#danny really got a new friend from cujo | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

jadedwolf18-blog · 1 year

Text

Mini Phantom Invasion.

Hi, I plan for this to be a series of inter connected one shots based on some of my favorite prompts. I’m a huge Tim Drake/Red Robin x Danny phantom shipper, so for now most of my fics will feature them. Once I’ve end this series, I’ll try branching out to other relationships Danny could have with the bats.

I can’t remember where I got all of them but I’ll try to tag as I find them. If anyone notices a prompt or plot they’ve seen please let me know or tag the person it came from. I’m knew to posting on Tumblr so I’m still getting used to how to tag and insert links. Thank you.

🤍🖤💚💙💚🖤🤍

Chapter 1

Danny was not having a good day. He’d had a fight with his parents about ghost hunting, stating clearly that he had no interest in their bias views on an entire species based on one encounter when they were young. It had escalated to the point where they blamed his lack of interest on the fact that he was spending to much time with his sister and his female friends.

He’d had enough! He left mid argument and was contemplating just packing up and moving into the Ghost Zone permanently. As he’d slammed the door he could hear his parents shouts for him to come back and once again blaming his behaviour on a ghost.

What did his sexuality have to do with ghost hunting? And what was wrong with wanting to be more feminine sometimes? He honestly didn’t understand why they found it so weird or wrong for him to swap between genders and pronouns? Jazz, Sam and Tucker accepted him as he was, they didn’t but an eye when he would randomly say ‘she’, ‘they’ or ‘him’, they just continued the conversation with the new pronoun and that was that. They understood and accepted that sometime he felt male or female or neither. He was lucky to have them.

The day just seemed to continue down hill from there. It was summer vacation so Sam was forced to spend time with her parents at some rich holiday resort, Tucker had won a spot in some sort of tech camp and Jazz was still at College working on a finals thesis and was unable to come back for the summer. He was essentially alone for the summer. He could hang out with Val but she was working a lot and he didn’t want to bother her. He still felt guilty about her dad losing his job, even if it wasn’t entirely his fault.

*****

After leaving the house he’d found a place to transform and let the cool rings of light soothe him and took off into the sky. After finding out they could survive in space it became their favourite way to relax, they’d spend ours exploring space, even hang out on the moon. Thank you high speed and portal powers. Their Phantom form had changed in the last two years. People could no longer tell if they were male or female and he looked less human now. Thankfully, they looked nothing like their alternate future self. When their legs melded together their ghostly tail looked more eel like and their ears were longer and thiner, resembling delicate fins. Jazz and their friends had joked about how the acted like cat ears. Lastly their face was now a pale mint color, almost white and translucent, his eyes were still the same luminous ecto-green with deep blue pupils. The only similarity to Dan, that they could see, were the fangs and longer hair both of which were also present in their human form.

*****

They had been flying around Amity, a somewhat lazy patrol of his claimed haunt, it was a calm night. Ever since they had defeated Pariah Dark the other ghost had calmed down and came to Amity less frequently. A few still came to bug them, namely Skulker, Ember, Johny and Kitty. Young Blood and Boxy more frequently than the others and of course Cujo came by often. Their visits were more to do with fulfilling their obsessions than anything else. Danny’s obsession was Space but so was Protection. They needed to fulfil both to some extent or suffer from a form of ghost hunger. It was a win win situation even if they did go back… home? Was it really still a home?

Before they could go down that dark spiral again their instincts took over and they narrowly dodged a bright green shot that had been aimed at their head. Whirling around and flying higher out of range they looked at their attacker and just stared.

“of course it’s them.” They muttered. Before repeating it with more venom than they thought they were capable of. Which was shocking because not even Vlad had receive as much hatred in the entirety of the time they’ve known him than in that split second they felt it towards their own parents. “Of fucking course it’s them!”

They blink away the shock of such an intense emotion and huffed. Not even bothering to acknowledge them they turned around to leave. That had been a mistake. They’d barely made it a few paces before pain bloomed across their back as an Eco-blast shredded the fins on their lower back and bit deep into their flesh. They bit back a cry of shock as they felt themselves plummet from the sky. It took a moment but they gathered enough concentration to open a portal. He didn’t care where they ended up as their only thought was ‘Somewhere safe.’

They fell through and just before they lost consciousness, they heard their parents yell after him.

“Get back here you ghost scum, so we can rip you apart molecule by molecule!”

“We won’t forgive you for corrupting our Danny!”

‘Of course… It’s always Phantoms fault…’ Danny’s world turned black as he continued to fall. Maybe when they opened their eyes again all of it would have been a dream.

*****

Somewhere in the infinite green a Grandfather clock chimed. A screen flickered. Time flowed on.

“All is as it should be.”

Chapter 2

(I'm Not A Cynic Song by Alec Benjamin)

Danny pulled their little floating ducks out of their personal pocket dimension and set them to gently drift in the hot spring. They had found it while wandering the forest. Their lower back still ached and they were a little worried about how it hadn’t healed completely yet.

*****

They didn’t know where they were or how long they had been in this dimension but they were safe and alone for the time being. When they’d woken up, the first thing they did was try to figure out where they were. thankfully no-one had discovered them, tucked away in the underbrush of the forest they had landed in. They’d let invisibility wash over them and flew high enough to get a view of the land. They recognised asian architecture and flew in the direction they had spotted a small farming village. With a closer look they determined they had landed in some version of Japan. Instinctually they knew they were not in their home dimension. Everything, even the air and feel of the atmosphere felt slightly shifted to the left. It was like that feeling of entering a hotel room, they were all essentially the same but there were the little details that told you it was a different hotel.

*****

Brushing the thought, and everything associated with the reason they were injured and alone in a foreign dimension, aside. They coiled their tail in the centre of the spring and sank down until their lower back was submerged in the healing warmth of the spring. Closing their eyes in content they began to hum. Their eyes shot open when they felt a gentle nudge against his arm but smiled gently at the little wisp as it bobbed and drifted in the breeze. They continued to hum and watched in amusement as more joined the first. The little orbs of light ranged in color from soft pale blues to vibrant greens and warm reds, oranges and yellows.

They lost themselves in their song as they twirled in and played with the water, creating little floating ice crystals that caused mist to form around them as hot and cold air danced around each other. Humming soon gave way to words as they swayed to the rhythm only they could hear.

“I'm just bein' realistic, bein' honest with myself

I've tried bein' optimistic but it doesn't seem to help

So I'll just have to admit this is the hand that I've been dealt

I'm not bein' pessimistic, just bein' honest with myself”

They were thankful to Pandora, who had taught them to sing in an effort to train his ghostly wail, for realising he was taking on the form and habits of a triton.

“I'm not a cynic, oh, today's just not my day

I've tried to spin it 'bout a thousand different ways

But from every angle, oh, the outlook is the same

I swear that I'm not a cynic, my glass just has no water in it today”

They poured all the hurt, betrayal, anger and loneliness into their voice, allowing them to release it all in a more melodic call than his previous wail. That, as pandora explained, had been an unhealthy burst of emotion and they were lucky they hadn’t blown out their vocal cords the last few times they used it.

“I swear that I'm not a cynic, my glass just has no water in it”

Through their practice they found they could influence emotions but not out right control them. They were glad, influencing them was bad enough, he didn’t want to manipulate anyone. They didn’t want to spend their life wondering if the people around them truly cared or if they had somehow manipulated them into caring. They may me a budding empath but they still struggled to tell the difference between a sincere emotion and a projected emotion.

“You only get that which you're given, it's not always up to you

Not every Sunday is a picnic 'cause the sky ain't always blue

You can't just change the weather by changing your point of view

Some days you have to wait until the storm just passes through”

Danny’s voice grew louder as their emotions poured out into the lyrics. They knew they still had their friend, their sister, Elle and everyone in the Infinite Realm. They were also the Half Ghost son of ghost hunters and scientist with a heavy bias against Ecto-entities. They will be the rulers of an entire realm in only a few short years.

“I'm not a cynic, oh, today's just not my day

I've tried to spin it 'bout a thousand different ways

But from every angle, oh, the outlook is the same

I swear that I'm not a cynic, my glass just has no water in it today”

They gave a bitter sweet smile as they watched the wisps duck and weave between the ice crystals. They looked around for their ducks and their smile turned a little more sad as they waved their hand and the little ducks joined the dancing lights and crystals. Each one was modelled after his favourite comic book vigilante. They’d had to save them from the dump truck once, they’d been looking for them when he’d asked his parents, their father had made an off hand comment about how he should throw out old toys and they’d panicked. They’d manage to find and save them all just before the truck arrived.

“So like a boat on the ocean, I'll rock with the waves

God, I'm so sick of this notion that I have to fake

Fake my emotions and pretend I'm okay

So like a boat on the ocean, I'll just rock with the waves”

Jazz had bought them for them, after they had told her about being gender fluid and pan, they were probably one of their most treasured possessions. Jazz had gone on a whole spiel about how it’s important that she show support and provide a safe and understanding environment. They hadn’t been listening, they’d been crying. To caught up in their overflowing emotions and happiness. It lasted a day, their parents had been less than understanding, with their passive-aggressive comments and actions.

“I'm not a cynic, oh, today's just not my day

I've tried to spin it 'bout a thousand different ways

But from every angle, oh, the outlook is the same

I swear that I'm not a cynic, my glass just has no water in it today”

Their frown returned. They had shot them, that in itself wasn’t unusual, as Phantom. Isn’t that a sad thought. What was was that there had been no prior warning. It was a sniper shot, from their mother. Only their heightened hearing and instinct had saved them from ending up dead dead instead of a Halfa. That bothered him

“I swear that I'm not a cynic, my glass just has no water in it today”

They returned to humming the last notes of their song as the dunked under the water to rinse off. They popped back up and gathered their ducks, floated up out of the spring and laughed as the wisps twirled around him. They landed on the ground, allowing their legs to form and walked off into the forest, dancing lights trailing after them. Completely unaware of their watchers.

*****

The shadows slunk away to report their findings. While two birds hesitantly returned to their temporary nest, One worried and wanting to help the being that reminded him so much of his younger siblings. The other having felt a connection to a being that had shared similar experiences, someone they wanted to help and if they wanted to end the beings loneliness… that was no one’s business but their own. Both slept little that night, both determined to find the being again and offer what they could to help.

*****

@im-totally-not-an-alien-2

@alinmenttreasure

@blackroserelina

@blacksea21090

@seraphinedemort

665 notes · View notes

nelkcats · 1 year

Text

Hood Assistant

Prompt Part 1 Part 2 Next Ao3

Part 3

-----

Loving is hard because it hurts but once you have it you don't want to let it go.

----------

Danny left the apartment with Johnny following him behind, he sighed unwillingly wondering what the ghost was up to now, half the day had already passed, he had been forced to eat and now it seemed his new roommate didn't want to leave him alone, he was worse than Cujo.

"Johnny, stay in the apartment, I know you want to watch my back and all that but your shine and ghostiness is very noticeable, you know?" he complained.

"Oh yes, so noticeable that your parents, the professional ghost hunters and your sister didn't notice it at all when they met me" the blonde sneered, softening the "other world" feeling a bit, he didn't really have as many abilities as other ghosts but he was one of the best in camouflage, probably because he looked pale but mostly alive.

"Well, I see your point but that doesn't explain why you're following me, my friends don't know you" the halfa complained again in frustration.

"Cupcake, exactly how do you plan to get there?" the ghost questioned looking at his friend as if he was crazy.

Danny had gotten tired of arguing with him about nicknames so he ignored it and answered "Walking?"

"Are you going to walk more than 5 kilometers?" the blonde judged him.

"I don't see that you have any better ideas" he frowned.

Johnny simply cleared his throat pointing to his well-kept motorcycle that appeared on the side of the street as soon as they left the apartment "you were saying?"

"Fine, but I'm not hugging you" the halfa pointed out.

Johnny sighed and tossed his helmet at him as he started his motorcycle, Shadow melted with him in support. "I didn't know you were shy, but if you say so," with that said, he let them both get settled before driving to their destination.

—---------

On his side, Jason was making his rounds in Crime Alley when he remembered the meeting he had heard about; he had to find out if the pretty boy had connections to the city's Rogues or something similar, although knowing Bill that was unlikely.

He cursed not having put the apartment address as one of the job requirements, but at least he remembered the final address where they would meet that contact "Sara", the name brought a memory to him but he didn't know exactly what.

He managed to accelerate his motorcycle a few meters before the intended place, but all he remembered in that area were the night workers, what business would Danny have with them? Or Bill for that matter, he parked on a hidden spot and climbed on one of the roofs for better surveillance, if something happened he could always come closer.

He got to the roof just in time to see a bright green motorcycle speeding and heading towards the same meeting place he was watching, a blond looking about his age was driving it with a big smile on his face while a boy he found very familiar was clinging to his back letting out what seemed like very colorful curses.

He tried adjusting the frequency of the nearby mics but it seemed like they weren't carrying long signals or weren't working properly because the static almost hurt his eardrums. With a sigh of suffering he ended up coming down from the roof and hiding in one of the nearby alleys, he had good visibility and could hear, more or less.

"You're a fucking idiot Johnny" growled the one he now recognized as Danny as he shivered away from the boy, removing the helmet from his head, said stranger just started to laugh.

"You said you weren't going to hug me, I thought it was a dare, honey" the blond scoffed, Jason stopped himself from reacting to the nickname, there was no point in getting angry with that "Johnny" or whatever, and he shouldn't reveal his position.

"Oh, shut up and go back to the apartment" Danny didn't seem too pleased either, he felt a bit relieved, although the familiarity with which they communicated was uncomfortable for him.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever you say, good luck with your meeting with friends and all that, tell me if you want me to take you to Robin Hood tomorrow" the blond said goodbye, he looked around for a moment before getting on his motorcycle, the vigilante felt frozen at the familiar green gaze directed his way: bright, toxic, but a few seconds later the green eyes seemed normal, a little light for his taste perhaps, but not murderous.

It seemed that it had only been part of his imagination, probably because the neon color of the vehicle reflected on the driver or something similar; he felt a little stupid for relating it in the first place, there was no need to have an attack in the middle of a mission; Jason wondered if he should follow the stranger but in the end he dismissed the idea, he was useless in his current purpose and he could investigate later.

"IS RED HOOD" the boy yelled, still frustrated as he approached the alley. A part of him was happy that he defended his name, when Danny entered the building where they were waiting for him he decided to talk to the girls about it.

"Do you know why he was here?" He questioned pointing to the place where the boy had entered, it seemed part of the resting places, it was not the bar where they brought customers so that ruled out most of the possible rogues or enemies.

"It's strange that you're interested in the boy, Hood, but he doesn't work for us" one of the managers spoke a little mockingly "but you already knew that, he's supposed to work for you"

"I like to take care of my employees, it's strange that he is here when he is not assigned to this sector" he spoke naturally, although he supposed that the voice modifier on his helmet would ruin any tone he took and make him neutral or just aggressive.

"If you say so" whispers were heard behind him, he managed to catch the word jealousy between their laughter but that didn't give him any clue "The boy is Sara's friend, he comes here from time to time to meet her" the woman shrugged "Although, you should take care of him Hood"

Jason arched an eyebrow, curious by the suggestion and forgetting that his expression wasn't reflected on the helmet. "Take care of him? Why would I do that?"

"Because if you don't, we'll steal him from you, obviously" the woman smiled "Sara offered him a job but he refused, I think you called him first; he's not ugly, if he truly consider it, he would have a guaranteed position in this place"

Jason tried to imagine it, the Danny who carried bowls of soup from place to place and confused the ingredients, who looked at him searching for his approval, his eyes twinkling when he mentioned it was edible; him interacting with many kinds of people daily, people who wouldn't care at all. He had the charisma, yes, but as much as he respected the business the boy with his heart on his sleeve didn't belong there.

He couldn't help but growl at the mere thought "Don't worry, I wont let him go", with that said he walked away from the place, he had verified that his suspect was not meeting with anyone dangerous, when he looked inside the building he simply saw Danny, Bill and a girl laughing, he felt like an idiot for following him on his day off, maybe he should make up for it later.

Of course, what Jason didn't notice was the female workers whispering that Red Hood was following the new guy, and that they weren't sure if it was jealousy over his obvious lack of communication with his boyfriend or if he was looking for a lover, these rumors didn't take long to spread, reaching Maurice who was on call that day and the information nearly made him choke on his drink.

—-----------------

Danny entered the place, it seemed quite spacious and similar in appearance to a living room. He found his friends lying on one of the sofas, in front of them there seemed to be a series of photos and red threads, Bill was focused on explaining something while Sara looked at him as if he had gone crazy.

"Am I interrupting something?" He asked worriedly, if it was because of the mental health of his friend or because of his boss who was the protagonist in most of the photos, it was still to be seen.

"Danny, I think we should take him to Arkham" Sara commented, she was afraid that her friend would end up falling for conspiracy theories, the next thing he would say is that Bruce Wayne is Batman when the man couldn't leave his house without being scammed.

"Don't wish me ill Sara" Bill frowned "You're just in time Danny, I'll show you the truth" he gestured at the table, obviously proud.

"I'm going to regret this so much" the halfa muttered as he took a seat next to them "Okay, what do you have?"

"Well, let's start with the latest" Bill pointed to the photo in the center of the table "Last night after our shift, our dear Jay went to meet Hood"

"I don't see how that's abnormal, he's his boss" pointed out the boy.

"Well, usually when you visit your boss you don't come out with messy hair" Bill pointed to the second picture attached to that one "and look, his lip is bitten, they were obviously kissing in there"

"Those are just assumptions Bill, people can get nervous" Sara tried to point out but she was immediately shut up by the goon.

"That's just evidence A, I have many more, and if this doesn't convince you we can follow him, obviously" Bill smiled.

"I would really prefer not to harass our boss" Danny sighed exhausted from the meeting already "Okay, next"

"Evidence B, and this is more of a recommendation. Look at the clothes Hood wears tomorrow and what Jason wears the next morning, I heard from very reliable sources that Jay stays in his safe house with him so they share most of the clothes" Bill assured confidently.

Danny walked near the table, perusing the photos it seemed that Bill was mostly correct, the difference was that Hood wore them in a slightly more military style, mostly skintight; Jason seemed to be the complete opposite, his shirts were big and loose. Although he hated to admit it and reinforce Bill's theory, if the shirts weren't originally Jason's it was no wonder they didn't fit.

It seemed that the common sense in the room would be ignored for a long time. Jason actually bought his shirts loose due to preferring to be comfortable, however the amount of weaponry and straps around his body needed he put on his clothing in a more military sense when going out as the Hood, basically shirts tucked in and lots of belts around him secured his weapons. This ended up giving the appearance that the clothes were tight even though it wasn't really the case. If you hadn't seen him undress it was very strange that you would notice.

"Evidence C, he knows things" the man stated, albeit in a very cryptic way "Things only the higher ups know, or only Hood should know"

"You know I'm on your side Bill but he's his assistant, isn't that his job?" Sarah asked amused.

"Sure, but the last time he knew the name of a mobster's daughter, one who only met with Red Hood to report his last-minute visit, most of us didn't even know that meeting had happened." Bill sighed “I know it sounds weird, but if Hood told him it wouldn't be odd."

"Well, if they were a couple it wouldn't be strange to tell those kinds of details, right?" Sara hummed, studying the pictures.

"Evidence D, they are also each other's emergency contact, isn't that suspicious?" Bill turned to Danny who had been silent for too long.

"I still think we're getting ahead of the facts, but it's a little fishy" he muttered, he knew Bill wasn't a liar but Jason and Red Hood seemed to be wrapped around each other in some strange way that even he couldn't explain.

"Besides, he knows all of his agenda by heart, that's the normal job of an assistant, but sometimes he writes things down and even though they don't see each other all day, Red Hood does them the next day" he said.

"Oh, I think I heard something about it, Jason made an appointment with the girls to ask about something and Hood showed up the next morning, but maybe he was able to inform him over the phone" Sara shrugged, still not surprised.

"Look Danny, I can keep showing you all the evidence, but you won't believe me so how about this? The next few days ask questions, watch what I told you and you'll find out for yourself, if you still don't believe me by then I'll give up" Bill decided to persuade him, he was sure his bosses were dating, he had confidence in himself.

"Fine, it's a deal" Danny decided to take Bill's hand, the evidence was spinning in his head and although he still needed real confirmation more than speculation the seed of doubt was already planted.

In the end, they ended up talking about different things, like the ice cream shop that had opened near Crime Alley and the gossip in the area; as soon as the changing of the guard happened Maurice ran in, he seemed to be in panic.

"Danny, you really have to be careful" he begged the boy with concern.

"Why?" He hadn't really done anything to deserve such an extreme reaction.

"Red Hood was here, he asked about you and he literally said he wouldn't let you go, what if he knows about Jason? He said he was going to take care of you, that's obvious code to get rid of you!" he exclaimed in a panic.

"Maybe he's just worried about his employees?" Danny murmured, his answer didn't sound so sure "he has no reason to distrust me"

"Maybe he's looking for another lover" Sara teased "I know Bill has his weird theories but I know from good sources that they've seen them kiss and fight a lot lately" she spoke confidently, the kids from the alley had gossiped.

"That kind of confirms Bill's theory, but it doesn't explain the part about the lover" said the halfa doubtfully.

"I don't like talking without proof or encouraging Arkham patients" Sara looked at Bill suspicious "But it's known that even though Hood and his assistant are very much in love they don't look at each other very often, there are rumors on the streets that they've had a fight again so, you know, maybe he got fed up and is looking for another pretty boy."

"And I'm the pretty boy?" Danny sneered "They barely know me"

"Uh, I'm just suggesting you keep your eyes open lovely boy, or you could end up in one of those weird soap opera scenes" Sara continued "and like Maurice said, be careful, broken hearts are hard to heal"

Danny had no idea how Sara knew about his little crush on Jason but decided not to ask; he needed to reevaluate his decisions, probably talk to Johnny about it, he really didn't want to become some kind of dating buster or something, but what if they really were dating? He had to find out, pay attention to Bill's observations and draw his own conclusions.

