#Vlad was really creepy alright?

[torscrawls]

Fishing for the Truth

It's time to post for @ecto-implosion! I got the privilege to write a fic for the wonderful and talented kad! Check out their wonderful artwork!

Summary:

Two half ghosts, one ghost dog, and one ghost hunter go fishing together. What could possibly go wrong? Now if only Vlad hadn’t gotten it in his head to suddenly tell Jack the truth about being a halfa, and if the fish in the lake hadn’t turned out to be murderous ghosts, the trip might have been quite nice. But of course Danny couldn’t be that lucky.

Word count: 10,575

You can read it on ao3 here!

--

Danny almost went ghost by instinct when his bedroom door suddenly slammed open with enough force to bounce off the wall, nearly hitting the person bursting into his room in the face.

“Son!” Jack screamed as Danny hastily hid the ectogun he had been tinkering with under the new dog clothes Jazz had made for Cujo before turning around in his desk chair.

“Dad,” Danny answered warily and thanked his unlucky star that Jack was so unobservant.

“What do you say about a fishing trip with your old man?”

Danny blinked in surprise. That wasn’t what he had been expecting, but for once he was having a slow Saturday and it had been ages since he had actually spent some time with his dad one-on-one. “That… That actually sounds fun.”

“Great!” Jack said in a tone of voice somewhere between enthusiastic and foghorn. And then he just stood there.

“You mean… now?” Danny hazarded a guess.

“No time like the present!”

“Yeah, sure. Just give me a minute, alright?”

“Okay! I’ll go pack,” Jack said before turning on his heel and exciting the room as suddenly as he had arrived. Danny let out a long breath, got up, and closed the door after his dad. As soon as the door had clicked shut he became aware of a low scratching sound.

Danny frowned and opened the door again. The hallway was empty.

He slowly closed it again, and… There! There it was again!

“Hello?” he hesitantly called out. He really hoped it wasn’t a ghost looking to mess with him.

There was no answer, except an increasing intensity of the scratching.

Danny slowly turned in place until his eyes landed on his closed closet doors. There. The sound was no doubt coming from inside his closet. Great. Not creepy at all. Danny slowly inched closer, raising a hand and preparing an ectoblast. He really didn’t want to get into a fight right now, he just wanted to have a nice and calm—and above all else; ordinary—Saturday.

The door handle was cold in his hand when he carefully gripped it and then slowly eased it open and—

And was met by a face full of slobbering green ghost-dog.

“Cujo! I almost shot you!” Danny complained with a laugh as he hugged the—currently— small dog tightly.

The dog in his arms simply barked and wiggled with happiness, his tongue leaving long, dripping green streaks on Danny’s cheeks.

“Yeah, yeah, you know I can’t stay mad at you.”

Cujo squirmed out of his arms and jumped to the ground, immediately going for one of his toys, nabbing it from the ground and impatiently showing it to Danny.

“I’m sorry boy. I don’t have time to play right now. I’m gonna go on a trip with my dad.”

Cujo tilted his head cutely in obvious confusion.

Danny couldn’t keep himself from patting it. “Sorry. Not today.”

Cujo whined but then went to the door, looking over his shoulder at Danny, as if waiting for him to follow.

“You can’t come with me. Even dad would notice that you’re a ghost.”

The mere thought of Jack finding out about Cujo made his stomach clench. His parents had gotten better when it came to their prejudices against ghosts, but they still had some way to go.

Cujo wasn’t aware of any of Danny’s internal struggles and simply stepped impatiently in place and whined again, eyes locked on the closed door.

Danny cast about for something to distract the little guy before he got too impatient and decided to simply go through the door. It was a testament to how far he had come that he hadn’t already. Danny almost laughed. What did it say that he trusted his dead dog to behave better than he did his own parents?

His eyes landed on the new clothes that Jazz had made for Cujo. She had insisted that it was a practice run before making clothes for a friend’s dog, but Danny was fairly certain she had just wanted to dress the little guy in some cute clothes. He couldn’t blame her.

“Hey, boy! Let’s see if these fit.”

What followed was a very undignified attempt to get the clothes on him, which Cujo seemed to interpret as a wrestling match; refusing to sit still and turning intangible at every opportunity.

“Come on! Do you want to come with me or not?”

That managed to get him to calm down. Sometimes Danny was certain the dog understood everything he said and simply chose not to listen a majority of the time. The little bastard was lucky he was so cute.

When he finally managed to get them on they fit perfectly. Of course. He hadn’t expected anything less from Jazz.

He held the little dog up in front of him, looking at the cute little sweater and goggles that covered his red eyes.

“Wow, Cujo! You almost look like a real boy!”

Cujo gave a small yip, looking very pleased with himself.

“Danny!” Came a booming call from downstairs, “Let’s go! Are you ready?!”

Danny tilted his head as he considered the dog hanging happily from his hands. “Maybe dad won’t notice that you’re a ghost underneath the clothes?”

Cujo barked, wagging his wispy ghost tail. Well, there was nothing he could do about that detail, but hopefully his dad was as unobservant as always. He also knew, intimately, that if he left the dog home alone he would come home to carnage and chaos. And nobody wanted that, least of all Danny himself.

So he adjusted Cujo into a more secure hold and opened the door. “Coming dad!”

Danny took the stairs two at a time as he muttered to Cujo hanging happily in his arms. “You stay small, alright? I’ll get you a treat when we get back.”

When he entered the hallway, Jack was standing by the door with two big bags and with a bright orange button down thrown over his usual jumpsuit. It was the same garish orange as the fabric beneath it and Danny hoped he didn’t think that made him look casual. Danny was unsure what kind of style he was going for, and he definitely wasn’t about to ask. If there was one thing he had learnt over the years, it was to not get involved in the fashion disaster that was his parents’ wardrobes.

His dad’s eyes lit up when he saw Cujo in Danny’s arms. “Who’s this? I don’t remember us having a dog?”

“I’m gho—” Danny cut himself off, “dog-sitting for… a friend. His name is Cujo.”

“Oh? What a little cutie!” Jack beamed before pausing and frowning. “Why is he so green?”

Danny cast around for a somewhat believable explanation while cursing himself for somehow forgetting that despite the clothes, Cujo was still very much a shining green dog. “Uuuuh, he… was attacked by a ghost? He got covered in ectoplasm and it got stuck in his fur?”

Jack made a cooing sound and leaned over to pet Cujo on the head. “Aww, poor little guy!”

“Yeah. It’s very sad. Tragic.” He cleared his throat. “So, can I bring him with us?”

Jack didn’t even hesitate before saying, “Of course he can come! The more the merrier!”

“Great!” Danny smiled in relief. “Then let’s go!”

And in line with Fenton tradition, they didn’t waste any time before getting in the car and driving off. Cujo sat in the backseat and stuck his head out the window, his ears flapping adorably in the wind and his tongue lolling.

Everything had been going so well, so it wasn’t until they had taken several turns off the main road that Danny straightened up and actually paid attention to where they were going. Or, more accurately, to where they weren’t going.

“…Dad? This isn’t the way to the lake?”

There was nothing out this way, nothing but—

No, it couldn’t be.

Jack turned to face him with a broad and oblivious smile. “Well, we need to pick him up!”

“Pick who up?” Danny asked with growing trepidation, even if he had a sinking feeling that he already knew the answer.

Jack didn’t have time to answer before they came to a screeching halt in front of an elaborately fancy gate.

Just outside there was a man. A very familiar man.

“Why are we picking up Vlad?!”

Jack looked back at him with a confused expression. “What do you mean? This was his idea! Didn’t I tell you?”

“You must have skipped that part,” Danny bit out through gritted teeth. And here Danny had thought that his dad had wanted to spend some quality time with him. Just the two of them without any ghosts or drama, and especially without any meddling billionaires. Of course not.

“Well! No harm! That just makes this a fun surprise! You love your uncle Vlad!”

“Yeah. Amazing. Love that guy.”

Danny watched as Vlad brushed himself off after having jumped back to save his feet from Jack’s patented Fenton parking style, and then he smiled towards the driver’s seat. The expression froze as soon as his eyes landed on Danny and he did a double take, blinked, and then frowned.

Danny took a small measure of satisfaction from the dread he could see growing on the man’s face. It would feel even better if it wasn’t mirrored on his own.

At least that meant he hadn’t planned to torture Danny specifically. Though, it might mean that he had planned to get his dad alone, which wasn’t exactly reassuring.

Maybe it was lucky that his dad had been clueless enough to invite him since it meant that Danny could keep an eye on Vlad and make sure he didn’t try to kill his dad. Again.

Even if that meant he had to go fishing with Vlad of all people. It would be fine, he had survived worse things. At least, that was what Danny tried to tell himself as he sighed and mourned the loss of his calm Saturday, before getting out of the car together with his dad with the same enthusiasm as someone going to the gallows.

Vlad was dressed in his usual immaculate suit and polished shoes. Absolutely deranged for someone that was going fishing.

Danny made sure his feelings about the man in front of him were clear on his face before he nodded in greeting. “Fruitloop.”

“Daniel,” Vlad replied with an infuriatingly disdainful look on his face.

Jack looked between Danny and Jack and then nodded with an overly serious expression on his face. “Jack.”

Danny burst out laughing at the same time as Jack did, only spurred on by Vlad’s groan of dismay. He already looked as if he regretted the whole trip. Danny grinned. Good.

Vlad cleared his throat and asked, eyes narrowed and glaring in Danny’s direction, “So, what is young Daniel doing here?”

“He wanted to join us on the fishing trip!”

Vlad raised both eyebrows in a smooth and practiced motion. “Did he now?”

Daniel raised his own eyebrows in an exaggerated mimicry of Vlad’s expression. “He did now. If it makes you happier, I didn’t know you were about to curse us with your presence either.”

Jack laughed and thumped Vlad on the back hard enough to make him stumble. “It’s great seeing you two get along so well! It’s been ages since we last hung out, just the two of us! It’s like the good old days!”

Vlad coughed before righting himself and straightening out his immaculate suit as if it had gotten wrinkled by simply being touched by Jack. “Yes. And we’re not just the two of us right now either, are we?

“Of course not! Danny-boy is always welcome!” Jack added with a beaming smile, oblivious to the obvious hint and the bite in Vlad’s tone.

“That’s great,” Vlad muttered and he almost looked… Disappointed?

Danny crossed his arms as he thought. This whole thing was a bit too straight-forward in comparison to Vlad’s usual tactics. If Jack went missing under mysterious circumstances while one a fishing trip with him, then surely that would place him under some kind of scrutiny and they would be able to trace it back to him?

It was all way too simple.

Vlad hadn’t been as bad as of late, but that didn’t mean that Danny trusted him. And the increased silence almost made him even more worried. He had to have another, less obvious, plan and Danny would figure it out.

Jack smiled widely, ignorant of the tense atmosphere. “Just imagine, the three of us, all alone on a boat with no one else in sight. Just the silence of nature with no one to disturb us.”

“I can’t wait,” Vlad bit out through clenched teeth.

Danny agreed. “Oh joy.”

“Let’s just get in the car,” Vlad said and made for the front seat. Danny smoothly stepped in his way to block him.

Danny made sure to pitch his voice low enough so that Jack wouldn’t hear him when he said, “If you think I’ll leave you in the front seat with my dad, you must be more delusional than I thought. You get to sit in the back with Cujo.”

Vlad looked affronted. “I won’t sit in the back with the dog!”

Danny turned to Jack and put on his most innocent face. “Daaad, I want to sit in the front with you! It’s been so long since we’ve been on a trip together!”

“Aw, Danny-boy, of course you can sit next to your old man! I’m sure Vladdie won’t mind sitting in the back since it’s such a short trip!”

Vlad sent Danny a nasty glare but somehow still managed to dredge up a tight smile, even if it came off more like a grimace than anything else. “Of course. No problem.”

Danny opened the back door and made a show of gesturing Vlad inside, who hesitated at the sight of Cujo with his hackles raised. Danny was so proud.

Danny smiled and made sure his fangs showed. “Be careful though, he’s known to bite.”

“Great.”

--

Danny turned up the music until it was impossible to hear Vlad from the backseat and thankfully he stopped trying to make conversation after the first ten minutes.

Somehow they managed to arrive at the lake without anyone ripping out anyone’s throats. Danny was honestly surprised.

They came to a stop in a deserted parking lot surrounded by trees. Danny could just about make out the glittering shine of what he assumed was the lake through the trees and, right by it, the outline of a dark cabin. He really hoped that was the boat rental Jack had been talking about during the drive, and not a murder cabin. When they got back Danny would have to have a talk with Sam about cutting back on the horror during their movie nights.

As they got out of the car, Jack brought out one of the stuffed bags he had packed and proudly pulled out three overalls, two green ones in different sizes—clearly intended for Jack and Danny—and one in a dark gray. “I got us matching clothes!”

“Oh, you didn’t have to—” Vlad began but cut himself off when Jack reached back into the bag. “And you even got hats. Of course.”

And he had; bucket hats, all in matching beige. Danny was delighted. They were going to look so ridiculous and Vlad would absolutely hate it.

On the other hand, he was fairly certain that Vlad would refuse to wear it. Which was why, when Vlad accepted the clothes from Jack, Danny was surprised to see that the man almost looked touched. He could almost swear he even saw Vlad smiling down at the hat in his hands before he put it on.

