#ectoberhaunt obsession

[suretkerim]

Ectober Haunt – Obsession / Repression

#ectoberhaunt23 #ectoberhaunt science #ectoberhaunt obsession #danny phantom #ember mclain #forgive me my poor attempt at forget me nots

[ovytia-art]

Various dragon Dannys based on a few AUs for Ectoberhaunt :3

#these look longer than I expected cuz I do not do enough creature design lol #mothaganda #ectoberhaunt23 #ectoberhaunt #dragons #magic #dragon au #dragon danny #electric core au #moth danny #space obsession #creature design #dp #danny phantom #digital drawing

[five-rivers]

On Obsession and Free Will 4

The fourth chapter of this fic! Written for Ectoberhaunt 2023 Day 12: Obsession.

Warning for loss of agency.

Danny woke with a slow, syrupy kind of comfort.  He felt nicely weighted down.  He blinked his eyes open.  That would probably be because of the thick blanket draped over him.

“Clockwork?” he called.  

“I am here.  Stay where you are.”

“Mhm,” said Danny.  Not a difficult instruction to follow.  It draped over him in much the same way as the blanked.  

Clockwork loomed into his field of view, red eyes bright in the shadow of his hood.  “How do you feel?”

“Heavy,” said Danny.  “Tired.  My right shoulder feels kind of bruised, and so do my ribs.  I think I still have a bunch of scratches from Dan.  I feel… Good?  Happy?  Comfortable?”  He blinked a little at how thorough he’d been.  But why wouldn’t he be thorough when Clockwork asked him a question?

“Good,” said Clockwork.  

A sense of pleasure suffused Danny.  Clockwork said he did good!  Or that his current state was good.  Danny wasn’t sure.  

“You took care of me,” said Danny.  It made his thoughts feel bubbly with happiness.

“I did.  You sound surprised.”

“I was worried you wouldn’t,” confessed Danny.  “After you had what you wanted.”

“I see,” said Clockwork.  “Tell me, can you think of any circumstances where you would not obey me?”

Danny’s eyes fell halfway closed.  He could feel the walls of the box Clockwork had made of his Obsession.  They were firm, the joints and corners rounded.  He could push against them and feel them push back, an even pressure on his mental body.  He was not locked in so much as welded in, every escape closed, the box unopenable without the kind of force that would break the contents.  

He wondered if, as he grew more used to them, the walls would recede from his awareness.  

“If I didn’t understand what you wanted,” said Danny.  “Or if I couldn’t do it.  Or if you told me not to beforehand.”

“What if you interpreted my orders as being given under duress?”

“Like, someone was forcing you?”  Danny frowned.  “Can someone force you?”

“Perhaps,” said Clockwork.  “For the sake of this question and your answer, assume that it is so.”

“Well,” said Danny, feeling like he was trying to follow a line of thought made of razor wire, “I guess… if you were being forced, it wasn’t something you wanted to say?  So, I… I’d base what I was doing on what you’ve told me before and the surrounding context.”  The box felt very small right now, but he was still inside it.  The walls pulsed comfortably around his swollen thoughts.  

Clockwork smiled faintly and patted Danny on the head.  “Excellent,” he said.  “Please get up and follow me.”

Danny wriggled out of his blanket and stood, unsteady, taking in the room for the first time.  It was a bedroom.  Nothing fancy, but obviously arranged for the maximum physical comfort of its inhabitant, for all that the walls were made of interlocking metal gears behind glass etched with patterns that put Danny in mind of antique clocks.  Everything was draped in dark, silver-flecked fabric, or piled with cushions.  There were bedside tables, and a desk in one corner, but they were oddly rounded, made of clockwork metal and wood, but covered in a thick layer of rounded glass.  The light in the room was diffuse, and seemed to emanate from somewhere near the ceiling, but Danny couldn’t find the source.  

Overall, it put him oddly in mind of the mental image of the box around him, his thoughts, and his actions.

“Is this your bedroom?” asked Danny.  

“No,” said Clockwork.  “It is yours.  Do you like it?”

“Yes,” said Danny.  “It seems comfortable.”

“Good.  You will be spending time here, in the future.”  Clockwork turned away, to a wall, and drew back a dark curtain to reveal the outline of a door.  There was no handle that Danny could see, but the gears in the wall rotated, moving a bar and a counterweight, and the door swung open on its own.  

Outside, the hall - if he could call it that - was similar, but the walls weren’t covered with glass.  There was only a little of the stonework Danny usually associated with Long Now, and he got the distinct impression that this was the lair itself revealing some truth about itself to him.  

They came to a wider space, where at least the floor was covered by another, continuous material.  The room was filled with cabinets, shelves, and long tables.  Worktables, Danny thought, seeing the tools and small objects that rested on them.  The workspace was, overall, much neater than his parents’ lab, back home.  

"We are going to run through some exercises to help you settle, before you return to Amity Park."

Danny nodded, grateful that he would be allowed to return.  Although he had tried not to dwell on it too much, he'd been aware that was a distinct possibility. 

On the other hand…  "What do you mean, 'settle?'" he asked as he followed Clockwork to one of the benches, where a clock case and inner workings had been neatly laid out.

“You have just gone through a major change,” said Clockwork.  “It will take some time before you become used to it.”

“It’s good, though,” said Danny.  “I like it.  I wanted it.”

“Even so,” said Clockwork.  “Do you not feel weaker, less steady than you usually are?”

“I…”  Danny hesitated, thinking.  “Yes.”

Clockwork nodded slowly.  “That is only to be expected.  Even good changes can cause stress and strain.  You must be settled, before any other alterations can be made.  Sit.”

Danny took the indicated seat, across the table from Clockwork.  “You’re going to alter me more?” asked Danny, intrigued by the possibility of being shaped into something even more helpful.  

“Perhaps,” said Clockwork.  

Danny pouted slightly at the nonanswer, but he knew that Clockwork must have his reasons.  Not telling him must have benefits.  

“These exercises will help you become more used to your new configuration, more confident in it.  Now.”  Clockwork folded his hands on the table.  “You are going to help me build this clock.”

Danny’s core thrummed to attention.  “How?” he asked.  

“You will pay close attention to me, my instructions, and the materials you are working with, and nothing else.”

The rest of the world went fuzzy.  “Yes,” he said, and even his own voice felt distant.  

“Excellent.  We will begin with the casing…”

.

.

.

Clockwork let him take the finished clock back to his room at the end of the exercise.

.

.

.

For the next exercise, Clockwork set Danny to work on a small, but somewhat overgrown and neglected, bonsai tree.  This time, however, he did not give Danny explicit instructions on its care, but told him to find the information in the library, gently prompting him to look at more than one source before deciding what to do with the tree.  

Danny had never found books so interesting before.  He’d had no idea that making Clockwork part of his Obsession like this would have such wide-reaching effects.  

It took a while for Danny to get all the information he needed, but he did, and he trimmed the bonsai down to size, watered it, fertilized it, and bent the branches into a more aesthetically pleasing shape.  

Like the clock, the bonsai tree made its way to his room.  

.

.

.

For the third exercise, Clockwork presented him with a blank book and told him to record a detailed history of his life, up until that moment.  

Danny had hesitated, then.  “There’s a lot I don’t remember,” he admitted, even as the need from his Obsession seemed to crawl into his brain to unearth memories he hadn’t known he had.  

“Yes,” said Clockwork, his tone prompting.  

“Will you…  Will you help me?  With the things I don’t remember, I mean.”

“Yes,” said Clockwork.  “I will show you how to operate one of the simpler time screens, but you must never use it without my permission.”

Danny nodded, enthusiastically.  He liked these exercises.  He was learning so much.  

.

.

.

Unlike his other two products, the book was whisked away as soon as he’d finished it, disappearing into the folds of Clockwork’s robes.  Clockwork then presented him with a tiny vial, no larger than the smallest bone in Danny’s smallest finger.  

“What is it?” asked Danny, tilting the vial to the side.  The contents looked like water, but there was something about it Danny couldn’t quite put his finger on.  

“Waters of the Lethe,” said Clockwork.  “Diluted.”

“Am I supposed to drink it?” Danny asked, staring up at Clockwork.  The vision of Clockwork as a giant flitted across his memory again.  

“People are not supposed to know their whole history.  This will only abstract your memory of what you learned here, from the time screens, not your entire memory.”

“I would drink it even if it did,” said Danny.  

“I know,” said Clockwork, “but for now, you need only drink this.”

Danny put the vial to his lips without hesitation, and swallowed the water inside.  He blinked once, twice, slightly disoriented.  “What next?” he asked.  

“Next,” said Clockwork, thoughtfully, “I believe you can go home.”

.

.

.

Danny returned to Amity Park as if he had never left, as if nothing significant had changed in himself.  He went to school, he fought ghosts, he talked to his friends, he played games, he helped people.  Always, he helped.  

And he visited Clockwork.  

Clockwork almost always had something for him to do, whether that was a big thing, like saving a city from destruction, a small thing, like moving a branch, a mundane thing, like studying, or a confusing thing, like being sent to a Renaissance-era party after gorging himself on strawberries with no other instructions.  And, the rare few times Clockwork didn’t have anything for Danny to do, he still treated Danny with gentle care.  

Like now.  Now, Clockwork carefully measured Danny's body, the width of his chest, the length of his limbs, the depth of his breath, the speed of his heart, the color of his blood.  Danny followed his instructions to move and breathe, to stay still, to cough and bleed. 

Clockwork patted him on the head, and Danny leaned into the touch until it turned into something more like a stroke, Clockwork’s hand tracing down to cup his cheek and the underside of his jaw.

“Do not grow,” he said, almost absently.  “Do not age.”

Danny still wasn’t used to the way his body itself would respond to Clockwork’s instructions.  How a few words from him could unlock abilities he would never be able to activate on his own.  A shiver swept over him as his very cells seemed to set themselves in place.  It felt good, of course, but it was also…

“That is still a little intense for you,” said Clockwork.  