—----------

After hours of talking to his new friends and listening to Bill's increasingly ridiculous theories about one thing or another, he'd called Johnny for a ride back home, the blond looking on the brink of boredom immediately agreed. They decided not to speak until they got back to the apartment after the ghost noticed the boy falling asleep in the back seat and he spent most of the way preventing him from falling onto the road.

"That was a really long meeting" Johnny smiled when they finally entered the apartment "any news on your crush?"

"Well, I still don't know what to believe, they have many theories and photos but it feels bad" said the halfa yawning "I'm debating, but I think I'll keep an eye on it and draw my conclusions"

"Yeah, but if it really was true you could date him anyway, you know?" The ghost smiled passing him a thermos with some ectoplasm, it gave him chills to touch the damn portable prison but he had to make sacrifices for his friends.

"I don't like breaking up relationships" the boy immediately refused "even if they have a lot of fights"

"If they get separated you could sneak in, even before that" the blonde pointed out again, the halfa frowned and looked directly at the motorcyclist "there is always an opportunity"

"Johnny I don't get it, why are you so interested in my love life? And don't you dare say it's because you're my ex" Danny questioned, it wasn't normal for the ghost to be so insistent.

"I died because of love, I just don't want you to do the same" the blonde shrugged.

"That doesn't make sense, in that case you would do the opposite of supporting me" the halfa frowned.

"Same answer honey, I died loving; I want you to experience it, to feel what it is to give your soul to another, what it is to consider running away because you no longer belong to yourself, and you don't want to leave part of you behind" the ghost played with one of the pillows on the couch, he seemed doubtful "however, I don't want you to end up dying (completely) for it, that's why I recommended running" and the reason I am here, he didn't said out loud.

"Because you and Kitty ran away together and ended up together?" The half alive guy asked.

"I guess that's the best way I know of to make sure that not even death will get you" Johnny didn't want to look into another tragedy.

"Are you scared of love and death?" The blue eyed boy asked.

"You ask hard questions" the ghost sneered "I'm scared for you, not for me, I can't be scared of it anymore; I'm just here to make sure you don't take loving too far."

Johnny was still too closed on the subject, but he was telling the truth; he feared love as much as he needed it to live, many had assumed he had a shadow core like Spectra, that his existence revolved around bad luck.

That wasn't true, both Johnny and Kitty had concept-based cores, they weren't ancients of course, but their obsession and core was love. That's why when he appeared in the Realms: scared, alone and without Kitty by his side, he had almost broken, he had never feared loneliness so much as at that moment, loving so much had destroyed him in so many ways.

Until Shadow found him, Shadow didn't talk much but he knew instinctively that he was his soulmate, a ghost born of bad luck, which was ironic because it was the best thing that had happened to him, maybe not in life but in death and was enough, Shadow was lonely too and looking for a guide, soon after their meeting both had united; when Johnny finally found Kitty and managed to satisfy his obsession he asked Shadow to stay, and Shadow decided to stay and protect him because everyone knew stupid things are done for love and even bad luck wasn't immune to that fact.

So yes, Johnny no longer had the right to fear love, the one that had killed him and brought him back to life, the one that gave him Shadow and Kitty, the one that kept him anchored to existence as much as it kept him from living; but he feared how love would treat Danny, how it would hook him in its clutches and not let go, the boy seemed so lost only with the possibilities, that he felt responsible to guide him, but no one said he was the best at it.

"You know, even though he's taller than you I think he could be the little spoon" he finally decided to say instead of making a sentimental speech, that wasn't his style.

"Johnny it's been less than a day since I admitted I had a little crush, I'm not sleeping with him for the long haul" Danny exclaimed in exasperation, though somewhat relieved to put the heavier conversation behind him.

"I was just saying" the ghost complained, he was the little spoon when he slept with Kitty after all.

"Go to sleep, I have work tomorrow so I won't wake you up" Danny yawned, he wondered internally if having Johnny in his apartment was the equivalent of adopting another pet to guard the house, he decided not to mention it.

—---------

The next morning when he got to work Danny definitely wasn't expecting Red Hood waiting for him where Jason should have been and offering him...chocolate? That was weird.

"Jason told me that you did a good job last time" the vigilante clarified "I thought that rewarding you was a good idea to welcome you, beyond phone calls"

"Oh thank you" Danny didn't really think that justified it but he wasn't going to complain "I thought I was meeting Jay today?"

"Jason is…indisposed today, he can't show up, so I'll join you in his place, he'll probably be better in the morning" the vigilante stated.

Evidence B: Jason lives in his safe house, Danny remembered Bill's comment while he was examining the chocolate

"Okay, what are we going to do today?" The boy smiled, accepting whatever had happened.

"We're going to supply the safe houses, food, medical resources and that kind of thing, it's nothing very complicated" Hood commented "not all of them course, there are some that even you shouldn't know about"

Maybe where Jason is staying, he couldn't help but wonder, maybe Bill's theories were starting to get to him.

"We're also going to check the people who are staying and see if they're okay" the crime lord assured. Every once in a while his boss would see him looking for some confirmation, Danny wondered what he was looking for.

In the end, the day had turned out pretty well, Danny had been able to put his extensive medical knowledge to use, earning him some compliments from Red Hood, and his boss had been far more relaxed than a man equipped with so many weapons on his body had any right to be.

He couldn't help but think the man looked so human when he bent down to bandage a little girl's knee, or when he decided to braid her hair even though it was obvious he had to go through many more places than there. Really all the rumors about how bloody and evil he was were dead wrong, he even stopped to play tag with orphans!

Red Hood took his time in each house, talking to the children, asking the victims about their health, their living conditions, and Danny couldn't stop his treacherous heart from pounding because of how sensitive the man looked, the feeling of security that lingered around him. At the end of the day his boss had even given him some pretty flowers to place in his dining room saying it was a nice welcome gift for entering the goonion.

The halfa couldn't help but smile when he saw the gifts placed on his table, sighing as he kept remembering how much fun he had had helping out on the day, his obsession humming with satisfaction, it was the same feeling that Jason had brought him.

"You're absolutely lost Twinkcito" Johnny commented nonchalantly "And you're a crush-hoe, I'm from Team Jason by the way"

"I have no idea what you're talking about" Danny rolled his eyes "my boss was just nice today and welcomed me"

"Shut up and admit that you like people who can crash you against the wall" the ghost stated "not that I can judge you, because I would absolutely love Kitty to, but I still think this is a betrayal"

"I don't like people who can crush me!" He squealed in embarrassment before reflecting on his previous romances and giving up, his history was doing him no favors "Well, maybe a little but it's not the same."

Johnny just rolled his eyes and took a sip from his ectoplasm but Danny could feel his judgment gaze "I'll see Jason tomorrow anyway" he admitted quietly, maybe the blond was right and he was starting to have double trouble, or worse…triple!

Listing his problems, everything seemed to focus on three things:

> He liked Jason

> He wanted Hood to crush him any day of the week (According to Johnny)

> Jason and Hood were dating

Life really hated him.

—---------

In the dead of night a security alert from Arkham was heard, macabre laughter rang through the desolate streets of Crime Alley as Scarecrow made his way to one of his hideouts leaving fear gas scattered in his wake, surely the next day would be a scare.

-----------------------------------------------------

Aaand tag time, also credit to Emeralds, Clockways and Bucket for the ideas on the goons evidence! Ao3 comments helped me a lot for future plans but I will expand that later, and credit to Summers for the "Twinkcito" lmao, I love the word, hope you liked the update, I am still thinking if giving a mini Valentine special but idk! Again sorry for all the Johnny content lmao, he just invaded my thoughts and didn't leave until I wrote about him

@skulld3mort-1fan @sorryiwonnoob @idfk-man10 @avelnfear @criticaloverthinker @confusedandghostly @lunadoll36 @spidey29phangirl @suppengott @yjfk @apointlessbox @mimilikey @thegatorsgoose @jaggedheart11 @dyinggirldied @pyramaniac @akikkobara @thedragonqueen1998 @lostlightandfoundcrazy @xye-chan @saltyladynightmare @ashleysmshly @thewondersoflebanon @illusionwolfwriter24r8 @littlefeather345 @asphyxia778 @amercurio @leftmiraclechaos @dixiwoods @satoshy12 @lyra689 @meira-3919 @quietlyscared @plotwholls @kyrianclawraith @blacksea21090 @basilf1res @flowers-n-fauna @8-29pm @jaxinkh @luer-mirin @taniaundertaleau @cloriform @readerkayden @oddlydrawnpuppets @basementloser @little-green-asparagus @echoednonny @yummy-yummy-mmmbones @confusionchaos @ectoplasm024 @autumnwulf @666deaddash999 @redhoneysugarorange @blue-avis @sailor-goddess @satanicrutialspecialist

#danny phantom #dp x dc #danny fenton #dc x dp #jason todd #Hood Assistant #dead on main #jason todd x danny fenton #Johnny is once again invading my thoughts #is good but this is a dead on main fic please #Johnny and Shadow are platonic Soulmates #Johnny and Kitty have a love core #Jason is once again causing misunderstandings #in both ways #he didn't notice #Alley kids are expanding rumors of RH and Jason just because they can #red hood #Triple problem #but actually not a problem at all #Here comeeeees the booy #next chapter will be about scarecrow and consequences #Jason is not flirting #or that's what he says #Danny is having a crush problem #But he kinda accepted that they are dating #Johnny's eyes are too similar to the pits ups #and yes Johnny and Shadow are different ghosts that decided to unite to not being alone anymore free lore

447 notes · View notes

itshype · 1 year

Text

My DC x DP Masterpost

Here is my masterpost of works that fall into the category of a crossover of DC comics and Danny Phantom. Mostly, these will be notfics. If any of the links are broken please message me ASAP. Edit: I will not be doing taglists because people are quite frankly abusing the idea.

What's a notfic?

So, this was really common in fandom like 10 years ago but it's less common now so I'm just including this quick explanation in case. Notfic/Not!Fic is the halfway point between an actual fic and a prompt. It mostly sort of has the tone of describing another fic to somebody, or working out an ongoing plot with a friend (e.g. Instead of writing out an entire set of dialogue, a notfic might just put "Jason and Tim discuss why they both want to fake their deaths").

Permissions Housekeeping

I totally don't mind if anyone wants to take all or part of what I've written for any prompt and write an actual fic or create another transformative work as long as I'm appropriately credited. If you're just taking the most oblique inspiration from something I've made I'd appreciate at least a tag so I can read it!

Also if you'd like to tag me in any of your works please do, provided that it's the first if it's in a series and not Jazz/Jason as the main pairing, please.

Works

Kingmaker, Kingbreaker, Crowntaker, Realmshaker

Danny isn't the Ghost King but after defeating Pariah Dark the new king knows Danny has massive political influence.

Navigate any storm, with nothing but the stars to guide you

Danny is obsessed with space so the whole 'superhero' thing is on the backburner.

Please don’t pet me! I am working!

Repeat after me, SERVICE ANIMAL CUJO. (Minor Connor Kent/Danny Fenton)

It's a boy, congratulations... to me!

Danny insists Connor is his clone even though he's really not.

Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss, Godhood

Danny gets caught and tells the JLA that neither he nor Vlad are ghosts.

New type of Vlad just dropped

When a ghost's obsession is destroyed, they get a new one.

Mother of the Year

Talia Al Ghul gets to be a good mother. As a treat.

Amorpho Whomst?

Danny, Dani and Dan trade off on responsibilities.

Halfa? Half a What?

Danny's half human, no one's sure what the other half is.

The second, secret Justice League

There's another Justice League that not even the Justice League is cleared to know about.

Excuse me, do you work here? Danny is sent to represent the first, non-secret Justice League.

Triple Threat

The Champion of All Magic and The King of All Ghosts have a mutual triplet.

Like peas in a pod [person]

Jason is healed of the pit rage but has a whole new problem.

There's a Mr Wight Hood to see you?

Jason adopts Danny instead of being the Red Hood.

The Wight Baby For The Job Sequel to Mr Wight Hood

You Make Miso Scared

Danny's always talking about soup time.

Reverse Bruce

Give baby Jason MORE PARENTS!

Work Experience

Danny has to learn about Ghost culture before he can rule it.

Mansplain Yourself

Constantine probably knows best about ghosts over the Justice League's newest member...

The Opposite of a Golden Ticket

International star Ember McLain is in danger

Haustoria Horror

Undergrowth's got Poison Ivy

Like and Survive!

Danny runs an advice website for young heroes

You're not the Boss of me!

Batman accidentally outs his family to Danny

This is a PSA

Danny's Wail affects the JLA

Floral Fiasco

Poison Ivy errs

How I Met Your Brother

Dan joins the JLA

The Manhunter's Manhunt

There's a miscommunication with the Martian Manhunter

The Green Knight

Jason lives (just this once)

___

The Job

Danny's gotta put food on the table (Also available in DP only version)

Always A King (DC x DP)

The Realms must have a king

Series: The Surprise Obsessions of the Ghostly Batclan (image heavy)

Ghost Bruce HC

Ghost Jason HC

Mini prompts

Danny Phantom vs The IRS ; part 2

Phantom's mistaken identity

Billy and Danny are secret twins

Danny scars the batfam

Superheroes need more therapy

All-caste Jason

Poison Control

#masterpost #dc x dp #dp x dc #danny phantom #danny fenton #justice league #mine #batman #tucker foley #the JLA #teen titans #titans #vlad masters #vlad plasmius #sam manson #valerie gray #jazz fenton

452 notes · View notes

dontbooatme · 2 years

Text

DP X BNHA au where Danny finds a way to Musutafu (alternate universe) through the ghost zone. Maybe through the infimap. Maybe a stable portal. Maybe Cujo or Wulf help him. Maybe there are people in the bnha world who are just as interested in portals to separate dimensions.

Either way, it's a reliable way to travel between the two dimensions and when he figures out that's where he's found himself in, Danny decides to keep this little discovery to himself. Just for a little while. He doesn't need to share everything right? It's just a little dose of escapism

When life and responsibilities, ghost fights, or the otherworldiness of being one of only two halfas across the globe gets too stressful for him. He sneaks away. Just for a short while. He can't help it and it doesn't hurt anyone. Danny knows he's a freak in either world. But being surrounded by other people with powers, with mutations that make them look a lot more other than Danny does, a whole society built around having quirks... it makes him feel just a little more normal.

And it turns out that when people don't scream and run at first sight of you, don't even double-take at your appearance, the feeling can get pretty addicting.

Unfortunately for Danny his undocumented and repeated entery into a country in an entirely different universe does... not exactly go unnoticed.

He's literally just trying to chill he didn't mean to kickstart a whole ass investigation into a poor, trafficked? Lost? Runaway? Kidnapped? foreign teenager

But admittedly when a flighty tourest shows up, beat up from an (ghost fight) unknown source and won't answer any questions about where he's from, how he got there, where his parents are or how he got his wounds...

Even Danny can admit he raised some concerning suspicions. But he's hard pressed to let anyone catch up to him. He may not be the best fighter, not that he's about to try fighting professional heroes, but with his powers flight is his specialty

Maybe Danny ends up running into a new hero each time he visits. Aizawa and Yamada for sure, maybe Snipe, Fatgum, or Endeavor at some point. They all think his quirk is something different. Maybe Danny had figured out at this point that multiple powers isn't common here, even possibly suspicious, but he hadn't thought to care much about consistency earlier on. Before he realized people are actually noticing him and looking into him.

Maybe this idea would evolve into a mentor/mentee kind of thing. If Danny still lives in Amity Park then he couldn't really join the school and get any training in the traditional way heroes in the bnha world do. But from the heroe's perspective I don't see them being comfortable with an underaged, unlicensed hero continuing without any kind of training in a place outside their jurisdiction

And on Danny's end maybe he struggles with feeling really attached to this world. But also the one he comes from and his family/friends there. He just ends up feeling so split and missing either world and the people there when he's not in it. Not to mention the responsibility he feels to Amity Park

#dp x bnha #danny phantom #my hero academia #aizawa shouta #danny fenton #mha #dp crossover #crossover #boo tag #i like my characters w a heaping side of trauma #but also #i think that the idea of the pros seeing danny immediately just #Assign Trauma #except its the wrong trauma

499 notes · View notes

bubblegumbeech · 1 year

Text

Don’t Try Again

Happy Truce @greatbigolhampuckjustforme

Here’s your fic, I hope you like it! AO3

“Give me your hand.”

She reached towards him. At the same time—no, faster than the others but only by just a moment.

It was long enough.

Once he took her hand he was pulled, firmly, securely, into her arms. It felt comforting, safe.

She had been his enemy, she had been his friend. She had almost been more.

Now, in this moment, she was his protector.

It had started fine. A normal day. Red Huntress was chasing him down after he dealt with Cujo’s weekly ‘walk’. (The one where he destroyed half the town because he had the zoomies.)

He hadn’t expected to fly face first into a ghost shield.

Then again, he had never been particularly observant.

The shield had been different from what he was used to—sticky and malleable as opposed to solid with a slight buzzy feeling. It also burned, not anything excessive, or that he couldn’t handle, but uncomfortable and corrosive nonetheless.

He couldn’t get it off. Like a mosquito trapped in amber, the more he struggled the more it started to incase him. Even Red Huntress had stopped, watching in dark fascination as Phantom became trapped.

His parents had jumped out from around a corner, claiming victory and monologing about their new invention.

His parents were still celebrating when the GIW found them, and started writing tickets and trying to claim government jurisdiction over his capture.

Danny didn’t bother rolling his eyes, but he did groan as he felt the substance start to turn hard and sharp around him. It made every move to escape both more difficult and more painful, the still soft and moldable parts eating away at his ectoplasm with the jagged bits digging into fresh wounds and making themselves at home.

He really wasn’t claustrophobic, especially not with the amount of times he got trapped in the thermos. Something about being completely unable to move without his physical form being dismissed though…Every movement punished…

It was shrinking.

The trap-burning goo-stuff that hurt.

It was getting smaller and burning through him. His ectoplasm. Was this how Dani felt? When she started fizzling away?

There was a moment were he just froze, the realization taking hold. He knew, of course, that his parents as hunters weren’t particularly worried about how safe their weapons and traps were to use on ghosts. They had no qualms about… well, anything, in the name of their research and vendetta.

He just kind of hoped that, like most of their inventions had been so far, their future inventions would turn out to be mostly useless.

His eyes met Red Huntress. She, unlike the other hunters, was not celebrating. She was watching though. Her nails tapped in an erratic rhythm against the weapon clipped to her belt and she looked on edge. Like she was half a second away from doing… something.

Danny didn’t know what that something might be.

Wasn’t really sure he wanted to either. His faith in humanity was starting to be at risk. At least Skulker’s traps were only ever uncomfortable or shorted out his powers. He’d never had one slowly start to dissolve him.

But he knew what he had to do. It wasn’t worth Ending over. And he could always do something to fix it if it went badly. As long as he survived. As long as whatever this was didn’t reach his core.

He transformed.

It hurt.

The crystallized goo splintered apart, cutting and tearing even deeper into Danny’s skin. But it didn’t burn anymore. At least whatever this was wouldn’t work on both forms. No worries about it being a modern Blood Blossom.

His parents’ eyes went wide behind their goggles, there was a gasp from Red Huntress and the GIW moved for their weapons.

Maddie was the fastest.

She hit him—hard.

The Fenton Anti-Creep Stick cracked against the side of his head and Danny staggered back down to his knees, crashing them into some of the thin splinters of the sharpened goo.

What? Why did she….?

He shook his head but that sent the whole world spinning and didn’t help him decipher any of the things being screamed over him.

The only thing he saw as the edges of his sight went blurry was Red Huntress reaching out, and the only thing he could do was take her hand before he collapsed entirely.

Danny woke up in a familiar room. It wasn’t his though, and he couldn’t remember—

“Owww,” he groaned, hand lifting to his head. Everything was still spinning, despite his accelerated healing. Luckily the rest of the wounds, cuts and general abrasions had disappeared during his impromptu nap. Only his knees were really still chewed up and someone had cleaned them up at least.

Right now he kind of wished his brain had disappeared too.

Two warm hands pressed gently at his shoulders. “Lie back down lover boy,” a warm voice said from beside him. “You’re hurt.”

“Val?” he asked, his vision still blurry. “What did you…?”

“I took you home to get you bandaged. You transformed in front of damn near every ghost hunter in town.”

He let himself fall back into the plush pillow, biting at his lip to try and ground the pain. “So you knew.”

There was a snort, and Danny closed his eyes. Figured. He was bad at lying.

“I didn’t know,” she said, to Danny’s surprise. “But I know your… cousin. So when you transformed I put two and two together. Unlike other, less talented hunters, I know you are who you say you are.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Her grip on his shoulders tightened, just a bit, before letting go and smoothing the wrinkles out of his shirt.

“Your parents are on a man hunt. They think the worst. You remember that Amorpho guy?”

“Couldn’t forget him if I tried.” A useful ally, but a horrible enemy to have. Especially if you didn’t know his tells.

“Yeah, well, they think you're something like a cross between him and Spectra.” She looked uncomfortable. “They think you… stole your own body.”

Danny sighed. “Of course they do. I need to talk to them, set this right.”

But Val was still holding him down.

“You’re not going anywhere to get yourself killed until you’re fully healed. Understand?”

Danny nodded slowly, careful not to move too much and set off the spinning again.

“Good.” She smiled, brushed a bit of hair from his forehead , then leaned down and kissed him gently on the corner of his eye. “Go back to sleep. I’ll run interference.”