They all changed into the clothes and Jack looked them over with a huge smile. “What do you think, son? We match!”

“They’re great, dad. Thank you,” Danny said and found that he really meant it. His gratefulness sat like a warm weight in his chest as he fiddled with one of the buckles.

And then the sight of Vlad in an oversized overall with his fancy dress-shirt with rolled up sleeves and polished shoes made Danny snort. Vlad’s subsequent glare, combined with the fact that he didn’t take any of it off, made him laugh out loud.

Vlad sniffed. “If you are laughing at me because of my clothes, I just want to inform you that you look the same.”

Danny did a little twirl in his green overalls and bucket hat, “We can’t all wear it as well as I do.”

Jack sat down on his haunches and petted Cujo on the head with an uncharacteristically serious expression on his face. “I’m sorry, little guy. I would have brought a hat for you too if I had known you would come with us.”

Cujo yipped and pushed his head into Jack’s hand.

Danny felt an overwhelming wave of love for his dad. Then the moment was broken by Vlad’s irritating voice, “He sure is a strange dog, Daniel. What kind did you say he was again?”

“He’s just a normal dog,” Danny said as he crossed his arms.

Vlad raised one eyebrow. “He’s green.”

Jack looked up from the happy puppy. “The poor guy was in an accident.”

“Really now?”

Danny nodded. “Really. A ghost related accident, poor guy.”

It didn’t get him the reaction he had been aiming for and instead of annoyed, Vlad looked between Jack and Cujo with a thoughtful expression.

Jack straightened up and clapped his hands as he announced, “Well, I’ll go get the boat. You three wait here!”

And before either of them could complain or offer to come with him, he jogged away between the trees, leaving Danny and Vlad alone to eye each other warily and Cujo to whine at the loss of the attention.

After a few tense moments, Danny let out a deep sigh. “Alright, out with it. What are you really planning?”

Vlad tutted. “Don't involve yourself in this.” 

“I think I’ve earned involving myself after the first time you tried to kill me and my parents.” 

“Fine! Fine. I want to… I want to get them back, okay?” 

Danny frowned. “You can't get my mom, I've already told you that multiple—” 

“Not like that! Just. As friends. As partners. All three of us.” 

"Oh,” Danny wrinkled his nose. “Gross.” 

“Not like that,” Vlad repeated as he pinched the bridge of his nose. “I just want my friends back, okay?”

It seemed to pain him to admit it and Danny blinked in surprise at the admittance. “Are you saying you're lonely?”

Vlad was silent.

Danny held up a hand. “Wait. Wait, wait, wait. Let me get this straight. You turn evil, try to kill your only friends and then you complain because you feel a bit lonely?” 

“I didn't—” Vlad began and Danny opened his mouth to argue, but thankfully Vlad cut himself off as he seemed to realize the futility in arguing when they both knew the truth. Instead he said simply, “Yes.”

Danny dragged a hand down his face. “Ancients. I can't believe this.”

To Danny’s horror, Vlad actually looked hesitant as he said, “I—I had actually planned to…” Vlad trailed off.

Danny had a horrible realization of just where that sentence had been going. “You planned on telling him?”

Vlad looked away.

“You were! You have got to be kidding.”

“No. I am not jesting, Daniel,” Vlad said as he dragged all his formality around him like a protective cloak.

“You think that will go over well?” Danny asked incredulously.

“Well. He doesn’t seem to hold your little mongrel over there accountable for his accident,” Vlad said with a nod to Cujo.

“I can’t believe I have to say this, but you’re not a cute little dog, Vlad.”

“I am well aware.”

Danny sighed. “You’re still going to do it, aren’t you?”

“You can’t stop me,” Vlad said and he had never sounded more like a stubborn toddler. “I'm finally ready to be honest.”

“Good for you. I'm not.”

“I really don’t care,” Vlad sneered and Danny almost felt relieved at the familiar disdain in his voice.

He probably would have if he wasn’t suddenly and acutely aware of how uncomfortable this whole trip was going to be. “Ancients, I can’t believe I’m third-wheeling you and my dad while you come out to him!” Then he paused as a thought hit him. “Why only him, though? I thought it was my mom that you were obsessed with?”

This made Vlad look back at him with a scoff. “Have you met Maddie? She wouldn’t let me finish explaining before absolutely wrecking me.”

He ended the sentence with a dreamy expression and Danny wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Again. Gross. I don’t wanna know about your fantasies.”

But he couldn’t really deny that his dad was the easiest to influence out of his parents.

Danny stared up at the sky to gather strength for three blessed seconds before looking back at Vlad and asking, “So what was your plan here? Just to say ‘I’m Plasmius, sorry for trying to kill you but I’m not evil anymore, I promise. And oh, by the way, ghosts aren’t all bad. Trust me’?.”

“I don’t think I like your tone.”

“And I don’t like your face, but here we are. So come on, spill. What was the plan?”

“I know they’ve been getting… better about ghosts.”

Danny nodded. “Because of the hard work of me and my friends, and—you know—actually talking to them. Hard work that was not helped by you attacking them and the town repeatedly, I might add.”

“I haven’t attacked you and your friends, or anyone for that matter, in months,” Vlad hissed out.

Danny threw his hands up in the air. “Well, then! All is forgiven. You haven’t tried to kill anyone in months! How generous.”

Vlad combed a hand through his hair, looking agitated. “I’m actually trying here.”

“And I don’t believe you.”

“I just want to tell him the truth, alright?!”

And damn it all to the deepest parts of the Zone, but he actually sounded sincere. And just like that, Danny’s Saturday had morphed from nice to sit-com level mix-up and all the way to trip from hell.

Vlad couldn’t just tell his dad the truth. Not before Danny even had a chance to do it himself.

“Tell me what, V-man?”

The two of them froze like rabbits in headlights as Jack came back with a wide grin and a set of keys dangling from one hand.

Vlad opened his mouth and Danny gave Vlad a warning kick to the shin. “Nothing. Just that…” Vlad trailed off.

Danny jumped in with an overly cheerful, “That he has missed hanging out with you!”

“Aww! I missed spending time with you too! That’s why this trip is going to be such a blast! Here, I got you two fishing rods and some bait! The boat is down by the water and I even managed to get the motor to start!”

That was when Danny became aware of a continuous roaring sound in the background. He slowly asked, “…And you left it running?”

After a short sprint down to the water to make sure the boat was still there—thankfully it was, even though the cost for the gas would surely be astronomical—they turned the motor off and loaded all their supplies in.

Danny had finally started to relax, so of course that was when Jack decided to whip out a fishing rod that had a suspicious green shine to it. “Meet the new Fenton Fishing Rod™! It’s guaranteed to fish out any dastardly ghosts hiding in the depths!”

Danny took a small step away from the thing. “What does it do exactly?”

Jack beamed, oblivious to the tense atmosphere he had created and the stress of his companions. “It attracts ghosts and entices them to take the bait.”

“That’s… awesome,” Danny said as he exchanged a look with Vlad and hated the feeling of camaraderie that passed between them at their shared discomfort and exasperation in the face of the gadget.

“Right? I can’t wait to see what kind of ghastly catches we’ll get!”

“Weren’t we supposed to catch dinner?” Danny asked carefully, “I’m not really in the mood for the undead kind. Again.”

“Oh, that’s right! Not to worry though, it’s turned off right now and it also functions like a regular fishing rod, fully capable of catching non-dead fish!”

Danny eyed it warily. “That’s great dad, but maybe try not to lure any ghosts to us tonight, okay? We’re just here for regular fishing, remember?”

He had just wanted to spend some ghost-free time with his dad, not to sit in a boat with him and Vlad and use a fishing rod that attracted every ghost in the vicinity to their location. Thinking about it logically, he really should have known better.

Danny heaved a sigh of defeat. This would end in disaster.

Cujo jumped into the boat with enthusiasm.

Jack looked at Cujo with clear worry on his face. “Are you sure the little guy will be okay on the boat? Should I have gotten him a life jacket?”

“He’ll be fine. He floats. Besides, he can help with the catches, can’t you boy?” Danny held out the net for Cujo. Cujo barked back an affirmative, grabbing the net and sitting down in the back of the boat, tail hitting the side of the boat with a hollow thump thump as he impatiently waited for the rest of them to get in.

“Well then, the little guy has the right idea! Let’s go!” Jack said as he too jumped onboard, and then there wasn’t any more time for regrets as both Danny and Vlad had to throw themselves onto the boat to get on before Jack took off.

Half an hour later Danny found himself contemplating how far he would get if he jumped in the water and swam for shore before his dad would come and fish him out of the water.

The minutes crawled by agonizingly slowly as they sat in silence. Just the three of them and the quiet waters around them, the setting sun, the clear sky, the sound of birdsong, the gentle rustle of leaves in the trees.

It should have been exactly what he needed to wind down, but Danny found himself hating every second of it. He was acutely aware of Vlad sitting such a short distance away, surely about to try and—once again—destroy his whole life. The only saving grace was that Jack had situated himself in the middle, creating a small barrier between the two of them.

As if hearing Danny’s thoughts, Vlad broke the silence with a casual, “Actually, Jack, there was something I wanted to tell you.” 

“What is it Vladdie?”

Danny panicked. He couldn’t just say it!

Vlad took a deep breath, set his shoulders—oh shit, he was actually going to do it—and said, “I'm actually a gh—” 

“Ah!” Danny cut him off, “I think I got something on the hook!”

Jack leaned closer to him, excited about the possible catch. “You do?”

“Oh, no, must have been my imagination. My bad.”

“Of course. A simple mistake to make,” Vlad bit out, but thankfully stayed silent afterwards.

Or at least that’s what Danny had hoped, but not even a minute later, Vlad broke the silence as he turned to Jack, “So… Jack. Have you met Phantom lately?”

Danny narrowed his eyes. “What are you fishing for?”

Vlad smirked. “Dinner, dear Daniel.”

The asshole. Of course he would get Danny back.

Jack paused, uncharacteristically hesitant. “That ghost boy… I think we might have been a bit wrong about him.”

Danny watched with satisfaction as Vlad froze at his dad’s words. “…What?”

A few months ago, Danny would have reacted in the same way, but by now he was aware that his parents had been less prone to shooting first and asking questions later, and that—combined with the fact that they had actually proposed a truce a few months back—had made him realize that they were starting to change the way the saw ghosts. Finally.

It still warmed him to hear his dad say it.

Jack fiddled with the fishing rod in his hands as he spoke, “Well, me and Maddie have been rethinking some things lately and maybe… Maybe we’ve been a bit too zealous and strict with our judgments.”

 “…Strict?” Vlad asked faintly.

“Yes. We judged all the ghosts without even really knowing them. We should be using this opportunity to learn more about them, not just destroy them. Some of the ghosts in town haven’t attacked anyone in all the years they’ve been there and there really isn’t anything indicating that they’re planning to.”

“Right. You seem to have really thought this through,” Vlad said, seeming stunned.

Jack clapped Danny on the shoulder, almost tipping him overboard. “It’s mostly thanks to Danny and his friends. They managed to get us to see that we let our emotions cloud our judgment a tiny bit.”

“Quite a bit,” Danny corrected under his breath, but he was still very proud of how far both his parents had come. Only a few years ago he wouldn’t have thought this to ever be possible, that he could have a calm conversation about ghosts with his dad.

Vlad frowned and seemed to mull it over but before he had the time to work up to saying something in response—and probably try to reveal his secrets again and subsequently tear down all the work Danny had done over the last few years with keeping his own secret—there was a tug on Vlad’s fishing rod.

Jack immediately zeroed in on it. “I think you have something on the hook there, V-man!”

“So it seems.”

“Come on, let’s reel it in!”

Vlad got the fish up and Jack grabbed it from the line, unhooked it and snapped its neck before dumping it in the bucket at their feet. Cujo seemed very happy at the new addition to their boat, and wouldn’t stop trying to stick his nose into the bucket, no matter how many times Danny tried to push him away.

“Thanks for the help,” Vlad said and was that… fondness in Vlad’s voice?

This whole situation was starting to weird Danny out.

Vlad hadn’t tried to kill his dad even once during the whole trip. It was unnerving.

Maybe it was time to poke the hornets’ nest a bit.

Danny turned to smirk at Vlad as he innocently asked, “Since we’re on the subject of ghosts, Vladdie, what do you think about the ghost Plasmius?”

To his credit, Vlad simply blinked in surprise before turning to stare deadpan at Danny. “Are you baiting me?”

Danny was mortified to find himself almost laughing at that comment. He needed to get control of the conversation back, and fast. “I fucking hate you,” Danny muttered before turning to Jack and loudly asking, “Dad, what do you think about the ghost Plasmius?”

Jack hummed in thought, leaning forward to help in trying to keep Cujo out of the bucket.

Vlad leaned back behind Jack and, in a warning tone of voice, hissed out, “Daniel. What are you doing?” 

Danny whispered back, “What are you doing?!”

Jack didn’t seem to hear the whispered argument taking place behind his back as he took his time to answer.

Vlad let out a frustrated huff. “I'm trying to tell him. I'm finally ready to be honest. 

“Good for you. I'm not.” It wouldn’t be a big leap for his parents to take if they found out and accepted Vlad as a ghost.