Danny made a small, soft noise of agreement.  Despite himself, he was half dozing, leaning heavily on Clockwork’s hand.  Today had been very long, and he was so comfortable here, where the limits and guidance of his 

“I think a more thorough assessment of your physical state is in order,” said Clockwork.  

Danny hummed, questioningly.

“We are going to visit your friends in the Far Frozen.”

.

.

.

The yetis looked at Clockwork with suspicion, but did not stop him.  

“Hi, Frostbite!” said Danny, cheerfully, throwing himself at Frostbite.  Frostbite returned the hug, albeit far more gingerly than usual.  

“Hello, great one,” said Frostbite.  “Timekeeper.”

Clockwork inclined his head minutely.  

“I didn’t know you knew each other,” said Danny, watching the exchange with wide eyes.

“I have brought Daniel for a full physical,” said Clockwork.  

“We have a custom of seeing patients alone.”

"I am aware.  Daniel."

"Mhm?"

“Answer any question Chief Frostbite has.”

“Okay!”

“Truthfully,” Clockwork added.  

“Yes!”

Clockwork nodded. “I expect a full medical report.”

“If he wants us to give you one, it will be done,” said Frostbite.  

“I do!” said Danny.  Clockwork smiled faintly, and Danny’s core itself seemed to hum in pleasure.  He’d done the right thing.  

“Very well, great one,” said Frostbite.  He picked Danny up and carried him to the medical caves, where he started running through a standard checkup, asking Danny how he was eating, how he was sleeping, the last fight he’d been in.    

But Danny had a question of his own.

“You look upset,” said Danny.  “Why are you upset?”

Frostbite sighed.  “Great one…  Are you aware that you have been enthralled?”

Danny kicked his feet.  The examination table was sized more for yetis than for human-sized things like Danny, and he felt significantly childlike, sitting on it.  “Um, he didn’t use that word, but Clockwork pretty much explained what was happening to me while it was happening.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, he said he was,” Danny searched for the right word, “shaping me so that I saw doing what he wanted as the same as my Obsession.”  He tilted his head to one side.  “Is that wrong?”

“No, it seems that he did tell you what he was doing.”  Frostbite sighed.  

“But you think it’s bad that he did it in the first place,” surmised Danny.  “That he… enthralled me?  Even though I wanted it?”

“It is complicated.”  Frostbite made a chair out of ice, and sat so his eyes were level with Danny’s.  “Thralls do not typically see anything wrong with their status.  Many ghosts do not.  Many consider it a positive, or at least a neutral thing.  And I am happy, great one, that you have found a way to follow your Obsession that brings you joy and satisfaction.  But it is also true that thralls are mistreated, or outright sacrificed, frequently.”

“But for their Obsession.  Which is something they’d do anyway.  Clockwork isn’t like that, anyway.”

Frostbite sighed heavily.  “Not always for their Obsession.  The point is,” he continued, before Danny could again protest that Clockwork wasn’t like that, “thralls end in tragedy and suffering, more often than not.”

Danny tilted his head.  “What do you mean?”

“Any position where one person has power over another is open to abuse, and the greater the degree of power, the greater the potential for abuse.  We ghosts may be… constrained, somewhat, by what we are.  By our Obsessions, I should say.  But we are still people.  People who can make both good and bad choices.”

“Okay,” said Danny.  That wasn’t really what it had sounded like when he’d asked Clockwork about free will, but maybe this was just another perspective.  It wasn’t like Frostbite was stupid.  “Okay, but Clockwork really isn't like that.  He’s taking good care of me.  And our Obsessions are pretty similar, so I don’t think I’m just going to be sacrificed or whatever.  I get why you’re upset,” he added, quickly.  “I do!  I’d be pretty upset if I thought one of my friends was tricked like that and was getting dragged around for stuff that wasn’t even their Obsession. But it isn’t like that.  He even came here to make sure I was okay, didn’t he?”

“He did,” said Frostbite.  He still didn’t sound happy.  “For a full medical report.  Do you know if he plans to alter you?”

“He’s mentioned it,” said Danny with a shrug.  The idea of being further modified was thrilling.  

Frostbite nodded.  “Regardless, I will list the common side effects of thralldom.  Let me know if you are experiencing any of these.”

“There are side effects?” asked Danny.  “Wait, no, that’s stupid.  Of course there are.  I passed out when it all, um…”  He touched the tips of his fingers together.  “Clicked.”

“I see,” said Frostbite.  “Was this prompted by Clockwork in any way?”

“He told me to sleep,” said Danny.  “But I was definitely passing out anyway.  I’ve got a lot of experience with that.”

Frostbite made a hmm deep in his throat and made a note on a pad of paper.  Danny leaned forward, gazing at him in interest.  He found himself wanting to cuddle in Frostbite’s fur… Not something he normally did.  Even if Frostbite was very soft and fluffy.  

“One of the typical side effects is more animal behavior or features.”

“Oh,” said Danny, a thought crossing his mind, “are the vulture ghosts Vlad’s thralls?”

“I am unsure,” said Frostbite.  “I am unfamiliar with the ghosts you are referencing.”

“It’s not important,” said Danny, shaking his head.  “It’s just, I’ve always wondered why they do stuff for him, since he doesn’t seem to pay them, like he does with Skulker.”

“Have you experienced anything like that personally?” prompted Frostbite, gently.  

“I don’t think so,” said Danny.  

“Lack of interest in other methods of fulfilling your Obsession?”

“Nope,” said Danny.  “I’m still doing all my hero stuff.”

“Abnormal emotional states?”

“I’ve been really happy, lately, I guess,” said Danny.  “But not really, other than that.”

“Anxiety over the location of your thrall-holder?”

“Mm,” said Danny, thinking.  “Not really?  Maybe a little bit.  Clockwork isn’t really… someone who can be put in physical danger?”

“I see," said Frostbite.

“Difficulty understanding the world around you?”

“No,” said Danny.  “Not more than usual.”

“Core pain?”

“At the beginning, but not right now.  Clockwork did exercises with me, to help me settle.”

“Alright,” said Frostbite.  “It’s time for the more traditional scans and measurements.  Are you ready?”

“Yes,” said Danny.

.

.

.

Danny bounced over to Clockwork’s side, sucking on a lollipop Frostbite had given him.  A still unhappy-looking Frostbite handed Clockwork a thick packet of paper, which Clockwork vanished into thin air.  

“I’m ready to go when you are,” said Danny.  

Clockwork nodded, eyes drifting slowly to each of the frowning yetis staring at him.  

“I am aware that you are researching a way to break thralls,” said Clockwork.  

“It doesn’t work, does it?” asked Danny, thoroughly spooked by the idea.  

“No.  Not currently, no.  It isn’t something you need to worry about,” said Clockwork.  It wasn’t really a command or an instruction, so Danny decided not to think about it too much.  He had plenty of other things to think about, after all.  

"Are you going to try to stop us?" asked Frostbite.  

"No," said Clockwork.  "Your research is, actually, part of the reason I brought Daniel here today."

Frostbite’s eyes flicked between Clockwork and Danny.  

“I’m afraid I do not understand,” he said, finally.  

“And that is acceptable.  Come along, Daniel.”  He began to fly away, and Danny hurried to keep pace with him.

"Are you going to have me do that, if they figure it out?" asked Danny, worried again, despite himself.

"There are scenarios in which it may become useful.  I prefer to keep my options open, in these cases."

“But…  You’ll only have me do it if it’s more helpful?”

“Of course,” said Clockwork, ruffling Danny’s hair casually.  “I wouldn’t even consider it, otherwise.”

#danny phantom #ectoberhaunt #23 day 12 #23 prompt obsession #23 calendar science #eh23 #ectoberhaunt23

[half-deadmagicperson]

Ectoberhaunt: Obsession

"They think I'm crazy, Kyle! They say I'm obsessed, but I'm not obsessed! I'm perfectly normal, see?"

I was just in the mood for unhinged Wes.

#danny phantom #dp #wes weston #ectoberhaunt #ectoberhaunt23 #day 12 #obsession #eh science

[megamindsupremacy]

Day 12: Obsession/Repression

His first love was space

Time: 15 min

I love the dual obsession AU, where Danny's obsessions are both "protection" and "space", so obviously when presented with the opportunity I had to make a sequel to Day 10's "pseudoscience". Day 10, I made the Aquarius zodiac for Danny's birthday. This is the Leo zodiac for Danny's deathday- I couldn't find a canon date, but the general consensus was that it happened a few weeks before the start of his freshman year, so I went with Leo (July 23-Aug. 22).

Ectoberhaunt Masterpost

#mads posts #ectober #ectoberhaunt #ectoberhaunt23 #23 day 12 #23 prompt obsession #23 calendar science #eh23 #danny phantom #cross stitch

[ectoberhaunt]

Ectoberhaunt 2023: Science VS Magic

Dear Phandom new and old, sorry for the delay but this here is our 2023 theme and prompt list! Once again we've changed it up a little to make it a little easier on all of us, and to invite fun and mayhem Phandom wide! Prompts are once again Monday-Friday, with Friday being singular prompts, and weekends being (mostly) free as catch up days. The only real change is our new 'isekai weekend' on the 21st and 22nd, with two different sub prompts for the days. Isekai is a subgenre of anime in which a character ends up in a different place or world all together. It literally translates to 'otherworld'! The two prompts for this weekend are 'past prompt', where we want to see the Phandom use a prompt from either of our previous calendars. The other is 'portal shenanigans'. We highly encourage you to create crossover content and AUs you've wanted to play with. As always, our last prompt day is October 24th to make way for the Ectober Week event. This means our free days are the 1st, 7th, 8th, 14th, 15th, with the 25th-31st being @ectoberweekofficial's time to shine. Please tag all prompt fills as "Ectoberhaunt23", and follow the additional posting guidelines below!

Posting for this event begins October 2nd!

Down below are our written out calendar prompts (for accessibility) AND our posting guidelines. Check 'em out!

The Prompts

Below are the listed prompts in date order, if it's blank it's a catch up day. First prompt is Science, second is Magic!

