#spectra: and i took that personally

[thebrainrotsreal]

Freeing myself from the shackles of an organized comic format to get this idea out of my head!! Also, just follow the numbers if the layout is too confusing otherwise, but basically I want Spectra to be Jazz's Nemesis so bad. It just makes sense.

SO: the hypothetical episode's showdown would be them battling, and no Danny, he's already got beef with a packers obsessed billionaire. Now, Spectra's got the high ground with overwhelming power, but she's sloppier and easily irritated because of it! Jazz then outsmarts her, getting her angry enough to make enough mistakes to be corned and canned by the thermos.

Also minor spelling error ugh, meant to put "no one could", not "no could".

#also mad kudos to ectoblastic for the idea of jazz and penni being friends (but particarly penni using her) !! i saw the tags and GASPED #also i will never draw danny the same way but i've selected the colors i will use for him until i die #first and last panel of spectra were my fav to draw because she looks feral and unhinged. as she should always be. #jazz: figures out “penni” spectra and her whole deal #spectra: and i took that personally #she fully means killing jazz btw she has SO much power right now and she is READY to use it #the brainrotsreal's art tag ✧˖°:*♡ #digital art #dp spectra #penelope spectra #spectra phantom #danny phantom fanart #jazz fenton #danny fenton fanart #danny fenton #LET SPECTRA AND JAZZ HAVE ETERNAL BEEF #THEY WERE MADE TO BE EACH OTHER'S NEMESIS #the way vlad is like a stronger/smarter/older verison of danny in terms of physical ghostly capabilities but selfish #and thus the way spectra is a stronger/smarter/older verison of jazz in terms of manipulation and pysch but selfish #DO YOU SEE THE VISION??????? #if anyone's reading the tags feel free to ask me about this idea PLEASE #I CAN RAMBLE FOR HOURS

[maythearo]

" Welcome to Night Raven College's "Ghostly Gossip"! The school's unofficial main online source for the latest news, articles and trending topics circulating around campus! "

" A new ghoul here, are you? Well then, don't worry. Let this blog be your guide from the hallways to the catacombs! I'll let you in for some personal notes and tips to gurantee your high school survival, so don't you get lost on me now! "

There are plenty of monster students yet to be introduced to you, but for today let's start with...

Navigation (to be linked) :

R. Rosehearts - T. Clover - C. Diamond - A. Trappola - D. Spade - L. Kingscholar - R. Bucchi - J. Howl - A. Ashengrotto - J. Leech - F. Leech - K. Al Asim - J. Viper - V. Schoenheit - R. Hunt - E. Felmier - I. Shroud - O. Shroud - M. Draconia - L. Vanrouge - S. Zigvolt - Silver

(Messy) Design notes:

Give me strength to complete this project with every character. Just Jamil's took me days because I kept getting stuck with that first scraped design ⚰️ of course I had to start with him since AHEM AHEM I hate him sm (lying)

The only thing I forgor to add in the pic above is that the reason I made his hair half green/blue/(?) Is bcs I wanted something to contrast with the red clothes. For the first half of the process I thought his color pallette was too boring in general, so I slapped a gradient over his Rapunzel hair and called it a day tbh 💪

I'm still not 100% sure if I nailed it the way I originally wanted to, buy hey, It's a start. Can't let my perfectionism hold be back and keep me from sharing my art til the end of times. So here it is. First entry. I'm posting this at 22:20 right after I got home from class so I hope my exhaustion didn't sneak in some typos in the post 😫😫 oh and by the way the snake names were all ideas I asked for on my instagram stories. I absolutely love Steve. The person who sent the idea said that it was Kalim who named it that way and I can totally see it happening

But in a final note, I wanted a cooler layout for me to post the series, so I took the name Ghostly Gossip from Spectra's original name for her blog before it became The Gory Gazette, I believe? I'm having fun with this idea that everyone would be introduced by a in-universe blog post just like the original monster high website used to do. So I'm creating a tag for the navigation purposes too! At #.the ghostly gossip hehe, but that's kinda all! Um,, stay tuned? (Runs away)

#.the ghostly gossip #twst #my art #twisted wonderland #twst fanart #monster high #jamil viper #scarabia #monster high fanart

[little-pondhead]

So, for the Supervillain Danny and Everlast Trio Villains Au's....

What about Jazz?

Since I understand everyone's villain alter ego is based around their trauma and becoming their own antithesis and what not, I'd like to think that Jazz's alter ego would be a bad girl, kinda like Ember and Kitty (the former who mind controlled her twice and the latter who almost took her place while slowly corrupting her), maybe with a hint of Spectra (the school councilor thing, the hospital thing, and that one time with all three of them).

Instead of being the nice, normal girl who tries to be perfect, she's a loose cannon who does all the wild teen stuff, doesn't care about anyone accept for those who are in her 'gang', and will absolutely resort to violence the first chance she gets. Maybe she also has some kind of mind control powers, given how these incidents relate to her being under someone else's control.

Maybe she doesn't come around as often, because she has college and the like, but once she does, things get messy as she takes the chance to let out all her school related stress.

you have read my m i n d

Jazz had almost no childhood since she helped raise Danny from a very young age. She's intelligent and respectful and really wants to be an excellent example for Danny, so she acts as such. Therefore, Jazz never got to go through her 'teenage rebellion' phase. She wears modest clothes and upholds a pretty solid moral code. So here I present Nightingale, the punk-rock social justice warrior who comes and goes like a hurricane. She takes on the name Nightingale to avoid confusion, but once the JL realizes she and Fenton are related, some of the members consider going on a very long vacation to another world so they don't have to deal with this shit.

Now for her powerset, I'm not entirely sure if she should play meta or not. It's a common trope in fics that Jazz has been ecto-contaminated from her parent's experiments, thus giving her some sort of body enhancement. I played on that to give her a set of ears and teeth that match Danny's. She may not have ghost powers, but if she's fighting alongside Team Phantom, she must have some freaky abilities, right? (I love the mind control idea, btw) I feel like Jazz would be the Exception, where she's obviously enhanced in some way, but it's not an obvious power she can consciously separate herself from. It's like trying to tell your body to stop using your eyes. Unless other outside forces are preventing it, Jazz can't really not use her enhanced strength or speed. It drives the JL nuts because either Nightingale is a very weak meta or just an Olympic-level teenage athlete, and no one will spill the beans.

Also, this is personal preference, honestly, but I think it'd be really fucking funny if the DC universe is where Jazz and Danny have all their sibling fights. At home, they have to put up a united front so their parents don't get suspicious and the house doesn't kill them. (Also so none of the rogues takes advantage of their anger at each other) But they're siblings. Even if Jazz and Danny are the best of friends, they have to have arguments over the stupidest stuff. That's practically rule number one of having a sibling. So they go there to blow off steam and duke it out like they've always wanted to. It's mostly to release tension and stress, but each fight is getting more and more elaborate, and this whole thing is ridiculous. None of the heroes get paid enough for this. They're just gonna sit back and watch the show.

#pondhead replies #doodles from a pond #supervillain danny au #let jazz go apeshit #as a treat #GASP #I THINK #INSTEAD OF DANNY ADOPTING CONNER #JAZZ SHOULD #THAT WOULD BE SO FUNNY #also i just realized i spelled 'nightingale' wrong in the sketch #fuck me i guess #danny phantom #danny phantom au #dp crossover #dp x dc #dc x dp #justice league #dpxdc

[noxcheshire]

I’ve been kinda thinking this for a while because I know the dpxdc fandom likes thin as a bean and shouldn’t be capable of lifting Superman so easily, buff as a Viking, and as small but so much curves like his mom, Danny Fenton/Phantom.

And I love them all. For various reasons.

But I just thought about something really hard for a second.

Danny died at 14.

He died being small, and young. He became ecto-contaminated in a way so much more different from Vlad who had been blasted in the face by the smallest portion of ecto-portal that infected and corrupted into his skin.

This is in comparison to Danny who literally had a dimension rip open on top and inside of him.

To me, Vlad basically got the equivalent of a mini bomb exploding in his face and came out of it with severe third degree burns that translated into Ghost Acne.

And then we look at it again from their Ghost’s.

Danny’s ghost is that of a 14 year old boy who died in a cold portal in his parents basement.

Vlad who got blasted in college, was a twig and yet his ghost form is buff and aged just like his aged human body.

If he ‘died’ when he got hit by the mini-portal than his ghost would mimic the form he died in.

But he isn’t.

Instead we get Two different spectrums of a ghostly appearance for two halfa’s.

Ghosts who are meant to form as how they had been during the time of their death. Ghosts who will always be at their core the person they died as, the identity of those last seconds before death took them.

That’s the point of ghosts.

The only time it changes is if there are external third factors.

Such as Aragon’s Necklace. Or being able to use something of the living to ‘change shape’ as the Lunch Lady, or stretch yourself into a giant like Walker, and the greatest exception being Amorpho who HAS no identity to begin with. More than likely a thought that was made but never given anything further, and thus his jealousy with identity. Either that or he died never making a solid identity that could carry on into death, thus making him faceless because he didn’t even know who he truly was at that time of death.

Even Spectra is different! She’s more of a poltergeist-demon than an actual Ghost from the way she does things and even from how she looks in ghost form.

So with that, who is actually Human-Ghost and who just happens to be Ghost adjacent enough to get powers?

Danny is a real Halfa and Vlad is just mimicking one.

Now for the Dan, evil-phantom, of the fandom.

Dan is just BUFF.

He’s an adult. He GREW.

But it wasn’t due to Danny.

It was due to whatever he took from Vlad/Plasmius.

To me, Plasmius was just the ecto that resided in Vlad. All that anger and resentment that gave birth to itself from Vlad’s own anger at what he went through with the mini-portal. It was ecto that was residing in him, ecto from the Infinite Realms itself that was made INTO an idea and then given form.

Ecto that lived, Venom-style, in Vlad.

An idea that grew up with Vlad BECAUSE Vlad was growing up himself. He wasn’t thinking of himself as that scrawny college student anymore. He was becoming an adult so of course the ecto would mimic that idea of Vlad and make Plasmius older too.

Plasmius was a fairy tale that Vlad made up, and that’s why Dan was able to rip that part out of Vlad like it was it’s own true ghost. But it wasn’t, and so it collapsed without its person to control it. At least until Dan dove into the ecto and took the ideas that were there and intertwined himself with it.

Those YEARS of ideas isn’t so easily brushed away either, and even less so when Danny and Vlad had believed that Plasmius was Vlad’s ghost, a halfa just like Danny. So of course Dan would believe in the idea that he took/ate Vlad’s ghost. And that idea would spread because ecto is just another form of power and vitality. So of course that ecto should change Dan.

And then it did.

It changed his colors first and then eventually his physical form.

Thus we have Buff older Dan.

Now back to Danny.

With all that, this means that Phantom is never going to age.

Because Danny did die that day. He died, and only came back because the dimensional rip of ecto from the Infinite Realms tied his ghost neatly into his human body. The human body that just died.

He isn’t alive, his ghost that is tied to the body is simply puppeteering it. And as the Infinite Realms is literally all of time and space throughout every single multiverse in existence, it’s not too far of a shot to say that it could snatch that very moment, that heartbeat Danny craves restlessly, the heartbeat just before he truly died entirely.

Danny is a moment in time.

So his ghost will never age. And neither will his body.

Basically, Danny is forever an eternal 14 year old twig and he will be so very mad about it.

#dpxdc #dcxdp #danny phantom #danny fenton #thoughts on Danny and his death #vlad #vlad plasmius #twig Danny #buff Danny #curvy Danny #eternally 14 year old Danny #Dan #tbh don’t remember much of when I first watched Danny Phantom #but I’ve been rewatching it #and also reading ao3 #and then had a thought that wouldn’t leave #especially when I kept looking between Vlad and Danny #and trying to figure out how the HELL did Danny’s GHOST get buff and old #it’s a GHOST #HE DIED AT FOURTEEN it isn’t gonna suddenly shapeshifter to be an adult because he felt like it #even more so since it was heavily implied that Dan KILLED his human half #so I had to figure this out

[profounddestinyrebel]

Pretty much my ideal dcxdp coexisting world

Danny had all his canon happen before Bruce and the JL started their vigilante careers

Before Bruce was born or Martha and Thomas even got married

Phantom Planet never happened and the world never realized that they were almost dead in the first place (I apologize for mentioning it)

Danny retires after blowing up the portal and designing a new system of gov for the Infinite Realms (why the hell is that a monarchy anyway? Fighting being a way of communicating AND the way of determining a ruler does not make sense so I'll choose the better one)

Danny still visits the Infinite Realms but mostly lives his life

He still has interesting things happen to him but more because he apparently has a curse placed on him than anything else 'may you live in interesting times'

Danny manipulates the curse by getting into situations on purpose and then resolving them without getting attention drawn to his civilian id and normal life

He keeps track of immortals and big names that deal with death magic so as to lower the chances of being summoned

The more powerful the Realm Being the more powerful the summoner has to be to summon them and with how powerful Danny is there aren't many he has to keep an eye on

Ra's has been losing Lazarus water at a steady rate for over a decade but only now has it become a noticeable loss. The day the that he notices is a Very Bad Day for the League of Assassins (the day Danny lets himself get caught satisfies his curse for 2 whole months)

Danny hasn't aged much at all since he left Amity at 17. He's still short but mimics the effects of age with stage makeup and other tools used by actors to look older they actually are. This is how he meets a certain Alfred P. who remains a good friend even though they never really meet in person.

His parents blow themselves up and wipe their house off the map when tinkering with a device designed to lure realm beings to them. Danny isn't really sorry they're gone. He finds out after leaving Amity that he wasn't really their kid and he wasn't even adopted. They made him in their lab while distracted from their obsession with ghosts then completely forgot they had done so when they refocused on ghosts. His growth chamber (terrible name) was coated in ecto which allowed the device to reactivate and allow Danny to finish incubating into a toddler then (suspicious) it mysteriously popped him out before his the fentons noticed the growth chambers success.

His parents never took any notes on the clone experiment out of the house due to it being a (perceived) failure. After going back to their ghost obsession they completely forgot about it so no one knows. Jazz only found after Danny told her and he only found out after growing older and continuing to look less and less like either of his parents.

Danny finds the notes and that's what inspires him to leave Amity, to start looking for his bio parent. The Fenton's had no clue that the clone they grew was Danny. They dismantled the growth chamber when Danny was four (actually two) and never realized that the toddler they adopted was the clone of wonder woman they made. They never said anything to anyone about Danny being adopted so Vlad has no idea that Danny isn't Maddie's child.

