#phandom holiday truce 2023 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

scarletsaphire · 4 months

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This is the first @phandomholidaytruce I've done, and I got @darthfrodophantom! They gave some incredible prompts, with this one being for: "After a reveal goes poorly with his parents, Danny can't hide out with Tucker or Sam because they'd find him. He finds refuge from an unlikely source (surprise me on who that is!)" I hope you like who I chose! (Also there is something else for you in the end notes. Just something else I wanted to say. So. Be aware of that.)

Danny's life could be a lot worse. After all, he was still somewhat alive. Sure, he couldn't leave the house, and his parents were keeping a close eye on him after… what had happened. But it was fine. He was fine. He just needed to sleep it off.

It could be worse. That had been Danny's silent mantra for the past three years now, even if it didn't help much. If nothing else, it was always proved true. After the accident, it had been followed by "At least I'm not dead!" and then they figured out that no, he very much was dead, if not completely. That revelation had come along with the ghost attacks, where the mantra was completed with "At least no one's getting hurt!" Sam promptly got kidnapped by the Lunch Lady. She may have made it out largely unscathed, but that didn't mean it didn't count. Then the saying moved to "at least its only other ghosts I have to worry about." Then "at least its people who can defend themselves." Then "at least most people are supporting me." Then... well. It didn't stay on one concluding phrase for long.

Right now, Danny repeated the new phrase in his head, just like he'd been doing for the better part of a week. "It could be worse. At least they noticed my heart was still beating. At least they stopped cutting before they could stop it. At least they haven't turned me in."

It was true. Danny was sitting at the table in Fentonworks, with a spoon gripped in one hand and a bowl of cereal in front of him. His mother was by the counter, pouring herself a bowl. His father was at the couch behind him. They only looked at him when they thought he wasn't looking, with hands resting a bit too close to holsters to be natural. They talked at him, not to him, and it was always stilted half baked conversations, the things they felt they were supposed to say.

None of them had talked about it. Danny was beginning to doubt that they ever would.

It could have been worse. At least Danny still had a place to stay, even if he couldn't stop his eyes from wandering to the basement stairs every time he could see them, couldn't stop the feeling of his skin crawling along the lines where it had been peeled back and pinned down. He was still here, and he had to stay here, no matter how much his stomach churned just being inside these walls. It wasn't like he had anywhere else to go.

He couldn't leave Amity Park. He'd figured that out ages ago, had come to terms with it through many unwilling discussions with Jazz. It was too dangerous for him to leave while the portal still stood, and the portal wasn't going to close. Probably ever, if he understood the science correctly. He wasn't old enough to move out yet, and even if he was, he didn't have the money or time to be able to support him with. Mr. and Mrs. Foley might let him stay for a little while, but they wouldn't be able to accommodate him forever, and while Sam's parents could accommodate him, they would leave him on the streets the moment they thought Sam wasn't looking. Or maybe sooner.

Danny had no where else to go. But that was fine because he didn't need anywhere else to go. He was allowed to stay here, and he was fine with staying here, and-

There was a flash of metal in Maddie's hand. A scalpel, pristine and sharpened, glinting in the lights of the operating table. He couldn't see her face, hidden under a medical mask and the goggles she always wore, a face so alien that he couldn't quite compute that it was his mother slicing him open, his mother peeling his skin back, his mother removing his innards, his mother-

His mother dropped the spoon into her bowl of cereal and turned to face him. She wasn't wearing a mask, or goggles, and the hood of her jumpsuit was pulled down. She was getting breakfast. Danny was eating breakfast.

Or he was. The spoon he'd been holding was crushed in his hand, a mangled mass of unidentifiable metal. Danny shoved it in his pocket before either of his parents could notice.

Standing up was a painful endeavor. You didn't need to be a doctor to know that standing uses a lot of muscles in the stomach, and while Danny's stomach was no longer gaping open, it was being held together by sloppy stitches he'd done himself. It took every ounce of strength to pull himself up without crying, and the shambled half steps he started taking to the stairs brought tears to his eyes.

He mumbled something unintelligible. He knew by now that his parents wouldn't listen to him, but him saying something had them take their hands off of their blasters. Danny could feel their eyes burning into the back of his skull as he shambled to the stairs. They made no sounds of concern, no moves to help him.

A week ago, he would've described climbing the stairs as hell. He could feel his skin puckering as the stitches holding him together tore. He wouldn't call it hell now. Hell was the table in the basement. This wasn't even close.

Danny collapsed into his bed, trying to gulp down air without moving. It didn't work. It never worked. He tried anyway.

The handful of minutes it took for Danny's torso to go from burning, pulsating agony to only just below unbearable seemed to stretch out for hours. He didn't dare move, couldn't even think through the haze of pain clouding his mind. When it cleared enough for him to hear his own thoughts, they carried nothing good.

He wasn't getting any better. It wasn't surprising; he hadn't done anything to get better. He couldn't. He needed food and rest and ectoplasm, and he couldn't get any of that without giving up something of the other. Maybe if Jazz was still home, he'd be able to get her to cover for him. She'd always brought him the supplies he needed, no complaining or questions. At least, not until after he'd felt better.

Jazz wasn't here anymore. She was off in some other state, living her dreams of becoming a psychologists, and Danny was left here, with his parents, who wouldn't let him within 10 feet of the basement door, meaning he didn't have access to ectoplasm like he normally did. They wouldn't bring food to him, or even let him bring food to his room despite never caring before, meaning he needed to go up and down the stairs to eat anything. They would wake him up and insist on him coming down to eat three times a day, meaning he couldn't even lay there in misery.

Sam and Tucker had noticed his radio silence a few days ago. Sam had snuck in through his bedroom window to check on him. Danny had barely been able to get a word out, hadn't been able to decide whether he wanted to show her what had happened or not, before his parents were in the room.

"Danny's just feeling a little under the weather the past few days," his mom had said with a smile. It felt more like she was baring her teeth.

"I'm sure he'll be right as rain soon enough kiddo!" his dad had said. He wrapped his arms around Sam's shoulders and guided her out of the room. She'd wanted to argue. Danny saw it on her face. Danny also saw how Jack's hand tightened just enough to draw her gaze back to him, just enough that even Sam bit her tongue.

At least they weren't making him go to school. He didn't think he'd make it five steps out the door before collapsing. Maybe that was why they weren't making him; it would raise too many red flags.

Danny was trying very hard to not think of himself as a prisoner. He wasn't a prisoner. His parents were just concerned, and showing it in a... less than ideal way. It was fine. Everything was fine. He wasn't trapped. Even though he couldn't leave, and could barely move, he wasn't trapped. He'd spent his whole life in this house, he couldn't be trapped.

Danny pushed the train of thought to the side, just like he'd done the other dozens of times he'd started to think that. It wasn't any good to dwell on things that weren't real. He needed to focus on doing something to help, which in this case meant getting better. He just needed to sleep.

That was easier said than done. The pain was still terrible, and the incision on his chest meant that he only had one option to try and get comfortable in. It didn't help that he already knew what was awaiting for him when he finally got tired or bored enough to fall asleep. He didn't think it was fair that he had already lived through that once, and his prize was getting to live through it over and over again every time he closed his eyes.

He didn't bother keeping track of how long passed before he slipped into sleep, but he knew instantly when he did. That was odd. Most of the time, he wasn't able to figure out he was dreaming until he was sitting upright, panting and grasping at torn stitches in a mixture of pain and desperation to feel his own, still beating heart. This time however, he knew he was dreaming immediately.

He wasn't on the operating table either, like he had been at the start of all of his other dreams. He wouldn't really describe himself as being anywhere, actually; he was surrounded by nothing but blackness.

Danny pushed himself up with his arms, and the world shifted with him. It was as if he hadn't moved it all, but the world had moved to make it seem like he had, interspersing spots of white that seemed to come out from behind nothing. It made his stomach churn and his head spin, and he brought one free arm to rub at his now aching temples.

"It seems as if I was correct. It is the little hero that needs saving this time." The voice was horribly familiar, and seemed to come from every direction at once. He should've known this was Nocturne's doing; the entire ordeal was covered in signs.

Danny stood to his feet in a flash whirling around to try and find where exactly this other ghost was, but he was only met with more of the void around him, shifting in that same unfamiliar way. He pushed the nausea down further; he couldn't worry about that now. "What do you want, Nocturne?" He called into the abyss. "I've beaten you once and I will do it again."

"You have," the voice focused on the spot in front of him, and the abyss seemed to gather in front of Danny, coming together to form Nocturne. "That is part of the reason why I'm here."

"Why, you looking for a rematch? Needed to wait until the odds were stacked in your favorite?" Danny spit out. He didn't bother trying to transform, or to fight Nocturne as he was; it wouldn't do him much good. Instead, he focused all his energy on waking up.

Nocturne floated closer, clicking his tongue in disappointment. "You will not wake up until I let you. It's a waste of energy to try."

"I've done it before," Danny pointed out.

"When I was busy with the rest of your town, yes," Nocturne agreed. "I am not spread so thin this time."

Danny knew he was telling the truth. He could feel the power threading through the air, reinforcing the barriers of the dream even as he strained against it. It was comforting, in a weird way. At least now Danny knew that, when he did wake up, he wouldn't be met with a city wide sleep epidemic. Again. It didn't bode well for him right now though. "So you're what, trapping me here?"

"No," Nocturne replied. "Nor am I looking for a fight. I am here to offer you a deal, nothing more. Once I receive my answer, you will be free to go, if you wish."

Danny set his jaw and crossed his arms. "Fine. But if you don't let me out after, I’ll kick your ass here, and then I’ll kick you ass when I wake up too.”

“I suppose that is a fair trade,” Nocturne replied. “You are not safe in your home. You have not felt safe in your home for years.”

“Hey, that’s not-“ Danny protested.

“You cannot lie to me here, child.” Nocturne shut him down immediately. “Even if you can lie to yourself.”

Danny snapped his mouth shut.

“I have come with an option. A way for you to turn back the clock on your... situation and return to the way things were before. Or better, if that is what you'd wish.”

"...how would you do that?" Danny asked, narrowing his eyes.

"I will create it for you. Your town, your friends, your family. Whatever it is you wish, in your own world. You wouldn't even be able to tell the difference."

Danny rolled his eyes and snorted. "Yeah, cause that's not something I've heard before. Lock me in some imperfectly perfect make believe so you can take over the world or whatever, or so I can waste away without even realizing. No thanks."

Nocturne moved closer, the surrounding starscape moving with him. "Your town would be safe from me, and while I will be the first to admit I can do nothing for your body, I'd have hoped that by now you would have realized that you are far more than just the skin you wear. I am promising you more than just a reprieve from your current predicament. I am offering you an eternity with those you love, where you are certain to keep them safe and protected. The real them, tied to the same dream as you, in the same way. That is not the kind of safety you will ever be able to offer on your own. Is that not what you desire?"

Danny hated just how right Nocturne was. He hated how tempting the offer was even more. He'd be lying to himself if he said he hadn't worried about the state of his friends once they'd moved away from Amity, that he hadn't paced his room worried about Jazz when she'd moved away to college, forcing himself to not run to the phone and try to call her again.

He shook his head anyway. "I can't just leave everyone else. I can't just live in a fantasy while who knows who does who knows what to Amity Park. I need to keep it safe, not whatever replica you're promising."

Nocturne floated closer, until he was barely a foot away from Danny, and lowered his mask to look Danny in the eyes. Nocturne's expression did not change. "You are a fascinating creature," he said, before pulling away.

"You're going to let me go now, right?" Danny asked, as Nocturne pulled away. "You said-"

"I am aware, child," Nocturne interrupted. "And I will keep my word. But I have something else to offer you, though this will require something from you in return."

"Why?" Danny asked. "Why do you care so much?"

"As I said, you are a fascinating creature," Nocturne said. Danny didn't like the way he said it. It made him feel like an insect to be studied.

He decided that thought was better left unsaid. "Well, if you're just going to try and trap me in some other dream, I'm going to pass."

Nocturne pulled away, moving around Danny in a slow circle. "It will be nothing of that sort. You have made your stance on that clear, and I respect your wishes. But my powers can extend to the waking world. I can help you protect your little town far better than you are able to now."

That had Danny's interest, and his suspicion. He narrowed his eyes, rotating to keep Nocturne in his sights. "And how would you do that?"

"I can make the... recent events the dream, in your mind and your parents."

"What, so I won't remember it?" Danny asked. "That's not going to do anyone any good when I have this mess to deal with." Danny gestured to his chest.

"Tell me, child. How does 'that mess,' as you so eloquently put it, feel?"

It took Danny a second to figure out what exactly Nocturne meant. And then it dawned on him; it took him a second to figure out how the wound felt. He'd been hyper aware of it for a week now, constantly in pain, constantly tiptoeing around it. He'd spent every moment, awake and asleep, trying to do whatever he could to make it better. Now, he could barely feel it.

He still could. It still hurt. But it was a dull throb, the kind of pain he'd learned to push aside and ignore with years of practice.

"You will feel like this once you wake up. You will be able to return to your place as protector of your town. The wound will not be healed. You will still need to tend to it. But it will not interfere, and you should heal."

"And... my parents?" Danny asked.

"Their memories of the event, and yours will grow distant. You will all know that it happened, but become difficult to recall."

"Like trying to remember a dream?" Danny asked.

Nocturne tilted his head in affirmative, and raised his hand out towards Danny. "So tell me, little dreamer. Do we have a deal?"

Danny stared down at it. "You said there would be a price," Danny said slowly. "I'm not agreeing to anything until I've heard this price."