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Tecnomancy vs Botonamancy

Black Cat vs White Crow

Aliens vs Zombies

Hunt vs Haunt

Tabletop

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Robots vs Dragons

Pseudoscience vs Occultism

Dread vs Calm

Obsession vs Repression

Horror Flick

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Revenant vs Death Echo

Blood vs Flesh

Unravel vs Intertwine

Claws vs Horns

Danse Macabre

Isekai: Past Prompts (2021 | 2022)

Isekai: Portal Shenanigans

Technus vs Magic

Science vs Dora Ectober Week!

coming soon

coming soon

coming soon

coming soon

coming soon

coming soon

coming soon

Post Guidelines

The following are the posting guidelines. Please follow them so we can reblog and share your posts without issue. We will also have this as a post available on our blog separately.

Tag all posts with “Ectoberhaunt23” so we can find it. If you do not use this tag, we may not find you.

Tag which calendar you're pulling from (“EH Science” or “EH Magic”), which day the prompt is for ("Day X"), and which prompt(s) you completed ("Eyes" "Teeth"). Example: #ectoberhaunt23 #EH science #day 5 #hunt Single day prompts, such as the ones on Friday, do not need a tag for which calendar it's for.

Put your fics under a readmore. Add a summary before the cut with a short preview, content warnings, and which prompts were used. Then, add a readmore no more than 150 words or 10 lines/groups of text under your summary. If you're using mobile, type :readmore: and hit enter to make a readmore. If you do not do this, we will NOT reblog your post.

Make sure to tag all common content warnings (blood, gore, death, drugs, body horror, existentialism, & vermin)

We will try to reblog every prompt we can. Feel free to @ us in the post too or send us a DM with the post!!

Feel free to shoot us an ask about rules/clarifications and any queries on prompts. Our discord is open as are our messages.

Here is a spreadsheet you can use to track your progress made by the talented @ajitated

Title graphic by @kawaiijohn | Calendar graphics by @ajitated

#danny phantom #ectoberhaunt #ectober month #ectoberhaunt 2023 #ectoberhaunt23 #eh originals #eh calendar #23 #mod technus

[goodfish-bowl]

Can Something Like This Really be Contained?

Ectoberhaunt 2023 Day 12: Obsession vs Repression

Danny and Vlad have very different coping mechanisms and it shows.

Ectoberhaunt 2023 Master Post

#ectoberhaunt23 #EH Science #EH Magic #Day 12 #Obsession #Repression #goodfish draws #danny phantom #vlad masters #it was originally just supposed to be Danny as something simple #but then I got lost in the sauce and Vlad's turned out EPIC #even if it did go through at least 3 different redesigns

[lollystocks]

The New Kid

Ectoberhaunt 2023 Day 3: White Crow

Summary: Danny continues to mind his own business whist freaking out everyone around him with his mere existence.

A short "Cryptid Danny" fic, with a twist.

Words: 509

CW: mild horror, mild body horror

---

"White Crow": a member of a group who is different from the rest. Elaya vorona (бе́лая воро́на) in Russian, kalāg-e sefīd (کلاغ سفید) in Persian. Similar to English's "Black Sheep".

---

The New Kid was exceptionally unnerving.

Friendly enough, if one got the chance to talk to him - which was kinda rare. He was territorial and kept to himself which, fair enough. But he never really seemed interested in getting to know anyone.

But despite being, on the surface, a pretty normal New Kid, there was something very wrong with him.

No-one could put their fingers on it at first. And no-one liked to talk about it. Because how could you talk about…that?

His eyes, for one. A nice, normal, luminous green for the most part. But when he was tired, or distracted, they would… they’d dull. Lose all traces of light, and just go empty. They’d flicker back on as soon as you’d caught it, and one might chalk it up to a trick of the light. He’d smile a normal smile, and you’d forget you’d seen anything. Or maybe, try to forget.

His teeth, too. A perfectly average maw of razor-sharp fangs. But he covered his mouth with his hand when he smiled or laughed. If one looked beyond that, they might see - or rather, sense - a jaw of blunt, flat, incisors and molars. Prey’s teeth. Mortal teeth.

But prey shouldn’t fill you with such discomfort. Should it?

He was probably just developing his shapeshifting skills early. That was probably it.

Youngblood swore he’d seen him drift through a wall, once. In the Ghost Zone.

Youngblood was hardly a reputable news source.

All the same.

Then, then, there was his voice. How sometimes (always when he was tired or injured or distracted) he’d talk and his voice would just… dampen. Vanish into nothingness. No echo, or reverberation through the ectoplasm around him. Nothing to carry his words through to other ghosts. And, once, again, everything would reset, and he’d be a normal ghost.

There was a theme - moments of flatness, dullness, of disconnect. Moments of mortality.

The worst one was when he would breathe. He wouldn’t even hide it. After a territorial spar (which he took way too seriously) he’d float there, victorious, and his chest would expand and retract like some wet, dying thing. Bodies weren’t meant to move like that. Not after death.

And it wouldn’t be so bad if he was weak.

Freaks came and went. There was enough variety amongst ghostkind that any one, or even multiple of these things, could be brushed off.

But the New Kid was strong. Stronger than any of them. He’d been around for no time at all and defeated every one of them in combat, even the strongest of them. His abilities were coming in fast, too fast, and he had too many. No ghost should have a portfolio that large, and know how to use their new powers so well.

He got better with every fight. 

They were training him, without realizing. Feeding him.

But there’s the rub. To back off, to withhold from indulging in one’s Earthly Obsession, to bow to his obscenely large territory? The thought alone was obscene.

And what would be the repercussions?

#ectoberhaunt23 #eh magic #day 3 #white crow #cw mild horror #cw mild body horror #fanfiction #cryptid danny fenton #pov outsider #just a good ole inversion of my favourite genre: #“holy hell this kid is creepy” #Danny with a mouth full of fries: #“huh?” #dp #dp fanfic #danny phantom

[ghostly-penumbra]

Ectoberhaunt 2023. Day Twelve

"Obsession/Repression"

Ao3

Warning: Implied/referenced death.

- - -

The people around him screamed, running with no real destination other than far, far away, but Danny didn’t move.

His hands shook, his knuckles white with how hard his fists were closed. Sweat ran down his forehead from the stress.

He did his best to keep his eyes open, but then a kid stumbled, letting go of his mother’s hand, whilst she was ruthlessly swept away by the crowd, and he couldn’t help but scream out, “That’s enough!”

He collapsed to his knees, heaving in deep, ragged breaths, and felt Clockwork wrap him with his cloak.

“It’s okay, Danny, you did good. That was a long time ago, not your fault nor your responsibility.” The Master of Time reassured him.

“They are all dead.” The boy choked out. “And I didn’t help them.”

“Everybody dies and you will not change that.” Clockwork told him firmly but not unkind. “And if you had tried to help them, I wouldn’t have let you.”

Danny ought to remember that; the world was not under his control and he didn’t want it to be.

He had to hold back on his protective urges, develop some restraint, otherwise someone cunning could manipulate him through it, again.

And for that, he needed to practice.

- - -

This is inspired by another fic, I think it was one of @/five-rivers'? I couldn't find it tho, and it's been a while since I read it.

#Danny Phantom #ectoberhaunt23 #Danny Fenton #Clockwork #death tw #ghostly-scrypts #day twelve #obsession #repression

[aprocessionofthoughts]

Ever Onwards

ectoberhaunt23 day 12- obsession TW- manipulation summary- Clockwork will do anything to get what he wants.

ao3 ectoberhaunt masterlist part 2 of SOT

Clockwork made his way to where the Council met, taking his time. He passed ghost’s frozen in the middle of their movements and he could sense the humans on the other side of the portal frozen as well.

He stood in the council room taking in everyone, taking in the faces of his… friends.

He stood in front of his King, staring into his worried face before pulling out a thermos and sucking the young King in.

He glanced once more around the room, at these ghosts he would never see again, and then he left, returning back to the Long Now.

Back in the safety of his lair, untouched by the flow of time, he set the thermos down and walked up to his row of clocks. He found the one he was looking for easily enough though it looked just like all the others. It was running behind the others, hands jumping forward and occasionally jumping back. He reached forward and pulled it out, replacing it with one of the many watches that hung around his arms. 

He stared at the precious clock, his favorite one. But there was no other choice, if this one were to stop it would cause a chain reaction that would destroy all the rest. 

He set it on the ground and with a heavy core, he brought his staff down, shattering it to pieces. 

The Realms shuddered, connections fraying and snapping. An unearthly screech was heard as the fabric of reality was torn.

Then like a collapsing star, the frayed edges of the Realms collapsed back together, threads knitting together all signs of the tear gone except for a faint shimmer where a timeline once was, where a dimension once stood. The Universe still stood intact, to destroy that would destroy the balance of the Multivers, but the space it had occupied was empty of life now, like a black hole, taking up space and holding an important position, making sure things still remained balanced. 

A whole section of the Realms gone, destroyed, everything that was, fading as the Realms repaired itself As memory was purged of what was destroyed. 

With a final shudder everything calmed.

It had all happened in less than half a second

There would be nothing left for his King to return to, no one left he had known.

There had been no other choice, if he had not erased the current reality, then all would be destroyed when the GIW attacked.

But Phantom would not die. Clockwork Loved him too fiercely to let that happen.

His obsession would not allow it.

The Ancients had also been spared. Clockwork Loved them too. And to destroy them could also destabilize the Realms. But their memories were purged just like everyone else’s. They would not remember Phantom beyond knowing that he was their King.

All that was left was to place his King somewhere new. He would come to forgive him eventually, Clockwork would make sure of it. But which reality would lead to the most favorable results? His eyes landed on a mirror that was nearly always blurry. All the other mirrors showed resentment towards Clockwork and he couldn't have that. Perhaps not knowing the future would make sure that Danny eventually came back to him and rose to the seat of power he was meant to hold.