He was fairly certain that sleeping after a concussion was probably a big no, but he was already half dead and a little brain damage was nothing compared to some of the other stuff he’d dealt with. So Danny let himself fall asleep, two warm and delicate hands carding through his hair and carefully avoiding the bandage there.

When he woke up it was to the smell of food. Real food, without that zesty sting of ectoplasm he’d grown used to. It smelled delicious, even if Danny’s head was still spinning as bad as it was last night he still probably wouldn’t have been able to resist seeking it out.

He was pretty much healed by now though, even with the sting of whatever it was that had gotten him trapped in the first place.

Walking slowly into the kitchen, he saw Val at the table, two plates and two cups of coffee still just barely steaming.

“You’re lucky,” she said. “The food was going to get cold if you took any longer waking up.”

“Thanks.” He sat down across from her and took a bite out of the toast before diving after the coffee.

Valerie was looking at him. It was the same gaze she’d always reserved for Danny Fenton ever since their almost-not-relationship. Warm, bemused, soft.

For some reason he had expected it to change when she found out. To turn sour, or dark, or bitter, or betrayed—

“Stop thinking so much,” she said, tossing a piece of toast at him.

He caught it and immediately licked the jam off in a small petty act of retribution.

Her laugh was still the same. And despite every warning Sam and Tucker had ever given, it still turned his core to goo just hearing it.

“You’re not mad?” He set the toast down, fiddling with his hands and avoiding eye contact. He knew what the answer likely was. Even so, he still really needed to hear it out loud. Something. A certainty worth holding onto even if it was likely to break his heart.

“Should I be?” she said softly, dropping her chin onto the back of her hand. “I mean, I tried to End you quite a bit before we started getting along better. And you knew who I was. That I was the one hunting you.

“Honestly if you had told me I would have thought you were trying to trick me or something but…”

“But?”

She caught his gaze for a bit, searching. Eventually she gave up, pushed back from the table and sighed. “I saw your expression when your mom hit you.”

What expression did he have? Scared? Desperate? Was it too human to not believe?

Val gathered the empty dishes and walked them to the sink. Danny rushed to follow, offering to dry as she cleaned them.

“… You looked like you were expecting it.”

Ah.

She turned to him, her hand resting warm and still a bit wet over his own on the counter.

“Will you be okay Danny?”

That was the question wasn’t it?

“I don’t think that’s really up to me anymore,” he chuckled, rubbing at the back of his neck with his free hand.

Val frowned. Her grip tightened.

“Val?”

She stepped even closer, not letting him pull back, crowding him against the counter and wow.

Danny knew she was strong– all sturdy muscles and a solid frame so vastly unlike his own lanky moldable-even-when-he-was-human form, but it was different entirely to have the full force of that muscle pressed against him.

He fought a blush. They’d decided, the two of them, that their fight was more important. Danny needed to protect Amity Park. So did Val.

They’d tried protecting it from each other. Then with each other. Then adjacent to each other.

It was better not to get too involved with all those… secrets.

“Danny,” she said, catching his eyes. “No more secret identities right?”

He nodded.

She nodded too and lifted a hand slowly to his cheek, as if asking for permission. He didn’t stop her.

Even as she leaned in. Even as she kissed him.

He tried to stop her when she pulled away though.

They stayed like that for some time. Touch, taste, warmth, the only things Danny bothered to think about. Living (for once) in the moment.

But there was only so long a single moment could last, and eventually they pulled apart.

“If you need help—“

Danny chuckled. “I already come to you when I need help, Val.”

She blushed, her skin just a touch darker around her ears and cheeks. “Shut up,” she said. “This time I won’t try and run you off, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Let’s get to school.” She walked back to her room to grab her bag, and Danny remembered he was still wearing the same gross clothes from yesterday. They were torn in very unflattering ways with splatters of unknown goo, ectoplasm, and blood.

They also smelled bad.

“Uh… lemme call Jazz first.”

Jazz was able to bring his clothes so he could shower in the locker room. Other than that, school was pretty normal. He warned Sam and Tucker that his secret was probably out so they should be prepared in case anyone went after them.

The trouble was, he didn’t really know what to do now. Should he go home? Ask to stay at someone’s place? Hide out in the Zone for a bit? What would help get his parents to trust him? What would keep him safe?

Was there even a good answer to that?

Why was he so scared? There were plenty of times they found out and accepted him… before he reset time or reality or their memories—

He could always do that again. Ask Clockwork for a favor, rewind time a day. Just one. He was usually pretty accommodating with those kinds of requests.

But the memory of a warm kiss after breakfast stopped him.

Would they have that if he didn’t let this go?

Was one of these things worth the cost of the other?

Why was he so scared? Still?

Val found him after the last class ended. There weren’t any ghost attacks all day. Danny didn’t know if it was because the day itself was just a bit boring, or if his parents' new traps had done more damage than he’d like to think about, but he still couldn’t concentrate in class.

Because of course not. His day off was for worry and confusion and over thinking. Relaxation? That was for the — well clearly not for the dead, huh?

“You’re sure you feel alright?” she asked.

“Right as rain!” Danny forced an easy going grin. “Real rain, not the ecto-mix we get here in Amity Park.”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re half ghost. I think the Ecto-mix is actually a better metaphor.”

Exaggerating a pout, Danny trailed a fake tear down the side of his cheek. “You wound me.”

“I’ll try to avoid that in the future.” She ruffled his hair, gently, and then she was gone. With the speed she left, she probably had work right after school.

He watched her go, lost in thoughts once more. What were they now? What could they be if he just let this go? Let whatever was happening, happen.

What would happen if he didn’t?

“Danny?” Jazz tapped him on the shoulder. Startling him.

It took a second of Danny holding a hand over his heart and glaring at his sister before he calmed back down to his usual– probably unhealthy– levels of anxiety.

He shook his head and started walking. “Sorry, thinking about homework. What were you saying?”

She didn’t look convinced. She shouldn’t, he was a bad liar. But he was trying. “Are you sure you want to come home tonight? Val told me—“

“Yeah,” he shrugged, forcing his smile to look more relaxed than he felt. “The longer I put it off the worse it’ll be, you know?”

Jazz shook her head. “It’s your choice little brother.”

No, not really. If he had a choice…

Would he tell them anything at all? Would he have told anyone?

Wouldn’t he have kept it from Jazz too?

“Mom?” Danny knocked on the door of the lab, Jazz next to him just in case. “Dad? Can I talk to you for a second?”

It was silent. Danny called out again.

This… wasn’t a good sign.

He stepped back.

A voice, sickly sweet. “Where are you going, sweety?”

“I… uh…”

His mom and dad stepped up from the bottom of the basement, the shadows hiding most of their expressions.

“I needed to explain—“

He heard it before he saw it. But it didn’t matter either way. Jazz was pushing him aside and shouting.

“Get out of here for now!”

So he did.

He disappeared and watched his sister argue with his parents about how human he was and—

“We won’t hurt him! We just want to make sure—“

Was the last thing he heard before he made it outside.

To make sure.

Of what? How? What was that thing they shot at him? A new invention? Already?

His stamina had never been very good so the short sprint from home was very short and soon Danny was just walking in the opposite direction of his house. Aimless.

It wasn’t like he had to worry about curfew right then, not with the much bigger threat looming over him.

He was just outside the Nasty burger and about a third of the way to Tucker’s place when he heard it.

“Get run out?”

“Taking a walk,” Danny smiled up at Red Huntress as she hovered above him. “Walking’s for nerds. Come take a flight with me instead.”

So he did that too.

Easier to go with the flow than to try and think on his own.

He transformed, not bothering to look if anyone saw him. The ones that mattered knew now anyways.

“Can you even keep up on that thing?” He nodded towards Val’s hoverboard even as she revved it. “Or should I go easy on you?”

“Hah!” She shifted her weight back, zooming forward past Danny. “If anything, I should be the one with a handicap.”

He smirked, watching her silhouette as it got smaller, then flew after her. It was more fun to catch up than to stay ahead.

They ran across Skulker. Because of course they did. Turned out the reason today was so quiet was because he’d been planning some kind of ambush and scaring other ghosts away.

Too bad for him.

“Ah,” he said, looking up from the trap he was setting as Danny and Val both slowed to a stop above him. “You’re here a bit… early.”

“Sorry about that,” Danny said, “I’d have taken another lap around town before stopping but I didn’t want to embarrass anyone.”

“Ha,” Red Huntress rested her large ecto-weapon on her shoulder. “You’re lucky I was going easy on you then. Otherwise the one embarrassed would be Phantom.”

“You’re just saying that cause I won~”

“In your dreams.”

“That’s weird, the last dream I had you were definitely—“

She coughed, loudly. “J-just help me catch this creep!”

Success. Danny would love to see if she was blushing under her helmet, but for now just getting her flustered was reward enough.

Skulker had tried to run off while the two of them were distracted, so Danny threw a wall of ice in front of him, forcing him to turn around. He shot a net out in retaliation, and Danny (in his usual fashion) couldn’t decide whether to phase through it or dodge and got tangled up in it.

“Shit—“

“Ha! I see your dodging hasn’t improved.” Red Huntress zoomed past, aiming her ectoweapon and firing three shots successively. Each one missed as Skulker dodged and burned a hole through Danny’s ice shield.

“I see your aim hasn’t improved,” he sneered, finally cutting away the last of the net with a sharpened piece of Ecto-ice.

An ecto-blast whistled right past his ear and Danny glanced up, affronted.

“Whoops~,” Red Huntress sang before following after it. “Try to keep up this time, would ya?”

Danny let himself smile as he kicked away the last of the net. Maybe he should let her win this one.

They had defeated Skulker and Danny let Red Huntress trap him in her cube to send him back to the Ghost Zone. He didn’t really know when he’d be able to use his parents’ portal again after all.

She released her suit, and he undid his transformation, and the two of them walked, hand in hand for a bit, before deciding to get some food at the Nasty Burger.

He hadn’t even taken a bite of the fries before everything started to weigh on him again.

“I just… don’t get it,” he mumbled, unable to even taste the salty mush now in his mouth. “You handled it so well.”

Val sat back. “I told you, I met your cousin. I already knew about—“

“Everyone always handles it so well… why can’t they?”

He didn’t mean to interrupt. Didn’t really mean to say any of it out loud either. But she leaned in before he could apologize.

“What do you mean Danny?” Her hand reached for his.

“Everytime…” he thought back to the different times and different situations where his secret got out. Desiree, Freakshow, some of the others… “Dash and Paulina and Lancer always handle it well when they find out even though they hate me—“

“I don’t think Mr. Lancer hates you.”

“And Jazz handled it so well too! Why isn’t there one—one timeline where they handled it with grace?”

“Danny,” her hand grabbed his shoulder. “Timeline?”

He didn’t answer.

She let go reluctantly and it showed on her face. In the pinch of her brow and the confusion of her eyes.

“Danny, can you do something for me?”

Her voice was light and Danny found himself nodding without even thinking. Of course he would. He would do anything he could to help her.

It took a moment. Them gazing into each others eyes, trying to read what the other was thinking, before she smiled and pat his hand.

“Good. Promise me you won’t reset this timeline. You won’t try to change their reactions—“

“But—“

She held a hand to his mouth. “No. Give them a chance to grow, to get used to it. And don’t take this,” she squeezed his shoulder, gesturing to the two of them, “away from me.”

“Okay,” he said, “okay.”

They shared another small kiss, short and sweet, before she punched him on the shoulder and told him to man up.

“I’ll go with you,” she said. “Let’s set this straight.”

And maybe this time they would.

#Danny Phantom #grey ghost #danny x valerie #reveal fic #christmas truce #2022 holiday truce #bee’s writing

126 notes · View notes

camels-pen · 2 years

Text

Princess of the Sea

Ectoberhaunt day 11 - Thirst & Drown

Summary: Danny's not sleeping with the fishes, but he thinks this might actually be worse.

Ao3 Link

There was a new ghost causing havoc at the camping grounds near Lake Eerie. The trail of destruction, starting from a town not far from the lakeshore, was devastating.

Danny, Sam, and Tucker had decided they needed to put a stop to this ghost’s rampage, taking the Spectre Speeder to get to the lake quickly and being taken aback by the size of the destructive ghost.

They all thought it’d be easy to catch this one compared to some of Danny’s regular enemies, but the ghost was surprisingly fast and avoided all of their attempts at capture. Danny was kept on his toes as he fought and tried to subdue the ghost while avoiding attacks from the ghost’s little minions.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t avoid all of them.

Danny gasped. He felt a scalding hot pain shoot straight through his core. He couldn’t, wouldn’t look down enough to see what hit him (he knew, he knew exactly what stabbed through him), but from the looks on his friends’ faces it was probably something lethal to humans at least.

He tried to lift his hand, but found himself unable to do more than twitch a finger. He tried to give them a joke about kebabs to lighten the mood a little—let them know he was fine and that it was just a small hiccup really, and he’d bounce back soon—but the motion forced a warm liquid to well up in his throat and out of his mouth with a wet cough, splattering somewhere on the concrete below.

Something tingled across his body as he tried to phase his way free, content to land on the ground and let his friends pick up the slack. The falling sensation and the feeling of his body forcibly changing forms gave him a vague sense of what it cost him.

Valerie had to be close by now, right? He could afford a 20 minute nap?

Yeah, that sounded right.

Just for a little bit.

They could handle themselves just fine until then.

Sam had Cujo’s new squeaky toy somewhere in her bag and the three of them came armed to the teeth to fight this ghost, so there was nothing to worry about.

Jazz was on standby at home in case Vlad tried anything while the trio were miles away and she was running interference to keep their parents from tracking down this new ghost (he loved his parents, but he didn’t want them here, didn’t want them to see him, not now, not like this).

Of course, Valerie needed no invitation to follow; they heard from his sister maybe a few minutes after they left that the Red Huntress was spotted zooming out of Amity in their direction, wanting to fry the big fish before it could cause anymore damage.

Yeah, she would probably be here soon. Guns blazing, but thankfully nothing too harmful. The alliance they made last week would keep Valerie from ending Danny the first chance she got, but he’d definitely get some kind of beating for letting himself be reduced to this (like he had a choice). All the more reason to tap out; she’d be more concerned about Fenton than Phantom and considering the current situation (he couldn’t get air past the liquid drowning his lungs; he couldn’t feel his limbs) it might be better if she didn't see his ghost form for a while.

Danny finally hit the ground with a painful thud and as his friends’ voices became harder to hear, he thought to himself, 20 minutes, then I’ll play damage control.

---

“A-And then, he did a flop and and he went splat!” the little ghost girl, Li’ilt, said excitedly, giggling every few words, “Phanty went big splat!”

“Is that so?”

The little girl nodded her head furiously, “Uh huh, uh huh! I can do it again, wanna see?”

Jazz locked eyes with Danny, who shook his head and mouthed ‘no’. She turned back to the floating mermaid ghost holding her hand, “Maybe later, Princess. How about you show me something else instead; you said you liked to sing, right?”

The little girl’s smile widened, revealing a small gap between her front teeth. She flapped her tail and swim-floated in front of the group of four, her large curly hair following her as if underwater.

She began performing ‘Under the Sea’ at the top of her lungs and Danny’s mouth pressed into a thin line. The sea creatures on her blue t-shirt peeled themselves off the cotton with a few of them pulling instruments out of nowhere. They played the musical accompaniment and sang along with voices identical to each character from the movie, almost as if the sounds came from a recording.

“So,” Danny leaned closer to his sister, whispering, “What do you think?”

“I think she’s a child,” she whispered back harshly, glaring at him out of the corner of her eye.

A snort. “Told you.”

“Shut up, Sam.”

“Danny, we can’t just tell her she’s dead and drop her in the Ghost Zone. That’s cruel,” Jazz said, turning a bit more to let him fully see her disappointment. Scoffing, he turned away to look for help.

Sam’s attention was centre stage, her irritation at having to deal with a clingy ghost girl for the majority of the trip all but forgotten, the scowl Danny thought was becoming permanent started to melt away at the magical performance. Tucker was in a similar state of awe, stylus held still just above a news headline on his PDA screen. The halfa leaned back into the couch, grumbling to himself.

“Full ghosts get the whole ingrained knowledge thing, remember?” he whispered after a particularly high note he’s pretty sure sounded like a dog whistle. “She’d do better than I would.”

Li’ilt was spinning and swimming all over the living room, lost in her performance. There were more fish than before, one he recognized intimately.

He glared at the cartoon manta ray, letting his eyes glow a bright green. It played on a drum set made of clams and didn’t acknowledge him in any way despite it looking directly at him. Wary eyes watched the goofy sea creature until well after the performance had ended, finally looking away as it rejoined the other creatures in shrinking and sticking back to the ghost girl’s shirt.

A few of the characters’ outlines stayed empty while some ghost fish stuck around for a dramatic bow after the applause. Li’ilt copied them, but ended up bending too far and sending herself spinning in the air. She giggled and quickly readjusted herself, but not before Danny spotted another manta ray shaped outline on her back.

The others showered her with praise while Danny surveyed the room, tensing and allowing his eyes to glow brighter in anticipation. She had two manta rays. Because of course she would have two manta rays, why did he expect any different?

He felt a prick at his back and the overwhelming heat that bloomed in his core from being skewered for the second time today reminded him that manta rays were harmless. Great.

Danny managed to jerk his head to the side to see the gray not-manta ray with an identical face to the manta half-phased into the couch behind him, its tail stabbing his back.

“Miss Jazz, Miss Jazz, lemme show you what Phanty can do!” Li’ilt said excitedly, swimming right up in her face. Tucker leaned forward a bit, research entirely forgotten.

“Li’ilt, I don’t think Phanty wants to do that right now,” Tucker said slowly, in an even tone. Danny tried speaking, but ended up spitting out a mouthful of warm seawater.

“See, Phanty said,” she dropped her voice, “‘It’s okay! I’m a hero so I can always play!’” Danny shook his head and waved his hands, but the ghost girl had already started her clapping.

He turned into… well, Flounder Phantom was the only way to describe it. He let out a long sigh, water pouring from his mouth in a continuous stream.

“Danny, the carpet!” Jazz screeched, quickly pulling her feet up onto the couch.

Sam snorted hard and mimicked her on the other side of Danny, “Oh my god, you’re even more Flounder than Phantom this time!”

Danny’s face turned a bright yellow with blue stripes along his cheeks reaching back into his hair which had also turned blue. His jumpsuit’s colour scheme changed from black and white to blue and yellow and a small set of gills were visible in new slits on his collar. This time, however, Danny also had blue flippers instead of hands and feet, fish scales covering his skin, and was noticeably smaller. Fish sized, if you will.

Tucker not-so-discreetly held up his phone to take a picture.

“So why is Danny—sorry, Phanty—spitting up water?”

“Fish breathe water so Phanty gotta breathe water too!” Jazz looked to Sam and Tucker, who both shrugged. Danny swam-floated to sit on Tucker’s shoulder and sulked.

“Ah, of course. That was a silly question.” He tilted his PDA screen closer to his chest and Danny looked down, catching part of an old newspaper article talking about a broken carbon monoxide alarm. “Er, how about you tell us why you were so angry before you got to the lake?”

“My chest felt bad when I finished my nap,” she said with a frown. “And I couldn’t find Mommy or Woosha so I got really sad.” They all collectively winced. Danny had a feeling he knew where her mom and her ‘Woosha’ went.

“Who’s Woosha?”

“My puppy!” She grinned wide and bobbed in the air. “She’s a big dog, but she’s my puppy, and she’s the same colour as Phanty!”

“She was blue and yellow?”

“No silly! She was black and white. And she was just as nice too!”

Danny felt a stab of guilt at that, thinking about how he wanted to drop kick this little kid into the Ghost Zone just moments before. Being turned into a fish wasn’t so bad. It’s not like he was dying again.

He resolved to be a little more patient with her—

“Woosha is really fun to play with too! Just like Phanty! ‘Cept she doesn’t scream as much,” Li’ilt said with a giggle. Sam and Tucker were very visibly trying not to laugh and Danny scowled.

Maybe he shouldn’t be so quick to scrap his drop kicking plans.

#danny phantom #Ectoberhaunt22 #EH chaos #day 11 #drown #nemo the writing ho

14 notes · View notes

theplanetprince · 2 years

Text

Schrodinger's Adolescent || Ch. 18

Fic: AO3 || FNN

Fandom: Danny Phantom

Rating: Teens and Up

Word Count, as of update (approx): 133k~

Chapters: 18/40 (subject to change)

Relationships:

Dash Baxter/Danny Fenton,

Sam Manson/Tucker Foley,

GhostWriter/Ember Mcclain,

Characters:

Danny Fenton,

Dash Baxter,

Sam Manson,

Tucker Foley,

Cujo,

Johnny 13,

Ghostwriter,

Sidney Poindexter,

Mr Lancer

Additional Tags: Slow Burn, Slow to Update, Canon Rewrite, Post-Reality Trip, High School Setting, Fake Dating (Kinda), Unrequited Love, It's requited but they're dumbasses, one-sided attraction, fluff, I know the content warning is extensive, but I promise there's fluff, tooth-rotting fluff, Danny Fenton has PTSD

Content Warnings: A lot of talk/descriptions of food, mentions of starvation, stalking, inappropriate contact with a minor, assault,

Fic Summary: “Schrodinger put his cat in a box with a bottle of poison. He closes the lid. The cat is alive or dead— In this state, the cat is neither. He leaves the box closed. You are the cat.”

All Danny Fenton wanted was to be normal. He had to work harder at it than most of his peers. Normal wasn’t exactly an option while being the Phantom of Amity Park. Of course, that all changes when Danny accidentally outs himself to his bully, Dash Baxter. Between dances, big games, school plays, and violent biker demons— Danny’s got his hands full. What may be surprising is just how much Dash cares about the human underneath the ghost…

Author's Note: I am beyond relieved to have finished this chapter. I am so glad. It took me all week but I've finally can carve my way forward. I guess I should thank Wes for this one. Wes really changed the direction for this chapter, and I think I owe him that. -Voorhees ✌

Wesley liked the outdoors— No, he adored the outdoors. Home to Wes wasn't limited to the construction of a building. He was never the kind to feel comfortable in one place for long. He had to move, and he had to stretch his legs. He loved climbing trees. That was the big positive he took away from the move to Amity Park. They called it the sticks for a reason. There was so much life compared to the major cities the Westons resided in prior. At first glance, at least. The irony wasn't exactly obvious then.