"Does it matter?" Nocturne's mask didn't move, just as static as it had been the whole time, but Danny couldn't help but feel like the smile was mocking him now. "If I was to tell you that the price was to serve me for an eternity, after you have no town left to protect, would you say no? If I gave you the ability to keep fighting, is there any price you wouldn't be willing to pay?"

Danny's breath caught in his throat. He wanted to say no. He wanted to deny it. But he couldn't. It was true. Nocturne didn't wait for his answer. Danny couldn't shake the feeling that it was because he already knew.

"I have no interest in any of that." Nocturne pulled away, and Danny could breathe again. "All I am interested in is another set of hands with a brain attached. My sleepwalkers are helpful, but they cannot do much with my more delicate work."

"And... and you won't make me leave?"

Nocturne tilted his head. "I am more than capable of collecting your side of the bargain while you sleep."

Danny hesitated for only a moment. He knew he couldn't be locked inside as he had been for much longer; he refused to leave the town in Valerie's hands alone. He just couldn't.

Danny tried to shake Nocturne's hand, but when he tried to tighten his grip, he met no resistance. It felt like he had plunged his hand into a jar of jello straight out of the fridge, with nothing underneath it. He tried to pull his hand away, only to find that it was stuck. He watched as the tar continued to move past his wrist, and then up his arm.

He looked up at Nocturne in horror. He was still smiling. Of course he was. "What's happening?"

Nocturne tilted his head. "You truly are a fascinating creature." His voice was distorted, as if Danny was underwater. "Even I cannot keep the nightmares from finding you."

—

Danny awoke gasping for air, sitting up in bed suddenly. Despite his rude awakening, he felt... good. Better than he had in the past week, for certain. He wouldn’t quite describe himself as well rested, but he was certainly less tired that he was before. He glanced at the clock on his bedside table and blinked in surprise. It was late afternoon. He'd slept for six hours. A full six hours of mostly uninterrupted sleep. That was more than Danny could ask on any regular day.

The fact that he was sitting up took a moment to dawn on him, and then hit him all at once. His hand went to his chest. His pajama shirt was damp, though he wasn't sure if it was from blood or sweat. Despite this, he didn't hurt; at least, not as much as he should. There was still a dull throb through his abdomen, like he was pressing on a bruise, but no where near the pain it had been only a few hours previously.

The dream came rushing back to Danny all at once, bringing with it a sense of relief. He hadn't trusted Nocturne at any point in the dream. The fact that he was awake at all was surprising, but the fact that Nocturne had actually withheld his part of the bargain was even more so. Hopefully that meant that Danny could get back to his "normal" half-life quickly.

He reached over and switched on his bedside lamp. The dampness had been a mixture of both sweat and blood, which was better than just blood but still meant he had yet another shirt to burn. He changed quickly, faster than he had since everything had happened, and went downstairs.

Danny could hear the sound of his parents in the lab. He remembered how his heart would race when he would hear that, or even so much as look at the door. Now, he felt... maybe a little nervous, distantly, but nothing like the sheer, gripping panic he'd had to fight off before.

Going down the stairs was harder, but he needed to do it. He needed to prove to himself that Nocturne had followed through on every part of the bargain, not just where Danny was concerned. The metal was cold underneath his feet, a familiar feeling that helped to ground him. He peaked his head around the corner, taking in the lab.

His mother was standing at one of the workbenches, hammering away at a lump of something that Danny couldn't identify. His father sat at one of the desks, squinting at a piece of paper and mumbling to himself. They were working on normal projects, just like they always did. Danny cleared his throat to get their attention.

"Oh, there you are Danny boy!" Jack said, looking up from his papers with a wide smile. "We were beginning to get worried about you! Feeling any better, son?"

"Uh, yea, Dad," Danny said, fumbling over his words.

"Oh, that's wonderful!" Maddie said. "If you're hungry, there's some cans of soup in the cupboard, or you can order yourself takeout. You know how. Hopefully, you'll be feeling good enough to go to school tomorrow. Don't want you to fall any further behind, isn't that right young man?" Her tone was playful. Teasing. Something she hadn't done since figuring it out.

Danny stifled his sigh of relief, and shot her a smile, though she hadn't turned around from the table she was working at. "Thanks mom. I hope so too."

He turned around and made his way out of the basement slowly. Clearly, Nocturne had followed through on his deal, just like he said he would.

Let's just hope Danny didn't regret it when he had to do the same.

---

I am now talking directly to darthfrodophantom. Hello, I hope you enjoyed it, when I said you gave some really good prompts, I meant it. Your prompts have inspired me with two other fics that I would like to do at some point down the line, both gray ghost, one of them being a multichapter thing. If you are interested in me tagging you and saying "hey this was inspired by their truce prompts!" I can, if not, they'll be getting written anyway. I just wanted to make you aware of that fact.

#danny phantom #danny phantom fanfiction #danny fenton #nocturne dp #dp nocturne #starry eyed dreamer #tw dissection #tw gore #tw manipulation #phandom holiday truce 2023

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elliefenton · 4 months

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Holiday Truce 2023: The Conspiracy Surrounding One Danny Fenton

Happy Holiday Truce @scarletsaphire! I hope you like it! Sorry I'm a day late, I had a lot going on the last few days and completely forgot to post this. I used your prompt 'Danny being not quite human and freaking people out (on purpose or accidentally).' I also included a little bit of Johnny and Kitty!

@phandomholidaytruce

Summary: Danny's classmates notice some peculiarities about him.

It took everyone a while to notice.

They knew the Fentons were weird. They knew Danny Fenton was weird. But they didn’t realize just how weird he was.

They knew he wasn’t always this way. Back in middle school, he was actually normal compared to the rest of his family. But he was gone for a few days at the beginning of freshman year, and when he came back, he was different.

It started with small things. He seemed to leave the room right before a ghost showed up. That was explainable, his parents had tech that could track ghosts, Danny probably carried something like that on him, and he was so scared of ghosts that he just left the second he knew they were coming.

But then there were other things, things they couldn’t explain away so easily.

Whenever he left the room in the middle of class, it suddenly got… warmer? And that was weird. They’d heard of ghosts turning a room colder, but the lack of a specific human turning the room warmer was very odd.

Sometimes, the classroom would get warmer without Danny raising his hand, and someone would look back at his seat to find it empty. That raised some questions about how he was leaving the classroom without people noticing, because someone would see if he went out the door, right? And the school’s windows didn’t open, so he couldn’t have left through there.

People started to pay more attention to him, and that was when they noticed the really weird things.

It had been a few months since the beginning of freshman year, and it was now the middle of winter. Danny was in his usual Christmas Grinch mode, which was expected by now. His entire class was used to his attitude around Christmas time. But what was unusual was the fact that he showed up to school every day without even a jacket. Everyone else, including his two friends, came to school wearing a coat and gloves, maybe even a scarf or hat, and this kid walked in with short sleeves and jeans. He never once looked cold.

He actually seemed to be thriving in the cold, looking more refreshed than he had in the previous seasons, like maybe he was getting more sleep.

He also started to keep weird company outside of school. Someone swore they saw him and his friends at the Nasty Burger hanging out with that biker couple Phantom used to chase around. They were pretty sure that guy used to date Danny’s sister, and was presumably a ghost since Phantom used to hunt him down, so what was he doing hanging around with them, especially as afraid of ghosts as he was?

At this point, a group had formed around these conspiracy theories about Danny. They shared information, held meetings, and even had a Discord server. One might even call them a cult. When Wes Weston started yelling about his theory that Danny Fenton was Danny Phantom, the group laughed at him. Not in disbelief, but in pity. They knew better than to let anyone know of their suspicions, and if Wes didn’t shut up soon, they’d have to teach him that being discreet was the best way to keep being able to investigate.

At the end of the year, the weirdest thing of all happened. Danny Fenton started… acting normal? He stopped skipping class, started dressing normally again, and was acting much more like a fully functioning human being. Suddenly, the only weird thing about him was his hair, which had white streaks in it now.

When news of the asteroid was announced two weeks later, the group knew Danny Fenton was somehow going to be involved in whatever came next. Especially when both the Fentons and Tucker Foley became directly involved in trying to solve the issue. The reveal that Danny Fenton was Danny Phantom came as no surprise to anyone involved.

Wes Weston, of course, was bragging about how he was right, but no one paid him any mind.

#dp #danny phantom #holiday truce 2023 #phandom holiday truce 2023 #my writing

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rgbyshipper101 · 4 months

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Happy Phandom Holiday Truce! This is for @lixxen

Happy holidays friend! Enjoy!

Prompt: Tucker/Danny story where it's Danny trying his best to set up a really cute and nice date for them, but for reasons it goes horribly wrong and Danny is upset but Tucker still loves it :) it's the effort that counts

#danny phantom #phandom holiday truce 2023 #lixxen #savant par #ao3

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torscrawls · 4 months

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Pressurized

Happy Holiday Truce @ectospacecadet! This is my gift for you, based on the prompt “Sometimes all it takes is one bad day to break someone: Danny snaps.” Hope it tastes good!

You can also read it on AO3.

“Fenton! Get up that rope!”

Danny clutched his aching left arm tight to his side, cursing Skulker and his attack early this morning as he moved to do as Ms. Tetslaff had ordered. The wound throbbed and radiated pain up his whole arm as he grabbed the rope and started to haul himself up.

“Ha! Fenturd is too much of a wimp to get up that rope!” Dash laughed and was soon joined by the rest of the A-listers.

Danny grit his teeth and reminded himself that what Dash and the rest thought about him really didn’t matter in the big picture. He had more important things to worry about. Like how to keep his wound from opening back up while making it to the top of the rope. Maybe he could use a touch of flight to—

Suddenly the whole rope heaved beneath him, writhing like a snake come alive, and Danny lost his grip. Thankfully the fall wasn’t long, but it still hurt when he landed—of course—on his wounded left arm.

Danny groaned from where he lay on the mat and as soon as he opened his eyes he got a face full of a grinning Dash, leaning over him and looking proud of himself. He still held the rope Danny had been climbing in one hand. Of course he had been the one to mess with him. Danny couldn’t even find it in himself to be surprised.

Danny turned his head to his side and saw Tetslaff on the other side of the room, not looking. Of course.

Dash laughed. “Wow, I didn’t know Fentoe was so weak he couldn’t even hold on to a rope!”

Danny reminded himself that Dash didn’t matter and that he didn’t care about what they thought, that he didn’t care about any of this. He didn’t.

Danny got to his feet, keeping his left arm close to his side. He felt a slow trickling of warmth run down the inside of his arm and really hoped his wound hadn’t opened back up. It would be just his luck.

Tucker jogged up next to him and sent him a concerned look. “Hey, you okay man?”

Danny took a deep breath, relaxed his clenched hands and let it out slowly before looking at Tucker and giving him what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “Yeah. I’m good.”

Considering Tucker’s grimace, he guessed he didn’t manage it, but his friend thankfully didn’t push the issue. And he was fine, this didn’t matter. It was just a slight annoyance. He would fix the wound after gym was over and then it would all be fine.

They were interrupted by Tetslaff suddenly deigning to look over towards them now that Dash had started climbing his own rope to the cheers of his friends. She frowned and immediately screamed, “Fenton! Foley! If you have time to just stand around talking, then you have time to run twenty laps! Get going!”

So Danny pushed down his pain and started running, Tucker by his side.

—-

After gym was over he waited until everyone else had finished changing out of their gym clothes before doing it himself, ignoring Dash and his lackeys continuous jabs and insults.

He didn’t feel like explaining his wound—which he was now certain he had reopened as the warm wetness on the inside of his arm hadn’t stopped and only gotten worse as time went on—and his extensive bruising. It would just raise a lot of questions. And probably even more insults, and even if Dash and the rest didn’t matter, Danny was too tired to deal with it right now.

He had to convince Tucker to go on ahead without him, “There’s no reason why we both have to be late. Besides, I don’t want them to start bullying you too.”

Apparently that hadn’t been as convincing as Danny had thought, but in the end he had managed to convince Tucker anyway and that was all that mattered.

As soon as the door closed and Danny was alone he let out a long sigh as his shoulders slumped. He rolled up the sleeve of his left arm with a grimace and then let out another sigh at the sight. Oh, he would definitely be late for the next class. He dug out his beat up first aid kit from the bottom of his bag and got to work.

Ten minutes later Danny carefully eased the door to the classroom open and quickly slunk inside. His hopes of sneaking inside unnoticed were dashed as Mr. Lancer fixed him with a glare and didn’t waste any time before chewing him out in front of the whole class. He could see Dash grinning and elbowing Kwan, Paulina leaning in to whisper to Star as they both pointed at him, Mikey and Nathan looking annoyed at the interruption and aiming their glares at Danny. Danny felt his shoulders climb up towards his ears. Great.

The whole spiel ended with Lancer declaring that he had detention after school and Danny barely found it in himself to give the teacher an affirmative before making his way to his school desk.

Well, no matter. Danny had only planned to get his homework done as soon as he got home, do his chores, and maybe actually go to bed early tonight. Maybe sleep off some of the exhaustion and pain dragging him down. Guess that wouldn’t happen. He didn’t know why he even tried anymore.

He sank down in his chair and Tucker immediately leaned in towards him and hissed out, “Man, your eyes are glowing.”

Danny closed his eyes in defeat. He tried to calm himself down, taking slow breaths and consciously relaxing his shoulders. The last thing he needed right now was any more attention.

After a few tense seconds he turned back to Tucker, one eyebrow raised in question.

Tucker gave him a slightly uncertain thumbs-up.

Danny felt himself relax slightly. Crisis averted, for now.

He just had to get through today.

Just like always.

