#phic phight 20

[ajitated]

(Originally posted: 20 April 2021)

Summary: When Danny starts having dreams about an abandoned ghost ship, he doesn’t expect to ever come across it when he’s awake, or to discover that it’s not actually abandoned at all.

It turns out a lot of ghosts stay around because they want family. They want someone to care about and someone to care about them in turn, a level of closeness they missed out on in life. Danny isn’t ready to admit that this applies to him, too.

Written for Phic Phight 2021, Team Human! Prompt by imdeadtiredtm and @five-rivers :D

#ajility writes #ajs fanworks #danny phantom #moving onto blog #originally posted 20 apr 21 #dp ff #dp fic #phic phight #phic phight 2021 #team human

[dp-marvel94]

20 Q's for Fic Writers

Thanks for tagging me, @agentianlegend !

1. How many works do you have on Ao3? 

62! I can't believe I have that many fics posted.

2. What's your total Ao3 word count?

918,405

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Almost exclusively Danny Phantom. I have one Gravity Falls Crossover and one DPxDC crossover as well.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos? 

Summoning: When Jack and Maddie Fenton tried to summon the King of All Ghosts, the last thing they expected was the sudden appearance of a very familiar, very human boy wearing spaceship pajamas and with a toothbrush halfway to his mouth.

Double Discovery: After accidentally shooting Phantom with an anti-possession gun, Maddie finds she has a lot to learn about both Danny Phantom and Danny Fenton. Eventual Revelation Story.

Borrower Danny: A teeny tiny Danny starts living in Wayne Manor

4. Fangs or No Fangs: For Phic Phight 2021. Jack and Maddie know that Danny is Phantom. They saw him transform and they knew they should talk about it with him. But…even after two weeks, that conversation feels impossible. And so Jack and Maddie have a plan: a trip to the planetarium to cheer Danny up, to finally see him smile again, and to pave the way for the truth.

5. Below the Greenhouse: For the Phic Phight. Prompt by Avearia: Maddie discovers the depths of Vlad's obsessions when she stumbles upon his secret lab. Despite the shock, part of her almost isn't surprised by the stolen Fenton Tech, the ripoff ghost portal, or the eerie Holo-Maddie—but the clone she finds floating in the pod at the back of the room? That's another matter entirely.

5. Do you respond to comments?

I generally try to! I love hearing what readers have to say and will happily answer questions, as long as I'm not giving out spoilers. XD

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Well, my second long fic, Hope Can Be a Heavy Thing to Hold, ends with the main character dying so....

Seriously though, I do have a sequel to this story planned as my next major project. Maybe we'll all find out things aren't what they seem. 😜

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

I love angst with a happy ending so a lot of my fics end happily. I don't think I can pick which one is happiest. This one has a special place in my heart though.

Offspring of my ectoplasm. My child.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

I have before but not very often. I normally just delete mean comments without replying.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Nope.

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

I have written a two before. I think Borrower Danny is the craziest one.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Luckily I haven't as far as I know.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Kinda? One of my fics, The Danny Program, was based on an au which @thesoulspulse came up with. Later, Soul wrote a longer version of that au which followed a lot of the same stories beats as my fic and I beta'd.

14. What's your all-time favourite ship?

I'm not a huge shipper. Dark Gray (Dan Phantom and Valerie Gray) is something of a guilty pleasure though.

15. What's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

My series, Life and Death is all Perspective, has been a bit of a struggle. I get close to thinking it's done and it keeps growing. 😂

16. What are your writing strengths?

I'm very good at writing emotions and dialogue.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Fights scenes are definitely a struggle since I have trouble visualizing them in my head.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I only speak English fluently so I probably wouldn't write dialogue in another language.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

I feel like I've told this story before but the first fic I wrote was a Doctor Who fic for a school assignment in high school. It was for one of those warm-up exercises in English and my teacher loved it. XD

20. Favourite fic you've written?

Tagging @mymadmedleyw @five-rivers @assorted-candy @tathartiel @tachvintlogic and anyone else who wants to participate!

#my post

[bubblegumbeech]

Bee’s 2023 Fic Review

2021 2022

My AO3

Works: 8

Word Count:  154,635

Events: Invisobang | Phic Phight | EctoberHaunt (Mod Tucker)

Here’s my  fics! I didn't write nearly as much as I hoped but I did start a Masters Program so I am learning to write better hopefully! (I actually wrote a lot I didn't post that I am saving for when I am more caught up on my WIPs tbh >>)

Danny Phantom:

WIP:

Pieces of Time (26,520 words) Subscriptions: 154 Hits: 3,390 Kudos: 267 Comment Threads: 45 Bookmarks: 118

Some questions don't have answers, some answers aren't worth having and some make you wonder where the truth is being hidden. Danny asks Clockwork a question, now, what about the answer?

Finished:

We Interrupt Your Scheduled Programming (10,062 words) Subscriptions: 5 Hits: 486 Kudos: 70 Comment Threads: 7 Bookmarks: 20

Nocturne generally hates doing favors. He’d honestly rather be sleeping, or messing with someone’s head or … well anything really. But Clockwork got himself into a mess that even he wasn’t going to have an easy time digging himself out of. But hey, what are brothers for? Clockwork was going to owe him for this one though.

Pruning the Branches (30,289 words) Subscriptions: 3 Hits: 215 Kudos: 14 Comment Threads: 12 Bookmarks: 2

Flynn is finally headed back to his home in the Ghost Zone! But something happened in the short time he was away, something that put his family at risk. Struggling to once more find his footing now that everything seems to be falling apart around him, Flynn needs to get answers-even if that means running from his Mother and overprotective siblings and dodging a murderous ghost that's a little bit too murderous. Nothing is going to be the same after this.

Other:

WIP:

Hyde Inside (7,847 words) Subscriptions: 11 Hits: 257 Kudos: 27 Comment Threads: 5 Bookmarks: 7

The only place for a murderer is a hangman's noose… but there is another place for a madman if Gabriel can make the argument. He could save his friend's life. Even if he'd never be forgiven for it. It might have even worked if it wasn't for the mysterious sharp-toothed woman outside Hyde's room, and the answers the good doctor seems reluctant to share.

Finished:

Treasures and Tricks (1,518 words) Hits: 314 Kudos: 55 Comment Threads: 4 Bookmarks: 8

Hastur was an all powerful inhuman King. He did not spend his days thinking about Arthur Lester.

Not a Home but a Haunt (2,319 words) Hits: 77 Kudos: 13 Comment Threads: 3 Bookmarks: 2

Arthur Lester is adjusting just fine to his new 'situation' thank you. Being blind doesn't make him helpless, it's just a new fact of his life. He can still be a detective, if Parker would just let him prove it. Ignoring of course, the strange new voice that seems to come from no where, and Parker swearing that it's just the two of them alone in the apartment…

Grand Line Carnival (24,140 words) Subscriptions: 51 Hits: 3,909 Kudos: 268 Comment Threads: 45 Bookmarks: 81

Law doesn't want to go to a carnival ever again, but his crew doesn't know that and they insist that he has been spending far too much time in the hospital. So he's stuck, but at least he's with friends, now if only he could get that weird stranger off his mind. Or better yet, Stop running into him everywhere. Literally.

Beneath Different Stars (51,940 words) Subscriptions: 175 Hits: 7,784 Kudos: 520 Comment Threads: 125 Bookmarks: 116

A role-reversal that has Dynn Jaren, a stormtrooper with an attitude problem running away with a stolen asset. And Corin, a Mandalorian bounty hunter that’s supposed to be hunting him down for the good of his clan. Except, what happens when the “asset” isn’t what he thought it was? And the “stormtrooper” he was chasing packs a bit of a punch?

#fic year in review #Bee's writing #bumble thoughts #yearly review #Danny phantom #Issa me! Bee!

[gilbirda]

20 questions for writers, tagged by @gremlin-bot

1. how many works do you have on ao3?

83!!! But a lot are crossposted from FFN, and not ALL of my FFN stuff is there.

2. what's your total ao3 word count?

753,449

3. What fandoms do you write for?

At the moment dpxdc, but I have projects for DP in progress. I have some really old Inuyasha stuff, and Twilight, and a Gravity Falls fic that I def will continue? but mostly dpxdc :D

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Clown around and find out (Kudos: 8,524)

Mondays, am I right? (Kudos: 8,080)

Employee of the month (Kudos: 7,865)

Can't have shit in Gotham (Kudos: 7,343)

How to confuse a Bat (Kudos: 6,749)

Unsurprising xd

5. Do you respond to comments? why/why not?

I usually do the week when I post a fic, but i stop after that period of time. I don't respond mostly because I dont know what to say... I love each and every comment!!! I just get nervous.

6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Hmmmm, I'd say What could have been. It's a DP fic from Phic Phight 2022 and the prompts I used weren't necessarily angst material, but I tied them together in a story meant to leave you empty.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

I don't do "happy" endings? I think I do "realistic" endings - main quest is conquered but we lost and gained things in the way.

I do write a lot of fluff and unapologetic one shots, so I would consider all of those "happy" endings.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Yes.

Fortunately is not a normal event in my fics, but now that I have dipped my toes in comic book fanfiction I've gotten my fair share of purists and know-it-alls that come to my comments to educate me on what it's "canon" and explain to me how my interpretation is wrong.

That aside, I'm not afraid to portray "problematic" ships and delicate situations ,mainly mental health stuff. I'm not the first or the last person that pour themselves in their writing and use fictional characters as a medium to work on some personal things. Of course that's gotten me enough comments telling me how disgusting I am and how I'm writing XYZ wrong.

9. Do you write smut? if so, what kind?

Yes. I don't have a lot posted, but I have WIPs.

Mostly BDSM and how important it is to trust your partner.

10. Do you write crossovers? what's the craziest one?

Mostly DPxDC!

I did have an insane crossover between Twilight and a book not a lot of people know. TBH im keeping that information to myself xd.

11. have you ever had a fic stolen?

Yes.

There's a russian website that reposts fics.

And also people reposting my stuff in wattpad with a "credits to the author [name]" but they never asked me for permission.

12. have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes! To Russian!!!! Made me so happy ヾ(≧▽≦*)o

13. have you ever co-written a fic?

Yes! I'm co-writing a fic with some close friends and my girlfriend. And another fic with just my girlfriend, but I'm so slow with it lmao

14. what's your all-time fave ship?

I'm a multishipper but usually I have 1 OTP that im Very Normal about in every fandom and then I'm just okay with everything else.

Some examples are:

KogKag, SessKag (Inuyasha)

Hardcover (JazzxJason)(DPxDC)

PrussiaxHungary (Hetalia)

Mabill (Gravity Falls)

HikaHaruKao (Ouran HSHC)

Deckerstar (Lucifer TV)

15. what's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you will?

I don't want to jinx myself.

But probably the DP longfic. It's just. So long.

16. what are your writing strengths?

I've been told that my characters feel very real and that I write dynamics in a very organic way. In romance, I think I'm very good at portraying falling in love.

In general I've also been told I describe things in a way you can feel it, like you really are there.

17. writing weaknesses?

English is not my native language and I make a lot of mistakes, grammar wise. Or I let my weird miss matched speech patterns bleed into my characters and make them sound not quite right.

18. thoughts on writing dialogue in another language?

Again, I'm native Spanish speaker, so I do write in English regularly xd

Other languages, I'd need someone that speaks that language to help me.

19. first fandom you wrote for?

Inuyasha. I was about 11 years old. Those fics were written in Microsoft Word 2003, in script format (aka "theater" format), and every character had an assigned color and I would switch colors every dialogue line.

20. fave fic you've ever written?

Difficult to choose.

I love a lot of my fics, even older ones.

If I have to pick just one, I'm picking Friendly neighborhood vigilante

Tagging!

Not feeling like tagging today, and grem kinda stole the people I was thinking I could tag.

So, if anyone wants to do this, go ahead!

#tag game

[haloburns]

want the whole au timeline?

because baby, i've got it!

the entire au, can't have shit in amity park (not even a slightly normal halfterlife) and the world is having more fun than me (tonight) in chronological order below the cut!

it only includes most things already published, minus the few things that are set vaguely in the future that got written during phic phight, since i don't know exactly where they're falling just yet!!

Aug 24 2007 - going...! to be in so much trouble...

Aug 25 2007 - hey, dad, look at me, did i grow up according to plan?

Sep 1 2007 - four years, that's all you've got to endure chapter one, falling asleep in class

Sep 8 2007 to May 28 2007 - i fought you for so long (i should have let you in)

Oct 25 2007 - pumpkin head ghost boy

Feb 22 2008 - feed the boy (like and subscribe!)

Apr 10 2008 - four years, that's all you've got to endure chapter two, ectoplasm spaghetti (don't do this)

Feb 2 2009 to May 4 2009 - and they were history project partners...

May 25 2009 to May 30 2009 - the end of some good times

Aug 21 2009 - a ghost boy at college? it's more than likely than you'd think

Aug 21 2009 to Sep 11 2009 - such a big, big world (and only the tools to deal with a tiny portion of it)

Sep 3 2009 - the ghost boy can have a little coffee (as a treat)

Sep 14 2009 - i think i'd rather scream

Sep 22 2009 - new cryptid unlocked

Sep 23 2009 - sick ectoburns

Sep 25 2009 - boredom breeds stupidity (and the occasional ghost or two)

Oct 3 2009 - all that glitters is just danny, actually

Oct 8 to Oct 23 2009 - college is a time of firsts

Oct 23 2009 - baby take my hand (don't fear the reaper)

Oct 31 2009 - halloweekend

Nov 1 2009 - actions have consequences, and man, they suck

Nov 2 2009 to Nov 8 2009 - it's just another day without you (and i can't sleep)

Nov 8 2009 to Nov 15 2009 - i'm not okay (i promise)

Nov 15 2009 to Nov 20 2009 - against doctor's orders

Nov 20 2009 - when the nightmare fades

Nov 26 2009 to Nov 29 2009 - quit telling everyone i'm (permanently) dead! WIP

Nov 30 2009 - untitled UNPUBLISHED WIP

Dec 1 2009 - longer than the song of the whippoorwill

Oct 31 2009 & Dec 2 2009 to Dec 7 2009 - invisobang [title redacted] UNPUBLISHED WIP

#the world is having more fun than me tonight series #au birthday shenanigans #danny phantom #ecto fics #my writing #my au #im using a lot of cuts today so i'm not clogging people's dashes with *long* posts #even if i'm clogging it with *lots* of posts

[shamelesslymkp]

REC: Marsalias - School Bus in the Ghost Zone - Danny Phantom [Archive of Our Own]

URL: https://ift.tt/g2k1Si0 by @five-rivers Danny had seen scenery like this before. On occasion, he had even admired it. Vistas like this one were stunning, powerful, alien. They sparked wonder and curiosity. They sang to his soul that they were home. Or, at least, his core seemed to think that. At the moment, he was feeling none of that. The principal emotions he was currently experiencing were exasperation, annoyance, and horror. But, then, he'd never viewed the Ghost Zone through the dingy window of a school bus before, either, so that might have something to do with it. The panicking students might have also contributed. (Words: 10,108) Part 20 of Phic Phight 2023 !!!fandom, !!fic, |site:ao3, +fandom:danny.phantom, ::rating:teen.and.up.audiences, ::category:gen, ~ao3:field.trip.in.the.ghost.zone, ~ao3:field.trip, ~ao3:ghost.zone.field.trip, ~ao3:description.of.a.seizure, ~author:marsalias

click here for mkp's pinboard and more fic recs!

#i eat fic for breakfast #fic recs #via:pinboard #schrödinger's content warnings #queue me up scotty #goddamnit ifttt

[darks-ink]

Got My Reasons

“Doing the right thing for the wrong reason doesn’t make it good!” His glow flickered wildly, coalescing and twirling like flames. His eyes burned bright like a jack-’o-lantern’s. “Just because you helped me doesn’t make you the better person!” “You practically served yourself up to us,” she retorted, her voice flat. “What else did you expect, a heavily injured ghost unconscious in the vehicle of ghost hunters?”

Prompt: After being seriously wounded in a fight, Danny collapses inside the Fenton GAV to recoup. When his parents are called to the ghost sighting a few minutes later, however, they don’t notice who they’ve brought along for the ride Prompt by: @sapphireswimming Word count: 7,625

[AO3] [FFN] [more Phic Phight fics]

Content warning: descriptions of serious injuries, kinda terrible medical practice. The usual. But it’s all okay in the end!

---

The GAV screeched to a sudden halt, Maddie already half out the door before it had stopped. The ghost on the road in front of them roared, baring oversized fangs at the vehicle.

She rushed around the car, pulling open the doors in the back with force. A weapon. That’s all she needed. A weapon, ASAP.