Vlad opened his mouth to respond, but before he could, Jack spoke up in front of them, prompting both of them to sit up straight. “I think that ghost was one of the bad ones even though he seems to have mellowed out a bit, which is fascinating because we didn’t used to believe that ghosts could change!”

“Neither did I,” Vlad said low enough that Danny doubted Jack could hear him. Annoyingly, he raised his voice again as he sucked in a deep breath and said, “Jack. What I’ve been trying to say is that I...”

Cujo chose that moment to turn intangible and simply stick his head though the bucket instead and Danny lunged for him before his dad could see. Which meant that he completely missed trying to interrupted Vlad as he continued,

“I’m a halfa. I’m half dead.”

Danny froze with one hand in the back of Cujo’s shirt and the other trying to pry the fish out of his mouth. Fuck.

Jack patted Vlad on the shoulder. “We’re all a little dead inside, it’s okay.”

“That’s not what I—”

“It doesn’t make me think any less of you.”

Danny burst out laughing and Vlad slumped where he sat, looking utterly defeated. “Lucky me.”

Danny almost felt pity for the man. He managed to get Cujo to let go of the fish, inspected what was left of it and deemed it a lost cause. He held it out for his dad. “Hey, do you want to give him the rest? I don’t think we should eat this.”

Jack lit up and immediately took it upon himself to try and get Cujo to sit and give paw, which Danny knew from experience the dog knew, but often simply refused to do. Danny, meanwhile, turned to Vlad and said, “Don’t waste your breath. He has a remarkable ability not to see what’s right in front of him. Especially if it’s something he doesn’t believe is possible.”

“What do you mean son? I can clearly see this little cutie-pie! Yes, you are. Come on, boy! Sit! No, don’t bark. Sit!”

Danny gave Vlad a meaningful glance. “See?” Then he turned to Jack. “Try ‘play dead’ instead, he’s really good at that one.”

Vlad heaved a deep sigh.

“You are such a good boy! Well, now we have to catch some more fish for dinner. We wouldn’t want you going hungry!” Danny didn’t even feel miffed that his dad seemed more concerned with feeding his dog than him. He understood.

Jack smiled down at Cujo who sat at his feet. “We’re going to have a fin-tastic dinner, just you wait!”

Vlad snorted.

Danny turned to stare at the man, shocked at the genuine sound of happiness, but Vlad wasn’t looking at him. He was making a casual comment to Jack, making him laugh in turn, and suddenly Danny could see them as they must have been in college. With dad and mom laughing and ribbing each other as they tried to one-up each other, and Vlad right alongside them, the voice of reason to his parents’ insanity.

His thoughts were interrupted by something tugging on his line and Danny turned his attention to reeling in the frankly massive bass he had managed to hook. “This one is huge! Help me reel it in!”

Cujo immediately latched onto the rod beneath Danny’s hands and started pulling. He didn’t really help much, but Danny appreciated the gesture.

“Awww, Danno, he seems to really like you! It’s going to be hard to give him back to your friend!”

“Yeah, haha,” Danny laughed awkwardly as he heaved the fish the last of the way into the boat. “When I give him back. Right.”

The massive bass flopped to the bottom of the boat and Danny had to grab for Cujo again to keep him from performing another impromptu dissection then and there.

“Wow! Great job son!” Jack praised as he grabbed the fish and promptly put it out of its misery. “That’s going to go great on the spit later!” He thumped Danny on the back, once again almost pitching him over the edge. “Soon you’re going to be stronger than your old man!”

“Thanks dad,” Danny said, trying to ignore the way his cheeks heated at the praise. Then the moment was ruined as he caught sight of Vlad staring at him with something akin to jealousy in his eyes. So Danny gave him a pointed look and added, “The fish won’t be the only thing getting grilled later.”

Vlad scoffed but didn’t have time to respond before Jack exclaimed, “Aw, you found the marshmallows? I wanted it to be a surprise!”

“What? No, I—” Danny cut himself off. “Wait, we have marshmallows?”

“For dessert!” Jack confirmed, then sheepishly added, “There might not be that many left though since I sneaked a couple while waiting for you in the hallway.”

“I’m sure we’ll be fine, dad.” He couldn’t help but add, with a glance at Vlad, “At least, if someone doesn’t mess things up.”

“Me? I’m obviously just here because of the good company and relaxation,” Vlad said in an obviously sarcastic deadpan. Despite this; Danny had never actually seen Vlad this relaxed before. No murder attempts. No villainous monologues. No deranged plans to ruin Danny’s whole life.

He didn’t know what to make of it.

Jack didn’t seem to have any such problems but the issue was that he had seemingly decided to land on gratitude since he said, “You’ve been so busy lately with all your new obligations. It’s nice that you take the time to be here.”

And Vlad looked genuinely touched. This was all so weird.

“I’m the one that should be grateful. And also ask for forgiveness.” Vlad took a deep breath. “What I'm trying to say is that I—” 

“Want to spend more time with you and mom! That’s so nice of you Vlad.” Danny cut in, a wide smile fixed on his face.

“Aw, Vladdie! I missed you too!”

“Yes. Right.” Vlad drummed his fingers on the handle of his fishing rod. “That’s great, but I really wanted to say was that I’m—”

“Hungry! He's so hungry, dad!” Danny cut him off again. “Better focus on the fishing so we get that dinner!” 

“Good to see you haven’t lost your appetite!” Jack laughed, “Do you remember those eating contests we used to have back in college? And that time you ate twenty—”

Vlad looked nauseous when he cut Jack off, “Yes. Yes, I remember. Danny’s right, let’s focus on fishing instead.”

“You’re right! Just you wait, I’m going to catch a massive fish so we can all eat our fill!”

“You really think you can beat that?” Danny asked with a nod at his earlier catch and a challenging grin.

Jack smiled wide, competition making his eyes sparkle. “I’ll show you what the Fenton Fishing Rod™ can do!”

Vlad sniffed, but wasn’t completely able to hide a small smile of his own. “It can’t beat proper technique.”

“Oh, it’s on!” Jack laughed and flicked a switch on his fishing rod. Danny’s smile faltered, he might have—just slightly—miscalculated with this challenge.

The effects were immediate.

As the fishing rod lit up in neon green, it was accompanied by a horrible screeching sound that seemed to reverberate in Danny’s skull. Danny instinctively tried to cover his ears and saw Vlad flinch violently, almost tipping himself over the side of the boat in the process.

“Turn it off!” Danny half-screamed to be heard over the noise.

Jack, apparently unable to hear the ruckus he was causing, said, “What’s wrong?”

From next to Danny he saw Cujo growl and start to grow in size, tearing his new clothes. The boat dipped at the added weight, tilting precariously as the side Cujo occupied almost took in water.

Danny let go of his left ear and gestured for Cujo to stand down. “Down boy!”

Vlad, thankfully, managed to get his hands on the fishing rod and switched it off.

Both Danny and Vlad slumped down in relief when the sound cut off. Cujo immediately started to shrink back to his regular size and Danny absentmindedly patted his head to calm him. He shook his head to try and get rid of the ringing sound still echoing in his skull. “I think that thing does the opposite of attracting ghosts.”

Jack wasn’t listening. He was staring at Cujo who was currently nuzzling up to Danny’s hand. “He’s a… ghost?”

Danny tensed up, cursing himself for not realizing sooner that of course Jack would have put two and two together after seeing Cujo’s little size-changing stunt. He immediately grabbed the pup off of the floor of the boat and cradled him protectively in his arms, eyeing his dad warily. Danny cursed the fact that the three of them were currently trapped on a small boat in the middle of a lake, with the only way out inevitably revealing his own ghostly status. Of course, he would do it without hesitation if it meant keeping Cujo safe, but he hoped it wouldn’t come to that. “Yes. He is.”

“But…” Jack frowned. “But he’s so cute?”

“Yes. And he’s a ghost. We’ve been over this, right? Not all ghosts are evil.”

Jack seemed to war with himself for a while before he bent forward, towards Cujo and Danny instinctively tensed; ready to snatch the puppy away. But his dad simply reached out a careful hand and waited. Cujo didn’t even hesitate before leaning forward and sniffing the hand. Then he started slobbering and licking all over it. Of course. Danny stared at his dad as he laughed at the currently small ghost and positively cooed, “Aren’t you a cutie.”

Cujo yipped and preened at the attention and Danny found himself smiling as he put the dog down on the floor. He immediately jumped towards Jack and before Danny could blink his dad had an armful of happy, wiggling ghost dog.

“What if he’s just biding his time before attacking you?” Danny asked pointedly, but he couldn’t keep a big smile from his face, “Look at him, he’s an evil mastermind. I think he’s planning to slobber all over your face again as soon as you let your guard down.”

Jack laughed, rubbing Cujo’s tummy, much to the dog’s delight. “Ooooh, so evil. Yes you are. Such an evil little ghost.”

Danny joined in the laughter, relief and delight at the sight in front of him making him feel almost light headed. He couldn’t believe his dad laughed. Actually laughed. About ghosts. Danny wouldn’t have been able to dampen the smile on his face even if he tried.

Vlad looked from Cujo, to Jack, and back. “You’re… okay with him?”

Danny couldn’t fault him for his obvious shock.

Jack tried to put the dog back down but Cujo was having none of it as he whined and just jumped back up into his arms and started licking his face instead. “I don’t really see any reason not to be.” Jack tried to speak between huffs of laughter as he did his best to ignore the dog currently doing his best to occupy his whole face. “As long as he’s such a good boy. Yeah, who’s a good boy? You are!”

Cujo barked in agreement, tail going a mile a minute.

Vlad stared at them with an incredulous expression. “You changed your mind. Because of a dog?”

“I know it’s not very scientific. But Vladdie, what we were doing before wasn’t any better! Just think about all the evidence—”

Vlad held up a hand to stop him. “I assure you, you don’t have to convince me. It’s just— A dog. That’s all it took for you to change your mind? Petting a dog?”

“Well, I’ve never really interacted with a ghost like this before! And who can say no to this little guy?”

He got another face-long lick for his efforts.

“You’re impossible,” Vlad said with a shake of his head, but Danny was fairly certain he didn’t imagine the fondness in his voice.

They were interrupted by Jack’s fishing rod almost getting dragged into the water from where it had laid forgotten and propped against the side of the boat. Jack managed to grab a hold of it at the last second and smiled down at Cujo. “Come on boy, I think we got something on the hook! Let’s reel another one in!”

“Wait,” Danny said as he wrinkled his nose, “Is it just me or does something smell fishy?”

Vlad heaved a sigh, “Daniel. I can assure you that I have no ulterior motives. I’ve already told you what I plan to—”

Danny cut him off and watched with a frown as his dad and Cujo wrestled with the fishing rod. “Not you. Something else. Something… rotten?”

Miraculously, Jack managed to get the fish out of the water without tipping himself or Cujo into the lake, but when they got it up into the boat the fish was half-rotted away with big vacant eyes and way too many teeth in its gaping mouth.

The three of them stared at their catch in silence, even joined by Cujo staring down at their disgusting catch without any of his usual antics.

Danny leaned away from it and asked, “…What kind of fish is that?”

“A dead one?” Vlad said with a tilt of his head and an almost hopeful tone of voice.

As if to prove him wrong it twitched, flopping almost aggressively on the bottom of the boat. The wet slapping noises, together with the stench made Danny wrinkle his nose in disgust. “It’s a... zombie fish?”

That got Jack’s attention and he immediately got to his feet, rocking the boat, and raising his fishing rod high in the air. “It has to be the work of some ghost! I knew the Fenton Fishing Rod™ worked!”

And before either Danny or Vlad could stop him, Jack turned the fishing rod back on.

The whole lake seemed to heave. The water churned as if whipped up by an unseen storm just under the surface and the rocking of the boat got even worse. Danny reached up and grabbed a hold of his dad before he could topple over the edge and used a hint of ghostly strength to force him to sit down. The screeching in his ears was overpowered by a gurgling sound emanating from all around them. The fish on the bottom of their boat kept on flopping, its eyes now a glowing red. “That can’t be good.”

A fish suddenly jumped out of the water, aiming straight for Jack’s head. Vlad caught it in his hand, looked down at the gaping mouth with razor-sharp teeth in clear disgust, and hurled it back into the lake.

Cujo whined and grew rapidly in size and Danny desperately tried to not get toppled over into the lake as the boat rocked.

“Maybe you should turn it off, dad?!” Danny shouted over the aggravating noise coming from the cursed fishing rod.

Jack turned to him with an offended expression. “I won’t get scared by a little fish! Don’t worry, son. I’ll protect you! Besides, maybe this ghost isn’t evil.”

Another fish jumped up, and Danny threw himself to the bottom of the boat to avoid getting a chunk bitten out of his face. “Oh, it’s definitely evil.”

Cujo growled at the fish and swiped at the next one that jumped up, hitting it out of the air.

“Good boy!” Danny called as he took shelter between Cujo’s large legs. The boat was tilting precariously and on the verge of taking in water. It wouldn’t hold out much longer.

And of course that was when something bumped up against the bottom of the boat. Hard.

Vlad gripped the railing on both sides as he stared down between his knees at the hull. “…What was that?” Then he winced and looked up, hands coming up to cover his ears as he said, “Jack, I really think you should—”

Jack wasn’t listening as he cast his line over the edge of the boat and into the water. “Don’t worry! I’ll take care of the ghost!”