—-

When he, Sam, and Tucker stepped into the cafeteria it was already full of students and Danny’s head throbbed at the noise. He really wished he had been able to grab more than a few minutes of sleep in between ghost fights, trying to avoid his parents, and all the traps they had set in the house.

Sam and Tucker walked towards the line for food and Danny stumbled after them. Tucker put a careful hand on Danny’s arm and Danny did his best not to jerk away from the pressure it put on his wound. Tucker still dropped his hand, a worried expression on his face, “Hey, man, you sure you’re alright?”

Danny nodded groggily, trying to muster up a smile. “I just didn’t get any sleep last night.”

Which wasn’t a lie, just not the whole truth. He hadn’t gotten any sleep, but he had also been in two fights and one hunt spearheaded by his parents. Then his home had decided he was a threat and attacked him as well. And, oh right; he got woken up by an alarm in the middle of the night because the portal almost blew up because of some new tests his parents were doing. He didn’t even have time to eat breakfast. He looked down at the slop the lunch lady splattered across his plate and it was a testament to just how hungry he was that it actually looked appetizing.

He was doing great.

Thankfully, Sam and Tucker didn’t push it as they walked towards a free table. Danny did his best to follow along in their conversation, but he was too tired to make sense of their discussion about the math homework they had just gotten. Was it futile to hope that he would have enough energy and time to do it later tonight? Probably. Danny wished he had the capacity to feel bad about it.

He looked down at the food in his hands and allowed his thoughts to drift as he followed Sam and Tucker and their familiar voices. At least he would be able to sit down for a while with his friends and just breathe. And eat. Ancients, he was starving.

So of course that was when a foot suddenly appeared in front of his feet and despite his usually quick reflexes his tired brain reacted too late and he tripped, losing his hold on his tray and watching as it spilled absolutely everywhere. He had to use both his hands to catch himself against the floor to avoid smacking his head into it and groaned at the pain radiating up his left arm. Maybe the face would have been preferable to this.

He didn’t have time to get back up before Dash’s laughter rang in his ears.

Of course it was him.

“What’s this?! You can’t even walk correctly, Fentrip?!”

Danny pushed himself up on shaking arms and kept his eyes locked on the floor, ignoring the giggling he could hear from all around him. It was fine. Dash didn’t matter. This didn’t matter.

He blinked when a hand with back nails came into view before carefully grabbing his shoulders and helping him back up. Danny looked up to find Sam frowning at him. “Why do you let him push you around like this?”

Danny blinked at her. Yeah, why did he? His arm ached and he was so tired. If he just fought back once then Dash would know that he couldn’t just do whatever he wanted to him, they would all see just how—

Danny shrugged as he pushed the thoughts away. He couldn’t afford to think like that. He couldn't risk turning into him. Danny feigned nonchalance as he said, “He doesn’t matter.”

Sam frowned at him.

Danny shrugged her hand off.

“Ha! You need your little freak girlfriend to protect you, Whimpton?!”

Danny felt himself tense up. They could pick on him all they wanted, but he hated it when they picked on his friends. They didn’t deserve that. He felt the tension rush back, ensnare itself through his shoulders and his arms until he couldn’t help but ball up his fists.

Sam raised a hand again as if to touch him, but let it drop again without making contact. “…Danny?”

“Dude,” Tucker joined in, voice strained and eyes glancing around them, “calm down.”

“I am calm!” Danny gritted out.

Sam raised an unimpressed eyebrow and Danny forced his hands to relax. He bent down to pick up his spilled food.

“Come on,” said Sam, “let’s go eat.”

They walked away from the laughing table full of A-listers.

Danny looked down at his ruined lunch and couldn’t help but let out a petulant, “I’m not hungry.” If he said it, then maybe it would make it true. Where was Desiree when you needed her?

Both Tucker and Sam sent him pointed looks and Tucker said, “I know that’s a lie. I could hear your stomach rumbling the whole class.”

Danny felt embarrassed that he had been found out; he didn’t like to make his friends worry about him.

Tucker just smiled. “Come on, you can have some of mine. I have a couple of snacks in my bag. Besides, I ate a really big breakfast so I’m not that hungry.”

Sam didn’t say anything, just silently handed Danny an apple from her tray.

How had Danny been blessed with such nice friends?

Danny sank down on the bench to finally eat with his friends, but the moment his arms touched the table he felt a familiar feeling of cold claw itself up his throat. The taste of ozone and ectoplasm burst forth from his mouth and he looked at the small cloud in dismay. Danny groaned. “I have to go. There’s a ghost. Again.”

Sam and Tucker exchanged a look and Danny tensed up. He didn’t have the energy to argue with them right now.

Tucker began hesitantly, “Maybe you should leave it to someone else?”

“I can’t. You know that.”

Sam crossed her arms. “Then we’ll come with you.”

Danny looked at his two friends and their full trays of food, which they hadn’t had time to touch. He didn’t want to drag them down with him, he owed them that. So Danny made an effort to sound snappish as he said, “I don’t need a babysitter.”

Tucker held up his hands in a pacifying gesture. “Hey man, we didn’t say that. We’re just worried about you.”

And now he had made his friends worry about him. Great. He couldn’t do anything right, could he?

He got to his feet. “I have to go.”

“Danny, wait!” Sam called out, but before they could start arguing with him again, he left.

——

Thankfully the fight didn’t take long, and Danny closed the thermos on the tiger-ghost just as the bell rang. It did leave him with scratch marks down his back though, and Danny cringed as he changed back into human form; praying that his quick healing would make sure it didn’t bleed through his clothes and thankful for the thick hoodie he had put on that day. He ran to his locker and got out his things, but was still late for the next class.

Lancer merely shook his head at him and Danny stumbled over to his desk and sank down in it while ignoring the worried looks from Sam and Tucker.

He was fine. It was all fine.

And even if it weren’t; it didn’t matter. He just needed to keep it together and do his job, keep everyone safe.

—-

The bell finally rang and Danny let out a stuttering breath. He was free.

He didn’t waste any time before stuffing all of his things into his bag and getting up, ignoring the pain in his arm and his back as he shouldered his backpack. It was worth it if he could get out of there quicker. Sam and Tucker joined him as he made for the door.

Tucker lowered his voice as he looked Danny over and carefully asked, “Danny? You okay?”

Danny kept his eyes on the door, feeling his steps lighten as he passed through it. “I’m fine.”

Sam pursed her lips and asked, “…Who was it?”

“A tiger ghost.”

He knew that they wanted more information than that, but he just wanted to go home and crash. He was so very tired and he hurt.

Tucker huffed. “Maybe you should leave the hunting to your parents for tod—”

“Mr. Fenton! Get back here, now!” Lancer’s call interrupted Tucker and made dread pool in Danny’s stomach. Right. Detention.

It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. He’s fine.

Danny sucked in a shaking breath and stopped walking. He didn’t look at his friends as he said, “Well, see you guys tomorrow.”

Tucker let out a long sigh and sounded defeated as he said, “Please be care—”

Danny nodded and took a step towards the classroom and then he felt something collide with his back. Hard.

Immediately he was back fighting the tiger, its swiping claws on his back right in the same spot. The pain was immediate and intense, and Danny saw stars as he stumbled forward, falling to his knees.

His mind reeled. Was he still fighting? He wasn’t even transformed! He had to defend everyone!

He reached for the cold feeling in his chest, ready to tug on it and go ghost to—

Cheers erupted around him.

“Touchdown!” Dash crowed from above and Danny froze in place.

Right. He was in school. There was no ghost to fight. It was the A-listers. They didn’t matter.

For the third time that day he picked himself up off the floor.

His arm and back burned. The pain pulsed in time with his thrumming core.

Ghosts fought during stressful situations and right now his instincts were screaming at him to fight. To get them before they got him. Danny balled his hands into shaking fists.

He tried to force his heart and his core to slow down. It didn't work.

A part of him slipped, too tired to fight it anymore. They wanted a fight, right? Then he would give them one.

But then he registered movement beside him and he blinked. Right. Sam and Tucker were here, which meant that he couldn't fight right now. Not with them so close. He couldn't risk it. Risk them.

Danny pressed everything down down down.

Or, he tried to.

His breath clouded in front of his face, but it wasn't because of a ghost, but because of the sudden cold blanketing the hallway.

“…Danny?” Tucker said hesitantly from beside him. “Dude, calm down.”

“I am fucking calm!” Danny growled.

Sam looked at him with clear worry in her eyes. She leaned in and whispered, “Your eyes are glowing again.”

Danny covered his eyes with his hands. He tried to force them to return to normal, to force himself to calm down. It didn’t matter, it didn’t matter, he repeated in his mind.

Danny heaved in deep breaths.

“Ha!” Laughed Dash, “Are you going to cry?!”

Danny sucked in breath after breath. It didn’t matter.

He tried to force the tension down. Tried to stuff it all down. Down where it couldn’t hurt anyone.

It doesn’t matter.

He gritted his teeth.

It shouldn’t matter.

He was fine. They didn’t matter. He was fine.

…He didn’t feel fine. He ached and was so very tired. He hurt.

His arms fell down to his lap and before he could do more than open his eyes, Tucker was standing in front of him, shielding him from view and hissing out, “Your eyes, man!”

And Danny tried. He really did, tried to make them go back to normal, to look normal. So he wouldn’t upset anyone. So no one would notice. So he wouldn’t matter. Danny grabbed his hair in his shaking hands, winced at the pain radiating up his arm.

“What’s wrong with the freak?” Dash asked and before Danny could react there was a hand reaching for him. His mind screamed at him to get away, to make it all just stop.

“Man, don’t!” Tucker shouted out in warning and then Danny watched with wide eyes as his friend was showed aside by Kwan, making him stumble to the side.

Sam stepped in front of Danny and then got pushed into the wall by Dash as they all laughed.

Danny’s eyes jumped from the wince on Tucker’s face to the angry scowl on Sam’s. To the way she pushed away from the wall and grabbed her left shoulder that had collided with it, on how Tucker wasn’t able to hide the fear in his eyes as he looked at the people who had attacked him.

They had attacked his friends. Because of him. Danny had put them in danger.

After everything that had happened, after all the pain and exhaustion, he couldn’t even keep them safe. His core screamed.

Danny felt himself fracture, crack like a thin layer of ice beneath a boot.

Dash’s hand moved as if in slow-motion as it approached him and Danny viciously slapped it away. “Don’t touch me. And don’t. Touch. Them.”

Dash cradled his hand in stunned silence for a split second before he broke out into laughter again, elbowing Kwan in the side as he said, “Wow, would you look at that? The wimp is fighting back!”

Laughter.

Danny’s ears roared and his chest stuttered as he tried to get enough air into his lungs; to calm down. His eyesight narrowed into a thin point as he raised his shaking hands to grip the front of his shirt. There was a pressure on his chest. On his core. Building and building and building.

“Stop,” he managed to croak out. He didn’t know if it was a warning or a plea. His instincts were screaming, clamoring, demanding, that he fight.

“What are you going to do about it?! Cry on us?”

A rough hand crabbed Danny’s shoulder and his own hand snapped up to grab it as he hissed out, “You don’t matter! You’re fucking nothing!” None of them did. So what did it matter what he did to them?

“Danny!” Sam yelled out in warning. But she was still gripping her arm where she had collided with the wall and that as all he could see.

Danny managed to let go of the hand in his grip, but he couldn’t calm down.

Maybe he didn’t want to.

“Hey…” Dash trailed off. “What’s wrong with his eyes?”

Tucker took a step closer to Danny. “Danny, you have to calm down!”

“Why?!” Why did he always have to calm down?!

He hurt.

“Danny!” He couldn’t even tell who was speaking anymore. It didn’t matter.

The air was cold enough to sting his throat and he breathed it in in in in.

He couldn't breathe out. He couldn't—

“What the fuck?!”

“Shit!”

“Get back!”

He smelled ectoplasm. The cold snow.

He smelled sour mouthwatering fear.

Danny recoiled with nausea climbing up his throat. He shouldn’t like that. He shouldn’t be that ghostly. He had to control himself. Just get himself back under control and calm down and—

And he couldn't. He couldn't.

His heaving breaths stopped when he realized that he didn’t need them.

In the end, he was just like any other ghost wasn't he?

The cold spread through him, out of him, and Danny didn’t even try to stop it.

They didn’t matter.

And he h̵̪̗͊u̴̯͒r̴͍͈̈̇t̸̮̺͈́.

#danny phantom #dp fic #danny phantom fic #all of your prompts were so good!!#phandom truce 2023 #i started writing something for all of them but then i had to contain myself #happy holidays!#my writing

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ionanana · 4 months

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HIIII @tsubaki94 I was your truce Giftee this year!

I did the prompt: Friends Having a Good Time

Decided to do a College Days Collage of the Mystery Trio (Jack, Maddie & Vlad) Definitely a change in reality where the Ecto-acne incident never happened. Or rather a reality where things went well. Looking up the mascot (Bucky the Badger) was a bit fun.

Happy New Year and I hope you like it!

A few close ups

#holiday truce 2023 #phandom truce 2023 #danny phantom #Jack Fenton #maddie fenton #vlad masters #vlad plasmius

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phandomnews · 5 months

Text

@this-is-z-art-blog is hosting the 8 Ecto nights events, and you can find more information on their page!

@phandomholidaytruce - for anyone who wishes to help!

Shop links:

dansaiyanart shop

CopperLyrebird - Redbubble

StarStorm - Redbubble & Threadless

ArtisfingersStudio - Etsy

#gift guide #gift guide 2023 #phandom news #December 2023 #etsy #shop #redbubble #eight ecto nights #Newsletter #holiday season #phandom truce #green with envy #phandom events

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dannyphannypack · 4 months

Text

Happy Holiday Truce @ghozteevee !

