his eyes and squinted down at his book. He recited the words on the page, not giving much mind to what he was reading until Mr. Lancer told him to stop.

“And what do you think he meant by that, when the narrator said, ‘A boy who won’t stand up for himself becomes a man who can’t stand up to anything’?”

A chill passed through Danny, and he waited for his ghost sense to make its grandiose entrance, but it appeared to be a false alarm as not even a small puff of air exited from his lips.

Stupid cold core throwing a tantrum, stupid Vlad and his stupid technology and desire to make Danny’s life a living hell.

“Daniel?” Mr. Lancer said in an exasperated tone.

Danny blinked, ignoring the stifling giggles that echoed around the classroom. “Huh?”

“What did you interpret from that passage?”

The chill panged from his core again, but Danny ignored it. “The passage?”

Mr. Lancer pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed.

“Amir tries too hard to be accepted by his community,” Sam cut in. “He craves Baba’s approval, and never stands up for himself or what he knows is right or wrong, especially when it comes to the racism in his community. This seems like foreshadowing to me, that the major character progression in this book is going to be him learning to stand up for himself.”

Danny shot Sam a look of relief.

“Very good, Ms. Manson. Maybe next time, Mr. Fenton, you might try absorbing the words that you’re reading.”

“Sure thing,” Danny responded, giving Mr. Lancer a mock salute.

“Now Wes, why don’t you pick up where we left off…”

Another chill washed through Danny, and he failed to catch the frost that formed on his fingertips. “Damnit,” he whispered, shoving his hands in his pockets.

He couldn’t be doing this now. Not in front of everyone.

Tucker poked his shoulder. “All good?”

“Fine,” Danny hissed, feeling the frost creep up his palm toward his wrist. He balled his hand, trying to force the warmth from his skin to melt the ice, but his attempt was futile. This was ectoplasmic ice, not natural ice.

And as Danny was well aware, ectoplasm had a habit of failing to obey the laws of physics.

The cold wafted through his body, tickling his nose. He scrunched his face up, unwilling to take his hands out of his hoodie pockets and potentially reveal his predicament to the class. As dumb as Dash and Kwan could be, Valerie and Wes were in the class too, and Danny had been in enough close calls to know that Wes always kept a camera on hand.

His arm tingled with a familiar feeling of invisibility, and Danny closed his eyes, forcing his arm back into the visible spectrum.

“Uh, Danny…?” Sam started.

Danny looked down, to see his now-visible arm covered in patches of ice.

“Oh for the love of—” Danny tried to melt the ice, but only succeeded in spreading it more.

“Maybe you should head out a sec?” Tucker asked.

“Maybe…” Danny stared aghast at his arm, and in that moment of brief distraction, that’s when his nose decided to launch its attack.

At the exact moment he sneezed, his core took the opportunity to flair, sending a cascading blanket of frost, ice, and snow shooting from his body around the class. Students yelled in alarm, jumping out of their seats. But that didn’t matter. Because in a split second, the classroom went from an average room to a scene from a winter wonderland movie.

With Danny at the epicenter.

There were several moments of silence, where only the creaking icicles sounded from the room before Mr. Lancer finally broke it. “Mr. Fenton?”

Danny glanced around the classroom. Everyone looked at him stunned, aside from Wes whose eyes were positively sparkling like a child on Christmas morning.

“I—” Danny’s voice cut off, and he raised his frost-covered hand up to his eye-line. “I don’t—”

Tucker slapped a hand on his shoulder. “Welp, it was a nice run, bud.”

Sam leaned back, folding her arms behind her head. “Looks like the jig is up.”

Valerie’s eyes narrowed from the other side of the room.

“What are they talking about, Fen-toe-nail?” Dash asked, shaking the ice off his letterman jacket. “What the fuck just happened?”

“Well…” Danny stood, diverting his gaze to the floor. “This wasn’t how I wanted you all to find out, but…” He transformed.

Gasps rang out from around the room.

“Sorry, guys. I’m Phantom.”

There was a beat of silence. Then another. Danny waited for Valerie to charge him, or for the telltale sound of Wes’s camera click, or for the screams or phones in his face.

But instead, the painful silence stretched on.

Danny squeezed his eyes shut. His heart pounded in his chest.

Finally, just when Danny was contemplating turning intangible and launching himself through the ceiling, there was the sound of a chair scraping against the floor as someone stood. Heavy footsteps stalked across the classroom, ones that Danny recognized all too well as deriving from Dash’s gate, and stopped just before him.

“Holy shit,” Dash said, poking his arm. “Phantom disguised himself as the Fenton dweeb!”

“No, you moron!” Wes yelled. “Fenton is Phantom!”

“No, he’s not. Fenton’s not that cool.”

“Yeah, Wes,” Paulina said. “No way someone as hot as Phantom would ever be Fenton.”

Shouts of agreement came from around the classroom.

Danny let out a breath, and with it the tension he was holding in. He opened his eyes, and looks of amazement and pure hilarity passed through Danny, Tucker, and Sam.

“Yeah, guys.” Danny fought to hold his laughter in. “It was a ghost prank.”

Judging by the dissolving snickering from Tucker behind him, Danny was doing better at holding his composure than others.

He covered his mouth with a gloved hand and said, “Sorry, I just wanted to see what being a normal student was like. Danny’s in the library, I’ll go get him. And, uh, let me melt the classroom for you.”

“Please,” Mr. Lancer said, the astonishment not having worn from his face yet.

Wes screeched in distress.

And thus, another potential catastrophe was averted.

---

[read more of my works here]

#danny phantom #my writing #sneeze #prompt fill #phicc #oneshot

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datawyrms · 2 years

Text

Misplaced Courage

In his quest to expose Phantom, Wes enlists the help of the mayor. Everyone finds out Wes was right in the worst way possible. Prompts by @idiot-cheesehead-archenemy and @crackedfoutainpen Happy(?) Phic Phight everyone! On Ao3

It was ridiculous how no one could tell Danny Fenton and Danny Phantom were one and the same. He barely tried to hide it, content to be shielded by the fact Phantom was a ghost. After all, who would possibly think some dead kid was also an alive kid?