Whenever the world got to be too much, as it often did when you were a teenager, Wes could just put one hand over the other. Then suddenly, his issues didn't seem so bad. They seemed so small up above the ground. His brothers had affectionately given him the nickname 'spider-monkey' due to his habit of dropping everything when he made eye contact with something he could climb or jump off.

More often than he'd like to admit, Wes would pop open his bedroom window and slide down the rain gutter and walk to the park just like he did tonight.

He walked until he found the tallest tree he could. He elected to climb it until his arms burned from carrying his weight. He didn't hear it when the motorcycle pulled up. No, he was still lost in his thoughts and grief. He was stewing from another fight with his parents. They had busted his chops for his 'attitude' … again. Like Wes wasn't entitled to one after being trapped in this hellhole. Attitude was how you survived.

Resting his back flat against the trunk, he exhaled. Tapping the back of his skull against the bark, Wes turned over the argument once more. He thought about the look of worry on his mother's face. He thought about how his dad never used to shout so much before they moved here—wondering what he could have said differently. What could he have done—?

Did it even matter?

No one even listens to me, anyway.

Not my parents, not Kyle or Easton. Not even Dash…

That brought his thoughts back to the present. What was he going to do about Dash? Why was he so… stubborn?! He had to know the Fentons were bad news.

Wes didn't have friends anymore. Danny made sure of that. But Wes still owed Dash his loyalty— Wes still needed to keep him safe. Wes wanted to cling to whatever he could hold. He couldn't just come out and say it like that, right? Wes and Dash weren't exactly on speaking terms… but…

Why did this have to be so hard?

Wes wanted to be good. He wanted to be true and good. The issue therein, nobody believed it. Nobody thought Wes was capable of such noble pursuits. Most of all, he wanted to be happy, but the world wouldn't let him. Not if the world still had Danny Fenton in it.

Danny Fenton was a stain that refused to fade.

Danny Fenton was a monster.

Danny Fenton had to die, but by some miracle— he couldn't. He can't die.

What's the opposite of a miracle?

Weston could care less who delivered the coup de grâce. He just wanted to be there to witness it. He wanted to know exactly what kind of evil sustains itself for that long without burning up. Maybe it would be like discovering a new element. He wanted to see them open him up. What kind of diseases could you cure with a guy who refused to die? How much money would that be? Had to be enough for a bus ticket out of Amity Park.

It wasn't exactly righteous to wish death upon someone. But since when was it righteous to walk back from your maker?

If people had read the Bible like they claimed to, they'd know it was cover-to-cover murder.

Then again, this wasn't about what Weston wanted. He was just the running joke at Casper high. He wasn't one of the zealots who praised the heavens for opening and gracing them with the Phantom. He was crazy; after all, why should it matter what he wanted?

That's the thought Wes kept coming back to. As if his brain was a one red-light town and every road led back to the same question and the same solution.

If Danny Fenton died… would this all go away?

The question sat there and stared at him. Stared at him with that same idle and taunting expression that the ghost boy did.

Would everything go away? If even for just a little bit? A couple of days at most?

He sat in the tree at least thirty feet off the earth and let the breeze pass him by. The chill made him aware of the tears on his face that definitely weren't there before. Wes wiped his eyes and rubbed his nose. The moon bounced off his pale, skinny limbs, and he mulled over how he got here. He fiddled with his sweatshirt ties. The red cords were fraying at the ends, the plastic parts having cracked. He pressed them between his thumb and the rest of his fist, spreading the threads even thinner. Twisting.

Why did he have to look at me like that? Like I was dirt?

Why is he so obsessed with Danny Fenton all of a sudden?

How could he be so—

"Easy Shadow, easy. We'll go see our boy soon enough. You have to leave them wanting more." There was a chuckle in the dark.

Drawn to the sound of boots crunching gravel and a voice, Wes peered down from his perch. There was someone below him.

Through the bramble and leaves, what the ex-jock could make out, was a man… and something. Something distinctly inhuman surrounded him. It looked like… slime? Like oil animated and suspended in the air. Whatever it was, it shimmered in the borrowed glow of the moon.

It had teeth.

A lot of teeth. Sharp and pointed, like that of a predator, evolved to kill for the joy of it and not for sustenance.

"Yknow, It's gonna be a real shame about that kid… " The biker continued to muse to himself as he put down his kickstand. Adjusting his long flowing jacket as he went, brushing the dust off his leather clothes. He retrieved a box of cigarettes from his pocket and then a lighter.

Clasping onto the paper roll with his teeth, he flicked the metal wheel a few times before a spark caught the tip.

Exhaling a plume of sour smoke, the stranger spoke hoarsely and with the faintest bit of humor, "He really didn't have to make himself such an easy mark. But walking around like that with the perfect body—?"

He stood up, stretching his arms above his head casually and sighing, "With that whole, 'you gonna finish that?' line— it's like the kid was after my own heart."

The stranger snickered.

"Such a shame…" He shook his head, "No one's gonna even know the difference when we're done."

The shadow gurgled a reply to its master, or what Wes assumed to be its master. It seemed to have a rapport with the man, like a pet. It followed the gestures and waves of the stranger's hand.

"What kind of a name is 'Dash' anyway? We're definitely changing that."

As Wesley leaned to his side, balancing himself between an adjacent branch and the one he was sitting on.

Did he just say—

The tree cracked, disturbing the still atmosphere, sending the residents of said dwelling into the sky with alarm. The pine needles rustled as what Wes initially thought of as a sturdy foothold began to rumble.

The duo on the ground snapped their glares up into the night. The moonlight blew out their eyes. Their scleras glowed white like feral animals caught on a trail cam.

Ghosts.

Holy shit.

Wes held his breath. His lips folded into his mouth to hold back a scream. Sweat caressed the curves of his cheekbone and poured down, down, down off his chin, and to the bark chips below. He clenched his teeth so hard that Wes thought he would somehow break through his jaw.

Please don't see me. Please don't see me. Please don't see me. Please don't—

Crickets and cicadas chirped in the stillness.

"Lay back, Shadow." The man took another drag off his cigarette, turning his gaze to his beast, "I don't wanna keep lover boy waiting."

The comment made Wes' stomach sink. There were thousands of ways he could've interpreted that, but none of them were good.

The man chuckled. His deep voice was like trying to fathom the rolling ocean. Yes, it was serene to a point, but it hid so much. It hid too much. Maybe there was a bottom to it… but not one desirable or one that wouldn't utterly destroy you before reaching it.

"Remember, buddy, if you catch it—" A twig snapped as the biker took a few more steps under the tree's canopy. He knocked on the trunk.

He growled, "You eat it. "

The biker departed. Tossing the filter of his expired cigarette to the side, the embers faded into the seamless dark.

Wes couldn't hear him leave, whether that be because of his heart beating in his ears or because the ghost had shed his physical form.

Maybe he didn't leave. He only wanted to lull Wes into a false sense of security.

There were a few seconds at most where the conspiracy theorist didn't move—just a few seconds of doubt.

A few seconds too many as the sentient black mass darted under the tree.

Cautiously, Wes centered himself on his weakened branch. He got his knees under him and perched on the balls of his feet. The tree replied with another sharp crack. He was getting down one way or another. Let it be through gravity or by his agility.

He was on the clock now.

Hands dove into this center sweatshirt pocket. Finding his field notebook, he tossed it—he found his copy of the ghost hunters' almanac. The written word would do little to help him now. The papers he kept with him only rustled in protest.

Shit, shit, shit, shit, SHIT!

The thick viscous sound of that animal— that creature— that thing slithering up the tree caused his body to break in goose flesh. It was the sound of the world ending as clouds blotted out all the light. It was the sound of rain falling in reverse. It was the last gasps of the cosmos that no one could perceive in the vacuum of the void.

From the roots, the tree began to tremble as if caught in the middle of a cataclysmic earthquake. He got his back to the wall and limited his window of vulnerability.

It was indescribable. It was the hoofbeats of hell's cavalry.

And it was getting closer.

Futilely Wes called out, "Get back!"

In his panic, the edge of his palm brushed the cool metal of his taser.

Thank god for overnight express shipping.

Unrelenting thoughts racing, Weston realized he never looked up. There was a branch just out of his reach—

The monster wailed in its bottomless hunger. It wove itself into the spaces between the fabric of the bark. Tendrils coiled around the pine needles, and molecule by molecule, the entity rewrote itself into nature as if it weren't a cruel parody. It moved like a disease—Swift as an infection.

All it took was a jump. Just a jump—

Wes snapped his glance from impending doom consuming his foothold to the branch above him. It would be a stretch, but it wasn't like he had any other choice.

Kicking the chip in the branch, more of the white inner flesh became exposed. All it would need is all of his weight coming down on the weak spot.

Knees apart, Wes took the leap.

The branch still persisted.

"C'mon! Dammit!"

One more time, the young man channeled all of his strength to his legs—

The last fibers of the branch snapped with an almost melodic sound. It was so beautiful and terrifying. Terrifying, for a brief moment, he was in the air. He was nothing but mass and matter. One-hundred-twenty pounds of dead weight that hung there in the sky. In anticipation for the nine-point-eight-two per second squared equation of gravity to finish him off.

But Wes caught himself— just barely. Just enough. There was liquid seeping from his hands. Hot and burning.

It wasn't his time yet. There was still work to be done.

Not today.

The impact sent up the gravel in a cloud of dust and the monster down with it.

"Yeah! Bitch! Now you know!" A tight laugh escaped his diaphragm. It punched its way out of him with his victory. He tapped his sweaty forehead on the limb of the tree. Wes repeated to himself, " Now you know ."

His biceps burned as he pulled himself onto the higher hold. He swung his legs and pressed his eroding sneakers against the trunk until he got the upper branch between his thighs. He flipped onto the top side, still trying to catch his breath.

"I-I should've stretched. Whew —" Rolling his shoulders, Wes shuddered.

"Yeah— yeah, I-I definitely pulled something." He ghosted his hand over the stitch in his side, " Aghhh…"

So much ow. Whole lot of ow.

The pulse in his hands only got stronger as warm blood began to rise from his flayed palms. He glared down at his sorry hands. He didn't dare try to make a fist, and he can forget about basketball for—

Wait, what was that?

That awful noise…

Something between an infant trying to form its first words and something being blended between the teeth of an irreparable garbage disposal. The gurgling returned. It was a throaty clicking and rasp of a death row inmate seeing stars in his vision as the injection took hold, as he choked on his own bile. That sound. That awful sound.

It was so close. It was practically all he could hear.

But where is it?!

Then the death rattle evolved into an ear-shattering squeal. Like Wes had left the calm serenity of Amity Park's forest and entered the killing floor of a meat farm. The breath of the monster was as thick as blood and rotting meat. He could hear the links of chain beating against the stained floor as they raised the carcasses to the ceiling. Wes could hear it all despite shutting his eyes tight and using both of his hands to block it out. It's what he would do during thunderstorms or if the curtain plagued his tired mind with shapes of someone that meant him harm. It was all he could do. Close his eyes and pray.

Oh, God, no.

The needles in the tree rustled in weak protest as the dark being darted in and out of the gaps, working in a whirlwind to tie the living down. The spots of green withered into ash, decaying into nothing.

It had latched itself onto the bottom of Wes' shoe like mud, and it chilled every nerve and cell in his body. The stain only grew and grew at an illogical panic-inducing pace. Its spread was uncontrollable. It clouded his vision. It eclipsed him. The Shadow contorted Wes's body against his will.

Forcing Wes to pulverize himself.

It didn't want him. Shadow didn't want Wes. Johnny didn't want Wes. So, it would kill him. It would stop when Wes's remains were no longer entertaining.

Nobody wanted Wes.

It was a few more moments after Wes's abrupt landing before someone said anything.

"Oh, great, that's exactly what this situation needed. Another dead child…" Stephen gestured to the body of the high schooler in front of them. He was tempted to poke the boy with his shoe to see if he would twitch.

The Phantom's initial startle had sent him skyward. He had jumped six feet out of his skin and floated there. Danny didn't say a word. Not even scolding the senior ghost for his barb disguised as levity.

Ghostwriter turned his glance toward his ward, it was unfocused but still burning, "Friend of yours?"

Still gawking at the young living on the ground, it took Danny a few moments to register that Wes was unconscious. That wasn't unsurprising, he did fall from a tree for god's sake—but seeing him there on the ground…

It didn't feel good. There was a pang of unidentifiable emotion that pulled at him. It pulled and kept pulling him further into his memories he was better off abandoning. Guilt? Was that it? Why did it hurt to look at Wes this way? Barely Wes's chest was still moving. The subtle rise of his lungs expanding was the only thing tipping the scales in his favor.

Unnerved that his companion who had talked his ear off the entire journey to this point, Stephen snapped, "Daniel!"

The Phantom's voice exited his body with no coherency. He made a noise but it wasn't a word. It was just in acknowledgement that the other party said something. Danny had dropped from his flight, and landed on the ground jostling from one foot to the other. He moved to his classmate with hesitation. Danny wasn't sure he could do anything to help, but something compelled him to try anyway.

His approach was curious, cautious, and excruciatingly slow.

Lowering himself, Danny tried to sift through thousands of questions and thoughts that all seemed important but held no weight like smoke. Scouring the recesses of his mind for any faint flash of the article Sam made him read for how to treat concussions. Anything he retained from health about first-aid.

Anything… anything at all.

Selfishly, the Phantom had made the assumption he was indestructible. He didn't think he needed to know. There were better uses of his time. For the life of him, Danny couldn't tell you what those uses were now. Off playing video games and screwing around. Not paying any attention yet again. Now his mind was painfully blank.

"What's going on out there?"

His sister's voice brought him back to reality.

"I— Jazz— I-I need you to read me off the steps on how to revive an unconscious person!"

The static crackled across his ear piece, "Wh—"

"Now! Jazz, tell me what to do! I found Weston… I found…" The Phantom trailed off uselessly, his voice was quivering like he was that scared boy in the basement again, " He's hurt real bad, Jazz. "

For all the posturing, for all the bravado— this was the creature everyone in the zone was so terrified of? Stephen crinkled his nose at the scene. The elder would have been so bold as to call the sight… tender.

Ever still woozy and boozy— Stephen had exhaled a burp. He took a respite under the tree, hunching over. The ghost tried to rationalize that he no longer had functioning organs so he did not need to be nauseous but this did little to elivate the feeling. The living world would remind him with no sympathy that he was supposed to be rotting worm food, and by existing in this plane all he was doing was hurting himself.

Why would Johnny choose to subject himself to this willingly? Surely he wasn't that sentimental about this little town.

As Stephen widened his stance and kept his head towards his chest, that's when he saw it.

A book.

A hardback book just sitting face open in the dirt. An unassuming brown leather tome. The cover was upside down or— or Stephen was a little more than half-in-the-bag. He picked it up, and brushed the debris away from the cover. As his marble like eyes scanned the serious typeface to make sense of it, the Ghostwriter began to cackle—

The Ghost Hunter's Almanac, Written by Edna Wickett.

The kid was a ghost hunter! Of course! Irony seems to follow the Phantom just as closely as the shadow of death.

Danny ripped his head away from his task and to his elder, "What's so funny?!"

"A ghost hunter! The boy's a ghost hunter." Stephen guffawed, slapping his forehead with the heel of his palm. His clawed fingers tangled with his curly black hair.

"If you're just gonna stand there and not be any help— can you shut up?!" The Phantom glared at the drunk, trying to find his sister's calm and level voice again.

Danny did as she said with no room for error, listening for a heart beat, seeing if Wes's airway was blocked, it was obvious she was reading off of a website but it was more resources Danny had at the moment. By his unprofessional opinion, Wes was fine— just asleep and banged up. Really banged up.

Danny pleaded with his sister, "Is… is there nothing I can do?"

"... I'd maybe call an ambulance?" Jasmine offered gently, "If Wes' not up and walking around within a few minutes. Just to make sure he did sustain a neck or spinal injury?"

Danny's gloved hand ghosted around his own throat when she posed that option. He blinked rapidly and swallowed. He really hoped it wasn't a neck injury.

"I-I can't leave him here. We can't… No hospitals …" Danny couldn't imagine a good outcome if he were to drop off Wes on the doorstep of the emergency room.

He gripped the living teen by the shoulders and softly shook him, quietly whispering pleas and demands that fell on deaf ears.

Stephen leafed through the book. Curling each page around his claws. It was well-loved. Frantic notes in the margins and highlighter ink that bled through the worn page. The information didn't seem to bridge any gaps, or enlighten the older specter on anything new. He had seen this book in his library as well. The opening passage was etched into his brain.

In regards to the recently deceased… They are to be treated with the utmost respect because at one point they were our friends, our neighbors, our parents, our siblings, our lovers, our children. Soon we will join the choir. It is not a matter of if, but when. This book is to be a guide to navigate the uneven rocky terrain between birth and death. This book is also a warning to those who are not satisfied with answers provided. A warning that must be heeded. Unless you wish to be adopted early into the choir of hollow voices.

Still chuckling, the undead-shut-in took off his glasses, and rubbed his eyes, "I don't understand you." His shoulders bounced with his stifled reaction, "I really don't. Why do you… why do you try so hard ?"

"What're you talking about?" Danny barked.

"You know better than anyone that these— People —" The way the author wielded the word you would have mistaken it for poison.

The elder ghost spat, "These people aren't worth the effort ."

"I knew that when I was alive!" He tossed the book at Danny's side.

The book landed with its covers clattering. The Phantom didn't flinch. He knew what it was.

" Stop it, " Danny replied solemnly. He fidgeted uncomfortably. Caught between a lie, or a statement he simply didn't believe. But he wanted to. Danny wanted to believe that Ghostwriter was wrong.

"We're petty, and stupid— so, unbelievably stupid—" Stephen slurred, "Small, and cruel ."

He exhaled breathlessly, "And it only gets worse when we die."

"It only gets worse ."

Danny said nothing. He only listened. Replaying that look on Dash's face. That terrified look kept replaying on the backs of his eyelids. Biting the inside of his mouth, the Phantom was caught between punishment and atonement. As if somehow they were the same thing.

"But that's what I can't stand about you, boy—" Stephen braced his palm against the trunk of the tree, the colors of his form only saturating with his anger, "You think you're better than us. You think you're above it. Don't you?"

The Phantom couldn't conjure a reply. It was better to stay in silent denial, than to keep lying. It was getting harder to breathe, the blockage in his throat refused to wilt. Jazz's voice was in one ear, and Stephen was in the other.

"Don't you?!" Stephen exploded, forming a fist and scratching his nails down the thick skin of the tree, "You deny what you are, and for what?! You think these people actually care about you?!"

He scoffed, "The Phantom of Amity Park! They love you in the same way they love a caged bear. They love you because they fear you. They would feed you their young if you asked and fear the consequences if they didn't follow through. You think they're smart enough to know the difference between a good ghost and a bad one? Yeah, if that's what helps you sleep at night, Daniel—" Ghostwriter mocked his younger, " Congratulations , they love you."

Giving a slight turn of his head, Danny's hateful eyes found the Ghostwriter, his chest heaved with his growing fury, "Got anything else on your chest, old man?"

"You're still an animal." Stephen growled, "And animals need to eat. And you're starving by pretending to be noble."

Brow only knitting, and shoulders tensing— The ghost boy seethed.

"Oh my god, you don't know!" Stephen inclined his head in disbelief, his grey skin dewy with perspiration and reflecting the moonlight. He exclaimed in mutter, "Of course! Of course you don't know."

The Ghostwriter put into small words for the child, "Ghosts are evil. Intrinsically. We are not a part of the ecosystem. Ghosts feed off of misery. So we create it. Wherever we go we hurt people, because that's what keeps us here. We exist as blunt instruments— reduced to repeating patterns and base primal instincts. That's why I never wanted to leave the Ghost Zone…" Stephen watched his physical form jitter and flicker. He stared at his hand, and tried to keep his anger at the forefront of his mind. It was the only thing that anchored him here.

"That's why you're hesitating. Isn't it? It's why you're paralyzed. It's why you're leaving him there in the dirt—to suffer—because you're feeding—"

The gravel shifted as the Phantom's boots agitated the ground as he turned between his two points of focus, "The only thing you should be concerned about, Stephen , is staying out of my way…"

Danny exhaled several glowing cyan wisps from his throat, "You talk too much. Way too much for a man who can't fight his battles."

As the boy snapped back to treating the living, the Ghostwriter could barely perceive the light trail that followed Danny's awful piercing stare. A stare few forget and even fewer survive. The ghost boy exhaled an affirmation only for himself, "I'm not evil."

A toothy smirk curled into the book-keeper's cheek, and it tinted his voice, "And you'd be the judge of that… wouldn't you?'

Over the ear piece, the ghost boy could hear the distinct rattle of a phone vibrating against his sister's desk.

"Wh-why is Dash calling me right now?" Jazz said in between mumblings and rereadings of the article in front of her.

Without thinking, Danny blurted out, "Wait— Wait! Don't answer that! You need to focus and help me—"

"What if it's an emergency?" Her voice collided with her brother's. Jazz didn't let her panic become anything other than background noise, however everything seemed to be happening all at once without rhyme or reason, "Dash'd never call me like this out of the blue, what if it's a ghost attack?"

"Jazz, whatever you do— don't answer that—" Was all the younger sibling could say in the absence of another lie. Danny was desperate for any excuse to keep his sister away from hearing just how screwed up he actually is. Reflexively he clapped over his mouth.