I'm so sorry about the wait! I'd say the holidays got away from me, but I think procrastination is pretty true-to-form for me. Something I'll definitely work on in the New Year. I really hope it's still January 3rd for you!

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this little story <3 I took some inspo from two of your prompts: post identity reveal family outing and sibling bonding. The sibling bonding is in the first quarter or so, the parental bonding is in the last bit. Also, the conclusion definitely ran away from me! Very Brother Bear vibes up in here. I hope that's okay!

Enjoy! :3

Word Count: 3280

Danny gasped awake with a shiver, barely catching the green of his eyes as it caught on the shiny, canvassed ceiling of their tent. His breath fogged in front of him, visible in the quickly dimming glow. It served as a warning of what he already knew had awoken him, but it was nice to get the confirmation anyway: there was a ghost nearby.

He rubbed the crust from his eyes as he allowed his brain time to wake up the rest of the way. The good news was that it didn’t feel like anything overly powerful. The bad news was that if it tripped his Ghost Sense, then it was powerful enough—and more than likely causing havoc, because it was clearly feeling some big emotions and those emotions usually amounted to some brand of anger. It also felt distinctly feral, and given their locale, it was safe to bet it was an animal spirit of some kind. Those could be especially unpredictable, and he wasn’t in the mood.

Danny looked over at the sleeping bag where his sister slept—seeing in the dark hadn’t been a problem for a long time, with or without the aid of glowing eyes—and he watched the slow rise and fall of her chest as she quietly snored. Now, whether or not to wake her was the question. The Ghost Assault Vehicle would be the safest place for her if things went haywire, but undoubtedly she’d be worried and clingy and want to help, which he also wasn’t in the mood for.

Ultimately, though, safety overruled whatever annoying sibling feelings she might stir up. Danny dislodged himself from his own sleeping bag and crawled across the floor to her, the waterproof fabric beneath him making rustling noises all the way.

“Psst,” he whispered, setting a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Jazz.”

“Whazzat?” she asked, jerking. “Danny?”

“Hey. There’s a ghost.”

Her eyes blew open. “Like, here? Now?”

Yeah, maybe he could’ve handled that better. “Not yet,” he amended. “But I’m heading out. You should probably get in the Gav, just in case.”

“The G-A-V, Danny, not the ‘Gav.’” It was an old argument, one they hadn’t really argued over in years. Danny figured that Jazz probably found it endearing now that she was out of the house and missing him for most of the year. She sighed as she sat up and reached for the ground, hands fumbling towards her glasses. “You’re going alone? At least tell Mom and Dad first. And help me with a light, please.”

Danny summoned a ball of ectoplasm and sent it floating up towards the domed ceiling, where it lit the whole tent in a dim, soft blue. He grimaced. “I was kind of hoping you’d do that.”

Danny’s parents had been informed of his little secret only a week ago, and all-in-all it had gone down pretty well. The timing had been strategic, of course; Danny was going off to college at the end of the summer, and his parents needed to know why their newest ghostly ally would be disappearing from Amity for the entire school year (barring holidays and emergencies, if all went well). Going to college was a failsafe he knew he hadn’t needed, but wanted anyway—seeing alternate timelines where his parents were accepting of his after-school activities was very different from actually experiencing it in his own, after all. They’d reacted much as expected, though. Surprised. Excited. Sad. Guilt-stricken.

Jazz looked at him with something that bordered on pity, and it made him squirm. “I can if that’s what you really want, Danny,” she allowed. “But you know why I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Okay, no need to get all mopey about it,” Danny deflected, clambering up to his knees (the tent wasn’t tall enough to stand, which kind of put a damper on his whole ‘stoic’ front. Not that he’d admit that). “It just…still feels weird. But I can do it!”

Jazz raised her hands in fake surrender and fought a smile. “Yeah, yeah, you’re a big boy now, I got it.” She unzipped her sleeping bag and cast the cover aside. “I’ll go hide. Though…if it’s big enough that you needed to wake us up, maybe you should do more than just let them know.”

“Like?” Danny asked, just to be obstinate. He knew what Jazz was hinting at.

Jazz rolled her eyes. “Like ask for help, you big dummy.”

Danny sighed. It’d be the first time working with them since…“I don’t know if we’re at that level yet, Jazz.”

“You were before you told them,” Jazz pointed out with a raised brow.

“It’s different,” he stressed.

“Okay, well, different or not, you need to tell them you’re leaving, at the very least.” Jazz crawled over her sleeping bag towards the door and unzipped it with a practiced, fluid motion. “After you,” she said with a dramatic gesture towards the dark campfire and forest beyond.

Danny grumbled as he passed, and once out of the threshold he let the ectoplasmic ball lighting the inside of the tent wink out, just to hear Jazz’s indignant “Hey!” from behind him. Seconds later he heard (and saw) her flashlight click on behind him; ectoplasm-powered and too big for its own good, Danny was sure that thing created its own light pollution. He refused to use it on principle.

Danny walked the short trek to his parents’ tent and crouched to get the zipper, deciding against intangibility just in case one of his parents was awake enough to notice a shadowy silhouette phase through the wall. On the other side, Jack snored with the force of a train engine; Danny could swear it was rattling the zipper out of his hands as he fumbled with it.

The inside was dark, but Jazz’s flashlight outside cast long shadows across the floor. Danny moved out of the way so that the light could hit his parent’s faces; Danny knew his mother would have in ear plugs, so this was really the only safe way of waking her beyond shaking, which Danny knew from experience could be…startling, sometimes.

He watched her brows furrow before her eyes squinted open. She rubbed at her eyes with one hand and took an ear plug out with the other. “Danny? What happened?”

“Um, there’s a ghost,” Danny said (muttered, more like). “I was gonna go—”

“Hold on, I can’t hear you,” Maddie said, turning to shake her husband. “Jack, wake up. Danny needs something.”

“Whazzat?” Jack yelled, in much the same way as Jazz. Like father, like daughter. “What happened?”

“Uh,” Danny said, feeling tenser now with both their attentions on him. “There’s a ghost.” He pointed north. “Half a mile that way, maybe. Getting closer. I was gonna go deal with it, but I told Jazz to get in the RV just in case.”

Maddie frowned. “You were gonna go deal with it? By yourself?”

Danny glanced behind him, where Jazz was giving him a thumbs up from across the campsite. “Um, no,” he lied, turning back around. “You guys can come. If you want. You don’t have to.”

“Of course we want to, Danno!” Jack shouted. He had positively lit up, like grogginess wasn’t and had never been an issue for him. “I’ll go get the Fenton Grappler!”

“Do you know what kind of ghost it is, sweetie?” Maddie asked, still watching him. “What equipment do we need to bring?”

Danny hadn’t thought that far ahead. “It’s an animal, I think. It feels pretty feral. It’s not that strong, either, but—”

“Animal spirits can be unpredictable,” Maddie said, echoing Danny’s earlier considerations. “Alright, we’ll bring the capturing gear.” She paused. “If…that’s okay?”

Danny almost laughed; he’d never heard his mom sound so unsure when it came to ghost hunting. “That sounds good, Mom,” he said. “I’ll go get my boots on.”

— — —

Danny led the way through the timber with his parents, feeling a little silly in human form but unwilling to change nonetheless. It was nice to walk, sometimes, even when flying would be quicker and less taxing. And he could pass his feet intangibly through those pesky fallen branches and thorny bushes, so really it wasn’t all that worse than strolling down an Amity sidewalk. There was, he told himself, no other reason he might want to stay human in this scenario. He certainly wouldn’t feel uncomfortable otherwise.

“Are we getting close, honey?” Maddie asked after helping Jack over a rotted trunk.

The irony wasn’t lost on Danny; he’d asked the same question on the RV ride there. He felt around in his chest, feeling for the speed at which his core buzzed it’s steady warning, the strength of the tug. “Nearly there,” he promised.

“That’s a real neat trick, Danny-boy,” Jack praised. Danny could hear the smile in his voice. “You know, I always wondered how Phantom heard wind of a ghost faster than we did. Didn’t I, Mads?”

Danny kicked at some dead leaves and sticks at the ground, embarrassed. “That ghost alarm you guys developed works similarly. It maybe doesn’t have quite the range, though.”

Maddie hummed, contemplating. “And that’s what woke you up tonight?”

“Yeah.”

Maddie reached out to set her hand on his shoulder, stopping him. He closed his eyes before he turned to face her, bracing. If he hadn’t caught on to the concern in her voice before, he was definitely feeling it now. “How often do ghosts wake you up?” she asked, quiet.

Danny opened his mouth to lie and then thought better of it. That was a habit he was determined to break with his family, whether they’d like the answer or not. “Once or twice a night,” he admitted, slowly. When Maddie made a pained noise, he quickly added, “Usually it’s nothing to worry about, though, so I just go back to sleep. Like, at least half the time.”

She bit her lip. Guilty. “You shouldn’t have had to deal with that, hun.”

“Can we not do this?” Danny pleaded. These were the kind of conversations he’d been trying to avoid for the past week. “It’s my fault for not telling you guys, not your fault for not noticing.”

“We know that’s how you feel, Danny,” his mom allowed. She shared a glance with Jack from over her shoulder. “But we can’t help but feel like some of that lies on us, too. For noticing the clues but not acting on them in the ways we should have.”

“We want to know now, though,” Jack said, coming up behind his wife. “Warts and all.”

“Is this an intervention?” Danny asked, nervous. It felt like his core was constricting in his chest. “Because I get enough of that from Jazz.”

“It’s not an intervention,” his mom denied, pinching the bridge of her nose. “It’s just…Why haven’t you turned into Phantom yet, Danny?”

Danny wasn’t sure if he heard that right. It felt like the conversation had spun 180. “What?” he asked.

“This isn’t exactly an easy hike, sweetie,” she said. “Mostly uphill, through brambles and across fallen trees.”

“It’s been fine,” he argued. “I’ve been phasing through most of it.”

“If we were Tucker or Sam, you would have flown us there,” Maddie finished, and, well, he couldn’t deny that logic. “So why haven’t you?”

Danny frowned. “I didn’t think we were at that stage yet.”

“We’re not on a date, Danny; we’re your parents,” she sighed, shaking her head. “There is nothing you could do that would make me stop loving you. I changed your diapers; I should know.”

Danny frowned. If she had said that two weeks ago, before they’d known, he might not have believed her. He did believe her this time, but it was marred by something else—this aching, squeezing feeling in his chest, riddling his core with fear and anxiety and confusion and—

Oh. That wasn’t from him.

“Look out!” Danny yelled, grabbing hold of his parents and shoving them to the ground. His shield came up just in time: a glowing black bear, absolutely massive for its species, came barreling down upon it, scratching and growling and baring sharp, sharp teeth with saber-toothed tiger levels of length. He flinched against its strength but held steady, keeping his hands in front of him to feed ectoplasm into the bubble that surrounded them.

Perhaps realizing that its efforts were futile, the bear backed away, roared once in warning, and then took off running in the opposite direction, taking a moment to pause awkwardly at a hollowed tree stump before disappearing over the hill.

“Okay,” Danny breathed, allowing the shield to dissipate. There was that conversation out the window. He was almost grateful for it; he’d always been better at fighting than he was at talking, and staying human during this battle was quickly becoming a moot point, anyhow. “Alright, here’s the plan: you guys follow from back here, and I’ll fly up and cut it off from the front. Sound good?”

He was about to run off then, but Maddie grabbed his chin and twisted him to face her. Her eyes scanned over him faster than Danny could even blink, checking for injuries at a near-inhuman speed.

Once he got over his shock at being grabbed, he started to squirm. “Mom, stop. I’m fine,” he murmured, trying to turn away to hide the way embarrassment was quickly flooding his cheeks with red.

Once satisfied, Maddie nodded and placed a chaste kiss to his forehead. “Be safe,” she commanded in a no-nonsense voice, like he’d be grounded for a week if he came back injured. Then, she finally let him go.

“You too,” he said, turning away. Squeezing his eyes shut, he transformed—focusing on the way his core bloomed outward instead of the stares on his back—and took off into the air.

Going on a bear hunt. He was sure there was a kid’s song about that.

Danny followed the tug in his gut from the sky; it was even stronger now that he’d transformed and they’d gotten…acquainted, for lack of a better word. He couldn’t shake that weird anxious worry in his gut—the one that seemed to be emanating from the bear in waves—but he could fight through it, and that’s what mattered.

Animal spirits were all instinct and emotion, wrapped up into something tight and cohesive that ectoplasm wouldn’t have trouble latching onto. Usually that something was governed by anger, which, as far as Danny knew, was the strongest emotion in a living animal’s arsenal. Human spirits could end up governed by that too, but there was more nuance to the reasoning behind anger with a person: jealousy, revenge, even loneliness could rearrange into different flavors of the same base emotion. It was easier to assuage because of its complicatedness; when there was a direct physical link to someone’s anger, there was something to solve.

It was more difficult to get angry animal spirits to move on. They were angry at everything and nothing all at once. The whole world fueled their anger, and so there was little that could calm them down.

Fear, though…He’d never met an animal spirit governed by fear, or worry, or whatever anxious instinct this bear’s ectoplasm was releasing. Maybe he could turn this into a happy ending, for both him and the bear. He hoped he could, anyway.