The thought distracted her enough that she stumbled, almost falling over something out of place in the GAV. She barely caught herself on one of the shelves, already turning to scold Jack, when she saw—

“Phantom,” she whispered, feeling her brain grind to a halt.

Because it was, without a doubt, Phantom. The ghost seemed to be severely injured, splattered in green ectoplasm. It dripped over Phantom’s side, staining the wall of the GAV that he leaned against. One hand was pressed loosely against his side, but the ghost’s eyes were closed, and he hadn’t responded to her tripping over him, either. Passed out? But that wasn’t possible, was it?

She bit her lip. The ghost outside was a bigger threat. Maddie knew she had to focus on that one, first. Phantom was clearly in no state to leave, but…

Her hand touched the familiar metal curve of a Fenton Thermos.

Without another thought, she uncapped the device. Phantom was dragged in without another movement, not even stirring in the slightest. This was a perfect opportunity to study him, and the Thermos would preserve him until the right time.

With that settled, Maddie turned to grab a gun. Jack needed her. Phantom would come later.

---

“Uh, Maddie?” Jack’s voice rang from the back of the car, and she paused. “Why is there ectoplasm splattered all over the inside of the GAV?”

She blinked for a moment before realization struck. “It’s Phantom!” she yelled back, already turning to walk back. “I found him seriously injured and passed out in the back of the van, but we had to go deal with that attacking ghost.”

Now next to her husband, she clambered inside. The Thermos was still where she had left it, and she grabbed it. Let’s not get that one confused with the others. “I caught him in this Thermos. Not sure how bad his injuries really are, but this way he would be stable until we could look at him.”

“Good thinking!” Jack grinned, climbing into the GAV next to her to stow their weapons. “Passed out, though?”

“He didn’t move, not even when I tripped on him.” She frowned at the Thermos in her hand. “It was… strange. He was completely unresponsive, but he was still together. Leaking ectoplasm, but only from his injuries. Not destabilized.”

“Odd,” her husband agreed, clicking the last gun into its place. “I guess we have our work cut out for us!”

“Indeed.” She turned the Thermos, slowly, gazing at the meter in its side. It was startlingly full, a measure not just of mass but also of a ghost’s strength. Considering that Phantom was the only one in the Thermos… “Why don’t you drive us back, honey?”

His excitement would turn him in an even more reckless driver than usual, she guessed, but… she didn’t want to risk Phantom escaping.

Briefly, she considered clipping the Thermos onto her belt, but no. It felt safer in her hands, even as she had to take one off of the device to climb into the passenger’s seat of the GAV.

Their drive back home was… well. It was certainly fast.

Before she knew it, Maddie was clambering out of the GAV with one hand, the Thermos clenched in her other. “I’ll go prep the lab. Jack, bring in the spent weaponry and the other ghost, please?”

“Gotcha!” He bounded away to the back of the GAV while Maddie walked to their front door, quickly unlocking it. The house was empty inside—Danny was off with his friends, and Jazz away to the library—but that had become rather common these days.

At least she wouldn’t have to worry about either of them protesting their capture of Phantom. She didn’t understand it, the youth’s insistence that the ghost was good, but she certainly didn’t understand how her own children had fallen for Phantom’s tricks.

Well, it would be a problem no longer. Once she and Jack were done with their studies of Phantom, the ghost would no longer trick anybody.

Maddie left the Thermos on one of the mostly empty tables, quickly putting away the few things that were on it. She rolled a trolley over, paused. Rolled her eyes and emptied that, too.

By the time Jack had made it downstairs, their used weaponry stacked in a pile to the side—she made a quick mental note to make sure those were taken care of later—Maddie had finished preparing the table and the trolley. She had stalled out a large assortment of tools they might want or need for their inspection of Phantom.

There were no straps on the table—they had removed them due to the diversity in ghosts’ bodies—but she didn’t think they would need them, anyway. Phantom had been so weakened… He hadn’t even fought back when she’d tripped over him, when she’d captured him.

“Ready, Jack?” she asked, picking up the Thermos again. “We won’t know how he’ll act.”

“Ready,” her husband confirmed. He flexed his fingers, the metal ghost-proof gauntlets shifting with the movement. “I’ll hold him if he tries to escape.”

Maddie nodded, twisting the cap off of the Thermos. With a whir, it unloaded its contents, spitting Phantom onto the table.

The ghost groaned as he hit the surface, his limbs twitching slightly. He seemed slightly more awake than in the GAV, but not much. Didn’t even try to leave the table.

Ectoplasm gushed from several injuries all over Phantom’s body, the liquid spilling onto the table already.

“Not looking good, Phantom,” Jack commented, disengaging the gauntlets. Clearly they wouldn’t need them to restrain Phantom.

Phantom groaned again, a warble of sound that might’ve been intended as an answer. Definitely awake, then, but in poor condition.

She moved to roll him onto his back. Frowned at the deep slice in his side, right where the ribs would be on a human. The inside of the injury glimmered with fresh ectoplasm but it didn’t spill, not nearly as freely as she would’ve expected. No, the surface-level ectoplasm seemed… almost crystallized, a solid instead of a liquid.

Frowning, with one hand bracing Phantom, she reached in. The ectoplasm certainly felt solid under her probing finger.

Phantom groaned again, his left arm shifting slightly, like a weak attempt at batting her away.

“He seems to have some form of ectoplasmic bones,” she reported to Jack, finally rolling Phantom over all the way. The ghost twitched, his left hand wandering back to the slice. His eyes, he kept closed. “But his injuries are severe. He might destabilize before we finish our research.”

“That’d be a waste.” Jack frowned at the ghost on their table, too. “We’ll have to stabilize him. This is the first ghost with those kind of traits we’ve seen. We can’t risk losing him.”

That, at least, they agreed on. “We’ll need to close the injuries, stop him from losing too much ectoplasm. Can you get a needle and thread?” She looked back at Phantom, his complexion seeming to pale. “Fishing line if you can find it, but normal thread might be enough to tide him over for now.”

Phantom muttered something again, a whining noise that didn’t quite make it to words. It was odd. Maddie had been sure the ghost always spoke in perfect English, yet he seemed to be conversing in something else now. She was almost tempted to consider it a ghostly language of sorts, but why would such a thing exist? Ghosts weren’t intelligent enough for a society, let alone a language that drove such a thing.

“I found some fishing line, but not nearly enough for all his injuries.” Jack handed her the first aid kit, a sterile needle and clean thread, as well as a ball of tangled phase-proof wire. “… and I’ll have to untangle it first,” he added on, sheepishly.

“We’ll have to risk the normal thread.” She reached for the needle, then paused. Looked at Phantom. “It… His structure seems far more complicated than that of other ghosts. Should we see if he has a layer of skin underneath the jumpsuit? Stitching the two together might cause harm.”

Jack nodded, already grabbing Phantom’s right hand—the one not pressed against an injury. He hooked his fingers underneath the edge of Phantom’s white glove, carefully peeling it off.

As she had half expected, the glove came off entirely, damaged but not destabilizing even when removed from the ghost it belonged to. And underneath it, Phantom’s hand was… almost normal. The skin was the same cool tone as his face, a thousand small details she never would’ve expected a ghost to have, especially on a surface not usually exposed to sight.

“Let’s strip the rest, too,” Jack said, dropping the glove next to Phantom’s side. He reached for Phantom’s left hand, but hesitated. “The jumpsuit, at least. But, Maddie, what detail.”

“He’s unlike every other ghost we’ve tested so far,” she agreed. From this close, she could see the exquisite detail in Phantom’s clothing, too. A zipper hidden in the edge of his collar, which she tugged down to unzip the front of his suit. “And you couldn’t even tell from the way he acted! I wonder how many more are like this? Is it related to their strength?”

Phantom’s jumpsuit peeled apart to reveal a pale chest. Several smaller cuts littered his front, previously unnoticed due to the splatters of ectoplasm. The structure of it was, again, oddly detailed and human like.

Jack whistled, low. “What a scar, Mads! I wonder if it’s related to his death?”

“Why would he have scars of an event he doesn’t remember?” She zipped the jumpsuit down to his belt, working his right arm out of the sleeve. “I’d consider it more likely that it’s an old injury he got in a ghost fight. Maybe he kept it for intimidation purposes, to show that he won from a ghost with a certain level of power.”

“But then, why not show it off?” Jack asked, helping her by lifting Phantom up slightly. The ghost groaned, quietly, but didn’t try to stop them. “Why hide it under his suit?”

“He might’ve changed his appearance to appear more tame towards Amity Park’s citizens.” She rolled the right side of the jumpsuit down to Phantom’s hips, but that left the other side. “Jack, why don’t you keep pressure on that cut, and I’ll take off the rest of the jumpsuit?”

Her husband nodded, bustling over to press his hands against Phantom’s side. The ghost hissed, a strange warble and click to the sound, like a layer of audible static. His left hand batted at Jack’s hand, weakly, but it stilled quickly. The ghost went limp against the table.

“Did he pass out?” Jack asked, leaning over Phantom without taking his hands off of the injury. “Well, that’ll make our job easier, at least.”

She hummed as she peeled off Phantom’s left glove, slick with ectoplasm. His hand was sturdier than she would’ve expected of a ghost, a clear sign that his bone-like constructions extended into his hands. The skin was… surprisingly human-like, too cool but not as icy cold as ghosts usually were.

Maddie dropped the glove with the one already on the table, turning to lay down Phantom’s hand, when she noticed its appearance.

“Jack, look.” She held up the hand, her fingers tracing the extensive scarring. Its texture differed from the rest of the skin, rough and ragged like an actual scar. It seemed to originate in the palm, branching outwards from there, all the way down his wrist and into the cuff of his jumpsuit. It glowed, faintly, brightest at the palm. “Do you think it’s the same scar as on his chest?”

“Only one way to find out, huh?” Jack twisted his head to nod at Phantom’s face. “He has some kind of bruising on his throat, somehow. Green instead of purple, but you can’t mistake that kind of splotching.”

“At least we won’t have to worry about a crushed windpipe.” She twisted his arm out of the sleeve, feeling the bones in his shoulder shift with the movement. Definitely a human-like skeleton. How odd. “There we go. Definitely one large electrical scar, with the extremes in the palm of his hand and on his chest.”

Jack shifted his hands, allowing her to push the jumpsuit down to Phantom’s hips entirely. Now, they could see the ragged edges of the injury, the way it had torn Phantom’s… skin, for lack of better word, apart.

“Whoever, or whatever, he fought must’ve been something vicious,” Jack commented. Green ectoplasm continued to bubble up around his black gloves.

“Loathe as I am to say it, it was a good thing that Phantom dealt with it.” She looked over Phantom’s other injuries, but none seemed as threatening as the one on his side. “Something like this would’ve killed a human almost instantly.”

She picked up the needle, taking it out of its packaging. Using sterile tools might not be necessary, but Phantom was already defying what they knew of ghosts. Better not risk it.

“He must’ve caught it, at least,” Jack said as she threaded the needle. “If he was in the back of our GAV, the fight must’ve ended. Not sure where the Thermos went, though.”

Maddie gestured, and Jack shifted, pinching the injury closed instead of covering it up. She stuck the needle through, swiftly, but Phantom didn’t move.

“Definitely passed out,” she commented, moving to pinch the injury closed herself. “I’ve got this, Jack. Can you go look over the rest of his injuries?”

“Well, he has those bruises on his neck.” Jack paused, placing his fingers against the bare throat. “They seem… finger-like? Like someone tried to strangle him. A ghost my size, maybe?”

She threaded the needle through Phantom’s side again. “But why try to choke him out? That’d do nothing to him, he’s a ghost!”

“Maybe they were trying to snap his neck, instead?” Jack made an uncertain noise, moving up to Phantom’s head. “If he has something like bones, they gotta serve some purpose, right? So maybe breaking his spine would’ve disabled him, like with a human?”

“But as a ghost, his most important part is the core in his chest, not the brain.” She was making steady progress on Phantom’s side. The ghost still hadn’t stirred. He’d better not destabilize, not after all the effort they put into preserving him. “Unless he needs his head for some kind of offensive power, snapping his neck wouldn’t have done them any good.”

“There might not be any logic behind it, anyway,” Jack pointed out. “We’re talking about ghosts, after all. Maybe this wasn’t an attempt at strangling at all, but just the most convenient part for the other ghost to grab.”

He paused, gently probing Phantom’s head. “He definitely has some sort of skull, too. Very human-like, barely any flesh—or ectoplasm—over it. A cut on his temple, kind of deep. Looks like it bled badly, but it’s got some sort of crust over it, now.”

“Normal ectoplasm doesn’t crust… But normal ectoplasm also doesn’t form bone-like structures.” Halfway through the slice on his sides. The ribs still glinted crystalline against a backdrop of green so dark it appeared black. “No other injuries on his head?”

“None that I can see.” Jack hesitated, then ran his fingers through Phantom’s hair. The black of his gloves contrasted starkly against the white of Phantom’s hair. “There’s some dried ectoplasm in here, but I think it all came from that cut on his temple.”

“That’s good, at least. I’m not sure how his head injuries would compare to a human’s.” A few more stitches went into Phantom’s side. “None of the cuts on his chest seemed severe when I checked them out earlier, and I don’t think he has any on his arms, either.”

Jack hummed, walking past her to the other end of the table. “I’ll check out his legs, then.”

As she continued to stitch of Phantom’s side, Jack’s humming paused. His hands wrapped around Phantom’s left leg, gently probing the limb.

“I… think he has a broken leg,” Jack said, abruptly. “It feels like the bone-like structure doesn’t line up right. It’s not that way on the other leg.”

“We might have to set it, then.” Another stitch as she thought it over. “If his flesh injuries heal, his bones probably do as well. He probably doesn’t need his legs to walk, but having the bone grow wrong might stop him from forming his spectral tail.”

She paused, her hands stilling. “How does he form a spectral tail if he has bones?”

“I…” Jack halted too. “I honestly don’t know. He doesn’t move that thing like there’s any bones in it.”

“Maybe…” She continued her work again, pulling the needle through Phantom’s false flesh. “Maybe he can form and dissolve the crystal structures by will? To form bones and then make them go away when they’re a hindrance?”

“In which case we wouldn’t need to set his leg, because he can just reform it properly,” Jack pointed out. It was quiet for a moment as he, presumably, felt out the bones. “It feels like a clean break, at least. We can try waiting it out and offer him a splint if he needs it.”

“That might work.” She finished another stitch, looking over her work. Tied off the thread. “There, this should keep him stable for now. Let’s hope he doesn’t immediately rip it or phase it out when he wakes up.”

Which was baffling her, still. Ghosts don’t pass out; they don’t black out or sleep or go unconscious in any way. Even if Phantom had bones of some sort, what benefit could passing out give him?

“I’ll get a bucket and some cloth.” Jack had wandered off already, having finished his inspection. “We better clean all that ectoplasm off of him, make sure he’s not hiding anything more severe.”

She nodded, placing the needle back in its wrapper. It would have to be thrown out and replaced later; there was no sterilizing a needle so heavily stained with ectoplasm. Speaking of which…

Maddie stripped off her gloves, dropping them on a nearby table, and wandered over to the lab’s closet. It always paid to have a few jumpsuits on hand. One of the bins contained spare gloves, and she quickly pulled a clean pair on.

“I got the stuff!” Jack announced, bustling down the stairs. He had replaced his gloves with clean ones too, at some point. Hopefully before he left the lab and smeared ectoplasm on everything.

“Let’s get him cleaned up, then.” She took one of the cloths out of the water—warm, but not too hot—and pressed it against Phantom’s chest. The ghost made a soft noise, a staticky whine, his fingers twitching.

No further movement came.

They carefully cleaned the ectoplasm off of Phantom’s body; his scars seemed to glow even brighter when they were wet. As Jack finished cleaning off Phantom’s torso, Maddie moved over to his head.

Phantom still had his eyes closed, but they were no longer clenched as tightly. Thick globs of ectoplasm trailed down the side of his face, smeared through his hair.

Gently, she pressed the cloth against his head, just underneath the injury. If it had scabbed over, she didn’t want to reopen it. Phantom moaned, his eyes moving underneath the lids.

It wasn’t a sound, not a human one, but… Maddie could’ve sworn that Phantom called her ‘Mom’.

“Those noises are strange, aren’t they, Jack?” she asked, trying to distract herself from the not-word. Ghosts didn’t do parents; the concept of a mother should be completely foreign to Phantom. “I’ve never heard him speak anything but perfect English.”

“They’re so inhuman!” he agreed, as excited as ever. “The warbling, the almost static sound of them! It must be something lower than true speech, for Phantom to fall back into it when injured.”

Jack tapped on Phantom’s chest, right in the center of the glowing scar. “It’s almost like it comes from his core, sometimes, instead of his mouth. Fascinating, isn’t it?”

