#since the duplicates are still Danny they found trouble easy | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ladylynse · 6 years

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So, long before Legend of Korra aired and told us more about the spirit world in ATLA, I started writing a Danny Phantom/Avatar: The Last Airbender crossover....

“Pick a door, any door, right?” Danny muttered to himself, glancing down at the paper in his hand before looking around him again. He’d never gone out to this part of the Ghost Zone before. Not that he remembered, anyway, and it was beyond time that he started filling in the blank spots in his map.

Ordinarily, he wouldn’t be out scouting without Sam and Tucker in the Spectre Speeder, but it was five in the morning, or at least it had been when he’d left the house, and he was definitely not prepared to wake anyone up just because he couldn’t sleep.

It wasn’t normally this bad. After doing the catch-and-release thing with the Box Ghost twice, he’d just left him in the Fenton Thermos for the night and planned to get some much-needed sleep. He’d only gotten about two hours before his ghost sense had first gone off, and he really hadn’t wanted that to be it. But he’d only just been getting back to sleep when it had gone off for a fourth time, and then it had been Skulker after his pelt, and by the time Danny had him in the thermos, it had been around three thirty.

After an hour and a half of rolling around in bed, he’d admitted defeat. Tired as he was, he wasn’t going to be getting any more sleep. Also, tired as he was, any homework he did wouldn’t make sense anyway, so he’d left it as is. Hence the early morning scouting mission in the Ghost Zone.

Some of the doors led to places created by certain ghosts themselves. They were specific realms for ghosts who hadn’t made their homes directly in the Ghost Zone like Skulker or Dora or Frostbite had. But some really were just doorways. He’d opened one that appeared to be a shortcut to the Far Frozen. Another had opened into a dungeon—or at least a really dreary prison cell—in what he assumed was the Real World. But there’d been a whole host of things in between, places that, if they weren’t created by other ghosts, had to be other dimensions. At the very least, other worlds.

Danny opened the door to his left. It opened into a swath of blackness permeated by pinpricks of light. “Right,” he said, closing it. “That was either outer space or a planetarium or Nocturne’s favourite place in the entire Ghost Zone.” He made a few notes and then moved to the door on his right.

It was then that he heard it.

Some kind of ominous rumbling sound.

His ghost sense didn’t go off in the Ghost Zone (thank goodness), so sight and sound were about the only warnings he ever got.

And he didn’t need to see this thing to know he shouldn’t stick around.

“Fastest way back, fastest way back,” Danny murmured, glancing down at his notes. Whatever this was, he didn’t want to lead the thing straight to the Fenton Portal, but he didn’t want to do a whole lot of roundabout manoeuvring when he didn’t have a firm grasp of where he currently was.

When he took a quick peek up at his surroundings so he could guess at how long he had before he got attacked, he knew he had to move now. Whatever it was would give a chimera a run for its money. (Sam should be proud that he remembered what those things were called; for all that she’d been trying to coach him on a bit of mythology after the incident with Pandora’s Box, it was slow going.) He definitely didn’t want to stick around.

Trouble was, he was kind of backed into a corner. Stupid thing could duplicate. That was probably how it got its prey—surrounded them, cut them off, and then attacked.

Fun.

He got backed into one of the doors. The one he hadn’t yet checked, of course. Logically, he knew it was his best bet for escape. Still, he’d never intended to actually go through one. That was just asking for trouble. Especially when he had no idea where he’d end up if he did.

Crud. He’d never hear the end of it if he let slip that this had happened. Jazz, at the very least, would make sure he never went into the Ghost Zone by himself again.

But if he didn’t take a chance, he wouldn’t have to worry about how Jazz would react, and he’d never get to see the look on Sam’s face (or Tucker’s, when he found out) when he admitted—

No. He was going to get out of this. Alive and in one piece. Danny felt for the door handle, murmured, “Here goes nothing,” and flipped around, diving through the door as the ghost lunged for him.