It was the last question he wanted to hear. It was a razor slice around the curve of his quivering, gasping throat, leaving him to bleed out. There was a beat of silence, a beat where Jazz debated if she really needed to know the answer. Her voice was clear amongst the compression of the device, Jasmine asked, "...Why?"

Too overwhelmed with trying to breathe, focusing on not losing whatever semblance of control he had, Danny didn't answer her. He couldn't answer. Preoccupied with not collapsing and breaking into a thousand pieces right here in the dark. He gulped down lungfuls of air but he was still drowning— he knew he didn't need to breathe, it offered no relief like how it did when he was alive. Helpless. Helpless and heavy. Everything was so heavy and closing in on him—

"...Wh-what did…" Jasmine stuttered out, "What did you do, Danny?"

Swollen eyelids fluttering open, Wes stirred. His thin legs began to draw towards his center. His worn sneakers kept worthlessly scratching against the dirt. The ginger moaned in pain, as he summoned all his strength to his arms to prop himself up.

"Hey—Hey, man, hey take it easy." Danny croaked out, "Do-do you r-remember your name and where you are?"

"Fenton…?" Wes blinked his eyes before holding his presumably pounding head into his hands. Weston's vision was waning, but his hearing was pitch-clear-as-a-church-bell-perfect apparently.

"Well, uh, that's uh— that's me technically." The ghost boy replied, with an anxious flutter to his voice. Hoping his creeping panic attack wasn't obvious.

The living teen kicked, and thrashed away, causing a cloud of dust to rise around him. Wes the end of the cut volatile wire with no grounding agent. Danny could almost see how his lungs kept fighting against Wes' chest muscles. Wes shuddered and twitched, he was scared but his anger—? His anger was blinding. Wes snarled, "Fenton!"

Danny wanted to set their petty rivalry aside for a moment, "You took a really nasty fall ther—"

A searing jolt hit the ghost boy's core. His abdominal muscles convulse and flexed wildly without any permission. His body racked with pins and needles. Fire ignited in his blood as his body rebelled against the sensation. Danny's torso hit the ground next.

Coughing, the ghost boy peered up at Wes, holding a device engulfed in blue static in his hand.

"What the hell's the big idea— huh?!" Wes dialed up the wattage of his pocket taser, "Wh-what the hell did you do to me while I was knocked out, you—you freak?!"

Danny spat some grains of sand from his teeth, "That—That, really , h-hurt."

"—Fuck yourself, Fenton," Wes rose to his knees, huffing the entire time, "What's your angle, asshole?!"

"I… I-I di-didn't do any-anything to you," Danny kept repeating. Drool began to exit from his numb face. Two pale rings sprung free from the undead-teen's ribcage. The last of his strength extinguished, Fenton kept writhing as if his back was being used as a butcher's block.

Wes' expression dropped, as he slowly enunciated, " Bull. "

The ex-jock gestured to his face and then the motorcycle, "You invite a couple friends down here, then what? What're you planning? You wanna Hijack some bodies, what for?"

When Danny didn't answer right away, Weston raised the taser above his head—

A hand had clasped around the living boy's wrist. Black claws contrasted Wes's pale flesh. The intense pressure Stephen put on the teen's arm was enough to bruise.

Ghostwriter's face split in two as he let out a devastating wail, " GO AWAY ."

The author's jaw dislocated and fell, and kept falling. It stretched beyond all physical reason. Wes could see into Stephen's gaping mouth curtained with pointed teeth, he could nearly see into his empty stomach. Grey rotted skin barely held Ghostwriter's bones in place.

Wes stumbled back. He stumbled, eyes wide with horror. The young man scrambled and bolted from the scene.

There was a loud crack. Danny assumed this was Stephen setting his mouth back into place. There was a wet click, as the elder specter regained control over his forked tongue.

The Ghostwriter sighed, hearing the haphazard footfalls of the young man tearing away into the night like a spooked deer. He lowered his glance to Danny's hobbled form.

"A resilient little cuss, isn't he?" He adjusted his cardigan and glasses, "I suppose you've both got that in common."

It was lunchtime at Casper high again. Nothing remarkable on the menu today. Something unrecognizable to the human taste palette, yet the school still charged four dollars for. Some chose to forgo the whole thing entirely. Some would eat in their classrooms or the rooms of their favorite clubs. Some wouldn't eat at all if they could help it.

Often the seniors and those with cars just went to the gas station down the hill to get their bags full of all the name-brand junk food they could find. From the track field, the quarterback could see the platoons of cars depart, and students eagerly get their fix. He halted in the middle of his lap, checking his pulse. Pressing his fingers to his throat, he felt his heart struggling to keep up with the rest of his body— just under the pads of his fingers.

At least one-ninety, Baxter decided.

In a glance, he saw the painted lines on the asphalt become vacant as cars peeled out of the exit. Dash blinked and what was beyond the chain link fence that rattled was empty. He was surrounded by emptiness. Sweat cascaded down his body; it clung tightly like a second skin. It burned his eyes. Dash closed them again and cleaned himself off.

What he wouldn't give for just a little rain. The clouds had been heavy and welcoming, but it proved nothing more than to be meteorological red herring. It was pointless to think humans could predict anything. We're just making sense of a world much bigger than us, after all. A world much older and wiser than us. We assigned meaning to such patterns because we were the first to record them. The cold hard truth of it is that the universe is chaotic and, therefore, meaningless.

His heart was beating so hard— he could feel it travel up his spine. Thrumming in his brain stem, as if the momentum would rip him apart. Dash exhaled a breath he didn't know he had been holding, "...Rough start."

It was just like this last night. When he saw the ghost kid standing there. In his room.

There was no point in lingering on it.

He was something of an icon for students at Amity Park. Something about him spoke to the unseen and undying boiling anger in the hearts of teenagers. Anger was the keyword. The Phantom was hardly invested in being a hero. It was more so an obligation than a genuine goal of his. Some were just glad The Phantom was on their 'side.'

…

No one liked it when you pointed out that there weren't any sides. They just wanted to assume ownership of the 'good' ghost. No one wanted to think what would happen if the Phantom one day decided he wasn't a people-person anymore.

There was nothing Dash could have done to stop him. You don't contain a force of nature; you just… pray. This was a ghost town. It's best not to argue that with them. There were theories, of course, but Dash didn't much believe in any of them. That's all anyone had in Amity Park. None of them really stood up under scrutiny.

The ghosts were pieces of people repeating patterns from displaced periods of time. This theory seemed to absolve all the creatures of guilt or even liability for the harm they did to the living.

That one was quite popular with the intellectual head type thinkers. But nothing about last night was routine or ordinary. In fact, the reason why it was terrifying was because the Phantom never did stuff like that. At least to anyone else. Dash believed in concepts he could touch, grasp, and feel, but he didn't trust ghosts as far as he could throw them. Which unsurprisingly wasn't very far. Spirits led to many loaded questions no one wanted to think about. Amity Park citizens were confronted with the inevitably of death every single time they opened their front doors.

Ghosts were the victims of violent or unjustified deaths. Dash would scoff at this like it was a poor joke. Okay. If that's all, it took, explain what happened to the ghosts of those in any war ever? Being something of a hopeless romantic in love with the earth and the people on it— there was the unspoken other side of the coin Dash typically fronted with. The utter pessimism that with the ability to love gives you just equal depth to hate just as hard. Baxter wouldn't admit it so much out loud, but his bitterness came from a place of being so infatuated with people that you hate them for hurting each other. He didn't want to believe that somehow that need to hurt others persisted. Maybe love neutralized that pain, or perhaps it made that hurt more tolerable. We could just be destined to hurt each other no matter what. It's probably why Dash would rather be alone. It's probably why we strive to find the one person it's okay to hurt over and over again.

That's what people do best. Break each other's hearts.

Is that what I have to look forward to when I die?

Maybe this was just projection on his part, but— Dash knew physical pain was such an ephemeral concept. You could outlive pain. You grow from it. You channel that energy somewhere else. Pain was mortal. That was the athlete's perspective, wasn't it? It was the ability to take your hurt and rage into your body effortlessly as if absorbing poison.

Perhaps the ghosts just had unfinished affairs in the living plane.

No theory ever seemed to fit perfectly. It was as if they were all popping seams.

The horrible truth was that gave Dash a knot in his throat. They were all ghost stories in the making.

He opened his eyes and stretched his neck. Looking over his shoulder again to the parking lot. There was a motorcycle in one of the spaces close to the fence. With his leather duster barely grazing the ground below him, the man stood out.

When did he even pull up? Why didn't I hear the engine?

…

There was this pang in his chest, and his blood ran cold.

The man from the woods yesterday. That man… that man sat on top of the machine. He flashed the quarterback a toothy smile and a wave.

Hesitantly, Dash waved back. More accurately, he lifted his hand in acknowledgment of the biker's presence.

Taking two fingers, the man stuck them in his mouth and whistled so wolfishly it echoed across the field.

Well, he's persistent. Shouldn't he be a creep on his own campus?

Dash rigidly walked back towards the main building, quickly stopping by the benches to gather up his jacket and books.

From the fence, Dash could hear the husky voice of the man from the woods call out, "Aw, leavin' so soon, superstar? C'mon, don't be shy!"

Baxter said nothing as he put an arm through his letter jacket. This school had to get better security.

Kwan, whose nose was stuffed deep into a geometry textbook, wearily asked, "Can we please get something to eat? I'm starting to see triangles when I close my eyes."

The metal risers creaked under while the linebacker fidgeted. He seemed unaware of anyone besides the two of them on the field.

Running a hand through his hair, Dash hastily agreed to the solution that would get them the hell out of there as fast as possible. He nodded, "Yeah, yeah, I just need to change out of my gym clothes."

"Are you okay?" Kwan detected the hurried tone.

"It's nothing. Don't worry about it." Baxter pulled his friend along, believing there was strength in numbers, "Let's just get a move on before the line gets too long."

Maybe the man would leave if he could see the kind of people Dash really hung around with. The quarterback would say it was unlike him to be scared, but that would be a lie. Dash knew whatever that guy was up to; it was no good. He was peppering on compliments and flattery to get something from Dash. What that 'something' was, remained to be seen— but Baxter was not sticking around to find out.

"It's nothing, or I shouldn't worry about it?" Kwan picked up their bags, carrying both his and his best friend's books under his arm. However, he was still being dragged along by his superior.

"Dash, Dash, easy, dude!" Kwan pried his friend's wrist off his bicep as soon as they were in the safety of the gymnasium.

"Sorry…" Baxter said.

Kwan's brow pinched in the middle, "Are you sure you okay? Do you, like, maybe want to call your doctor to—?"

"I-I'm fine… just, spooked, I guess." Dash slowed as he reached the locker room door, holding it open for his friend so they could continue their conversation. "But I promise, everything is under control."

Without a better word, Kwan was a good friend because he made Dash feel safe. He didn't ever want to do anything that would compromise that feeling of safety between them.

"You came to my house, drenched in sweat like you just ran a marathon, and you threw up in the yard." Kwan shook his head and bounced the door off his shoulder. His tone was flat, just repeating the facts, following his friend to the lockers.

Dash's eyes fell slightly as he wrestled out of his gym shirt, "I'll replace the wonky flamingo I destroyed with my stomach acid."

"That's not the point, and you know it." Kwan crossed his arms. He watched Dash to ensure he didn't blindly punch himself in his hurry, "You never actually told me what happened last night."

Hunched over by his locker, the captain was just stripping off his first layers and reorganizing his lockers. He reapplied his deodorant.

"It was just… nerves, s'all." The athlete fumbled with the cap and stick, "It's hard being the quarterback in a school where the leading cause of our failure is somethin' called the 'quarterback curse'."

"Is it those snobby Elmerton douchebags?" Kwan threw out the suggestion, prodding for any answer, "Did they jump you or something?"

"No," Dash said tersely. Pulling on his black shirt that he wore last night. Thankfully, it didn't smell like puke. Kwan's mom was nice enough to make sure the kid got his clothes taken care of.

Slapping the tops of the lockers, Kwan was getting frustrated, "Did Wes say something to you?"

The quarterback's face was tense but neutral. Not giving a single indication of his thoughts. He stared hard into the crimson surface as if the metal would start to warp. Barely moving his lips, then just to breathe and say, "Wes and I have nothing to talk to each other about as far as I'm concerned."

Kwan sighed, "Your shirt's on backwards there, Patrick Bateman ."

"Goddamnit."

Electing to look at the wall, so his captain could fix himself, Byun-Ji barred his arms over his chest and leaned back on the bench, "Sue me for caring about your stupid ass. But you're really starting to scare me. So just… tell me that this is the worst of it, and you'll be fine."

Kwan didn't mean to sound so… desperate, but he tacked on an additional caveat, "Can you do that for me, Dash?" Even quieter, Byun-Ji demanded, "Please?"

Baxter knew what his friend was asking for was impossible. What the entire world was asking of Dash just wasn't in his ability to do. He couldn't be 'normal.' He was cracked into so many different facets that Dash couldn't recognize the original anymore. The schism deep within himself was only eroding further and further into nothingness. The Dash Baxter Kwan needed may have existed one point years ago, but… truthfully, Dash has forgotten which traits he's stitched to his eclectic tapestry of people he's become. The leader, the golden child, the one everyone pins their hope to, the canary in the coal mine—

Then the pendulum swings back. He's Mr Johnny football hero. He's every cliche in the book; he's the big bad wolf.

The quarterback wanted off the ride. He wanted to disappear. He was terrified of the day someone got too close to realize how rough the patch-ups were.

Smoothing out his shirt over his stomach, Dash agreed, "Everything's under control."

"That's not what I wanted to hear, but I'll take it." Kwan raised his hands up in surrender before slapping his thighs, "I'm gonna name my first grey hairs after you, y'know that knucklehead?"

Unceremoniously, Baxter hopped into his sweats, covering his shorts with them, chuckling while cinching his waist with the black drawstrings in the band. The lock clicked back into place—

Picking up the letterman, Kwan's eyes caught the bright red patch just above the elbow. The saying on it was applicable 'Fragile! Handle with Care!'

Cocking a brow, Byun-Ji had this incredulous expression.

Snatching it away, Dash shook his head and muttered an explanation, "it's an inside joke with a couple of friends…"

The linebacker said nothing as he migrated to the locker room door.

However, that heavy door burst open suddenly.

Both boys startled in place.

Speak of the devil, and he shall appear. Weston put his back into shoving the heavy drab door out of his way, using all the strength in his thin and brittle body to get inside.

Neither Kwan nor Dash said anything, despite Wes's careworn stare.

It didn't occur to him until after they stopped being friends, but Baxter couldn't stand it when Wes looked at him. His green eyes bore too close of a resemblance to the Phantom's. It was such a superficial reason— but it was the truth. Dash didn't like to look at him.

"Yeah, don't get up, assholes." Wes exhaled.

He always looked sleep-deprived, but today? God, it was as if he got socked in the face by a pitching machine. His eyes were swollen and purple— leaking discharge of some kind. Little nicks were on his face, which he didn't seem to bother covering. It was like he went one to apeshit with a cheese grater on his skin. A large cut across the bridge of his nose was barely contained within a thin butterfly bandage.

"Jesus, Weston—" Kwan exclaimed and winced.

Dash took a moment to compose himself, "What— what happened to you?"

The sounds of his high tops squeaked against the concrete.

Naturally, Wes wanted to roll his eyes but obviously could not. He shuffled to the sinks to wash his face. He muttered something to the effect of, "Do you want the truth, or do you want the version you're comfortable with?"

There was a beat of silence as Wes stared at them from the restroom area. He turned the faucet on, "I fell out of a tree."

Kwan decided to humor him for a moment, "Did you get any good pictures before you fell? Preferably of that one house, they rent for porno?"

Dash's expression got all folded and irritated at his linebacker's comment.

Coughing, Wes smiled sarcastically, "You wish."

The football players stood awkwardly and fumbled with their belongings for a moment. It got quiet again. What were they supposed to say?

Dash offered with a weak gesture of his hand. Like he was reaching out but couldn't commit to it. As if the commitment was too great. He was reaching out because the bridge of their connection was still actively burning; it wasn't too late for them to save each other.

He quietly instructed without any warmth in his voice, "... You should increase your vitamin c intake over the next few days. It helps you heal faster. Try not to sleep on your side if you can help it. Wrap a towel around your neck to keep yourself in place."

"This isn't my first time being punched in the face, Baxter." Wes splashed some water on himself.

"Just figured you'd want the advice of the leading expert on being punched in the face, Weston," The quarterback shrugged, fiddling with the strap on his book bag.

Wrinkling up his face, Wes pried the bandaids off one by one, turning the surface of the porcelain sink red. He winced, "Keep your eyes on your own work, Baxter. Try not to screw it up this weekend, okay?"

Kwan opened his clenched jaw to say something to Dash's defense but was called off.

"Try to keep your nose clean, alright, Atlas?"

'Stay alive,' Was what Dash meant to say.

Why couldn't they say, 'I care about you'?

'Don't do anything stupid.'

Softening at the nickname, Wes traced the lines on his face. He nodded, "No promises."

Without another word, the pair departed, leaving their classmate to his own devices. What else could they have done? Forced him to the nurses' office? Make him go home? It was clear that whatever his goal was this time, it wouldn't be achieved unless everyone saw. What did unstable people ever want? Attention? Mission accomplished.

Dash didn't know what was in his heart in regards to Weston. Not pity. Not anything positive.

As the football players navigated the turns out of the gym and across the courtyard. The blond passed his palms over the foliage. His fingers caught on the twigs and leaves. Thoughts passing to what Wes said yesterday…

What the hell did he mean by that?

Dash was in danger every single day of his life—

He exhaled at this, though his stress only seemed to sink further into his being.

The cafeteria was amok with underclassmen. The lines hadn't entirely spiraled out of control yet. The menu was some kind of food item. Foodstuff, Dash believed that was the technical term. He couldn't remember the last time he actually looked at a sloppy joe, let alone actually consume one. The cafeteria offered plenty of health-conscious options. Extremely sparse salads. Damp broccoli that was supposed to be steamed. Cut carrots. Some kind of chicken that inspired indifference.

Kwan grabbed a tray for both of them out of habit.

And out of habit, Dash followed along. A routine he had done so often that it was practically muscle memory. It no longer felt like a conscious choice when he spoke up with his order.

Food was complicated.

It's probably a little silly, but Dash couldn't help but think about his favorite food. Eclairs. They were nostalgic. He would split them on the couch with his mother while they watched television. She'd put them in the freezer beforehand so it would make the soft stuff softer. The outside would melt against your tongue, and the cream would escape.

He'd also say tomato soup. Not for any particular reason. Probably because it was the only thing he could cook without screwing up. Canned tomato soup required very little, just the stove to get it going. It was sweet and thick and warmed your chest.

Dash yearned for the days of simplicity but then came the hypocrisy in the form of pancakes. The breakfast people most associated with mistakes and failure. Pancakes were never perfect or circular. They were messy and sticky. The hassle never seemed worth it until it did.

Baked potatoes reminded him of barbecues during the summer. Potatoes were something shared with everyone, chips, fries— it was stock food that stuck to your ribs. They kept you alive when nothing else did. They could be cooked so many different ways they hardly held a resemblance to its original form.

The woman behind the counter in the clear hairnet clicked her tongs and dropped a number of cold vegetables on his organized plate.

Another woman dropped a ladle of chili and mystery meat onto Kwan's plate with white bread.

Dash had trained himself to become nauseous at the scent of grease. His stomach lurched, and bile bit at his throat.

Their usual table in the center of it all. This was done so the A-listers could survey their kingdom. Little did they know their panopticon was only an illusion. They were the natural spectacle. Even when the gods sat high on mount Olympus, they were only as real as the public believed in them. And like those parables of mythology, they were studied, compounded for their flaws despite their responsibilities. As if they didn't suffer from the same sickness as mortals— desirous of everything. Grasping onto things they weren't supposed to have.

High school blows.

It was a fun house with no real theme, just mirrors.

When Dash thought about eclairs, he thought about Danny. It was a natural thought progression of things Dash should not have. He thought about elementary school. He thought about the day he tackled Danny when he wasn't expecting it. Grass stains on both their shirts and faces.

There wasn't so much thinking involved in that process. Just energy that needed to go somewhere.

"Kwan, could I ask you something?" Dash didn't look up from his food tray, only pushing it around with his fork.

The linebacker in question slapped a hand on his captain's back, "Of course. Your mileage may vary, but anything you need. Thank you for choosing Byun-Ji; how may I be of service?"

Dash untensed and rolled his shoulders. Not fully relaxed but approximating it. He cautioned with a laugh, "Um… I'm not really sure how to ask this… but uh, y-you've kissed people before, right?"

A wide smirk broke out across Kwan's face. Amused didn't even begin to describe the near devilish expression that became affixed to his features. Nodding slow, Byun-Ji pointedly agreed, "Yeah?"

"Forget it." Exhaling suddenly through his nose, Dash decided against it, "It's stupid; forget I said anything."

Grabbing his water bottle, Dash could only attempt to drown himself from here. It's not like he could un-ask—

Poking his captain, Kwan all but demanded the details, "Oh, no—no, you've been sketchy and twitchy all week, and you're telling me it's because you've met a girl?!"

Hiking up his shoulders around his ears and fumbling to make himself smaller— Baxter muttered, embarrassed, "There's no girl."

"Tell me everything, dude! What year? What club?" Suggestively the linebacker added with a wiggle of his brows, " Measurements?"

Uh, sophomore, no extracurriculars whatsoever— oh, yeah— and a guy.

"It's not like that ."

"I can't believe you didn't mention this last night! You know my parents are gonna want to meet her— I think they're more invested in your marriage prospects than mine." Kwan grabbed the quarterback's shoulders in an effort to entice more information out of him. However, he was met with silence.