“But why would ghosts have a basal language of their own?” She rubbed the ectoplasm stains off of Phantom’s cheek, the ghost’s nose twitching when she brushed too close past it. For just a brief moment, she could see green gums, sharp teeth. “They’re not sentient, not even like animals. Right? They would have no need to communicate with each other.”

“Well, if they can learn human languages, I don’t see why they couldn’t have their own.” He shrugged, coming closer to Phantom’s head as well. “They clearly have some form of intelligence, even if it’s limited. They can conceptualize and plan, after all.”

He lifted Phantom’s head, and she started cleaning the ectoplasm out of the ghost’s hair. It was odd, the texture of it just off. A little too slick, too smooth. Not heavy enough, as it seemed to stir even when neither of them touched it.

“I suppose you’re right,” she eventually said. Phantom’s head laid limply in Jack’s hand, the other braced under the ghost’s shoulders. “They must go out of their way to avoid using it around humans, then. I can’t think of a single ghost using it before, not even the animals.”

“It’s definitely weird,” Jack agreed. “And, I was thinking… It doesn’t seem the echo the same way as their voices either, does it?”

She paused, the wet cloth pressed against Phantom’s head. No. No, it certainly hadn’t. “Huh.”

“Maybe they do always speak in it,” Jack continued. “Maybe they just layer actual speech on top of it, usually. Maybe that’s what causes the echo? A voice from their core, for ghosts, and a voice from their throat?”

“I suppose it might be possible.” The clumps of green had mostly been washed out of Phantom’s hair, now, leaving just faint green stains. “I think this is as good as we’ll get it, Jack.”

He nodded, lowering Phantom’s head back onto the table. The ghost stirred again, a little, eyelids clenching and relaxing again. It sniffled, oddly enough, face contorting.

Maddie dropped the cloth back into the bucket of water. They’d definitely need to get rid of all that, too. Ugh. The disadvantages of working with ectoplasm.

Phantom warbled something again. His fingers twitched against the surface of the table.

“Look who’s waking up!” Jack grinned at her, from Phantom’s other side. “About time, Phantom!”

The ghost jerked, suddenly, like a full-body flinch. He hissed, a sound filled with static and pain.

And then he was sitting up, fingers clawing against the surface of the table.

“No you don’t!” she told him, pressing a hand against his chest. Pushed him back against the table. “You’re not tearing those stitches I just put into you.”

His eyes moved to stare at her, the green dull and glassy compared to their usual brightness. He frowned, warbling something at her.

‘why’ her mind told her it meant.

“Down, Phantom.” She pressed harder, and he collapsed back against the table. There was more tension in his body, now. In his false muscles.

Or were they false?

“We found you passed out in the GAV,” Jack explained, tone dropping into something comforting. “You looked close to destabilizing.”

Phantom’s eyes seemed to sharpen, finally, as they darted from her to Jack and back. His left hand wandered to his side.

“Don’t mess with those stitches,” she told him, sharply. He flinched, but dropped the hand. “We didn’t clean you up just so you can wreck all our hard work, you know?”

He licked his lips, tongue vivid green against his pale skin. “Why?” he croaked out, layered so thickly in static she could barely make out the word.

“Why?” she repeated, quirking an eyebrow at him. “Well, you were too interesting a subject to pass up, of course. None of the ghosts we’ve studied so far had bodies as complex as yours. What a waste it would be, to let you melt away like that!”

Phantom pressed flatter against the table. His hands wandered, like he was looking for something. “Now what?”

“Well, there’s no straps on this table, if that’s what you’re looking for,” Jack said, looking down at Phantom. The ghost stilled immediately. Huh. Odd. Why would he know to look for those? “For now, you appear weakened enough that there’s no risk of your escape, but you’re awake enough to answer some questions. Mads?”

“Sounds like a good start,” she agreed. This was probably the most pliable they would get Phantom. “Let’s start easy, shall we? Your leg is broken. Lower left. Do you want a splint for that?”

“I…” Phantom blinked, apparently caught off-guard by her question. “Um. I think I’ll be okay.”

She nodded, watching him carefully. His eyes seemed to brighten, slowly, becoming greener and greener by the second. Even his complexion seemed to gain some color back.

“Did you catch the ghost who roughed you up so badly?” Jack asked, crouching a little so he didn’t tower over Phantom as badly. “Wouldn’t want them to try the same on any humans, after all.”

“No, he’s… He’s not a concern anymore.” Phantom tried to push himself up again, but paused when she glared at him. “He’s… He only has it out for me. Doesn’t really care about the humans.”

Well, that was good, at least. “Is there any risk of him breaking in to chase you?”

“No, I took care of it.” Phantom shook his head, slowly, wobbling a little. “He needs his suit to be a real threat, and I destroyed that.”

A ghost wearing a suit? Something mechanical, then. Maybe like that annoying electric one, which controlled technology, but he didn’t seem all that interested in Phantom.

Must be an unknown ghost. That was… worrisome. The possibility that there was such a dangerous ghost out there that they knew nothing about, running loose in Amity Park.

Phantom seemed uncomfortable, pinned down flat against the table. She supposed that she and Jack were kind of looming over him.

“You can sit up, if you want, but be careful.” She tried to ease her posture, to soften her glare. Phantom was just a ghost, yes, but he was voluntarily giving them information. No point in shutting him down so soon.

The ghost nodded, sliding his hands underneath himself. Slowly, he pushed himself up. Cautiously. His face strained as he did so, briefly, hand sliding closer to the stitches in his side.

Curious. A pain reaction. Could be faked, of course, but it seemed… it seemed genuine. The barely-there hiss of static through his clenched teeth, layered over an almost physical sense of pain.

Maybe that was Phantom’s big trick all along. The ability to make others feel emotions. To somehow convey emotions and feelings that he, himself, did not feel.

“Do you want painkillers for that?” Jack asked, also watching the ghost grimace, hands hovering over the stitches. “Or, uh… Some ghost equivalent?”

Phantom’s eyes slid back to Jack, then Maddie, and back to Jack. “I… If you’ve got some. I need more than a human, though.”

“You want some water to help that go down?” Jack grabbed the first aid kit, digging through its contents for the painkillers. “Or food?”

“Um. Water would be nice. Food…” The oddly mundane sound of a growling stomach. Phantom flushed bright green. “I’d like food, yeah. Um. Thanks.”

Jack handed her the painkillers, already turning towards the stairs. “I’ll be right back with a glass and something to eat. Maddie, you figure out how much to give him.”

She turned the bottle in her hand, searching for the instructions. How did Phantom compare to a human? Was his metabolizing faster? Stronger? Did his ectoplasm somehow form organs, as well as bones? Some sort of non-crystallized solid?

“Um. I probably know how much I’ll need if you tell me what kind that is,” Phantom said, interrupting her train of thought. Her eyes snapped from the bottle to him. His shoulders were drawn up, tense.

“What?” she asked, still working through the sentence. “Oh, it’s… paracetamol. We don’t usually need painkillers for this sort of stuff.”

He nodded understandingly, and Maddie wondered how much of it he really did understand. His structure was definitely more complicated than that of most ghosts. He had bones, musculature, apparently even organs. Was it really that far-fetched to think that he might have something like nerves, too? That he might feel pain, or at least understand it?

“The teen portion, but up it by half, then.” He opened his hand, and only then seemed to realize that he wasn’t wearing his gloves, because he froze up. Stared down at his bare, heavily scarred hand. “Wh— Why am I not wearing my jumpsuit anymore?”

“We had to take it off to check your injuries.” She uncapped the bottle of painkillers, keeping Phantom in her peripherals. “And you seemed to have a structure underneath the jumpsuit, unlike most ghosts. We didn’t want to risk damage by sewing the two together.”

Phantom hummed at that. “I… thanks. I don’t think that that’d be good, yeah.”

“Well, it would be a shame to let you destabilize just like that, wouldn’t it?” She shook out a few pills into his hand. This was just… a study. An ordinary ghost wouldn’t have any desire for painkillers, and it definitely wouldn’t be able to process them. But would Phantom be any different?

“Yeah…” He made a face, hand curling closed around the painkillers like she might take them away again. “Well, thanks anyway, I suppose.”

Jack’s thudding footsteps sounded, and he appeared down the stairs. In one hand, he held a glass of water. In the other, a plate with a few sandwiches. “Sorry, we didn’t have anything quicker.”

He walked up closer, handing the glass to Phantom first. The ghost took it in his empty hand, fingers carefully wrapping around it, slick with condensation.

“Thanks.” The ghost raised the hand with pills to his mouth first, dropping them all in before chasing them with a big gulp of water. He made a face, following it with several smaller sips of water. “Eugh. That stuff never tastes good, does it?”

“It’s not supposed to taste good,” she pointed out, quirking an eyebrow. “You realize that, right?”

“Of course I do, I’m not an idiot.” He leaned backwards slightly, emptying the rest of the glass in one go. “Doesn’t mean I gotta like it.”

He handed the glass back to Jack, exchanging it for one of the sandwiches. Didn’t even try to grab the whole plate.

“Are you sure you don’t want more?” Jack asked, gesturing the plate at Phantom. “Those are some serious injuries to heal from.”

“Yeah, I guess, but…” Phantom shrugged, taking another bite of the sandwich before continuing. “It’s getting late. Wouldn’t want to ruin my appetite.”

Maddie could feel her eyebrow raising. “Dinner plans, Phantom?”

“I… uh.” His shoulders came up, suddenly, as he seemed to remember where he was. “Kinda, yeah…”

He took another bite of the sandwich, dropping his eyes down to his loosely folded legs.

Phantom looked like a scolded kid. It was the only thing she could think off. The way he curled up on himself, the tension in his shoulders. It just reminded her so, so much of Danny, whenever she scolded him.

Her heart stuttered in her chest, and she cursed herself. She couldn’t feel sorry for him. He was just a ghost! He was— he was doing it on purpose, to make her feel bad! To make them let him go!

The ghost continued eating in complete silence. His hair hung down over his face, barely moving anymore. The lines of his shoulders taught.

“Look, Phantom…” She paused, looking over at Jack. He shrugged back, looking equally unsure of himself. “We’re ghost hunters. We can’t just… let a ghost go.”

“Especially not one as fascinating as I am?” he sneered back, bitterly. He looked up, suddenly, venomous green meeting her eyes. “That’s all I am in the end, huh? No matter how hard I try, no matter how much I let myself get hurt just so no one else has to! In the end I’m just some ghost, to cut up and experiment on!”

She flinched back, involuntarily. The glow around his body, barely visible before, had flared out with his temper.

“It’s not like that,” Jack tried, feebly.

“No?” Phantom hissed back, the warble of static layered heavily over his voice once more. “Then what is this, huh?”

“We’re helping you.” She straightened her back, her fists balling automatically. “We’ve stitched you up, given you painkillers, fed you.”

“Because you didn’t want to lose me,” he countered. His lips curled, showing her once more those green gums and vicious teeth. Fangs. He’d had fangs all along, and she had never noticed until he bared them at her. “Because I was such a precious study object! And the painkillers, the food—”

He flung out an arm. “I bet that all that was just a test, to see if I was faking any of it! Could I really process food? Do painkillers really work on me? Wow!”

“Would you have preferred it if we hadn’t done any of that?” she snapped back. “That we’d left you smearing ectoplasm all over the place until you destabilized?”

“Doing the right thing for the wrong reason doesn’t make it good!” His glow flickered wildly, coalescing and twirling like flames. His eyes burned bright like a jack-’o-lantern’s. “Just because you helped me doesn’t make you the better person!”

“You are the one who broke into our vehicle.” She took a deep breath, forcing herself to calm down. Getting into a shouting match would accomplish nothing. “You passed out in the back of the Ghost Assault Vehicle.”

That seemed to take all the wind out of his sails. Phantom spluttered, but his glow dimmed significantly already. “I— That’s not what we were talking about!”

“You practically served yourself up to us,” she continued, her voice flat. “What else did you expect, a heavily injured ghost unconscious in the vehicle of ghost hunters?”

His shoulders came up again, Phantom halfway through curling up in a ball. He muttered venomously, some ghost-speak noise again.

And, again, Maddie somehow understood exactly what he said.

‘parents,’ he had hissed, from the very center of his being. An almost sardonic tone to it, somehow.

“Look, Phantom,” Jack said, picking up Maddie’s slack. “We’re ghost hunters. Supposedly, so are you. We found a potentially dangerous ghost in our vehicle without our knowledge, and we made the decision to patch you up. Regardless of the reasoning behind it, what else would you have wanted us to do? What would you have done, in this situation?”

“I…” Phantom sighed, blowing the hair out of his face. “I would’ve patched them up, too. But I definitely wouldn’t have told them that I saved them just because they were so fascinating, because I wanted nothing more than to experiment on them.”

“Would you have rather had us lie to you?” Jack asked, bluntly. “Would you rather have had us tell you that we patched you up out of the goodness of our hearts?”

“I… no.” Phantom shook his head, wrapped his arms around his bare chest. The picture of uncertainty. “No, because I know you would’ve been lying. You’ve been hunting ghosts for research for ages. Me, especially. There’s no way you would’ve patched me up out of kindness.”

“So then what do you want from us?” Maddie asked, shoving her thoughts to the back of her mind for now. “You didn’t want us to let you dissipate in our van. You didn’t want us to lie about why we helped you, but you don’t want us to tell you truth about that, either. What option does that leave?”

Phantom gritted his teeth, his glow suddenly brightening and immediately dimming again. “I don’t know! I just— Can’t you just be nice! Couldn’t you just fix me up out of the goodness of your hearts and mean it?!”

His fingers clawed in his hair as he curled even further into a ball, only the broken leg staying in its place. His shoulders were taught with tension, shaking lightly.

It sounded like… like he was sniffling.

Crying?

She grimaced, turning to look at Jack. He, too, seemed completely thrown off by the display.

It was just…

It was so genuine.

The shaking of the shoulders, the soft sounds of muffled crying, the barely visible glint of tears, the hitch in his breath, the soft keening of his core.

The hitch of his breath?

Hesitantly, Jack reached out. Placed one of his hands on Phantom’s shoulders—so big it almost covered the entire area. “Shh, kiddo.”

Phantom shook harder, but didn’t try to throw off Jack’s hand. The hitching of his breath was clearly audible now.

And Maddie…

Maddie didn’t know what to do. She knew how to comfort kids, and her heart clenched, demanded she help this teen, too. This kid that reminded her so much of her Danny.

But she didn’t know what to do. Phantom was supposed to be just another ghost. An ectoplasmic abomination that had lied and faked its way into everyone’s hearts.

Not this.

Not a teen, warbling “mom” at a stranger who cleaned his wounds. Not a teen who had hidden in their car when he’d gotten too injured to get away, searching for something that reminded him of his parents. For someone who’d keep him safe like his parents would’ve, should’ve.

“Oh, Phantom,” she said, threading her fingers through his hair. It was soft, still wet where she’d cleaned it. Still stained faintly green from his own ectoplasm. “Oh, honey… Why have you hidden this for so long? You are so… so human.”

He keened again, shaking harder under their hands. And in the sound, she heard ‘love acceptance warmth caring’ and ‘not me not mine not for ghosts’.

And for once, Maddie Fenton ignored her curiosity to focus on the crying ghost in their lab.

“Shh,” she told him, soothingly combing her fingers through his messy hair. “It’ll be alright, Phantom. We… It was our mistake. We were wrong.”

“We were so wrong,” Jack chimed in, rubbing circles on Phantom’s back. “We… You’re just a kid. How long have you been dead, kiddo? How old are you really?”

Phantom sniffled, and, voice warbling with emotion, said, “Two years. I— Sixteen.”

“Oh, sweetie.” He was so human, so young. He could’ve been her own son. “We’ve been so wrong. We never should’ve shot at you, never should’ve threatened you.”

“We let our assumptions lead us,” Jack agreed, quiet. Soft. “Phantom, we’re so sorry. Hey, shh. It’ll be alright.”

The ghost, so human and yet not, shook his head. Only slightly, just enough that Maddie’s hand didn’t dislodge.

“We’ll make it alright,” Maddie promised him, instead. Fierce, sharp. Determined. “Let us make it up, Phantom. Let us pay for our mistakes.”

“Don’t wanna,” he mumbled back, so quiet she could barely hear him. “Lemme leave.”

“Of course you can,” Jack assured him, still rubbing circles on Phantom’s back. “We won’t stop you, kiddo. We just want you to be safe.”

Phantom sniffled again. Slowly turned his head, until a single vivid green eye looked up at Maddie.

It was ringed with red, green-tinted tears still tracking down over his cheek.

“Do you?” he asked. He sounded… shattered. The echo of ghost-speak behind his voice wavered like glass in a storm.