“No! Just turn it—” Vlad tried to grab for the fishing rod, missed, lunged for it again, managed to snatch it out of Jack’s hand, overbalanced and then slowly tipped over the edge of the boat. Danny watched the whole thing unfold with the kind of delighted awe you got when knowing that you were watching a once in a lifetime event.

As an added bonus, the noise stopped when the fishing rod disappeared beneath the surface of the lake together with Vlad. Danny felt Cujo relax behind him and absentmindedly petted one of his front legs.

Almost immediately the rain of deadly fish stopped, the lake turning almost eerily still and silent. Except for the loud sputtering as Vlad breached the surface.

“Vladdie!” Jack called, “You okay down there? You should have told me if you wanted the Fenton Fishing Rod™ so badly!”

Vlad sputtered as he started clumsily swimming towards the boat, no doubt weighted down by the overall and his fancy dress shirt. The bucket hat bobbed on the surface next to his waving arms. “I don’t want your cursed fishing rod, you oaf! Help me up!”

Cujo let out a sudden growl and Danny turned to calm him, but instead caught sight of what he must have spotted. A teeming mass of something was moving towards their boat, and it was coming on fast. Was it the fishes? Why hadn’t they calmed down? Maybe the fishing rod was still emitting that horrible screeching sound beneath the surface.

Danny eyed the approaching mass and then Vlad’s clumsy attempt at making his way back to the side of the boat. Too slow. “Hey, dad? Maybe start the motor?”

Jack turned to him with a frown. “Shouldn’t we fish Vlad out first?”

“He’ll be fine. Look!” He gestured to the writhing mass that was now way too close for comfort. “Just go!”

“I can hear you!” Vlad shouted from down in the water where he was trying to grab a hold of the side of the boat.

Danny turned to face Vlad, patience long since run out. “Then get in, old man!”

Jack cranked the engine. It didn’t start. He did it again. Nothing. The sound of the motor stalling made dread pool in Danny’s stomach. This was just not panning out to be the relaxing evening he had envisioned with his dad.

Jack sat back on his heels. “I think we’re out of gas.”

“Of course we are,” Danny said with a groan. “And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why we don’t leave the engine running.”

The mass in the water started to breach the surface in a splashing, whirling mess of small bodies. It would soon be upon them.

Danny resigned himself to having to fight ghost fish with his dad and Vlad. Cujo let out a bark from behind him, reminding him that he at least had someone competent on his side. “I hope you brought some weapons.” He definitely didn’t want to have to reveal his ghostly ability to shoot ectoblasts because of some fish.

“Of course I did!” Jack sounded offended. “I don’t go anywhere without them!”

Jack produced two ectoguns from only the Ancients knew where and for once Danny was glad for his parents’ inability to go anywhere without weapons.

Danny grabbed one of the guns and before his dad could comment that Danny didn’t know how to handle it, he had checked the ammunition, loaded it, and taken aim at the closest part of the writhing, teeming, mass of bodies beneath the surface, now only a short distance away. “This has to be a new record; we didn’t even have time to catch dinner before it started fighting back!”

Jack barked out a laugh and thankfully didn’t question his apparent sudden gun proficiency, simply loaded his own weapon and took aim as well.

Danny fired off a couple of shots, but there were just so many and there didn’t seem to be an end to them. Maybe Vlad could get to the fishing rod and turn it off or destroy it?

“Vlad!” Danny called and Vlad paused in his effort to get back in the boat. “Get the fishi—”

And that was when something grabbed Vlad and dragged him beneath the surface. Well, there went that plan.

No matter. Vlad would be able to fend for himself. But then Danny saw Jack and his distressed expression at Vlad’s sudden disappearance and knew that his dad was too nice to just leave his friend to his apparent fate as fish food.

Danny heaved a sigh and said to Cujo, “Stay boy. Guard.”

Then he tossed the gun to his dad and called out, “I’ll get him! Stay with the boat!” before diving into the murky water.

--

Ten minutes later Danny found himself dragging Vlad out of the lake and onto the rocky shore, both of them dripping with a putrid mix of water and ghost fish intestines. Somewhere along the way Danny had picked up a fishing line and then promptly tangled himself up in it during the swim-slash-underwater-fight to get out of reach of the now definitely confirmed murderous fish.

He glanced over his shoulder as they stumbled out of the water and noted that the boat was still out on the lake. After everything that had happened he was almost surprised to see it floating, which most likely meant that Cujo and his dad were safe. Even so; he doubted that they would get their deposit back after all they had put the poor boat through.

Vlad groaned from his position slumped over Danny’s shoulder and Danny scoffed. “Don’t be so dramatic, they only took a couple of small bites out of you.”

Vlad glared at him but the effect was slightly diminished by the limp hair obscuring his eyes and making him look more like a drowned cat than an intimidating half-ghost. “So sorry if my almost death is inconveniencing you.”

“It is, thank you for noticing,” Danny snarked back, almost glad that they were back to ribbing each other after the day’s strangeness.

But then Vlad blinked and his glare changed into something too soft for Danny’s liking before he said, “You didn’t really have to come save me, you know?”

Danny tried to laugh it off, but it came out sounding strangled. “Well, someone had to drag your sorry ass out of that maw. I would never live it down if my nemesis met his end as fish food.”

“Still, I appreciate it. Especially since I know you don’t want to risk your dad seeing you as a ghost.”

“Well, I’m so sorry that just because you suddenly want to scream to the whole world about you being a ghost, I’m not ready to do the same. You should respect my ghostly privacy, thank you very much.”

Vlad let out a sigh and, to Danny’s horror, he said, “You’re right, I’ll try to find a better way of telling him.”

The surprise he felt at Vlad agreeing with anything he said was overshadowed by the sudden arrival of Cujo as he jumped up on Danny and almost tipped the both of them over. At least he was back to being small again. Small mercies. “Hi, boy! Weren’t you with—”

“A ghost? What do you mean by that?”

Danny whipped his head around and found his dad staring at him with wide eyes. “Oh shit. How did you—” Danny’s eyes jumped out to the lake, but the boat was still there. He shouldn’t have assumed that meant that his dad was as well.

Then he realized that he should have denied it.

“Son. You’re a…?”

Danny couldn’t believe that this was how his dad found out about him being a ghost; with a sopping wet Vlad hanging over his shoulders, guts in his hair, a fishing line stringing him up like a tied up ham, and with Cujo nipping at his heels.

Before he could come up with an answer that was even close to coherent, Cujo grabbed hold of a loose end of the fishing line and pulled, and before Danny could do more than utter a short yell of surprise, he found himself with a mouth-full of dirt after falling flat on his face.

He immediately decided that facing the ground was preferable to facing his dad right now and stayed right where he was as grumbled out, “Of course when you finally manage to out someone it’s me. I guess that’s what I get from trying to stop you the whole day.”

“Son—” His dad said at the same time as Vlad protested, “I didn’t mean to—”

Danny waved them both off, not bothering to pick himself up off the ground. He would just stay here, facedown in the dirt, thank you very much. “I know you didn’t mean to. Yes. Okay. We’re doing this, huh? I’m a ghost. Half-ghost. You got me.”

“Half…?” He heard his dad trail off, sounding very confused. At least he didn’t seem angry. He would take any silver lining he could get at this point.

Danny gave a half-hearted thumbs up from his prone position. “I’m not fully dead, don’t worry.”

There was silence for a short while and then his dad said, sounding exasperated, “Can you get up off the ground so we can talk?”

Danny shook his head, only succeeding in further shoving his head into the dirt. “No, I think I’m good right here, thanks.”

Then he felt a small tongue on his cheek and snorted. “That tickles!” And then he realized that Cujo was chewing on something wet and purple that smelled alarmingly of rotten fish. Danny sat up immediately and grabbed for the piece of fish-intestine that Cujo had nabbed off of Danny’s face. “No, bad boy! Don’t eat that!”

Cujo simply jumped out of the way, still happily chewing away and Danny groaned.

Then he looked up to find both Vlad and his dad staring at him; Vlad with an expression halfway between disappointment and exasperation and his dad with an uncharacteristically hesitant expression. Well, this was awkward. Before he could decide on what to say, Vlad held out a hand. “Come on, get up.”

Danny stared at the offered hand. “Wow. You really just needed to get outside for a while, huh? Like airing out dusty clothes. Aired the evil right out of you.” He grabbed the hand and let Vlad pull him to his feet. “Or wait. Did you hit your head when you fell in?”

Vlad rolled his eyes. “Very funny.”

“Thank you.” Danny grinned, trying to grab for any semblance of normalcy in this situation. He dusted himself off as well as he could, decided the effort wasn’t worth it and that there was no real reason to keep up appearances anymore, and simply turned intangible to get all the gross stuff off of him.

Jack kept on staring. Danny couldn’t take the tension anymore and promptly struck a pose, jazz hands and all, and said, “Ta daa!”

Vlad groaned and buried his face in one of his hands, but at least it succeeded in getting Jack to finally blink and take a breath.

“Well.” Jack paused, then sighed. “I think I need to have another talk with your mother when we get back.” He sent a pointed look at Danny. “With you this time.”

“Alright.” This wasn’t how he had envisioned this going down, but he could work with it.

Vlad looked between the two of them with a frown. “Oh, so now he listens.”

Danny couldn’t help it, he broke out into laughter. From the release of tension and from the absolutely petulant look on Vlad’s face.

Thankfully, Jack seemed to finally connect all the dots he had been handed over the course of the afternoon. “Wait. You’re also…?”

“Half ghost. Yes,” Vlad said and made as if to straighten out his suit, but since he was currently wearing an overall he simply ended up grabbing the straps and looking like the world’s most pompous hillbilly. The image was further perfected by a piece of ghostly entrails slowly sliding down Vlad’s shoulder before landing on the ground with a disgustingly wet sound. Cujo barked happily and immediately dove for it. Danny decided to pick his battles and let him have it.

Jack groaned. “How can you be half—” he shook his head. “You know what? Don’t answer that. We should all sit down and eat. This is too much to take in on an empty stomach.”

Danny had to agree and they had managed to get a single—hopefully normal—fish before all this mess had started. Who was he kidding? This trip had been a mess from the very start. Danny stared out at the boat still bobbing in the middle of the lake, all alone. “Yeah, that might prove to be a bit of an issue.”

Jack followed his gaze and then sadly said, “…We still have some marshmallows?”

Danny couldn’t help the snort that escaped him at Jack’s forlorn expression. His dad could teach Cujo a thing or two about puppy eyes. Its effects were only slightly diminished by the fact that he was sopping wet. “I can’t believe you guys swam ashore!”

“Well, we couldn’t just let those pesky ghosts get you both!”

“So you dove in to save us?” Danny felt oddly touched.

“Of course! Now, you apparently didn’t really need saving, but still!”

Danny smiled. “Just wait a second; I’ll go get the boat.” He turned to give his dad a warning look. “Please don’t shoot me.”

And then he transformed into Phantom. He didn’t give his dad enough time to gather himself or to stop gaping in horror at him before taking off.

--

Later when they were sitting around a green fire, grilling fish and marshmallows, Jack very un-casually said, “Sooo, you’re both ghosts, huh?”

“Yep,” Danny said, popping the p.

Vlad leaned back against a log and said, “Yeah.”

Danny couldn’t help giving Vlad a glare for the relief he could hear in his voice.

Jack looked down at Cujo. “Like this little guy.”

“Yes…?” Danny didn’t know where Jack was going with this.

“So… does that mean that he’s your dog? Can we keep him?”

Danny looked at his dad sitting on a log with a sleeping Cujo in his lap. He hadn’t stopped petting him ever since they sat down and Danny had caught him sneaking pieces of both fish and marshmallow to the dog several times. Danny smiled. “Yes, dad, we can keep him. The problem is trying to get him to leave you alone.”

Jack beamed. “Sounds perfect!”

Vlad gave a short laugh. “Can you believe it? You’re getting willingly haunted by a dog.”

“And the two of you!” Jack added happily.

That startled a laugh out of both Vlad and Danny. Vlad reached for another marshmallow as he said, “That’s fair.”

Danny stuffed his face with his own burnt marshmallow and said, “Nothing like a fight for your lives to bring people together, huh?”

“Or, half lives in your case!” Jack added with a laugh.

“Dad, oh my god!” Danny groaned into his hands, hiding his smile.

Jack chuckled. “What? Too soon?”

Vlad shook his head with a smile. “Not soon enough.”

#ectoimplosion2023 #dp #danny phantom #dp fic #danny phantom fic #danny phantom fanfic #dp fanfic #phic #my writing

[hailsatanacab]

@the-witchhunter - this is incredibly disturbing, i love it. fair warning, i took it more in the direction of that oglaf comic (nsfw) where Vlad fully doesn't realise that this is a love shrine, this is a completely normal thing that you do for your arch enemy!

———

“Daniel! I can explain!”

“Oh… my… God...”

“Daniel, really, it’s not what it looks like!”

“Really?” Danny breathes, shocked and honestly kind of fighting down the urge to vomit. The thermos slips from his fingers and clatters to the ground, the sound echoing far too loudly in the enclosed space. “Because it looks like you have a shrine dedicated to my dad in your closet.”