Vlad starts to age drastically after the portals are destroyed and Danny figures out that Vlad isn't a halfa after all. He's just a normal ghost who can prey on people like spectra but with an obsession directed at Maddie originally and then Danny. Afterwards Vlad gets shunted off into Walker's prison because of all the toxic and human crimes he's committed among them brainwashing, mind control and mind wiping various wealthy and not so wealthy individuals into giving Vlad their money and companies.

Ellie has to explore the Infinite Realms (literally Infinite though so she's not confined) only because she can't really produce her own ecto. She has to absorb it from her surroundings so she can wander safely all over the Infinite Realms (so long as she calls for help when she gets in over her head) but not the human realms unless she takes a buddy who can produce a steady stream of ecto for her.

Vlad makes Danny his heir so now he's rich enough to travel even after giving all the people Vlad stole from their money back. It turns out that Vlad was good with making more money once he had it.

just Danny being a crptoid for the entire magical community and them being unable to talk about it if they even know of him

while danny runs a NASA and space account where he talks about NASA's recent achievements, newly discovered stars, planets and new alien races that Earth has been in contact with

#dpxdc #dp is before all dc vigilantes start #danny stops aging #perfectly preserved at 17 #he uses make up to seem older as the years go by #no ghost king #down with the Monarchy! #clone of wonder woman danny #dead fenton parents #no one knows that danny is phantom except for jazz sam and tucker #danny hasn't been able to find his bio mom #or dad #does find it odd that with so much maternal dna and minimal paternal dna that he turned out male #the giw had fake authority #they never even informed the us gov that ghosts exist #for gov/military took advantage of the ghost situation to quarantine amity #danny mind wipes them #too dangerous for them too keep all the knowledge they gained about the realms #tell me what you think #this is 5 or 6 of my most solid hc fitted together

[samgirl98]

Wail of the Silent 7/?

Prev | Next

CW: Two boys kissing and making out in this chapter

You were right.

Danny read the note and the police reports, wishing he hadn’t been. There had been a rise in suicides throughout Gotham, especially in Crime Alley. Spectra was feeding overtime. Fuck! If only he had caught her sooner…

“I wish I wasn’t,” Danny whispered.

He felt Jason’s reassurance and gave a weak smile. The other halfa was trying to make Danny feel better, but it wasn’t working. It was Danny’s job to keep the ghosts in check, and he failed. Now, a dangerous ghost was wreaking havoc outside Amity Park to a populace without any idea of the new enemy unleashed on them.

A paper was waved in front of Danny’s face.

We’ll take care of it. The bitch won’t know what hit her.

Danny took a grounding breath.

“Okay, but first, I have to teach you how to take care of yourself.”

____

Jason grinned manically as he held on to the weapons Danny had gotten out of a green portal that he called a pocket dimension.

They were sleek, green, and white with the name ‘Fenton’ etched on them.

His favorites were the bazooka and the ray gun.

“All these weapons will harm a ghost without touching a living person. They will still hurt any ectocontaminated human or halfas like us.”

Jason nodded, absorbing the information while perusing the rest of the weapons. His eyes landed on a thermos. He couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow at it.

“Aw, the Fenton thermos. This is your most valuable weapon in your fight against ghosts.”

Jason's eyebrow rose higher, incredulous.

Danny rolled his eyes, “I can hear you, remember? This baby here is the most important tool in my arsenal. It captures and holds ghosts, making it impossible for them to get out unless I want them to. This is how we’ll stop Spectra.”

Jason stared at the green and white thermos in disbelief for a second longer but then shrugged. Danny was the expert here, not him.

So, how do you use it, he wrote.

“Oh, really easy to use. You point, open, and let the thermos suck the ghostie in.”

Jason nodded.

“This is the Boo-Staff. Yeah, I know it’s a silly name,” Danny said as he felt Jason’s amusement, “but it’s perfect for close combat.”

Jason took the staff. The Bo staff wasn’t his most used weapon that went to Replacement, but he knew how to use it.

“Here, if you press here, it collapses,” the staff shrunk. Jason threw it like a baton before catching it and grinning at Danny.

Danny laughed at Jason’s antic. Jason’s heart started speeding up at Danny’s laughter; he had a nice laugh that filled the room. Jason blushed as Danny gave him a knowing look.

It’s okay—it’s cute, the other man chirped out.

Jason sniffed, offended. He was the Red Hood; there was nothing cute about him! He was a dangerous crime lord/ anti-hero.

Danny had the audacity to laugh! Laugh at Jason. Jason gave a whistling sound that would’ve been a hiss if he had his vocal cords.

“I’m sorry,” Danny said between giggles, “it’s just you’re so adorable when you think you’re tough.”

Think? Jason didn’t notice he had chirped out the word.

“Yes, think,” Danny said with a shit-eating grin.

‘I’ll show you, ‘think,’’ Jason signed before he attacked a confused Danny. Both men wrestled on the floor, and the giant of a man pinned Jason’s arms above his head and ended up on top of Jason.

They both ended up breathing hard. Jason could feel Danny’s cool breath on his face. They both met each other’s gaze. Suddenly, the air felt charged. Danny let go of Jason’s hands and cupped his face. He slowly lowered his head, giving Jason enough time to turn away if he didn’t want what was coming next.

Jason wanted the kiss.

He went up and met Danny’s lips. He tangled his fingers in Danny’s hair, and the kiss deepened.

The charge in the air suddenly became more powerful. It almost felt like a storm of emotions was dancing through the air. He didn’t know if it was his, Danny’s, or a mixture of them, but Jason reveled in it.

(Jason felt the buzzing deep in his chest that turned into a loud purr.)

All too soon, Danny broke the kiss. If he could’ve, Jason would’ve whined. As it was, Jason gave a thrill of disappointment.

(Some of him still marveled that he could communicate with sound.)

Danny gave a crooked smile and gave him one more peck on his lips. Jason couldn’t help but stare at Danny’s blue eyes and handsome face.

‘Pretty,’ he signed.

“What does,” he mimicked the sign, “mean?”

Pretty, Jason mouthed.

Danny blushed and gave a small smile.

“Thanks, you’re handsome yourself.”

Jason grinned at the compliment. It had been so long since he had been kissed or held in any way. Danny made him feel more human, ironically enough.

Danny lay beside Jason, and they both stared at each other. Jason knew he had the same dopey look as Danny. Jason suddenly shot out his hand and held on to Danny’s. There was a chirp of surprise before Danny started purring, too.

Both men stayed looking at each other, staring and memorizing features.

“Do you think this is going too fast,” Danny asked.

Jason shook his head.

“Yeah, me either.”

Jason gave a silent laugh and got up. Danny whined, whined when Jason let go of his hand.

He got the notepad.

I would love to stay here and make out all day, but I think we have a ghost to catch.

Danny pouted, “I hate to say it, but you’re right. Ugh, after this is over, we’ll have to go on a proper date, though.”

Deal.

“Kay, well, I showed you my weapons. Is there anything you like best?”

The bazooka and the ray gun.

Danny rolled his eyes, “Of course, you go straight for the guns, huh?”

Jason smiled and nodded.

“Okay, let’s go catch a misery-eating bitch.”

Sorry for the long wait and the short chapter. I'm not feeling too well, so there might be some mistakes. I hope you liked

#wail of the silent #dc x dp #dp x dc

[indigo-grimoire]

Hi-Fi RUSH theory rambling time

I was writing this for a wiki but why the hell not post it here too -

Chai's music player deliberately chooses songs that fit his emotions at the time. The game already implies that the music player's grafting to Chai affects more than his physical abilities and reacts to stress (like when The Rush starts playing when he's hit by the SBR-001), so it's entirely possible that this includes picking the song that would be the most personal.

With the streamer mode songs, that might even include the lyrics; even before the surgery, Chai is listening to "The Beacon" which is about being rescued from a dark, lonely place (possibly his own life prospects and hope about Project Armstrong), so it could be emulating the same habits. Notably, that song in specific could be suggesting he had depression or some sort of breakdown before the events of the game, but since Chai never shares about his life before this, no way of knowing.

(spoilers under the cut, to go into the songs individually:)

"I Got This", which only starts playing after he's started his escape, is about Chai's euphoria in getting freedom and attention, and having no intention of letting his new arm be taken away from him.

"Too Big To Fail" is similar, focusing on Chai's determination to fight anything that wants to take away his newfound freedom.

"Captive Normals" adds an extra layer to the ableist angle that being called a "defect" seems to have on him, as it insists on not submitting to anyone just to be "normal", even if that means acting well out of line. The lyrics have a LOT of ableist imagery mentioned (asylums, being shoved out of conversations, being “bed bound” and forgotten) further supporting that Chai has a lot of restrained anger about it.

"Buzzsaw" is Chai's first genuine act of teamwork instead of being mostly self serving, and the lyrics reflect a need to make it count despite the odds.

“This’ll Be Rough” speaks for itself; climbing Wing 2 is a pain and a break would be nice, but Chai is gonna do it anyway; fits his character well.

"My Heart Feels No Pain" seems to specifically relate to Mimosa's contribution to Chai joining the project. The female vocals insist it can't be a lie if he took the risks knowingly, while the male vocals have a realization that it was a mistake but it's not too late; culminating in the duet talking about Chai being truly free from her propaganda as the last bit of truth about Vandelay was fully revealed in the previous Track - not even Project Armstrong was Kale's idea in the first place, and his "coolness" was all manufactured through altering the truth about his family.

"Surfacing" is a reply to "The Beacon", having realized that a miracle wouldn't turn his life around, and instead Chai had to make the best out of his situation through effort.

"In a Blink" starts out mild as the music player is malfunctioning, describing a moment of hesitation leading to being manipulated (much like SPECTRA, but with the song playing at all, it’s clear Chai still had a little resistance left in him); but once 808 breaks him out of it, the song kicks in at full force, repeatedly telling himself to "snap out" as there is too much at stake, and face Kale head on.

EDIT: I saw a different interpretation of In a Blink’s lyrics that doesn’t match up at with the previous, so putting this alt here: assuming the themes use the vampirism allegory, it actually changes the context to something far more gay I mean vengeful. Kale put Chai in a world of lies set up to be a tool; but now that Chai is part of it, “it's my turn to feed”, as in, he’ll make full use of it to turn the tables instead of becoming the puppet. No seriously the vampirism angle only makes this more gay

In constrast, "Negotiation" and "Reflection" have no lyrics whatsoever or a licenced counterpart, as Chai is focusing on the task at hand fully.

#Hi-Fi RUSH #theory rambling #hfr is living on my head rent free #might as well put it to work a bit

[its-rat-time-babey]

I adore Spectra’s first appearance in My Brother’s Keeper. In fact I adore My Brother’s Keeper in general, as it’s my absolute favourite episode in the show.

One thing that I confidently say about the series as a whole is that it would be instantly improved if it leaned towards the more horror aspects of its concept. The show as a whole would be way better if parts of it were played for horror, and that goes DOUBLE for Spectra.

And that’s because Spectra in canon acts extremely differently compared to the other ghosts that Danny faces. Instead of being loud and flashy like the others, Spectra is a slow, creeping force.

Basically all other ghosts in the series are, just like how I described them before, pretty loud and flashy with their actions and fights. When they show up, everyone knows pretty quickly and Danny gets on the case not long after. Even villains that try to hide their ghostly attributes like Ember in her first appearance very quickly drop that facade once they’re face to face with Danny or once they get decently close to their goals.

But not Spectra. The only thing that gets Spectra to reveal herself as a ghost is being directly confronted with no other choice. Instead of being loud and flashy with her plans and actions, Spectra maintains her disguise through everything and goes about things quietly from the shadows. When she needs something loud and flashy, she has Bertrand do it for her to stay out of the spotlight.

And the results are terrifying to watch. Spectra latches onto Casper High like a parasite and we see her influence slowly creep through the school as the episode progresses. Students become more depressed as Spectra gives them the opposite of therapy and encourages negative behaviours, made even easier by her negative emotion generating presence, starting with just a few and ending with the entire student body being depressed. All while Danny struggles to figure out why because Spectra did what no other ghost even attempted to do and found a way to trick his ghost sense.

Not to mention that the final part of Spectra’s plan involved publicly killing Jazz (who from Spectra’s perspective is just some random student by the way) in front of the entire school to make everyone even more miserable.

When Spectra is defeated the school is described as “having a dark cloud over it lifted” because that sums up what Spectra is perfectly. A slowly creeping dark cloud that settles over an area and drags everything down.

My Brother’s Keeper is also perfect for Fridge Horror. Because I can point out three massive chunks of fridge horror right off the bat.

1. Spectra knows about Danny’s ghost sense and how to fool it, heavily implying that she’s been in the background for a while now stalking Danny from a distance to learn these things.

2. We very plainly see that this isn’t the first school that Spectra has visited and fed from, with multiple pictures of other schools that Spectra has worked at. There’s a 99% chance that those schools met the same fate that Spectra attempted to doom Casper High to, drained of all positive emotion with one or several student deaths before Spectra left. I say several student deaths because as Spectra states herself in the episode, one person’s spirit affects the next like dominos. The death of one student in a school full of extremely depressed and even traumatized teenagers depending on the circumstances could very easily lead to more deaths, which in turn lead to even more deaths.

3. Sidney Fucking Poindexter. It is very easy to understand the theory that he took his own life back in the 50s. He’s the ghost of a high schooler whose backstory involves constant relentless bullying with no friends or help, bullying so relentless that it became his main focus as a ghost. It’s all but directly stated that that’s the case. But stranger is the fact that a ton of his classmates also became ghosts. So many of his classmates exist in the ghost zone that an entire alternate version of Casper High exists there. So why are they here?

Because remember what I said about one student death causing several more? There’s a good chance that this isn’t the first time that Spectra came to Casper High. Sidney dying from suicide makes even more sense if Spectra was involved and a large amount of Casper High’s student body dying shortly after also has an explanation if she was there in the 50s.

——

I also really like My Brother’s Keeper because in my opinion, that’s the episode where Jazz’s character goes from her initial characterization as a Skeptic, Know-It-All and Perfectionist at the beginning of the series to her much better characterization as one of Danny’s best supporters and one of the best characters in general. It introduces her to ghosts for the first time for one, but it also reveals Danny’s identity as Phantom to her, and I’m obsessed with how good her reaction is from a character and meta perspective.

When Jazz learns that Danny is half-ghost, she doesn’t confront him for keeping secrets or anything like that, but instead quickly and easily accepts that Danny has his own reasons for wanting to keep his identity a secret and decides to let him come out to her when he’s ready to on his own. She also tries her best to make Danny feel comfortable with his identity around her with her “you can talk to me about anything” speech.

It’s an amazing bit of character that not only shows how much Jazz trusts, respects and just cares about Danny, but it’s also amazing out of universe because I seriously struggle to find any other character in fiction that’s acted this way when discovering someone’s secret identity, especially when that person is close to them.