Honestly, Wes was pretty sure ‘Fenton’ was just a handy disguise for the ghost. It explained all of his little ‘accidents’ with the school glassware, how the black haired boy just happened to go missing whenever a big ghost fight went down. Oh and who could forget Tucker Foley and Sam Manson, who often helped Phantom? They just so happened to be Fenton’s BFFs? It was so obvious!

There were holes in the theory. Yes, both had been seen together at the same time, but both had been acting strangely. It was rare for that to happen. Yet everyone just liked to dismiss it because ‘Fenton’s a weak loser’ or ‘You think Phantom lives with ghost hunters’ and he was sick of all the mockery and wilful blindness to the facts right in front of him.

Which is why he had called Mayor Masters to let him know that he had information on Danny Phantom. If anyone was going to listen, it had to be him. The mayor made his disdain for the ghost boy clear countless times. If even he wouldn’t even try to see the truth, no one would.

The fact the mayor had scheduled a meeting with him the very next day put a flicker of hope back in his heart. Finally someone would take him seriously, someone could see the threat lurking nearby every single day.

Wes made sure his meticulous notes and (stealthily taken) photographs sat securely in the prepared folder and felt a brief bolt of pride whenever he caught a glimpse of it during the too long school day. Soon everyone would know. Soon he wouldn’t be some joke.

“Mr. Weston, was it? Please, take a seat.” Vlad Masters said, gesturing to the seat across from the grand mahogany desk. His smile was friendly, but felt sharp instead of comforting. Of course it was only there to be polite, but Wes couldn’t shake the chill snaking down his spine. “I heard you found out something about our local ghost pest?”

Most of the decorations here felt a little too big, too expensive for a mayor’s office. Though not many mayors were also billionaires. The explanation should have calmed his heart, dislodge the worry. This was stupid, he was going to finally expose Fenton for what he was, and he was getting cold feet because a rich and powerful man was just across the desk. He had to try. Mr. Masters wouldn’t just laugh at the suggestion. He would listen, he had to. He took a breath to steady his nerves and gave a lopsided smile back. “Yes sir. I found out how Danny Phantom manages to hide all the time, so that you never catch him.”

Vlad leaned forward ever so slightly in his chair, eyebrows arching in a clear display of interest. “Did you now? When I’ve had million dollar bounties on that ghost, and no one could get results?”

“Yes! Everyone was overlooking it, maybe the people you hired couldn’t do it because he doesn’t hide out around adults. He hides around other teenagers, like me.” Better to not make it sound like everyone the mayor hired was totally incompetent. Even if they were.

“Fascinating. Can you elaborate?”

Okay, he looked interested, he was listening. He shouldn’t just brush off the truth like everyone else did. “The ghost boy can pretend to be human. Or is one, I guess since no one else seems to notice. I know who he is.”

“Now that is quite a serious accusation, Mr. Weston. You think a ghost is just hiding among regular people, dodging every ghost repelling measure that’s been taken?”

The doubt. He was losing him. Wes fumbled for the folder, only barely managing to place it on the desk without shaking. “I know it sounds weird, but I have proof! Not like a picture or anything, but if you connect all the dots it’s obvious!”

“Obvious? My boy, are you telling me that you think a human could act with the powers of a ghost?” Vlad leafed through the folder with one hand, but didn’t seem to be giving it his full attention. No. Those pale blue eyes were more fixated on him, for some reason.

“I know he is sir. Danny Fenton IS Danny Phantom. The ghost illness proved people could get powers! I don’t think he’s sick though- I think he’s always like that. Somehow.”

“So you’re suggesting an entire family of ghost hunters that is unaware of a ghost living in their home?”

Why did everyone ask that? “Uh, with no disrespect Mr. Masters, I kind of doubt they’d ever consider it possible- especially if the ghost was their kid.”

“True, true, Jack is almost impressive in his boundless ignorance.” The folder closed with a sudden snap, dropped with no ceremony. “Now my boy, who else have you told about this theory of yours? I wouldn’t want to waste time repeating it to those you’ve already informed.”

He was going to do something? Look into it just like that? Really? The joy he should feel was uncomfortably lodged in his throat, the voice in the back of his mind screaming it was too easy, too sudden. The mayor didn’t even want time to read over everything, he was accepting it just like that? “Well no one at school believes me, so I guess you’re the only one that even thinks this should be taken seriously?”

“So it’s fairly common knowledge that you believe that you know Phantom’s true identity then, even if they fail to understand it, I see.” He steepled his fingers and stared at the wall, pondering. When he unfroze from that position he tapped a key on his phone. “Cancel the rest of my schedule for today, something much more important has come up. Thank you.”

“Really? You’re going to find out what he’s up to right now?” Maybe he could help? Rub it in Fenton’s face a little once everyone knew he wasn’t who he pretended he was.

“Why of course. I couldn’t risk such news not being acted on immediately,” he said as he stood, keeping a close eye on the boy. “Did you have any other folders like this? Evidence and the like? My experts should be fully informed, you understand.”

“O-Of course! I can get you anything that would help.”

“Wonderful. We can take my limo to your abode and sort out what you’ve gathered,” his tone left no room for argument, sweeping out of the room with a presence that practically made Wes want to cower in its wake.

Should success feel like this? The looks, the praise just felt off. A little too perfect and calculated. No, no that was just his paranoia acting up again. He could follow with confidence and pride. Maybe it was just a bit of guilt towards Fenton. Not that he deserved any pity, lurking around and just controlling people, using his powers to screw with him because it was ‘funny’. The creep of a ghost deserved to get hunted down and dealt with. The plush limo seats didn’t ease the tingle, but he just dug his fingernails into his palms and forced himself to ignore it. This is what he wanted.