The linebacker leaned on his serious face and bridged his fingers over his face in mock dramatics, "I knew God would answer our prayers about your lack of hoes."

Dash raised his brows and deadpanned, "Har har."

Okay, when astonishment or mockery wouldn't get him anywhere, the duke of Casper high knew when to call in the heavy artillery. Removing his aviators from his pocket with the practiced motion of a federal agent, Kwan solemnly stated, "We have ways of making you talk."

Eyes blown wide— Dash waved his hands in a declarative motion, but it was too late.

Taking a sharp inhale, Byun-Ji kicked up his feet onto the bench. The linebacker leaned on his captain, crushing him with his mass into the corner wall and subduing his protests. Kwan cupped his hands along his mouth to make a megaphone and yelled, "YO! POLLY-POCKET AND HER BAND OF MERRY POMPOMS, GUESS WHO'S GETTIN' HIS V-CARD PUNCHED!?"

The entire cafeteria turned their heads to the noise. Some laughed— actually, correction— a lot laughed. The student body loved their daily dose of A-lister Antics. It gave them something to speculate on in their free time. And by God, when the ghosts didn't attack, students had a lot of free time.

"Kwan, I swear to— I'm gonna kill ya!" Dash shoved against his would-be subordinate, though it was impossible. Kwan was in a totally different weight class. He was fitfully grabbing fistfuls of clothing, hoping to either pull his friend off or slip out of the pin, though no such luck.

This earned the blond a noogie, "Tell me you aren't this bad at talking a girl out of her bra too?"

With a furious groan, Dash knew better than to fight it. He rode out the sharp knuckles grinding into his scalp and fussing up his hair.

Next thing Baxter knew, he was being held nearly horizontally in a headlock, Kwan practically dragging him across the bench. Then he was watching a platoon of kitten-pump pink heels clicking across the dusty linoleum towards their lunch table.

"You have gossip for me, Kwan-cakes?"

Barf.

No one in their right minds would say that Kwan and Paulina were dating. It was more like she was using him to upset her dad, and Kwan could still flirt with anything that showed any interest. The pair seemed to have a mutual contract instead of a relationship. Or perhaps this is just what relationships were to them. Maybe there was a feeling of faint affection and gravitational pull that drew them together. Though boy-girl arrangements never seemed to be Dash's area of expertise. Byun-Ji would often claim to have the best girlfriend ever; Paulina would, in turn, show him off like a prized-show-pony. They never seemed to fight. They liked being around each other clearly. But there was never anything more than that. Their relationship was… primarily gathered by subtext. It was confusing. They were close. Kwan and Paulina were in the way your elbow and tongue were close. Like something about it just didn't quite line up.

Why can't I have that? Why can't I have a fraction of what they have?

It was a more enviable teenage confusion than what Dash was working through.

The head cheerleader set down her burgundy lunch tray and took a seat across from her boys. Her legion of followers did the same thing, each acting as a limb of their host—simply an extension of her brain. If Ms Sanchez needed some napkins, faceless cheerleader number six would be passing up the chain of command. The girls came in near surgical organized lines and fanned out to find any and all available seating. Forcefully nudging lesser students out of their way.

Efficiently, Paulina tore open the plastic utensils that came with her lunch—for some reason, Dash always pictured her future career as being a courtroom stenographer. It was the way she tucked her flat-ironed hair around the curve of her ears and showed off the delicate pink pearl earring in her lobes. Something about it screamed Law and Order . She just needed those kitschy bright red cat-eye glasses—though good luck getting her out of her puka shell jewelry and tattoo choker. She wasn't trendy; she wasn't capturing a moment—Paulina was the moment.

"They were out of those black and white cookies you like, so I just got you two brownies—that okay?" Sanchez asked with a sickly sweet smile to her beaux.

Dash was now imagining blowing his brains out, in case you were wondering.

Happily, the linebacker snatched up the pastries from his cheerleader, finally releasing Baxter.

"First things first, Dash, not every girl likes kissing, so don't worry if you suck at it." Sanchez delivered this charitable donation with about as much passive aggression as possible.

Somehow this is worse than if my parents were to give me dating advice.

"Yeah, if she's anything like Paulina, she'll hate kissing. So just stick to, like, stuff you're confident in. Oh, practice on your hand or like—"

Dash interrupted, "Please, God alive, do not finish that statement."

Arriving fashionably late, Star took her rightful seat across from Dash as she was his cheerleader.

This day keeps getting better and better.

"What's up about Dash's virginity?" Star queried, a bit too loudly for comfort.

Why did I know that was gonna be the first thing out of her mouth?

"Uh, still intact." The quarterback said awkwardly. He was discrete in wanting to shrink to a speck of dust on the atomic level and never be seen by human eyes again.

Robinson smiled, "Oh… that's, uh, good?" She paused to read his growing pained expression, "or uh, I'm sorry?"

Kill me, kill me, kill me.

"Yep." Dash was practically scarlet. His entire body became pink. You could fry an egg on his forehead with the power of pure mortification.

Kwan snickered, "He's got a girlfriend."

"I really don't," Baxter retorted defensively.

"Then why're you asking for kissing tips?" The linebacker was boisterous and slapped the table with an open palm.

"I dunno, just felt like taking a survey! What's it to you?!" Dash weakly shoved him away.

Paulina speedily got through her disclaimer before placing a single leaf of salad into her mouth with precision and poise, "You have to tell us who she is, so I can tell you why she can do better."

"Is that why you didn't have your jacket yesterday?" Kwan badgered some more, hoping to shake out some information.

"Scandalous…" Paulina purred

Dash only groaned in response, burying his burning face in his hands.

"Guys, don't tease him too hard," Star whined, "He's gonna pop a gasket."

"That's not the only thing he's popped— look, he's wearing a promise ring—!" Snatching His right hand, Sanchez directed everyone's attention to the gold band adorning Dash's ring finger.

"Oh no, this is actually a funny story…"

…This drifter gave me a ring because we shared cigarettes— and, wow, that's way too many red flags.

Dash rephrased, "Not, like, funny ha-ha, but unrelated funny."

This did nothing but earn him steely stares from his peers at the table.

Anxiously he rubbed the back of his neck.

"I didn't think you'd be this bad at lying," Paulina muttered with an even level voice, "Yet, here we are."

"So, does she go to a different school or what?" Star pressed a fist into her cheek, trying to fight the irritation that pulled at her features, feigning disinterest.

"I didn't even consider that Star!" Kwan declared, wiping crumbs from his chest and continuing to speak with his mouth full, "Does she go to Elmerton? Is she a Papermaker? A couple'a regular ol' Romeo and Juliets."

This earned a chorus of 'aw's from the background cheerleaders.

Dash dissented, "You guys know that's a tragedy, right? Not a romance? They both kill themselves?"

Like a rabbit, Paulina worked on one salad leaf with delicate little bites, "I can help hide the bodies if needed."

Expecting another round of bitching from their captain bitch, Kwan glanced over to Baxter. But the quarterback was staring off at something just off in the distance from their table at the front of the cafeteria, with a view of the land they reigned over. Following his gaze, Kwan was met with a sea of faceless Casper High students. It was clear Dash was starting at something— someone, maybe? But no one Byun-ji could assign any significance to.

Without another word, Baxter stood up jerkily and off-balance. Taking his tray with him.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the cafeteria, at the table closest to the rear exit to the courtyard, surrounded by trash cans and litter, Sam, Tucker, and Danny had been chatting amongst themselves there.

The goth raised her brows as her hands were preoccupied with her BLT, excluding the B.

In the middle of a joke, Foley saw Sam's eyes shrink towards a shape in the distance.

Daniel, with his face propped on his fist. The picture of an exhausted high schooler in his element. Fenton didn't have to turn his head. He already knew. Danny could detect Dash's aura from yards away, it seemed. Like his ghost sense, this… sensation, this unidentifiable shiver across his atoms— gave him a few seconds to brace. What Danny would be bracing for remained to be seen. Dash didn't scare him. Don't make him laugh. But this unpredictability was becoming tiresome. The anxiety that the quarterback sparked caused every single one of the ghost boy's muscles to tense. It was a bottomless apprehension that left him physically sore. Maybe if Fenton didn't look, then maybe, the trainwreck coming wouldn't be so bad. He wasn't afraid of him but afraid for him. How would Dash embarrass himself today?

The stride was focused and only gained speed as Baxter's target came into view.

Armed with his tray, the quarterback dropped it in the empty space in front of Danny. He was flushed and in a hurry. But in a rush to get out of there as fast as possible, Dash relayed in as neutral a tone as he could convey, "I'm not hungry."

And for added measure, he gave Fenton a noogie. However, it wasn't knuckles against scalp in the traditional sense. Dash more so playfully ruffled Danny's bangs out of his face before making a quick exit out to the courtyard.

Sam and Tucker, in tandem, put on big smirks in the ghost boy's direction.

He threatened under his breath before grabbing a fork and picking up where Dash left off, "Don't even start."

It was a case of excellent timing because Danny was inexplicably starving . Even if it was crummy cafeteria food, it was better than the nagging emptiness in his core—that static vacancy right behind his ribs.

There was something kind of sad about turning the guy who'd, by cliche definition would, steal his lunch money into a delivery boy. Then again, Dash was so loaded he didn't need to lower himself to mugging nerds for their allowance. Was there anything really awful about this kid, or did Danny just imagine it all? Christ, the guy, organized canned food drives and coat donations during the winter— not because he had to, but because he was good at it. How could you hate someone like that? Maybe it was easier to hate him than to think of all the ways they differed. Of course, Dash was popular. Of course! He was easy-going, generous… handsome. Kinda… when the golden sunlight dappled through the tree leaves just outside the window. The way it complimented his hair and olive skin. It wasn't hard to look angelic in that lighting. However, what kind of angel would have a notched nose and a crooked smile?

Hating Dash Baxter was like hating the pop song chorus stuck in your head. He was so universally accessible to hate. The quarterback was a song that wanted to assure you that everything was great and only good times were in your future. Suntans, parties with solo cups on a Friday night, or the cloudless beaches of California. The song called to mind the scent of chlorine-filled pools. All with an air-tight shrink-wrapped beat. Dash Baxter, like any radio party anthem, was designed to be perfect. That's why he needed to be destroyed.

But Dash wasn't perfect. Far from it, actually.

Danny wasn't about to admit that right now.

What was being a teenager besides being angry for no reason? God, he could kill something. And the scary part was that he was in constant doubt of his restraint. Why was he even angry? He couldn't remember. Danny just wanted to stop. For a little bit, at least. The best way he could describe it was in chemical terms. Acidic.

Leave it to the quarterback to just get lean meat and vegetables.

#schrodinger's adolescent #schrodinger's adolescent 2.0 #danny/dash #teddy ghost #swagger bishie #dandash #danny phantom #dp #phic #enemies to lovers #slow burn #mine

9 notes · View notes

obsidiancreates · 3 years

Text

An Honest Talk

(Got to the episode where Valerie gets the ghost hunting stuff. I just want her to be happy and not Filled With Vengeful Rage so, here's this.)

Jazz sees the whole thing.

Really, Valerie isn't even good at hiding it. As soon as that Ghost Hunter shows up at that school game, Jazz figures it out. Not just because her voice is the same, but because of the insults she shouts while hanging in that basketball hoop. Sure, Jazz is in a higher grade, but she's heard that A-Lister group plenty of times in the hallways and after school.

They're real jerks. But not murderous jerks.

So she decides to do something about it. No-one attacks her baby brother. ... Well, except other ghosts. But Jazz can't always help with those.

This? No problem.

"Hey, Valerie."

Valerie jolts, yelping and almost dropping what is clearly some kind of ghost-detecting device. "Who are- ugh, aren't you Fenton's sister? What do you want?"

"To talk to you," Jazz says in her most empathetic voice. "I noticed you're having kind of a rough time."

"Why do you care?"

"Because my brother does." Cares about not being pummeled, at least. But Jazz is sure Danny hopes the best for his schoolmate, even with the attacks.

Valerie huffs. "Great, pity from the loser kids."

"Come on, it won't hurt to talk about it?"

"Talk about what? That some ghost kid and his dog ruined my life? That we're broke, and all my friends hate me for it? yeah, talking will fix everything."

Jazz sits down on a bench, and pats the seat next to her. Valerie looks away.

But then... she sighs. And sits. "I keep thinking about that five hundred dollar shirt I ruined. Maybe if e hadn't bought that, or I hadn't worn it to school, we'd be a little better off right now."

"It's not your fault."

Valerie grits her teeth. "Yeah. It's that ghost kid's."

"Ghost kid?"

"... You believe in ghosts, right? Because of your parents?"

Jazz nods. "Plus, that thing during the school game,, Kind of hard to deny."

"Heh. Yeah. ... That dog broke into the place my dad was working for. he was showing off what he did for their security, and none of it stopped the dog or the kid. And then they showed up again at the garage sale and wrecked our moving van, and the dog stole my lunch after all my friends rejected me!"

Valerie wipes her eyes, scowling. "It's not fair!"

Jazz hands her a tissue. "It's not, not at all."

"I wanna destroy that kid," Valerie growls. "Like he destroyed me."

"... Valerie... how old is he?"

"About my age, I think."

"And he's a ghost."

"Yeah. And?"

"So... how do you think a ghost kid comes to be?"

Valerie doesn't reply. But after a moment, her eyes widen a little. "Oh... no, no, but... but he's a kid. He can't be any older than me."

"Yeah," Jazz says softly. "So something horrible must have happened to him already."

Valerie looks at the device in her hands. "... But... he still ruined my life." She sounds a bit unsure now.

"Maybe he didn't mean to. I mean... imagine one day you wake up and everything is... different. Suddenly you've got no gravity, and-and no-one can see you sometimes and you're this weird thing-"

God, how scared was Danny when it happened? She's pretty sure by now that it was The Accident that did it, she can't think of anything else that explains it. What was it like for him, waking up as something different?

"It would be tough," Jazz finishes, looking at Valerie.

Valerie still won't meet her eyes, looking at the beeping device. "Then why is he following me around?"

"... Well... does he show up first, or the dog?"

Valerie thinks for a long moment. "... The dog. It's always the dog."

"So maybe he's trying to catch it."

"... I mean, I guess that could be it. But he's been fighting me!"

"And you've been fighting him."

"But-! ... Aw, geez..." Valerie deflates. "What do I do now, then? I can't... I can't keep attacking some kid who... we've barely lived, I can't just make it so that he's barely lived twice."

Jazz stands up and offers her hand. "How about we try talking to him?"

Valerie looks at her. "For real?" She's skeptical.

Jazz nods. "For real. Maybe we can clear some things up."

Valerie turns away again. And then, with a hefty sigh...

Takes Jazz's hand.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Cujo?" Danny calls out. "Cujo! We need to get you back to the Ghost Zone, buddy! Come on, where is he?"

Someone clears their throat behind him, and he yelps as he shoots up in the air.

He turns around, and sees possibly the worst thing he could see right now.

His sister, and his hunter.

"Hello, Ghost Boy!" Jazz calls out.

"Um... hi." Danny waves, still looking startled.

Jazz nudges Valerie, and Valerie huffs. "Hi," she says shortly. Jazz smile at her, though.

"I'm here to mediate a talk between you two," Jazz says, walking closer (and somewhat pulling Valerie along behind her). "I figured there might be more to this story than we all three think."

"Um, you're not- I mean, I'm a ghost, you're just... casual about this?"

Jazz nods. "My parents are well-versed with ghosts, this is nothing."

A straight-up lie. Jazz hadn't even believed in ghosts until she peeled Spectra. But maybe it's to save face for Valerie? Or maybe Jazz recognizes him as the ghost from that day.

"Anyway," Jazz says, "Valerie here has something to say."

Valerie, arms cross and back hunched angrily, glares at Danny. "Who are you, and why are you out to get me?"

Danny floats back down to the ground, standing on it now. "I'm, um... Phantom-"

Valerie gives him a disbelieving look.

"Uh, Ghost Names are uh, different! It's this whole thing. And, I'm not out to get you, I swear. It's all been terrible coincidences."

Valerie scoffs.

"Val, we're here to listen," Jazz reminds gently. "Let him explain his side of things, and then you can explain yours, and we'll come to a solution. Trust me, I read a book about this."

Danny doesn't doubt it. "I don't own that dog, I found him wandering around outside. I thought he was cute at first, and then he turned into the big dog that keeps haunting you."

"And why's he doing that?" she snips.

"I don't know yet." Danny rubs the back of his neck, embarrassed. "I'm trying to send him back to the Ghost Zone, but he keeps coming back out! I'm starting to think it's some cliche 'unfinished business' thing. But until I can figure it out I don't know how to get rid of him. All I can do is try to minimize the damage."

"Doing a great job." Valerie rolls her eyes. "Ruining my father's business, ruining our garage sale, ruining my lunch!"

"I swear, I was trying to help! He's really, really hard to get under control! He's like five times my size!"

"And you can't grow bigger and handle it that way?" Valerie retorts.

"No! I'm only a few months into this, I-"

He cuts himself off at the look on Valerie's face. "What?"

"A few months? ... So... so I could've known you?" Horrified, is the best word for her expression.

Danny shrinks, holding his bicep and hunching a little. "Um, nevermind. I just mean I'm not super powerful."

"No, no, we're going back. Did I know you? Is this a revenge thing?"

"What? No! I already told you, I'm trying to help prevent things from getting worse! And... no. I'm a loser kid, and you're popular."

"... Was," Valerie says quietly. "... All my friends ditched me when I lost my money."

"That's awful."

Valerie nods. "I don't know why I thought they liked me for more than money, looking back. But it still hurts. Being a lonely loser is the worst."

"Tell me about it," Danny mutters. "I mean, I have friends, but sometimes some stuff just makes you feel alone no matter what."

He thinks he sees Jazz tear up at that, but he's not sure. He's distracted by Valerie letting out a sob.

"I don't have anything left," she says, voice quavering. "I don't have the popularity, I don't have money, I don't have the grades..."

"... So you turned to revenge?" Jazz's voice is soft.

Valerie sobs again, and Jazz gives her some comforting slow pats on the back. She looks at Danny, nodding at Valerie.

Danny gets the hint. "You... you could, um, make something, more?"

Valerie gives a somewhat bitter teary chuckle. "What is that supposed to mean, huh? I'm already hunting ghosts. It's... something."

"... You could try to make new friends."

"Oh sure, that's easy. I'm a social pariah."

"So am I. But even just one or two friends helps a lot."

"You got a lot of ghost buddies?"

"... Humans, actually. An if I can make friends with some high school kids as a loser and a ghost, you can make friends too. You just might have to lower your social radar a bit."

Valerie rubs her arm. "... You're really not out to get me, are you?"

"No, I'm not. I want to protect people, not hurt them."

"... I'm sorry I shot those missiles at you."

"I'm sorry I couldn't keep the dog contained."

"... I'm sorry you're a ghost so young."

Danny snuffles a little. "... Thanks." Sometimes he is, too.

Valerie looks at her hand, and then holds it out to him. "Truce? I won't mess with you. I can't promise the same about that dog if it keeps showing up, but I won't mess with you."

Danny sighs. "So you're keeping the weapons."

"Oh, you know I am. Even if I'm not hunting you, now that I know about ghosts I want to be prepared."

"I guess I understand that." Danny shakes her hand. "Truce."

Jazz grins. "See? Just needed a real, meaningful talk!"

Valerie laughs a little, wiping her eyes again. "Yeah, I guess. But... now what? Who do I blame for this?"

"Probably the boss who decided that Ghosts Suddenly Existing was your father's fault," Danny says.

Valerie's eyes harden. "Yeah. Yeah, I can go with that."

"But," Danny and Jazz say at once. They look at each other, and Jazz let's Danny speak.

"But," Danny says again, "Maybe focus on making some more friends, first. One thing about us losers, is we don't ditch someone just for money reasons."

"... I'll give it a shot." Valerie smiles a little at Danny. "With better aim than the ones I took at you."

Danny chuckles a bit.

They both wave goodbye, Jazz and Valerie leaving Danny to continue his search.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Hi."

Danny, Sam, and Tucker all look up. Valerie is standing nervously with her brown paper bag of lunch. Tucker brightens up, and Sam gives a little, slightly suspicious, wave.

Danny scoots over. "Wanna sit with us?"

Valerie looks over at the A-Lister table. They're all staring, smirking, whispering.

Mocking.

She looks back at the 'losers'.

They're looking at her with... openness.

"Yeah. Sure."

She sits down, and gets out her lunch. For a minute, she just listens to them talk while she unpacks the sandwich.

"Hey, is that peanut butter and honey?" Sam asks. Valerie nods.

Sam holds up a thick roast beef sandwich. "My parents are trying to get me to eat meat again, but I'm staying vegetarian. Want to trade?"

Valerie blinks. "Uh... sure?"

They swap sandwiches. Valerie looks at the sandwich, mentally trying to figure out the carbs and calories and fat content-

She looks around the table. No-one else is analyzing their food. Or, judging hers.

She takes a bite. It's pretty good.

This... is pretty good.

She smiles, and laughs a little at a joke Danny makes.

Yeah. This is pretty good.

#danny phantom #Valerie Gray #Danny Fenton #Jazz Fenton #fanfic #my attempts at fanfic

850 notes · View notes

thesoulspulse · 2 years

Text

Regarding My Good Vlad AU (Re-imagined Timeline! Part 1)

I got to thinking about the timeline I made about my Good Vlad and you know what? I bet there are more episodes I can salvage so here’s my re-imagined one! Isn’t that wonderful Vladdy?

But before we get into all that let me share links to my previous post about this timeline...

Good Vlad AU Timeline: https://thesoulspulse.tumblr.com/post/661878830618771456/regarding-my-good-vlad-au-alternate-timeline

Alright, with that out of the way, just like the original post I’m going to go season by season to share some new ideas about ways we could possibly re-add similar events to Good Vlad’s timeline. So as always, lets start at the beginning!