“No, that’s not—it’s more complicated than that, Daniel. You wouldn’t understand.”

“I don’t think I want to understand.”

“Your father is a ridiculous man, Daniel. I hate his stupid face so much. Look at him!”

Vlad turns back to the actual shrine, with actual candles and actual flowers and actual photos of his dad with… Holy crap, did Vlad cut out Mom in each of the photos? What the fuck? 

Wait… Look, Danny tries not to look too closely at the weird things Vlad has hidden around his mansion dedicated to his mom, but he’s fairly sure that the pictures of her he’s cut out (in heart shapes—yeah, Danny’s definitely going to barf) are the ones Vlad’s put in his other weirdo closet shrine that Danny also wishes he’d never seen.

“Why don’t you just have one shrine? Why have—no, you know what, I don’t want to know. I think I’m just gonna leave.”

Yeah, that sounds like the best option. Danny takes a cautious step back, very ready to get back home, bleach his eyeballs and maybe never look at his mom and dad ever again. Or, at least, not until he has successfully blocked this from his mind forever.

He only gets one foot out the door when Vlad lashes out and grabs him. The day just keeps getting better and better, really, doesn’t it? Even as he twists and turns, he can’t get out of Vlad’s ironclad grip and he’s pulled even farther into the closet. 

Panic rises in his throat as Vlad shuts the door—what the fuck is happening? He doesn’t want to be dragged into Vlad’s creepy shrine to his dad, what the fuck? What the fuck!

“I loathe your father, Daniel, I hate him with the very core of my being. Look at him!” 

There’s no goddamn way in hell Danny is looking at any of the pictures, no thank you. He squeezes his eyes shut and wishes he were somewhere, anywhere else, when Vlad jerks his arm forward so he comes nose-to-nose with the largest framed portrait of his dad in the very centre of the table, smiling with his doctorate and a very unfortunate 80s mullet. Dear God, no.

“I hate his smug face! I hate his stupid fashion sense, you have no idea how much I detest that orange jumpsuit of his, how much I want to claw it off him and tear it to shreds! If I have to listen to him say another boneheaded, idiotic, ridiculous thing, I will—I’ll rip his throat out with my teeth! You don't know how long I spend here looking at him, imaging all the ways I'll have him grovelling at my feet. One day, Daniel, I'll have him one day...”

———

The sun was going down when Danny finally managed to escape and find solace in Sam and Tucker. He's not going home. Not yet.

“Danny, are you okay? We were so worried, we couldn’t get hold of you for hours! Where were you?”

“Sam, Tuck… Vlad, he…”

“Holy shit, Danny, you’re shaking, are you alright? What happened, what did he do?”

“I think… I think he wants to fuck my dad.”

#danny phantom #vlad masters #jack fenton #phan phic #hope you enjoy!! this was so fun i can totally see it happening haha #also i spent a solid three hours going through the oglaf archive to find those two comics so like... double procrastination #thanks! #does vlad want to fuck jack or is he just incredibly unhinged? #trick question it's both #this is the most harrowing torture vlad has ever put danny through btw #locking him in the weird shrine closet and forcing him to listen to everything he wants to do with his dad #lbr tho if vlad ever did get to fuck jack OR maddie it would ruin him #like he wouldn't know what to do with himself after that there's no coming back #he'd be a shell of a human being #ANYWAY hope you enjoyed it!! thank you for the prompt!! #my writing #cab writes

[satureja13]

It's sunday and Saiwa is taking a day off from working all week long on their game and the device to send messages and produce over to the Muggle World. Today he's going to spend all day trying to bring Kiyoshi back! Since the day he started talking a few days ago Saiwa is pondering about things that could trigger his way back. And then he remembered the Cat Café. And how Kiyoshi had reacted on the cats. Goats are animals too and so they went to care for the goats. And really. Kiyoshi hugged his Little Goat!

And again he exitedly mumbled something that sounded like 'I like Bird!'... Saiwa sighs. He knows that Kiyoshi needs time to adjust to this world and even to how time passes here. Spending a few decades as a tree surely messed him up. But it's time he comes back and they can talk to each other and set things right. Saiwa can't be Kiyoshi's 'Bird'...

Kiyoshi wasn't around that often to get to know him very well and he kept his life mostly a secret but Saiwa remembered something else. He took Kiyoshi over to Jack's Nectar Shop.

Saiwa: "Jack, do you remember your wine and cheese cellar at the Invisible Farm? Kiyoshi loved to be there and make his cheese!" Sure, he loved to be there, but mostly to secretly make out with Jack... But he can't tell Saiwa this -.- He swore by his life he'd never tell anyone. It's time Kiyoshi comes back to set things right. He'll never be able to heal if he can't talk with his friends about what happened between them.

Saiwa started making cheese and it seems to make Kiyoshi happy. Of course it does -.- He was babbling all the time, just no one could understand a single word. As if he was mumbling in his sleep.

Sai left them alone for a few minutes to go to the bathroom (alone!) Jack to Kiyoshi: "I knew since you left the farm that you are Saiwa's fated mate. I just don't understand why you did all this with me then. Was I just a substitute for Saiwa? Did you really step back so Sai and Jeb could be together? End this uncertainty. Come back and set things right. We are hurting. I'm just trying to get over us. It's so painful, you can't imagine."

When Sai was back, Jack went over to his houseboat to give Ji Ho 'Lessons in how to love Vlad' again ^^' Today they are talking about Vlad's qualities.

Jack: "... and he's so talented! He's an amazing writer and painter. And you won't believe me when I say this, but he can really be funny! And he's so handsome! And he's a good kisser!" Ji Ho: "Vlad is utterly beautiful. I was stunned when I first saw him..." Jack: "And then he hissed at you and was mean..." Ji Ho sighed: "And then he hissed at me and was mean... But I agree, he's a fantastic kisser."

Jack: "And I'm glad he has his black eyes back. The normal eyes were creepy. Do you think the Bond still tells him to kill us?" Vlad: "Not the Bond. But I somehow feel the urge to kill you, Jack..." Jack to Ji Ho: "He's just kidding ^^'" and to Vlad: "It's not wise to torpedo my efforts here!"

Vlad sighs. Why again was Jack his best friend? And why does he always have to overhear such conversations? This is so embarrassing! But Ji Ho thinks he's a fantastic kisser! And that he's 'utterly beautiful'! (And there he smiled :3 too bad no one witnesses it.)

Outtakes Caught Jeb watching TV when I logged in. With gritted teeth, like the cat below the TV ^^' Poor Jeb, he can't bear watching couples kissing while he's loosing his Giigs to Kiyoshi...

'Now, I'm lookin' to the sky to save me Lookin' for a sign of life Lookin' for somethin' to help me burn out bright And I'm lookin' for a complication Lookin' cause I'm tired of lyin' Make my way back home when I learn to fly high

I think I'm dyin' nursing patience It can wait one night I'd give it all away if you give me one last try We'll live happily ever trapped if you just save my life Run and tell the angels that everything's alright'

Learn to Fly - Foo Fighters (The MV is worth a watch! Witch Jack Black and Kyle Gass from Tenacious D!)

From the Beginning  ~  Underwater Love ~  Latest 🛺 'Home happy Home' from the beginning ▶️ here 📚 Previous Chapters: 🛺 'Home crappy Home' from the beginning ▶️ here 🌴 'The Expedition' from the beginning ▶️ here 🎤 'Putting the Boys Back together' from the beginning ▶️ here 🥀 'Disbandment of the Group' from the beginning ▶️ here

#home happy home #sims 4 story #simlit #sims 4 #ts4 story #ts4 #simblr #jeb harris #tomarang #underwater love #sims 4 vanilla #The Crappy Home #the sims 4 for rent #sims 4 for rent #for rent #jack callahan #woo ji ho #vladimir tepesz #saiwa #giga byte #kiyoshi ito #vlad overhearing #lessons in love

[everybodywantssomething]

hihi! this is your srs (i’ll sign off with a 🎭, if that’s alright!!)

you seem very cool, and i’m excited to talk with you! to start off with, what do you most want me to know about you/your interests? what are your favorite bands? - 🎭

Hello!!

Let’s see. Music wise I’ve been really digging this little 90s Australian band called The Brown Hornet (Vlad, Phunk, and Spores are favorite songs that come to mind but all their songs are pretty great). I also have been really digging Rhett McLaughlin’s/James and the Shame’s album Human Overboard. Those are maybe my current “new” listens that I’ve been enjoying.

I grew up really loving The Beatles and they will always hold a special place in my heart. George’s solo career might be my favorite of the four. I also dabble in some stuff by The Monkees, Queen, The Byrds, CSNY, Canned Heat, Huey Lewis and the News, The Band and probably plenty others I’m blanking on.

As for life or hobbies, I work as a preschool teaching assistant. I enjoy reading mystery novels and generational novels and sometimes horror if I can really get into it. Some of my favorite novels are “Faithful Place” by Tana French, “Tell The Wolves I’m Home” by Carol Rifka Brunt, and “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien. I love creepy movies as well as low budget, tug at your heartstrings kind of films, one of my favorites being “Short Term 12”.

I feel like this is getting kind of long and I don’t want to talk your ear off for the first message but I look forward to talking more! :)

#srs22

[writer-room]

Danny would absolutely go on a horror movie binge spree and after the nightmares from it ceased he would go out of his way to reenact or make homages to said horror movies as a ghost because he’s bored and also just Like That. The residents of Amity he doesn’t like are petrified, Vlad is kicking him out of his manor for the 5th time, Jazz is about to kill him twice, and the ghosts are a mix between weirded out and proud.

#danny phantom #danny fenton #horror #amity park #ghosts #vlad plasmius #jazz fenton #townfolk #horror movies #dork #danny: ok why are YOU excited by me being creepy #box ghost: your finding your place as a ghost!!! its very important! #danny: this isnt a regular thing dude #box ghost: i literally saw you have a breakdown 2 days ago & you blew up an abandoned warehouse #danny: moving on- #meanwhile the fright night is super proud but also really really concerned #fright knight: small ghost boy?? are you alright? your not usually like this are you ok #fright knight: are you having bad life memories?? #danny: what the hell is a bad life--ooh

[five-rivers]

Auction

For @skellagirl

.

“Hey, Jazz,” said Danny, leaning into Jazz’s room, one hand on the doorknob, the other braced against the jamb. “Wanna help me mess with Vlad?”

“Do I?” responded Jazz, pushing her chair back. “What’s the plan?”

“Well,” said Danny, “Vlad left one of his creepy spy bugs in the kitchen again, and I was thinking we could have a loud conversation in front of it about how Mom’s going to that charity bachelor auction.”

Jazz frowned. “But she isn’t. She’s married.”

“Yeah, that’s the point. Vlad’s delusional.”

“Ah, I see,” said Jazz. “Yeah, let’s do it. Should we write a script?”

“Maybe just a backstory. I work better with improv.”

“I’ve seen your fights, Danny. You definitely do not.”

“That’s cold.”

.

Maddie was not here, and Vlad was going to commit murder. Just a little bit. The victim was already half dead, after all.

His teeth squeaked as he forced himself to smile at the vapid, crowds of rich single women below him. He could not, unfortunately, back out now without losing quite a bit of face. The only consolation he had was that he had already communicated the need to eliminate the wealthier bidders, so that Maddie’s bet would win, to his ghostly servants. If only he could get away from the crowds and duplicate himself to take care of the others…

But that would be suspicious too, wouldn’t it? He had to let at least a few bids go through. And some of them had to be high, otherwise he’d never hear the end of it from his ever-aggravating business associates.

Curse them and their golf-playing buffoonery. He didn’t even like golf. It took so long.

When his name was called, he went out onto the stage like a man expecting to be hung. Why did anyone think this kind of thing was a good idea? This was humiliating. Ninety percent of the people bidding were after his money one way or another, he was sure.

Not like Maddie.

He sighed and refused to make eye contact with anyone in the crowd as the auctioneer called higher and higher values. Finally, the number stopped climbing, and Vlad lowered his gaze to see who, exactly, he would have to waste a day with.

Well. At least it wasn’t someone who was after his money.

.

“So,” said Harriet Chin, not even bothering to hide the recorder she held in her hands, “Vladimir Masters. Do you have a statement regarding the Whole World Mission scandal?”

“Harriet,” said Vlad, “please, we’re supposed to be on a date.”

“Yes, and I get to decide our activities. And I want an exclusive interview with the elusive Vlad Masters. That’s what I paid for, after all.”

“And here I was, thinking that it was my ravishing, good looks.”

Harriet snorted. “Maybe for someone who didn’t see you and Jack in that ridiculous hot dog eating contest. Although,” she leaned back appraisingly, “you did fill out since then. Actually… I’m sort of surprised at how early the bidding topped out. Was the room filled with bitter exes, or is there some scandal I don’t know about?”

Vlad rolled his eyes. “I confess, I’m as surprised as you.”

“Now, that’s a lie,” said Harriet.

“Excuse me?”

“You still have that tell from college,” said Harriet, smugly.

“Excuse me? I do not have a tell.” If he did, he had to identify and get rid of it as soon as possible.

“You do,” said Harriet, still grinning.

Vlad weighed the pros and cons of simply overshadowing her and making her lose the day. She’d probably claim that he drugged her or something. Curses.