#ectoberhaunt23 #ectoberhaunt #day 12 #eh science #obsesion #clockwork #danny phantom

[fandonnavyce]

Fic Masterpost

By Events

Ectoberhaunt 2023

Crossover Danuary 2024

DPxDC Ship Week2024 & Ship Week: After Dark 2024

Dannymay 2024 (upcoming)

Dead of Mayn 2024 (upcoming)

Invisiobang 2024 (upcoming)

Fandom Trumps Hate 2024 (upcoming)

Ghouls and Gangs 2024 (upcoming)

DPxDC, Dead on Main Series/AUs

My Love I Devour and it's sequel series, The Wild Hunt

Cinderella Wonderland

Everything is posted on AO3, not everything is cross-posted on Tumblr

Ectoberhaunt 2023

Day 2 - White Crow. Danny's a college student with some corvid friends. Dead on Main

My Love I Devour Series (In Timeline Chronology)

Day 4 - Zombies. Another Danny fixes Jason’s Pit Madness/Sick Ghost Core Fic, feat. the inherent homoeroticism of impromptu soul surgery. Rating: Mature. First in the My Love I Devour

Day 10: Occultism, Day 11: Dread vs Calm, Day 12: Obsession vs Repression, Day 13: Horror Flick - Sequel to Day 4

Day 17: Flesh, Day 18: Unravel vs Intertwine. Jason and Danny get down hot and heavy at a nightclub in the ghost zone. AO3 Series Link

Wild Hunt Series (Occurs post MLID)

Day 5 - Hunt. Ghost King Danny cordially invites you to the Wild Hunt, winner gets Constantine's entire soul - Danny's First Draft. DpxDc. First in the Wild Hunt Series

Day 19 - Claws. Danny needs Jason's brains (to write a royal invite) Sequel to Wild Hunt Part I.

Day 23: Magic, Day 26: Cults - The Ghost King summoning ritual is active for the first time in aeons. Constantine and Zatanna try it out and get more than they bargained for. AO3 Series Link

Crossover Danuary 2024 AO3 Link

Day 1 - Ben 10 Xover Tucker escapes Space Prison with the help of his two best friends

Day 1 - Another Ben 10 xover, the soft prequel. Ben meets an non-alien ET in a haunted forest

Day 2 - Atla Xover Hey, remember when Sokka got kidnapped into the Spirit World?

Day 4 - Cinderella Wonderland. A Cinderella and Alice in Wonderland Fandom Fusion but make it dpxdc, Dead on Main

Day 5 - The Owl House xover where The Collector becomes fast friends with a certain white haired girl on a day at the beach (Word of God part of the Cinderella Wonderland AU) AO3 Collection Link

DPxDC Ship Week and Ship Week: After Dark 2024

A continuation of Ectoberhaunt's Day17&18; it is the completion of part 3 of the MLID series. Can be read stand-alone more or less.

Part 1: Pleasures of the Flesh Ch 3

Part 2: Sweet Endings aka The Epilogue AO3 Fic Link

#crossover danuary 2024 #crossover danuary week 2024 #danny phantom #ben 10 #atla #dpxdc #dead on main

[alumbianchronicler]

EctoberHaunt 2023 - Oct 4

Science - Aliens

[Ao3]

Warnings: Cosmic/eldritch scope/imagery

Crossover: n/a

Summary:

After several years of preparation and planning, Phantom set out toward the stars.

He trusted his Council to rule in his stead, should anything go wrong in his absence, but he needed to get away for a while and find solace in the vast expanse of space.