—

“I’m just saying we might actually win if you don’t use your controller” Tucker pleaded as he elbowed Danny as they walked onto the school yard. “You can react so much faster in person!”

Sam smirked at his antics. “In your dreams, Tuck. Danny knows I have him beat even when he cheats.”

“Hey! It’s not cheating, it’s uh. Creative control schemes.”

“Suuuure it is. You’d think you’d be a better shot by now.”

“I’m not that bad. It just hurts when you sneak up on me!” Danny rubbed the back of his neck, giving Tucker a weak grin. “Seriously though, I get hit enough without needing to feel it when we’re playing Doomed. Sorry.”

“Aw mannnn. She’s gonna thrash us again if we don’t try something new!”

“Try practicing,” was the goth’s suggestion, earning an eye roll from her friend.

Danny opened his mouth to make a retort but froze as the frosty breath of his ghost sense escaped instead of words. Great. “First thing in the morning? I’m going to get marked late again!” He scowled as he shrugged off his backpack and handed it off to Tucker.

“Hey, at least your stuff will be in class on time.”

“Maybe it can take notes for me too. If it’s the Box Ghost I’m gonna kick him into next week for this.”

“You’re sure you don’t want backup?” Sam frowned at the bag, already reaching for her own.

“All of us being late because we’re chasing a ghost would look really bad, so yeah. I’ll be fine. Probably.”

“You got this dude, be confident!”

Danny couldn’t help but smile a little at the reassurance and nodded before dashing off to find a more secluded corner to transform. All he needed to do was be invisible for a moment, find who was giving him a headache and probably get detention again. Great start to the day.

The difficult bit was the lack of noise. Usually someone would yell when they saw a ghost, or the sound of people running away would tip him off. Yet the halls remained the normal low buzz of activity as he floated above the disorganized mess of teenagers. Maybe one of the still empty classrooms? Or the storage rooms.

Nothing.

Was his ghost sense faulty? The first bell was ringing in his ears, a painful temptation to forget it and go back to class before the second bell sealed his fate.

Maybe it distracted him too well, considering how he got a heavy blow to the back of his head. He only barely managed to throw up a barrier to break his sudden slam into the concrete floor. It still hurt, it always hurt when he hit this hard enough that his bones vibrated under his skin, but he was able to turn and face his assailant quickly. “Seriously? You couldn’t wait until after school, Plasmius?”

“Unfortunately not all of us can pretend problems will solve themselves, Daniel.” He didn't give the boy a chance to retort, seven quick blasts shot and slamming heavily into boxes, chairs and startled hybrid.

“Like that makes any sense. Get lost!” Danny blocked the next volley and launched forward with a glowing green fist, narrowly missing the vampiric ghost’s trailing cape. With a grunt he twisted in midair to fire a blast after such a close miss, but the crackling slam of ectoplasm against shield proved him one step behind again.

Well, if he couldn’t quite keep up he could always distract Vlad. “What, you aren’t going to tell me your evil scheme? Make a gross pass at my mom?”

Vlad bared his teeth at the insult, but only tried to attack again instead of giving the expected answer, or insult back. An attack that was a feint, an opening that just let a duplicate Danny hadn’t been aware of send a painful shock through his body.

At least it was easy enough to grasp his ice powers even as he jerked from the agony, doppelganger banished with a swift retaliation blast. Danny swung blindly instead of aiming, mostly trying to avoid being caught in another trick.

His blind strike hit home, but met no resistance. The first one was a copy too? It was so unfair that he had that power. Wait. If that was a fake, where was the real Vlad? Green eyes darted all over the room, but no more attacks came. Okay, time to find a creep. No big deal.

The ghost shield he slammed into face first at full speed was a bit of a deal. Mostly because he was slumped on the floor clutching his head, cursing Plasmius to every terrible fate he could think of. Of course this was a trap, of course there was some stupid gadget trying to trap him here! “I can walk through these too, Vlad,” the boy muttered to himself as he found his footing and the door, dropping his ghost form as he ran.

There was screaming now. Fear, panic and worry that only made him want to run faster, heart pounding as he dodged between fleeing students. No one would notice him, or care he was going the wrong way. He just knew he had to go now, as quickly as possible. This kind of terror was wrong, he could feel it. A weight on his shoulders that wasn’t right, wasn’t how people normally felt. Maybe it added a little extra get up and go to his feet, but he was going to try and ignore that his ghost powers might get a boost from this awful tension in the air.

Danny didn’t intend to speak or yell out until he was back in his ghost fighting persona, but the blood splatter on the floor threw all his senses out of the window. Was he after Tucker and Sam? Trying to hurt or kill his friends now? His eyes flared green as he spotted the ghost hovering over the bloody display, nose wrinkling as the wet stench of iron crawled down his throat.

Vlad was right there, floating casually. He didn’t have Sam, or Tucker. He did have someone, limp and motionless, too stained with blood dripping down to the tile below to identify them right away. The man shouldn’t look so impassive while clutching a bloodied teenager with one hand, other black glove stained crimson so there was no mistake who had caused the damage.

They were the only three things that existed right now. Him, the devil himself, and the body. The scream ripped out of his throat before he could even consider anything else, already lowering into a battle stance. “Put him down!”

“Hm? Oh my boy, of course. I already have,”

Time froze as the snide words slid into his ears. Already had? Already? A joke. It had to be a joke. He wasn’t too late, that wasn’t a corpse.

Vlad either didn’t notice or didn’t care how the boy was only staring in wide eyed shock. “If you don’t want to keep cleaning up messes, one should be more careful. Especially about what they say.”

He let go of the thing hanging from his hand and Danny moved out of some desperate need to stop whoever it was from taking more pain, suffering even more for no reason. As they weren’t dead, they couldn’t be dead, he refused to believe Vlad actually had the guts to go through with murder when his dad was still alive and well.