He sighed, heavily. “At least let me take you out to a restaurant instead of,” he flicked his fingers at his surroundings, “just standing here.”

“Oh, I don’t know. A person’s house can tell you a lot about someone. Didn’t your Wisconsin home blow up? What was up with that, anyway?”

“I released a statement regarding that some time ago,” said Vlad.

“Wasn’t it also raided by the government?”

“That was a misunderstanding. And I also released a press statement about that incident. It shouldn’t take you more than, oh, an hour to look it up online.” This wasn’t entirely true. Once it was out of the immediate spotlight, Vlad had spent quite a bit of money to have the whole story scrubbed. “Dinner? I am paying.”

Harriet looked thoughtful. “Alright, but I’m picking where we go.”

“Of course,” said Vlad, graciously.

.

He regretted everything.

“Harriet, I know Amity Park is small relative to, say, Chicago, but, really… There are good restaurants here.”

“Yes,” said Harriet, “but I wanted to eat here.”

Vlad grimaced and tried not to look at the booth where Daniel and his juvenile delinquent friends were sitting and filming him with a handheld camera.

“Of course,” said Harriet, apparently unbothered by the stickiness of the booth bench and the screaming of children in the other part of building, “if you wanted to go back to a more private setting so that we could continue our interview—”

“No, no, this is quite alright. I said I would get you dinner, and here we are, eating…” He glanced at the menu with derision. “Food.”

He could, just barely, call it that. Even if he’d discovered during his short-term ownership of the chain that certain of its condiments could be used as mid-grade explosives. He didn’t know how Daniel could stand it.

(On the other hand, he had to admit he was enjoying this. Just a little. He so rarely got to match wits against a competent adult.)

(Maddie didn’t count—He was trying to woo Maddie, after all. They were practically on the same side.)

Valerie Grey, looking intensely weirded out, brought their order to their table. Harriet, unperturbed by the grease leaking through the paper wrappings, began to sort though the offerings for the cheap chicken burger she had ordered. Vlad, meanwhile, stared down at his sandwich.

Someone had put an ectoplasm antagonist in the dressing. He glared at Daniel. He didn’t know how the boy had done it, but he was going to pay for it. Along with setting him up for this ridiculous ‘date.’

“Aren’t you going to eat?” asked Harriet.

“I’m not hungry.”

“Oh, stop being such a snob. I remember you and Jack living off of instant ramen.”

“That was then, this is now,” said Vlad.

.

“Seems to be going well,” said Tucker, adjusting the lens on his camera, “all things considered.”

“Kind of surprised they’re here of all places, though,” said Sam.

“I think Ms. Chin’s just trying to get a rise out of Vlad, to be honest.” He’d stopped looking at them, though, instead frowning at the kitchens. “I think Valerie put something in his food. Do you think we should do something?”

“Not really,” said Tucker.

“Yeah, I’m going to choose Valerie every day over the old rich white guy who wants to kill your dad,” said Sam. “Even if she has some slightly homicidal tendencies regarding you.”

“Fair enough,” said Danny. “Want to stalk Vlad and his date until they drive home?”

“I don’t have any other plans,” said Sam, easily.

“Same,” said Tucker.

“Cool,” said Danny.

.

“Are you frequently stalked by teenagers?” asked Harriet.

“No,” said Vlad.

“And isn’t that Jack and Maddie’s son?”

“Unfortunately.”

“Oh ho, there’s a story there, isn’t there?”

“A private matter, I assure you.”

“When you’re as wealthy as you are, Vlad, nothing’s a private matter anymore.”

“I fear I must disagree with you on that count. Where are we going, anyway?”

“It’s a surprise,” said Harriet. “Unless you want to give me that interview.”

“Ugh. No.”

It was a miniature golf course. Of course it was. He could never escape from the accursed ‘sport.’ At least the miniature version was marginally more tolerable. Or it would be, if Daniel and his pack of friends weren’t able to follow them in.

… Or maybe they wouldn’t follow them in. The trio veered off suddenly right before the exit. Vlad smirked. Not enough cash for the little badger to get in, hm?

This assumption was disastrously disproven when a ghost fight tore through the Astroturf that covered the third hole.

Harriet was very nearly thrown into the pond, but Vlad managed to catch her at the last moment.

She was blushing.

Butter biscuits.

.

“Well,” said Harriet, “that wasn’t the interview I wanted, but it wasn’t a total waste of time. Same time next week?”

“Fine, fine, whatever you want,” said Vlad. Then what he said caught up to him. “No. One date. One date was all you paid for.”

Harriet pretended not to hear him.

#danny phantom #phic phight 2021 #phic phight

[ratanslily]

Five overrated + five underrated rc lis? 👀

you're going to get me in trouble😂

this is in no order alright?

overrated~

• Jake from wave patrol. this mf rude and arrogant as hell and he pisses me off. i see many people have picked him and oh well. benefits of being the only male li in the story who had a long route.

•Alexander, chasing you. look i really like him as a friend and his banter with sam always had me laughing. but his initial reactions and advances towards mc were really creepy and disrespectful. i know he's a popular li in this fandom.

• Max, moonborn. i hate his angry face, so ugly😂 plus i really dont like his behavior whem he gets angry. i actually didnt like his vibes at all

•Adrian, Rott. he's sweet.. but...boring.. like there's no flavour to him lmao. i like him as a friend but his route is not enjoyable.

• Vlad, Dls. im sorry but the hot n cold, slow burn, forbidden to touch each other is not it for me. plus I really hate how he's always there, but the other lis have been pushed to the side. yeah i KNOW the story is called dRaCulA:a love story but fun fact? i dont care💋. if you wanna make lis in a story, you should give them proper attention.

Underrated

• I'll add this later. I've to think😅

[aleks-norward]

The Difficulties of Old Habits😔

Hi, guys! How are you doing?😊 Hope everything’s alright.

Please, let’s speak about the third chapter of “Repairing our lives”. Especially about Vlad. Danny is an understandable case. After all he is traumatized now and is unstable with his emotions hecause of that. He is confused and don’t know if he really can trust Vlad, though he wants, because he has no one else to rely to.

But Vlad... You were so kind and good all this three chapters. What are you doing now?.. Well, I must say that the case is in the funeral. Vlad thought that the after having the closure Danny would stay mostly calm and quiet. He didn’t expect Danny to freak out about Sam’s grave so much. But electrocuting the boy... As we see, Vlad’s malicious side is still with him.

I must tell that all this instability is made on purpose. Vlad and Danny are used to be enemies, and no matter that Vlad cares for Danny in his some creepy as of yet way, he still can’t change in a heartbeat. So can’t really Danny. And this makes their relationship, as I think, more real. Old habits die hard and their power haunts their owner for long.

So tell me what you think about this chapters in the comments below❤️ Here is a link to this chapter!

https://www.quotev.com/story/13840212/Repairing-our-lives/4

If you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend you to do this❤️ This art originally was the illustration of the Young Justice comics, but remade to fit the chapter by me. Hope you like it😊

#repairing our lives #danny fenton #danny phantom #vlad masters #fanfic #fanfiction #adventure

[maggot-monger]

what are some of your favorite/most interesting vampire folklore stories? or legends/myths/stories about vampires?

alright, my beautiful, patient anon, let’s talk about vampires >:D

(this is going to be mostly historical accounts, but i’d be happy to talk more loosely about common features of vampire stories or just to spit hot takes or whatever too, just let me know!)

my #1 recommendation is to look into the american vampire folklore tradition from the 18th and 19th centuries. most of these stories are about vampirism spreading within family units. there is usually blood involved, but there is rarely explicit blood drinking (there is nothing consistent about vampire lore...they are very much a ‘i know it when i see it but damned if i can define it’ monster lol) — instead, new england vampires were more about unseen contagion and disease. a great example of this is the story of mercy brown, who is usually mentioned as the “last” “real” new england vampire. i also suggest the article “vampires and death in new england, 1784 to 1892″ by michael bell, if you’re interested in an academic take on this stuff. people (rightly) associate vampires with central and eastern european folklore, but the american stuff is really cool and very creepy, and if you’re interested in weird old vampire stories you might like it!

okay so now skipping actually over to central and eastern europe, there are a number of accounts of “normal” vampire encounters that started getting written up around the 17th-18th centuries that seem like good examples. a few good ones are: petar blagojević (1725), a serbian vampire who killed about 9 people as a vampire and made himself a nuisance to his family; arnold paole (1725), the source of an epidemic of vampirism in his serbian village; “the shoemaker of breslau” (1581) [cw for suicide in this one...a pretty common theme in old vampire folklore], a german revenant/nachzehrer/”ghost” who caused a ruckus in his town post-mortem; and löwenstimm’s account of justina yschkov (1848), a young russian woman suspected of vampirism because of the circumstances surrounding her death (namely, cholera and pregnancy). there’s also joseph pitton de tournefort’s vrykolakas story from greece about watching some people, uhm, deal with (dissect, basically) a vampire. 

i have more if you want them but i think these are some of the best (well, ok, justina’s isn’t that good or easy to find material about but i wanted to include a lady vamp and there aren’t that many of those from this tradition). it’s hard to get really good accounts of these types of vampires because they were mostly peasants from regions that kept changing hands politically. most of the stories got written down by german people cataloging to-them unfamiliar superstitions of people now under their empire’s rule — often first-hand accounts, but definitely with some foreign sensationalist flavor.

a third group of vampires worth talking about are the central and eastern european nobles. it’s funny that vampires have become such a classy monster considering mostly the folklore is about poor working people, but anyway, there are three main notables in this category. most people probably know about vlad iii aka vlad the impaler aka vlad dracul (1428/31 – 1476/77), famous for defending wallachia against the ottoman empire and for, well, impaling a fuckton of people on spikes. another is countess erzsébet báthory de ecsed (1560–1614), who ~allegedly~ held prisoner, tortured, and bathed in the blood of hundreds peasant girls from her lands. finally, and probably least well known of the three, is princess eleonore von schwarzenberg (1682-1741), who was basically just a weird lady whose death made everybody extremely paranoid (to the point that she was not even buried with her family like other people of her rank and lineage usually were! i actually visited the church were they ended up burying her...nice place lol). 

and finally, some older short story/novella recs, because why not? carmilla (1872) by sheridan le fanu is great; the vampyre (1819) by john polidori is less great but still fun (the main character is wonderfully soft and dumb :p); good lady ducayne (1896) by mary elizabeth braddon; dracula’s guest (1897) by bram stoker; luella miller (1903) by mary e. wilkins-freeman; and for the blood is the life (1911) by f. marion crawford. (actually, all of these are in the penguin book of vampire stories edited by alan ryan, which is a great collection btw!) 

(also, weird shout-out to the novel the manuscript found in saragossa (1805) by jan potocki, which is...not about vampires exactly, but is also definitely about vampires imo? i haven’t actually finished reading it and i might not ever but the creepy isolated dreamy vibe is impeccable if you’re into it)

i hope this response makes up for how long it took me to get around to answering you, anon!!

#vampires #folklore #mine #replies #anonymous #i do legitimately love talking about this stuff #if you want to chat more you can hmu and i promise i'll get back to it quicker!!! #my writing #my meta

[immortalonus]

Where You Belong: Chapter One.

So in case you guys were wondering where I vanished off to, the answer is mostly work. This chapter also took way, way more brain power than I really intended, so I didn't really have the energy to post much else.

I could probably edit this more, but I swear if I spend one more hour editing this I will go insane, so here it is, chapter one of my first multi-chapter fic in, *checks calendar,* four years!?

Jeez, time really does fly, doesn't it?

Read on AO3

If I were Where I Would be, Then I Would be Where I Am not. But where I am, There I must be. And where I would be, I cannot.

-American Folk Poem.

________________________________________________________

As soon as Valerie had flown out of sight of Plasmius’ portal, she made a point to dump everything he had given her for the trip.

First, the communication devices. She had no desire to talk to anyone, much less the creepy, lying, traitorous ghost-thing masquerading as Vlad Masters. She gave the DALVco edition headset her best fast ball, taking no small satisfaction in watching it break piece by piece as it clattered against the frames of one floating door after another before finally vanishing into the mists below.

If Plasmius wanted to talk to her, he could crawl out of his portal and find her himself. Which he wasn’t going to do, because he had a cover to maintain. After all, what kind of delicate, elderly gentleman would throw himself into a dimension of rarified death? Not Mister Masters, oh no.

Especially not when he had a willing pawn to do it for him.

The more surreptitious listening devices went next. Fat, disgusting, bloated insects they were, bugs in function as much as form.And they were everywhere.

She found them wedged between her armor joints, the soles of her boots, in the crevices of her guns, and, after putting her systems through an intensive self-diagnostic, her hair.

When had he touched her hair?

She made a point to crush them all. Either plucking off the parasites directly, or, in the case of those lodged beneath her suit, pulling them into her storage unit and spitting them back out again into the open atmosphere where they could be destroyed.

She removed everything else Plasmius had given her immediately after: Several days worth of food, a large pop up tent, a sleeping bag, a map, several spare weapons, a well thumbed biography on Vince Lombardi and more spewed out of her storage units like a sickness, purged in gouts down to the waiting abyss.