And the final frontier holds wonders strange and beautiful, hidden within the obscuring dust of a dark nebula.

~~~

After several years of preparation and planning, Phantom set out toward the stars.

He trusted his Council to rule in his stead, should anything go wrong within the Infinite Realms in his absence, and if it came down to an emergency, he knew Clockwork could find him if his Mentor really needed to.

But he needed to get away, for a little while, at least.

As the humans he had been close to aged and died, leaving him immortal and alone, his tie to the Earth diminished, leaving his need to Protect aching. It was soothed for some time by turning his attention to the Infinite Realms themselves, but after a century of his rule, there was hardly the sort of conflicts which had necessitated his interference in the early days.

Restless and aching, he found solace in another Obsession, and turned his attention to space.

After discussing the matter with the Council of Ancients, it was decided that he would spend a decade among the cosmos, discovering what he could of the vast expanse of darkness and light, before returning to his throne. A bare blip of time in the grand scheme of immortality and the universe, but long enough to soothe his Core and help develop some of his more cosmic-oriented powers.

The depths of space hummed with the background radiation of the birth of the universe, occasionally interspersed by the roar of a star’s death or the ringing trill of a star’s birth. Sometimes, he could feel the blip of a gravitational wave, or the shivering numbness of passing through a gamma-ray.

After a year of drifting through a particular empty region, memorizing the locations of galaxies and nebulae, of pulsars and black holes, Phantom decided he wanted a closer look at one of the nebulae.

Choosing his target, a Dark Nebula which obscured any attempts to look into its depths, he parted the veil to the Infinite Realms and traveled, seeking out a corresponding location that would bring him out in the heart of the vast cloud of dust.

A nebula such as this was an old structure, full of the remains of generations of stars, evidenced by the presence of heavier elements and relatively complex molecules. From within it, the distant reaches of space appeared dark, obscured by the nebula’s bulk, though much like an Earthbound, water-based cloud, the nebula itself was much less dense from within than it seemed from a distance.

A few young stars glimmered inside the nebula, either surrounded by glowing disc-shaped accretions or a relatively clear ring of planetary space.

Near the center of the nebula, a super-massive, dull-orange star sat like a gravid Koi, its roar far deeper than that of the ringing, hotter, younger stars sitting toward the edges of the nebula.

Phantom floated aimlessly, observing the supermassive star. Fascinated as he was with it, he didn’t register a crackling static of radio-waves against his senses until flickers of light appeared in the corners of his vision. He spun, and the background pressure of radiation humming against his senses burst again into a crackle of radio-wave static. Something was there, within the nebula, calling to him.

Again, flickers of light flashed at him, mostly violet with occasional blinks of cyan and bright red, as radio-waves chittered at him in lower frequencies, nearly undetectable even with his ghostly senses.

A large shape was moving slowly through the nebula.

It was nearly the length of a blue whale, shaped like an exponential cone, the wide end at the front flaring out into a full circular structure almost like a sail. Overlapping plates of a glass-like material covered its body in a spiral beginning at the pointed tail and working frontward, and the distant starlight reflected from a violet-magenta liquid coating it. Within its translucent body, he could see shifting metallic shapes, organs perhaps.

He could feel a flow of energy coming from it, like when he had learned to hold a lodestone on Earth and feel the planet’s magnetic field acting upon it.

This… was an alien. Some sort of… nebula whale?

He flew closer to the organism, enraptured. Pulling on his powers, he gathered a small charge of icy power, glowing cyan in the darkness of space.

The flow of the creature’s magnetic field’s changed in response, becoming stronger as it moved so that he was positioned along one side of it, revealing a line of dark spots along its mid-point. Sensory organs, perhaps.

It continued moving slowly on its way, but as he flew alongside it, the radio-wave static and flashes of light (hydrogen spectra, he realized, recalling long hours spent poring over spectrum analysis of distant galaxies and stars) Ultraviolet, blue, blue-green, red. Its… skin was a layer of liquid hydrogen, and the light he was seeing was it using that hydrogen to produce different emission spectrum frequencies.

Did it mean something? Was it… some sort of speech? That and the radio-waves and the electromagnetic probing. Was this thing… sapient?

Breathless with more than just a lack of need for breathing and no atmosphere, he raised both hands. He had learned how to change the color of his ectoplasm not long after graduating high school, and…

One hand red. One hand just a bit more green than cyan. Green light. Red light. Green light.

For a few moments, the creature simply continued flying, then… a green flicker. A red flicker. A green flicker.

It was… well, he couldn’t say for certain it was sentient, let alone sapient. Perhaps it simply mimicked whatever lights hit it, instead of actually recognizing the attempt to communicate, but…

A purple light. Long. A shift up to a brief blink of red.

He didn’t know what it meant, but focusing his ectoplasm, he echoed it. Long purple. Short red.

Apparently it was as excited as he was, because its liquid skin erupted in an aurora of flickers, coinciding with a rush of staticky radio-waves, and he thought that if he focused, he could nearly make out repeating patterns within the waves.

This was… so much cooler than anything he had expected to find out here, and he was going to have to tell everyone and…

Unable to contain his exuberance, he flew in a series of loops, finishing by circling the creature, who seemed to track his movements with flickers of light following him along its skin.

A much stronger radio-wave static suddenly hit him, causing him to abruptly halt in his flight, flipping over backward to look for the source.

There was another one.

But this one…

This one dwarfed the largest of buildings he had ever seen on Earth. Dwarfed the pyramids of Giza. Dwarfed some mountains even, massive in its glittering, flickering bulk, the glass-like plates under its hydrogen skin creaking under its own mass and gravity. A massive cloud of dust surrounded it, collected by its personal gravity and sparkling like innumerable tiny fish around it.

Oh.

The first one was a baby. Or at least… was much, much younger than this glorious behemoth.

He watched it, noting the flickers of light along the flank facing the smaller one next to him, the elder having oriented itself so that its magnetic field was alongside them.

The young one, beside him, flashed back a sequence of lights.

The behemoth responded, with a rumbling undercurrent of radio-waves, and continued on.

With a quiet trill of static, the one next to him flew off, as well, turning away with a shift of its internal mass, its front sail catching a faint stellar wind and sweeping it off.

For several weeks, Phantom stayed within the nebula, observing the creatures. He saw several others, recognizing what he guessed was a greeting light sequence, and an acknowledging response, eventually picking up a few other flickered meanings.

They would share flickers of light and radio-waves, and continue on their way within the vast dust cloud.

Once, he witnessed a medium-sized one, nearly the size of a sky-scraper, gain speed until it appeared nearly comet-like with the turbulence of the dust it pulled along in its wake, before finally turning, folding back the silicate plates of its sail, and flying down toward the supermassive red star.

His Core thrumming in anxiety, he watched as the creature slingshot itself near and past the star, a glittering trail of… something left in its wake, falling into the upper atmosphere.

Was this… some sort of ritual?

Or… A star like that, cool enough to be relatively calm, would have an upper atmosphere dense in the dust particles that he suspected these beings fed on. A perfect nursery.

It had been laying eggs.

Or… spores.

Seeds?

Anyway… the star itself was their nursery. Quite likely, the newly-formed young would be pushed out of its atmosphere by the pressure of the stellar winds once they were large enough, sent off to find their way in the vast, dust-rich nebula beyond.

It wasn’t until he was nearly ready to leave the nebula and move on that he once again saw the behemoth.

It was flying directly away from the supermassive nursery star, though it had slowed down and seemed to have shrunk some. The plates of its silica shell seemed almost uncomfortably pulled inward by its own gravity as the massive cloud of captured dust still swirled around it like schools of minnows.

Phantom flew nearer, charging ectoplasm in his hands. He flickered Greeting. Worry. Question?

The creature rumbled at him in their staticky manner, and flickered a faint greeting back. Silence, then a series of flickers he had never seen. Three different shades of purple, with the last flicker fading away slowly.

He watched the fading flicker for a long moment, puzzling over its meaning.

Finally, it clicked.

It was dying.

The creature… was too large to sustain itself. It was collapsing under its own weight.

As it was collapsing inward due to its own gravity, the fragile structures of its body were pulled inward. Eventually, as its center was pressed in upon by the outer layers of its body, pulled in more and more strongly by gravity’s pull, it would begin nuclear fusion.

These creatures of hydrogen and glass, singing to the void in radio-waves and flickers of light, became stars when they died.

He remained by the behemoth’s side for another month. It didn’t speak much, its body creaking and slowly shrinking as its own gravity crushed it, but he rather thought it was glad for the company.

It continued its flight heading away from the nursery star, toward the edge of the nebula and away from others of its kind, preparing for death as it slowed more and more but still kept moving forward.

Finally, its silicate shell shattered inward.

In a flash, the creature collapsed then expanded into a massive ball of blinding light, pulling the cloud of dust that it had gathered around itself into a whirling cocoon of dust, the new star slowly integrating the material into itself.

He could barely see it for the obscuring dust cocoon once he flew some distance away. A protective adaptation, he supposed, to keep others from coming too close to investigate. Keeping the smaller ones who may get caught in the new star’s gravity from becoming too curious.

In a short time by cosmic standards, it would be shining clear and bright. Just another star in the vast expanse of the void. A ghost, like so many others.

Smiling in quiet, bittersweet acceptance, he pulled open a portal to the Realms and stepped through, ready to seek out another corner of the universe.

#ECTOBERHAUNT23 #EH SCIENCE #DAY 4 #ALIENS #DANNY PHANTOM #y'all #I spent about 2 hours just figuring out how these lifeforms work #I love them #so much

[five-rivers]

Dream Lantern Chapter 1

For Ectoberhaunt 2023 Day 5: Hunt.

The person who entered the small examination room wasn’t a doctor.  They weren’t even human.  

Danny, who had been hunched in the less-than-comfortable chair in the corner, waiting for the doctor to get to him, sprang to his feet.  “You!” he hissed, green sparking from his fists and his rings snapping into place and sweeping outward to transform him.  “You did this!”

At first glance, the person in front of Danny looked human, but that was only at first glance.  The ridges of their eyes curved smoothly, owl-like, into the bridge of their nose.  Their hair, too black, formed a widow’s peak so sharp Danny wasn’t sure it couldn’t draw blood.  They wore a black suit that was about ten times too formal and old-fashioned to even exist in Amity Park.  

But all of that could be brushed aside.  Sometimes people just looked or dressed strangely.  The real indicator was the eyes, which were red from lid to lid and faintly luminous.

“Yes,” said Nocturne, gloved hand touching their face as if to make sure it was still in place.  “Did you think someone else could have?”

“Put them back!” demanded Danny.  “Or I’ll–”

“Or you’ll do nothing,” said Nocturne.  “They are hostages, boy.  I’m sure you realize this already, or you would have attacked.” 

Danny bristled.  “What do you want?”

“Your help.”  They laughed, showing off teeth that were both too white and too sharp.  “You like that, don’t you?”

Danny scowled.  He couldn’t deny the way his core had twitched at the word ‘help,’ but even full ghosts weren’t mindless slaves that could be programmed and activated by their Obsessions’ triggers.  Besides, he had better people to help.  

Like Tucker and Sam.  Jazz.  His parents.  

They were elsewhere in the hospital, in comas so deep Danny couldn’t touch their minds at all.  The doctors had kept Danny here, just in case he was about to slip into a coma, too, but knowing that it was Nocturne, rather than just suspecting it…

He wanted to fight.  He wanted to force Nocturne to let them go, to wake them up.  

But… hostages.  

“With what?”