“You’re just some kid in way over your head.” Maddie let her hand drop from his head, instead trying to convey her genuineness through her gaze. “You’re… barely a teenager. No one can—no one should—blame you for any of the damages you’ve caused, trying to help.”

“You’ve tried so hard, despite your death,” Jack chimed in, his hand stilling too. “You’ve died, and you’re still so good.”

“You’re so good, Phantom. I wish you were one of ours.” Maddie reached forward, slowly, wiping the tears off of his cheek. “If you ever need us, for anything, please don’t hesitate to come by.”

“I—” Phantom’s voice crackled, and he sniffled again. Wiped his own hand past the other eye. “I don’t— I can’t—”

“Please just promise us that.” Jack let his hand slip off of Phantom’s back, placing it on the edge of the table instead. He, too, stared pleadingly at Phantom. “We won’t force you to do anything, kiddo, we’re just asking. Let us help.”

Maddie slid the stained gloves over towards Phantom. “Phantom, we obviously remind you of your parents.”

The ghost hunched up again, slightly. Green spread over his cheeks like a blush. She pushed on. “You called me Mom when I cleaned off your wounds. You hid in the GAV because you felt safe in it, because it reminded you of your parents. They’re obviously not here, because you’ve died or because they’ve died or because of some combination of those, but you’re still allowed to want that comfort. And we are willing to give you that. It’s the least we can do, to repay what we’ve done to you, what we’ve threatened you with.”

“I—” His breath hitched again. “I don’t… I’ll keep it in mind.”

Well, she supposed they could hardly push for more. She didn’t think she’d be so open to accepting help from them either, if she’d been in Phantom’s place.

“Please do,” she told him instead. Patted him on the right knee. “Whatever it is, whatever you’re struggling with. You’re always welcome at our place. Okay?”

“Okay,” he whispered back. He wiped over his face again. “I gotta… I gotta get going.”

“Dinner plans, right?” She stepped backwards to give him some space. “You’d better eat well, young man.”

Phantom grunted, a noise vaguely underlined with acceptance. He stuck his arms through his sleeves, carefully pulling the jumpsuit back up over his upper body.

“And be careful with your injuries.” Jack handed Phantom the gloves, having apparently scooped them off of the table at some point. “Those stitches in your side will need some time to heal before you take them out, and your broken leg… Well, you’d know better than us how it heals, but still.”

“I know how to take care of myself,” Phantom grumbled back, pulling on his gloves. He grimaced at the left one, more green than white with his spilled ectoplasm. It had dried, crackling uncomfortably as he moved his fingers. “Despite the evidence of the contrary.”

He pushed himself off of the table, suddenly. Maddie jerked forward automatically, but Phantom hovered above the ground, his leg held limply.

The ghost raised further up, until he floated at their eye level. “I… Thanks. For helping me. And… the apologies, I guess.”

“It was the least we could do,” she assured him, crossing her arms loosely. “Please, Phantom, come to us if you need anything.”

“I’ll… keep it in mind.” He shimmered, turning transparent. Then, suddenly, he dove upwards, and then he was gone.

“Well…” Jack cleared his throat. “That… That happened.”

“Yeah,” she agreed, looking at the empty table. It’s surface was stained green with Phantom’s ectoplasm, a small puddle left where he’d bled the worst. “God, Jack. What have we done?”

“Something we’ve learned from. Something we won’t ever do again.” He looked up, meeting her eyes. “That’s all we can do, Mads. Make amends to the best of our abilities.”

She nodded, slowly. “We’d better get working on cleaning the lab. We’ll need to go through all our research on ghosts, strip it down to the base observations. Start over from scratch.”

“Yeah.” He rubbed a thumb over the edge of the stain on the table, absentmindedly. “But first, we should focus on our own kids, I think.”

Maddie paused. Turned to look at the clock. “Oh lord, you’re right. I’d better get started on dinner.”

“I’ll start on cleaning the lab.” Jack nodded at the stairs. “You go take care of the wonderful kids we already have, instead of worrying about Phantom.”

“Thanks, honey.” She pressed a kiss against his cheek, before turning to rush up the stairs.

He was right. They already had two wonderful kids. Worrying about Phantom would do them no good, not unless the ghost would accept their help.

The door to the kitchen swung open, and Maddie stared in the startled blue eyes of her son, the lingering sounds of the conversation she’d just cut short between him and his sister.

“Oh, kids, I’m so sorry. I’ll get started on dinner right away.”

“Something distracting in the lab?” Jazz asked, getting out of her chair. “Can I help?”

“If you could help me peel these potatoes, that’d be wonderful…” She passed a pan and a knife to Jazz. “And, yes, I suppose you could say as much.”

Danny laughed. She turned to look at him, at his cautious grin. “Must be something big.”

“Yeah,” she answered, watching him angle his head slightly. Letting his black hair slide down his face, parting just right for her to see a flash of dark red against pale skin. A scab on his temple, right where… right where Phantom had had a scab, too.

But… surely that couldn’t be?

No, it was just her mind playing things off.

Right?

#danny phantom #phic phight #phic phight 20 #phic phight 2020 #dp fanfic #phanfic #phanfiction #dp fanfiction #maddie fenton #danny fenton #jack fenton #dark writes #me at the start of the month: my goal is to hit 30k :) #me now: *will probably hit 60k at least* #AAAAAAA

[currentlylurking]

Hello everyone! After last year’s success (and Team Human’s dramatic win at the hands of our own minor god) we’ve returned with new and improved version of the slightly less chaotic Phandom Phight. 

Please note the ‘slightly,’ it’s a very important distinction.

What is Phic Phight?

Phic Phight is an event for Danny Phantom Fanfiction authors that is loosely inspired by Art Fight. In Art Fight, the participants are split into two teams, and score points for their team by drawing the opposing team’s OCs! We’ll be doing something similar.

Every participant will be able to create up to four prompts to enter and will be randomly assigned to either Team Human or Team Ghost. Team Ghost will have access to the prompts the members of Team Human wrote, and Team Human will have the same with Team Ghost’s prompts! You’ll get points with each fic you write, and whichever team has the most points at the end of the month wins!

(We also have a tumblr, @phicphight, if you want to check out the submissions from last year!))

When is Phic Phight?

Officially, Phic Phight will be from April 1st - 30th, 2020. You have until 11:59 pm PST on March 26 to join. After that, I’ll be in contact with everyone who’s joined with more information on their team and the prompts they’ll be working with.

How do we get points?

For every 10 words you write of a prompt, you’ll get 1 point. For every fic you complete, you’ll be granted an additional 5 points. You can also write fics based on your own team’s prompts, however, you’ll only receive half of your eligible points for doing so.

This year, we’re also trying out something new - you’ll get points for commenting on other people’s fics! For each comment you leave on another person’s fic on Tumblr, FFN, or AO3, you’ll be able to receive 1 extra point!

We’ll be keeping track of which prompts have had the most fics, who’s written the most, and which team gets the most points!

What should our prompts look like?

Your prompts should be a brief, 1-4 sentence summary of a fic concept you like. You will be required to submit at least two, but can do up to four if you’d like.

Don’t worry about duplicates of ideas, but please be sure to include any ships or trigger warnings that apply at the end of your summary. AUs are fine as long as they are widely known and not another fandom au. For example, a coffee shop au would be fine, but a Buffy the Vampire Slayer AU would not. 

Due to the controversy surrounded them, prompts where a minor and adult are shipped together are not permitted in this event. Prompts that crossover with another fandom, have a heavy focus on original characters, or AU prompts that rely on intense worldbuilding known only to the author that cannot be simplified to fit the summary limit are also not permitted. If there is a problem with one of your prompts, I’ll let you know and give you a chance to alter it.

I have another question!

We have an FAQ, where I give some more in-depth explanations about the specifics of this event in addition to example prompts. If you’re still confused, feel free to shoot me a message, here or @phicphight! ^-^

I like it! How do I join?

Fill out this form HERE. We’ll be in contact after the 26th with more information!

Aside from the Tumblr, we also have our own channel on the DP Fanfiction Palace Discord. You can access it easily by requesting the Phic Phighter role after you join! It’s the best place to be if you want quick access to any updates or changes in the rules! The link to it is right HERE!

Have a great day, everyone, and I hope to see you in the Phic Phight! <3

#Danny Phantom #Phic Phight #Phic Phight 20 #Currently talking #Let me know if there's any issues with the links. they SHOULD work but yall know how tumblr is. #I'm very excited I love Phic Phight #and!! I have extra mods!! so there won't be any issues with keeping track of points!! #Also the tumblr has the old phic phight prompts on it too if you want to check those out #this event is so much fun april's going to be amazing

[ghostsray]

kin assigned fenton

(’nother @phicphight entry for @darks-ink‘s prompt: "Fenton/Phantom AU where during the Portal accident, a ghost bonds to Danny Fenton's body, bringing him back to life but maintaining their own ghostly memories and none of Danny's. Meanwhile, Danny himself died and became a ghost, keeping his own human memories.")

(words: 8645) (AO3)

(part 2)

The first thing Phantom noticed when he woke up was that he felt heavy.

Gravity did not exist in the ghost zone. He never felt heavy unless he was being pinned by another ghost. As such, he was filled with fear, and his eys flew open.

He immediately regretted this action, because the harsh light that met his eyes made him wince and close them again. How could his eyes hurt? Ghosts shouldn't even be able to feel pain unless it was dull, but just looking at something bright made his head ache.

Now that he noticed it, he felt much more than just a headache. There was the cold floor underneath his arms, and when he tried to stir, a sharp ache flared throughout his whole body.

What, sincerely, the fuck was happening?

There was ringing in his ears, but that faded over time. When the ringing was no longer there, he was able to make out voices. They seemed to repeat the same name over and over: "Danny!"

"Who's Danny?" he managed to say. Ancients, even his tongue felt heavy.

The voices suddenly fell silent. "Um," said one of them, "you are."

Phantom hesitantly opened his eyes again, slowly this time. He found two people standing over him, but something about them looked odd. Their skins weren't like any shade of blue, green, or gray he had seen on other ghosts, and they lacked any sort of glow emanating from their bodies...

Phantom's eyes widened, and he blurted out, "Humans!"

The concern on both humans' faces immediately deepened. "...Yeah?" the darker one, which wore glasses and a ridiculous red hat, said. "Should we not be?"

The paler one, which looked like a girl with black hair and even blacker eyeliner, leaned over Phantom with knitted brows. She held up a hand with four fingers raised and asked, "Danny, how many fingers am I holding up?"

Phantom wanted to scramble away from these strangers, but his body was too tired and--ugh--heavy for him to move, so he frowned at the human girl and said, "Four. But why do you keep calling me Danny?"

The two humans exchanged a glance, then the girl asked, "Do you remember anything about yourself?"

"Yeah," Phantom said, a little (okay, a lot) confused. "My name's Phantom."

Another exchanged glance, and the human boy said, "No, it's not."

Phantom eyed the two of them in turn and said, "How do you know? I've never even met you before."

The girl grabbed his shoulder, which made him wince because he was still in a lot of pain (which shouldn't be possible, but he was). She stated sternly, "Yes, you have. We're your friends--I'm Sam, he's Tucker, remember? And you're Danny."

Despite his pain, Phantom managed to push her away and sit up against the awful pull of gravity. "No, I'm not! I--" He froze, because just then a strand of black hair fell over his eye. His hair wasn't black. If that wasn't enough to confuse him, he then noticed his own hands, which in fact were not his own. He was dressed in a white jumpsuit, except it looked like it had been blown apart--tears and holes riddled it, and through these, the skin underneath was visible. Pink skin, just like the paler human's. Phantom brought the hand up to his face. Hundreds of tiny grooves were etched into it.

Again, what the fuck? This was not a ghost hand. It didn't even have any claws! Realization dawned on him. He wasn't in a ghost body...he was in a human's.

"Uh, Danny?" the boy--Tucker--asked.

Danny. That must be the name of the human he was inside. Phantom didn't even remember overshadowing this guy, but that must be what was happening, right? He focused on leaving Danny's body so the human can talk to his friends and get them to leave him alone. Except, well, no matter how hard he tried...

"I'm stuck," he said.

"Stuck?" Sam repeated.

Phantom was really filled with fear now. This--yuck--human organ in his borrowed chest began to beat harder the more anxious he got, which wasn't helping. "I'm stuck inside this body! Why can't I leave?"

He glared at the two humans before him, who looked dumbfounded. "...Um," Tucker finally said, "are you saying...you're a ghost?"

"Yes, I'm a ghost!" Phantom snapped. Ouch, his head hurt. Phantom tried to push Danny's stupid body to its feet, which was enormously hard with this stupid gravity, but he managed to succeed. "I'm not Danny, whoever he is. I need to get out!"

"Er, Da--Phantom," Sam said. "How do we know you're really a ghost and not just, uh..."

"Off your bonkers?" Tucker completed.

Phantom raised an eyebrow. "Why? What's so hard to believe about your friend getting possessed?"

"Nothing much," Tucker answered, "except that ghosts don't exist."

Of fucking course he would say that. Why would humans ever believe in ghosts? The two species interact so rarely that Phantom himself would not have believed in humans if several ghosts didn't previously exist as them in life. Phantom opened his mouth, trying to find a valid argument, but he came up empty. Not that it mattered anyway, because the blood rushing from the chest organ was growing too heavy for his thought organ to handle, and he felt Danny's knees buckle and send him falling to the floor again while his vision filled with black.

He woke up. Again.

This time, the surface underneath him wasn't so cold. In fact, it was warm and soft. Likewise, the torn up hazmat suit he was wearing before was now replaced by soft cotton clothes.

Phantom hurriedly brought a hand to his face and was immediately disappointed. He was still in Danny's body. How? Why? Why was he stuck?

"Danny, you're awake!" a voice next to him said, making him jolt in surprise. He expected to see the same girl as before, but when he turned his head (Correction: Danny's head) to the side, he saw a different human. She had ginger hair and teal eyes.

"I'm not Danny," he told her.

The girl frowned. "Sam and Tucker told me about this. They say you think you are...a ghost?"

"I don't think I'm a ghost, I am a ghost," Phantom retorted.

"Really?" the girl replied skeptically. "Can you prove that?"

That should have been easy. Ghosts still kept a few of their powers even while they were possessing someone--at least, that's what he heard from the few ghosts who did interact with humans and managed to overshadow one. He focused on Danny's hand, willing it to turn invisible.

It did not turn invisible.

He frowned and tried to phase it through the soft surface he was lying on. The hand only pressed against it, but it did not phase through.

Invisibility and intangibility were a ghost's two simplest powers, so why was he unable to use them?

"You're not a ghost," the girl said when she sensed his failure. "You're Danny Fenton, a human."

"I'm pretty sure I just told you that I'm not."

The girl's gaze was intense as she continued, "You just went through a traumatizing experience. It would be normal for your brain to make up memories to..."

"Woah, woah, woah," Phantom said before she could finish. He rolled his borrowed eyes and grumbled, "Awesome. You're a psychologist."

"I'm your sister, Jazz," she stated simply. "And...are you saying you know what a psychologist is?"

"Of course I do! Do you think all ghosts are eighteenth century peasants or something? Psychologists can die, too, you know."

Jazz was undaunted by his comment. "As I was saying, though..."

"I'm not crazy--I mean, Danny isn't crazy," Phantom cut her off. "Like I told you, I'm a ghost."

All of a sudden, the door slammed open, causing Phantom to jump in his bed. A very large human man dressed in a vivid orange jumpsuit walked in, followed by a shorter human woman in a matching teal suit.

"He confesses! So he's guilty," the man said.

Jazz groaned. "Dad--"

"Your father is right, dear," the woman in teal said. "You said Danny might be having a psychological crisis, so we let you talk to him, but it's clear now that the ghost inside him is saying the truth."

"Yes, thank you!" Phantom said, spreading his arms out gladly. "Finally, someone who believes me!"

The woman gave him a smile. "We believe you, dear. And we'll get you out of my son."

"Really?" he asked hopefully.

"Oh, yes," she said, and then whatever happiness Phantom felt immediately plummeted as she pulled out a very large weapon and aimed it at him. "And the only way to do that is by exterminating you."

Phantom's eyes widened, and he chuckled nervously. "Um, sike?"

The gun powered up, and Phantom yelped and shut his eyes as a blast came out at him.

Silence fell over the room.

Phantom opened one eye, then the other. The weapon's nuzzle was smoking slightly, so it must have fired already, but he wasn't harmed. He scanned the room to see any sign of where the shot might have landed, and he found a scorch mark--right behind where he should have been hit.

"Huh," the large man said. "I guess Jazzy-pants was right."

Phantom snapped his attention to him. "What?"