Any thing he'd handled, all his supplies, every “present” he'd ever bestowed, she made a point to dump them all.

But God, when had he touched her hair?

Once she was finished, it felt almost like a victory. With no material proof of her obligations, it was easy to imagine she was already free.

She would finish this mission on her own. No outside aid, no puppet-masters, no regrets.

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

/Sorrysorry-soverysorry!/

“Shut up!”Valerie had regrets.

/sorrysorrysorry/

So many regrets.

“I said shut up, you stupid bug!”

She emphasized her point by kicking the target of her ire right in the soft parts of its creepy, eye studded thorax.

This was stupid, she was stupid, but more than anything, she was pissed.

Valerie took a few steps closer to her target, gait slightly uneven for the lack of both her usual boots. While she wasn't going to die anytime soon, as the black leather that fit snug as skin across her body, the true barrier against the toxic atmosphere of the Zone, remained fully intact, it didn't stop her from being mad about it.

The bug, which had finally stopped gibbering in that vile, hissing tongue that had become more and more common the deeper she ventured into the pea-soup hellscape otherwise known as the ghost zone, took the opportunity to cower against the calciferous outgrowth that had halted its pitiful attempt at flight from Valerie's relentless pursuit.

She had hunted ghosts stronger and faster than this every day back in Amity, and could not help the faint sensation of disgust that came over her at the sight of a figure so unexpectedly pathetic. Did she appear so weak that this creature, along with the half a dozen or so of its less successful, but no less kleptomaniacally inclined ilk see fit to prey upon her? Did she seem so low indeed, that even the meanest, most beggarly of the Zone's inhabitants should see her as some object to pilfer and mock?

It was the work of a moment to summon her laser cubes, pulling them from the pocket dimension from which they resided to slide noiselessly over to the insect lying prone before her. With a thought, they flew forward, two each to press down on the thing's chitinous skull, heightening the artificial glow of her suit as she did for that extra sense of intimidation.

It was an ability she'd never had the need for back on earth, only to find herself putting it to use with unhappy frequency not a day after she'd set off on her journey.

Everything in the realm of the dead glowed, and the capacity to put off and manipulate one's own aura was a hallmark of the creatures that 'lived' within it. Those that didn't stood out strangely, casting shadows upon themselves and the world in a way that made them an obvious anomaly in the otherwise antumbral reaches of the Zone.

While Valerie didn't enjoy wasting her resources on glowing like she was her very own spook, she also hated wasting time, which advertising her humanity to every ghost that glanced her way very much did; a lesson that she'd learned after fending off an entire assault squad of ghost police, who had chased her for ages while screaming about her criminal possession of so many 'real world objects' within their territory.

That it also made sure any enemies never anticipated her ability to phase through objects came in handy from time to time as well, such as when a would-be thief, for example, tried to duck into a thicket in an effort to snarl its pursuer.

As expected, the bug shuddered in response to the cold touch of the barrel against its skin, curling into itself as it looked up into the dark panel of her faceplate.

Valerie leaned down, pinning it between herself, her guns, and the stony trunk of what, on this particular island, seemed to serve as some kind of tree.

/Alright, Manbug, one more time./ Her voice crackled and popped through her translators, adding even more intimidation to a tone already modulated down to something lower and crueler than her natural snarl. /Where. Did you. Put. My Stuff. /

The insect whimpered a little harder, oozing something suspiciously close to snot from the hole above its writhing mouthparts. It remained otherwise silent, however, as it shook.

Valerie pulled back her leg and kicked it again.

The imitation flesh buckled beneath her toes, causing the creature to squeal, a nonverbal expression of pain peaking just beyond her range of hearing as it flickered invisible, writhing in a hopeless gambit to escape the weapons still clamped against its head.

Funny how ghosts kept so many features they really shouldn't need anymore. Like joints, for example. Was it a subconscious matter, or some kind of deliberate choice, Just one more means to mock the living, their very forms a cruel parody of everything they once had been?

She silenced the voice which whispered how she should know by now, that it wasn't that easy. There were more important things to focus on.

/P-please./

The bug focused its myriad gaze on the huntress' visor, all six limbs twisted over themselves, wrapped tight over its oozing midsection.

/In error, Milor- Milord. Your place, held, not neutral. Shall honor, please. /

It was leaking from the eyes too, now, viscous fluid pouring from its dozens of eyes, wetting it bodily, puddling down onto the dark purple earth, adding to the halo of scattered goods and tchotchkes that had spilled out from the overstuffed bags that it had clung to for dear life even as they toppled, overbalanced from a too-fast turn, dragging the creature headfirst into ruin.

/Mer- mercy./

This wasn't fair. This miserable thing, begging in the dirt like it hadn't gotten anything more than what it deserved.

Valerie grimaced, rubbing the heel of her palm against her faceplate. Phantom's visage, not long past, looked up to her from the depths of her memory, face just as desperate, just as indisputably, distressingly genuine as when she'd first seen it.

“Valerie, You don't want to do this.”

“Like I have a choice, spook.” She muttered.

She took a deep breath, sucking in the same recycled exhalation she'd been breathing for nearly a week now, and took a moment to actually think her situation through.

She wasn't lost. She had no idea where she was, but she wasn't lost: That would imply a level of helplessness she could not bring herself to admit. What little food and water she had brought with her had been eaten a while back, reducing her to scavenge among the portal droppage scattered through those areas not patrolled by mad policemen, hoping she could find something sufficiently sealed against ectoplasmic encroachment to remain edible.

She reconsidered her captive, still trembling on the ground. A ghost zone native, utterly at her mercy, and, by the looks of things, a serial hoarder of goods.

/You want mercy? Fine. But you do what I say, exactly as I say it, M'kay?/

While the guns pinning its head in place were something of an obstacle, the bug did manage a spasmodic sort of jerking motion, forebody pushed back and forth with desperate, eager haste.

/(Enthusiasm,) (enthusiasm,) assent! Lord, generous, gratitude, respect./

“Good, now-”She held out one hand, palm expectant.

/Give 'em back./

It responded slowly, still slobbering at the maw, all eyes fixed on the huntress as it unwound its uppermost limbs, which reached up towards those tattered bundles still clustered fungiform over its heaving thorax, rifling between twine-like bindings for what seemed an age.

Patience had never been a skill of Valerie's, and she found herself torn between wanting the moment to last forever and wishing go faster instead, tightening her mental grip over her laser cubes, fingering the internal triggers in anticipation of some sudden, traitorous motion on the part of her captive.

Ghosts were deceptive, dangerous creatures, except, of course, when they weren't.

Without any ability to tell the difference, she could do nothing but pace at the bars of her patience, waiting for the moment to act.

Finally, a claw submerged itself into one of the parcels, pulling out one boot, and, just beside it, a single leather fold.

This was it. Valerie snatched the wallet from its pincers. The boot was replaceable, her construct engines could make another now, if she wanted to waste the resources for it, but her wallet-She flipped open the small leather parcel, noted immediately that the contents were not any state remotely akin to how she had left them.

/Milord?/

The bug was still subtly trying to wriggle its way out from under her guns. Her systems noted, then deleted, increased energy expenditure from her laser cubes as they were forced to adjust to its motions.

Useless data. A ghost of so low a caliber could never hope to escape so easily.

Debit card-broken, bent until the plastic whitened from an excess of pressure; Dollar bills balled together and crammed into a single pocket, still damp with a kind of ectoplasm that looked disquietingly similar to the slobber still dripping from the mouthparts of the bug before her; Plastic wrappers, spare coins, a concert flyer for a band she'd always wanted to see.

/Ah, Milord? Pardon, Excuse?/

All of it. This vile, twisted excuse for an insect had messed with all of it. It had played with her most important cards and documents like they were toys, then shoved them back in with utter disregard for any sense of their value once it was done.

/Goods, returned, trust?/

Dread crept into her heart as she reached into the backmost pocket of her billfold, the place where she kept the picture of her.

/more goods? Information? Information on goods? Release, please?/

It was shoved in the very bottom of the wallet, balled into the crease where the two halves of leather were joined into one. She pulled it out, fingers shaking only slightly as they smoothed it back into a more flattened form.

The Red Huntress had no face, and never had Valerie been more grateful for that absence than in that moment, when she beheld the true extent of the damage done to Polaroid before her.

Soft white creases were everywhere, shattering the image into isolated fragments of its former self. It had been torn, too, at the edges, a grip too hard, twisting too far, integrity compromised as a result.

The worst of the damage by far, however, were a series of punctures, scattered at random through the center of the photograph, small to medium perforations forming little absences where there had once been trees and grass, where there had been a woman's face. A hole sat primly above her dark neck, arched back into nothing, a yawning gap where once there had been laughter.

The Huntress turned her blank visage back to her captive, who froze in the act of trying to pry her weapons out of position. Cowardly, but expected. Trusting a ghost was a fools game she had no intent on playing.

/Ah, haha, (nervous) (nervous,) (respect.)/ The target pulled its claws back up against itself, fiddling with the tips as it looked up to her absent regard.

/...Milord?/

The Red Huntress had no face, could betray no emotion, could reveal none of the cold black welter that rushed up through the depths of her breast and pressed against her throat. An impassive machine, possessed of a will stripped free of feeling.

No sliver of her intent showed through, no shudder passed from her shaking fingers to her gauntleted hands, not even the psychic senses of a ghost could hope to detect the lava that boiled up from her guts, pressing against her skin in an sheet of living fire even as the pits of her stomach chilled to ice.

The bug was still looking up at her, eyes all expectant, when she commanded her one of her guns to fire.

A bright streak of energy shot through the top of its head, hard pink flash cutting through a wave of green.

It squealed, jerked all six limbs towards the missing portion of its skull in a hopeless effort to stop the thick chunks of ectoplasm from slopping down the side of its face. Valerie brought her foot down at the same moment, crushing its forelimbs down into the dust. Forelimbs tipped with little claws, just large enough to fit the holes in a certain photograph.

/Why!? Ancients, why, why!?/

Why?

“Why the hell not?” she snarled, “Ain't that how it works here?”

If a different ghost wanted to rob her blind every time she tried to sleep, they could. If Valerie wanted to chase down the one that finally succeeded, she could. There were no laws here, there were no rules, there weren't even morals. There was nothing to stop anyone from doing anything, so why should she be the one to hold herself back?

She lifted her foot off its claws, then swung it once again into its thorax, only just crusted over from where she had kicked it before.

It squealed, just like she imagined another ghost would, red eyes wide and frightened, vampiric teeth shattered against her fist, choking as she wrapped her fingers around his blue, blue, skin.

He deserved this, it deserved this, she was in the right. She had been tricked, mislead, mistaken maybe, but she wasn't wrong, she was in the right.

And if there was some dark curl of satisfaction there, a self righteous flame alighted just where she'd been coldest in that moment of hate, then that was proof, wasn't it? Of just how right she was.

She bent down to her target, which had started drooling all over again, ground speckled green and wet as it heaved against itself. It was disgusting enough that she would have shot it in the mouth instead of the head, but she still needed information, which meant it still needed to talk.

It's upper set of antenna had survived the cranial blast, making for an easy handhold as she yanked its drooping head up to face her once again. At the same time, she sent her guns down to its chest, where its energy levels peaked their highest.

Ghosts, much like the cockroaches they resembled, could survive well enough without a head, but none, not one could ever hope to make it without their precious ghostly core.

“Listen up spook.” She hissed. /Here's how this is gonna work. You lie, I shoot. You run, I shoot. Got it?/Its head twitched up and down, the smallest possible motion of assent.

/Good./

This was what it took, when it came to ghosts. Cooperation proceeded pain, loyalty from the threat of it, and mercy not at all.

/We'll start with the questions./

She allowed her guns to charge power, deadly, scintillating hum filling the air with the sound of her malintent.

/I like what I hear, maybe I let you keep talking./

Author's note: If Sam is more pride than wrath, then Val is more wrath than pride, IMO. I've done my best to write her accordingly

#Fanfiction #ao3 fanfic #Chapter 1 #Where You Belong #Danny Phantom #Valerie Grey

[ayamari-no-goshi]

Eidolon 16 | (T)

ff.net | AO3

Fandom: Danny Phantom (DP)

Summary:  AU: What started off as the result of a simple act of rebellion ends up causing his life to spin out of control. How will young Danny cope with the results as well as a past that has a strange habit of coming back to haunt him.

Warnings: rated T for violence, mentions of death, kidnapping, and various other things

Chapter warnings: Hospitals, mentions of abduction

Parings: hints of Danny/Sam much later on

Notes: originally uploaded to Ff.net. Cross-posted to AO3 and tumblr

16. Information

"So, do you believe him? And, since when is a ghost a 'he'?" Tucker asked Sam as he lounged on the plush carpeting in her room after she told him of her ghostly encounter the previous night.

Sam sighed as she tried to put her thoughts together. She had called the boy as soon as she had gotten home from the cemetery to inform him of what happened. It had been too late for him to come over at the time, but it didn't stop her from demanding him to come over as soon as he woke up.

"I really don't know," she finally admitted. "He didn't seem like he wanted to hurt me and even offered to help me up after I fell. And, he really did just seem like an oddly dressed boy who happened to be glowing." Unsure how to continue, she stood up from her spot near Tucker to retrieve a picture from the dresser. She had taken it the day prior to Danny going missing, and it was the only picture she had with him in it.