Also the episode in general shows how much Jazz cares about her brother. Right off the bat at the beginning of the episode Jazz is talking to Mr Lancer about wanting to help him and Jazz mentions that she’s been worried about him ever since the accident (also giving us the lore that all the Fentons know about the accident and it wasn’t just a secret thing that only Danny, Sam and Tucker are aware of).

Also My Brother’s Keeper is absolutely RIPE with Trans Danny material. Jazz’s reaction to learning about Danny’s identity, Spectra’s quotes of “What are you? A ghost trying to fit in with humans? Or some creepy little boy with creepy little powers?” and “You're a freak! Not a ghost, not a boy! Who cares for a thing like you?”, it’s got some gems in there.

Also Trans Danny combined with Spectra’s quotes in this episode make her Danny’s only explicitly transphobic villain and that’s remarkably in character for her.

#danny phantom #My brother’s keeper #penelope spectra #jazz fenton #analysis #an I being pulled back into the Danny Phantom fandom? #I don’t know at all #enjoy word vomit about my favourite Danny Phantom episode

[the-curious-butterfly]

Dracugoona, Clankie, and Spawdeen: What personal item from their S/O do they keep on themselves at all times?

Lagoona: she keeps Nosbearatu together with Senior Squeaky in her bag. Despite Draculaura telling Count she’s too old for the stuffy to make her feel better it was still very important to her and she figured with Lagoona’s love of cute things she’d appreciate the meaning of such a gift. She very much did.

Draculaura: A small sketchbook Lagoona kept back in her Castillo that was already filled by the time she arrived at Monster High. The first time Draculaura flipped through it she couldn’t help the feeling that she gained a deeper understanding of who Lagoona was. What her fears and dreams were, it was all in those pages which Draculaura treasured greatly.

Oh and she wears Lagoona’s hoodie every chance she gets that Lagoona has to (playfully) fight her to get it back, so there’s that too.

Clawdeen: The first ICoffin charm Spectra had ever gotten is now the first Clawdeen has ever gotten. It’s of a small Purple Heart, wrapped in chains and held together with a lock. When Clawdeen asked if there was a key that came with it, Spectra’s answer of “She’s the one holding it” completely knocked the wolf out of her until she was nothing but a crying mess.

Spectra: Clawdeen spent days thinking of what to give Spectra after the charm incident. She wanted to give the ghost something just as meaningful but the most important thing to her was the Moonclaw and she couldn’t give that. Or could she?

The first time Clawdeen took it off to put it around Spectra’s neck it was Spectra’s turn to fight tears. This was her lost mom’s necklace and though she wasn’t quite giving it to her Clawdeen was telling Spectra ‘I trust you to keep it safe.’ A job Spectra took quite seriously as she refuses to let anyone too close to it or even remove it unless Clawdeen asks for it.

Frankie: at first they had to fight with Cleo when she tried to give them the jar with her heart in it. Yes it was very sweet and incredibly swoon worthy a gesture but they didn’t want to be the reason Cleo turned heartless around others if they were too far apart. Cleo was too beautiful for that and so they settled on something else just as sweet but slightly less important. The only stone Cleo had that meant more to her than a shiny bauble for it was one of the first Nefera had ever given her back when they were children and their relationship wasn’t as strained. It didn’t look like much because it wasn’t, it was something Nefera picked up off the ground and thought her sister would like. She never knew Cleo kept it all this time.

Cleo: body parts. Maybe an eye here or an ear there it tends to differ every day but will often be one of those two. Frankie insists it’s because they like being near, and while they can’t always be at least a part of them still can. And no matter what part it is Cleo takes very special care of it until the next time they see each other again.

#monster high #monster high gen 3 #spectra vondergeist #clawdeen wolf #Spawdeen #lagoona blue #draculaura #dracugoona #frankie stein #cleo de nile #clankie #Clankie being the couple giving each other body parts #so romantic #curious things

[lialia0213]

Hi sweetie. Can you tell us more, like random facts, about Vasi? 🥰

Her height, her favourite place, music, hobbies.... 👉🏻👈🏻

Of course! ☺️☺️

* Vasilisa is about 5’5 ft tall!

* I haven’t figured out her weight yet but her body type she has an Average hourglass thick tone. She has hip dips and a small round belly (so think of Nani (Lilo and Stich), American singer Tyla, and Twyla (monster high).

*Has a lot of beauty marks.

* since her race is elf/vampire her nationality is Afro-latina! But to simplify it she’s Afro-Brazilian (like myself 😌)

* She has a nose ring, belly piercing and others.

* She has a small fairy wing in one of the back of her ears.

* Her voice VA is a mix between Spectra vondergeist (Monster High) and Chihiro Fujisaki (Danganronpa)

* She has a kind, understanding, outgoing, shy, quiet personality. She RARELY ever gets mad but when she does.. she can be pretty scary.

* Her best friends are Amber Orlock, Gytha Demona, Nerys Blyssen ( which they are in the working process 😅)

* She occasionally plays the Quest of Yore with Barely and goes on Quests with him. That is of course dressing up as well! 😂

*She sometimes floats like Marceline (adventure, Time) and Spectra (monster high)

* She loves to go on day and night strolls. In the daytime for favorite places are the park, the Manticore! Tavern, and the Labyrinth mall. In the night time she likes to go on her land to look at the stars and of course ride along with Barley 😁.

* She likes poetry, drawing landscapes, spells and mythical creatures, fajitas, and rice pudding.

* Her Dislikes though are dishonest and cruel people, being taken advantage of, being an out cast, bullies, colt Branco (at times), spiders.

* She listens to a lot of variety of music. But her absolute favorites are 2000s rock, rock folklore ( like Barely lmaoo 😭) j-pop and k-pop!

* Her favorite movies are Twilight, all Saw movies, Harry Potter, Let Me In (2010), Kill Bil volume 1 and 2, and the grudge.

* She makes jewelry as a hobby.

* She wears a lot of her mother’s jewelry and clothes to always have her by her side.

* Can speak MANY different languages ( including sign language)

* Wears a bunch of goth clothes ( so like corsets and a bunch of medieval dresses) and other wears!

* She’s a Mage and does a lot of magic such as healing, reading people’s minds, and Telekinesis.

* One of her strengths are Shapeshifting, healing, using any form of magic. But her downsides are that she has to drink and eat more than a normal being can do. She can also get sick easily.

* Whenever she’s available she’ll help Ian with some magic stuff and teach him different spells and potions and honestly how to maintain it better!

* Now since she’s half elf and vampire blood doesn’t have an effect on her only because she took majority of her mother’s side. But every once in awhile she does get the cravings often. So she drinks pigs blood and makes it into boba 🧋 (I’m assuming there’s such thing as pigs in the universe 😭)

*Since she has a lot of her mother’s traits she will have longer ears and eyebrows when she gets older. 

* She owns a Phoenix as a pet (I name her Fawkes after professor Dumbledores from Harry Potter 😁😁)

* She Keeps a lot of charms and crystals in her room from Barley  

* Loves to cook and bake!

* She reads a spell book that her mother left for her.

* Knows how to figure Skate and do ballet and Plays the violin and the piano (so I guess you can say she was very active)

I think that’s pretty much all of it! I hope you enjoy! ☺️

#onward #pixar onward #disney #onward fanart #onwardsona #pixar #barley lightfoot #ditigal art #high elves #vampire oc #varley #ian lightfoot #original character #oc x canon #ibispaintdrawing #ibispaintx #oc fanart #oc facts #Vasilisa Valentine

[hannahmanderr]

A fight with Spectra leaves both Fenton and Phantom hurting in more ways than one.

They'll make it up to each other. They always do. (Pitch Pearl)

Rated: Teen

For @scarletsaphire and @duchi-nesten

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

“Wow, Spectra.” Phantom grunted as he dodged a swipe from the shadow ghost. “I never would’ve pegged you for the swimming type. Last time I took a shadow like you for a dip, they got the one way ticket to the Amity sewer system.”

Spectra tutted. “A girl’s allowed to have fun every now and then, Danny!” 

“And by fun, you mean trying to stage a little ‘accident’ for the first gym class of the morning?”

“See, you get it! A little tampering here and there is all it takes to give a couple of kids a shocker of a morning wake-up call!” She dissolved into a dark mist as Phantom made a dive for her, reforming after he passed through her harmlessly.

But he’d been expecting that. He doubled over backwards, arching his back into the flip, and snapped into a quick roll to make another pass at her.

Apparently, she had been expecting that too. She bared her claws and swung them in a wide arc, forcing him to twist out of the way to try to avoid them. The claws thankfully missed his chest, but she managed to snag his arm and rip four jagged cuts into his arm, almost like mini versions of the gash she’d managed to give him earlier.

“Gah!” Phantom clapped a hand to the torn jumpsuit. “Jeez, have you ever heard of nail clippers?”

Spectra grinned wickedly and made another lunge for him. “Ha! I’ve spent hours making sure my manicure is… on point.”

He barely had time to pull his hand away and throw up a green shield, deflecting her blow. Ectoplasm dripped from his glove to the tile and left tiny little glowing pinpricks on the dark floor. Kind of like stars.

Focus. Not the time to be thinking about that.

“Hey, the puns are my thing, alright? At least let me have that.” Flames of cold green energy burst to life around his hand, and he shot off a quick succession of blasts, hoping at least one would hit. 

He’d have taken the time to aim if he hadn’t already gotten his head smashed into the wall twice during this fight. Either that, or his slightly fuzzy vision indicated he was having a sudden need of contact lenses, but the throbbing at the back of his skull seemed to say otherwise. 

So maybe he had a tiny little baby concussion. No big deal. 

Only one of the blasts hit true, but it did little to deter Spectra. She snarled and called up her own purple ecto-energy. “And why should I let you?”A flick of her wrist warped the energy into a lasso. “You already have so much, don’t you?”

The lasso came flying at him. He darted to the left only to be met by the wall of bleachers, sitting halfway folded up. Figured. The janitor must’ve gotten lazy after the swim meet earlier.

Either way, it added a tally to his growing count of blows to the head today. He gripped his head tightly and tried to funnel ice energy into his hands to try and numb the pain a little, maybe even help put a block to any swelling, but all it did was open a window for the lasso to close around his ankle. A yelp escaped his throat as Spectra yanked him towards her.

“I mean think about it! You’ve got the powers, the looks, the personality…” Each word was punctuated by a sharp tug on the rope. “What more does a boy need, hmm?” She paused in fake contemplation. “Oh, wait! I might know!”

“Not! Listening!” He pulled fruitlessly at his leg to try and free it before giving up and shooting at the rope with an ecto-blast. His energy wasn’t quite strong enough to break hers. Of course it wasn’t. Just his luck. When had her energy gotten so strong anyway?

“How about a family who loves him? I don’t think you have one of those now, do you?”

“I said I’m not listening!” he shouted, though the weight of her parasitic words settling into his chest seemed to indicate otherwise. 

Ice. Surely ice would work. Phantom barely needed a thought to call it into his hands and coat the energy rope with a thick layer. He snapped it like a toothpick and immediately whirled around to fire off two blasts of ice as soon as his leg was free. They both missed, instead catching some of the swimmer’s blocks along the edge of the pool.

“Poor little Danny,” she cooed condescendingly, apparently unfazed by his escape. She shot off a couple of blasts of her own before disappearing in a whirl of shadow

Before he could figure out where she’d gone, she dug her claws into his shoulders. A whimper of pain squeezed past his lips as the fabric of his suit tore again, exposing his bare skin to her razor sharp claws.

“Maybe I should feel sorry for you after all! You’ve got the adoration of all these humans, yet you’ll never truly fit in with them. Of course, you could just stick to the Ghost Zone, but you’ve managed to turn everyone there against you! Well now, that really is a sticky predicament! Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to let you have your precious puns after all.”

The toxicity in her words began to make him dizzy and lethargic, especially now that she had a physical hold on him. Her claws dug deeper and deeper into his shoulders. Why were her words getting to him this easy? It’s not like he didn’t know how to handle himself around her.

He shook his head and jerked half-heartedly, but that only succeeded in cutting himself open on her claws even more. Her venom wasn’t physical, sure, but it didn’t stop it from hurting as it penetrated him down to his very core.

“Stop it,” he panted, “I’m… you can’t get to me like that.”

Except she absolutely could, and she knew it just as well as he did.

“I want to help you, Danny, I really do.” She leaned her head down close enough that he could feel her lips graze his ear. He recoiled from the touch. “All you have to do is let me. I can take it all away, you just have to let me get in you to take it out. So simple… and then you won’t feel a thing. I promise.”

His struggles weakened as the words drove themselves into his core. 

She was right. It would be so much easier, wouldn’t it? To just give in?

No.

Just a little moment of selfishness. That’s all it would take. No more pain. No more heartbreak.

Fight it.

The town wouldn’t be completely unprotected. Valerie could handle it. And who knew? Maybe the ghosts wouldn’t attack it so much without him.

Fight it!

And if the ghosts quit attacking, then that would just solve the problem. A win-win. Everyone wouldn’t have to deal with the ghosts, and he wouldn’t have to deal with everything.

Fight it, Phantom!

The familiar voice echoed in his ears, trying to be heard over the static of Spectra��s spell. 

If he focused, it was as though he could hear it right beside him. 

A single ray of light, breaking through the heavy gloom of his own desolation and guilt.

Phantom!

So close…

Something jostled his shoulders.

“Godda- oh my God, please don’t…”

Strange. That voice really did sound close.

“I swear, Phantom, if you don’t snap out of it in the next ten seconds, I’ll… I’ll… oh, damn it…” 

Slowly, Phantom peeled his eyes open. When had he closed them?

His core throbbed painfully. Like someone had taken a dagger to it. A dagger made of misery-inducing lies, anyway.

“Oh my God, finally!” Warm hands moved from their position on either side of his head to clasp onto his shoulders. “Don’t you dare do that again, you - you… Oh my God…”

“Wha…?” He groaned and brought a hand up to his head, ignoring the sting of his wounds rubbing up against the hands. As his vision cleared, a dark head of hair and bright blue eyes came into focus. Off to the side, he could see a shadowy, glowing heap lying a few yards away, smoke drifting up from it. 

He struggled to sit up. “Jeez, Fenton, did you really shoot her?”

“Wow, okay, you don’t have to sound so surprised. What was I supposed to do, just stand there and let her waste you?”

“You… you shouldn’t be here.” If the pool could stop spinning at a million miles an hour, that would be nice. “I had it handled.”

Fenton scoffed, though his breath still shook. “Sure. Keep telling yourself that. Being pinned down by a literal soul-sucking she-demon is definitely what most people would consider having it ‘handled’.”