Shades of Grey

I’m only marking this as re-imagined to go a little more in depth because last time I only said “Instead of making Valerie a ghost hunter to spy on Danny, Vlad makes her one as a way to help lighten Danny’s workload from dealing with so many ghosts. Vlad is still keeping tabs on Danny but it’s more to make sure he’s not up against something he can’t handle on his own.”

I mentioned this in the original post but in this AU, Vlad has a huge soft spot for animals which is partially due to owning a special kitty-cat of his own named Madison who saved him during a dark period in his life when he was lonely after parting ways with Jack and Maddie for their own safety while he sorted out his new reality of being half-ghost after the proto-portal accident. I wrote a oneshot about their meeting you can read here: https://thesoulspulse.tumblr.com/post/663747011039870976/when-blue-eyes-meet-good-vlad-au-oneshot or you can find it over on my fanfiction.net account!

After Vlad gained most of his riches through at least slightly more legal means, he began working with and donating to a lot of different animal rescue projects which got me thinking...poor Cujo was a security dog for Axion Labs that was put to sleep right? So what if Vlad was doing his own thing investigating the company and this blatant act of animal cruelty when he happens across Danny dealing with that and the unfortunate events that put Valerie and her dad in such a tight spot?

Vlad grimaces when he sees all the chaos and such unfold thanks to Cujo and wishes he could intervene directly on Danny’s behalf, but he resists the urge since Vlad thinks this is something his little badger needs to figure out on his own to improve and grow. Besides which, Danny still might not trust him despite clearing up their misunderstanding at Vlad’s castle during the college reunion Danny’s parents dragged him to.

After Danny and Cujo leave, Vlad overhears that Axion’s Head of Security -aka Valerie’s dad- was just fired as a result and follows them for a bit since he’s still trying to find evidence of what happened to Axion’s old security dogs anyway and knows he can’t do anything to expose the company’s animal cruelty without physical evidence.

Not only that, but Vlad’s amazing at reading people and has a good feeling about Damon, he seems like a good man and obviously the poor guy had no idea how to protect the lab against ghosts since they weren’t exactly common knowledge at that point. He’s also a single father and Vlad wants to become like a father-figure to Danny someday so he really envies Damon Gray...

Skipping ahead to when Valerie and Damon almost have to sell everything they own to move to a smaller apartment, Danny and his friends go there to try and help since he feels guilty about what happened but like in the episode, Cujo causes a lot of problems and breaks a lot of their stuff since he can still smell Axion Lab’s scent on them and is desperately looking for his favorite toy.

Unable to stand idly by any longer since Danny’s clearly in over his head managing this ghost dog, Vlad makes his first move to make things a bit easier for his little badger and indirectly gives Damon the good news that the Director of Axion Labs had a sudden ‘change of heart’ and is going to give him another chance at his security job.

Still, independent of her dad, Valerie is dead-set on finding out who that ghost boy and his dog are exactly since she’s sick of all these problems and this is when she begins researching ghosts. The rest happens just like in the episode except the intention behind Vlad giving Valerie ghost hunting equipment is totally different. He actually did some research on her too and found out Valerie is surprisingly skilled in karate and such, even having won several trophies at a young age, and so Vlad decides to take a chance on her by making Valerie a ghost hunter since this might actually help her and Danny in different ways.

Unfortunately, the first thing she does with her new anti-ghost toys which he should have seen coming a mile away is go after Danny which was not Vlad’s intention. So it’s onto plan B on Vlad’s part by finding out what Cujo is after and also making it clear that he doesn’t belong to Danny at all and is therefore not to blame for her family’s misfortune.

On that note, in addition to smoothing things out in that regard, Vlad also plans to reveal to Valerie that it was Danny Fenton of all people who helped her dad get another chance at Axion Labs by asking Vlad Masters -who happens to be an old family friend of his parents from college- for a favor to help them out.

With that settled, Vlad eventually finds the abandoned kennel just before Danny does and once he has what he needs to settle his own affairs, Vlad leaves the rest to Danny and is secretly proud he figured out what kept bringing Cujo back there on his own.

Also, Vlad makes a mental note to remember that Danny’s good with dogs and of course to put someone more responsible in charge of Axion Labs from now on...aka himself.

Not only that, but he plans to keep a closer eye on Valerie from then on too so she doesn’t go after Danny again and wants to make sure he redirects her anger towards other ghosts as an outlet so that Danny won’t have nearly as many ghosts to deal with on his own anymore.

Maternal Instinct

I already wrote a whole post about this so I’m not going to repeat myself, but you can check it out here: https://thesoulspulse.tumblr.com/post/662310410203152385/good-vlad-au-maternal-instinct-re-imagined

Million Dollar Ghost

This one is kinda interesting because I got this idea that instead of Vlad offering a reward for the capture of Danny Phantom since this version would never dream of doing that, a rumor spread on its own in the ghost hunting community which told them that the entirety of Amity Park is haunted by multiple ghosts and has become quite active supernaturally. As a result this eventually catches the attention of lots of well known ghost hunting teams, including the Guys in White.

As a branch of the government the Guys in White try to put pressure on the others, trying to make them all back off since they consider themselves the only ‘real’ professionals there and sadly as a result that includes pushing around Danny’s parents.

The head of the team sent to Amity Park also seems to despise Jack Fenton especially and goes out of his way to humiliate the guy. Basically, this agent is the replacement “Vlad” of this episode.

The funny part is, Vlad DOES decide to visit Amity Park after his portal explodes but this time he mostly just uses it as an excuse to see Danny since he has nothing else better to do in the meantime until he can build a new ghost portal.

Also, don’t worry, his cat Madison was totally unharmed by the explosion since she’s already a ghost cat! But Vlad’s probably pretty sad that he lost a lot of his Packers mementos since were destroyed and he’s going to have to stay in one of his vacation homes until his castle is rebuilt, so being the good girl she is, Madison comforts him with lots of snuggles. I’m just going to pretend his castle ends up being rebuilt more quickly since Vlad has a skilled team of ghost builders on staff or something.

When he arrives in Amity Park though Vlad discovers Jack and Maddie at Casper High since they’ve started running ghost drills there and has no choice but to wait for Danny to come home before saying hello. Vlad also sees Danny unjustly get detention for something his dad did which hardly seems fair, but again he resists the urge to fix that with some carefully timed overshadowing.

As the total opposite of canon Vlad’s intentions, my Good Vlad he feels bad that Jack is having such a hard time thanks to that jerk in the Guys in White and doesn’t want to see Danny’s faith in him falter so unable to watch any longer, Vlad tries to give Jack a chance to show off his skills by sending in his three vultures in to challenge him just like he originally did to test his old friend before “Bitter Reunions.”

Too bad it doesn’t end well and Danny misunderstands him again and thinks Vlad’s a two-faced liar and sent those ghosts after his dad on purpose just to make him look bad. Poor Vladdy can never win when he just wants to help them both be the best they can be!

Danny of course feels angry and betrayed and fights Vlad for a bit who tries to convince him that’s not what he meant to do at all. Eventually Vlad has no choice but to retreat since Danny’s too stubborn to listen to him and goes back to his hotel room to mope about only making himself look bad again in Danny’s eyes.

So really the only major differences here is Vlad’s not there to steal the Fenton Portal at all and he wants to help his best friend look GOOD in front of his son.

After that, the same thing from the canon still happens where Maddie happens to helps Jack catch Danny, who was trying to boost his dad’s confidence again by letting him think he caught him but ended up captured for real. As for Vlad, once he feels better he comes up with a plan to pretend to offer a big reward for the ghost boy but ONLY sends it to Jack as an indirect way to rescue Danny and clear up yet another misunderstanding about his intentions. See? They all care about Jack’s well-being!

During the whole exchange between Danny and his dad, as soon as Vlad overhears the part about the ecto-filtrator not being replaced he panics, traps Jack and Danny in an ecto-energy cage for their own safety and then teleports directly to Fenton Works change it himself before anything happens to Maddie or Jazz. When they realize there are ghosts in the house since Vlad brought his ghost vultures to search for the new filter, he has to trap them too while he takes care of this though so that part also stays the same.

Danny and Jack get free but then they are chased after by the ghost hunters in town which delays their trip home.

Jack somehow manages to get home first and tries to stop Vlad too who insists he’s trying to save them all! But when that fails, Vlad resigns himself to “playing the villain” as planned to boost Jack’s confidence and prays that they’ll fix the portal in time themselves. Basically, Vlad takes a dive on purpose since he knows he had only made things worse by trying to help so much.

Thankfully the day is saved but Vlad’s still upset by how poorly he handled the situation and begins making preparations to hopefully repair the damage he’s done to his relationship with Danny and his family.

To make that easier since the timeline is a bit unclear in a few places, I’m going to say “Maternal Instinct” happens after this episode to help smooth things out between Danny and Vlad.

65 notes · View notes

the-sprog · 3 years

Text

So since I'm very bad at remembering my ideas, I'm gonna throw this out there and hope one day I'm like "WAIT didn't I have an idea for a fic??? What was it???" And I will find it on my tumblr.

It's about Danny Phantom, obviously.

There are actually two of them in here so:

The easiest one: Jack and Maddie are not stupid. I mean they're scientists, the use the scientific method. One of the things about the scientific method is that if you do a bunch of tests, based on an hypothesis and only one of them comes out disproving it, then your hypothesis is incorrect.

Phantom has disproved basically all of their hypothesis.

So, next thing to do? Create a new one. Do new tests. They take Jazz's suggestion and try and see if the ghosts of Amity are actually conscious. Because obviously they're sentient, but are they like animals? Or are they like robots with artificial intelligence?

Or even better yet, are they like humans?

They grab Phantom's attention and ask him if he would cooperate for this test. A simple Turing test. Obviously they're still wary because of everything that happened with him, and do the test with witnesses to keep both Phantom's and their minds at ease.

He passed the test. With flying colors.

They're shocked and ask him if he knew peaceful ghosts that would be willing to take the test (because, y'know. Scientific method. Need to try over and over again). Phantom would have to explain that not all ghosts are as human-like as him (as, first of all, he's a halfa, but he doesn't say that. And second, lots of them are blobs or animal-like ghosts), but cue his parents meeting Jhonny and Kitty (cause I like the idea that they have a truce with Phantom and that going out of the zone helps them with their couple problems), as well as Shadow (example of a less human-like ghost). Then Sidney, Dora, the Fright Knight (cause king ghost Danny ftw) and Frostbite.

They all pass, more or less. Some, like Dora, the light and Sidney, where given away by their choice of word, but other than that all of them passed the test.

OK SO MORE COMPLEX ONE:

I love crossovers. I love finding ways of putting the two universes together, of making them work with each other, adapting the rules so that they apply to both. (With Danny Phantom it's also really cool to just... Make him travel the multiverse. He doesn't adhere to the rules of where he goes to, so it's always hilarious. But we're not here for that now).

One of the best ones to do this with is My Hero Academia. Whenever a show has someone with powers I end up asking myself "how should that work in the world of my hero?" And start trying to incorporate it in the lore.

So, first thing first, we're getting rid of the canon story of my hero. Completely unrelated to the show. This takes place decades in the past, when the first people where developing quirks (so if I wanted to write something with this and actually use my hero characters, I'd make it so that they where hit with a time traveling quirk or that Clockwork was somehow involved).

The Fenton's hatred for ghosts? Make it discrimination against the people who have quirks.

Danny being half-ghost? His quirk's fault. He calls it Ghost, for simplicity, it allows him to come back as a sort of ghost-like creature after he dies. Somehow, one day, he doesn't die completely so his body fixes it the only way it know how. Making him partially ghost.

Obviously that would mean that all the ghosts he fights aren't ghosts anymore. They're villains with quirks, and their powers would be based on what they can do on the show, minus the basic intangibility, invisibility and flight.

Obviously only Sam and Tucker would know he was Phantom and he had a quirk, he's also kinda the only one in town with one. People would be a little racist against quirk havers, but the kids, like in the show, come around to it. And actually start loving Phantom and thinking of him as a hero.

How do I fit Vlad in all of this? Ehm ahhhh this is the one thing I didn't think about. Very basic, but could give him a power similar to Danny, were instead of a ghost, he becomes a vampire. But his quirk is caused by an accident in college, so it's artificial.

Why does Skulker (who doesn't have a quirk. He's just a guy in a suit) hunt Danny? He has a very unique quirk.

Does Dani exist? I mean. Yeah. Cloning is not so farfetched, especially with the existence of quirks.

Clockwork can control time, he involuntary does that being a child, then an adult then an old man thing. The Observants are people without quirks that keep him in check, an organization that made a pact with him to stay young forever or something in change of idk what. No idea what Clockwork would get out of it I won't lie. Money maybe? Or somehow they found a way of keeping him there against his will?

Walker (and I'll make a seperate post about this) is an ex guy in white. Yes they still exist, but they hunt quirk havers instead of paranormal stuff. Walker was kicked out because he actually has a quirk but lied about it. He's after his own kind in the show as well. I mean, he's a stickler to the rules, but he only ever seems to care when it's ghosts that brake them. Correct me if I'm wrong, but never has he punished a human. His quirk is making semi-sentient minions. They're not copies of himself. They're like clay humans with basic forms. They all look alike and have no special characteristics.

Frostbite is just... A yeti. With cryokenisis. It's a mutation type quirk.

Same goes for Wulf, he's just a humanoid wolf that can create teleportation portals. I can't think of a reason why he would only speak Esperanto though. It could be something similar to Five from umbrella academy. He accidentally got stuck in the 1600 as a kid and managed to come back only relatively recently.

I feel like all the other ghosts have obvious powers.

Cujo can become ginormous,

Technus can control technology,

Dora and Aragon can become dragons,

Jhonny gives people bad luck and can control his shadow,

Kitty can make man disappear,

Ember can mind control using music,

Spectra can use people's negative emotions to stay young,

Bernard has shapeshifting,

Youngblood can't be seen by adults (side effect: can't grow old) and his sideckick has a variant of shapeshifting where he can only transform in animals. A definitive father figure),

Box ghost can control boxes,

Pandora can control the plagues of the world,

Desiré can make people's wishes come true,

Sidney can swap bodies with people,

Undergrowth can control plants,

Pariah Dark- I... Actually don't know...

Lunch Lady can control food,

Aaaanndddd no more come to mind.

I want to do something with this AU but I can't really think of an interesting story, other than "kids from 1A get misplaced in time and Danny has to help, discovering the existence of Clockwork and the Observants, whom he hates. So he tries to get Clockwork out of there with the other kid's help" but that's it, really.

I actually have a 3rd idea, but it basically works the same as the MHA one. Crossover with the X-Men.

Substitute quirk havers with mutants and quirks with mutations and you get the idea.

The plot would be more of a "Danny gets recruited by Xavier after the trauma of almost dying activated his mutation and goes to live at the mansion. This happens after the events of season 3, alla salted to make sense in the world of Marvel, but without Phantom planet. He makes friends there, since Sam and Tucker aren't with him and everything is fine and dandy and happy. Until it comes out that the Fentons actually contribute to the creation of the Sentinels, because they hate Phantom that much.

So Danny has to infiltrate his own family to get info on how the Sentinels work so they can destroy them, since his parents are still oblivious and they made it so that the Sentinels wouldn't attack Danny thinking that his accident just somehow make him register as a mutant on machinery" and that's it.

#danny phantom #my hero academia #crossover #danny Phantom and my hero academia crossover #danny phantomxmyhero academia #wanna write #marvel #X-Men #danny Phantom x X-Men

94 notes · View notes

ghostgothgeek · 3 years

Text

Pull.

My first for the Phic Phight! 1,685 words.

Danny's been summoned. But not by who you'd expect. In fact, not by an actual person. Prompt by Greyheartwriter.

-----

Danny had been summoned before. Or rather, Phantom has. Usually by Sam, with Tucker occasionally tagging along. Typically when he was grounded. His two best friends always got a kick out of it. Grounded or not, they were going to hang out with their friend, especially when he insisted he should probably stay home “just in case”. He hadn’t gotten caught yet, but there have been a few close calls. Regardless, summoning Phantom was one of the rare moments the trio had to goof off and be regular teenagers. Well, regular enough anyway.

Danny sat with his elbows on the desk, hands gripping his hair in frustration. Falluca had assigned a large problem set to be done overnight. Like Danny didn’t have anything better to do - rest, catch ghosts, nap, hang with his friends, sleep. At 10:30 pm, he was almost done, he was just stuck on this one problem. He thought about calling Sam and asking for help, but he really wanted to try getting this on his own first.

He grabbed his pencil and tried writing out the problem for the 400th time when he felt the pull. “Oh no,” Danny muttered and looked around his room before trying extra hard to focus on his math homework and not the pull. It always failed, but he had been trying to train himself to ignore the pull. “Not. Now.”

Danny put his face closer to his paper and tried to focus, but the pull was getting stronger now. Ugh, why him? Why can’t people summon other ghosts? Well, that could get ugly and dangerous real fast, but come on! He was gonna kill Tucker and Sam. Or maybe…

Maybe his friends were struggling with the same problem as him and they wanted to put all their brain power together. But they could have just called. Regardless, he was still resisting the pull.

The pull was just a feeling of needing to be physically somewhere else. Or it started out that way, anyway. It was like holding your breath and forcing yourself to not hiccup again. You could try to deal with it absentmindedly, but usually it was all you could focus on until you were satisfied. And that’s where Danny was at now, the pull was beginning to consume all of his thoughts, it was beginning to cloud his brain of anything else. He gripped his desk as he felt another strong pull. Whoever was calling him had done it at least 3 times now. Again, Danny tried to focus on his paper.

Another pull, and Danny’s vision became cloudy. He felt anxious. He needed to be somewhere. What about math homework? That was supposed to be his top priority, they had a test on Friday. He gently started shaking as he tried to refrain.

He fell out of his chair at another pull, another call. Fuck it. He couldn’t hold on anymore.

He sighed, took a deep breath, and focused on the pull. He felt immediate relief as he answered. He felt the familiar feeling of following the call, like riding a waterslide or a rollercoaster in the dark. You had no idea where you were going, you couldn’t see anything in front of you. You didn’t know how long the ride would last and you had zero control. You were just being forced in a different direction, sometimes feeling the whiplash of the unexpected.

He could feel his core becoming colder. He felt his transformation into Phantom, and soon enough, the blackness was beginning to fade, and he tried to gather his surroundings. “Sam, Tucker, if it’s you I swear I’m gonna-”

Oh, OH. This was new. Danny didn’t even know that this was possible. He guessed it made sense though. Maybe Ouija boards were like cell phones in the Ghost Zone. Ghosts had to get a hold of each other somehow.

He turned his body as he slowly looked around. He didn’t know this part of the Ghost Zone. He didn’t even see any ghosts around. He started to panic. He didn’t know where he was, or who called him, or if anyone even actually called him at all. Was this some new stupid ghost power he had to learn to controll again? He just figured out how to keep his pants from falling down when he tried to flirt with girls. Not important right now, he reminded himself. He formed a small ectoball of energy in his hand, preparing himself for any attack.

But no attack came. Instead, he just felt a little nudge at his feet. Looking down, he sighed and dropped his ectoball. “Really?” He glanced down at his caller. “First of all, how did you even learn to do that?!”

Headbutting his ankle was the small green fluffball nicknamed Cujo, in his puppy form. To answer Danny’s question, he used his nose to nudge the planchette on the board, moving it around until Danny began to feel the pull again, though this time the pull wasn’t as strong because he was already in his destination.

Danny chuckled and scratched the pup’s ear. “What’s up buddy? I gotta finish my homework.”

Cujo barked and wagged his tail ferociously, sticking his butt up towards the air as he bounced around. Eventually, the dog dragged his squeaky toy towards the halfa and barked again.

“I can’t play! I have to finish my homework so I can try to get a few hours of sleep in a row tonight. Sorry dude, but no.”

The puppy’s excitement level deteriorated quickly. He let out a little whine, and gave Danny his best puppy dog eyes. Danny sighed as he rubbed the back of his neck. Cujo was adamant on playing, that much was clear. He called him 6 times already, what was going to stop the pooch from doing it again until he got what he wanted? Maybe just for a few minutes…

Cujo’s tail began wagging again as he could see Danny caving in. “Alright, alright. I needed a break anyways.” He formed another ectoball and threw it as hard as he could. “Go long, Cuj!” He smiled as the pup darted after the ball at lightning speed and stretched his muscles for the few seconds it took for Cujo to return with the ball. The pup barked excitedly.

Danny smiled, he always wanted a dog anyway. He threw the ball for Cujo for another few minutes, before playing tug of war and teasing the dog with the squeaky toy. “Who’s a good boy?” Danny said in a voice only reserved for Cujo and other animals (except for Sam’s pet snake...he couldn’t use his little baby voice on that thing, it was too weird). He rubbed the dog’s belly, laughing when Cujo’s back leg would twitch in response to the belly rubs.

The phantom yawned as he laid down on the ground next to the pup, using one hand to prop his head up and the other to scratch Cujo’s chin. “I’ll admit, you are making me feel more relaxed.”

Soon enough, Danny was snoozing with the little puppy curled up into his side, snoring softly. Though, the moment of peace didn’t last more than 15 minutes as Danny woke up to the feeling of being pulled again. He groaned, gave Cujo a little kiss on his head, and answered the new call.

Sure enough, he was in the middle of Sam’s room, falling to her rug as he was still too drowsy to make a better landing. He heard Tucker’s laugh and jolted up, shaking the remaining grogginess out of his head. Danny groaned, “what?!”

“Look who woke up on the wrong side of the...rug…” Tucker tried. Danny could feel Sam rolling her eyes as she offered him a hand so he could stand up.