“With retrieving something,” said Nocturne.  

“And if I help, you'll bring them out of their comas?”

Nocturne lazily raised a hand.  “I swear it.”

“Fine.  What is it and where is it?”  If it was something dangerous, he could always sabotage it.  He had experience with that kind of thing.

“Oh, you mistake me, child.  I will retrieve it myself.  I only need you to accompany me to do so.  A being of your… nature is required.”

“What, a half ghost?”

“A creature neither alive nor dead,” said Nocturne.  “I think you fit that requirement quite nicely.”

The way Nocturne leered at him made Danny’s skin crawl.  He forced the ectoplasm swirling around his hands to recede and landed.

“Fine,” he snapped, again.  

Nocturne reached out towards his face and Danny swatted their hand away.

“I’ll go there awake, thanks.”

“Very well,” said Nocturne, still smiling.  They turned and opened the door.  It no longer led back into the hospital.  Nocturne’s form liquified, and they oozed through the door, gaining volume as they did so until they were in their massive usual form.  The one that could hold and crush Danny in the palm of a hand.  

Danny swallowed.  He hadn’t realized Nocturne could make portals like that.  He followed, and the portal shut behind him.  

Nocturne’s smile grew smugger.  They turned and made a sweeping gesture.  “Behold,” they said, “the Plain of Dreams.”

There… wasn’t much to look at.  There was a big island there, sure.  One large enough that the other side vanished into the horizon.  But the surface of the island was flat and gray, devoid of any point of interest except for size.  

“You live here?” asked Danny.  

“Once,” said Nocturne, almost wistful.  “But there is no time for reminiscing.  You have a role to play here.”

“Which is?”

“That of a lantern.”  Nocturne reached into the invisible folds of their robes and pulled out a glittering, golden, jewel-studded cage, one shaped like a lantern and floored with rich, plush bedding.  They pinched the door open and held it up in front of Danny.  

“No,” said Danny.  “I’m not getting in there.  If you need my glow or whatever for your thing, well, guess what?  I glow just as well out here.”

“It’s not quite that simple,” said Nocturne, circling him.  Danny turned, trying to keep eyes on Nocturne’s face and hands.  “You must be neither alive nor dead, awake nor asleep, willing nor unwilling.  Caged, but uncaptured.  Hungry, but full.  Complaisant, but steadfast.”

Danny’s skin prickled again.  He did not like this, and the fairy-tale-like phrasing was not helping his nerves.  “I don’t know that I’d call myself complacent.”

Nocturne chuckled.  “Different word, little ghost.  Or… I can seek out more friends of yours.  The girl in red, perhaps?”  They switched directions so fast Danny couldn’t keep track of them.  Their next words were whispered into Danny’s hair.  “She still dreams of you, you know.”

Danny flinched away, glaring, but he couldn’t hold Nocturne’s gaze for long.  He frowned at the cage instead.  He did not like it.  At all.  

“I get to leave at the end?” he asked, knowing full well he couldn’t hold Nocturne to that in any meaningful way.  Even Nocturne’s word that he’d let his family and friends go didn’t mean much.  

But what else could he do?  He’d already tried to wake them up himself, and he didn’t know what else Nocturne could do to them when they were in that state.

“Yes, yes, and I’ll wake your family.  We have already discussed this.  You are wasting time.”

“We hadn’t discussed this, actually,” said Danny.  “We’ve barely ‘discussed’ anything.”

“I can send them deeper,” said Nocturne, voice low and dangerous.  “Do you want that, child?  Perhaps their doctors will notice when they stop breathing on their own.  Perhaps not.”

Danny, core making an awful whining sound, raised his hands in surrender and flew into the cage.  Nocturne, moving swiftly, closed it behind him.  

The exhaustion he’d been holding back all day (or was it all week?  All month?  All year?  Since he died the first time?) poured over him.  Against his will, he sank slowly to the blankets and pillows at the bottom of the cage, clouds of golden dust rising around him as his weight settled.  His eyelids fluttered, and his vision became blurred, uncertain.  

Nocturne threaded their long, pointed fingers through the bars of the cage and pressed one against Danny’s chest, over his core.  Inky, starry blackness flowed from Nocturne’s finger and into Danny.  He could feel it being pressed into his core, and his core drank it in, growing colder.  His aura flared out involuntarily, to a brightness that was almost painful.  He groaned and tried to turn his head against one of the pillows.  

“That wasn’t so bad, now, was it?” asked Nocturne in a falsely sweet voice.  It echoed weirdly, the words warping around their edges, morphing into other voices, other conversations.  “A simple waking dream.  Look.”

With some effort, Danny raised his head as Nocturne thrust the lantern-cage forward.  For a moment, bright colors streaked dizzyingly across his vision, like fireworks and flowers, but then–

What lay before him was not the gray and featureless plain he had seen only moments before.  Instead, ringed by the golden haze of dreams was a vibrant forest, decked with vivid colors and bright flowers, brighter and more numerous than they ever would be in reality.  Or maybe jungle was a better word.  In the distance, majestic mountains rose from the middle of the jungle, tinted blue and purple, glittering cities of gold and crystal built on their slopes.  A flight of butterflies bigger than birds exploded from the near edge, and swooped around Nocturne and Danny in a rainbow whirlwind.  Some of them had wingspans longer than his arm.

“What,” Danny might have said, aware that his words were slurred into unintelligibility, if they were spoken at all, “is that?”

“The Dream Wilds,” said Nocturne.  

They reached into the cage again, adjusting Danny’s position so that he was halfway between sitting and lounging, hemmed in and supported by blankets.  They might as well have been chains, and even as that picture developed in his mind’s eye, it developed in reality as well.  Blanket twisted around his limbs and grew darker, the fabric taking on a metallic sheen.  Pillows grew heavier… but also softer, pulling him yet deeper into the half-dreaming state Nocturne had forced on him.  

He was, really, horribly comfy.  

If it wasn’t for his hazmat suit and its boots, Danny could almost be convinced he was bundled up in his own bed.  Then, he blinked, long, slow, and sleepy, and he wasn’t wearing his hazmat suit anymore.  Instead, he was wearing a set of pajamas that, if he’d seen them in the real world, would have sent him into paroxysms of envy.  They were a set, a button-down shirt and a pair of pants, the type of pajamas he liked the most.  They also were sewn with tiny star-shaped sequins in the pattern of real constellations.  

Danny knew they weren’t real.  Unfair.  

Nocturne chuckled and tugged on Danny’s newly-bare toes.  

“Don’t,” mumbled Danny, sleepily, not coordinated enough to twitch away.  “Let’s get this over with already.”

“Yes,” said Nocturne, gliding forward.  “Let’s.”

.

The Plain of Dreams was only the greatest of the many places in the Ghost Zone where the ethereal and otherwise elusive energies of dream gathered.  It had been tamed, once, and inhabited, brought to the kind of civilization only known in the dreams of visionaries.  Crystal cities of philosophy.  Hidden villages in perfect harmony with nature.  Utopias of justice, science, and art.  

But those realms were long gone.  When the rulers of the Dream Kingdoms saw the approach of Pariah Dark's armies, they ordered the caged dreamers on whose dreams the foundations of the cities were built woken and released, and their cities faded back into the wilds, and the wilds themselves faded and sunk into slumber until only fragments and memories remained.  

There were ways to navigate them, if one had the right tools.  Ways to access the Dream Wilds where they slumbered, still beautiful, rich, and powerful.  Even with those tools, however, the Dream Wilds were still immeasurably dangerous.  

Even in the Ghost Zone, there were few places where one could be destroyed by their own passing fancy.  

It had taken years upon years for Nocturne to find the lantern-cage, a relic from one of the Dream Kingdoms, traded to a traveler and sold on as a curiosity not long before Pariah took the throne.  Cages not unlike this, but far grander, had held the forever-sleeping dream-architects who had made up the foundations of the great Dream Kingdoms.  The only other Nocturne had ever heard of beyond the borders of the Dreamlands had been from their own collection, melted down to be reforged as part of the Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep.  

The success of that plan had made the sacrifice worth it, but Nocturne still resented it, and the lost opportunities it represented.  

All too often, Nocturne found themself dreaming of what would have been, if they had still had their own lantern-cage.  If they had been able to travel back, to reach the Dream Kingdoms before they fell to ruin entirely, to enter the great halls with a dreamer, and once again let dreams be true.  

But even dreams must bow to time.  

The cage was not all Nocturne needed, nor the only preparation they had to make.  Among other things, the cage was useless without the proper dreamer.  

The Dream Kingdoms had, for the most part, used volunteers.  Specially selected, educated, and prepared, quite literally pampered beyond the dreams of sloth, the dream-architects of old had been remarkable.  But even they were unlikely to have had the qualities Nocturne sought.  

And seek they did, searching high and low, throughout both the Infinite Realms and the human world.  But no matter what dreamer they brought to the Plain of Dreams, no matter how long Nocturne wandered, their lantern did not light the way.  

They had thought it must be a matter of power, and set to collecting dream energy from wherever they could, even going to the human world to gather it from living sleepers.  That particular endeavor did not go well, and they returned to the Realms with less than what they’d started with.  

But then they found that old record, and its list of odd requirements.  Neither alive nor dead, awake nor asleep, willing nor unwilling.  Caged, but uncaptured, hungry, but full, complaisant, but steadfast.  A liminal dreamer was required, and not just any liminal.  

There were only two liminals that Nocturne knew of.  He could, with some effort force either of them to fulfill most of the other conditions.  Waking dreams were well within his capabilities, the right pressure on an Obsession would have any ghost, full or otherwise, walking into a cage.  Hungry but full was trickier, but the lantern-cages were designed to help regulate what their inmates absorbed, among other things that allowed their function of bringing dreams into reality.  A glut of dream energy and a dearth of more traditional forms of sustenance would do nicely for Nocturne’s plans, and if the requirement was more metaphorical, they could adapt.  

The difficulty lay in 'complaisant but steadfast.'

The elder half ghost was widely regarded as a coward, having fled from too many fights he himself had started.  Even if he wasn't, Nocturne had tasted his dreams.  Vlad Masters relished every bit of power he could hold over others, and resented any he could not subjugate or suborn.  

The younger… Any being that could escape a dream crafted by Nocturne had to be described as both willful and strong-willed.  Yet, while the child had dreamed of being recognized and praised for the service he provided, in the waking world he provided those services unasked and unrewarded.  

It wasn't ideal, but it would have to do.  Nocturne wasn't about to make more of the creatures.  

From there, their preparations were relatively simple.  Phantom was young and brash, not stupid.  He may have managed to defeat Nocturne once, but the circumstances had been vastly different.  Then, Nocturne had been gathering dream energy and assessing the potential of dreamers.  They had been spread thin, distracted.  

trapping a whole city in slumber.  

Which led to the present moment.  

As during their first encounter, the boy was far more susceptible to dream sand than even ordinary humans.  Nocturne could not recall at the moment whether or not Plasmius had fallen asleep as quickly, or if the weakness was unique to Phantom, but that hardly mattered.  What mattered was that he was working.

Where Phantom's aura fell, the Dream Wilds and all their flora and fauna became real, material, some might even say alive.  The radius of the effect was miniscule.  Nocturne could easily see beyond it, past the golden air and verdant leaves, to where the Plain of Dream was as drab and flat as ever. Phantom was not one of the great dreamers of old.  Nor, Nocturne could already tell, would the masterworks once crafted by those dreamers be making an appearance.  Phantom's conception of the Dream Wilds was too simple, too imperfect to support such complexities.

Butterflies.  Really.  

Even some of Nocturne's earlier dreamers had done better, reached further.  

And yet… the texture, the depth of color, the quality of light… Yes, with Phantom as their lantern, he would reach the ruins at the heart of the Dream Wilds, and finally claim what they had sought for so long.

Lantern in hand, they glided forward, beneath the boughs of the great trees.  

.