Phantom took the opportunity to take gauge of his surroundings. He had no clue when he’d ended up on the floor of the pool room, but the soreness in his back definitely gave him the impression that he’d been dropped. Fenton must have dragged him here to prop him up against the bleachers. Ice still covered the swimmer’s blocks and some of the walls were singed from wayward ecto-blasts.

And then there, squatting in front of him, red-faced and panting for breath, was Fenton. He kept his arms placed on either side of Phantom’s head and leaned in oh so close, close enough that his warm breath tickled Phantom’s nose and chin and made him swallow thickly.

It took every ounce of self-control he could muster to push past that train of thought. Not the time for that. “I was just, you know… letting her think she had the upper hand.”

Fenton rolled his eyes. A little more of the tension relaxed from his shoulders. “Keep telling yourself that, ghost boy. Whatever floats your boat. But let it be known that today, I had to save your sorry butt for once.”

“I refuse to feed your fantasies about being my knight in shining armor any more than I already have.”

That made Fenton fall back onto his bottom with a thud and the red blush creep up to the tips of his ears. “Well maybe if you quit running into things alone for once, I wouldn't ha-”

A flash of movement caught Phantom’s eye.

It was the only warning he got. There was not a second to spare to alert Fenton; he simply threw his body into the human’s and tackled him to the ground. 

“Ow! What the fu-”

Spectra went whizzing over their heads, missing the top of Phantom’s head by inches.

It was a scramble of limbs as the two boys struggled to untangle themselves from one another. Phantom barely managed to pull his bleeding arm in to miss a blast of purple ectoplasm. Still with half-blurred vision, he threw out his good hand, and a shield cascaded over the two of them.

“Why didn’t you get her in the Thermos, you idiot?” Phantom demanded as he crawled over to where Fenton laid. 

Fenton rolled onto his back with a groan. “Excuse me for wanting to make sure you weren’t stuck in whatever the hell funk she was trying to put you into!”

Spectra’s energy slammed into the shield like a brick wall, nearly sending Phantom toppling again. His core still panged with the ache of the aftereffects of Spectra’s influence, and it fluttered weakly in his chest. A second strong blast struck him right down to the core and shattered the shield.

Fenton cursed again and began to search blindly for his weapon as Phantom took to the air again, ignoring the way his core and arm and shoulders throbbed. He fired off a quick succession of blasts himself and made a beeline for the shadow demon.

Much to his dismay (but not his surprise), she twirled around the attacks, and they sailed right by her as she cackled in delight. “Aw, looks like I really caught you boys off your game tonight!”

“I’m working with a concussion here,” Phantom growled, “cut me some slack.” He made a lunge for her as she still had her focus turned on Fenton, but this time he pulled up and out of the dive at the last second and allowed his tail to reform into legs. His foot connected with the underside of her jaw, sending her crashing into the ceiling.

“You have a concussion?” Fenton shouted from the ground. He’d found the blaster and was attempting to shove the cartridge back into it. “And you’re still at this?”

“Not to sound repetitive, but excuse me for making sure she doesn’t electrify the pool to kill a couple kids in the morning!”

Fenton glanced up to where Spectra was pressed against the ceiling, rubbing the spot where Phantom had kicked her. “Really? Electrifying the pool? That’s the best you can come up with?”

“Oh, don’t you worry,” she said. She zipped downwards, but to Phantom’s surprise, she diverted away from the two of them and made a mad dash for the live wires she’d been tampering with, lying towards one corner of the pool.

He wasn’t sure what she was up to, but he chased after her anyway. “I’m getting real tired of this game, you know!” he said as his core gave another painful pang. He didn’t know how much longer he’d be able to hold out. Her spell had really done a number on him this time.

Fenton finally managed to fit the cartridge back into his blaster, and he wasted no time raising it to take aim at Spectra. He fired one, two, three back-to-back shots, and Phantom prayed to the Ancients that the human’s aim would hold truer than his own.

Two of the blasts clipped her tail, but it was enough to make her falter and hiss. Phantom plowed into her at full speed and tackled her into the floor.

“Now how does that feel?” he asked with an impish grin.

“It’ll feel better when I’m pounding your skull in with an anvil,” she said with a snarl. “But don’t worry, I’m just warming up.”

It was his turn to falter (had she really just punned at him again?), and though he tried to recover quickly, it was long enough time for Spectra to take back the advantage. Too late, he realized the floor around them had begun to steam and the shadowy flesh (mist? Goo? It was kind of hard to tell with shadow ghosts) grew burning hot under his hands. It surprised him enough to cause him to yelp and push himself off of her, his core instinctively generating more of his cold energy to counteract the effects.

She took advantage of the opportunity to fly off again, Fenton’s blaster shots following right behind. Phantom shook his head - big mistake apparently, what with the state of his head at the moment - and took off after her again as well. Tag was really starting to wear him out.

This time, she managed to reach the wires before he reached her, and she wasted no time dragging them into the water. “Ah ha! See? Even with two of you around, I still get what I want!”

“You do realize we’ll just take them out once we get you back inside the Zone, right?” Fenton asked. He squeezed the trigger of his blaster again, but this time, only a few sad sparks puttered out the end.

“Oh my God, do not tell me you brought a dead gun to a fight!” Phantom shouted. He swiped at the wires, trying to pick them up off of the floor, but Spectra, in her madness, grabbed at him furiously in an attempt to get him to stop. Her claws dug deep across the backs of his shoulder blades as he tried to evade her.

That was definitely enough to elicit a curse out of the young ghost. Reflex caused him to try and put a hand up to the injury, but he couldn’t twist his arms or his torso right to reach it well enough.

Spectra didn’t waste any time before lobbing an enormous ball of her ecto-energy at him, and in his distraction, he didn’t notice it until it was too late. Once again, he was sent sprawling into the general direction of the bleachers.

“Phantom!” The shout came from Fenton’s general direction, but his head was swimming too much to be able to see him properly. With a groan, he pressed his hands to his temples again, trying to feed as much cold energy into them as possible. Anything to stop the throbbing and the spinning at this point.

A strangled sort of yelp snapped him out of it, and he looked up to see Spectra charging at Fenton, who’d begun to try and swing the strap of the Thermos off of his shoulder to use it. Phantom didn’t even have the chance to react before she swiped a hand up Fenton’s chest, raking into his skin and leaving four glistening red stripes, visible underneath the ribbons of his t-shirt.

Fenton’s cry of pain stabbed Phantom right in the core, and as he staggered to his feet to rush to his aid, Spectra fastened her hand around the collar of Fenton’s shirt and pulled him up into the air. She dragged him like a rag doll, only stopping to hover some 15 feet above the surface of the pool, near the ceiling.

Ecto-energy was already pooling in his hands in spite of the ache in his core and head, but she waggled a finger from her free hand at him. “Ah, ah, ah! I wouldn’t shoot if I were you! You wouldn’t want me to lose my grip on your little human now, would you?”

“Don’t listen to her!” Fenton shouted, struggling in her grasp even as Phantom froze in place, remembering the wires still live and still dangling in the water of the pool.

His mind raced, working desperately against the agony of his rapidly accumulating head injuries. He could just try and fly right at her, but she’d still probably drop Fenton, and he didn’t think he could bank fast enough to try and catch him before he hit the water. Maybe he could try and freeze the pool over, but again, she’d drop him the minute he made a move, and with his core sputtering like it was, he didn’t know if he could get a thick enough layer on fast enough to keep Fenton from crashing through and plummeting into the water anyway.

“Okay, okay,” he said, holding his hands behind his back. Show her he wasn’t about to try anything funny. He couldn’t think straight enough to do much else. “You… you win, just - just put him down, safely, alright?”

“Are you nuts?” Fenton screeched. “What the hell are you thinking? She’ll just drop me anyway!”

“You know, Danny, he does have a point,” she said, stroking her chin. “After all, your misery is just delectable. Why not sweeten it a little more by making sure your precious boy toy has a little accident of his own?”

The tips of Phantom’s ears burned cold. Any other day, he would’ve shot back with some clever quip that no, Fenton was not his “boy toy,” but the threat to Fenton like that…

“Please…” he whispered. He knew how pathetic he must’ve looked. If anyone else in the Zone saw him they’d have a field day. Probably end up on the cover of that stupid underground tabloid allegedly run by Kitty. “I won’t - I’ll… I’ll do whatev-”

“Just take the damn shot, Phantom!” Fenton yelled. His shirt began to tear even more where Spectra had her grip on it.

“Yes, Danny, take the shot,” Spectra purred. “There’s really no way out of this, you know. Either way, I get what I want. At least if you shoot me, you can say you went down swinging instead of lying down and taking it like a worthless dog.”

The words bit into his ears and embedded themselves in his core. No, he couldn’t, he wouldn’t, but as much as he fought, he couldn’t deny that she had a point… If his head would just stop spinning he’d think his way through this, he’d come up with an idea to save Fenton, but he could barely focus on keeping his lunch in his stomach.

On the edge of a full-out panic attack, he didn’t even think as he looked up and found Fenton’s fierce blue eyes. Their gazes met, and even from the distance…

Phantom wasn’t quite sure how it happened, or even why it happened. Maybe it was a spontaneous ghost power. Maybe he was just imagining it. Maybe he still remembered how his soul once twined together with Fenton’s, before they split, and maybe even after they split, a little piece of each of their souls stayed with the other and bound them closer than they had ever been, even when they had been one person.

Whatever it was, he didn’t know, but the moment he met Fenton’s eyes, he could see. 

Fenton trusted him. With every fiber of his being and every beat of his wholly human heart, he trusted him.

Do it.

So he did.

In one motion, he brought his hands back out in front of him and shot a single beam of ecto-energy at Spectra. Without waiting to see if it hit or how long it took her to drop Fenton, he darted forward, flying out over the electrified pool.

He caught a glimpse of Fenton’s free fall just ahead of him, and he poured on the speed. Just…

… a little…

… closer…

Phantom grunted and faltered as Fenton landed in his outstretched arms, nearly dragging them both into the pool. He kept his forward movement and held onto the human for dear life (quite literally, apparently) as Fenton fumbled with the strap of the Thermos.

Above them, Spectra screamed furiously. Phantom could feel the intense heat of her anger flare bright and start speeding towards the two of them. 

But Fenton was already on it. He twisted in Phantom’s arms and aimed the Thermos at her, and in a matter of seconds, she had been secured inside.

It was only after Spectra had been caught and they were safely above dry ground that Phantom slowed his flight. Only then did he notice just how fast his core was vibrating and the adrenaline pulsing through his body that he could only attribute to his ghostliness. The whole thing had taken mere seconds, but to him, each second had felt like an eternity.

Fenton had one arm wrapped in a death grip around his shoulders and the other folding the Thermos in between their stomachs. In this position, Phantom could feel the flutter of Fenton’s heart and just how shallow his breaths were. Black hair brushed against his jaw, but he couldn’t be bothered to move it out of the way.

He just wanted to hold him tight to him and never let him go.

Fenton turned his head to look up at Phantom, the hairs tickling his skin as they dragged across his chin. That smarmy little jerk had the gall to grin up at him, still breathless, and say, “Thanks for letting me drop by on such short notice.”

Phantom groaned and shook his head, which just made Fenton burst out laughing.

He flew them over to where the wires had been put into the pool. Carefully, making sure to mind the human still clinging to him, he grabbed them at the dry bits and lifted them out of the water. A little bit of intangibility made sure they were free and clear of any dripping.

“I, uh, don’t suppose you know how we turn these off?” he asked. Now that the fight had ended, his voice echoed throughout the large room, just reemphasizing how eerily quiet it had become.

Fenton shrugged. “Fuse box? Where’d she even get them anyway?”

“I don’t know.” He opted to lay them out on the tile, away from the water and away from the metal bleachers. He could figure it out in a bit. For right now…

A warmth on his stomach drew his attention. “Ancients, Fenton, what were you thinking?”

Fenton looked down at his tattered shirt and the blood seeping onto it and Phantom’s jumpsuit. “Tis but a flesh wound,” he said with a little laugh.

“Spectra rips into you like wet toilet paper and all you can do is quote Monty Python at me?”

“It’s not like you’re doing much better!” Blue eyes trailed to the green-stained tears in his jumpsuit. 

Phantom bit his lip. The urge to scold the human and fuss over him was nearly overwhelming, but he knew Fenton would throw a fit if he ignored his own injuries. “Okay, okay here.”

He touched down beside the pool and set Fenton down as gently as he could. Fenton sprawled out over the tile with a sigh. A whine stirred in Phantom’s chest as the familiar weight and warmth left him, and it took every ounce of his self-restraint to choke it back and keep himself from latching on to him.

Instead, with a swallow, he knelt beside the human and carefully pushed the ribbons of t-shirt fabric out of the way. The cuts in Fenton’s chest weren’t horribly deep, but they continued to ooze blood and stain the shirt.

The hand he placed next to the wounds was feather-light. “I can’t believe she got you like that…”

Fenton laughed hollowly. “And I can’t believe she ruined this shirt. Sam will never buy me another concert t-shirt ever again if I keep getting them ruined.”

The joke fell on deaf ears. An idea was blooming in Phantom’s head, he just didn’t know…

“May I?” he asked, pointing to the cuts.

“... You don’t have to ask permission. It’s not anywhere your hands haven’t already been, you know?”

Oh, Ancients. His cheeks burned bright enough green to cast the barest hint of a glow on Fenton’s face. The human snickered at his reaction. “Wow. I guess you can say I really know how to turn you on, huh?”

If possible, the glow brightened. “Just shut up and let me try this,” he muttered grumpily.

He set his jaw and placed a gentle hand over the bleeding wounds. Fenton let out a quiet hiss as the glove made contact with the open flesh, and Phantom couldn’t hide his own wince upon hearing it. 

It’s okay. Focus. He breathed in deeply - a habit leftover from when they had been one what seemed like forever ago - and drew cold energy from his core. Lessons from Frostbite echoed in his ears as he zeroed in on the energy, trying to carefully twist it just so…

Fenton gasped when the hand began to glow a pale blue, radiating a pleasantly cool energy. Phantom felt him lean into the touch ever so slightly.

“That’s nice,” the human whispered. He closed his eyes and let his head tip backwards.

Phantom ignored him solely out of a need to concentrate. It was a constant, precise work, drawing up the energy, carefully reshaping it, channeling it up and out of his arm, not too slow but not too fast, either.

The two of them sat there in comfortable silence, their faces lit only by the glow of Phantom’s hand, the underwater lamps lighting up the pool, and the two lone emergency fluorescents hanging overhead. Fenton’s even breaths and the hum of the pool filter were the only audible sounds.

It was nearly ten minutes before Phantom pulled his hand away abruptly and fell to the side, barely managing to catch himself before his head smacked into the floor yet again. 