The door slammed shut behind Danny, cutting off the bright green glow from the Ghost Zone, and it took a minute for him to realize that he probably wasn’t going to die a very painful death or otherwise be wiped from existence. The place looked normal enough. Lots of rock and bare trees, but not really cold. Kinda dark, with muted colours, like someone had taken a page out of Sam’s book, but since he didn’t yet have company, he figured it was a fairly safe bet that he hadn’t stumbled into another ghost’s lair. That meant he’d come through a doorway into another world.

Well, if this was still Earth—his Earth—then it definitely wasn’t a time with which he was familiar.

Still, it wasn’t that big of a deal. Not the end of the world, anyway. All he had to do was sit tight until he figured the creature on the other side of the door had left, and then he just had to—

Danny glanced over his shoulder, and his heart sank. “Crud,” he muttered. He had a problem.

Even by his terms, it was a pretty big one.

The door was gone—and with it, his way home.

XXXXXX

“We’re running low on supplies,” Sokka said, looking up from the papers he’d piled in front of him. “We’re going to have to make a quick stop in a town soon. And I mean quick. No sticking around like last time. We don’t have time.”

“You never say we have time,” Aang countered from his place by the fire in the middle of their makeshift campsite. He was playing with Momo, trying to keep a leaf from touching the ground.

“Because we’re behind schedule!” Sokka retorted, gesturing at the papers. “Look at this! We’ve only got—”

“If you say it one more time tonight,” Toph said without moving from where she lay, “I’ll wash your mouth out with dirt.”

“But we can’t—”

“I can make sure there’s at least one roachworm in it, too.”

Katara laughed at Sokka’s sour expression, and he glared at her. “Don’t pretend you’re not worried,” he groused.

Katara’s smile fell. “Of course I’m worried,” she said. “But Toph’s right. Saying it again isn’t going to help us move any faster. Appa needs rest, and you’ve already said we can make up our time if we start a little bit earlier each day. We’ll make it.”

“Appa’s doing the best he can,” Aang added. “Aren’t you, buddy?” He looked over to the edge of their campsite, and the flying bison in question snorted his agreement.

“We can’t always start earlier every time we get behind,” Sokka muttered. “We’ll end up quitting earlier if we try that.”

“I won’t be complaining,” Toph said. “The sooner I get back on the ground each day, the better.”

“But we wouldn’t—” Sokka broke off, realizing he wasn’t going to win this argument. For all that he was often right, he didn’t win a lot of arguments. He was cursed with travelling with people who were hard to argue with, if only because they didn’t listen to him.

Ever.

“We won’t be off right away tomorrow anyway,” Katara said, reaching over to use a stick to shift the logs of their fire. Fortunately, if they were careful, smoke wasn’t something to fear. The Fire Nation didn’t track down every smoke trail they saw; only the suspicious ones.

They’d managed to skirt the patrols for days now. Katara had still been reluctant to gather wood for a fire, but Sokka had finally managed to talk his sister into something. That was an argument he had won, and he’d been rewarded with a hot meal. With real cooked meat from the game they’d caught. Something other than roots and berries and (he still shuddered to think of the fact that he’d ever swallowed it) insects.

But a fresh meal wasn’t something they could afford to seek often, and they could never risk staying in one spot long enough to do anything to preserve a large supply of meat so that they could take it with them and, theoretically, not have to stop as often as supplies.

Besides, Aang didn’t eat meat, and though he didn’t stop them from enjoying it, Sokka knew Katara, at least, was doing her best to find and prepare meals that they would all eat.

Eat, but not necessarily enjoy. Roots just didn’t taste as good as meat. They were bland. Stringy. Tough. Berries were good. Well, most berries were good. But even when they found edible ones, some of them were sour or they had pits or the seeds got stuck in his teeth…. In his opinion, meat was just so much better.

Sokka sighed and slumped back down onto the pile of leaves he’d gathered for his bed. Though he couldn’t see her, he knew his sister was gathering all the papers he’d left into a bundle. When the shuffling stopped, he asked, “Did you think of something else we need?”

Katara hesitated before saying, softly, “I’m not thinking of our supplies.”