Danny dived down in front of it, and from the way it twisted backwards and picked up its pace in the direction opposite of him (the direction towards his parents), it seemed the bear could sense him, too. He went intangible and picked up the pace, letting trees and leaves fly through him at a dizzying pace. Finally, the forest opened into a little clearing, and Danny threw up a green wall at the end of it, where the bear was trying to escape. It skid to a halt so fast it left deep gashes in the dirt, dropped something fuzzy and black from its mouth, and turned to face him.

Danny froze. There, curled beneath the ghost bear’s legs, was a single cub. It peered out from behind her, oblivious to the danger and curious as to the reason for their night’s interruption. More importantly, it did not glow like it’s mother. It was still alive.

Mother Bear growled a warning at the same time Danny’s parents started crashing through the brush nearest her. “Stop!” he shouted out, holding out a hand despite his parents not being able to see him. “Uh, stand down!”

“Danny?” His dad called. “What’s going on?”

Mother Bear was looking increasingly frantic. Panicking a little himself—whether from the emotions that he was accidentally leaching off her or the situation, he wasn’t sure—Danny made a split-second decision and thrust a dome over the top of her and her cub. It would shield them from any sudden bear attacks, true, but it also served as makeshift protection from any Fenton weaponry.

He trusted his parents not to shoot him. He wasn’t sure if he trusted them not to shoot Mother Bear.

“It’s safe now!” Danny called to his parents. “Um, leave your guns outside the clearing! And walk slowly!”

Danny was almost surprised to hear them listening. He didn’t know why. He had to stop doubting them.

“Oh,” Maddie said when she breached the tree line. Mother Bear rotated to face her and Jack as they stepped out, gnashing her too-long teeth and backing further over her cub to put it safely beneath her belly. It peeked out from beneath her paws. “It’s…a mother.”

She sounded shocked. Danny concurred.

“Come over here,” Danny told his parents. “Behind me. I’m gonna try something.”

He stepped forward as his parents came around the dome. Mother Bear watched them walk until they’d settled behind Danny, and already he could feel that fear worry stress easing, just from having all potential predators in-sight instead of surrounding her.

“Danny,” Maddie warned when he took another step forward. “Bears are extremely protective of their young.”

“I know,” Danny murmured, keeping his voice low. He inched forward, getting lower to the ground as he walked. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

Mother Bear snarled statically, touching on Ghost Speak but unable to form full coherence. Worry, is what Danny was able to read from it. Worry. Baby. Danger.

Danny switched tactics, changing to Ghost Speak as he set his hands gently against the wall of the dome, emanating as many calming emotions as he could summon. Calm. Safe.

She flinched, but her teeth were shortening, growing less sharp. Baby Bear yawned beneath her, a kind of squeaking hum. Almost like a puppy. Like Cujo, maybe.

Calm. Safe. Danny promised, at the same time voicing sentences in English above the Ghost Speak’s static: “It’s okay. You’re safe. I won’t hurt you. I won’t hurt him. You can let go. I’ll protect him. It’s alright.”

Mother Bear swayed, grew smaller. Promise. She growled. Staticked. No-nonsense voice.

Promise. Danny responded.

Baby Bear nuzzled into Mother Bear, and she licked at his cheek as her body grew brighter and began dissipating, moving on. Baby Bear purred and purred.

She looked at Danny. Looked behind him, where his parents stood. Mother? she asked. With the emotions clogging her speech finally gone, he could actually understand her.

Danny nodded. “Yeah. That’s my Mom.”

Good. Mother Bear hummed, closing her eyes. Safe.

She disappeared, her glowing green fragments scattering on the wind.

Danny turned around to face his parents, and for the first time noticed that they were both crying. That was okay. He was crying, too.

He cleared his throat. “So. Anyway. Where’s the nearest Animal Sanctuary?”

#danny phantom #tayscreams #tay writes #holiday truce 2023 #phanfic #danny phantom fanfic #jazz fenton #maddie fenton #jack fenton #danny fenton #featuring: animal spirit inspo from shift by captainozone if i'm not mistaken #been a while since i read it but something something animal spirits being unpredictable feeding off instinct and emotion yaddah yaddah #happy holiday truce! i hope it's a good one <3 #this is the first time ive written anything for the phandom in … years #anything ive posted anyway #college has been ;-; taking the creative energies out of me ;-;#ive resorted to turning old dp plot bunnies into creative writing assignments for workshop classes. it’s rough out here #at least it’s working. people just think i have a thing about ghosts. and they’d be right but it’s much deeper than that #holiday truce

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theghostlycoyote · 4 months

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The Ghost Zone's Next Regent

Word Count: 5640 (Completed!)

My piece for the 2023 Holiday Truce is finally done! I wrote this fic for @jadenoryuu and their super interesting prompt:

Danny's tired of being the Ghost King, so he institutes the "GZ Next Regent" (a-la Nation's Got Talent). All the participants have to sign a binding contract before making a candidature: to always answer truthfully to Danny during the "show" and don't sabotage or harm (even indirectly) the other participants. The various parts of the show consist in trying to convince Danny that they're worth being the next King/Queen under selected categories: Power, Motives, Ideals, etc. No one would have ever predicted (not even Danny), that the winner would have been the Box Ghost.

I had such a blast writing this for you, and I'm sorry I kept you waiting!

The fic is up and completed on AO3 now!

Read a sneak peak here:

To be honest, Danny was really over the whole “Ghost King” thing. It seemed like since he gained the title, his problems have increased exponentially. On top of his run-of-the-mill fights with the normal cast of characters (which were really more for show now than anything else; he’d established a weird sort of camaraderie with his regulars), he also has been fighting newer, much more powerful ghosts intent on stealing the crown from him. He’s been able to beat them all so far – he didn’t become the King for nothing – but it’s getting a little old.

On top of that, those cryptic ghosts with one eye and sticks up their asses keep coming to him for all manner of things, in the most inconvenient of times. He’s running out of excuses for why he suddenly has a propensity to slam doors, cabinets, shower curtains, windows, etc. whenever someone walks into a room unannounced. They never come to him for anything urgent either, always talking about “holding court” or “signing decrees”. He really couldn't care less. Clockwork has been keeping them at bay as much as he can, but there’s only one of him, and seemingly endless little Mike Wazowski ghosts who want to ruin his day.

Despite it all, Danny really felt like he was managing everything relatively well. That was, until junior year hit, and his parents urged him to start taking AP classes. He still aspired to be an astronaut someday, and he knew he had to get his grades up to do so, so that’s what he tried to do. If he could go back in time (and with Clockwork, maybe he would) and tell his younger, fresh-from-the-accident self that his grades would start to worry him more than the ghosts did, he’s sure the young him would laugh in his face. And yet, here he was, working desperately into the night, not getting any sleep, not because he was fighting ghosts – most of his fights were relatively short, nowadays – but because he needed to get all of his AP work done on time (and correctly) to even stand a chance at getting into a good college.

Now, he could see adulthood on the horizon. His senior year was about to start, and really it was more of the same – plenty of ghost fights, plenty of dodging the Observants, and plenty of homework. But now the threat of college loomed over his head, and surprisingly, he found that this was the straw to break the poor camel’s back.

He realized that he would have to give something up, and one night in an impassioned rant to Sam and Tucker, he stumbled upon his solution. He didn’t want to be the Ghost King anymore.

#danny phantom #fanfic #ghost king danny #holiday truce 2023 #coyote writes #phandom truce 2023

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tsubaki94 · 4 months

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Happy Truce and Happy New Year @skittlespoxxum

I'm your Truce Gifter this year.

Your promotes were all inspiring and I wanted to write something this year making them all even better. I'm so sad that I couldn't weave in Danielle somehow but the others I got to some degree. I'm a sucker for Danny/Dash pairing and was delighted to make something where they could be a couple. It might not be clear in this fic but Dash is the leader in a relationship, able to both take command in any situation but caring for his partner and their need to function. Danny is very much the cuddly type, needing lots of comfort and affirmation.

The chapters will be going up continuously today as I'm giving them a final dead thought but I wanted to make sure you got this gift before 2024.

Now onward to a New Year. ^^

#danny phantom #phandom holiday truce 2023 #truce 2023 #danny fenton #Danny/Dash #Fluf #fanfic #fic #ao3 #I wanted to do art as well but couldn't find the time #half of this fic was written at work on my phone #happy truce #phandom truce 2023

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ei-w · 4 months

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made for @craftybookworms 's truce prompt ♥️

(Little background & concept: as I have begun to sketch it up, I remembered the 'old' times when teachers left lovely notes or doodles on the green boards - before modern white boards - before summer breaks or winter holidays. Imagine Danny sneaking into classrooms to leave messages to the students and reminders about the truce between ghosts and humans ^^)

#phandom truce 2023 #danny phantom #dp fanart #festive blob ghosts #happy holidays to y'all!!! <3 #ghost draws

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darthfrodophantom · 4 months

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Family Traditions (We Are a Family...Right?)

Summary: Summary contains AGIT spoilers! Inspired by the Christmas season, Vlad takes his two charges Dan and Dani to select a Christmas tree for their first Christmas together. Dani is thrilled by the outing, Dan...not so much. And Vlad is left to ruminate on his nostalgic memories and the meaning of the word family.

Happy Holiday Truce @northerngrail! I'm your Secret Santa! I really hope you enjoy your gift this year! Thank you for the wonderful prompts! I decided to go with this one for your gift:

Prompt: The Masters family (Vlad, Dan, Dani) doing something incredibly stereotypically "family bonding" ie: fishing, road trip, etc. And suffering through it (happily)

AO3

CW: AGIT Spoilers!

Family Traditions (We Are a Family...Right?)

He didn’t know what drove him to think this idea would go well. Maybe he thought this living arrangement meant more than it actually did. Maybe he finally had some hope that something would change. Or maybe he was just getting soft and senile in his old age. Vlad realized with a sharp jab of annoyance mixed with pain that it was probably the latter.

He couldn’t really put a name on what living situation he had now with the young Danielle and the redemption-seeking Dan. Parent? No, that felt far too familiar. Warden? In the case of Dan that sometimes felt appropriate. Caretaker? He certainly did watch out for them, but even that seemed a little distant for the paternal relationship he’d started to build. Guardian? That seemed to fit the best as a good mix of responsibility and affection.

But would that make them a family? He felt loath to ascribe that much affection and companionship towards what they had. He could catch a glimpse of it sometimes, especially from Danielle, but he didn’t feel that quite met the criteria for family. Then again, he didn’t have the best example of that growing up, but when he looked at what the Fentons had…he didn’t see that in his current living situation.

So if he didn’t see them as a family, then why did he think it wise to embark on something that most would consider a family tradition? He still couldn’t rationalize those competing principles in his mind, just like he still couldn’t explain the pull he felt towards this activity. He could say he got caught up in the infectious holiday spirit surrounding him, or the yearning for a family tradition, but in reality it had been a thought: a simple thought that pushed him to change his entire approach to the month of December. This was the first Christmas he would spend with children under his roof - and he painfully realized it would be the first Christmas he would spend with anyone under his roof since he was a teenager - and he needed to make that special for them. Whether he was their parent, warden, caretaker, or guardian, that meant he bore the responsibility of giving them a Christmas and rolling out all the stops. The decorations. The stockings. The presents. The Christmas meal. The Christmas movies. And that also meant…the Christmas tree.

Wrangling them into the car proved to be a challenge. Dan was a malevolent, violent ghost stuck in a teenager’s body, which proved to be a disastrous combination on the best of days, and Danielle was mischievous and far too inquisitive for her own good. Neither of them responded well to the idea of an unannounced drive to an undisclosed location for an activity. His suggestion was met with suspicion and questions, and even though he managed to convince them to join him in the car, the suspicious and inquisitive questions had not ceased.

Christmas music crooned out of the stereo to set the mood as Vlad turned off the highway and onto a country road. Sure some people sold suitable trees in the city, but this was less about the tree and more about the experience, and he wanted to find a small local shop off the beaten path. As they pulled into the small dirt parking lot, Dan’s eyes focused on the large cars with cables and trailers and harnesses already equipped. He watched as a family walked out from under a white canopy strung up with warm Christmas lights as they pulled something heavy behind them.

Dan shook his head as he frowned. “No…no wait no. I see what you’re doing here. Are we–”

“Picking out a Christmas tree!” Dani interrupted in sheer joy as she pressed her face against the cold car window to look out at the selection of pine trees that covered the snowy ground.

“Yes, that is what we are doing,” Vlad confirmed as he out-maneuvered someone to get a close parking space. They didn’t need a closer parking space - all of them were fit and able to walk and carry a tree a long distance - but this was about the principle and the status of managing to find and obtain a closer parking space.

Dan groaned as he slumped into his seat with his arms crossed over his chest. “Why can’t we just get a plastic tree from Target like everyone else? Or better yet, none at all.”

“Because that’s no fun,” Dani pouted as she turned around in her seat to face her…sibling? Herself? Her future? Vlad wasn’t quite sure how to quantify and label their relationship either. “This is so much better! I’ve seen this on TV. You run around and look at all the trees and pick the best one. Don’t you want to do that?”

“No,” Dan quickly retorted.

“Really?” Dani pressed.

“I would rather be in the thermos.”

“We can arrange that,” Dani muttered under her breath as she turned to look back out the window.

Vlad took a moment to build his patience (a patience he’d been working incredibly hard to develop after finding himself a guardian) before he turned around to look in the back seat. “No one is being sucked into a thermos. Now we are going to look at some Christmas trees. Maybe we don’t need to look at all of the trees,” he conceded. Dani opened her mouth to protest but Vlad held a hand up. “We can find a perfectly good tree without looking at all of them. But we are going to look, understand?”