Fenton’s eyes flew open at the sudden disappearance of the ghost’s cool touch. “What hap- oh.” He looked down at himself, where newly mended skin replaced the wounds. The only indication that there had been an injury in the first place was the pinkish shade of scabbing skin, almost like a sunburn.

A grin blossomed on Fenton’s face. “No way, you can do that? That’s so cool! How long - whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, what happened? Are you okay?”

If the unbearable pounding of his head and core and everything weren’t enough to prove that. “Jus’ a little tired,” Phantom mumbled. “Probably… used too much energy at once…”

“No shit you did! Like seriously? You take that big of a blow from Spectra and then try and heal me? What the hell are you thinking?”

“I’m fine.” He grunted as he pushed himself up a little more. “I jus’... need a sec. Just a sec…”

Except he overcompensated while trying to prop himself up. A new wave of dizziness washed over him, and he began to topple the other way.

Fenton cursed again as he scrambled to grab Phantom and shove himself in between the ghost and the tile. “You’re such an idiot,” he said even as he shifted their bodies so Phantom’s back leaned against his arm. “And don’t you dare say anything about being my idiot or whatever.”

“Wasn’t going to.” Phantom sighed and slumped even further against Fenton. The cuts on his back screamed at the friction, and he knew he was probably just staining Fenton’s shirt even more, but he couldn’t be bothered to care.

Screw the circumstances. This was nice. Just existing together like this.

After a moment, he felt Fenton let his head lean against the top of his own. “Seriously though,” he said, wrapping his pinky around Phantom’s. “Why would you do that? It could have waited, it wasn’t even that bad.”

Phantom exhaled. If Fenton was seriously expecting to have this conversation right now, he was about to be sorely disappointed. “I was just making sure.” The words sounded flimsy even to him.

“Yeah, sure. Definitely not you being an overprotective neurotic like you are.”

The frustration behind Fenton’s words surprised him. It… definitely hadn’t been the response he’d been expecting. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“What do you think it’s supposed to mean?” Fenton huffed. “You always do this! Act like some sort of martyr or something when it’s totally unnecessary. All you’re gonna do is end up screwing yourself over!”

Okay. Apparently this conversation really was happening now. “Is it so wrong to try and help? Because I know you’d do the exact same thing if you could. And you still try anyway.”

“Did I say it was wrong to try and help? You know I’m not gonna stop you from helping out, especially ‘cause duh, I want to help out too, but no, I’m talking about stuff like this.” Phantom craned his neck around to see Fenton gesturing at his torso. “The extra stuff that’s more than just helping.”

Ancients, how could he explain this without getting himself into hot water? “I just… get worried…”

Fenton scoffed. “Worried? About a few little cuts? You know for a fact we - I’ve taken harder stuff than that. So why freak out when clearly you’re the one that needs the healing?”

“It’s not the cuts!” Phantom said before thinking. This was exactly what he wanted to avoid, this sort of argument, especially when he knew his mouth was going to get ahead of himself and make him regret it. The exact kind of conversation he should be avoiding while nursing a weakened core and a concussion. “I just… it’s complicated, okay? Look, can we… can we maybe just, not do this right now?”

A silence fell over the two, only broken when Fenton lifted his head and leaned forward to get a better look at Phantom’s face. “Do you… are you, like… hiding something?” he asked quietly.

The hesitation and tension in the question was palpable in more ways than one, at least to Phantom. It left a slightly spicy taste in his mouth and made his own core seize up. “N- why would I be hiding something?”

Fenton fingered a rip in his jeans. “I dunno, you just seem… more nervous, I guess? And I just - I don’t know, I’m just worried, like… do you… trust me?”

“What?” That sent a jolt through Phantom’s core. He sat straight up, ignoring the surge of pain that accompanied it, and turned to face Fenton head on. “Why wouldn’t I trust you?”

“You don’t have to tell me it’s dumb, alright? I already know it.” Fenton refused to meet his eyes, instead pointedly fixating on that little rip. “I’m just - argh, you’re gonna think it’s so stupid!”

Phantom hesitated before gently grabbing the human’s fretting hand. “Look, I promise, I trust you, okay? I didn’t realize… I’m sorry if I did something to make you think…”

“Ugh, that’s the problem, you didn’t do anything!” Fenton shouted in exasperation. He hugged his knees into his chest, but allowed Phantom to keep holding his hand. “It’s just me being stupid, alright? Just… forget I said anything.”

Another silence fell between them. Phantom watched him closely. The emotions coming from Fenton were growing increasingly complex and frustrated, and it didn’t help matters that Phantom grew frustrated that he couldn’t properly read them. Whatever was going through Fenton’s mind, it ran deep.

He took in a shaky breath, as unnecessary as it was. They were clearly both holding back from each other, and they were clearly both nervous about how the other would react. If Jazz were here, she’d be scolding them for repressing such strong emotions, especially from one another. She’d go on a whole girly tirade about the importance of openness and honesty in relationships.

To be fair, she generally knew what she was talking about when it came to this stuff.

So maybe he should try and listen.

Before he could talk himself out of it, he blurted, “I was scared, alright?”

There. The proverbial olive branch. 

One of them would’ve had to bite the bullet eventually.

Fenton jerked his head up. Clearly he hadn’t been expecting that. “Scared of what? The cuts?”

“No, not - not that.” Now it was his turn to avoid the other’s eyes. “I… seeing her grab you like that, and then if she’d dropped you, you would’ve fallen in and…”

“But you caught me. It worked out okay.”

“And what if it didn’t?” His core began to pound harder. “What if she’d let you go and - and you fell, and I didn’t get there in time?”

Their gazes met. Phantom found himself wanting both to rip his eyes away and lose himself in Fenton’s pretty blue eyes at the same time.

He hated the feeling.

Finally, Fenton sighed. “... You wouldn’t have let that happen.”

“Okay, maybe you thought that, but not me! I couldn’t even think straight because of this stupid concussion and I didn’t know what to do, so what do you expect? Am I not supposed to be scared?”

“Oh my God, no one said you couldn’t be scared, alright?” Fenton uncurled himself and swung his knees underneath him to sit on his heels. “Like duh! Of course you’re gonna be scared, but that’s not a reason to pop off and try and get yourself hurt just to save me a couple of scratches!��

Phantom sat up straight. “You never know if those ‘scratches’ are gonna be the tipping point! If you’re hurt and I can do something about it, then why shouldn’t I?”

“Because like it or not, you can’t!” Fenton shouted. The words hit Phantom harder than any hit he’d taken from Spectra.

And Fenton wasn’t done either. “You’re not perfect, alright? You’re just… you’re not gonna be! You can try to do everything you can and bend over backwards to make things perfectly okay for everyone else, but at some point, it’s not gonna work! And then what? How - how is you getting yourself hurt making everything okay?”

“I don’t care if I get myself hurt!” Phantom snapped. The words were getting ahead of him again, and as much as he knew he would regret it, he couldn’t bring it upon himself to try and contain them. “Do you know how hurt I would be if I lost you?”

“Of course I do, you idiot, I lo-” Fenton cut himself off as his entire face flushed red.

The pounding of Phantom’s core echoed in his ears, and a strange thrill ran through him. 

Say it. 

Please, I need to hear you say it.

Fenton’s eyes squeezed shut. “I… I care about you… a lot, okay? Like, more than I’ve ever really cared about most people. You… you talk so much about being scared for me, and not knowing what you would do if you lost me, but… haven’t you thought about what I would do if I lost you?”

Phantom froze. The thought had always been there, of course, somewhere in the back of his mind, but…

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I should’ve… I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

Fenton didn’t say anything for a long moment. “You don’t have to apologize, I…” He sighed heavily. “I know you’re just trying to look out for me, and I swear, I appreciate it. It’s… It feels nice, having someone care about me that much, but at the same time, it’s like I hate it, ‘cause - ‘cause it hurts me to see you always throwing yourself into these sorts of situations and just getting yourself more hurt when you don’t need to be and all that stuff.”

Phantom didn’t know how to respond to that.

He sat and watched the refracted light from the pool dance across Fenton’s face as the human stared somewhere across to the other side of the pool. That sort of an outburst… that wasn’t like him. Granted, neither of them ever really enjoyed talking about feelings-with-an-F, but still.

Fenton’s sudden movement caught his attention. “Where are you going?”

The human stood and brushed off his jeans. “You’re still bleeding,” he said, as if that explained everything. “If you get to patch me up, then I get to patch you up.” Without waiting for Phantom to respond, he walked over to the boys’ locker room door and disappeared behind it.

Phantom watched the door swing shut in silence. A certain brusqueness lingered in the air, making his nose itch. 

That could’ve gone better.

But what was he supposed to say? His own feelings were… complicated at best. On one hand, it made his core sing hearing Fenton talk about how much he liked having him worry about him like he did.

Yet on the other, it shattered him to hear the pain and anxiety behind Fenton’s words.

He shifted to let his feet dangle off the edge of the pool and began stirring the water absently with the toe of his boot. At least I made sure the water’s fine, he thought to himself with a grim sort of smile.

Wish I could say the same for him.

Fenton returned a minute later with the first aid kit from his locker in hand, wearing his gym shirt. He wasted no time in kneeling beside Phantom and popping open the lid to grab the antiseptic wipes and gauze.

“What did you do with the old shirt?” the ghost asked quietly.

Fenton shrugged. “Tossed it. What else would I have done?”

“I don’t know. I figured you’d be worried about someone seeing it.”

“Nah. No one ever looks in the trash in that bathroom. That’s like, asking to be scarred for life. Unzip your suit for me, will you?”

Phantom obliged and shrugged his arms out enough for Fenton to wipe at the claw marks. He hissed at the sting, and he didn’t miss how the human’s movements faltered just the slightest bit. Still, he pressed on, gently cleaning away the ectoplasm.

Phantom tried to temper his blush. He was never this tender when taking care of his own wounds.

The tension in the silence began to rub at him. “You… how long have you been wanting to say that?” he whispered, not even bothering to refer to what “that” was.

The breath from Fenton’s long sigh warmed his bare skin. “It’s not exactly like… something I’ve been planning on saying or whatever, it just… came out.”

There was some sort of joke in there somewhere, but now probably wasn’t the best time.

Instead, Phantom cleared his throat. “You know I’ve never meant to hurt you, right?”

“Of course I know that.” Fenton tore open a packet of gauze and pressed it against the cuts on his arm. “Look, this… we’re not in some sitcom, alright? You don’t have to get all sappy on me or whatever. Just… let me take care of your stupid butt.”

Holding back one joke had been hard enough, but holding back a second was impossible. “Says the guy who couldn’t keep his hands off my ‘stupid butt’ a few nights ago.”

Fenton made an odd sort of choking sound, and Phantom couldn’t help but laugh out loud. “I take it all back,” the human grumbled as he taped down the gauze. “You’re the biggest jerk of them all.”

“Only for you.”

Another packet of gauze was torn open and taped to his shoulder before either of them spoke again. “Alright look, I promise I won’t get super sappy on you okay?” Phantom said. He scratched absently at the drain ringing around the pool. “But like… I also don’t want to go on hurting you.”

Fenton sighed again. “Seriously, you don’t ne-”

“No, I do. Even if it’s just for me.” He exhaled shakily. “You… you know I can’t just like, stop jumping in to help and stuff, and you’re right, maybe I do overreact a bit -”

“A bit?” Fenton asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Whatever. I overreact, okay? Happy?”

“Well… it’s at least nice to hear it come out of your own mouth,” Fenton admitted as he pressed a third gauze pad to his other shoulder. “But go on. Since you’re so determined to say this, apparently.”

Phantom closed his eyes as his chest tensed. “I was just gonna say I… I can try and be better about it. Like I can’t promise I won’t get in too far over my head, but… I can try. For you. So you don’t have to worry so much.”

Only the gash on his back remained open. Fenton trailed a gentle finger around the torn skin, leaving the barest traces of warmth in his wake. Phantom swallowed as he realized just how desperately he wanted to feel the full weight of the human’s warmth around him.

Finally, Fenton grabbed one last gauze pad. “You realize that means you can’t flip out on me if I get a papercut, right?”

“What? When have I ever done that?”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the other boy’s lips tick upward. “Kidding,” Fenton said with the tiniest laugh. “Just giving you a hard time.” He smoothed the last piece of tape in place and helped work the suit back around Phantom’s shoulders.

“Right,” Phantom grumbled as he zipped the suit back up. “Pick on the guy with a concussion. Hilarious.”

“Eh, consider it payback for being so stupid in the first place.”

“What, like having my pride ruined isn’t punishment enough?”

A lump formed in Phantom’s throat as Fenton leaned in close, the black and white of their bangs intermingling with each other. If he needed to breathe, surely he’d be so dizzy from how quickly and how shallow his breaths had become and how violently his stomach and core fluttered. The heat from Fenton’s breath warmed his flushed cheeks.

Ancients, this wasn’t anything new. They’d been this close - or even closer - too many times to count at this point. 

So why did he feel like a kid about to try to kiss their crush behind the school playground?

Right when he didn’t think he could hold out any longer before grabbing Fenton and closing the distance between them, the human broke out into a wide, devilish grin.

“Nope. Not enough.”

Phantom blinked as Fenton laughed and stood up, practically skipping away in glee.

Of course he would. That asshole.

Fenton’s giddy laugh echoed throughout the room as Phantom glared after him with a frown. A shimmer caught his eye, and he turned to look at the rippling surface of the pool. 

A wicked grin - the perfect mirror of Fenton’s - grew on his face.

Two could play at that game.

The throbbing pain of his head was a thing of the past as he lifted into the air and dashed after the human. Fenton was too lost in his amusement to even notice Phantom until it was too late and he had been plucked into the air.

“Not fair! Let me go!” he shouted, kicking at the ghost in protest.

Now it was Phantom’s turn to laugh. He dragged Fenton out over the pool. “Let you go? Are you sure you want me to do that?”

Fenton must not have noticed their position. “I swear, if you don’t let me go…”

Phantom shrugged. “Alright, suit yourself,” he said before dropping Fenton unceremoniously into the pool with an enormous splash.

He couldn’t contain his laughter as he watched Fenton sputter and flail to try and right himself. “Hey, look! You’ve just fallen in, and I’m not freaking out trying to rescue you or anything! I’d call that a solid developmeeeent!”

Fenton had apparently reoriented himself enough to latch a hand around Phantom’s ankle and yank him straight down into the water. A swarm of tiny little bubbles engulfed him as he sank down from the force of Fenton’s pull. 

Ectoplasm was far less dense than water, so by all accounts, he should’ve bobbed right back up. A little bit of flight worked wonders to keep himself underwater. Still grinning, he found Fenton easily and surged at him in a tackle.