“Then what are you thinking about?” Aang asked, sounding far more cheerful than Sokka figured he had any right to, especially seeing as he had the greatest responsibility of them all.

Sure, Sokka would admit optimism was good and that keeping their spirits up was important, but he sometimes got the feeling that Aang didn’t appreciate—or just plain ignored—how much danger they actually faced. Being realistic didn’t seem to come anywhere as near as easy to the air bender as being optimistic did. Sokka just couldn’t bring himself to ignore all the things that could go wrong like Aang could.

But Aang was the Avatar. And if Sokka was honest, he’d done a lot of growing up since they’d first met. He might not know fire bending, but he was skilled at the other three elements. He had a kind heart, if too trusting of one, and Sokka had seen more than one act of wisdom on Aang’s part, for all that he still had more than his share of childish moments.

Sokka knew all about that, of course. Aang might only be twelve—even if he was technically one hundred and twelve—but not all of his wisdom came in snatches through mediation or influence from his past lives, and not all of it came from what the monks had taught him, back when the Air Nomads had still existed. The decisions he’d faced since he’d found himself the centre of a war that had been raging for all the years he’d been missing…. It wasn’t the same as the ones Sokka had had to make after his father and the rest of the men in the Southern Water Tribe had left, but he knew, on some level, how Aang felt.

He knew what it was like to feel like everything was going over your head but knowing you had to do your best anyway. He knew how it felt to act on decisions, pretending to be satisfied with them while fearful that they might not have been the right ones. He knew the agonizing feeling of being forced to make split-second decisions without having enough information. He knew how it felt to work towards something and see all his hard work come to naught. He knew how it felt to make mistakes and be held to them. He knew how it felt to have people look to you when you weren’t sure you’d yet earned the right to be the one everyone depended upon.

When Toph spoke, Sokka realized Katara had never answered Aang’s question. “We’ll make it, you know. Sokka will make sure we’re moving according to schedule, even if it kills us. Or—” here she paused “—even if it means he drives us to kill him so we can get some peace.”

“I know,” Katara said, and Sokka didn’t need to see her face to know that she was looking at him or that the sound of Toph’s knuckles cracking had brought a smile to her face when it brought a grimace to his. “You’re right.”

Toph snorted but didn’t comment. Instead, it was Aang who asked cheerily, “So what are we going to get tomorrow?”

He was entirely too comfortable venturing into villages in the Fire Nation in Sokka’s opinion. But that was in his nature. He didn’t want to see danger at every turn. He wanted to see the best in people, to believe that not everything had changed from how he remembered it or that it wouldn’t be that hard to remind people that things didn’t have to be the way they were. But Aang was wrong. Until something changed, they couldn’t afford to pretend the danger wasn’t as real as it was. They had to keep their heads down. Even something as seemingly simple as a supplies run had to be handled carefully.

Sokka turned his head slightly and caught sight of his sister, who was already wrapped up in her conversation with Aang. He knew she’d never answered Aang’s question. He might have forgotten, and Toph might have, too, but she couldn’t fool him. Not all the time, anyway, and she’d pulled that trick on him far too often for him not to recognize it.

He could guess what she was worried about. There was any number of things that could be on her mind. Most, if not all, of them were on his mind already.

They didn’t have enough allies.

They hadn’t found a fire bender teacher.

They constantly ran the risk of detection.

They didn’t have much of a plan.

They were running out of time.

They didn’t know what the Fire Nation was up to or if they even had any inkling of what was actually being planned.

Their friends were risking their lives for them, depending on them, and they might not even succeed if they didn’t shape up. If Aang didn’t….

It all came back to Aang, in the end. As the Avatar, this was part of his responsibilities. They could help him as best they could, but when it came down to it, he’d be on his own. He needed to be strong enough, fast enough, wise enough….

He needed to be, Sokka realized with a sinking heart, someone he wasn’t quite yet.

Aang was the Avatar, and he still had much to learn, but they were running out of time.