Dan and Vlad locked eyes for what felt like minutes to Vlad, but he knew in reality it only lasted a few moments. He’d engaged in his fair share of these battles of wills with the malevolent ghost before (and he’d lost his fair share as well), but he had a purpose this time and the genuine hope this would do them all some good, and that pushed him to stand his ground.

Finally Dan huffed out an annoyed breath and stepped out of the car. Vlad slumped in his seat in relief. He really didn’t want this argument to escalate further, but with Dan he never knew. He genuinely felt that the ghost was trying to make good on his second chance, especially since they both knew Clockwork kept his eye on them, but sometimes he acted out in anger and it turned violent. Vlad could take the abuse until he could calm him down, but he preferred not to cause a panic in public around so many families.

Dani seemed to sense their victory. The tension bled out of her and a smile returned to her face as she jumped eagerly out of the car. He had originally been wary of bringing Danielle into the house after he took charge of Dan’s rehabilitation, but she had actually proven to be a stabilizing force in the house. Maybe she served as a gentle reminder of Dan’s prior innocence, Vlad couldn’t quite say, but in the absence of Jazmine (who Dan surprisingly listened to), Danielle could hold quite a bit of sway. They still argued, but she could hold her own and put him in his place when needed. Sometimes they even teamed up, and while Vlad appreciated seeing them working together, that never bode well for him.

He followed his two charges out of the car and led them towards the first row of trees as the snow crunched underfoot. What a stereotypical sight they must make: the single parent leading a sullen teenager and a wide-eyed younger child to pick out a Christmas tree. It felt reminiscent of those horrible Hallmark channel movies that he absolutely did not hate-watch in secret, but how wrong anyone would be to think that their arrangement was anything close to that stereotypical display.

“Don’t even look at the prices,” he instructed as they reached their first row of trees. Wafts of fresh pine scent assaulted them, and Vlad took a moment to breathe deep of the nostalgic smell. He couldn’t wait to have it spread through the living room once they installed the tree. “Just pick out a tree you both like.”

Dani clapped her hands happily and ran off down the row to look at trees further in, but stopped short as soon as Dan spoke up and pointed ominously at the very first tree. “This one.”

Dani stopped and turned around as she stomped her foot. “Ugh, you dummy! You didn’t even look at the rest of them!” Vlad raised an eyebrow because Danielle may very well be the only being in both the realm of the living and the realm of the dead who could get away with calling Dan a dummy.

“I didn’t need to. I like this one,” he said firmly.

Dani opened her mouth to argue again, but Vlad spoke first. “And why do you like this one?” Maybe he had a genuine reason for liking this tree, but he doubted it.

“Because it’s the first one.”

Both Vlad and Dani groaned. “We’ll keep your preference in mind, but we’ll keep looking at other trees,” Vlad decided. He didn’t want to dismiss Dan’s preference if he truly felt a connection to that tree, but he had a feeling the only positive quality that three possessed was being the first of the lot.

Dan retreated further into his sulk as he bowed his head lower, but he trudged after them as Dani ran through the trees. They had their work cut out for them, because all the trees were lovely. The recent snow dusted the branches with white powder and it looked like a perfect winter wonderland; he would be happy taking any of them home. Thankfully Dani seemed to have a vision and she inspected trees that caught her eye with an expert, critical gaze.

“What about this one?” Vlad suggested as he pointed at a well-shaped tree that Dani walked right past.

She turned to give it a second look as she placed a gloved hand to her chin, but she shook her head. “Nope. It’s too…piney.”

“Too…piney?” Vlad asked in confirmation.

“What the hell does that mean?” Dan asked as he raised an eyebrow.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s more of a feeling. It’s just…too much pine.” And as if that statement cleared everything up, she dashed off to another tree.

“She’s drawing this out,” Dan complained.

Vlad sighed. “We’ve barely been here five minutes; this is hardly being drawn out.”

“There was nothing wrong with that tree,” Dan pointed out. “She shot it down because she doesn’t want to be done.”

“And what’s the harm in that?” Vlad probed. “Let her look at some of the trees, get a feel for what’s out there, and then we can press her into choosing one.”

Dan rolled his eyes and trudged after them as he scuffed his boots stubbornly through the snow. Occasionally he’d kick the trunk of a tree just to watch the snow shake and fall from the branches, but mostly he sulked behind them while Dani debated the features of different trees and the quality of their pine needles.

“Oh stop looking like you’re being tortured,” Vlad finally spoke up. “This is far from the worst thing you’ve ever had to endure.”

“Don’t you remember I hate Christmas?” Dan pointed out.

“Part of you may,” Vlad conceded. He remembered hearing Jack complain incessantly about how young Daniel could not get into the spirit of Christmas. He’d planned to use that at some point to his advantage in recruiting the young Daniel, but now…well he had enough versions of the boy that he didn’t need to add another under his roof. “But the other part of you secretly loves Christmas. I know because that part is me. So maybe you should listen to that other part.”

“I usually lean towards hatred,” Dan quipped sullenly.

Dani poked her head out from behind a nearby Christmas tree, her hat covered in snow. “Well, then maybe you shouldn’t.” She gave Dan a pointed look and a shrug before she disappeared back behind the foliage.

Vlad had to hide a chuckle behind a gloved hand at how simple the suggestion seemed. Danielle had a way of cutting through the attitude to find the cheery solution. He didn’t know where that quality came from, because while Daniel could be overly hopeful at times, he wouldn’t necessarily describe the boy as cheery. She hadn’t had a cheerful existence so far (he meant to change that) so he couldn’t say that positive outlook came from her prior experiences. Maybe she forced herself to adopt that perspective specifically to deal with her experiences? He’d have to ponder that a bit more. But whatever the explanation for her optimistic demeanor, he appreciated her view on the world and tried to adopt a little of it himself now and then.

Dan also seemed intrigued by her suggestion because he grew quiet and pensive. It wouldn’t last long, it never did, but maybe he took some of what she said to heart.

Suddenly a tree caught Vlad’s eye and he stopped in front of it. A wide base with a tapered point, taller than him, no patchy spots - it resembled the quintessential tree from any holiday catalog. “Danielle, what about this one?” Vlad suggested as he inspected the branches. He gave them a good shake and they seemed sturdy and capable of holding even his heaviest Packers ornaments.

Dani doubled back and gave the tree some serious consideration. She walked around it a couple times and even got down onto her knees to look up under the tree at its bones. She scooted out from under the branches and shook her head. “No, that’s not our tree.”

“Are you kidding me?” Dan snapped. “It’s perfect!”

“That’s the problem,” Dani stated as she lifted up one of the branches. “It’s too perfect. You want the tree to have some character.”

“I can’t believe this,” Dan groaned as he looked up at the sky like it held some kind of salvation.

“Well, then we’ll keep looking,” Vlad agreed, though it pained him to walk away from this picture-perfect tree.

“I still don’t understand why we’re doing this,” Dan spoke up.

Vlad took a moment to close his eyes and collect his patience before he spoke up again. “Because we need a Christmas tree,” he tried to say through a controlled, even tone.

“Okay, but why are we doing this?” Dan asked with added emphasis on his real question. ”Why not just send Skulker to grab one? You send him on all your other mundane errands.”

“Because he wouldn’t grab the right one. And he wouldn’t take the care needed to transport it back. And he’s on a date.” There, three practical reasons that should hopefully quell Dan’s query and avoided the true emotional reasons for the trip.

Dan stopped abruptly as he blinked a couple times. “He’s what?”

Vlad turned around and quickly noticed the shocked wide eyes and gaping mouth, and he took the slightest bit of delight that he could catch the ghost off guard like that. He actually greatly resembled Daniel in that moment in more than just appearance. He didn’t often see pieces of the Daniel he knew in Dan - he must have torn it all out when he rid himself of his emotions - but occasionally they would bleed through. It was refreshing to see. “Well, he didn’t call it a date. He’s off destroying the world with Technus. But it’s a date. We all know it’s a date.”

Dan shook his head minutely as a look of revulsion colored his shocked expression. “I don’t want to hear that.”

“What, do you have a problem with love?” Dani asked as she emerged from behind them. She had clearly been crawling around under trees because pine needles stuck out of her hat and jacket.

“No - I mean yes,” he countered quickly. “Yes. I hate love.”

“Riiiight,” Dani said as she rolled her eyes. She gave a slight wink to Vlad who hid a chuckle behind his glove. “Hey, shouldn’t we be worried about the ‘destroying the world’ part?”

Vlad waved a hand dismissively. “Oh, I wouldn’t be too worried. It’s Skulker and Technus after all: hardly a pair to be concerned about. Besides, I’m sure Daniel will find a way to ruin their fun.”

“First good thing that brat’s done,” Dan quipped.

Dani put her hands on her waist as she leaned in close to Dan’s face. “Why are you so against them dating?” she asked as she squinted to study his face.

He took a step back and lightly shoved her out of his space. “Because I’ve seen them in the future. Look, can we talk about anything else? Like what about this tree?” he asked as he tapped the tree next to them.

Vlad smiled that Dan seemed to be getting into the spirit enough that talking about a tree was an acceptable alternative. It also seemed to work because it completely distracted Dani who rushed over to examine the tree.

“Nah. This one sheds too many needles,” she decided as she pulled a handful of needles off.

“You can’t–every tree will lose its needles if you pull on them like that!” Dan argued in exasperation.

“Yeah, but this one lost more,” she countered. “So there. Not a good tree.” She scampered off before Dan could get another argument in.

He clenched a fist and breathed out a long, slow breath. Vlad hiked an eyebrow in interest because it looked like some of those anger management techniques were actually working. He’d have to thank Jazmine later. “She’s being unreasonable.”

“She’s just having fun,” Vlad sighed. “I promise, I’ll make her select one soon enough, just bear with her.”

“Oh I’m bearing with her alright,” Dan muttered through gritted teeth as he watched Dani dismiss another perfectly good tree.

While Dan might be suffering watching her traipse through the rows of pine trees, Vlad actually found the whole event quite enjoyable. The whimsy of watching Danielle play around amongst the trees and inspect each one filled him with a paternal glow. Watching a Christmas tradition unfold through the eyes of a child filled him with a happiness he couldn’t really explain and renewed his Christmas spirit more than any other activity could. Now if only his other charge would find the tender happiness of the moment with them, then it could all be perfect. Alas, that seemed to be too much to ask for.

“If none of these trees are right, then why can’t we just get a plastic one? It would save us all a lot of time,” Dan pointed out.

“The plastic ones just don’t have the same feel to them,” Vlad explained as he stretched the limits of his very limited patience to stay civil. How he longed to turn around and brandish the ‘because I said so’ that all guardians use at some point, but he knew that would only end in conflict and would force Dan to pull away even further. But god would it be easier. “A real tree has a scent and a presence that the fake ones don’t have. And the experience of selecting a tree is far more thrilling.”

“I can’t say I agree with the ‘thrilling’ part of that statement,” Dan grumbled.

“Because you’re not letting yourself. But selecting a tree for Christmas…why it’s one of the few happy memories I have of Christmases past. My parents were usually too busy for their trophy child, but Christmas seemed to be the time when they remembered why they had a child in the first place. Every Christmas we would pick out a tree from some small lot like this one here. Mother would watch and smile as I picked out a tree. I could actually hold my father’s attention for a time. We had no distractions or anything else demanding their attention. It was us as a family picking out a Christmas tree.”

A soft smile settled on Vlad’s face as he thought of those happy, nostalgic memories. He didn’t have many happy memories of his childhood as they were mostly filled with loneliness and boredom, but the few he had of Christmas he held very dear to his heart. And being back amongst the trees, with the snow and the pine and the excited squeals of children pointing to trees brought him right back to the happiest of his memories.

Dani stopped her inspection of a tree’s branches, and when she turned to look at him, Vlad could see the sympathy creasing her slightly teary eyes. He wasn’t really trying to get that reaction from her, but he wanted to share how much the nostalgia of this trip meant to him. She reached a comforting hand out towards him, but stopped when Dan’s harsh voice cut through the silence left by Vlad’s story.

“You forget old man that I have those same memories too,” Dan growled with a slight edge to his voice. While Vlad clearly drew warm feelings from these memories, Dan’s reaction gave him the distinct impression that he was not as pleased to be reliving those old memories. “I don’t need the reminder. So I ask again why are we doing this? And I want a real answer this time.”

Vlad opened his mouth with a quick businessman answer full of bluster and smoke and mirrors, but faltered when he realized that this wasn’t a business meeting. This wasn’t some pitch that he needed to sell to a stranger whose feelings and opinions didn’t matter. This wasn’t some cut and dry business proposal that most people would forget about two days later. No, this was his ward and he owed him more than some superficial response. He deserved to hear the real reason, even if Vlad still didn’t know what that real reason could be. How was he supposed to explain to the ghost who tore out his own feelings a decade ago that he did it because he yearned to give his wards a warm memory to hold on to in the cold and lonely months that seemed to come for everyone in their later years, like he had of his own Christmas traditions. He couldn’t rationalize it or explain it in a logical way that would make sense to him, because all he had were feelings and a hope, and he could hardly find the words to explain that to himself, let alone to the other ghost.

Dani, however, seemed to have no problems putting that feeling into words. She stepped in between them and looked at them both with that infectious smile of hers. “Because it’s what family does.”

A silence fell about them as the word ‘family’ rang in their ears. Dan stared down at the snow-covered ground and refused to meet either of their eyes. He slid his foot in the snow just to make some kind of noise to fill the awkward silence. Vlad also shifted uncomfortably as he grabbed his other arm and ran his hand along his sleeve as he lost himself in thought.