Danny had expected it to be dark under the trees.  It had looked dark.  Instead, every leaf, every branch, every flower, every crawling, flying, or running thing, every wisp of colored mist was illuminated by Danny’s own aura, which showed no sign of dimming.  The shadowless quality of the surroundings added to their dreaminess, another layer of unreality on top of the haze, blur, and dazzle.  

Danny slowly turned his head back towards the way they’d come from.  The way he thought they’d come from.  Already, the open Ghost Zone sky was entirely hidden from view.  They could have been walking for hours, not… not…

How long had they been walking?  Had it been hours?  He couldn’t tell.  

Danny really didn’t like this.  But he couldn’t really do anything about it.  He was in a cage, and Nocturne still had his family hostage.  Plus, moving and thinking felt like swimming through honey.  Soft, cozy, comfy honey that made him sleepy.  The way the cage swung helped with that, a gentle, lulling, rocking motion that had him drifting, distracted.  

He blinked hard, rousing back to the half-asleep state Nocturne had put him in.  Being caged was one thing.  Being totally unaware of his surroundings while caged by an enemy was something else.  

“Where are we going?” he asked.  

Nocturne said nothing.  

“Where are we going?” he repeated, adding volume in the hope that it would let his words carry more clearly.  

Nocturne looked down at him contemplatively, clearly weighing options.  Then they smiled, sly, smug, and indulgent.  “We hunt the Beast of Dreams.  A chimera with many forms and faces, it guards the way to our destination.  Three times we must face them, and three times we must gain their tokens, else even your light will not shine on our path.”

“What if we, um.”  Danny licked his lips, trying to recover the thread of his question.  His tongue felt heavy in his mouth.  “What if we can’t find them?”

Nocturne tsked at him.  “What a terrible attitude to have,” they scolded.  “It’s almost as if you don’t care about your family at all.  After all, if you are useless, so are they.”  

They stopped their glide and reached through the bars of the cage, touching Danny’s shoulder where it joined to his neck.  Normally, with his hazmat suit, it wouldn’t even be exposed, but now Danny shivered as Nocturne pushed more energy into him.  He whimpered as his aura burned ever brighter in response.  His core hummed, high and strained, but his heart beat steadily, and his breathing stayed deep and slow.

“Guide me, little lantern, little light,” whispered Nocturne.  “I seek the Beast in the guise of Falsehood, where it lairs at the Gates of Horn and Ivory.  Show me the way.”

Danny had no idea how Nocturne thought he could navigate when he had never been here before and could barely see past his own aura.  No direction seemed better or more notable than any other direction.  

Finally, his eyes landed on a group of trees practically exploding with white and purple flowers.  He twitched his fingers in their general direction.  

Nocturne withdrew their hand and started moving in that direction at once.  Danny let out a sigh as his core gradually returned to a more relaxed state.  

They were looking for 'The Beast of Dreams in the guise of Falsehood.'  What did that even mean?  What did that look like?  Some kind of animal?  Like a fox?  A snake?

"The being we go to meet is the very essence of the deception of dreams.  It is that which makes you forget that you are dreaming, that which make you think the dead are living, and the living, dead, that which calls you late to events long past, that which casts you in a thousand roles whose lines you have never learned.  It is illusion and confabulation, a fabulist beyond all others.  He speaks truth only in service to greater lies."

Danny… understood some of those words.  Maybe if was more awake, he'd know more of them.  

“Even so, within the bounds of this, our trial, he will be forced to some measure of truth.  He must set a true price for his token, when asked three times, and when that price is paid, he must hand it over.  But even such a small honesty is one it despises, and it will seek to mislead us.”

“Mhm,” said Danny.  Beast guy would lie, and lie a lot.  Not much different than dealing with Nocturne themself.  Must be a dream thing.  

His eyes drifted to the trees and flowers outside the cage.  Periodically, glossy leaves reflected his aura back at him, making him blink and wince.  The trees here were really big, most of them towering even over Nocturne.  Which made sense, if Nocturne was from here, and they had those huge butterflies to contend with.  They’d fit their scale.  It still felt weird to Danny, and didn’t help with his deepening sense of unreality.

He blinked again, and his blink must have been longer than he'd thought, because when he opened his eyes, they were no longer walking, but standing under a massive apple tree.  Its branches spread wide and hung heavy with brilliantly red fruit.  No other trees grew under its shadow.  

To either side of the trunk, set into the hedge-like mass of greenery beyond the reach of the single great apple tree, were two tall gates made of pale materials.  Flowering vines grew around them, holding them shut as effectively as any chain. 

Speaking of chains… he shifted uneasily, and listened to the soft clanking of the blankets around him.  Yeah.  They were still messed up by… whatever was going on.  It wasn’t as if Nocturne had actually explained anything, and–

Something in the tree moved.  Danny startled as he realized that something was an immense snake.  Patterned in poisonous green and red, it blended in almost-perfectly with the surrounding leaves and apples.  

Normally, he wouldn’t blink twice at a giant ghost snake.  He’d fought more than his fair share of them.  Cobras, boas, vipers, rattlesnakes, you name it.  But this ghost radiated power far beyond that of a normal animal ghost, and he felt himself shrinking down among the pillows and blankets in an attempt to hide.  

He knew it wouldn’t work.  He was glowing too brightly.  

“Nocturne,” said the snake without moving his mouth.  His was deep and smooth, and reminded Danny of Vlad and, oddly, Clockwork.  “What an unexpected pleasure!”  It extended its head down, beyond the lower branches of the tree, as if in greeting.  “I see you have a new lantern with which to light your way.  I wish you good fortune on your journey, and hope you gain everything you seek.”

Danny winced at the use of the word ‘wish,’ but Desiree didn’t immediately jump out of the bushes, so he forced himself to refocus on the conversation in front of him.  

“Falsehood,” said Nocturne, “I come for your token.  What price have you set for it?”

“Is that any way to greet a friend?  It has been so long since your last visit, and you have not even thought to introduce your new friend.”  The snake lowered itself partially to the ground, the end of his tail still hidden in the trees, and began to circle Danny and Nocturne.  “He looks delectable.  I would love to just gobble him up.  That’s a joke, dear.”  It twisted to look more fully at Nocturne.  “I would never dispute your ownership of anything, after all.  Much less the light you steer by.”

“Enough,” said Nocturne.  “What price have you set for your token, that I might move forward?”

The snake shook his head.  "Moving forward, my dear?  Is that what you call this?  I must congratulate you indeed.  And in such a timely manner, too, for just the other night, another lantern-bearer came by, and took for herself the last of my to–"

"What must we pay to receive your token?"

"You won’t let me have even the smallest morsel of fun," complained the snake. "Your mother taught you no manners.  But very well.”  It turned away from both of them, somehow conveying the sentiment of sulking despite its body being a tube.  “In exchange for my token, I require either a thing that is both true and false at once, one lie that will become true, or one truth that will become a lie.”

"Any one?" asked Nocturne suspiciously. 

"The merchant cares not if you pay in gold or silver, only that he is paid."

"I want an answer, not a riddle."

"That is my sister's domain, not mine."

“Oh my gosh,” said Danny.  “Just do it.  If he doesn’t give you anything, then you know he lied.”

“Stupid child.  What do you think he means by ‘will become?’  So long as even a fraction of this place is held in reality, he has the power to make it so, and his games are far worse than those of the jinn you play with.”

“I know the rules as well as you, if not better,” protested the snake.  “I would not break them.”

“You would if you could.”

“I will not break them, then.  It is the same.  If you do not, perhaps I will assume you did come just to visit.  There are so many things you have missed when you were away, dearest.  It breaks my heart.”

“I doubt that.  This place is an abandoned ruin, the merest shadow of what it was.”

“And many places are, since the reign of the Pariah,” said the snake, mildly.  “Yet, even so, you have come here, dreamer in hand.  Do you imagine that everything is where you left it, even as you say that this place has fallen?  Perhaps.  Perhaps not.”

Nocturne shook their head.  “I will not listen to your lies.  You won’t trick me.  Not again.”  They hung Danny’s cage on one of the lower branches and started to pace, hands behind their back.  

The snake sighed, and, to Danny’s alarm, wound around the branch he was suspended from to peer into the cage.  His eyes weren’t like a normal snake’s.  Instead of pupils, they had several spirals in varying shades of red, green, and black, and rotated slowly, hypnotically.  Danny found himself unable to look away, his awareness of Nocturne and, indeed, the rest of the snake fading.  

Until, that is, the snake spoke again.  

“It is just as possible for a lie to be told for a greater truth, as it is for a truth to be told for a lie.  I do not care for you, but my games, as you call them, are for the greater good of all.”

Danny blinked his eyes, which had begun to water, hard.  Crap, that was scary.  Not quite to the level of Freakshow’s staff, but scary.  The only thing that kept him from trying to find a way out right now was that even if he escaped, his family couldn’t.  He needed to stay here, stay strong, for them.  He’d already tried everything he could do on his own.  

“You will accept a statement that is both true and not in exchange for your token?”

“Yes.  Or one truth that will become false, or one falsehood that will become true.  I’m not terribly picky.”

“And you only want to hear this thing, not wipe it from my mind?”

“I don’t even have the power to do that.”

“I know for a fact you do.  You only want to hear this statement, and you will accept that as payment?”

“Oh, are you asking me three times?  It is almost as if you don’t trust me.  That’s hurtful, after our long acquaintance.”

“Will you, or will you not, accept a statement both true and false as payment?”

“I will, I will!”  The snake sniffed loudly, a sound Danny didn’t even think snakes could make…  Then again, this snake was talking, a ghost, and maybe also a dream (Danny was unclear on that point), so, really, they were already far beyond that point.  “I know you don’t consider me worthy of respect, but shouldn’t you at least respect the rites and rules?  It will go much more smoothly.  Quickly, too, if that’s something you’re after.”

Nocturne smothered a growl.  They raised a knuckle to their lips, the starry blackness of the digit standing out starkly against their mask-like face.  “Then my payment is this: the path I seek is the one that leads to the Crown and Cup of Dreams.”

The snake laughed, an odd, barking noise.  “And you say I never taught you anything.”

Nocturne opened their mouth as if to argue, expression pinched and sour, but then closed it, thoughtfully.  “You are trying to distract me.  I have given you payment.  I expect your token in return.”

The snake sighed long and heavy.  It wound its way onto a nearby branch and pointed its nose at one of the apples.  “Any of these apples may serve as my token.”

Nocturne quickly picked the apple the snake had indicated.  Then, they flew to where Danny’s cage still hung.

In Nocturne’s hand, the apple was large.  Big enough that it wouldn’t look strange if they tried to take a bite out of it.  Big enough that if it was hollowed out, Danny could fit in it comfortably.  But that wasn’t what Nocturne did.  Instead, they brought the apple to the bars of the cage, and as it passed through them, it shrunk down until it could fit easily in Danny’s hands.  

The perspective made Danny’s head swim.  It didn’t work.  But it did, and it was, and Nocturne was pressing the apple against his lips.  

“Eat,” they said.  Despite their earlier anger, that smug, teasing smile was once again bending the corners of their lips upward.  “The purpose of these tokens is to ensure the lantern can light the way.”

Danny leaned away from the apple, squinting at it.  "No," he said.  

It wasn't as if Danny's parents had ever sent him to Sunday School (the Holy Spirit was bad enough.  The Holy Ghost?  You got the picture), but Sam had always been delighted to share the darker stories, and Tucker’s parents went to church on Sunday mornings, whether Danny was staying over or not.  Plus, he did try to pay attention to literary symbolism in English, even if Mr. Lancer didn't think so.  

A snake offering apples?  Bad news. 

Maybe if Nocturne was the one being told to eat it, or if Danny's friends and family weren't on the line, he wouldn't have said anything, because screw Nocturne.  But they weren't and they were.  

"This isn't your token.  You're lying."a

The snake chuckled.  "Clever child."