XXXXXXXX

Danny had revised his earlier opinion. Nothing truly resembled normal here. This place, wherever it was, was freaky—even by his standards. He figured he’d been moving for at least an hour now, probably more, just picking his way through the forest and trying to find a way out. Another doorway, maybe. Anything. At this rate, he’d settle for contact with something that didn’t shift, even if it wasn’t human.

But he hadn’t come across anything that really stayed still yet. Nothing seemed to stay still. Things blurred on the edge of his vision. Trees twisted themselves into different shapes, branches turning to follow him like a sunflower would follow the sun—only to return to their previous positions when he turned to look at them. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught glimpses of creatures skittering around that seemed like a horrible mix of the normal ones he knew from back home. They were underfoot and overhead and sometimes just out of sight, even though he knew they were there.

But it wasn’t just what he saw that was really gnawing at him. The air felt…dead. Like he was still in the Ghost Zone. Only this place still had a real sky, unless it was always this dark, which he doubted. And even though the animal life was far from what he was used to, the vegetation seemed normal enough. So it had to be a place like Earth.

Just a really, really creepy place on Earth.

Those places had to exist back home. The woods here almost felt like something out of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, minus the worrying sound of hoofbeats, and that inspiration had to come from somewhere besides nightmares. It was just…. It wasn’t right, somehow. He’d been dragged to enough supposed ‘haunted houses’ as a kid to know what it sounded like when you were hiking through a forest to some abandoned hunting cabin. And this….

It wasn’t always normal, with short silences broken by small animal sounds or wind in the trees or anything. It was like someone was fiddling with the volume knob on the radio. Sometimes it was horrendously loud, with various calls and hissing and rustlings. And sometimes…. Sometimes, there was something that definitely didn’t…. He heard muted screams. He couldn’t tell if those were human screams, exactly, but he…. It set him on edge.

To make it even more unsettling, there were other times when, as if a switch had been flipped, it was completely silent.

At this rate, he wouldn’t have been surprised if he found himself walking past melting clocks or something. Trouble was, this just didn’t seem like the Real World. It didn’t…feel the same. It almost felt less like human realm than the Ghost Zone. In his life back home, he’d been in a couple different realities and various twists the timeline could have taken but didn’t, but those had always felt…tangible, he supposed. This was more…dreamlike. Surreal, rather than vivid, even though he knew he was living through this. It wasn’t a lifelike dream.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t even a dream at all.

Even Nocturne’s induced dreams felt more real than this place did.

“Just one step at a time,” Danny told himself, rubbing his arms. “Just keep going. Try to find a way out. You’re not going to be stuck here. It’ll be okay.”

He was way more thankful to have a ghostly glow than he’d ever admit to anyone when he got out of this.

Especially to Jazz. For all the questions he knew she was going to ask, he was not going to say what he felt right now. He’d never hear the end of it.

Besides, it wasn’t that he couldn’t form an ectoblast, couldn’t just create one and cradle it to have a bit of extra light, but he just didn’t want to draw attention to himself. He didn’t want any more attention than he was already getting. He doubted he could blend in—he had yet to see another humanoid creature—but so long as he didn’t really stand out, then that was good.

Laying low and playing it safe seemed like a good thing to do right now.

And, anyway, it probably was a good thing to keep a few things to himself. For all he knew, the trees had eyes. He felt like he was being watched, anyway. He definitely wasn’t alone.

This place felt like it had layers. Like you could peel away the outer skin, the disguise, and see the true form beneath it. Like this entire world was built on double meanings, full of tricks and traps that you could fall into if you weren’t clever enough to spot them.

He hadn’t been threatened here yet, but he was almost as scared as he’d been when he’d had to fight his future self.

He was stuck here, wherever here was. He was alone. No one back home would know what had happened to him. He’d never see them again. Not if he didn’t get out of here.

One foot forward, then the other. One step at a time, Danny reminded himself. Don’t think about the future. Don’t wonder what’s going to happen. Don’t waste energy worrying about what can’t be changed. Just focus on the here and now. Just keep moving. Keep looking. Find a way out of here. Find a way home.

(Part II)

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