Splashing and rushing water filled their ears as the two boys tussled with one another, grabbing and kicking and punching wherever they could, not caring that Phantom was still technically injured. In one moment, Phantom had Fenton pinned down underwater kicking furiously, and in the next, Fenton had shoved Phantom into the pool wall.

Phantom phased himself out from in between Fenton and the wall only to be pulled under again by the human. As they both sank deeper, hair swirling around their heads and ripped clothes fluttering in the current, Phantom turned his head and instantly locked into Fenton’s blue gaze.

If he’d had breath, it would’ve caught in his throat. The sight of the human - his human - with clothes and hair floating weightlessly in the water, framed by the soft golden light of the lamp behind him, absolutely mesmerized him.

The urge was too powerful to fight this time. Before he could think, he took Fenton’s flushed face in his hands and brought their lips together with a hunger that made his head turn into static for an entirely different reason than a concussion.

Their mouths fit perfectly together. Like they had been made for each other.

Fenton responded just as earnestly, wrapping his arms around Phantom’s neck and tangling his fingers in the flowing white hair. He pulled the ghost in closer and pressed into his mouth greedily. 

A thrill ran down Phantom’s spine as the heat from Fenton’s lips burned pleasantly against his chilly skin and sent a spike of warmth straight into his core. He brushed a thumb across his human’s cheekbone and smiled into the kiss when he heard Fenton’s watery sigh from his throat.

He could've stayed there for eternity, kissing his human in the light of the pool lamp. Just the two of them drinking each other in with a thirst that could only be satisfied by the other. 

All too soon for Phantom’s liking though, Fenton was humming insistently and pulling up on his hair. Stupid humans and their stupid need to breathe.

He sighed and broke off the kiss, wrapping his arms around Fenton’s waist as he kicked upward. They both gasped for breath when they emerged on the surface - Phantom more so out of old reflex than anything.

He shook dripping wet hair out of his face. “Wow,” he whispered breathlessly. “That was -”

He was cut off as Fenton used his hold on Phantom’s head to pull him fervently back into the kiss with a nibble at his ghost’s lower lip. Phantom’s eyes flew wide open in surprise before allowing himself to relax into his hold. His hands slid into their familiar spot on Fenton’s hips as the warmth washed over him like a tidal wave.

Fenton bit down harder on his ghost’s lip, eliciting a moan from Phantom and giving him deeper access to the other boy’s mouth. He slipped his tongue in between Phantom’s lips and swept it through his mouth with a longing that he could physically taste on his human. 

Ancients, he could get drunk off that taste.

He let himself get lost in the haze of pleasure as Fenton’s tongue freely explored his mouth, darting in and out and tracing the underside of his own. It wasn't often that Fenton took initiative like this, but he’d be damned if he wasn’t exhilarated by his human’s ability to take charge and absolutely ravish him. Something about it - losing himself to Fenton’s affection, the desperate need to pull himself even closer to him, his other half, his perfect match - lit a cold fire in his core that intertwined with the warmth that burned through his body.

Absently, he moved his hands up Fenton’s stomach, taking the time to ghost his fingers around the outline of his ab muscles. That earned him a gasp from his human, and warm fingers knotted themselves even further into his hair, as if he still wasn’t close enough.

A split second grin was the only warning before Phantom recaptured Fenton’s mouth. He swiped his tongue against the other boy’s impossibly smooth, heated lips and shivered in sync with the hum that issued from his human’s throat and reverberated into his own mouth. 

So maybe he still liked to take charge himself. He blamed it on a ghost thing.

His hands continued to trail up Fenton’s chest to where he had managed to heal him of the claw marks. The fact that he could sense his cold energy still lingering where the wounds had been sent his core into a rollercoaster of thrill and nearly insatiable attraction.

Fenton took advantage of the momentary distraction to angle his head deeper into the kiss and run the fingernails of one hand down the back of Phantom’s neck and spine, sending a whole new slew of nerves alight in his ghost. Phantom’s head swam, not from his concussion but from the electrifying realization that Fenton was not about to surrender in this fight to make the other melt to nothing in their arms.

The thought nearly sent him right then and there.

They were so close. Impossibly close. Their chests aligned perfectly, his core mirroring Fenton’s racing heart. Another stroke from his human’s tongue only filled him further with a buzzing heat that stole every coherent thought from his mind. Nothing else mattered except them and this moment. Spectra could’ve broken out and he wouldn’t care.

And yet he still wanted more.

So did Fenton, it seemed. As Phantom’s hands flew back down his human’s body and hooked themselves into the belt loops on his jeans, Fenton’s free hand pawed desperately at the zipper on his jumpsuit, pulling it down further and - 

BANG!

“- told you I’ll be there, alright? You should be thankful I can even take my lunch period to come get you! You know how many lunch detention shifts I had to take to convince Lancer to cover mine today?”

Both boys froze in horror as Coach Tetslaff’s voice echoed throughout the pool room. Phantom caught a flash of red and white rounding the corner, and in a panic, he flashed into invisibility, snatched Fenton’s waist, and pulled them straight up out of the water and all the way to the ceiling.

Fenton’s heart beat impossibly fast against his own chest as Tetslaff walked into the main area of the room, holding a cell phone up to her ear. “I wasn’t sayin’ it to make you feel guilty!” she huffed. “I was just - wait, hang on a sec.”

Phantom’s core seized as he watched her look at the still-rippling water with a mix of suspicion and exasperation. “Alright,” she shouted, lowering the phone just slightly. “Who’s here? Don’t think I don’t know about that skinny dippin’ dare goin’ round!”

If he hadn’t just narrowly avoided being seen making out with Fenton at 5:30 in the morning in the very much off-limits pool, he would’ve laughed at the idea of a skinny dipping dare. A town full of kids with jacked-up senses of risk thanks to ghosts, and that’s the best they can come up with?

As funny as he found it, he didn’t dare move a muscle. Judging by the tension he could feel in Fenton’s body, he must’ve had the same train of thought. 

Slowly, still watching the pool carefully, Tetslaff brought the phone back up to her ear. “What? Naw, sorry, just some dumb kids screwin’ around and askin’ to get suspended!” she said, directing the last part out towards the room as a whole. 

Phantom clutched at Fenton tighter when she suddenly looked up, straight at them. He realized in horror that though they were still invisible, they were both still dripping wet, emphasis on the dripping. Drops of water slid off their bodies and plinked into the pool below. Of course she would notice something like that.

For an agonizing, long few seconds, they floated there, not even daring to breathe as she squinted up at them. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, she shook her head. “Damn leaky roof,” she muttered. “My team gets first at state for four years runnin’ and they can’t even give me a decent roof.”

She stalked off towards the locker room doors, apparently still determined to find her ‘skinny dippers.’ “Whaddaya mean they’re givin’ me a woof? Roof, I said roof.” She pushed open the girls’ locker room door. “I swear I’m gettin’ you hearin’ aids for Christmas.”

Her voice faded away as the door shut behind her. Only when he couldn’t hear it any longer did Phantom let up on the invisibility. Adrenaline hit him like a wave and made his head hurt all over again.

Fenton, however, grinned in exhilaration. “Holy shit,” he whispered with a nervous giggle. “I didn’t even know she got here this early!”

Phantom didn’t tear his eyes away from the locker room door. Ancients help him if he let up his guard and ended up getting themselves caught. He shuddered to think of the scandal. And trying to explain the whole thing to their family. Why Fenton found the whole thing funny, he had no idea.

Speaking of the human, the hairs on the back of Phantom’s neck prickled as he felt his eyes on him. He looked to see Fenton wearing a stupid grin with an eyebrow raised. “What’s that look for?”

Fenton’s smile broadened. “Wanna pick up where we left off?” he asked with a playful lilt.

“Seriously? After that? When you know she’ll be coming back here?”

“Not here, you idiot,” Fenton said with a roll of his eyes. “There’s still plenty of time before school starts. More than enough to go back home and finish what you started.” He tapped a finger against Phantom’s lips.

Phantom only frowned. “You seriously can’t still be turned on right now,” he said around the human’s finger.

Fenton shrugged. “What can I say?” His pupils dilated as he traced a finger down the little sliver of Phantom’s exposed chest. “Something about the thrill of it.”

Phantom swallowed thickly, trying to ignore the tingle left in the wake of the human’s finger. “I wouldn’t exactly call us nearly getting caught thrilling. And will you stop that?”

“Aw, come on! Live a little!” Fenton’s goofy grin returned, still with half-lidded eyes, and he planted a peck on the ghost’s cheek.

“I’m a ghost. By definition, I don’t live.”

“... You’re no fun.”

“Hmm.” Phantom’s lips quirked up into a smile, and he leaned in to place a tender, feather-light kiss on his human’s lips. “Too bad you’re stuck with me then.”

Despite the kiss, Fenton still pouted. “You know if we don’t go back home, you might as well just leave me here. And then you won’t get to see me till after school. Or later. Maybe I’ll get detention on purpose just to mess with you.”

“... Alright, alright, we’re going.”

#danny phantom #pitch pearl #danny phantom pitch pearl #danny fenton #hannah writes #danny phantom fanfic #this uhhhh grew way longer than i was expecting #mildly suggestive

[reallydumbdannyphantomaus]

Switch

danny and jazz are such siblings. even when under a secret identity, danny cannot stop being an annoying younger brother. also, spectra! (ao3) (masterpost)

Part 3 Chapter 2

Something was wrong with Kwan.

If asked, Danny couldn’t exactly say what had concerned him in a way that made sense to most people. Kwan didn’t seem angry or sad. He wasn’t yelling all the time or too depressed to get out of bed. If anything, he seemed almost aggressively happy. Like the moment Danny started to worry that he was upset, he smiled bright and made a joke.

Maybe that was what did it. No one was actually that happy all the time. But all of a sudden, Kwan stopped complaining. He never sat down at the lunch table with a groan and launched into whatever stupid thing Paulina had done in Algebra. He never whined when he died in Doomed. He never put his feet in Danny’s lap and switched the channel from National Geographic to whatever sports game was playing. He didn’t make fun of Danny at all.

When exactly it started, Danny wasn’t sure. But he’d first noticed about a week prior, when he, on reflex, sneezed into his hand instead of his elbow. Kwan had always hated it when he did that. “That’s nasty, dude. Go wash your fucking hands,” he’d said every other time. One of the things about being a doctor’s kid was that he was particular about sanitization.

This time, though, Danny was already off the couch before he noticed that Kwan hadn’t said anything. Instead, he was staring at the pillow in his lap, mouth twitching in a grimace. Kwan, noticing his stare, turned and smiled up at him.

“Are you good, dude?” Kwan said. He was so fucking earnest, too. Like a goddamn puppy. Staring up at him with big ol’ eyes. So goddamn concerned because Danny stood up suddenly.

“Yeah. Yeah, no, I just…” Danny let the sentence trail off before sitting back down.

It didn’t hit him until he got home that night: Kwan hadn’t said anything about his sneeze.

So something was wrong, but what was he supposed to tell anyone? “Oh, he’s too happy”? “He didn’t make me wash my hands when I sneezed”? They’d call him a lunatic. Maybe he was. How could he know what was wrong if Kwan wasn’t going to say anything?

He could talk to Dr. Huang, but that felt too close to snitching. He didn’t even know for sure that something was wrong beyond just a feeling. This whole thing just felt… nuts.

Well, if he was crazy, maybe he needed to go to an expert.

—

“Any reason you insisted we meet in the mall and not at home?” Jazz said, slurping on an Orange Julius.

“Because Mom and Dad are somehow simultaneously the least involved and the nosiest parents in the world?”

“Fair enough.” Jazz took another slurp. “So what’s going on?”

Danny pinched his nose. “Okay, look, I’m going to tell you all this in confidence and if you ever tell one single other person about this I will never tell you anything ever again for as long as I live, okay?”

“Are you… okay? Like are you in danger? Because even if you hate me, I’m not going to let you—”

“No! Jesus,” Danny said, pointedly ignoring the fading bruises under his shirt. The hunter ghost—Skulker—had come after him again, but at least this time he’d managed to get the asshole in the thermos. Kwan had looked sick when he saw the mark, though Danny wasn’t sure why. Kwan had seen him worse before and had never come close to vomiting. “It’s just personal, is all, okay? And I don’t want to hear anything about it from Mom or Dad or Lancer or—or anyone!”

“Okay, okay.” Jazz held her hands up in surrender. “Are you finally going to tell me what happened between you, Sam, and Tucker?”

“Nothing happened, we just… don’t hang out anymore.”

“Uh huh.”

“I mean it!”

“Danny, the three of you have been best friends since fifth grade. You didn’t gradually grow apart; you suddenly fell apart. If you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine, but I’m not an idiot.”

Danny crossed his arms and slumped in his chair. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Jazz took another sip of her drink. “Okay, okay. Then what did you want to talk about?”

“Kwan.”

“Ah. The new friend.”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t talk about him much.”

It was true enough; Danny figured that talking about Kwan would only draw attention to the fact that Sam and Tucker weren’t around anymore. Of course, Jazz had noticed anyway.

“Well, he’s just—weird lately.”

“Weird how?”

“Gah, I don’t know! It sounds dumb if I say it out loud.” Danny slumped even further in his seat.

“Dumb or not, I can’t help you if you don’t tell me anything.”

“It’s—he’s too nice!”

Jazz tilted her head in confusion. “And that’s a problem?”

“No! I mean, yes!” Danny groaned. “Look, he wasn’t being mean to me before, you know? But… he teased me sometimes. We teased each other. But now it’s like he can’t be anything other than perfectly nice all the time, even when we’re just messing around. Like, the other day I sneezed into my hand—”

Jazz wrinkled her nose. “Gross, Danny.”

“That’s what he always said! He always told me to wash my hands and that it was disgusting and stuff. Now he just sits there awkwardly even though I know he noticed.”

Jazz hmmed. “It does sound a little strange, but not overly worrisome. Can you think of anything that happened recently that might have impacted him?”

Danny thought back for a moment. “Well, he was friends with the kid that died.”

“You see? It could very well be a response to the grief he was feeling, then. Something that just needs to run its course.”

Danny shook his head. “But he wasn’t acting like this at first. It only started after—” The words died in his throat.

“After what?”

“The shrink.” Jazz gave him a look. “Sorry. Grief counselor. He started seeing her around when this whole thing started.”

“Danny, Dr. Spectra is a highly trained specialist. She’s trying to help Kwan. Correlation is not necessarily causation.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means that just because two things happened at the same time, it doesn’t mean they’re linked. He could just have other things on his mind.”

Danny groaned. “Ugh, I know it sounds silly and—and small! But he’s not acting like himself. Maybe it has nothing to do with the—with Dr. Spectra, but something’s wrong, Jazz. I know it.”