Their blood was still warm, awful as the red sunk into his white t-shirt. It was still flowing. Not dead. Not yet. What could he do? He didn’t want to look this closely, didn’t want to feel how weak and limp this person was but he had to. This was his fault.

It wasn’t just shallow lacerations on the chest and arms.

Wes’ half lidded eyes barely twitched as he registered the new face in front of him, an awful bubbling noise that might have been an acknowledgement. His face held the true wound that caused such a mess, missing his lower jaw entirely. No tongue lolling out without anywhere to go, the boy truly silenced in a gruesome display.

“Wes?” Danny asked, half wondering if he would wake up from this. Another twitch before his eyes rolled back, no longer able to keep his feeble grip on consciousness.

So much blood. He had to stop it. With what? His shirt? That wouldn’t be enough! It had to stop, get held back. Ice. He could do that. He had to, he couldn’t let someone die. Frost hissed at the remaining edge of his face before hardening suddenly, a misshapen chunk of ice binding skin back together, the cuts getting a similar icy scab as he begged for it to be enough, that he could hold on. See, this was better right? He could kid himself that the small white fragments of exposed bone was just a trick of the icy covering.

“What are you-”

Danny didn’t care what that monster was saying, he didn’t want to hear it. He didn’t want to hear anything. There weren't any words for this.

So he screamed.

He wailed.

Wailed with a power his human body couldn’t be expected to take, shrieked even as his throat burned and mouth bled.

Only after that did he hear the rest of the world again. Worried mutters, screams and footfalls. His legs gave out and he fell, still making sure Wes didn’t hit the ground first, clutching him tightly even as he wanted to pass out.

He heard ambulance sirens coming. Good. Okay. Vlad was gone. The doctors could help. Darkness grabbed at the corners of his vision and he didn’t have the strength to keep pushing it back.

“Wes was right? About all of it?” A hissed mutter was the last thing he could hold on to as he succumbed. If only he could try to warn them not to say too much.

#Danny Phantom #phic phight #phic phight 2022 #Vlad Masters #Wes Weston #Team Human #did i pick these two just to make red sad?#possibly #first time using wes and i'm just 'ah yes worst way possible

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scientifically-strange · 3 years

Note

So i am currently in a marver marathon with all the films ( I was bored) and while watching avengers 1 and I was thinking.....Fury know everything about everyone so naturally he know about Phantom. Danny is a teenager and Fury recruit (threatened) him in the avengers. So what will the others reaction to Danny and him to them ?

"Phantom. I'm Nick Fury, and I want to talk to you about the Avengers Initiative."

Danny looked the older man up and down and up again. He was stern, by the book probably. Definitely not the kind of adults Danny tended to hang with. The eye patch was pretty cool, though.

But as cool as the offer was, Danny couldn't just take it. Who was going to take care of the ghosts here whenever the world was ending? And what about school? He couldn't just quit because then his parents would get suspicious. And if they started asking question they would find out Danny joined the Avengers Initiative, and if they found out why he said yes they'd ask why and he's have to tell them-

No. It was just easier for everybody if he wasn't involved.

"I think I'm good, Mr. Pirate, sir," Danny said. He already had his own problems, he didn't need to deal with the government's either.

"Sam Manson. Tucker Foley. Jasmine Fenton. Valerie Grey," Fury said. Danny stopped cold in his tracks. He whirled around, anger bubbling just beneath his skin. The lack of expression on Fury's face just made it worse.

"What are you implying?" Danny asked, voice low and threatening. Fury didn't seemed phased, though.

"That maybe the Shield could not arrest them for being accomplices with a super powered criminal that's been terrorizing this town for the past year. Inviso-Bill sure is a menace, wouldn't you agree?"

Danny saw red. Was he really going to arrest his friends just for helping him out? Just to get him to join their stupid team?

"What about the ghosts here? I'm the only one who can throw them back in the portal."

"We've already made arrangement."

"With who?" Danny asked, narrowing his eyes.

"Not the Guys in White, I can assure you. And we will go through extensive measures to make sure your friends and family are safe. I understand your secret identity is important to keep. I can help with that, as well."

"You seem to have everything already so meticulously planned. Why me, then? Why not whatever special ops team you probably have."

"Because none of them can do what you do. The world may depend on you. Besides, you've already saved it once. What's one more time?"

Danny's face went slack with confusion. Was he talking about the Reality Gauntlet incident? How the hell did he know about that?

"I'll keep in touch, Phantom."

-------

"What is a kid doing here?" Bruce asked as he looked over at Phantom. He couldn't have been more than fifteen. Sixteen at the most.

Phantom, who was apparently already in a bad mood, seemed so sink further in his seat, his scowl deepening.

"Because I asked him to be," Fury said as he walked up to the briefing table. "He's a valuable asset-"

"-And a kid, Fury," Steve said with a frown. He didn't care if the kid was powerful or not, he needed to be out doing kid things like baseball and school. Not fighting super villains.

"I wouldn't be here if I didn't need to be, so just suck it up," Phantom said with a huff. He didn't seem angry at them. More at the situation. Like being called in the first place just pissed him off.

"Awe, somebody missed naptime," Tony teased. He held a bag of cashews towards Phantom, who took a handful. He didn't seem to particularly bothered by the comment. Maybe this would work out after all.

"Moving on," Fury said. "Your target is an old Hydra facility. They had a separate branch for supernatural studies called the Guys in White. They have managed to kidnap someone, and you all need to get her back."

Phantom visibly stiffened at the mention of the Guys in White, but at the mention of somebody being imprisoned there, he whirled around to face Fury. All anger he was feeling a moment before seemed to drain, being replaced with worry.

"Who?" He asked. "Who was kidnapped?" He sounded worried. He must have experience with these guys, then.

"Her name is Danielle," Fury said. Phantom paled, as he sat back down. He looked absolutely terrified now.