Family. So Danielle somehow believed they were a family? Why was he so shocked to hear that? He’d thought it earlier that night and even multiple times before that as he planned this out. This was the sort of activity a family did together. He wanted to share this with them because he saw them as family. It all made sense in his head, and yet for some reason the word never felt right when he rolled it around in his head. He always felt it wasn’t quite right for what a family should be, but maybe that had been his problem. For Danielle to say it so plainly…well it made it all the more plain to him too. Maybe it wasn’t the family everyone else had, but it was the family the three of them got, and didn’t that make the word all the more meaningful? The fact that three outcasts who never really belonged to anyone had found each other (sometimes in very strange circumstances) and managed to make it work meant something to him, to Danielle, and hopefully to Dan based on his reaction.

Dani must have realized she said something poignant because she let the other two sit in their thoughts for a long, awkward moment before her eyes grew wide. She pointed into the distance as a huge grin spread across her face. “That’s it!” she cried out before she shot off down the row to the tree that caught her eye.

Dan glanced up from the ground and took a step forward to follow after her, but Vlad held a hand out to gently stop him. He knew Dan didn’t like being touched and he was putting his own safety in danger by doing so, but he had a feeling he would allow it this time. “Wait. You want to know why I’m doing this?” he asked, which turned Dan’s warning glare into a look of curiosity. “I’m doing it for her.”

Vlad gestured towards Dani who jumped about her newly selected tree with excited hands clasped together. “Maybe you don’t care anymore, or maybe even can’t care anymore, and that’s fine. Maybe you don’t think we’re a family, and that’s fine too. But she does. And she has known very few Christmases since she…well since I brought her into this life. I wasn’t ready to make them good Christmases before…but I am now. And I want her to have a good memory of this, like we did.”

He gave Dan one last little nod before he met up with Dani at her chosen tree. Dan fell silent and stayed behind, but Vlad didn’t mind. Giving him a chance to think and ponder those thoughts seemed like it would be helpful in the long run. “Well now, let’s see this tree.” Like many of the others they’d pointed out, the tree had a good wide and full silhouette and was tall enough to fit the ceiling of its destined room. He nodded his head in approval as he circled the tree and studied it from all angles, but his inspection unfortunately uncovered a gap in the tree. And not just a gap, but it appeared all the branches below that gap seemed to be drooping, like something heavy had pulled them down. He grabbed those branches and tried to move them up to see if they were broken, but the branches still remained firm. So they were attached securely to the tree but had just been shaped improperly.

Vlad sighed as he released the branch and dusted his hands off on his jacket. “I’m sorry to tell you this Danielle, but your tree has some drooping branches on this side.” She would be crushed to hear the tree that captured her heart had such a noticeable imperfection.

“I know,” she said simply. “That’s why it’s perfect.”

“...I’m not following,” Vlad admitted. She’d dismissed so many other trees for the tiniest of details (some of which she made up) so how could she so easily ignore this one?

“Because it’s not made perfect. It’s not the perfect example of a tree, and maybe it’s not exactly what you expect or want when you think about a tree, but it’s still good. It’ll still make a good tree,” she pointed out as she held one of the branches and ran her gloved fingers over the pine needles. “And you can love the tree not just in spite of its flaws, but because of its flaws.”

Vlad quickly realized this had become far larger than just picking out a tree. Somehow she had turned this into a metaphor for herself. She wanted a tree that had its flaws just as she had, and knowing that tree could still be chosen and loved and desired was important to her. He realized he had caused that insecurity too. By chasing after a “better” clone, a clone more like Daniel, he had dismissed his other creations as failures without caring about how that made them feel. He had a lot to atone for, more than what he could do with a Christmas tradition, but he’d start that atonement by showing her that yes, she could still be chosen and loved because of who she was.

“Well, then it sounds like it’s the perfect tree for us,” Vlad agreed with a smile as he placed a hand on her shoulder. A slightly broken tree for the slightly broken family. It felt right.

Dani squealed in excitement and jumped up and down in place. “Yay! I can’t wait to put all kinds of garland and ornaments and lights and - ooh tinsel! We can put tinsel on it too!”

Vlad chuckled as he shook his head slightly. Tinsel sounded like a horribly messy thing, but if tinsel brought her some holiday cheer and joy, then he’d let her throw tinsel all over that tree. “Whatever you’d like. Now, let’s take this tree number to the–”

“Oh, sorry pal,” a voice spoke up from behind them. Vlad turned to see a middle-aged couple walk over to them. The bearded man gestured towards the tree. “We already paid for that one.”

“What?” Dani asked as she turned her wide, sad eyes onto Vlad, as if pleading for a different answer.

“For this tree?” Vlad asked in confirmation as he placed his hands on the branches of the tree.

“Yup, that exact tree. Number 251. Best bang for its buck on the whole lot. Managed to get a discount on account of the defect,” he crowed proudly.

“But…but…” Dani stammered as she looked back at her prized tree. “But I spent so long looking for this one…”

Vlad felt a frustration rise up within him, but he tamped it down as he put on his best businessman face. He didn’t need to let his temper get out of control here. He had to remind himself that this couple didn’t understand or know how much this tree meant to her, but surely they could be persuaded. And if the joy of a child couldn’t sway them, then he was sure money could.

“Any way I could persuade you to pick a different tree?” he cajoled as he took a step closer. “Pay the cost of the difference to another tree perhaps? My dau–young Danielle here, she really has her heart set on this tree.”

“It’s perfect,” she pouted as she held onto one of its branches like a young child held the hand of a beloved stuffed animal.

The couple looked between each other for a moment, but when he met Vlad’s gaze again he shook his head. “Sorry, but we worked hard for the deal we got for this tree, and as a point of pride we’d like to take it home.”

“Extra money then,” Vlad pressed. “The difference in price for another tree plus an extra hundred to spend on decorations or whatever you’d like.”

The man shook his head again. “Sorry pal, but we’d like this tree, and we did find it first.”

Vlad clenched a fist as his ectoplasm boiled in rage. Really they were just being unreasonable. The tree, while perfect for them, could not possibly be worth this much to the other couple. It seemed like the more he argued for it, the more value they found in their initial purchase. He normally believed everyone had a tipping point, but he feared that these individuals were too stubborn for their own good. Perhaps he could arrange a little…situation on the road, where the tree mysteriously fell through their car on the way home. He’d tried to handle this nicely, but he wasn’t above some ghostly trickery to get that tree. Yes, that could work. He would just need a duplicate to follow them and then–

“He made you a reasonable offer,” Dan growled out from behind them. Vlad turned to see Dan practically vibrating in his anger, like his skin could barely hold the rage building up inside him. His clenched fists shook from the effort it took to keep them at his side.

“Now Dan, we don’t need to–” Vlad tried to intervene, but Dan cut him short with a steely glare.

“I’m not talking to you, old man. I’m talking to these two,” he snarled as he focused his attention on the pig-headed couple as he took slow, controlled steps towards them, like a careful predator stalking his prey. “He made you a reasonable offer and you said no because of what? Your pride? So you can have a trophy and congratulate yourselves on how you got such a good deal at the expense of the dreams of a child? You’re pathetic.”

The man bristled and stepped in front of his wife. “We saw it first. We already paid for it. That means it’s ours.”

“Oh no it isn’t. No, this tree is ours now. You want to take this tree from her?” he asked slowly as he gestured towards Dani. “On her first real Christmas? Her first Christmas with her family? No…no you’re not going anywhere near this tree. I’ll make sure of that,” he promised as a sinister red light flared in his eyes.

“Brad,” his wife squeaked up from the back, but he shook his head and took a brave (and foolish) step forward. He took a moment to size the teenager up with his dark jacket and thick black boots. Vlad realized that the man probably thought he had this “teenage punk” all figured out - oh how wrong he would be.

“You think some teenager with a mouth will stop me?” Brad asked as he puffed up his chest with fake confidence. “I’ll call the cops and shut down your tough guy act.”

“The cops won’t save you from what I have in store,” Dan threatened as his eyes glowed a uniform red. A white ring of light formed around his waist, and as it split apart it revealed the massive, muscled form of Dan Phantom. Brad took a terrified step back on shaking legs as Dan advanced on him, towering over him. He grabbed the man’s shirt in his fist and easily suspended him in the air. The man grasped at the hand around his shirt and kicked his legs as he begged for mercy, but it only made Dan’s malicious smile grow wider.

He flew the pleading man up into the air, higher and higher before he simply released his hold on the man and dropped him. He screamed as he plummeted quickly to the earth, but Dan swooped down to grab him again. He held him in the air and grinned at his screams for mercy. “If you think that was bad, you should see what else I have in store for you,” Dan threatened as he held up a fist wreathed with green ectoplasmic flame.

“Oh butter biscuits, we’d been doing so well for a public outing,” Vlad sighed from down on the ground. As much as he felt great pleasure (and maybe pride?) upon hearing the unreasonable man squeal in terror and fright, he didn’t actually want the trouble of having Dan hurt the man. As much as he wished for the man to suffer pain for his stubborn attitude and refusal to help secure Dani’s dream tree, as a guardian he couldn’t actually let Dan hurt the man.

“Are you going to stop him?” Dani asked with a slight tremble in her voice. She must still remember the last time he had to stop Dan and took quite a beating in the process.

“Eventually,” Vlad sighed as he kept his eyes focused closely on Dan. “If he does anything that’s actually harmful I will of course rush in.” For now though, it seemed like Dan found satisfaction enough in terrifying the man, and judging by Brad’s high pitched squeals of “You can have the tree! You can have the tree!” he had a feeling the tactic worked.

“But first, let us rescue that tree, hmm?” Vlad suggested as he smiled down at his young charge.

Dani’s smile lit up her face as she reached over to give Vlad a hug from the side. He stiffened slightly in surprise only because he didn’t expect such a physically affectionate reaction, but it melted his heart all the same in a way he’d never felt before. He placed a hand on her back and gave it a comforting pat.

He looked back over at Dan who had moved on to threatening the man by slowly sinking him intangibly into the ground and he noticed the gleeful yet sinister smile on his face. Dan reacted so strongly to the potential for Danielle’s dream to be dashed, and he had even used the word family in his threats. He admitted they were a family.

Somehow, in their own strange way, this trip had brought them closer as a unit and…yes as a family. This off-the-cuff idea that he stitched together with a feeling and a hope had actually proven to be a happy outing that he knew generated some formative memories for all involved. Maybe he had done it. Maybe he had created a new Christmas tradition for all of them. For his family.

Their own family tradition.

Notes: I just wanted to make a note that I don't actually have anything against plastic trees. I myself have 3 plastic trees and have never had a live tree (I'm too paranoid about the fire risks). So that was all Vlad. But I do have a romanticized idea of what selecting a live tree would be like!

Also @northerngrail I hope you noticed the little nod to one of your other prompts in there!

This is also a first for me on a lot of levels. First time including Dani in a story. First time writing from Vlad's POV. First time writing anything post-AGIT. So hopefully I did it all justice!

I hope you enjoyed your gif!

#danny phantom #danny phantom fanfiction #fanfiction #phandom truce 2023 #holiday truce 2023 #masters family #agit spoilers #a glitch in time spoilers #post agit #christmas fluff #found family trope #family fluff #minor angst #but mostly fluff #parental Vlad Masters #Vlad Masters POV #christmas tree #christmas spirit

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library-of-cronos · 1 year

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Help Wanted

Happy Truce @brokeitwiththepowerofmathamatics! I liked your “ghosts get a job at Casper High” prompt, so I went with that :)

Ao3

Staffing had always been an issue at Casper High, what with the constant ghost attacks. Teachers quit, classrooms were destroyed, and every other day it seemed like poor Mr. Lancer was teaching a new subject. It was clear the man was stressed out of his mind. It didn’t help that his students cared less and less about the subjects he taught with each passing day.

So, with all of the grace of a man stress-balding and losing so much sleep he could put ghosts to shame, he asked politely (nearly begged on his hands and knees on the floor of the Nasty Burger where he was eating(?) lunch) for the teenage ghost, Phantom, to please please convince some of his less violent friends to come teach classes for even a single day.

Pride be damned, even if he didn’t think it would work, he was willing to try anything for a day off. He hadn’t honestly expected it to work.

"Sure." Phantom said, shrugging and taking another bite of his half-eaten burger. He said this while chewing his meal. "Pretty sure they’d find it funny."

"...Funny?" Mr. Lancer squinted, his eyes red and irritated from the lack of sleep and his stomach burning from the caffeine. "They would find it...amusing?"

"To ‘teach those little brats a lesson’ for a day?" He mocked someone with a higher voice, but quickly went back to normal. "Hell yeah, she’d like that." He took a long, drawn-out sip from his soda, which was nearing its end. "There’s a couple others who would do it, for a price."

"Please." Mr. Lancer choked out, his desperation and sleep deprivation leaking through. "Just for one day. That’s all I ask."

Phantom shrugged nonchalantly, humming in response. "Sure. Don’t worry about showing up tomorrow." He finished the rest of his meal quickly, then threw it all out in the trash before lifting himself off the ground. He turned back to the teacher briefly. "But if you want a good laugh, I’d say stick around."

He vanished after giggling behind his hand and laughing all the way through the ceiling. Mr. Lancer sighed in relief that his plan had worked, and promptly collapsed onto the nearest booth.

Mr. Lancer didn’t have high hopes at first—God knows no one could reason with the likes of even the Box Ghost to stop destroying the town for one day—but he prayed and hoped (and prayed again) for just a mere day off.

He had woken up the next morning with no intent of going to his job and decided that even if Phantom couldn’t pull off the impossible, he would damn the consequences of not showing up for his classes. Of course, after spending approximately twenty extra minutes in bed desperately trying and failing to go back to sleep, his body screamed at him to get up and go to school out of habit.