"The weapon didn't affect you," the woman holding the gun said. "It only affects ghosts, which means you're a hundred percent human."

"Wait, hold up," Phantom said, growing a little nervous and extremely confused. "How do you even know it works against ghosts? Did you meet any?"

The woman sighed, like this was a topic she had to explain many times over. "I assure you, it works. We don't need any practical testing to know that the theory is correct."

"But it's not," he argued, then gestured down to himself. "It didn't shoot me."

"Trust me, I know what I'm talking about," the woman said. "You're human."

Phantom paled. "But..."

He felt a hand rest on his shoulder and saw Jazz looking at him pityingly. "It's okay, Danny. I know you're confused."

"I'm not Danny!" he shouted. He couldn't be. There was no way his memories could be fake. The Ghost Zone, the lairs he visited, Frostbite, Dora, Sidney, all those ghosts he befriended...he was certain those couldn't be fake. Right?

But the humans seemed sure about their conclusion. The woman put her weapon away, got close to Phantom, and actually kissed his forehead. "I'm sure youre tired, Danny. Why don't you go back to sleep?"

Phantom wanted to argue that he wasn't tired, that he was the opposite of tired, but unfortunately, she was right. After she lowered him back into the bed with an immensely strong grip, he felt his (Danny's?) eyelids grow heavy. Well, heavier than usual.

The other people in the room, Danny's family, filed out as Phantom reluctantly fell asleep.

He saw himself back in the Ghost Zone, where he should be. He was flying around lazily, doing loop de loops in the air and poking the clouds of swirling ectoplasm that littered the Zone. He was bored. The Ghost Zone was a neat place, but he felt hed done all the exploring he could, and he wished something new would happen.

Luckily or unluckily, something did. Not very far, a spark of light appeared. Phantom raised his eyebrows curiously and approached it, but it disappeared. Weird. He floated to the spot where it had been.

Big mistake. The spark reappeared, except it was less of a spark and more of an explosion this time. Electricity burst through Phantom's form and fried him from the inside out. He screamed. His surroundings melted into nothing, and at some point, he thought he heard his scream mix with someone else's. His molecules were split apart, and he felt his consciousness go somewhere else, some body that was not his own.

And then he felt heavy.

Phantom gasped and jolted awake. He blinked several times, his brain filled with confusion. He wasn't in the Ghost Zone. He was still trapped in the human realm, so what was up with that vision?

Oh, he thought, remembering what Nocturne had told him about visions that humans saw in their sleep. That was a dream.

From what hed heard about dreams, they rarely ever made sense. This one did, though. He was certain that was a memory of what brought him here.

A lot of good remembering did him, though.

Phantom looked over the room he was in, which he didn't get a chance to do previously. It was too dark to see clearly, which was frustrating, because darkness had never impeded his vision when he was a ghost. Although, the soft light coming through the window was enough to let him make out a few things in the room, like the various models of what he recognized had been described to him as spaceships, and posters of what he heard were called stars.

There was also a mirror in the room. Phantom rose from the bed, and he noticed that the pain had blessedly subsided, although he still felt heavy. Stupid gravity. He managed to stand on his own after a few minutes of nearly falling off balance, then shuffled his way to the mirror.

Shit, he thought, because even though he knew he was in someone else's body, he never had a chance to actually see it before now. The boy he was inside had black hair and blue eyes, which he remembered were the same colors as that large man in orange had. This body was smaller, though, more similar in structure to the woman. That damned black hair kept falling in front of his eyes. He looked around as young as those two humans who first greeted him, which was also around the age Phantom (as a ghost) usually appeared, although he never kept count of how many years exactly that was. Not like keeping count of years was easy inside a dimension where there was no sun.

While Phantom was busy despairing over the frail body he was trapped inside, an object in the room fell with a sudden crash. Phantom jumped a foot in the air. For Pariah's sake, why was he so jumpy in this body?

He turned around and jumped yet again as he noticed the green glow that had fallen all over the room. A few objects started floating on their own, including the bedside clock that was knocked onto the floor before.

If Phantom were a regular human, he probably would have shitted himself. But Phantom was not. Instead, his face split into a relieved smile, and he opened up his arms and exclaimed, "Thank Clockwork! A ghost! You have to help me."

The floating objects paused, as if they were put off by Phantom's weirdly positive outburst. Then they fell back to their original places, and the glow gathered into a certain spot in the room until they formed a person.

Phantom frowned and tilted his borrowed head. The ghost that appeared before him looked familiar. Just as he was wondering why, he realized: it was the same image he had just seen in the mirror, only with inverted colors, so that he had white hair instead of black, grayish-blue skin instead of pink, and ectoplasmic green eyes instead of blue.

"You're Danny," Phantom said. Then he slapped a fist on an open palm and said, "Ohhhh, so that's why I couldn't return control to you! You're dead."

The ghost, who was indeed dead Danny Fenton, stiffened and yelled, "I'm not dead!"

"You're a ghost," Phantom said, gesturing to Danny's floating, glowing form. "I'm pretty sure that means you're dead."

Danny pursed his lips. Then he grabbed Phantom by the collar and repeated, "I'm not dead, because my living body is right here, and I would kindly like you to give it back."

Phantom chuckled and slowly raised a finger. "Um, about that..."

Danny's glare was intense. Phantom didn't think he could be a very strong ghost, considering how recent his death was, but he didn't have any powers to protect himself anymore, so he shrunk warily under his eyes.

"What about that? Give me back my body."

"Yeah, um, I'm kind of, stuck?" Phantom informed him.

"Stuck?" He shook his head rapidly and said, "Quit joking around! Let me get back in my body, or I'll get my parents to beat your ghostly ass."

Phantom paused, because he heard Danny's voice falter at the end. The hands grapping him were shaking. He realized Danny must be afraid.

"It's okay," he spoke soothingly, trying to pat his shoulder reassuringly. "You just died, I'm sure that's--"

"I'm not dead!" Danny screamed and threw him to the ground. Ow, ow ow, stupid human body that feels pain.

Phantom tried to get up and reason with him again, but then the door opened. Danny's mom was there, holding the gun from before.

Danny turned around, and he widened his eyes and smiled. "Mom--"

But the woman didn't hear him. She crossed the room in a few bounds and formed a barrier with her body between Phantom and Danny, except, well...she was protecting the wrong one.

"Leave my son alone, you ghost," she spat at Danny, aiming her weapon at him while Phantom lay behind her back.

"What?" Danny's smile fell, and he stared at her and said, "But that's not--"

He didn't have a chance to complete his sentence before she shot him. A ray hit him right in the chest, pushing him back and slamming him against the wall. When he looked up again, her stern expression didn't change, and her weapon did not lower.

Fuck, thought Phantom, and he pulled himself up behind her. "Miss, um, Mom--"

"Don't worry, Danny," she said over her shoulder. "Mommy's gonna take care of this nasty specter."

She powered up the gun again, causing Danny (the real one) to flinch. "Please, listen to me..."

She did not. When she pulled the trigger once more, Phantom saw one last heartbroken look in the ghost's eyes before he phased through the wall and fled from his mother.

Danny's mom blew on the gun and flipped her hair. "See? That ghost was no problem."

Phantom picked his jaw up and looked at her. "Why did you shoot at him?"

She frowned. "Because he was a ghost, of course. You can never trust a ghost."

"Why not?"

She looked like he had just asked her the dumbest question on the planet. "Because they're evil. Malicious. Violent."

"That's not true," Phantom said, truthfully feeling a little offended.

Danny's mom only laughed and patted his head. "I'm sorry, who is the ghost expert here? Me or you?" She smiled at him and said, "Don't worry, I'll protect you from any ghost that tries to harm you."

Phantom would have argued further, but the resolution in her voice scared him a little. For the first time, he found himself grateful for being in Danny's body, because he wasn't sure what she would have done to him if she saw him as a ghost.

"Come on, go back to bed. There's still a couple of hours left before morning," she told him, guiding him back to Danny's bed. After he was settled in, she started to leave the room, but he stopped her by asking, "Wait...did you add anything to your gun?"

She smiled at him and said, "Nope. I told you it works on ghosts."

"Oh," he said, feeling his stomach organ churn.

Danny's mom left, only pausing at the doorway to tell him, "Good night, sleep tight, and don't let the bad ghosts bite."

Phantom lay in bed for a long time, but he didn't sleep. He stared down at Danny's hand...at his hand.

Danny was dead, and he was fully human, which meant this body was now his.

That thought burned in his mind until the light from out the window grew brighter, and the alarm clock beeped from its fallen spot on the floor.

Jazz knocked on his door. "Oh, good, you're awake," she said. She grumbled something inaudible then told him, "Mom and Dad want you to go to school."

Phantom hesitated. "...School?"

"I know," she said with a huff. She rolled her eyes and said in a mimicking tone, "It doesn't matter if you got into an accident that almost killed you and made you lose your memory! As long as you can walk, you can walk to school." She shook her head then asked, "Are you feeling better, at least?"

"Um," Phantom said, "define 'better'."

"Whatever. I'll drive you to school." And she left.

Phantom stayed in bed for several moments while the alarm continued to beep sadly. And then...he felt his bladder act up. He knew, from talking to ghosts who were humans, what this meant.

"Fuck," he muttered. "I have to pee."

.

After wandering around the top floor of the house, he finally found what he was pretty sure was called the bathroom. Figuring out the mechanics of the toilet and the faucet were easy enough, as well as the mehcanics of the actual peeing itself. He tried not to look at Danny's private parts while he did his business...even though he wasn't sure how long he would be spending in this body.

He went downstairs, which was difficult for someone who spent most of his existence flying, but he reached the bottom safely and found Danny's family sitting around a table with some stuff on it.

As he watched, Jazz scooped up a spoonful of the stuff inside her bowl, and she stuffed it into her mouth and chewed. Oh, so it was food.

Jazz caught him staring and asked, "Well? Are you going to eat?"

"Oh," he said. That's right, didn't humans need to eat to survive? He sat at the table, across from Jazz.

Phantom looked at the bowl in front of Jazz and noticed it was filled with a white liquid with pieces of multicolored circles swimming in it. He turned his attention to the jug that held the same white liquid, the box with a cartoon toucan on it that he guessed held the small circles, and the empty bowl in front of him. Well, he could put two and two together, and in no time he poured himself a bowl of milk and cereal and brought a spoonful to his mouth.

Holy Unworld! That tasted great. I mean, food did exist in the Ghost Zone for those who missed eating, but it all had the same acidic taste of ectoplasm. This was different. It was tooth-rottingly sweet.

Jazz raised an eyebrow at his dreamy expression. "You look like you're enjoying your Froot Loops."

"Froot Loops," he repeated the name. "We didn't have this in the Ghost Zone." Or maybe they did, but it wouldn't have tasted the same.

Jazz lowered her spoon and frowned. "Ghosts. Are you still going on about that?"

Phantom stopped chewing. He cast his eyes downward and twirled the spoon in his bowl. "I'm right," he said. "You were wrong about the fake memory stuff."

"Oh really?" she said, sounding like she didn't believe him. "Why is that?"

Phantom opened his mouth to speak, but his words died when he noticed Danny's mom. She had her back on them and was washing the dishes, but he thought he saw her tilt her ear toward them. Had she been listening?

"It's fine," Jazz sighed. "We'll talk about it after school. We're going to be late."

Phantom nodded and finished his Froot Loops, happy not to talk. Not with the ghost hunter in the room.

After the breakfast was drained, Jazz made for the door. Phantom followed her, but she blocked him with a hand and raised an eyebrow at his clothes. "You're not going to school in pyjamas, are you?"

Phantom glanced down at himself and saw that he was still wearing the same soft clothes he had slept in. "Uhh..."

Jazz rolled her eyes. "Go change clothes."

"Right," Phantom said and went back to Danny's room.

Honestly, he wasn't sure what he was supposed to wear. Ghosts didn't have different clothes for different occasions (most of them spent their entire existence in the same set of clothes--either whatever they had died in, or if they were born in the Zone like Phantom was, then whatever they thought made them look scarier), and the Fentons weren't exactly a good example of what humans normally wear.

As he rummaged through Danny's stuff, he came across a photograph. It showed Danny with those two friends of his--the ones who greeted Phantom when he first woke up. The trio stood in a grassy park, smiling, their arms linked together.

Phantom was filled with guilt as he thought back to Danny's ghost, begging him for his body back. If only he knew how to do that. He set the photo aside, but at least it helped him in one thing: the three teenagers were wearing regular clothes. He managed to find some clothes that matched the ones Danny wore in the picture, and when he returned downstairs, he was wearing jeans, sneakers, and a red-and-white T-shirt.

Jazz was waiting for him. The two teens walked outside and entered her car, a small convertible. He sat in the passenger seat and copied what Jazz did to strap her seatbelt, but his mind was still thinking about that photo of Danny he found. After a moment's hesitation, he said, "I saw him."

Jazz's hand stopped in the middle of turning the key in the ignition. "Saw who?"

"Danny," he told her.

Jazz pursed her lips. She started the car and drove. "If you saw him, then where is he now?"

"Your mom shot at him."

"What?"

"He's a ghost. I don't think she recognized him, but...well, he's dead."

Phantom finally learned what the seatbelt's function was when he lurched forward as Jazz suddenly stopped the car. She gripped the wheel in tight fists and breathed through flared nostrils. "Don't."

"Don't what?"

"Don't say that," she pleaded. "It was bad enough when I thought you... I thought you might die. But you didn't. You're alive."

Phantom felt guilt gnaw at him from hearing Jazz. What could he tell her other than Actually, your brother did die, oops haha, sorry?

Jazz took in a deep breath, then she kept driving like nothing happened. Phantom stayed quiet.

Eventually, the car stopped, and Jazz unbuckled her seatbelt and stepped out. Phantom looked at the building they arrived at. Numerous humans around his general age were either milling about or going inside.

School. He never went to one himself, but he heard some stories from Sidney. They weren't nice stories.

Phantom gulped and exited the car. No sooner had he done that than he noticed the two teens rushing toward him.

"Danny!" that girl from last night said. What was her name...Sam. She hesitated and asked, "Do you...remember us?"

"You mean to ask if Danny is back," Phantom told her. That gave her the answer she needed, and she deflated.

Tucker glanced between them, then hooked his arm around Phantom's shoulder and said, "Hey, if you're amnesiac, you need someone to guide you through school again, right?"

"I'm not..." He sighed. Then he eyed the building warily and asked, "Are there bullies?"

"Oh, definitely," Tucker answered, which made his stomach sink.

His time at school actually went by pretty smoothly. He had wondered if anyone would notice that he wasn't Danny, but nobody paid him much attention, not even the teachers. He managed to breeze by two subjects already--one was math, which was admittedly gibberish to him, but Tucker told him no one understood it anyway. The second one he knew better--English literature. He had visited Ghostwriter's library a bunch of times in the Zone and knew about Lord of the Flies when the teacher asked him about it.

Sam raised an eyebrow at him. "You don't remember your name, but you remember reading a class assignment?"

Phantom almost screamed out "I'm not Danny" again, but he held himself back. He knew they would never believe him, not unless...

"Look, Sam, Tucker," he said nervously. He wasn't sure if they would react the same way Jazz did, but considering how close friends they were, then they probably would. The two waited for him expectantly while he tried to pick out the right words. "Danny...your friend...he's--"

"Hey, Fentina!" a sharp voice interrupted him.

"Oh bother," Sam grumbled.

Confused, Phantom turned around to the source of the voice. What greeted him was a tall and muscular blonde human in a letterman's jacket, sneering down at him. "I didn't see you at the beginning of the school day. I think we have some beating to catch up on," he taunted and slammed a fist into his palm.

"Oh," Phantom said numbly. "You're a bully."

The blonde released a laugh that sounded like a pig getting choked. "Me, a bully? More like you're a loser who deserves to get bullied."

"That...makes no sense."

That was apparently the wrong thing to say, because blonde dude's face turned beet red, and he picked up Phantom by the collar and slammed him into a row of lockers. At this point, pain was becoming a constant in Phantom's new, stolen life.

"Lay off, Dash," Sam snapped at him.

"You lay off, Manson," Dash bit back. "I'm only interested in Fenturd here."

"I hear you mispronouncing Fenton a lot," Phantom said in spite of his nerves. "It's really not that hard a name to memorize."

Dash's face turned an even deeper shade of red, and he punched Phantom in the face. All Phantom could think was, Man, Danny would not be happy if he found out I broke his face. Then Dash opened a random locker and stuffed him inside.

"Have fun, FenTON," he yelled at him and slammed the locker door shut.

This was fine. Phantom could handle being trapped inside a tight space with no intangibility to bail him out. I mean, he was already trapped inside this body, wasn't he? Haha.