------

"So do you know these guys?" Steve asked. He was a new recruit, and he wanted to learn as much as he could about them, but that could wait for the sake of the mission. Phantom's lips pressed into a thin line as he nodded. The others didn't say anything, but Steve could tell by their body language that they were listening intently.

"I've had a couple of run-ins with them. I've gotten lucky, though. But Elle...I don't think she's ever had to deal with them until now. And the faster we get there the better."

"Is there any particular reason why?" Clint asked. "Other than the usual 'time is of the essence' schtick?"

"The Guys in White are government ghost hunters," Phantom explained. "And once they get a hold of you you're no longer a person with feelings and autonomy. You're just a fucking lab rat for them to poke and prod at. The sooner we get there, the less time they have to strap her down to a table."

The thought of someone being strapped down to a table and experimented on was familiar to Steve, but it still made his stomach roll over. The others looked a little green as well.

"The hunt ghosts. You've had a couple run-ins with them. Does that mean you're also a ghost?" Clint asked. Danny nodded, and Clint's confusion only seemed to grow. "How?"

Danny shrugged and pulled off the glove of his left hand. Crisscrossing up his hand and into his suit was Lichtenburg scars, glowing a bright, unearthly green. "I was in a lab accident. It turned me into a halfa," he said casually. And then, before Clint could ask more questions, he clarified with a quick, "half human half ghost. I'm half dead."

The concept didn't make sense to Steve, but he learned very early on that the 21st century was overflowing with weird shit. This would just be another drop in the ocean.

Clint seemed to ponder this for a moment before shrugging. "Glad you're not a whole ghost, then. That would suck."

"What was dying like?" Tony blurted before Danny could answer.

"It was...Painful. It doesn't hurt for everybody, but it was...Like white hot, and it burned. I mean, getting electrocuted will do that, I guess." He put his glove back on.

"You seem very calm, considering everything," Bruce said. He almost sounded impressed.

"Well, now that it's happened once it's not something I'm really afraid of anymore. That makes it easier to deal with. I know where I'm going when I finally go. It's...Almost comforting."

-----

The raid was a success. Luckily Elle hadn't been beat up to badly. Though Danny couldn't say the same for the scientists they had taken down.

Now that Elle was back, and she was safe, Danny allowed himself to relax. He closed his eyes and leaned back, letting the rumble of the plane lull him into a half-asleep state. Just enough to tune out the others around him.

"Can I just say," Tony said, scratching at a cut near his temple, "what the fuck?"

"The kid's a powerhouse," Natasha said. "I bet he'd even be able to take on Thor with no problem."

Thor hadn't spoken much since the mission ended. He seemed to recognize the boy with a clarity he hadn't had before. Something unknown to the rest. They stayed silent as Thor gathered his thoughts.

"There have been rumors in Asgard," he said eventually. "A great successor who defeated the ghost king pariah Dark. He was an awful creature who preyed on everybody around him. A tyrant, through and through. The stories state that a half-breed executed him."

"And you think that half-breed is Phantom?" Bruce asked. Thor nodded.

"There are only three of his kind to exist currently. Two of them are sitting in front of us. The third is a blue man with a white cloak. The stories depict someone of Phantom's nature."

"So another living legend," Clint said, leaning back against Natasha. "Steve-o, you've got competition."

"I'm not dumb enough to try and challenge him," Steve said with a chuckle. "He can have the title all he wants."

Phantom had been more than a little angry at the Guys in White for how they treated his friend. He held back in the sense that he didn't kill anybody, but the kid had no remorse about beating the scientists within an inch of their lives. The kid had such raw power that he had barely tapped into. It was awesomely terrifying.

Steve was glad he wasn't on the receiving end of it.

Looking at him now, though, you'd never guess that he took down an entire building of scientists and guards almost single handedly, or that he fought the king of ghosts and won. When he was relaxed like this, he looked just like any other kid. Lanky and baby-faced with some quip on the end of their tongue.

The scars on his hand and the bags under his eyes told a different story, of course, but that could be a story for another time. For now, they would pretend like he was a normal kid.

(Clint vowed that if he ever moved into the Tower with them, he was never stealing his food. He liked living, thank you very much.)

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miscmonstro · 1 year

Text

The Uno Reverse Adoption Saga (formerly No Title Yet) 6

what's this? a title?? on MY fic?????

First: Chapter 1

Previous: Chapter 5

Next: Chapter 7

Halfa!Trio Au crossover with Batman

Current Characters: Sam Manson, Tucker Foley, Danny Fenton, Jason Todd

👻 {Chapter 6 Below!)

Jason was pissed.

To be fair, pissed off could describe him at any given point, though the trio didn’t know that.

“So you just decided ‘hey, rain’ll work’,” he glowered.

The four were in the attic. They’d returned the hostages and the crasher to the main floor for the paramedics and police to find respectively and then withdrawn to temporarily camp out. After a brief introduction of Tucker as Ghouley they glossed over Sam’s name, moving the conversation every which way before Jason had all but demanded to know how exactly they’d worked around the situation.

“Yeah,” Tucker shrugged. “And it did work, didn’t it?”

Jason muttered curses to himself and with their enhanced hearing, the phantoms heard every word. Danny mentally shuffled at the colorful vocabulary and Sam’s snicker echoed in their heads. They weren’t quite used to it because even if they could curse in their minds, they could not speak those words aloud. Curses were used sparingly. It was even more unusual to hear from someone else; back home, no one could swear.

Jason didn’t respond to Tucker’s statement and the frown on what was visible of his face under the mask deepened. “That was reckless. And where is Manes? Four kids isn’t better than three.”

“Uh oh,” Danny thought. Tucker made a mental shooing motion at Sam.

“She’s coming here,” he said.

Jason raised a skeptical brow and Danny hurriedly offered to make a copy and shift to look like Sam. Sam shot him down; he still wasn’t great at duplication. They didn’t need to explain why Manes dissolved into a puddle of goop.