Nocturne snarled and darted forward, clawed hand closing around the serpent's neck.  The edges of their form were flared out, like feathers or fur.  The apple fell down and vanished among the pillows and blankets.  

"I have paid your price.  I fulfill every requirement to walk this path, and you have no right to keep it from me!"

The serpent evaporated and reformed deep among the branches of the apple tree.  “You call me a liar, when you tell such untruths yourself!  Every right is mine, and mine alone!  Nor was I paid.”

“I gave you my statement, both true and untrue.  You will not cheat me.  Not now.”

“Did you?” asked the snake, clearly delighted by this turn of events.  

“How dare you speak of rules and respect, when you desecrate this ancient rite?  How dare you stand in my way, when I–”

“Indeed!  Who else should stand in your way?  My sisters and brothers?  All those with a greater claim to this path?”

As it turned out, despite everything, Danny had been paying attention to the whole conversation, even if he hadn’t followed all of it.  Nocturne had been sure the snake couldn’t lie if he was asked the same thing three times… so maybe he didn’t.  

“If the token is for me,” he said, slowly, “is Nocturne the one who has to pay the price, or is it me?  When you said ‘you’ earlier, you were talking to me, weren’t you?  I’m the one who needs to say one of those three things?”

The snake approached again, and Danny hastily averted his eyes.  "I like this one, Nocturne.  He reminds me of you, when you were younger, and better behaved."  He paused, significantly.  "And smarter.  Yes, little light, you are the one who must answer me, if you desire my token.  Of course if you do not…"  

Danny understood what the snake was implying, but he did, in fact, need that token.  

He really hated hostage situations.

But if what Nocturne had implied about the snake’s powers was true, maybe he could use this.  After all, nothing said the lie had to be his.

"Nocturne said they'd bring my family and friends out of their comas if I help them.  Can I give you that as the lie?"

The snake started laughing.  Danny, meanwhile, felt like his brain had been peeled out of his body and he was floating over his skin.  The persistent misty softness had converged on him, and now he was floating.  

"I had doubted before, but now I understand how it is that you were the one to defeat Pariah Dark.  Nocturne, dear, he has to be able to take the token.  I doubt keeping him like that will prevent him from vexing you, anyway."

“I can make him take it.”

“As you would.  Now–”

“You have not been this cooperative before.”

“Perhaps I simply want you gone.  You are, as I have mentioned, incredibly rude.  And ugly.  And I find what you are doing to be repugnant, as you yourself would, had you given it thought beyond your base desires.  Not that you listen to me–”

“You’re going to try to pass off something random as your token again, aren’t you?  And then you’ll claim it is because you didn’t give it to him, you cheat.”

“Me?  A cheat?  Never.  Or only at card games.  It is very difficult to play a hand when you don’t have any.”

“You aren’t even a snake.  You only look that way because of how he’s dreaming you.  But what I don’t understand is why you seem to want him awake.  You’re never this transparent.”

“Are you sure I want him awake?  Perhaps that is only what I want you to think.  Ah, and now you’re tying yourself in circles.  A shame.  Once you were good at this.  Or at least passable.  And you wonder why you couldn’t even hold the dreams of a single human city, much less the power that passes through here.”

“I am the Master of Dreams, and–”

“Only because there was no one else qualified.”

There was a long silence, and Danny felt himself drifting back to the surface of awareness.  That had been… strange.  

“Give him,” said Nocturne, their voice gravely with suppressed rage, “your token.”

Danny noticed with some alarm that the snake was wound around the cage.  When did it get so close?  Why did it get so close?  His scales flashed at him.  

“Take two,” said the snake.  

“What?”

“Take two of my scales.  Together, they make my token.”

“And… am I supposed to eat them or something?”  That… was that the right thing to ask?  Everything was still a bit floaty.  “Don’t laugh,” he said, crossly as the snake started to snicker.  It did that a lot.  “I’m serious.  You wanted me to eat the other thing.  The, um, the apple.  Are you going to make me eat these, too?”

“Take them and find out.”

Danny glanced back at Nocturne, but they didn’t make any objection this time.  Carefully and slowly, he crawled over the blankets to the bars of the cage.  Because of the way the bottom of the cage was curved and how the pillows and blankets were ever so slightly higher near the outside edge, he had to hold onto one of the bars to stay in place.  

“Any two?” he asked.

“No, the two you get by adding one and one.”

Danny glared at the snake for a moment, but quickly returned to looking at the scales.  Each one was only a little smaller across than his palm.  They glittered, and Danny blinked sleepy tears out of his eyes.  He adjusted his grip on the bars and resisted the temptation to lie down.  

He really didn't want to do this.  

"It won't hurt you?" he asked. That wasn't his main concern, but… in the moment, it was a concern.

"No more than pulling free a hair."

Depending on the hair, that could hurt quite a bit.  He reached out and grabbed a scale at random.  It slid free with surprising ease.

Most of it was green, but the edge of it was vivid red, as if it had been rolled in blood.  He tucked it quickly into the pocket at his breast, and reached for the next scale.  This one was green all over, a smooth gradient from one side to the other.  

He let go of the bar and slid back into the cozy nest in the center of the cage as if guided by an outside force.  Even without Nocturne’s intervention, the blankets and pillows tucked themselves in around him.  If anything, he felt even more secure than before, only head and hands free.  

But he was sitting there, holding the scales, one in each hand.  

In dreams, occasionally a dreamer is seized by knowledge or need apropos of nothing.  They know that this is their grandmother's house, even though it's obviously the grocery store.  They know they must hold the cards with only their left hand, or otherwise they'll lose, never mind what game they're playing.  Sometimes, too, the dreamer simply acts.  The impetus for their actions obscure, not originating from their own thoughts.  Jumping from cars, yelling, fighting, eating, smoking, cheating on tests, being unable to stop.  

Danny, not thinking about anything in particular, raised the scales to his eyes.  They sunk into his skin without a trace.  

At first, he rubbed his skin and eyes furiously, hoping to find a way to peel them off, but then… 

He saw.  

He could see.  

Before, it had been difficult to keep his eyes open, impossible to see past his own aura, but now everything looked so clear, from the leaves, to the apples, to the grass, to the gates and the ruins beyond them.  

"You see, now," said the snake, kindly.  "The purpose of my token is to shield your eyes, so you can see.  And, I suppose, better guide the one that carries you.  Before, you burned too brightly for your own good, but now…"  

Danny nodded as the snake spoke.  Vaguely, he felt as if he shouldn't agree with him, but what he was saying made sense.  He did see better.  He saw more.  

Most things were still misty, out of the corners of his eyes, but directly in front of them, they were clear and crisp.  Sharp.  Well defined.  

He could even see the path on the forest floor, where it ran underneath them and to one of the pale gates - which didn't look nearly as overgrown as he had originally thought.  

(There was something very wrong with that thought, with all these thoughts.  But this thought, in turn, slipped away and disappeared.)

“Which way, child?” asked Nocturne.  “We have wasted enough time here.”

Danny’s tongue felt heavy in his mouth, so he pointed instead.  It was strange that Nocturne could not see the path.  Nocturne walked that way, lantern in hand.  And when had he picked the cage back up?  Danny was missing something.

“Nocturne,” called the snake.  “I meant what I said.”

“About what?”

“All of it.  Give my sister-self my regards.”

#ectoberhaunt #23 day 5 #23 prompt hunt #23 calendar science #eh23 #ectoberhaunt23 #danny phantom

[scarletsaphire]

Vlad reads the newest Fenton paper on ghostly obsessions, even though he knows its nonsense. If ghosts had obsessions, Vlad would have an obsession. But he doesn't. So they don't exist.

---

Ectoberhaunt day 12: Obsession

Vlad took a sip of his tea as he read, hoping that the caffeine would do something to help him with the headache. He knew the cause; the research paper he was reading had clearly been written by Jack, not Maddie, and anything that buffoon wrote was bound to give even the most resilient of people a headache. Still, he had to press on. It was important that he kept close tabs on one the Drs. Fenton were doing, and their research papers were the easiest way to do that.

If the topic showed anything, it was that the Fentons were not doing great in the realm of research. It was entirely on ghostly obsessions, an overview of what their preliminary research had shown. It stated that ghosts were created from these obsessions, an echo of what was most important to the person who had died, the person they were imitating. It wasn't a very detailed paper; it would be difficult for them to write a detailed paper without any proper test subjects.

If they had had proper specimen, even Jack's buffoonery would not stop them from realizing the truth. All of this obsession nonsense was just that: nonsense. Vlad himself was testimony to that; if ghosts had obsessions, surely he would have recognized his own by now. But he hadn't, because he didn't have one. He would admit, on the surface ghostly obsessions did make some sense; he'd met many a ghost who made only one desire their entire personality, but Vlad had come to the understanding that that was a popular personal choice, and not a biological one, as the Fenton's were claiming it to be.

Vlad finished both the paper and his tea. He flipped the papers closed and made his way across his lab to his filing cabinet, where he stored all of the paper copies of the Fenton's research. He opened one drawers labeled Jack, rifling through the papers there. It wasn't difficult to find the O's; Vlad had sifted through these drawers more times than he could count in the past month alone. The new paper fit perfectly between the others.

Vlad closed the door carefully and made his way to his computer. All he had to do now was sort the digital copy into his files, and the most recent Fenton paper would be added to the archives with all the other papers.

#danny phantom #danny phantom fanfiction #ectoberhaunt23 #eh science #day 12 #vlad plasmius #vlad masters

[maxattax]

Obsession

Ectoberhaunt Day 12: Obsession

CW: None

Bob Gould was very happy with his boring job, despite what people may expect. He worked in a package sorting hub, and all he did was scan labels on packages and sort them into bins. It was hot, thankless work, but it paid pretty well and he got good benefits. Nobody would deny that he was the happiest and most efficient sorter in his hub. Nobody quite understood why, and he wasn’t close enough to any of his coworkers for them to have asked. But if they had, this is what he would have told them: He just really liked boxes.

Boxes came in so many shapes and sizes, and he got to see such a wide variety in his day to day. Big ones that he could barely hold, little ones that fit in the palm of his hand, thin ones that were basically cardboard envelopes… His favorite were the oddly shaped packages that came through, because he could try to guess what was inside. This one is tall, skinny on top and wide on the bottom, he’d think. Maybe it’s a guitar. The mystery of it was what got him excited to go to work every day. It made him think of a quote he heard once: “Life is like a box of boxes; you never know what’s inside.” At least, that’s how he thought it went. Even if he was wrong, he liked his version.

Yes, Bob’s life was pretty great. No wife, no kids. Just a man with a job he lobed. Until one day, when tragedy struck. He was sorting boxes and watching the conveyors move overhead. He was always impressed with how the boxes moved across the belts, sorted to different destinations. It was well coordinated, like a dance. But something was wrong. One of the dancers was off balance. The box topped off the conveyor. He saw it coming in slow motion, frozen to the spot. It got bigger, and bigger, and then…

Green. Everything around him was very green. Bob looked down at himself. He was still in his work clothes, but his skin was blue! He realized then that he had died doing what he loved. But he couldn’t blame the boxes. No, the blame was entirely on whoever improperly loaded that box on the conveyor. Bob decided that from now on, he would dedicate his afterlife to making sure boxes only made their way into the right hands: his own.

#danny phantom #ectoberhaunt23 #day 12 #eh science #obsession #my writing

[jhdanes]

@ectoberhaunt day 12: Obsession, such a small world for such a grand feeling, you my dear, are mine obsession, from now on, we’ll never be apart. #obsession

#danny phantom #dexters laboratory #ectoberhaunt23 #vlad masters #dee dee #eh science #obsession #dee dee x vlad #dee dee and vlad #ship #rare ship #twisted love #mind control #vlad plasmius #ghost x human #digital art #fanart #art #my art #myart