But after the first few minutes passed, he grew nervous. There was no way he would be left here forever, right? Oh, Ancients, he was going to die just like Sidney, alone in a school locker.

Apparently, that was not to be, because suddenly the air inside the locker grew colder. A soft green glow washed over it, and Phantom felt two cold hands grip his arms. A tingle ran across him. He recognized the sensation: intangibility. The arms pulled, and he was tugged through the locker wall and brought face to face with none other than Danny.

Phantom blinked. "You again."

Danny scowled. "You're still in my body."

"Well, yeah," Phantom said simply. "If I left, it would die."

Danny pulled him closer so he can feel his glare more intensely, probably. Phantom felt it all right, and he squinted his eyes because dear Clockwork, were ghost eyes always this bright?

"I asked you before, and I'm asking you again," Danny growled. "Give me back my body."

"And I already told you, I can't," Phantom retorted.

"Why not? It's mine!" His grip on Phantom's arms were tight now. "I can't live as a ghost!"

"I mean, technically you wouldn't really be living because--"

"I'm not dead!" Danny denied. "I can't...I can't be..."

His grip on Phantom felt weak now. His eyes were dimmer.

Phantom gulped and hesitantly patted Danny's arm in what he hoped was a reassuring way. "Hey, it's fine. Lots of ghosts I know went through a crisis when they died."

"Did they have parents who wanted to hunt them down?" Danny asked softly. Phantom paused and didn't know how to respond.

Well, they were alone, at least. The hallway was empty except for the two of them, and he had a feeling that whatever teacher he had would be wondering where Danny Fenton was. He wasn't sure if this fact was a good thing or a bad thing, because then Sam and Tucker would not see proof of their friend being dead, and he wasn't sure if that knowledge was good or bad.

"No," Danny said, snapping Phantom out of his thoughts. "No. I'm not going to stay like this while you live my life."

"But I already told you..." Phantom began, but Danny's eyes returned their brightness, and he stared directly at Phantom.

"I'm a ghost. I can possess stuff, right?"

Phantom's eyes widened, and that was all the answer Danny needed before he overshadowed him.

A minute later, the bell rung, and students filed out of classrooms. He heard footsteps approach him and turned around to see his friends.

"Thank god, you made it out!" Tucker said once he saw him. "I swear, I told Lancer that Dash stuffed you in a locker again, but he didn't believe me..." He trailed off and pointed out, "Your eyes are green."

"They are?" Danny asked. "Huh, that's weird. I'm not surprised about Mr. Lancer, though."

"Um, didn't you technically only meet him today or something?"

"Today? I wish," Danny said, rolling his green eyes. "That guy's been following our class since third grade."

Tucker gaped. "You remember?"

"Third grade? Unfortunately."

Sam was staring. She stepped forward. "Danny?" she slowly asked.

Danny grinned. "Hey, Sam."

She laughed and hugged him. "You're back! How?"

Danny shrugged. "Come on, you can't expect me to forget you forever, can you?"

Sam and Tucker smiled. Danny smiled. In the back of Danny's head, Phantom mentally frowned.

.

The day passed. Danny was back. He took his classes as always. He got bullied by Dash as always, but that didnt bother him much. Funny how small things become once you've literally died.

Not. Danny didn't die. He told himself that.

More than once, he felt a hand twitch on its own. He sent a mental frown to Phantom and told him, Why won't you leave already?

Dude, how many times do I have to explain to you that I can't?

But I'm in my own body now.

Temporarily. Overshadowing someone isn't the same as taking their body.

Danny tuned him out and continued with his day.

There was a price, however. Phantom tried to warn him, but he got ignored. As the day went by, Danny felt himself grow exhausted at an awfully quick pace.

Tucker noticed first. "Are you okay? You're breathing heavily, and it's not even P.E. yet."

"I'm fine," Danny panted, but he didn't look that way. His skin was pale and covered with sweat.

"No, you're not," Sam said with a frown. "It's the portal--you shouldn't be walking around school after a near-death accident like that."

"I'm not dead!" Danny snapped, shocking his friends with his sudden volume. He faltered. "I mean...I need to go use the bathroom."

They let him go, though their eyes followed his back as he left. He entered the nearest restroom he found and immediately splashed his face with water.

You should stop overshadowing me, Phantom suggested.

Danny scowled. He gripped the sink to steady his shaking hands. "I'm not overshadowing anyone. This is my body."

I'm not saying it's not, but right now, you're a ghost. Prolonged overshadowing isn't healthy.

Danny gritted his teeth. "So, what? I let you steal my life again?"

It's just until we can figure out how to switch us back, Phantom said, but Danny could tell when he lied.

"You don't think we can be switched back, can you?"

Phantom hesitated. Luckily for him, he didn't need to think of a reply--just then, Danny shivered, and a blue mist escaped from his mouth.

Danny frowned. "What was that?"

Oh no, Phantom thought.

Suddenly, a shrill voice cried out, "Trespasser!" Danny jumped and whipped around to face whoever spoke. He squinted his eyes and said, "Who the fuck?"

The speaker would have looked like a regular scrawny freshman, except his skin was gray and transparent, and his torso was sticking halfway through a closed bathroom stall. It was a ghost, obviously.

Truthfully, Danny was almost disappointed in how un-scary he seemed. As a child, he had nightmares about ghosts from the stories his parents told him, but the specter in front of him was far from intimidating. He looked like one of the geeks that Dash and his gang would have picked on if he were alive.

The ghost pointed a finger at Danny and repeated in his nasally voice, "Trespasser! This is my haunt."

Danny eyed the row of empty stalls and asked, "You mean the restroom?"

"Yes! I died in this place, and I chose to make it my haunt instead of going to the Ghost Zone. I don't need another ghost like you to take it from me!"

"Okay, Moaning Myrtle, calm down," Danny spoke. "Why would I even want to steal a restroom? Also, what do you mean by calling me a ghost?"

The ghost left his stall and floated over Danny with a scowl. "I'm not stupid. I can tell when a ghost is overshadowing someone. And if you would steal a body, then you would steal a haunt."

Danny bristled. "I didn't steal this body! It was mine in the first place."

"Oh, sure, and I bet you're going to say this haunt has always been yours!"

"I'm not interested in your fucking water closet!" Danny bit back. "And this body is mine! I was born in it. I lived in it. I...it can't belong to anyone else."

The ghost narrowed his eyes. Then he said, "You're a nasty ass liar, you know that?"

"I'm not lying!"

"Whatever! You're clearly overshadowing a human, and you're clearly still standing inside my haunt, so..."

Um, maybe you should leave the bathroom, Phantom suggested. But Danny stood his ground, glaring at the ghost with his fists by his side. He was tired of this--tired of his death being pointed out to him.

"What are you going to do about it, huh? Give me a swirly?" he gibed.

The ghost's expression darkened. He raised his arm, and several stalls began to rumble. Danny faltered, and his anger melted into apprehension.

Run, Phantom said. This time, Danny decided it was a good idea to listen.

He managed to make it halfway to the exit when all the stalls suddenly exploded. Jets of slightly glowing water burst forth and hit Danny in the back, pushing him the rest of the way out and also drenching him completely.

He sluggishly picked himself off the wet floor. When he glanced to his side, he saw Kwan pausing mid-step. "...I'll just use the restroom on the second floor," Kwan said, turned a 180 and left.

Danny flipped himself over and faced the ghost floating in the restroom's doorway. "I left your stupid washroom alone, so can you leave?" he barked.

"But how do I know you won't come back?" the ghost challenged. "And you're still overshadowing the poor human."

Danny laughed mirthlessly. "Poor human?"

The ghost didn't seem to understand the irony in that. He tackled Danny, phasing the both of them through the wall and into the adjacent hallway.

A few stragglers were still idling in the hallway when they burst in. At the sudden sight of the ghost, most of them screamed and scrambled away. Only a few stayed behind: some redheaded human in a basketball shirt, and Danny's friends, Sam and Tucker.

"Danny!" Sam called out and ran to his side. Tucker froze in place. He lifted a shaky finger at the toilet ghost and stammered, "That's a g-ghost."

The toilet ghost floated away from Danny and crossed his arms. "Yeah, duh," he replied. "I'm not the only one, though."

Tucker was about to ask him what he meant by that, but then Danny began to heave. Sam hovered over him worriedly, but even she had to step away when his coughing became intense. He lurched over--then coughed himself out of his body.

Ghost Danny popped out and landed on the floor. Behind him, Phantom sighed and fell onto his side.

Sam gaped and stared between them, her mouth forming wordless questions, before she gulped and said to Danny, "Phantom?"

Danny frowned and said, "No, I'm Danny! He's Phantom." He pointed at the person inside his human body.

Sam chuckled weakly. "I think you must be confused. He's Danny, because he's a human. And you're Phantom, because youre a g..."

"He's right," Phantom interrupted from his spot on the floor. He pushed himself up, still panting heavily, and said, "That's what I've been trying to tell you. I'm not Danny. He is."

Sam stared at him, then back at Danny. "But...but that would mean--" She trailed off, and her face turned pale.

Whatever heartfelt conversation might have followed was cut off by another splash of water aimed at Danny. He growled and turned on the toilet ghost. "Will you go already?"

The ghost's fists were surrounded by swirling water (which Danny really hoped was clean). He shook his head and barked at him, "Not until you leave this school."

"The school? I thought your haunt was only the restroom."

"It was! But then you made fun of it, so I've decided to make this entire building my territory!"

He shot another beam of water at Danny. Danny grinded his teeth and wished the water would stop in mid-air...and to his surprise, it did. A transparent green shield suddenly appeared in front of him, blocking the water and keeping him dry. Danny blinked and floated back in surprise, and the shield dissapeared.

Phantom was watching him with interest. When the shield disappeared, he called out to Danny and told him, "Use your ghost rays!"

"My what?" was Danny's response right before another jet of water came at him. This time, he didn't summon an ecto-shield in time, and he got slammed back against a row of lockers. As he picked himself up, he noticed that redhead from earlier, who had been staring, trembling, as the whole encounter went down. Ah, fuck, what was his name again? He was in Danny's P.E. class. The poor boy was shivering like a leaf, which made sense--Danny would have done the same if he saw a real ghost when he was still human.

The toilet ghost approached Danny, but stopped and scowled at the redhead. "Leave, human," he ordered. "This doesn't involve you."

The guy (His name started with a W, Danny remembered. Walt? Wes?) stared at the ghost for a moment, then hurriedly nodded and ran. That left the ghost flying in front of Danny.

"Your ghost ray!" Phantom repeated from behind the toilet ghost, as if that would make Danny understand what he was saying. "Just think about shooting him with your hands!"

Shooting him...with his hands? That made no sense, but Danny did as he was told. He made a finger gun and aimed it at the ghost, then imagined a pew! pew! come out.

Pew! came out the ray and shot the ghost right at his chest.

The opponent had only time to widen his eyes before he was slammed against the opposite wall and dissolved into (grossly) glowing water.

Danny slowly blinked. "...Functioning fingerguns," he said. "That's useful."

"What the actual fuck, dude?"

He turned and saw Tucker approach him, wearing a bewildered expression. He gestured wildly to Danny and said, "You're a ghost now? And your body is conscious on its own?"

"Actually, it's conscious because a ghost is inside," he replied, not-so-subtly glaring at Phantom as he said so.

Phantom threw his (or Danny's...whatever) arms up and said, "I didn't choose to be stuck in your body, okay? It was an accident."

Tucker rubbed his forehead. "I still don't understand. How is all this happenning?"

Before either Danny could speak, Sam's voice suddenly cut through and said, "I killed you."

Danny stared at Sam. She was hugging her arms, eyes downcast, and still looked pale as a sheet. "You're a ghost," she said softly. "That means you've died. And I killed you."

Danny felt that same tightness in his chest, not exactly squeezing any heart, but something similar. "I'm not dead," he tried again, but after repeating that sentence so many times, the lie sounded weak even to himself.

Phantom sent him a pitying gaze. Sam bit her lips and squeezed herself tighter. "Yes, you are. It was the portal accident. Somehow, you died and got replaced by...whoever this is." She gestured weakly to Phantom, then choked up and continued in a wavering voice, "It was my fault. I told you to go inside that portal. You're--you're dead, because of me. I killed you."

Seeing her like that, hearing her, made any sorry feelings Danny had for himself disappear. All he cared about was wiping that melancholy from his friend's eyes. "No," he told her firmly. "It wasn't your fault. I agreed. I--" A lump formed in his throat, and he swallowed it down before saying, "I'm dead because of my own fault."

He could feel Phantom's eyes boring into him. Probably, that ghost (ex-ghost?) was thinking something along the lines of Fucking finally! You admit it to yourself at last, but the emotional intensity of the situation was likely what prevented him from voicing that thought out loud.

Sam raised her eyes and met his sadly. Tucker stepped forward, his brows drawn together. "But...but that can't be it!" he protested. He grabbed Phantom's arm and pointed out, "Your body is still alive, isn't it? Can't we...I dont know...redo the accident so it gets you back in your body the same way Phantom got inside yours?"

Danny perked up and felt a sliver of hope grow inside him, but Phantom was quick to shake his head and say, "That won't be so easy. The Ghost Zone is always shifting. Whatever spot I was in when the portal thing happened, it won't be the same place for Danny."

"Oh," Tucker said, deflating. His eyes turned downcast, and his hands fell limply off Phantom's arm. "I guess it can be it, then."

Phantom looked at the trio of friends, their broken expressions. He honestly didn't see what the big fuss was about, but he hated seeing them so sad, so he hurriedly added in a forcefully positive tone, "That's okay, though! Difficult doesn't have to mean impossible! I'm sure we can...uh..."

He trailed off after spotting a person at the end of the hallway. Confused, Danny turned to see who he was looking at. He found his sister, slack-jawed, her eyes darting between him and Phantom.

"Jazz!" he said, then looked down and noticed his ghostly appearance. "Um, I can explain."

Jazz didn't leave him room to, because she promptly fainted.

Danny rushed forward to grab her, but of course, she fell right through his arms. He winced when she hit her face on the hard floor. Tucker came forward and checked her.

"She's fine," he said with a cross between a smile and a grimace.

.

Jazz's eyes fluttered awake. She groaned and turned her head to the side. On the wall next to her was a silly cartoon infographic of flu symptoms. It took her mind a minute to recognize it, but she was at the school infirmary.

"You're awake?" asked a voice nearby. She turned her head to the other side and saw her brother's face.

"Danny..." She frowned and sat up on the infirmary bed. Her face hurt. "What happened?"

"You don't remember?"

Jazz tried to recall what brought her here. She remembered seeing seeing Danny, and...ghost Danny? She shook her head. "Must have been a dream," she mumbled.

"What?"

She saw Danny watching her curiously. She sighed and ran a hand across her face, which still ached for some reason. "I remember seeing you standing next to your ghost. I think you might have...died. But that couldn't have been possible."

"You think that was a dream."

Danny's expression was unreadable. Jazz frowned. "It had to be. Ghosts aren't real." Mentally, she added, I hope not.

Danny averted his eyes from her. She wondered if she said something wrong, but then Danny stood up from his chair and said, "You slipped and hit your face, so we brought you to the school nurse. You need some rest...I'll leave you alone."

It sounded reasonable enough, but something nagged at her. Danny wouldn't meet her eyes, instead choosing to fidget with the hem of his shirt. She had a feeling he was lying.

"Danny," she called. "You know you can tell me anything, right?"

Her brother stiffened. It looked like he was about to say something, but he must have changed his mind at the last minute because he left the room wordlessly.

.

Phantom exited the school infirmary. "She's okay," he told the air.

Danny visualized in front of him, wearing a frown. "I heard what went down. She thinks it wasn't real."

Phantom shrugged. He felt a little bad, but he wasn't sure he could handle her reaction if he told her that her brother was really dead...again. The first time he tried didn't go so cheerfully.

"Where are your friends?" Phantom asked, choosing to change the subject.

"You mean Sam and Tuck? What do you think?" He chuckled humorlessly, then gazed at his boots and murmured, "They just discovered that ghosts exist and their friend is dead. Of course they needed some time to process that."

Phantom bit his lip. "We'll find some way to switch us back. Maybe."

That "maybe" didn't sound so reassuring, and Danny didn't look reassured. Phantom grimaced and tried to think of a better way to lift his spirits, but then he heard footsteps approach. Danny made himself invisible while Phantom turned around and saw a familiar couple in orange and teal come toward them.

"Danno!" Danny's dad greeted him. "The school called--is Jazzy-pants alright?"

"She's fine," Phantom said with a steady voice. "She just had some low blood sugar is all."

The man patted his shoulder, then entered the room where Jazz was held. His wife went to follow him, but Phantom stopped her by calling, "Uh...Mom."

She spun to him and smiled. "What is it, sweetie?"