“She’ll be here soon and if not, we’ll go look for her,” Sam settled on bullshitting. Really, while she and Danny went ‘looking’ for Manes she’d switch back to human and voila, cover complete.

“You four have no idea what danger you’re in. Dead or not whatever, you can make your own choices, but it’s irresponsible to shove Manes into this,” Jason said sternly. “And it’s not your job to clean up other people’s messes.”

Not their mess? Maybe that had been true, once upon a time, and they had struggled and even quitted the hero thing at different points over the years. But it was always a Fenton mess, with the offending portal in their basement, and Sam and Tucker’s for daring Danny to do the deed of accidentally turning it on in the first place. They were the cause, so protecting Amity had been their responsibility by default. But now? Danny was the King of the Infinite Realms. All ghosts were his responsibility and far be it for Sam and Tucker to abandon him now. It was unthinkable. So it was their mess, always had been, and now always would be.

“Why wouldn’t Manes help?” Sam scoffed. She swore she was going to punch him, baby ghost or not, if he spouted some nonsense about her being a girl.

“She’s a fucking human kid? And shouldn’t be risking injury like that?” he spat incredulously. “There’s no reason for a teenage girl to be cleaning up the Bat’s messes.”

“Hey! We’re also teenagers,” protested Danny, “and if we can do it, so can she.”

“And how long have you been dead?” Jason shot back rudely. “You could be forty for all I know.”

Danny felt a spike of annoyance.

“Ghosts don’t work like that,” Tucker huffed. He stared at Jason, mentally debating what they could, and should, share with him.

Jason was getting increasingly worked up. “Look, you might be teens, sure. Fine. The problem is that there wasn’t anything that could’ve hurt you, but that’s not true for humans.”

Sam, surprisingly impressed, remarked, “That’s actually really thoughtful. Pretty useless sentiment though.”

“I don’t think he knows that,” Tucker sighed, floating downwards and settling on an old boxy chest.

Well, they weren’t going to tell him they were halfa.

“You’re clearly not familiar with the situation, but all humans who know about us and aren’t hunting us are automatically subject to be hunted,” Sam said, taking a different angle that would still explain her human side’s involvement. “Did you read the acts? The association and ecto-entity aid clauses? Just by knowing us and not wanting us to be tortured thousands of people’s untimely deaths can be swept under the rug. It doesn’t matter if Manes helps us directly or not, she and everyone like her are targets.”

The only reason those parts of the acts were not enforced was because as much as they wanted to, the GIW couldn’t handle all of Amity. They didn’t have the manpower.

The angry frown shifted to a more troubled and less hostile expression. “I- just why?” Jason asked, seemingly at a loss. “Why would that many people risk themselves? Their families? There has to be more to this.”

“Ghosts aren’t all bad and people know it,” Tucker explained gently. “Some of these people have friends and family who’ve come back, some just don’t think it’s right. But truthfully, a lot of people are just too ecto-contaminated to qualify as regular humans anymore. According to the acts.”

“So Manes is in danger one way or another,” Jason muttered.

Jason was oddly fixated on Manes, but he was also just suspicious all around. “And most people agree they need ghosts to protect them from bigger threats,” Danny added cheekily. He figured he’d capitalize on the suspicion and distract him.

“Be back in a bit, we’re going to find Manes,” Sam blurted when she realized what he had, that Jason’s eyes kept flickering over to the ladder. She phased through the floor and Danny followed reluctantly a moment later.

Jason eyed where they’d gone through the floor before asking Tucker warily, “Bigger threats? The hell does that mean?”

Tucker flicked Danny’s presence for leaving him to answer the new line of questioning, then thought back to all the strange things they’d been thrown headfirst into and the different ways they’d learned to handle them lest they sink. “Threats that make artificial rain look reasonable.”

“That doesn’t tell me anything,” Jason growled.

“Dude I don’t know,” Tucker exhaled exasperatedly, though he knew all too well. “Think, like, eternal sleep, mass mind control, evil plants destroying cities, that kind of thing.”

With a dismissive scoff the younger ghost said, “Sounds like JL stuff. I would’ve heard of that.”

Tucker hesitated, momentarily forgetting what JL was before nodding. “Ah, them. Yeah, the events are pretty isolated. A lot of people are interested in keeping this mess under wraps.” Vlad, himself and the Phantoms, the GIW, and most recently, Technus had all inputted their unique brands of high end cyber security, cloaking Amity in a veil that was nigh impenetrable to outsiders. “Even then, the League can never come near ghost hotspots.”

“Ominous,” Sam laughed.

“The vaguer I am, the more questions he asks, the more time you have to look busy,” Tucker replied with the air of ‘I’m doing you a favor’.

Jason, perhaps emboldened by the absence of the other two, snapped, “But that doesn’t explain anything! Why can’t they? Preventing the destruction of cities is exactly what they’re for!”

“Dude, ghosts,” Tucker emphasized. “The acts aside, ghosts have an ability called overshadowing. It lets us possess people. Do you want to deal with a possessed Wonder Woman? The correct answer is no. Nobody does.”

Jason crossed his arms and studied Tucker. He breathed in and out once, and then twice.

“So Manes said the GIW operate more to the west,” he mused, quite a bit calmer. “Where exactly should I avoid?”

“Illinois and Wisconsin for sure, Iowa is a so-so depending on the season. Consider it ‘visit at your own risk’. There’s also a hotspot in Oregon that they haven’t quite picked up on yet but a lot of people are worried that it’s only a matter of time,” Tucker rattled off, the maps of GIW activity zipping through his mind letting him answer easily. “The only exception is Amity Park. Ghosts are really common there and it’s where the GIW got started, but it’s also where they have the least amount of success.”

“Amity Park?” Jason tilted his head. There was a spark of curiosity in him, the kind that made you want to know everything.