Danny couldn’t help but let out a low growl, “Tucker…”

“We’ve been trying to call you for 25 minutes already! Guess you didn’t have your phone on you. Thank the goddesses for Ouija boards,” Sam stated as she straightened out her skirt.

“Why? What’s wrong? Is there a ghost?” Danny examined her room, making a face at the snake that he swore was glaring at him.

“School starts in 4 minutes, dude,” Tucker explained as he grabbed his backpack.

“You gotta fly us to your house to get your stuff then fly us to school, and maybe we won’t get detention this time,” Sam put her backpack on as well.

“Ah, fuck,” Danny quickly grabbed his friends’ arms and flew as quickly as he could to his room, grabbing his backpack and flying to school. His parents were already in the lab working on stuff, and Danny doubted they even noticed he was missing and almost late for school. A bomb could go off in the town and they would be so immersed in their work that they wouldn’t hear it. His overattentive sister, on the other hand, had apparently been trying to get a hold of him for an hour now, only stopping when Sam texted Jazz that they had Danny with them.

The trio landed in the bush as the first warning bell rang. Danny transformed and they ran into the school together, making it to their homeroom late, but for once luck was on their side as the teacher wasn’t paying attention...her car alarm mysteriously went off.

Danny pulled out his notebook and realized he still had to finish that math problem. Shit.

He turned as Sam tapped his shoulder, handing him her homework. He smiled gratefully.

“Don’t worry, Tucker had to copy mine too. That problem took me 5 hours to solve. You both owe me.”

Danny sighed in relief and nodded. He had 10 minutes to copy this down, and it was two pages long. It should be a crime to assign problems that long. He pulled out his pencil and started scribbling down the solution when he felt it.

Another pull. Damn that dog. No, he loved Cujo. Damn that Ouija board. “Remind me to find Cujo a puppy friend,” the halfa muttered to his friends.

#phic phight 2021 #danny phantom #stephanie writes sometimes #danny fenton #sam manson #tucker foley

154 notes · View notes

constellaj · 3 years

Note

Please talk more about your reboot!

16: If you could change anything in the show, what would you change?

okay so how i would re-do CANON is completely different from how i would talk abt a reboot so im gonna touch on a couple things in both contexts! the reason for the difference is canon rewrites imply i can go back in time and introduce dp fresh and new, before anyone knows what it is; but for a reboot, id be working with an audience that has a better understanding of the source material, so i dont need to spend as much time explaining, but i also need to keep everything recognizable

Valerie

REWRITE: i would def make it more danny's fault that her dad lost his job, like danny was intentionally being reckless and shattered some security stuff, and he has a whole mini lesson about learning to not just run in guns blazing. i would probably remove the dating stuff with her and danny (and tuckers crush) too, I think them wanting to be good friends is good enough for freshman year

REBOOT: the fandom already knows valerie exists, so i would actually skip the whole shades-of-gray introductory episode and have her be present as the huntress from day 1-- probably even before danny got his powers. cujo is also HER dog, and her backstory-- we'd find out in like, season 1, that a natural ghost portal (maybe one wulf opened) ripped open on her dog and killed him, and since then shes had a vendetta against ghosts cause of how reckless they are and their disregard for life-- of course, cujo isnt actually dead. cujo is a halfa. a puby halfa. anyway instead of a hoverboard she actually rides cujo around cause he can fly and its big and epic. valerie has BEEN amity parks ghost-eradicating superhero for at least a year (tho shes been in the shadows abt it) and her hatred towards danny actually just becomes really petty, like them flying next to each other chasing skulker just going "I got this. no I got this. no I got this" and they just get in each others' way and its a mutual grudge.

BOTH: i am NOT keeping in vlad giving her the suit to watch danny under any circumstances. it was only utilized half assedly in canon (when vlad couldve just had an invisible duplicate watching him instead) anyway, and I dont have any reason to keep it in a reboot either. instead i want her tech to be a combination of half-stolen and half-gerryrigged stuff and she slowly slowly learns how to build her own.

I also dont want anyone knowing her secret identity, except maybe her dad, and sam or tucker. i think it works better if danny isnt privy to this magic info

Freakshow

REWRITE: i would honestly just remove him. the episodes hes in arent particularly interesting, theyre just generic "we need a plot about x" filler and he's not compelling enough a character (at least in writing) to carry a better plot that another antagonist couldnt. i'm serious

REBOOT: unfortunately in a reboot he's gonna have to pop up somewhere or else ppl will be like "where IS HE" so I'm going to stick with running some kind of ghost circus, maybe a few occult things, but cut out a lot of the spooky magical knowledge and mcguffin stuff. maybe i could make him like, someone from vlad/jack/maddies college who always felt pushed around by them and so he has a vendetta? and theyd be the only reason he even learned abt ghosts in the first place. idk in either way I want to force him into being irredeemable but also include LYDIA (the tattoo girl ghost) way more-- I want to give her an arc that ends in her tossing freakshow aside and running off to be a ghost vigilante.

BOTH: dear god the infinity gauntlet is stupid that needs to GO AWAY. especially for the reboot cause it would exist in a post-mcu world and way too many people would complain about it

Vlad

REWRITE: amp him up to a far more sinister and villainous character. the crushing on maddie isnt enough, I want to show him on-screen performing experiments on ghosts and himself, dismissing everyone else cause he thinks hes smarter than them. i want him to be actively sabotaging the fentons at every turn. i would also clarify that he doesnt actually want danny as a son, but as a trophy-- a line where danny says something along the lines of "you don't want a son. you want a slave". i want to make him a character who wants to destroy the entire planet and put it in the ghost zone so he can be the true ghost king and i want to make this all evident from day one. if i'm writing a series villain you can bet i'm going to write a GOOD one. less petty drama here and more actual stakes.

REBOOT: it seems silly but sense with reboot we have the benefit of hindsight and recognizing that vlad wasn't a big series villain, theres no way i'd actually go back and write him to be such. for starters, of course, theres the fact that anything he does would really be an exaggerated part of the original, and it would bore an audience to see the same story again-- theres also the fact that it doesnt seem right to take a character who was treated as a joke half the time and suddenly make them big and important. no, instead for my reboot i want to lean into the petty gay uncle vibe. he had a crush on jack and now just casually insults him. he moves mansions every now and again by just haunting the family who lives in the one he wants, and taking over-- i mean, who is gonna believe that an actual ghost haunted you. he dislikes danny not because he has some concept of 'evil' and 'good' but bc danny is just too damn active. of course he actually does care about danny and his safety deep down, it's just on the surface they have very conflicting motivations-- not to mention that danny has been raised on legends from his parents of the villainous Wisconsin Ghost, who has to be stopped at all costs.

BOTH: i want jack and maddie to KNOW he's a half ghost and to actively be hunting him down for it, maybe bc they think hes possessed, or been a ghost tricking them this whole time, or the victim of a tragic lab accident who needs to be put to rest, etc. whatever the case it will give vlad actual tangible reason to despise them and genuinely suspect they dont have dannys best interests at heart. i think it would be neat if vlad was cynical and every time danny hit him with the "I'll expose us both. at least theyll still love ME" vlad could be like in the back of his head "oh god theyre going to kill this child"

Dani

REWRITE: cut her out. we don't need her character at all. maybe replace her with a more ominous shadow duplicate / clone that actually looks like danny himself and doesnt really have a name? you could probably combine her and dark dans characters for their arcs

REBOOT: instead of a clone from vlad, she's a guys in white creation using some of dannys dna after he was captured (and vlad broke him out bc he was like "ugh i guess i have to save this child")

BOTH: vlad actually cares abt her (duh), shes nonbinary (double duh), she gets the funny dissolve into goo powers

i had more i thought i was gonna write but this post is already very long and also im running out of coherency for this LUL

#ask #danny phantom #long post #adpRewrite

88 notes · View notes

ecto-american · 3 years

Text

The Other Side

Phic Phight Oneshot for Kiinotasha and KC: (AU) Born a halfa and raised in the Ghost Zone by his mother, Danny struggles with his human identity when a permanent man made portal appears in the Ghost Zone.

On AO3 and FFN

-------------------

Danny never questioned his life until that man made portal spawned. He never forgot when he first saw it six years ago while playing with Youngblood.

Naturally, they were playing aliens and spacemen, Danny's favorite. Earlier in the play session, they had found it, and it was deemed part of their spaceship. It was just a metal outline, an octagon. Thick enough that they could sit, and they pretended that the limited space was the entrance. Obviously on the left side was space, and the right side was their ship. Eventually their moms called them home, and during dinner when asked about his day, he told his mom about it.

She frowned, and she asked him for more details. Having played on it all day, he described it perfectly. His mom paled, and she forbid him from going there again, but she didn't expand on why.

He saw no reason to be afraid. It was just a metal shape. There were far more dangerous places in the Ghost Zone. So the next day, he told Youngblood about his mom's weird reaction. His mom had reacted the same, but didn't say why. His dad explained that it was dangerous, but not what about it was dangerous. Danny didn't have a dad, but he was sure that if he did, he probably would have said the same thing. But neither child could get it. What was dangerous about a shape?

So they just played with it again the next day, and they lied to their moms about what they did.

Two years later, another ghost had join to make them a trio. Her name was Box Lunch, and she was honestly a lot of fun. But she was still a girl, and they didn't tell her about their secret fun location until they were sure she didn't have cooties. When they showed her, she instantly knew what it was.

"That's a ghost portal!" she exclaimed. Youngblood and Danny thought she was stupid. Ghost portals didn't stay anywhere permanently. They opened and closed at random, when the human world and Ghost Zone would temporarily merge and allow for a rip to tear. But it always mended back together quickly.

"No it's not," Youngblood scowled. Box Lunch made a face at him.

"Yeah-huh!" she insisted. "My mommy and daddy get into the human world all the time! She said some people there have been trying to make a permanent portal to here!"

"Nu-uh!" Youngblood argued. "My dad said that humans wouldn't do that, they're more afraid of us than we are of them!"

"Yeah-huh!" Box Lunch said more forcefully. "My parents were human once, they said that people constantly wanna hunt us in the human world! And that they're coming here!"

"If they're afraid of us, then why come here?" Youngblood challenged.

"What else would it be?" Box Lunch asked, crossing her arms.

"It's a weirdo ghost's lair!"

And as they bickered back and forth, Danny had remained quiet. He didn't know how to feel about any of this. His friends often forgot that Danny wasn't just a ghost. He was also human.

Not that he was a ghost who was once human, that died. He was both, and he always had been. Born that way, according to his mom, because his dad was human. Danny didn't know too much about him, and he never really thought to ask.

He knew that his name was Jack, and how he looked like. His mom had hung a photo of him in his room so that he'd know; blue eyes, black hair, with a square jaw and in a distinctive orange jumpsuit. The orange suit always reminded him of the blue one his mom wore underneath a lab coat. She said he looked just like his dad when he was in his human form, and he could absolutely see it. Though as a ghost he had white hair that he seemingly inherited from nobody, with his mom's light blue skin and yellow-green eyes. As a ghost, he matched with a black jumpsuit, though as a human, he preferred regular clothes.

Most ghosts had learned of Danny's true nature early on as the news slowly spread when he was born. They loved him and accepted him as one of them. He could go out into the Zone as a human, but it always felt weird. So he was always a ghost.

That night, as he got tucked in for bed, he decided to bring the metallic object up again.

"Box Lunch said that the big metal shape is a permanent ghost portal," he blurted out. His mom stared at him with wide yellow eyes, and so he knew that Box Lunch was actually right. "Is it?"

She sighed, sitting on the edge of his bed.

"I believe so," she confirmed. Danny sat up.

"Is that why you don't want me going near it?" he asked.

"Yes," she replied. Danny cocked his head curiously.

"But if I'm also human, wouldn't they be okay with me?" he wondered. His mom paused for a long, long time. "I'm also one of them."

"I don't know, honey," she admitted. He could tell that she did know. She kissed his forehead. "I'll talk to you about it when you're a little bit older, okay?"

"Promise?"

"I promise. Now good night, sweetie."

It was four more years before it really became relevant again. He had essentially forgotten about the unoperational portal as homeschooling, other friends, and general undead life had continued on for him and his mom.

Youngblood didn't age, since he was once human and died, and so as Danny got older, they hung out less. While Box Lunch, a born ghost, grew, he became distant from her too for unrelated reasons. Danny wasn't alone, however. For a while, he hung out with other ghosts who had died young before he met his best friend. He was a bit older than him when he had died, sixteen to his fourteen, but Johnny 13 (and his shadow) and him had almost instantly become friends and hung out nearly every day. Often his girlfriend joined them too. His mom also allowed him to keep a newly dead dog that had followed him home, that alternated from a puppy to a large hulking beast of a monster dog. Danny named him Cujo.

Ghost Writer provided lessons in the arts on Tuesdays and Thursdays for him and a few other younger ghosts, which did include Johnny and Kitty. On the other days, his mom homeschooled him in her passion: the sciences. His favorite memories were of him and his mother in her lab, doing home experiments and building a wide variety of things.

She indulged in whatever nonsense he wanted to build, which included but wasn't limited to: rock cannon, small spaceships, figuring out how they could grow potatoes on the moon like the man in the martian book did, using ecto energy to cook poptarts.

Often her friend, Technus, but better known to Danny as Uncle Nico, came by to do more of the tech-based stuff. Danny believed that Uncle Nico could do anything with technology. He was one of the ghosts that often went through the natural portals, and whenever he came back, he had something for Danny. Typically game consoles and games, but sometimes fun little useless knick knacks that Danny treasured deeply. He fixed those game consoles many times, and also showed him how to download and install cheats and mods to make them more fun.

And after a morning full of science or the arts, Danny would eat lunch then rush off to play with his friends, Cujo always on his heels.

Looking back, he never did much as a human. He had to resort to his human side to rest, or would default to it if he fell asleep. It felt weird being in human form amongst ghosts, and so he was just always a ghost. He never thought much about it, and nobody ever asked him to be a human around them. It was just how things were.

On the day he'd never forget, it was just him and Johnny. His girlfriend had opted not to come. Danny couldn't remember the original topic, but it made him remember the portal. As soon as he told Johnny about it, the two idly scratching Cujo as the dog slept in between them in puppy form, the ghost's eyes lit up excitedly.

"Dude! We have to check it out!" Johnny insisted.

"I dunno," Danny hesitated. "My mom said that I should stay away."

"Come on, it'll be sick! I've always wanted to go back to the human world," Johnny begged. "And you've never even been there, despite being half-human!"

Danny paused. Well, when you put it like that...

"Okay!" he agreed. He floated up from his seat a bit so he could untangle his legs to stand. Cujo immediately got up from his spot laying near them, tail wagging excitedly. "Let's go! I think I still know where it is!"

It had changed since he last saw it. It now had huge yellow and black doors in place of the previous blank space, and it seemed somehow bigger than he remembered it years ago. But it was unmistakably the man made portal.

Even now, he didn't get what would be too scary about it that his mom would encourage him to stay far away. It was just a door.

"This is so fucking cool," Johnny whispered as he touched the door. "Imagine...no more trying to hunt down a portal. We can just come and go as we please...seeing our lost loved ones...seeing my mom again…It's been so long...I dunno if she'd even remember me..."

Danny didn't say anything, but he did begin to think and truly wonder for the first time what his dad was like. His mom never talked about him, and he never really asked. He and his mom were happy, and he also had Uncle Nico. Was his dad kind? Did he also like science? Why wasn't he here? Did his dad even know about him?

"Do you think we can open it?" Danny asked. Cujo licked his fingers, and Danny scratched his head. Johnny glanced over his shoulder at him.

"I dunno," he admitted. His hand turned into a fist and he knocked on the door. "It seems really solid. I don't think we can just break it or something."

"Hm. Lemme see," Danny mused. He came closer, and he put his hand on the door. It was cold, and Johnny was right; it was metallic, just like the outer edge he used to play on, and it would not break easily. His finger traced the middle line of the two doors. "Hm. Maybe we can pry the door open."

"The humans made this," Johnny spoke. Danny stared at him. No shit. "No, no, I mean. Maybe you should do something to it as a human." Danny thought on this, and he shrugged. Couldn't hurt.

His transformation rings came and went, leaving him in his human state. He was just in a t-shirt and jeans today, and he stayed floating near the portal.

His hand had barely touched the portal when it opened for him.

Danny gasped in shock, jerking his hand back as it opened. Johnny had also jumped, going backwards a bit, and Cujo's fur went up as he barked. It fully opened, and he couldn't see anything but the green ooze. This wasn't anything like Uncle Nico had mentioned natural portals being like. They normally acted like a window you could see through. But it was an unnatural portal made by man.

"Maybe this isn't such a-" Johnny began, but Danny had already stepped through.

There was a weird in between area that shined bright blue that he never heard Uncle Nico describe. But in this in between, he could see exactly what the ghost had mentioned. He knew he was still in the Zone, but he could look out the portal into the human world like a window.

A man in an orange jumpsuit, with black hair that was graying, was sitting in a room that reminded him very much of his mom's lab. He was staring at the portal in confusion, likely because it had randomly opened, and Danny instantly knew who it was. He had no idea if his dad could see him, but he found himself rushing backwards, and back into the Zone.

The second he returned, he became a ghost again, and he silently began to fly away as he tried to process. Johnny asked no questions, only following, Cujo following them both.

That night, at dinner, he finally asked.

"What was dad like?"

His mom stared at him for a moment.

"Well, he was very sweet," she said slowly. "Very bubbly personality. Always went out of his way to help his friends." She smiled softly as she talked about him. "Adored fudge."

"Did he like science?" Danny wondered. His mom gave a short laugh.

"Oh boy he adored it. Not the best at it, but he had a lot of enthusiasm," he replied. "We used to do experiments together all the time."

Danny stared down at his food as he thought. He looked up to her, and he could tell that she already knew what he was going to ask.

"How come I never met him?" he wondered. She sighed.

"...He doesn't like ghosts," she replied. "Aspiring ghost hunter when I met him, actually. I was alive then. Had the same ambitions." At his shocked look, she laughed again. "I know, ironic. We had dated for about two years officially. But then...I died. It was winter, and I was driving late at night during a snowstorm. My car slid off the road, and into a river. And I died from my injuries. I found that I could disguise myself as human, and I was in denial. So I just...continued on."

"...Why?" he asked. His mom shrugged in defeat.

"I guess I just didn't want to admit that it was over. I hadn't done everything I wanted to do yet. I was still in college, and I felt like my life had been forcibly finished before it had even truly started," she admitted. "Jack had proposed, but I had declined. I was too afraid to tell him. He began pursuing ghost hunting more seriously as a profession and building weapons and portals. I found out I was having you, and he was so excited to be a dad. I began getting scared. I didn't know how long I could continue the lie. I didn't know how it all would affect you. Then the police found my car and body, and I knew I couldn't avoid the inevitable any longer. So I left. I had no clue how to face him, or even how safe you might be if we talked. Especially after you were born, and I realized that you were half ghost."

The more she talked, she more somber she became. By the end, she was sniffling a little. Guilt began to wash over him.

"Have you ever talked to him again? Like after I was born?" he wondered. She shook her head no. "How come you've never taken me to the human world?"

"I had considered it. But it's too dangerous," she explained. "Humans aren't like ghosts. If they knew that you were also ghost...you wouldn't wanna find out what happens."

"...Do you regret any of it?" Do you regret me?

She smiled softly despite the conversation.

"You were the best thing to ever happen to me," she told him. "I may have been very anxious about being alone, and how you may turn out despite it all. But you were born healthy and perfect in every way. You're absolutely the light of my afterlife."

Danny smiled back, feeling some reassurance. His mom stood up, leaning over to peck his forehead before picking up her plate. He heard Cujo scramble out from under the table, ears up in excitement.

"I think I'll finish this later," she told him. "I'm not too hungry tonight." She glanced down at the dog. "This isn't for you."

Cujo whined, following her as she put her plate in the microwave. Danny nodded, sparing a small smile to Cujo and ushering for him to come over. He slipped him a piece of chicken as his mom left.

Later that night, Danny couldn't sleep. He was too busy sorting out his rushing thoughts. He was of course still him. Nothing really changed, but there was this new growing emptiness. Danny was still Danny, but there was a whole other side to him that knew nothing about. It began to eat at him more and more. Who was this human side besides just human Danny who lived in the Ghost Zone? He didn't know.

He now wished that his mom had taken him to the human world before so that he could know. She did say that there was a risk in the humans knowing he was also a ghost, which he didn't get. The ghosts accepted him as one of their own, so why wouldn't the humans? He didn't get humans at all. And he needed to know more about them. He was one of them.

By breakfast, his mind was made up.

After an unusually boring lesson with Ghost Writer together, Danny immediately went to Johnny once their small class of sorts were dismissed.

"I have to go back." Danny couldn't breath for a moment. "I have to see what it's like. Like you said, I'm also human, and I've never been there. All my unlife, I've been a ghost, here, in the Ghost Zone. My dad's in the human world. And I need to know what it's like to be human. What it means. So I can maybe meet him one day."

Johnny nodded.

"I think I get it," he said slowly. "I'll come with you. Keep you company. I think I could pass for human pretty well, even if I have to say that I have some kind of sickly disease that keeps me pale."

Danny grinned.

"Thanks," he replied. "Come on."

It took no time at all to find the portal. Danny stared up at it, his breath once more stolen as he tried to think of a reason why he shouldn't go through it.

Nothing came to mind.

"It's okay if you don't wanna," Johnny said. Danny shook his head no.

"I have to do this," he replied. "I need to do this."

Johnny patted his back, and that was all the subconscious encouragement Danny needed to turn human and press his hand to the door. Once more, it opened. The fact that he's even able to open it made him know that this was something he was meant to do. He once again stepped through with Johnny right behind him.

#phic phight #the other side #my phics #phics #danny fenton #danny phantom #maddie fenton #johnny 13

99 notes · View notes