Phantom hesitated. He fidgeted with his shirt and asked, "Did you really mean what you said last night--about all ghosts being bad?"

The woman frowned. "Of course I did. Was I wrong?"

"It's just, well..." He focused on a random locker and said, "What if your son...I mean, what if I became a ghost? What would you do to me then?"

He braved a glance at her and saw a shadow cross her expression. She hesitated for a moment before replying carefully, "I don't like to think about that. I choose to believe that when you die, it won't be violent. I'll make sure of that." She forced a smile, then ruffled Phantom's hair and added, "But that doesn't matter right now. You're still alive and human. As long as you're with me, then I know that any ghost who looks like you is an imposter."

Phantom's stomach sank, and he swallowed down a lump that formed in his throat. Danny's mom only smiled at him once more before she followed her husband to see Jazz.

Danny didn't reappear. Phantom didn't see him for the rest of the day. But in that moment, he thought he heard a choked sob come from the air behind him.

#Danny Phantom #Phic Phight #phic phight 20 #phic phight 2020 #danny fenton #sam manson #tucker foley #jazz fenton #maddie fenton #jack fenton #dash baxter #fic #fanfiction #writing #au #mine

[sylph-feather]

Half-hot water

Summary: Phantom disguising as his normal self is a strange prospect, but one must do what needs to be done.

Wordcount: 2174

Prompt: by @ecto-american

“Danny being stuck as Phantom and forced to deal with situations that he'd normally be as Fenton (like going to school, having a family dinner, etc)”

“This is possibly the most stupid idea we’ve ever had,” Danny mumbles.

“And that’s saying something,” Tuck chirps an aside.

“Stop moving,” Sam instructs, “I’m trying to make you look like you.”

Green eyes blink, baleful as Sam adds a layer of human toned makeup to Danny’s green toned skin. Danny pouts, but his lips are sealed.

“How long do you think it’ll last?” Tucker hums, thinking back to Skulker’s new weapon— obviously inspired by (if not provided by) Plasmius.

Danny’s lips part to reveal sharp canines as he makes to reply, but Sam shoots him a glaring look. Exaggeratedly and spitefully, Danny lifts his arms in a frustrated I don’t know motion.

“Find him an outfit,” Sam instructs to get the two to stop talking. Tucker shrugs and scampers off.

xXx

By the time he’s back, Tucker has procured gender ambiguous things from Sam’s closet— all black, yes, but just a hoodie with a t-shirt and lounge pants.

The first step, of course, is removing the jumpsuit. Danny’s friends turn around.

And wait.

And wait.

And—

“C’mon man, what’s taking so long?” Tucker groans.

“Uh,” Danny’s small voice comes, “we may have a problem,” he says slowly, drifting over to them. His hair is black, but it drifts like Phantom’s wispy underwater hair; it’s a strange image, to see him so intentionally human, yet still with an aura and glowing green eyes and all the other subtly ghostly things.

Danny is still in his jumpsuit, just minus the gloves that he has tucked into one of the thing’s sleek pockets— really cementing his Phantom image.

Fantom? Tucker considers as a name for this, or maybe Fentom…? Phentom? Hm.

Sam, meanwhile, looks about ready to yell at Danny, asking why he is still in that jumpsuit.

In answer to the unsaid rant, Danny peels off a shiningly white jumpsuit boot, throwing it to the side.

For a moment, his foot is bare, and fairly human asides from the skin toned with green blood and the sharpened nails— and then. And then the boot makes a faint hiss, a bubbling sound on Sam’s carpet, and it melts. The leg of Danny’s jumpsuit then also seems to melt, rubbery material dripping into a new boot.

“That’s weird,” Tucker grunts as Danny settles on shoving all his clothes over the jumpsuit.

xXx

He can’t transform by the time the makeup is done, or by the time he reaches home from his “study session” (as was his excuse, his lie).

He tested all the other powers, putting a little float into his step, a little glow to his hands, flickering out of existence and tangibility… only the going-human one was left broken by that stupid, stupid electrical shock.

He gives his outfit a once over, tugging at things. His skin glows faintly beneath the makeup, and his eyes glow less faintly under the uncomfortable colored contacts (he’d almost gagged, putting the things in his eyes and blinking them into position), hence why he’s wearing sunglasses as additional cover, to keep people from noticing the toxic green light behind the blue.

Keep people like his parents from noticing. Parents that would— don’t think about that. He breathes in, breathes out, puts his feet back on the floor from which he had slightly drifted.

“I’m home,” he announces slowly, awkwardly bringing up that mask of normal to try to outrun the fact that he was anything but. He hopes his voice doesn’t echo too much. From this distance, at least, he doesn’t feel bad about removing the sunglasses (after all, he’d be questioned more about wearing them inside). Danny just tries to slant his eyes down.

“Hey sweetie,” Maddie says, absentmindedly fiddling with some machine at the table as Jack gives a muffled echo of that around the food he has shoved in his mouth. Jazz gives him a wave from her book, not even glancing up. His mother continues, “how was studying?”

That alone is enough to make him sigh a little in relief. “Good,” he pushes out with a nervous titter. “You know how great Sam and Tuck are,” he awkwardly adds. He considers excuses to get up to his room— normally he hangs around and chats a little, or listens to his parents rant, or does homework downstairs. But today he doesn’t exactly want to do that, but he also doesn’t want to be too dramatic and draw attention, so—

“There is a ghost ahead,” the sleek machine beeps, lights on it whirring.

Jazz, of all of them, freezes and stares at him— and then she stares harder, and Danny can feel his sharp nailed hands itching, and his hair feels scratchy around his pricked ears, and his aura feels bright— it’s as though he can see that she’s noticing all that.

Thankfully, Maddie and Jack on the other hand just laugh. “Silly thing. There’s no signs of a presence of one of those suffering spooks” his father guffaws.

(Behind him, the kitchen light flickers a little).

Danny barks a nervous, raucous laugh. You’re being paranoid, they don’t suspect you at all. “I’m, uh,” he pauses, stuttering, “gonna work upstairs today, if that’s alright,” he laughs, and it’s so fake he wants to claw at his throat. “I’m just feeling a little people-d out today, you know?” Danny is at least proud of coming up with a reasonable excuse that doesn’t invite scrutiny, and gives him an out for other extended family time.

“Aw, alright,” his dad pouts. “How can ya get people-d out?” he grunts with a laugh.

Maddie rolls her eyes. “You’re just too energetic, Jack. That’s fine, Danny— though do come down for dinner, please. Just a little time, at least,” she smiles.

Oh, crap. Now Danny feels bad. Wednesdays are usually reserved specifically for sit down together dinners; they have them other days, but Wednesday is the always, the guaranteed.

Danny’s head swirls with excuses from nausea to more introvertedness to headaches. What his mouth, against his better judgement, says is, “OK, yeah! Sounds good.”

He smiles nervously, lips moving to keep sharp teeth hidden, and he leaves just at a speed just a little under too fast to be considered normal.

xXx

Danny feels like throwing something as he angrily paces the air of his bedroom. Why did I say that? I’m so stupid.

There’s a knock on his door, and Danny thumps to the ground, scrabbling at his outfit to get it tugged down over his jumpsuit and glow. “Come in,” he stammers.

Jazz enters. “Sorry to bother you,” she says.

Danny shrugs.

And— and she just stands there, staring. Subconscious and feeling all the failures of his disguise, Danny picks at the threads of the hoodie to keep himself from further drawing attention to those features— after all, he now wants nothing more than to fiddle with all of them; to close his eyes even more, to ensure there’s no white patch in his hair that Sam missed, to brush that hair more thoroughly over his sharper ears, to flood the lights in his room so his glow isn’t so noticeable.

It isn’t until Jazz, still silent, takes a step forward while staring deep into the colored contacts that Danny blinks (and now those contacts feel so uncomfortable and gritty against his eye, ugh) ans says, “uh.”

“Right,” Jazz says slowly. “Sorry.”

And then she leaves.

Weird.

xXx

Danny is left to his own devices for the rest of the evening, which… asides from the tendency to float as he does them, he doesn’t do anything all that abnormal in relation to his routine. That is: keeping an eye for the foggy breath that came with ghost attacks while doing homework and studies, cleaning his room, and videogaming (or otherwise relaxing).

Thankfully, the universe for once decides to let Danny have a break, leaving him with finished homework and a clean room (for once), and time aplenty to just relax.

It isn’t until he smells dinner cooking that the dread kicks in.

xXx

His parents are calling him, and Danny is having a mental breakdown over sunglasses. Sunglasses.

He ditches them, because ultimately the thought that they’d invite more suspicion, or even worse, concern, is just too much.

“You look a little flushed,” his mother points out, pushing a plate towards him so he can serve himself.

Danny refrains from making a pale as a ghost joke, or saying something about that’s why his eyes look bright (that would only point them out, even if it excuses them in the same motion), and instead just laughs a breathy laugh. He keeps his lips tucked over his sharpened teeth, nervous.

Over the whole dinner, Danny can’t restrain himself from that urge to excessively fiddle. He messes with his hair, running sharp nails to comb it into place— make sure it isn’t drifting in that watery way it does sometimes, make sure it’s covering his pointed ears. He stares at his skin, checking for makeup smudges, carefully eats so that the makeup that feels so heavy on his lips does not become overly smudged and so that his teeth are not to exposed.

It’s calculated, it’s exhausting, and it’s frankly overdoing it for his rather selectively observant parents.

What reason would they have to suspect me? Danny constantly reminds himself as he stares at the food to keep his glowing eyes from their faces.

He babbles; he knows not about what, just generalizations. School, how his tests have gone, assignments he finds interesting (he is a nerd at the core, despite his grades). Sam and Tucker and the renewed fight of diet.

Thankfully, his family is enough to carry the conversation as well— especially, of course, Jack (as usual). Not per usual, Jazz does not participate. No, she spends dinner doggedly trying to meet his eyes, and Danny spends it vehemently avoiding hers.

Never would he have thought Jazz, the rational, logical, sister that didn’t believe in ghosts would be the biggest threat to his secret.

“I’m going to get some more,” she hums, and walks behind Danny.

His shoulders tense, body gone rigid.

Her hand just ruffles his hair— he feels it tickle at the edge of his ear, meaning it was exposed... and Jazz just gives him an odd smile, meeting his eyes briefly (he dropped guard on that feature out of surprise), before spooning more food on her plate.

...Danny doesn’t look the gift horse in the mouth (or the eyes), and he counts his blessings.

xXx

Sleep is, apparently, not something that comes easy in ghost form. Danny wouldn’t have known before all this, considering any time he was knocked out or fell asleep ordinarily, he’d revert to being a human, and he was never stupid enough to be a ghost in his own house as he did something as vulnerable as sleep.

Emphasis on that he was never stupid enough, on that past tense, because that is exactly what is doing now.

...Or, trying to do.

Instead, he floats a little above the bed, unable to keep concentration on staying grounded while trying to perform the activity of little concentration. A hard balancing act.

Really, after what felt like forever, Danny concludes it is highly likely that ghosts weren’t exactly made to sleep. That, or they weren’t made to do so at night; the darkness sends his cells abuzz, and explains to him why so many freaky things happened in the dark because he so wants to just go crazy. It is almost like Danny had drunk caffeine too late in the day, and now he’s gotten jittery— except he didn’t do that, so.

For good measure, he tries again on the human form front. Just a faint white spark— better than nothing, at least, and a little improvement considering it was nothing last he had checked. If it still was without improvement by now, maybe Danny would’ve worried about dying the rest of the way by an idiotic taser, but that improvement indicated he was (probably) fine, so he didn’t need to have one of his many existential crises.

So he stares,

— stares… stares… stares…

He feels his lids getting heavy.

xXx

Maddie shakes him awake.

“Rough night?” she asks, and Danny gives a nervous laugh, startlingly awake as memories jolt back.

Maddie frowns at her fingers, rubbing together waxy makeup, but shrugs it off.

Unable to stop himself, Danny’s eyes (crusty and uncomfortable with a night of sleeping with contacts in; the things feel more like shards in his eyes than ever) flick down to look at the hand his mother grabbed… to find it unsmudged.

No, wait.

He runs a finger along it, and makeup comes off, but it reveals human toned, pink tinted skin beneath.

His mom continues, oblivious to Danny’s joy— “I had trouble sleeping, too— trying to fix that new invention, because it kept saying there was a ghost here.” She laughs in a scoff.

Danny can’t project that same confidence, but he can laugh anyways, fully human once again.

#dp #phic #phic phight #phic phight 2020 #dp fanfic #Danny Phantom #phic phight 20

[idiot-cheesehead-archenemy]

Danny Fenton Is Fourteen

Prompt: “Danny is fourteen. But he is so, so much older than that.” by @bibliophilea

Word count: 681

There was a time when Danny Fenton hadn’t been fourteen. Once, Danny Fenton had been a human boy who was born in Amity Park, like so many boys before him and so many after. Then one day, when he was fourteen, Danny Fenton had stopped being like other boys in Amity Park. The Master of Time had watched it happen. He’d seen all of Danny Fenton’s life and both of his deaths. 

Danny Fenton was fourteen both times he died. The dying was painful, but not nearly as bad the second time as the first. The first time, there was fire. Danny Fenton burned and what rose from his ashes was something different. Different, but not completely new. It had happened once before, though that rebirth was not quite so violent. Half-ghost, half-human. Two opposite states of being bound in a single identity. It wasn’t stable. It never would have lasted. Still, he could have had more than a year if things had gone differently.

The second time, Danny Fenton had been unconscious for most of it. He had been aware that he was fighting, and he was briefly aware that he’d been drugged, and after that, there were only a few moments of blinding pain in between long stretches of darkness. He died not knowing exactly what happened to him. The Master of Time knows, of course. He’d watched every second of it. 

When Danny Fenton, Danny Phantom, awoke from death the second time, he’d been in the ghost zone. He’d been confused, then increasingly desperate as he realized he could no longer access his human form. It had taken him a long time to accept what had happened. The Master of Time had seen thousands, tens of thousands, untold numbers of ghosts go through the exact same process, and he was mildly surprised that Danny Fenton hadn’t handled the realization any better than anyone else, in spite of everything he’d been through.

Danny Fenton had gone to Clockwork, then. It hadn’t been the first time a ghost had found him and begged him to reverse their fate, nor the last. It may, however, have been the only time that Clockwork had wished he could say yes. He couldn’t, of course. He’d sent Danny Fenton away just like the others, though he told him that he was always welcome to visit as a friend. 

It was a long time before Danny Fenton took him up on that offer. He was angry and confused, as so many were. But he gradually came to accept and even embrace his fate, as so many did. And he matured in many ways, though he remained always fourteen. When he did visit Clockwork’s realm, he was changed. Not enough. Not all the way, yet. But Clockwork saw the possibility. 

They truly did become friends, Danny Fenton and Clockwork. They spent much time together, though time was a hard thing to quantify in Clockwork’s realm. They talked of many things, and Danny Fenton did not realize at first just how much he was learning, nor how impressed Clockwork was at his aptitude. 

It’s impossible to say how long Clockwork spent training Danny Fenton. Even to describe the process as taking time is perhaps inaccurate in the first place. Long enough, the Master of Time supposes. Long enough that Danny Fenton came to see the world much the way Clockwork did, to understand all the complex nuances of time and causality. He’d even had glimpses into the true vastness of time and thought he had a sense of it. Of course he hadn’t, not then. No temporal being ever could. But what he did see, he’d handled remarkably well. If Clockwork had been allowed to tell him about it, he would surely have joked that his ascension was only a matter of time. Clockwork had liked that joke. 

Danny Fenton is gone, now. But he is also eternal. Danny Fenton is fourteen. But he is so, so much older than that. Danny Fenton is the Master of Time, as he has always been and always will be.

#danny phantom #phic phight #phic phight 20 #danny fenton #clockwork #phanfic #my writing #fanfic

[ajitated]

Giving Up Ghost Hunting by Ajility

DP one-shot, 1.2k words Written for @faedemon for Phic Phight 2023, Team Ghost!

What do you do when your nemesis makes a really good point about wasting time and how exhausted you are? What do you do when it turns out he's right, and you don't need to be putting yourself through this? Valerie doesn't know, but she'll figure it out.

(Read on ao3, or keep reading below!)

Valerie has three upcoming tests, two papers, and a never-ending list of homework and practice problems to get through. Despite being part-time, she’s been scheduled to work for five of seven days next week — definitely over 20 hours. And there’s been at least one ghost attack every. single. day. 

She’s running on fumes, but at least she’s doing a good job hiding it. 

…or at least. She thought she was doing a good job hiding it. 

“...what did you just say?” she demands through gritted teeth, her ecto-gun aimed and ready. 