“Never search that up,” Tucker advised, knowing intimately all the triggers that search would trip. “I can get you a map if you’re interested in relocating.”

“I think it’s been long enough,” Tucker thought.

“No thanks,” Jason backtracked quickly. “I’m happy in Gotham.”

Sam, on the ladder, switched back into her human form and climbed up the top few rungs.

“Hey guys,” she said.

Jason rose from the box he’d been sitting on and looked her over with keen eyes. “Did you get injured?” he asked with worry.

“No I- gah!”

Sam’s hold on the ladder slackened and Tucker shot over to grab her. If not for him and Danny, who’d been invisible just below her, she would’ve fallen.

The fear was back.

“Sam you have to switch back,” Danny thought quickly. It hadn’t become overwhelming yet but even in the few seconds that she was human it had grown at an alarming rate. Soon, like before, it would spiral out of control.

Sam wanted to but Jason was right there.

“Come on Sam, we’ll figure it out later. Change back. It’s not worth it,” Tucker insisted. Danny had reservations but he shoved them aside. He could deal with Jason if necessary.

“Going ghost!” Sam gasped. The rings enveloped her and once again the fear abated.

“Oh thank the Ancients!” Tucker said.

“Gah,” she groused. “What’s wrong with me?”

“I think you have some explaining to do.”

Three heads swiveled towards Jason.

They really didn’t have to- Sam’s knee jerk reaction was to scowl and say they didn’t owe him jack but… he felt so unwillingly fragile in a way that made him feel like failure, likely unused to situations where he didn’t have an upper hand. That made him fidgety and angry and the little bit of his guard that had fallen rose back up and doubled in height. Tucker winced. They didn’t want to intimidate him. With a sigh Sam made up her mind- what he’d seen was pretty damning anyway.

Danny shifted back to visibility seeing as the gig was up. “Oh come on! We didn’t last two hours,” he complained.

“I’m a halfa,” Sam admitted slowly. “And there are only five of us in existence. So I’d appreciate it if you kept that to yourself.”

“Wait, so what’s wrong?” Danny carefully asked out loud. If there was one secret more well kept than the existence of halfa, it was the existence of their mental connection.

Sam grimaced. “I got hit with that fear stuff. It’s totally shut down my human side.”

Jason wasn’t that easy to divert. “Wait no, back up. Halfa? Explain.”

“Halfas are just that, half human, half ghost, and a well kept secret from the living,” Tucker said, eyeing Jason meaningfully. “Only two humans know.”

Sam, feeling bitter that she’d messed up again tonight muttered sourly, “I can flip between the living and dead. That’s unique to halfa.”

Jazz had known almost from the beginning- she’d figured it out early on and had committed to their corner ever since. Valarie was less accidental; the trio had decided to come clean for the sake of communication after too many close calls and while it had caused a few bumps in the beginning, overall their teamwork with the Red Huntress had improved. Even then, she’d known about Vlad and Dani so the concept of halfa was one she was already familiar with.

“So what am I then?” Jason asked. “I’m human but with a… core.” He was trying to mask his anxiousness at the question but said core was broadcasting his emotions loud and clear.

“We don’t know,” Danny said bluntly.

“But we know someone who might,” Tucker added. “Have you ever wanted to visit the Ghost Zone?”

“We know a doctor or two,” Sam elaborated. “You know, ghost doctors.”

Jason’s core fluctuated with irritation and a helplessness that was quickly converted into anger. “Great. Fantastic. So you don’t know what I am. Well I do and guess what? It’s called a zombie, kids.”

Danny shook his head. “You’re not a zombie, we’ve seen those.”

“What kind of undead are you then?” Jason questioned, staring pointedly at Tucker as he fiddled absently with his PDA.

“Er,” Danny said, looking at his partners.

“He’s kinda one of us,” Tucker said, though he really wasn’t an ecto-entity. Still, with the way they were classed by the acts, there was no difference between them.

“He might find out from another ghost anyway,” Sam acknowledged.

“We’re all halfas, actually. Team Phantom, at your service!” Danny turned back to Jason with an exaggerated bow.

Jason had been cycling through different reactions yet seemed to circle back to anger frequently. A greater intensity rattled him at the new information, converting everything else into utter rage. “Ok back the fuck up. You’re all teenagers?” His words were drenched in dismay.

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” Danny retorted confidently. In his mind all the headlines declaring them menaces and calling their intentions into doubt flashed by. Tucker gave him a mental hug. “He doesn’t know Danny, he doesn’t get it.”

“Yes, an adult kid,” Sam grumbled. “How innocent and unawares.”

“You three threw yourselves into a dangerous situation for no goddamn reason.”

The deceptively quiet statement was razor-sharp and overwhelmed with reverberating sentiments full of pain.

This was, for some reason, quite personal to him.

‘Upset child,’ their internal alarms rang, ‘do something!’

“We know about unnecessary risks,” Danny said at length.

“We just mistook the liminal guy for a ghost,” Sam nodded.

“And ghosts are our responsibility,” Tucker finished. “We wouldn’t have stepped in otherwise. Like you said before, the locals had it under control.”

Jason grit his teeth and then deflated, taking a deep breath. “And you have no one else who could’ve done it? There’s no ghost police? You kids don’t have any mentors?”

“Naw, we’re self taught,” Tucker said proudly. That was the wrong thing to say as Jason’s emotions constricted into a tight ball of frustration and fury.

“We had to step up. No one else would or could,” Danny explained gloomily. It wasn’t like they had wanted to do this. That made the already heavy emotions in Jason’s core even denser.

“Gah. Okay, different topic. How am I supposed to get rid of the fear stuff? I can’t exactly go to a hospital,” Sam asked, changing the topic to something that would hopefully distract the pit of volatile emotion that was growing inside of Jason.

Jason jumped on the issue presented to him, more than happy for the distraction. “Usually there’s an antidote. This is a new variant so it might take a few weeks before an updated antidote is made.”