Kwan didn’t seem sad, it was true, but—shouldn’t he? His friend just died! He should be upset. Conflicted. Instead, it seemed like Kwan was going out of his way to seem entirely unaffected. It couldn’t be normal.

Jazz slurped the dregs of her Orange Julius. “Are you sure you aren’t just looking for problems to avoid thinking about something else?”

“Am I—what?”

“Are you sure this isn’t about whatever happened with Sam and Tucker?”

Heat flushed his face. “Yes, I’m sure. And I told you I didn’t—”

“I’m just worried—”

“—want to talk about it! I know exactly what happened! I don’t need you to therapize me about it!”

Jazz shrank in her seat. “I’m only trying—”

“I don’t care! Why don’t you listen to me for once?”

“I am listening—”

“It sure doesn’t feel like you are.” Danny jolted out of his chair, knocking it over. Heads snapped over to their table, and his face reddened further with embarrassment. He picked the chair up and jammed it back under the table. “Whatever. I’m done with this.”

“Danny, wait!”

He ignored her and stalked away.

—

Danny wandered Amity Park in a fugue of fury for twenty minutes before he calmed down enough to start making a plan. The conversation with Jazz, frustrating though it was, had also brought him to his first lead: the shrink.

Okay, so it wasn’t much of a lead. Correlation, causation, blah blah blah. But even if it wasn’t actually her, this Spectra lady might have some idea of what was bothering Kwan, right?

As the thought crossed his mind, Danny shook his head. No. No. That was the sort of shit that had pissed him off about Sam and Tucker. Invasion of privacy and shit. He could not turn around and be the world’s biggest hypocrite about it now.

Maybe he could just… look her up. Spectra didn’t sound like a common name; maybe he could find something on the internet. A school she used to work for, or something. If she was legit, she should have credentials online, yeah? A thread to pull at. Something.

Tapping in “Spectra” to the search bar led him to a brand of breast pumps. Damn it. Looked like he’d need a first name at the very least.

He could ask Jazz, but she was kind of the last person he wanted to talk about this with. He could ask Kwan, but he was definitely the last person he wanted to talk about it with. He could go by her office on Monday?

That would be reasonable, he supposed. Just wait.

It was Saturday, so the school was closed. He was supposed to head over to Kwan’s in an hour, but he hadn’t planned on leaving the conversation with Jazz so abruptly, so now he was stuck wandering around the city until it was time to go over there. He could go home, but Jazz would just corner him again. He could show up early, he supposed, but since Kwan was the one he was so worried about…

Danny put his phone away and started back down the street. Mindless wandering it was. He walked for another five minutes before he stopped and faced a brick wall.

“I hate waiting,” he said, resting his head against the wall.

Well, he had ghost powers. He had an hour to kill. He could just… sneak into the shrink’s office. Take a peak at her name and maybe see if she had anything incriminating lying around. Like cult robes or human bones or something.

The thought had barely formed in his mind before he was slipping into an alleyway and transforming into his ghost form—into Phantom. 

(He’d started referring to his ghost self as Phantom out loud, even. Kwan didn’t even tease him for it.)

He flew toward school, flickering on his invisibility. One of those things he’d been practicing with Dr. Huang: using two powers simultaneously. No more falling unconscious from exhaustion. Dr. Huang insisted that if she was going to let him fight ghosts, even provisionally, then she was going to do her best to make sure that he was as prepared as possible. If he wasn’t hanging out with Kwan, then he was training with her.

(You aren’t gonna die, she said, not on my watch. Not if I have anything to do with it.)

(Danny whined and complained, but there was a little warmth in his chest at how blatantly she cared.)

And he could see the payoff now, flying while invisible like it was second nature. He had enough brain space leftover to obsess over what was wrong with Kwan and that terrible conversation with Jazz, even.

He practiced holding intangibility, too. If he didn’t have the brain space to obsess anymore, that was an unrelated consequence.

It can be forgiven, then, that since he was putting so much effort into not thinking, he didn’t notice that, when he flew into Spectra’s office, someone else was already there.

He flicked off his invisibility and intangibility all at once, hovering over Spectra’s desk, and someone screamed.

“Ahh!” he screamed back. The bright light of a phone flashlight blinded him, and he pawed at the light switch with his eyes squeezed shut.

“Who—Who’s there?” a thin, familiar voice demanded.

Danny blinked away the spots in his vision to see fucking Jazz, trembling but trying to pretend she wasn’t, one hand on her hip. Which, seriously? He’d tried so fucking hard to avoid Jazz and her big sister disapproval, and where did he find her but breaking into school. If he wasn’t currently a ghost and also breaking into school, he would so be lording this over her head for forever.

“Uh, Phan—Phantom.” He tried to make his voice deeper, but it cracked in the middle of the word. Fucking puberty.

“Who’s Phan—are you glowing?”

“Um. Yeah.”

“Are you floating?”

“Yeah?”

“No.” Jazz shook her head, stepping back. “No, no no no, this can’t be real!”

“Look, I know it’s weird, but can you please freak out more quietly?” Danny flicked his head back and forth, like someone would spring out of the darkness. It was stupid; who else would be here, anyway? But he’d already had one big surprise and he wasn’t looking for another one.

“You’re a ghost?”

“...Yeah.”

Whatever reaction he was expecting her to have (fear? anger?), it wasn’t for her to kick the wall and shout, “God dammit!”

“Are you okay?”

“No! If my parents find out that they’ve been right about ghosts this whole time and I’ve been wrong, they are going to be so insufferable. My brother, too.”

Danny couldn’t help it. He pointed and laughed.

“Yeah, yeah, yuck it up,” she said, because she was exactly the kind of teenager to say “yuck it up” without a hint of irony. “Can we, like, agree to call you a ghoul or something? Literally anything other than a ghost?”

“Absolutely not,” he said. Just because she didn’t know he was her kid brother didn’t make him any less her kid brother.

“Ugh, fine. You’re not gonna, like, kill me or anything, though?”

“Nah, you’re good.”

“Well, at least my parents were wrong about one thing.”

Danny felt a blush rise up to his cheeks and he turned away from Jazz. She was really willing to trust him despite him being a ghost that she just met. He’d never tell her, but it was nice.

“Yeah, I’m just here to—wait, why are you here?” She’d been so dismissive of the idea that the shrink could be involved, but now here she was not even an hour later, breaking and entering at the school when she’d always been the most obnoxiously well-behaved person he’d ever met. It made no sense. Was Jazz secretly a rule-breaking badass this whole time?

No. No way.

“None of your business!” Jazz reared back and crossed her arms. “Why are you here?”

If that’s how she wanted to play it… Danny stuck his tongue out at her. “None of your business.”

“Jeez, I meet an actual ghost, and he’s a freaking child.”

“You started it.”

Jazz groaned and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Fine. Fine. I’ll tell you why I’m here if you tell me why you’re here, okay?”

“Okay,” Danny lied.

“Look, I've been… shadowing Dr. Spectra for a couple weeks now and—something's off about her. She keeps being confused when I mention stuff about psychology that she should know. She hides it well, but she always changes the subject when I bring up any specific theory or practice.”

Danny raised an eyebrow. This was a very different story than “she's a highly trained specialist.”

“So she sucks at her job?”

“Well, that's what I thought at first. Like, definitely bad, don't get me wrong, but not… intentional.”

A hand reached into his chest and squeezed. “But now?”

“My little brother. He's worried about his friend, and I—well, he came to me and said his friend started acting weird when he started talking to Dr. Spectra, and I thought it had to be a coincidence, because she’s not a great therapist but that doesn’t make her evil, and I didn’t want to badmouth her to my kid brother, so I didn’t say anything to him, but then I was curious so”—she took a deep breath and unlocked her phone—“I googled her name, and, well, there was only one result that seemed to be about her.”

It was a blog, homemade, with a glittery pink header that read “Justice for Sarah” in curling font over a blue background. The most recent post read:

The IDIOTS at WXKZ still refuse to print the truth about Sarah’s murder even though we showed them her diary. So I just have to keep posting about it here, I guess. My daughter was depressed, yes, but she was getting better! She was seeking help! She even went to her school’s guidance counselor all on her own. And this ““““““Doctor””””””” Penelope Spectra started telling her lies and making her worse all over again.

Sarah wrote about it in her therapy diary. “Dr. Spectra says I need to not worry my parents so much” “I have to make sure I’m not a problem anymore” She was NEVER a problem! She was my baby! And I don’t care that she swallowed the pills on her own, this Spectra lady is the one that killed her!!!!!

But the cops won’t listen, and the journalists won’t listen, so I just have to keep her story alive here. Please, help me get justice for my daughter. She was 15. She liked drawing bunny ears on all our pictures of her. Don’t let Spectra kill someone else.

Danny could imagine, for a moment, a woman sitting at her desk, furiously typing this post, scrubbing tears from her eyes. There was no filter. No clever designs to enhance empathy, to draw his attention to just the right places. No well-crafted language to make him just the right combination of angry and sad. Whoever made this blog clearly had no experience with this sort of thing. It was honest, in a way that very little on the internet was anymore.

“Oh,” he said. “Oh shit.”

Was this real? Was this the same Spectra? Was she saying this garbage to Kwan?

(If Jazz was right, then he almost felt bad for Spectra, because Dr. Huang would definitely, definitely kill her.)

(He thought about the tightness of Kwan’s face when he insisted that he had nothing to be sad about, really, don’t worry about him, and he didn’t feel bad anymore.)

“Yeah,” Jazz said. “And, I don’t know, it could be a lie. I found an obituary for Sarah, but it doesn’t mention cause of death or anything. It could just be a grieving parent, looking for someone to blame.”

Danny coughed. Act normal. Act normal. This didn’t affect him personally. “Or it could be something worse?”

“Pretty much. I just can’t figure out why. What would someone get from intentionally being a bad therapist? What possible motive could there be?”

There was a pounding in his skull and his chest. It felt hot, but he couldn’t stop to focus on it. He was pretty sure he knew what it was, ultimately, and it would only make Jazz suspicious of him if he let it out now. “Maybe some sort of cult thing?”

Was he speaking words? Were words coming out of his mouth?

Jazz shook her head. “That seems like something that would involve more people, y’know?”

“I’m all out of guesses, then.”

She rolled her eyes and moved to the desk, tugging at one of the drawers. Danny pushed down the fire in his head, the red swamping his vision and floated forward to help.

They made quick work of the desk, skipping through a bunch of innocuous files, some fidget spinners, blank notebooks and planners. For someone who had been in town for weeks now, Spectra really didn’t have much personal stuff in her office. Danny wasn’t sure if that was suspicious, or if he was inclined to see everything as suspicious right now.

“So, why are you here?” Jazz said as they moved on to the filing cabinet. It was locked, but a simple tug with an intangible hand pulled it right open. “You never did say.”

Danny winced. “Uh. Same thing.”

“Oh, your little brother also made you suspicious that the therapist you’ve been shadowing might not just be bad at her job, but actively evil?”

“Something like that?”

“Hey! The deal was: I tell you my story, you tell me yours!”

Danny opened his mouth to say something smart that would deflect all suspicion, but he was cut off by the sound of the office door handle turning. Before either of them could panic, he grabbed Jazz’s shoulder and turned them both invisible.

The door opened and in stepped Spectra’s odd little assistant, the short man with the green eyes. 

“Now,” he said, voice soft, “I know we didn’t leave those lights on when we left yesterday. Is someone in here?”

The little man swerved around to look under the desk, stopping right in front of Danny and Jazz. Jazz let out a little whimper before Danny got his hand over her mouth and the man’s eyes whipped up.

“Ah,” he said, “so there’s a little ghostie in here. Don’t worry, don’t worry. I’m not here to muscle in on your turf. Why don’t you come out so we can talk? Face to face?”

Danny said nothing, clenching his hand harder around Jazz’s mouth. He felt something wet soak into his palm, but he couldn’t tell if it was Jazz’s sweat or tears. 

“Oh, come now. We can work together! Look,” and there was a bright flash of light and instead of the man, there was now a green blob ghost. “See! I’m one of you. More or less.”

Jazz got impossibly tenser against him.

Yeah, Danny was now willing to say that Spectra was probably evil.

“There’s no need for any… hostility between us. We won’t get in your way if you don’t get in ours.”

There was cement in his mouth, binding his jaws together. There was lava in his chest, burning holes in his heart. He couldn’t afford to be either afraid or angry right now, though. Not with Jazz right there, so very scared that he could feel her heart beating through her shirt.

“What is in your way?” he said at long last. His voice sounded like gravel, but it should help to disguise him.

“Oh, very little. We’ve got our own set up here in the school. Honestly, we’d be glad to have you around. More ghosts means more misery for us.”

“Misery?”

“Yes, well, you see, this is what I meant when I said more or less. My boss and I—we need to feed on human emotion. Misery really does the job for us, and what better place than a high that’s beset by ghosts?”

Danny said nothing, horror wiring his mouth shut.

“So you see, we have absolutely no reason to interfere with whatever your plans are for this town, and we pose absolutely no threat. Honestly, we should be friends.”

Jazz trembled in his hold. That was enough information gathering, then.

“Uh, okay, then,” he said. “Bye.”

Maybe not what a cool, mysterious ghost would’ve said, but he was too strung out, too terrified, too furious to care. He tightened his hold on Jazz, turned them both intangible, and flew them out of the school and into the night.

#danny phantom #dp switch #my writing #my fanfic #kwan #look this whole chapter is just danny and jazz being siblings and also cute little investigators #i was SO tempted to give jazz a little deerstalker hat but it just didnt make sense in the timeline #but know that in my heart she's dressed like sherlock holmes

[psychangels]

I have an idea for a fic if you'd want to write it...

Basically, Chai and Peppermint are sharing some guilt over their actions towards each other in the early game.

Pep feels really guilty because she forced Chai into her mission to stop Kale, and now that the adrenaline has worn off, he's paying the price. (Very sore not just from the fighting wounds, but his arm as well.)

Chai feels just as bad because he was nowhere near pleasant towards her, kept throwing wrenches into her plans, generally being annoying, etc.

Hopefully, a talk amongst them can dispel any concerns that they may have over the other hating them.

they're so. y'know?

"Hey...Chai? Can we talk...?" "Uh—sure. What's up?"

"I—" Peppermint stops, sighs, then starts again. "How...how are you holding up?"

"Eh. Could be worse."

She looks away. He tilts his head.

"How are you holding up?" "Me? You're the one that was getting thrown around!"

"It wasn't that bad. You're the one with personal stakes in all this—being family and all that."

"...Yeah. I guess."

Chai's brow furrows. "You haven't answered my question, y'know."