Phantom holds his hands up in mock-surrender. “Nothing!” He says automatically, then pauses and sighs, letting his hands drop. His usual taunting demeanor drops with them. “...just. You look tired.”

She looks tired? Ha! What would he know about that? It’s none of his business, and she has a mask on, and-! 

…and she is tired. 

“Well if you’re worried about my beauty sleep, why don’t you start running?” She scoffs. “The quicker we get this over with, the quicker I can work on my paper and go to bed.” 

Phantom just sighs again. “Or you could skip chasing me and go work on your paper now.” 

Valerie growls and gives a warning shot just a few inches to the left of his head. He doesn’t even flinch. “Nice try, ghost. You’re lucky I’m even talking to you right now, I’m not gonna just let you go.” 

“Yes, you will. Because you always do. Because if you ever actually caught me, you’d have to deal with all the ghosts in this town, by yourself.” Phantom says flatly. “You’re barely keeping up right now. You have tests to study for, papers to write, and work. That’s a lot even without the ghost hunting.” 

What? “How do you-” she starts to say, but he cuts her off. 

“I handled the ectopus today. I handled Kitty and Johnny earlier in the week. I dealt with Boxy and there wasn’t even much property damage this time. You got there late every single time because you’re so tired, you’ve started falling asleep in class. Stop being stubborn and wasting both of our time, and take a break before you get yourself hurt. Your paper is due tomorrow, you’re already not getting sleep tonight.”  

He turns and flies off before she’s even finished processing all that… which unfortunately means he’s gone before she can shoot him for it. 

Who does he think he is, telling her off like that? She’s handling everything perfectly fine, thankyou-very-much! She has plenty of time to- to… tomorrow? 

Today is Tuesday, the paper isn’t due until… oh. Oh, no. Today is Thursday. The paper is due tomorrow. 

She lowers her gun and speeds home; she doesn’t have time to figure out where Phantom went tonight or how he knew all that. 

--- 

On the upside, Valerie does get her paper done and manages to turn it in on time… on the downside, Phantom was right: she doesn’t get any sleep. 

It grates on her nerves, but… without him right in front of her, it’s much easier for her to admit he has a point. She is exhausted. She does have too much work to get done. She has been arriving to ghost fights late, and she’s been making stupid mistakes. She’s going to get herself — or someone else — hurt. 

She can’t risk someone else getting hurt. 

…which is also why she can’t just leave the ghost fights to Phantom. He’s a ghost. He clearly doesn’t understand, and isn’t going to protect everyone properly! She can’t trust human lives to a ghost. 

Except… she kind of has been, unintentionally. By showing up late to fights. And no one’s gotten hurt yet. If she’s going to keep being late and keep risking people’s lives… maybe she should take a break. So she can be ready when she’s actually needed. 

Maybe- just for a week? 

Dammit. 

She hates that Phantom has a point. 

---

A week goes by. Then two. 

Valerie doesn’t hunt any ghosts, including Phantom. 

No one gets hurt. 

She gets her papers turned in, passes her tests, catches up on sleep… She feels good. 

Good, but empty. 

Phantom was right, she doesn’t have to exhaust herself chasing ghosts, she doesn’t have to exhaust herself chasing him, and the world keeps turning… Ha. That’s messed up, isn’t it? 

She kind of wishes someone got hurt. Not because she actually wants anyone hurt, of course, but- because it’d prove she’s needed. 

Instead, the exact opposite has been proven: she can put her hoverboard down, leave the ecto-guns hidden away, and Phantom will handle all the ghosts juuuust fine — if anything, things are going better now that she’s not hunting him. She isn’t needed. At all. 

What does she do with that info? 

Now that she doesn’t have a billion normal life things to worry about, now that she’s caught up with school and things have calmed down and she has free time — what does she do? 

Ignore the fact she’s not needed and go back to hunting anyway? 

The few patrols she’s gone on, she hasn’t seen more than a blob. Shooting blobs isn’t any fun, it just makes her feel mean. That’s why she’d been leaving them for Phantom even before this… 

And- she doesn’t think she can go back to just hunting Phantom. As much as she hates him, as much as she wants to… he was right. And he hasn’t let anyone get hurt. It doesn’t matter if she knows he’s awful, as long as he’s keeping people safe and doing just as good a job as she had been. 

But then- what does she do? 

Valerie grits her teeth. She’s not going to start crying in the school library over this. She’s not. 

She’ll find a hobby. Maybe she can start… painting. Or photography. Or something. 

The A-listers are at least neutral towards her again — maybe she can make new friends, now that she has the time and won’t be making excuses to get out of plans because she has to deal with another ghost-bear. 

This line of thought is not helping. She rubs at her eyes and groans, then looks around to make sure no one’s paying attention to her… and spots Danny Fenton hunched over a book, a few tables away. 

She bites her lip. She hasn’t properly talked to Danny in months, he’s one of the people she could potentially try befriending… and he looks exhausted. More than she did a few weeks ago, before she stopped hunting ghosts, which is as worrying as it is impressive. 

She knows he struggles in a lot of classes (everyone knows that) and the portal is in his basement… even if he’s not hunting ghosts, he probably has to deal with them a lot. Honestly, she’s surprised his parents haven’t made him get into ghost hunting yet. 

Maybe- maybe that’s what she can do: help Danny Fenton. It might end up getting her involved with ghosts again— but there’s no guarantee so it’s fine, it doesn’t count. 

Besides, she should pay it forward right? Phantom helped her when she was exhausted, so… she’ll help someone else now. And this could go towards a ‘make new friends’ goal too, so even if she does just end up helping him with studying and school work, it’ll be a success. 

Mind made up, Valerie stands up and makes her way over to Danny’s table. She’s got this, she doesn’t need ghost hunting, she can help friends with school instead.

(ao3)

#ajility writes #ajs fanworks #danny phantom #phic phight #phic phight 2023 #team ghost #valerie gray #danny fenton #dp ff #dp fic #dp oneshot

[phicphight]

The Patron Saint of Liars and Fakes

FIC CAN BE READ HERE: ao3

Identity Reveal, Because it wouldn’t be one of my fics if there isn’t an identity reveal. Complete. Rated G. Word Count: 2136

Pairings: None

Trigger Warnings: None

Author: @babyhedgehog-cutebutdeadly (Team Human)

"Danny being stuck as Phantom and forced to deal with situations that he'd normally be as Fenton (like going to school, having a family dinner, etc)" - @ecto-american (Team Ghost)

***

Maddie Fenton knocks on the door of her son's bedroom, a small frown on her face. Is he alright? It's two o'clock on a Saturday. He has a tendency to sleep in on weekends, but this is a bit much even for him. 

"Danny? Are you alright?" 

"Mom! Don't come in!"

Continue reading...

#danny phantom #babyhedgehog cutebutdeadly #ecto american #phic phight 20 #phic phight #phic phight 20 entry #phic phight entry #team human #rated g #danny fenton #maddie fenton #jazz fenton #sam manson #reveal

[gilbirda]

DANNY PHANTOM

You and me and our best friend makes three - AO3 Series

- Remedy (NSFW) - Race ya! - Party like you are dead:  First Act  |  Interlude  |  Second Act  |  Encore - Never judge a book by its cover (JLxDP crossover) - Hidden identities? Never heard of them (BatmanxDP crossover)

Gilbirda’s Phic Phight 2022- AO3 Series

- What could have been: why don't you love who I am? | I hope you know we had everything | I want you to hurt like you hurt me today - Piece by Piece - Danny loses his humanity with every Wail - The man with a thousand faces - Amorpho backstory

Short fluffy prompts

- Everlasting Trio: “You’re unbelievably cute when you’re tired.” - Dead Serious (DPxDC crossover, DannyxDamian): “Believe me, I will never be tired of you.” - Everlasting Insomniacs (DPxDC crossover, Everlasting Trio x Tim):  “You’re unbelievably cute when you’re tired.” - Anger Management (DPxDC crossover, JazzxJason):  “I think I know what that smile means.”

BATMAN CROSSOVERS

Danny Arkham Security Guard AU - AO3 Series

Mondays, am I right?  |  Employee of the month  |  Can’t have shit in Gotham  | How to confuse a Bat | Clown around and find out

Friendly neighborhood vigilante: Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6  | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12 | Chapter 13 | Chapter 14 | Chapter 15 | Chapter 16 | Chapter 17 | Chapter 18 | Chapter 19  | Chapter 20 | Chapter 21 | Chapter 22 | Chapter 23 | Chapter 24 | Chapter 25

Safehouse - Jason adopts Dani

Dance with me? - Jazz/Jason meet at a gala: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Can’t help falling in love (with you)- Jazz and Jason are magically married by a ghost: Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5

BatPham server Summer event: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Family - Anger Management adopts Billy Batson, de-aged Danny and Dani.

Deal - Danny dies at the hands of the GIW and Jazz hires Red Hood to kill them all

Queen Regent - Danny is underage and appoints his sister as King in the meantime. She is summoned by the JLA.

Custody Battle - Anger Management cuddle after winning the custody of Danny against their neglectful parents.

Untitled - Short ficlet. Red Hood, Batgirl and Red Robin come to an Arkham breakout to find that the Fenton siblings already took care of it.

Death’s kiss - Death flirts with Jason every time he is close to dying.

Bluejay - Anger Management soulmate AU ficlet

Movie Night -  short and soft Anger Management ficlet

Drunk Summonings - Jason summons the Queen Regent Jazz in a drunken dare

Another Harley Quinn - sequel to The After. 

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder - Dead Serious (DannyxDamian) ficlet tattoo parlos/flowershop au

The Wonderous Beauty of the Statuesque Scarlet  - Tall!Jazz Anger Management fluff and vibes

The Interview - Lex Luthor and co. attack the JL the day Jazz has a important interview with them.

Weightless - A cute Jazz/Jason scene of them kissing in a pool.

Gil’s DPxDC Week 2022 fics:

Day 1: The Vampire Bat - Vampire!Jazz, short anger management ficlet. Day 2: The Impostor - Jazz impersonates Red Hood Day 3: The mystery of the giggling cape - There is someone giggling under Batman’s cape. Is not a Robin. Day 4: The After - sequel to Deal Day 5: Chapter 4 of Cant help falling in love (with you) Day 6: 101 Salvations - The Talons imprint on Danny like little ducklings Day 7: I’ll cover you in Moonlight - Gala fic, tall!Jazz and werewolf!Jazz, anger management

Gil’s DPxDC Disney Week 2023 fics:

Day 1: What a man can do - POTC AU. Jayroy (Elizabeth/Will) and Jazz as Jack Sparrow.

Do you like my stuff? You can support me here!

#writeblr #gil writes #fanfic #fanfiction #danny phantom #danny phantom fanfiction #danny phantom fics #fanfiction archive #dpxdc #dp crossovers #dp x dc

[dp-marvel94]

For the 'fanfic writers asks':

(I tried to ask not so many, but I've got curious :) )

7, 17, 20, 26, 28, 32

In reference to this. Thanks for asking, my friend! I've got a lot to say so see below the cut.

7. What story/headcanons do you feel the proudest of?

I see you picked a hard first question. XD I'm proud of all my stories. Double Discovery is special to me because it's my first multi chapter story. I'm proud of my Invisobang story from last year because I thought the idea was really unique. A lot of emotion went into that story too; it tackled difficult topics for me. I'm really proud of Hope too, because of the thoughtful and careful foreshadowing I put into the story. And of course, Face to Face is really special to me, both for the length and the content. I haven't talked about this a lot but I've drawn a lot from my experiences as a autistic person and dealing with ablest attitudes from my family and internalized beliefs. I wasn't diagnosed until I was almost an adult and it's taken me years to be able to say that I'm autistic and not feel ashamed or like I said something taboo. Writing Face to Face was a big step in getting there.

17. What fanfic tropes do you gravitate to writing for?

I have said that my favorite genre are stories where Danny talks to himself. XD So I'm gonna write all the split Danny/ separate Fenton & Phantom and Clone content I want.

20. What feedback makes you the happiest to hear?

I love hearing if a particular line really struck someone. Also, comments about the characters' arcs. It's really nice to know that the reader can clearly get where I'm trying to take the character.

26. Are titles for your stories easy to come up with?

Generally no. I love events like DannyMay and Ectober because they make coming up with titles so easy. XD But I also use a lot of song titles and lyrics. It's excited find a song who's lyrics or message really fit with the story I'm trying to write. As long as that happens before I name the story at least. XD

28. Is there a part of Face to Face you’re surprised no one has picked up on yet?

So I picked Face to Face for this because it's my darling. It's not a content thing. But I've posted about the song (Face to Face by Wolves at the Gate) that the titles from multiple times and to my knowledge no one's listened to it! I'm really excited about how well it fits, especially now that I'm getting close to the end of the story.

Here's the chorus:

"Listen closely, every seed must die before

Die before it can grow

Sinking slowly, to be planted in the dust

Long before it can grow"

I touched on it in the latest chapter but Danny's really grown a lot over the events of the story. That theme of death and rebirth goes hand in hand with the story I'm trying to tell.

"Standing at the great divide

I fell into the ground and died

The taste of death was bittersweet

I fell into the ground and died

But death made me alive

Death made me alive"

And the bridge! I mean, do I even need to explain?!

https://youtu.be/jN-nfjQA1sg

Seriously, please, I'm begging anyone reading this to go listen to the song. I even posted the link to the acoustic version. 😅

32. What story do you think showcases your signature style the most?

My signature style... well, that's probably a story with lots of crying and hugging. The central conflict is an emotional one and it ends one a happy or hopeful note. And oh yeah, there's probably more that one version of Danny in it. 😅 I've already talked about a few so I'll pick out something that isn't one of my long, multi chapter stories.

From Phic Phight 2021, The First Night.

A sixteen years old Danny Fenton helps his fourteen year old counterpart through his first night as a ghost.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/31122332

#Danny Phantom #my post

[jadenoryuu]

For: @crackedfoutainpen @deuynndoodles @deathcomes4u Chapters: 1/? Fandom: Danny Phantom Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Danny Fenton & Tucker Foley & Sam Manson, Danny Fenton & Jazz Fenton, Jazz Fenton & Sam Manson, Jazz Fenton & Tucker Foley Characters: Adhara the Apprentice Astronomer OC, Hershel the Mask-Maker/Actor OC, Macy the Cashier OC, Midna the Apprentice Restorer OC, Rob the Foreman OC, Flynn Wyle the librarian OC, Digory Tumnus the Lamp Lighter OC, The Tumnus Kin OC, Danny Fenton, Sam Manson, Tucker Foley, Jazz Fenton, Wesley Weston, Clockwork (Danny Phantom), Tiny Ghosts cameos Additional Tags: Not Phantom Planet Compliant (Danny Phantom), Episode: s02e19-20 Reality Trip, Reality Trip as Season 3 Finale, but with some twists!, Memory Alteration, no beta we die like danny, Amity is built over Ley Lines, Identity Reveal, Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Humor, Friendship, Phic Phight 2022 (Danny Phantom), Phic Phight: Team Human (Danny Phantom) Series: Part 2 of The Dragon joins Team Humans: Phight! Summary:

Amity Parkers are slowly starting to notice that there's something amiss regarding the memories of the past two years.

Plus deja-vus aren't a normal occurrence, so why were they getting more frequent? (and why are they all centered around the town protector?)

In the meanwhile, Sam, Tucker and Jazz are starting to investigate why both people and Danny are acting weird. What are they hiding? And why is Danny more and more distant from them with the passing of time?

[OCs belong to the "Domestic Phantoms" series (each character's PoV has the link of their respective fic at the start of the piece)] FFnet Link

Chapter 1: Bonds that transcend Brainy Magic

(From Prompt (PR051): Post Reality Trip, something goes wrong with the last command Danny enacted with the gauntlet. People are slowly getting their memories back. It takes a while for people to admit to each other that they're remembering things they aren't sure were real, but eventually Danny Fenton's behavior starts to clue them into realizing that it was not some shared hallucination. This boy is Phantom, and they need to figure out how to stop the GiW from coming after him once THEY remember. by @Deathcomes4u)

(Don't mind the format of this post, apparently Tumblr is glitching hard right now)

Finally I managed to finish at least the first chapter of my second Phic! Hopefully I'll be able to finish it before the end of April, but this season is weird, so who knows! (‘◉⌓◉’)

#danny phantom #phic phight 2022 #team human #Adhara the Apprentice Astronomer OC #Hershel the Mask-Maker/Actor OC #Macy the Cashier OC #Midna the Apprentice Restorer OC #Rob the Foreman OC #Flynn Wyle the librarian OC #Digory Tumnus the Lamp Lighter OC #The Tumnus Kin OC #wes weston #tiny ghosts #identity reveal #reality trip #reality gauntlet #deja vú #memory alteration #mystery #tumblr is broken at the moment