“Crud,” Danny cursed.

Sam sighed.

“We can say your grandmother took you to the officials and tell your grandmother you avoided the attack or something,” suggested Tucker.

Just as he finished Jason offered, “I could get Bruce to pay for a private physician.”

“Too risky,” Sam dismissed. “Our vitals are different. Besides, there are rumors that he funds the bats and the last thing we want to do is get near them.”

“Hm,” Jason hummed. He seemed to settle on something,resolving to do some unknown thing, before he spoke again. “Lesson one kids, lying. I’ll take the money and move it to make it look like a physician was involved. That way the story holds up. You ideally want three to four layers but in this case, two isn’t a bad place to start.”

“Won’t your dad mind?” worried Tucker.

With a smirk Jason said, “Not at all.”

“Great? But what do you want in return?” Sam asked suspiciously.

“Just tell me how to get to the ghost doctor and we’ll call it even,” Jason proposed.

“Oh. Right, well, that’s a whole other can of worms.”

👻 {Boo!)

“So to recap. Living age means nothing. Ghosts age like trees. You three are independent adults. I’m a ghost orphan because hell if anyone knows. Nobody will care about that and if I go to the Zone, of which there are only two reliable ways to get there and they’re both in Amity, I’ll get mobbed and forcefully adopted and never see earth again. Did I miss anything?”

“No, that’s about it,” Tucker said too cheerfully.

Jason rubbed his eyes and leaned back against the box he’d sat in front of when the trio had first launched into their long winded explanation.

“I can adopt you. It’s… probably the best option anyway,” Danny offered hopefully, the very tip of his spectral tail twitching. “Ghosts won’t try to be malicious but they will forget how humans work. As a halfa there’s no risk of that from me and I’m really strong.”

“We. We’re a packaged deal,” Sam stubbornly interjected.

“Oh boy,” Tucker exhaled. “Guys we’re not ready for this and there’s no way he’s going to agree-“

“Maybe. What does ghost adoption entail?”

Danny was more than happy to answer.

“We’d be your ghost guardians so we’d check up on you. We’d also do health stuff like cycle ectoplasm through your proto-core since it can’t pump on its own yet. And bonding stuff, you know, like play fighting. Ghosts love play fighting,” he jumped to explain. There was a powerpoint with the information and a mini Jazz in his head as he went through it. “But since we have human parts still we can watch movies and stuff, that should also work. Your emotions might get a little off balance since that happens as a core grows and we’d eat the extra. Also-“

“Hang on, eat my core? That thing might be the only reason I’m alive!” interrupted Jason with a recoil.

At the startled anger-fear that he felt Danny rushed to explain but Tucker, who was more composed, spoke first. “That wasn’t what he meant. By eating the extra stuff around your core we’re trying to stabilize it. Ectoplasm is linked to emotion and too much of anything is bad. You can’t feel one emotion all the time but if you tend toward a specific emotion, you might generate too much of one kind of ectoplasm. Think of it like pruning the dead stems off a plant. It doesn’t hurt at all and helps keep a plant, or core in this case, balanced and healthy.”

“I hate that I know that,” Tucker said miserably, thinking of the plant example he’d just used. Sam gloated.

Jason turned that over for a moment before he sighed. “Alright. What else?”

“One last thing. Once- if we do this our cores will start generating stuff for you to eat too. It’s kinda like baby food for ghostlings,” Danny said with a grin at Jason’s perturbed expression.

“Don’t you kids need it? For your own cores or whatever?” Jason questioned with a frown.

Sam almost snorted. “Adult ghosts, remember?”

“And you don’t have to answer now, the offer’s always open,” Tucker placated at the sudden weariness from Jason. “You got lucky with the timing actually- the Christmas Truce is going to happen soon and nobody is allowed to fight during the truce. If you really don’t want to be adopted you could go to the Zone to see the doctors on Christmas.”

“They’ll totally follow you until the truce is up though,” Sam cautioned.

“I can lose them,” Jason declared without a hint of hesitation. “I’m going during the truce.”

Danny sucked in a breath. It was hard to ignore the fact that there was what amounted to a sick, starving child in front of him and he couldn’t do anything about it. It was nauseating. To say he was disappointed Jason opted against adoption would be a gross understatement.

“We don’t know for sure yet,” Tucker said, though it rang hollow. Even without a more experienced eye they could all tell that his core was in a delicate state from proximity alone.

Still, Tucker had done the right thing in giving Jason the options. Meeting the medical yetis during the truce, however, ushered in a new set of problems.

“The party is at my lair this year,” Danny reminded them. “I kinda halfa be there.”

“This isn’t the time for puns,” Sam hissed.

“He’s right though. As the new king he can’t exactly skip out again,” Tucker sighed without any remorse. He was looking forward to it and had been since last year. “Also Danny, you already used that one tonight.”

Danny elected to ignore the critique of his puns. “But it kinda works out, right? The yetis will be there. We have time to set up doctor’s equipment. We just have to ask if they’d be willing to help,” he pointed out.

“And if you ask they’ll say yes,” Sam thought.

Danny felt conflicted after that comment. He didn’t make them do anything but if he so much as mentioned something in passing, they would go out of their way to do it.

“It won’t take all night,” consoled Tucker. “They’ll get to party with everyone else.”

“Alright, works for us,” Sam said aloud. “On Christmas we’ll take you to the Zone.”

👻 {Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed it.)

Taglist time! If you want to be added, just say so!

Next: Chapter 7

#Halfa trio pretty much from DarkNympha's Third Time fanfic #danny phantom #dp x dc #dp x dc fanfic #sam manson #tucker foley #danny fenton #jason todd #Halfa!trio Au #fanfiction #miscmonstro writings #always open to feedback #cries in no beta reader #jason seeing three vigilante teens: oh no #the trio seeing a stubborn lil ghost about to frickin keel over: oh no

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