The actions of getting up, getting dressed, packing up his things, and driving to school were all blurry in his head, but the one thing he noticed was that the streets were devoid of all ghost fights, including the GIW, Red Huntress, and the Fenton’s.

Casper High itself was quiet too. He looked up at the second floor while getting out of his car, half expecting it to be on fire without him. It stood proudly, not on fire, contrary to what he would have believed five minutes ago. He walked in the front door, maybe expecting the inside to lead to a ghost dimension, but it too was normal. The usual receptionist greeted him with a kind smile and a pleasant ‘good morning’.

Shaking his head, and thoroughly confused, he made his way to his first-period history classroom. He heard a single, calm voice behind the walls. The door opened, but he couldn’t have fathomed who was behind it.

A green-skinned ghost in a sky-blue gown, blonde hair held up regally, was floating at the front of the room, in front of a chalked-up blackboard, teaching in his place. A few students glanced over at his entrance, but other than that, every student was watching, listening, and taking notes on her lecture of the Middle Ages.

She glanced at him as well, nodding politely, before going back to her topic. He stood in the middle of the doorway, stunned, mouth agape. In the midst of his moments of staring, he noticed the staff name tag buttoned to her dress.

‘Dora’.

Mr. Lancer didn’t need to know any more. He wasn't going to question how Phantom, the teen-hero and enemy of ghosts, persuaded a ghost the teacher had never seen before to teach in his class at his school.

He walked to the vending machine, and mindlessly got a can of coffee. He spent what must have been the rest of the class ‘enjoying’ that terrible, bitter drink on a bench in the halls. It was the only break he’d gotten in the past month, and he wasn’t going to take it for granted by being suspicious of the ghost who’d given it to him.

The bell rang loudly, startling him. He put a hand over his rapidly beating heart, and took a calming breath, then put the empty can in the recycling bin and traversed the student-filled halls to his next class. For some reason, everyone was in a good mood today (seeing as no one slapped his head or called him silly names).

His second period class was in the computer lab. He had left his suitcase of teaching material somewhere along his journey from the front desk to where he currently stood outside the computer hall, though, and he’d already forgotten what it was supposed to be, so even if he wanted to teach, that was out the window.

Shaking his head and sighing deeply, he slid the door open to another strange scene.

The white-haired, electric-powered ghost that everyone knew by name because he shouted it out at every opportunity (almost rivaling the Box Ghost in that department), stood next to Mr. Baxter, guiding him along a research paper while monologuing about the sizes and fonts proper essays should be in. He would stop his rant to give advice or to praise the student for doing something well, but otherwise he chatted about the beauty of machines and how he decided to leave Phantom alone if it meant he got to be in a room with so many gorgeous electronics.

It was only then that Mr. Lancer noticed a trail of electricity running from his feet to each computer that was in use. If he squinted, the teacher could have sworn he saw a mini Technus displayed on the students’ screens, moving around and guiding them through their headphones.

He left, no one having seen him enter in the first place. The teacher decided to spend the rest of the class collapsed in the empty staff room. His weeks of insomnia were catching up to him, even with the coffee.

"Doin’ alright, teach?" A tiny laugh came from directly above him.

Without opening his eyes, he knew who it belonged to.

"Yes, Phantom." Sighing into his hands, he said. "However, I didn’t realize having the day off would be so stressful."

He snickered giddily, and Mr. Lancer loathed that he could not find this situation as amusing as he and his friends did. "Oh, and you haven’t even seen the best part yet."

"Please do not tell me." He shook his head and sighed again, somehow even more tired than before. "I would prefer to remain unaware for as long as possible."

"You got it, Mr. Lancer." He made a zipping sound, and presumably made the same action across his mouth. "My lips are sealed."

The room went quiet after that, and Mr. Lancer could only assume he had vanished through the ceiling again.

When the bell rang obnoxiously loud some time later, he slowly hoisted himself up from the chair and slugged over to the music room. This time, Mr. Lancer had an idea who would be behind this door. There was really only one ghost who had a music theme, though he had no idea why she would want to teach when the last thing he knew, she was hypnotizing his poor students into doing her bidding.

"Listen punks." Her voice was heard even through the door. It was...surprisingly gentle (considering her bold personality). "It’s 1, 3, 4." Three notes on an electric guitar played slowly. "Then 6, 8, 4, 44." Four more notes played. "Got it?"

Mr. Lancer heard a few affirmations, and the guitar shifted around. After a second, those first three notes played, a bit off-key but still correct. Then the next four, this time better.

"Now, do it all at once." He could hear the pride in her voice.

The student played the whole thing, and Mr. Lancer could hear the lyrics behind the notes. As they played it slowly, he followed along in his head.

You will remember my name.

Ah, of course the music ghost would pass on her favorite song. He actually stayed outside the music room for the rest of class, listening in on Ember's instruction and simply enjoying the pleasant sounds of guitars and cheers whenever a student got something right (cheers from both teacher and friends).

Just before he knew class was going to end, he got up from the floor, brushed himself off, and went back to the staff lounge before lunch began.

As he sat down, he began to get a little worried when he realized Phantom seemed giddy about something he hadn’t seen yet, even though there was seemingly nothing to worry about with Ember teaching his class, but he pushed it out of his thoughts so as to not ruin his break.

He suddenly realized that he had not only left his briefcase somewhere in the corridors, but also his lunch at home. Sighing in disappointment, he left to try and choke down some cafeteria food if he didn’t want to go hungry.

He was about twenty feet away from the closed cafeteria doors when he heard the raucous. He recognized the screams as those of his own students and dashed in, only to be hit in the face with what felt like chocolate pudding, but looked like radioactive waste. He exclaimed in disgust, trying to wipe it off with a nearby napkin, but when the napkin screamed back at him, he dropped it in surprise.

With one eye closed behind some radioactive pudding(?), he finally looked around to find out what was happening.

Inside, if his vision wasn’t failing him, there were definitely more ghosts than the ones teaching today.

While the Box Ghost was lifting boxes of utensils and politely threatening students with them (who were in turn throwing food at him in retaliation), Technus was summoning pictures of food from a stolen computer to lob at a ring of mashed potatoes the students had made as a target. There was a blue dragon huddled in the corner with a bunch of freshmen, all seemingly taking naps. Ember was standing on a table and playing her guitar for a screaming crowd (none of whom were mind controlled, just enjoying the show).

And Mr. Fenton had Skulker in a headlock?

"Heya teach!" He called out from where he was, dragging a complaining Skulker closer. Upon seeing his confused look, he glanced down at the struggling ghost. "Don’t mind this loser. He was trying to ruin our party, so he’s on timeout."

"Right." Mr. Lancer numbly nodded. "Well." He looked around again. There was food everywhere, the tables were flipped haphazardly, the Lunch Lady (when did she get here?) was serving radioactive food, and the bell was going to ring in ten minutes for class to start again.

Then, when class started, poor Mr. Lancer would be left to deal with this unholy mess.

Well, he’d only be left to deal with the consequences if he were here today.

"Good luck with your...party, Mr. Fenton." He decided. "If anyone asks, I was sick today."

When the students smiled, it was almost wicked, with bared teeth and nearly glowing eyes. "I hope you enjoyed your day off, Mr. Lancer."

#Phandom holiday truce #christmas truce #truce 2022 #even though I posted this on 2023 #Danny Phantom #holiday truce 2022

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ventisettestars · 4 months

Text

Happy New Year! This is a fic/art combo for @46-reasonable-hamsters in the 2023 Holiday Truce. The prompts were fun but I adored this one. The art is at the end. I hope you enjoy!

Summary: Danny needs adult supervision while his parents are out of town.

wc: 1.2k

Tags: Badger Cereal, Maddie the Cat, it's all fluff, no beta

₊˚ ‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿ ˚₊

"Daniel." Vlad looked down at Danny from the doorway of his Amity Park mansion, making note of the suitcase beside the boy.

"Hey. So my parents called you a bunch, and Dad said he left a message so that was as good as you agreeing to this." Danny pointed a thumb to indicate the GAV behind him, his father giving them both a thumbs up as Vlad made eye contact.

"Ah, yes, how could I, as his best friend, turn down a sudden request." Vlad's voice was dry. He'd listened to the messages, and hadn't responded back for a reason. They were going to a convention and didn't want to bring Danny along. Too dangerous or something?

"Yeah, you must have been just soooo busy you forgot to call him back."

"Your father is a fool." Vlad scoffed.

"Watch it. Anyway, if we just make it look like all is good, I can just fly back home once they are out of view and they won't know a thing."

"That isn't a bad plan." Vlad waved to Danny's parents, who then began to speed off. "Though seeing as it's the holiday week, you're welcome to stay and enjoy some real food. I'm having some things catered throughout the week as well."

Danny raised a brow. "This isn't some weird 'show me true holiday' scheme to make me want to be your son again?"

"No, if that is the outcome, I wouldn't dislike it. But it is not the plan. Simply, just a lousy time of year to spend alone. Shall we call it Truce early?"

Danny seemed to ponder a bit. "I guess as long as you don't try to force actual holiday cheer at me, warm meals would be a perk."

"Splendid." Vlad grabbed Danny's suitcase telekinetically and had it follow the both of them inside.

₊˚ ‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿ ˚₊

The room Vlad led Danny to was weirdly plain. A normal guest room with a TV and balcony facing away from the city with a rather nice view of the sky.

"The room faces the sunrise, so I'd suggest closing the curtains if you don't want the sun in your eyes first thing in the morning." Vlad set down the suitcase near the wardrobe. "My room is directly below this one if you need anything."

"You didn't take the top floor with the best view?" Danny walked over to check out the view.

"It was originally, but I grew tired of having to go one more floor up each night."

Danny let out a little snort. "That's super lazy of you when we can both fly."

"I'll admit it's partially to do with the lady I employ growing older as well. I'll introduce you to her when she comes in the next few days."

"Huh, Okay." Danny didn't expect that from Vlad.

"I'll leave you to it. You know where the Kitchen is, so help yourself to anything."

Danny watched as Vlad left. It made him suspicious on how non-confrontational Vlad was being, but he settled into the room and started sending messages to his friends.

₊˚ ‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿ ˚₊

A few nights into Danny's stay, things continued to go smoothly. Vlad left Danny to his own devices most the time, only interaction around meals or a few times when Danny was bored.

Most the time Danny spent playing with Maddie the Cat, or checking out Vlad's lab since quote 'I've nothing in the lab you haven't seen before while we fought'.

Danny wouldn't admit it was nice to be able to move around without having to keep an eye open for ghost traps at all hours of the day.

₊˚ ‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿ ˚₊

"Aw, hey there Maddie, whatcha got there?"

The cat merped from where she rolled in her tangle of yarn. Danny took the thread of yarn from her by phasing her out of it, starting to ball it best he could. It was longer still and trailed up the staircase. He followed it to one of the many rooms that Vlad had on the second floor.

Looking into the room was a given. Danny looked in confusion as he was greeted by a wall of yarn. Shelves contained a well organized gradient of yarn. Vlad sat at a desk with his laptop in front of him, a pair of knitting needles with half a scarf floated next to him.

The two half ghosts stared at each other, the only sound in the room was the clicking of the needles followed by Maddie jumping onto Vlad's lap.

Danny's eyes drifted to the striped scarf, that matched the sweater that Danny had assumed Vlad bought, but no. It was the same colors, and not that Danny knew anything about producing sweaters, he's sat through enough of Sam's gripping about matching all the shades of black.

"Ah, Maddie had this." Danny held up the yarn he collected on his way to the room.

"I was wondering why it'd gotten so quiet."

"So, you knit?"

Vlad sighed and pointed to the other chair in the room. Danny took it and got comfy, yarn still in hand.

"I do. It started as a means to control something telepathically while distracted. The lady next to me in the hospital back when- Well she would be knitting while doing just about anything but eating to keep her hands from going stiff."

"So you do it with your mind? Doesn't seem the same."

"No, but at the time I needed something to help fine tune my control. It was only one of the things I did, mind you."

"But you kept at it cause you liked it?"

"Indeed." Vlad barely even glanced at his work as he switched colors.

"What other things did you do?"

"It was before I made my fortune, so small things. Cleaned, dishes, puzzles-those were the worst cause I needed to have a visual most times- sometimes folded clothes. Once I'd even tried to use telekinesis to pick up the floor rather than vacuum."

Danny laughed. "How'd that end up going?"

"Terribly. I just made the floor intangible so that the dirt would go into the apartment below me."

Danny laughed. "That's evil."

"Well, they vacuumed at 6 in the morning, so they deserved it." Vlad followed Danny's gaze to his knitting. "Would you like to try it?"

"Wha-"

"You can even use the yarn that Maddie summoned you here with."

"I guess it couldn't hurt to try."

5 minutes later Danny was about to stab someone with the needles. "How do you like this?"

Vlad tsked. "You've hardly even started. I never took you for a quitter."

"I'm not quitting." Danny bristled. "It's just so- It looks ugly."

"It's because you're just learning. You're good enough with your powers this should be cake walk."

"You say that, but I just throw things."

"Then this is good practice. Developing fine motor skills has no downsides."

"Fine. I'll finish this damn scarf. It's gunna be for your cat."

"Ah, nice and small then. She will love it."

Danny growled and put all his focus back into making the needles move.

End notes:

The prompt was: Someone stumbles across Vlad practicing his ‘hidden’ hobby—knitting.

And I just couldn't get the idea of that being the one thing Danny would end up letting Vlad mentor him in.

#danny phantom #dp #holiday truce 2023 #my fic #my art #draws #phandom truce 2023

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