"Oh—I...I'm fine." "You sure?" "Yeah."

It goes quiet for a bit.

Then, Chai says, "Thanks." "For...what?"

"...For, uh...ask—cari—" He stops with a huff. After a beat, he continues. "Putting up with my bullshit."

"Wh—you don't need to thank me for that." "Yeah I do."

"Well—thanks for helping me. With everything. Even though you got hurt, and almost..."

"Died?" "...Yeah." Her reply comes out a whisper. "Well, I didn't. And...it's no biggie. I'd say we're even."

"No biggie...? Even? You risked your life to help me! How are we even?!"

"Like I said, you put up with m...my shit. So. Even." "That's not even close to being even, Chai!" "Sure it is." "In what world?!"

"In this one, where I was a shithead to you because—well—I don't know. But I was a total asshole. And you didn't..." He trails off, his gaze dropping to the floor.

"...Yeah. You were kind of a dick. But I was, too. So we're even."

When Chai grins, she huffs.

"About this specifically. We aren't even when it comes to you helping me."

"Yeah we are." "No! We aren't!" Peppermint shakes her head, a scowl on her face. "Why not?" "Because, Chai! You—you took down all of the department heads—" "We did that together, actually." "—you got rid of Kale, destroyed SPECTRA, found my mom—" "We also did that together." "—and you weren't mad that I...I lied to you." Her voice cracks.

"What?"

"A-About Kale—and Mom. How we're related."

"...I don't understand. You never lied. You just didn't talk about it. That's not lying."

"I—I guess. I still hid it."

"Hey, if I was related to him, I wouldn't wanna tell anyone either. He's a total dickbag. And you couldn't have told me you were related to Roxanne without me knowing it meant you're also related to him."

"...That's true."

They sit in the quiet for a bit.

"This still doesn't make us even," Peppermint says.

Chai sighs. "Look, I won't keep arguing about this, but it totally does. You don't owe me anything. Okay?"

She stares at the floor.

"Okay, Peppermint?"

He sighs when she still doesn't respond.

"...Y'know," he says after another moment of silence, "if you wanna do something for me, I..."

He trails off. Then sighs. When he continues, his voice is quiet.

"A hug would be nice."

Peppermint chuckles, shaking her head. She pulls him into a firm hug.

They stay like that for a little while.

Before she pulls away, she murmurs, "Still not even," quiet enough that he doesn't hear.

#hi fi rush #chai hi fi rush #peppermint hi fi rush #angelanswers.txt #angelwrites.txt #don't tag as ship #mayoi

[gummy-sharks666]

Sweetie, I have a new meal that I wish you to cook 😋😋😋 for the random hcs of bakugan characters.

Shun, Dan, Marucho and Billy.

Have fun!! ❤️🤩❣️

SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG 🫣

Shun:

Gender: v gender-fluid/demi boy

Sexuality: I’m thinking his sexuality is also p fluid but he’s probably attracted to more fem ppl

A ship I have: haven’t seen s4 but I���ve been converted to the shunsellon agenda. They can be emo together <3 might be strange but I like shun/ace 🫣

BROTP: Dan definitely. They’ve had ups and downs together, childhood friends. A lot of ppl ship them but idk I just see them more as rlly good friends personally. Also fabia and Alice

NOTP: uhh probably Shun/Fabia. I think they’re just friends

Random hc: his favorite MCR album is Black Parade but hes too afraid to admit it bc then he’d either be called basic or he’d have to explain the reason is because of losing his mom and how the hard he relates to the lyrics

General opinion: I like him and HOO boy I shave a history with him for sure. He was def one of my faves as a child and definitely contributed to my gender crisis. Also began my love for Ventus and Ventus users. I don’t think I ever crushed on him but I wanted to be him so bad…

Dan:

Gender: someone has to be the cis male of the group, it’s him

Sexuality: bi but definitely has not explored his attraction to masc presenting ppl as much. It takes him awhile to figure out he’s bi

A ship I have: THERAPY LMAO 💀 but fr I’d say either Spectra or Anubias, although I think those relationships would be more one sided (Dan not really noticing they’re crushing on him so damn hard). I think that’s why I like it so much too bc I’ve had MANY crushes like that before and i like angst… something something Pete Wentz lyrics be like

BROTP: Shun for sure, him and Runo strike me as the divorced couple who end up being besties after going separate ways and learning ab themselves more. Also Drago obvs

NOTP: Literally any female character in the show

Random hc: adhd for SURE

General opinion: I’d say season 1 Dan will forever be my fave. He’s a little shithead kid who gets the bomb dropped on him and he has to start reevaluating how he looks at the other people around him, but that starts to falter in the later seasons where he just becomes the stereotypical hero who gets all the buffs and does no wrong, which does his character such a disservice. I honestly like that he was such a dick in the beginning bc that’s how most kids are, but the point is they learn through meeting other people and experiencing shit. We were robbed of that for Dan after season 1 IMO. But overall he’s fine ig.

Marucho:

Gender: reads as a boy to me personally, now that I think ab it him being a trans guy is so real. Short trans kings unite 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻

Sexuality: his sexuality is fluid. He just likes who he likes, but I think he definitely tends to fall more for personality than looks

A ship I have: MARUREN OBVIOUSLY!! Literally one of the best things ab season 3

BROTP: Julie and Runo definitely

NOTP: uhhhhh idk honestly I haven’t seen him be shipped with too many ppl for me to be like “oh hell naw” 😭😭

Random hc: he def has a bakugan discord and probably a separate one for him and all the original brawlers from when the game first started. Him and Julie coordinate all the reunions and meetups

General opinion: I love this dude fr. He’s fucking LOADED but he’s still the sweetest kid in the universe. He’s not just hella book smart but he’s extremely emotionally intelligent too. I also relate to him with that whole gifted kid past a bit,,, hes honestly just all around a fantastic character I’m a big fan of Marucho. Def one of the best characters in the series

Billy:

Gender: yknow what,, I’m gonna say it. Billy gives me transmasc vibes

Sexuality: straight

A ship I have: Canon, but Julie. I think they’re whole backstory connection, the falling out and reconnection was really cute. I hope they have a good rest of their lives together 🫡

BROTP: Jake. I think they’d be homies. Jake is the third wheel on his and Julie’s dates

NOTP: uhhh idk honestly,,, maybe klaus 💀

Random hc: huge fan of early 2000’s pop alongside Julie

General opinion: I think he’s cool. He’s not one they expand on a whole lot but him and Julie are one of the very few straight ships I rlly like

#bakugan #bakugan battle brawlers #gundalian invaders #bakugan gundalian invaders #new vestroia #bakugan mechtanium surge #bakugan new vestroia #dan kuso #shun kazami #billy hargrove #marucho marukura #character hcs #character asks

[magmalaz]

I just created a Hi-Fi Rush AU!(along with a friend who has enabled my hyperfixation) :D Presenting...

The Swapped!AU (or the HiFiSwapped!AU, for tagging purposes)

This Au changes the main team, loosely like this:

Chai is Chai, he is eternal 

Peppermint gets replaced by Kale

808 gets replaced by a new character, 373 the doggo bot

Macaron gets replaced by Zanzo 

Korsica gets replaced by Rekka 

and Roquefort is there

On top of that, Peppermint replaces Kale as the CEO (And Macaron replaces Zanzo, but yeah)

I also replaced Roquefort with a brainwashed Roxanne as the Head of Finance because i really wanted to keep it down with the ocs.

Ok! Now i show you my designs and explain more (cut here because this is a long post)

First of:

AU!Peppermint

I based most of her redesign on her costumes.

In this AU, she felt ignored by her family due to Kale being the favored child and, after a few years of planning, took over Vandelay Technologies.

She usurped the company from Roxanne simularly to Kale, using a program/AU!Spectra to control Roxanne to step down and become the Head of Finance instead.

She is a hands on type of person, so she is more prominent than Kale was canonically.

AU!Kale

His and Peppermints ages are closer together in this Au.

Kale is pretty simular to his canon self. He was used to other people doing most of the work for him and is very bossy at the start. He left home because he felt like he wasn't his own person(and because he thought his mother was too overbearing).

He was, like Peppermint, very skeptical of Chai in the beginning, but he was glad to not have to do all the dirty work anymore.

He can overcharge doors and vents, but he can't break the shields of the enemies. Due to this, they don't get introduced until the R&D tracks. Oh and Zanzo takes this over once he gets around.

This counts as an oc i think. 373 (Now known as Subw00fr!) My baby boy!

He was named after a synthesizer

373 is Kales version of 808! He is based on a golden retriever. Nothing more to say here this is the best one

AU!Roquefort

This version of him starts as a human, suffering from a chronic illness. He was a family friend of the Vandelays and stuck around with Kale as a father figure.

As the story progresses, he will eventually look like his canon version. This lets him do the same things Korsica canonically does.

AU!Rekka

Rekka starts as the Head of Production like in canon. She is a lot less overbearing and more reasonable (She is still the strict Boss we love tho-) and she is very skeptical of Peppermint, as in this AU she was the Head of Production under Roxanne as well.

After the canon fight, instead of exploding she joins the gang instead (due to Roquefort convincing her. Neither Kale nor Chai would manage that at this point)

Due to her strength, she can break Z-Shielding, which gets introduced earlier in this AU. And she replaces Korsica in the Hideout.

AU!Zanzo

Zanzo was the Head of R&D under Roxanne instead of Macaron. His money spending habits were not canon-level bad in this AU because otherwise this would not work-

He was subsequently thrown out as Peppermint took over and from then on hid in R&D. Alone.

In this AU he was also the one that build Kales robot body after an accident. This is so I can write drama because they now know eachother.

Zanzo replaces Macaron in the Hideout and can overload regular shielding(with his swords like the anime character he is) . He also constantly tests new stuff on Chai, under the guise of 'Training'.

Sooo

I will be writing a fanfiction on this AU and i will link it here once i get it going!

Hope you enjoyed my chaos!

#HiFiSwapped!AU #I worked hard on this #so i hope it does not dissappear into the tumblr void #making that fanfiction 100% i need it- #hi fi rush #AU #hfr #hi fi rush au #hfr kale #hfr peppermint #hfr rekka #hfr zanzo #hfr roquefort #hfr chai #hi fi rush kale #hi fi rush peppermint #hi fi rush rekka #hi fi rush zanzo #hi fi rush roquefort #hi fi rush chai #roquefort #zanzo #kale vandelay #peppermint vandelay #hi fi rush 373 #making that a tag to filter my own posts

[samgirl98]

Wail of the Silent 6/?

Prev | Next

TW: Mention of Suicide

Spectra smiled as her latest victim patient left her office. She had only been in Gotham for ten days, but she already had a job in Arkham Asylum thanks to overshadowing and fake credentials. The whole place was a pit of misery.

So far, seven patients have killed themselves due to her feeding off them. Oh well, as the saying goes, you have to crack a few eggs to make omelets and all that. It’s not Spectra’s fault they were weak.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t get to the main rogues. They weren’t filled with misery, just madness. They gave her no nutrients, so she avoided them and went for the weaker ones.

Still, the patients in the asylum were nothing compared to the young man she had found the night before. She had left a piece of herself (a new development as her powers grew.) to feed off him when he felt miserable. It had already happened once that day, but he got over it quickly. The bite size snack left her craving more.

Spectra smiled as her next patient entered her room.

____

“You said you had an idea,” Danny asked as Jason led him into a room with three computer screens, some weapons lying around, and a bunch of wooden boxes.

Jason nodded; he had put his red helmet on again.

“Yeah. You know Arkham Asylum?”

“My sister has mentioned it once or twice, but I don’t know much about it. She wants to work there ultimately.”

Danny couldn’t see Jason’s expression but knew Jason was feeling judgmental.

“What? What’s wrong with that?”

“Casper—”

“Casper, wow, so original. I’m nicknamed after my high school.”

“Your high school is called Casper? What the fuck?”

“The elementary school is named Poltergeist elementary school.”

“Poltergeist elementary? No, you know what? That doesn’t matter. Arkham is where the criminally insane end up. I mean, these are people who have little chance of integrating into society, and those who do become ‘better’ usually end up reoffending again. I know of three psychiatrists who worked there who ended up being patients there. Your sister must be a special person to want to work there willingly.”

Hmm, it seemed Danny had to have a word with Jazz.

“You think Spectra is there?”

“There is no other place in Gotham that has as much misery as Arkham Asylum.”

“Okay, I believe you, but how will we know if Spectra is there.”

Amusement. Mischief.

“I can tap into the security camera and database.”

____

Bruce Wayne stared into his cup of coffee. There was guano floating in it. He sighed and looked back at the reports.

Something was wrong in the asylum.

An hour ago, he had gotten a ping of someone who had committed suicide in Arkham; the death had marked the eighth one in ten days, and no one else was worried or investigating it. He knew most people and law enforcement didn’t care for those who resided in Arkham, but to ignore something clearly wrong…well, Bruce wouldn’t be complacent.

He hacked into Arkham’s systems. Batman would get to the bottom of this.

____

Lady Gotham felt her being boiling with anger. Another one of her citizens had ended up dead by their own hands due to the interloper.

She sent the newly formed shade toward her favored knight and the ghost child. She knew they would help her lost ones. For now, she let her rage be known through the thunder and lightning in the sky.

____

“Eight suicides in ten days, and no one has reported on this?” Danny asked incredulously.

Jason shrugged; he knew how little people cared for the patients in Arkham. The only ones who probably noticed and cared were his family the bats. However, they wouldn’t know what could be happening, so it would take them longer to solve the problem.

For half a second, Jason thought about asking for their help but felt phantom pains in his throat.

He felt sadness and regret deep in his chest. (His core was humming out his emotions.)

Soon, he felt an overwhelming misery. It felt as if it was suffocating him!

“Jason! Jason, calm down!”

Calm. I’m here—calm, calm.

It took a moment, but Jason came back to himself. What the fuck was that?

“Spectra has found a way to feed off you even while far away. We need to find her and stop her.”

Anger, anger. I will stop her. Anger—she must be stopped.

Danny touched Jason’s shoulder, “Don’t worry, we’ll find her.”

Jason nodded, already feeling better. A part of him was dreading Danny’s departure, and it hadn’t even been twenty-four hours since he met the guy.

Danny kept his hand on Jason’s shoulder, grounding him, while he looked through Arkham’s security camera.

“There! That’s her.”

Jason watched the camera as a red-haired woman left an office. She had on glasses and a red suit.

Jason looked into the records.

“Penelope Spectra. She started ten days ago, the same time the suicides started.”

“I bet if we look around, we’d find suicide rates have gone up in other places.”

Jason nodded and started looking into it. He wouldn’t let the bitch get away with it.

#wail of the silent #dc x dp #dp x dc