Bring the picture back over to her seat, she showed it to Tucker. "This ghost did look incredibly like Danny, save for the difference in hair and eye color. Tucker… I don't want to believe it, but he seemed too familiar with me. He even knew about the day we found that old picture. It… it really did seem like he was Danny…"

Tucker was silent as he examined the picture. "I wasn't there, so I'm not able to draw any conclusions. But, this ghost did give you something, right? If this is a clue as to what's going on, we might as well use it. Have you glanced at it yet?"

Sam bit her lip as she once again rose, only this time it was to retrieve the book and the old picture they had found. "To be honest," she stated as she placed it on the floor, "I haven't been too keen on opening it. The phantom from last night gave a rather vague warning about its contents." Even if he hadn't warned her about it, she probably wouldn't have opened until Tucker came anyways. Something about the very appearance of it was unnerving.

"Wait, the master of all dark and creepy is having second thoughts about a simple book? This has got to be a first!"

"Tucker, will you be serious for once in your life!" A faint blush crossed her cheeks as she pushed her friend over. She hated admitting when something bothered her which Tucker knew. He loved calling her out on it when he could which did little more than agitating her more. "The thing's written on animal leather for crying out loud! How else am I supposed to act?"

"Alright, alright!" Tucker just raised his hands as an attempt at an apology. "I get it. If it makes you feel better, I'll handle turning the pages as we look at it."

…..

Sam just couldn't believe what she was reading. The book… no, it was much too disturbing to actually be called a book; grimoire might be a better designation. The writings contained within it were a strange combination of mystic writing, images, and stories. Though it might seem like a bunch of nonsense to someone just hearing about it, the tome itself was rather grotesques with its depictions. Parts of the text had become too faded to read, but what could be gathered was disturbing enough.

The main part of the tome spoke of a family which who had incurred the wrath of the spirits. A curse had been laid upon them in punishment for their deeds. The best Sam could gather (and Tucker would look into it more later), the curse would cause the family to produce a son who would be trapped between the spirit and material realms. This son would use his accursed powers to bring about the end of the world. The other writings either went into more details about his appearance or abilities or suggested spells to summon spirits which could be used to assist in darker deeds.

Placing the book as far away from her as she could, Sam just wrapped her arms around herself as she tried to digest the disturbing information. The ghost had told her it would give them an idea of what Vlad was planning, and if Vlad was really using the book as a guide than he must be planning to use the boy the book described. Did that mean he was still looking for the boy? Or did he actually have him? Wait… it couldn't be!

"Does… does that mean Danny's the boy this thing described…?" Sam exclaimed in a hushed voice.

Tucker looked at her sharply causing her to look away. She hadn't meant to speak out loud. "It would explain a lot," he said in a dry voice. "I mean, we knew the day he saved us he was something other than human."

She nodded as she allowed herself to recall the memory. Nothing about what happened had made sense at the time. Danny had managed to fight off the ghost who was threatening them and somehow transport them back to her house. His appearance had also changed some as his power over took him. A gasp escaped her as she recalled his appearance. "Tucker…! That night, Danny's hair had become white and his eyes were green, just like the ghost from last night! But, how! Danny saved us! He's not evil! There's just no way he could be!"

"Sam, just calm down! You're jumping to conclusions here!" After waiting a moment to see if she would have another outburst, he continued to speak. "I'm going to do a little more digging, but I think we can safely assume Vlad seems to think he can get a hold of the person… ghost… thing described in this book. As for Danny… it's difficult to say for sure. We know he is something other than human, but it doesn't mean he's the same." He paused again as he tried to adopt a comforting expression. "Besides, if that picture you found is anything to go by, Danny doesn't look a thing like him."

It took her a moment to understand his last sentence, but she couldn't help but chuckle when it came to her. It was true; Danny didn't look a thing like the terrifying image they had found. Even if the ghost she had encountered was Danny, he was still just as scrawny as ever. The depicted creature was bulky and flaming. The boy's hair may have turned white, but it certainly wasn't on fire. "Well, at least it's better than having nothing," she told her friend."But, now what? We're back at square one."

"Not necessarily," Tucker countered causing her to stare at him. "At least we now have a place to start looking. We might not know why exactly Vlad took Danny or what Danny really is, but we know what he wants. I'm going to head home and starting poking around. I'm also going to try to see if I can hack Masters' estate again. I'll call you later tonight to let you know what I found."

"Sure…." Confusion was noticeable in her tone. It was rare to see Tucker so determined to do something which didn't directly involve his technology. It just went to prove how worried he was about Danny.

The boy quickly picked himself up and moved towards the door. Before he went through it, he glanced back at her with a serious expression. "I'd hide that book if I were you. That ghost apparently went through a lot to try and get it to you. If it really is Vlad's, I'd hate to see what happens when he finds out it's missing."

"I hadn't thought about that," she admitted as she hastily closed the book and stood. The two friends then said their goodbyes and went their separate ways. Tucker headed towards the front door of the large estate while Sam sat on her bed and wracked her brain for ideas of where to hide the tome in her hands. She had to make sure she would be able to locate it again, but no one else, especially her parents or Vlad would be able to find it. She stood as an idea came to her. She would just ask her grandmother. The woman had a knack for hiding items her son and daughter-in-law could never find, so she was perfect to ask.

After carefully placing the grimoire under her bed, she quickly went to go find the old woman. Even though she had an idea where to find her, there was always the chance she was not there. Though her grandmother was confined to a wheelchair, it did not stop her from managing to find her way to places which were supposedly off limits to her. It always infuriated Sam's parents, which was probably the main goal.

xxx

Everything was fuzzy as he opened his eyes. After blinking a few times, an unfamiliar white ceiling came into focus. Confused, Winston glanced around to his side, noticing his body felt stiff as if he had remained still for far too long. The room he was in was not one he had ever seen before, but judging by the lack of decorations and the faint hint of antiseptic in the air indicated he was probably in some sort of hospital.

Why exactly was he here? Why wasn't he at home?

Knowing he would not get any answers by continuing to lie still, he tried to sit up. It was going well until he noticed a strange pulling sensation on different parts of his body. Concerned, he looked down at his body to find various tubing in his arms. That was bad enough, but pristine bandages were notable on his arms and the small bit of his torso he could actually see. Whatever happened to him must have been horrendous. At least there wasn't a tube sticking out of his throat; that would be overkill.

At least it now made sense why he was in the hospital; now he just had to figure out what caused all of it. He leaned back as he tried to recall what happened before everything went black. Flashes of colors and sounds quickly came and went without much definition. Did this mean he was going to have to recover more before he would be able to properly recall it? He hoped it wasn't the case. He was a military man who prided himself on recalling details.

His frustrations were put aside as a shriek penetrated the silence of the room. The next thing he knew at least ten different medical personnel were surrounding his bed and staring at him. What started next was a barrage of questions and tests which took up the next several hours of his time.

…

While the tests had been frustrating, at least he had a better understanding of his condition. He had been found with numerous severe injuries on his body in his home. When he was brought in, he was in critical condition, and the staff was honest enough to admit they were very surprised he was recovering. Most of them did not believe he survive the first few nights. His body was covered in odd burns and one of his lungs had been punctured. In truth, the staff couldn't really explain what had caused the injuries. All they knew is what the police had told them: he had been attacked by an unknown person using an unknown weapon one night several weeks ago.

Knowing they would not be able to help him piece together what exactly happened, he changed tactics and asked them about Danny. Any person he asked would just give him a strange look and tell him someone would be in to discuss what he had missed later. It was unnerving. If this continued, he was going to have to corner someone. Danny was his ward, and if something happened to the boy, he wouldn't be able to live with himself.

Several more hours would pass before he received any answers, and those answers came by means of a stern-faced police officer. After introducing himself and assuring the hovering medical staff he just wanted to ask some routine questions, he sat down near the bed and tried to explain what the police force knew about his attacker. Irritated, Winston interrupted the man and demanded to know Danny's location.

The officer took a deep breath before he spoke again. "The day you were brought in, we took Daniel down to the station to question him."

"You what?" Winston demanded, wincing from the strain placed upon his damaged throat. While he was in surgery, the doctors had placed a breathing tube in his neck. Sure procedures usually did damage, but it would be a while before he knew how bad it really was. "Danny wasn't even home when I was attacked! He was at his friend's house!"

"I understand that. It is standard procedure to question family members after an attack for any information which may help us."

Winston relaxed slightly at the explanation, but he narrowed his eyes. "There's something else you're not telling me."

"You're very astute," the officer complimented with a slight nod. "Though I hate to admit this, your ward went missing shortly after we released him from questioning. From what we can tell, the last place anyone had seen him was in the police station. We have records of him making a phone call to one of his friends… and the trail goes cold from there."

"Danny's missing? How could you let him go like that?" Anger coursed through him as he tried to rise out of bed, which immediately alerted the medical staff. Several of them ran in and tried to restrain him as he continued to yell at the officer.

"Sir, my department takes full responsibility for what happened. We keep trying to find some sign of him, but there is very little evidence to go by. It's almost as if he just vanished from the station!"

Winston stopped struggling as the officer's words sparked something within him. Images flooded back of the strange creature who could disguise himself as a man who appeared to him that night. It was Vlad! He had attacked him so he could get to Danny!

His eyes widened as another thought came to him. If he had been asleep for as long as they said, then the boy's birthday had already passed. Did that mean the little boy he had raised had turned into the foreseen monster? If it was true, than he had failed in his duty both to the boy and to his missing parents. How could he have allowed this to happen?

The medical staff realized he had finally calmed down, but there was talk of them retrieving a sedative. After warning the doctors to leave him alone until he finished talking to the officer, he looked the uniformed man directly in the eyes and told him what he remembered about when he was attacked. He left out the paranormal parts, as what rational man would ever believe such words unless he had seen it for himself.

The officer sat in a stunned silence after Winston finished his story. "That's quite an accusation," he eventually stated after he jotted something down in the notebook he was using. "Are you positive it was Masters who attacked you?"

Winston nodded vehemently. "He's a difficult man to mistake. About a month before all this occurred, his company started contacting me about Danny's situation. Some of his adoption papers had gone missing… and Vlad had tried to gain custody of the boy when his parents first disappeared, so it seemed like he was trying again. Danny had even mentioned he had found the man standing in our kitchen when he returned home with his friends the one day."

A frown crossed the other man's face as he made another note. "Daniel's friends had also mentioned something about that, but we had just set it aside. But, I don't think we can ignore that anymore." The officer asked a few more routine questions before he excused himself after promising he would return at a later time.

…..

A day or so later, he wasn't exactly sure due to the disorienting nature of hospitals, he received some unexpected visitors. When the nurse told him about them, he immediately assumed they were just more police officers and quickly agreed to have them come into the room. He was immensely surprised to see two teenagers, one boy and one girl, approach his bed. He recognized them at once; they were Danny's friends.

"How are you doing?" Sam asked gently as a form of a greeting as they approached the bed.

"It looks like I'll live," he replied in a semi-cheerful tone. "So, what have the two of you been up to?"

The two teens gave each other a look. It was almost as if they were having a silent discussion on how much they should say. "Well, we're doing our best to try and figure out what happened to Danny," Tucker told him as a serious look crossed his face. "We think Vlad Masters had something to do with it."

"I'd say so." Winston's dark tone received two startled looks. "I guess you weren't expecting me to agree with you. Vlad… or should I say Plasmius… has been trying to get his hands on Danny for years. After attacking me, it must have been smooth sailing for him to grab Danny."

A surprised silence filled the air before Tucker spoke again. "Wait… Vlad was the one who attacked you? But how…?"

Winston smiled despite of himself. Though Danny's friends were still children, they did appear to have a genuine concern for him. After debating how much he would say to them for a moment, he decided to tell them the whole story of attack, including Vlad's duel nature. It was possible they would think he was insane, but something told him they had already gotten a taste of the supernatural. How couldn't they? They were friends with Danny.

….

"Wait, so Vlad's this super powerful, crazy, half-ghost villain? How did I miss this? He has all the signs seen in the comics too," Tucker muttered to himself as he accepted the information. "Wait a minute! Sam, doesn't his description sound kind of familiar?"

"Now that you mention it… Vlad's 'ghost form' does seem similar to what Danny and I saw in the cemetery that one day." The goth girl's expression had gone rather contemplative. "But if that was really him, why didn't he just take Danny? I mean, he… it… whatever it was could easily have just taken him."

"Your guess is as good as mine. I won't even pretend I understand how that man's mind works," Winston admitted. "He's been planning this for years, so I assume he wanted to take Danny when the situation was perfect. He really doesn't seem to like witnesses. But, that's just an assumption on my part."

"Um… Mr. Wolfe, sir... this has been bothering me for a while, but why does he want Danny anyways?" Tucker hesitantly asked.

It took a moment for him to answer. "You've probably noticed that there was something different about Danny. Now, I'm not exactly sure how much you know or saw, but Danny's situation isn't much different than Vlad's… well, at least that's what I was told."

"I'm not exactly sure what you mean… but if it helps, we did read the creepy old book a ghost gave me the other night," Sam supplied.

Winston gave her a searching look. Did she mean what he thought she meant? "What book?"

"The ghost said it would help us figure out what Vlad was planning."

The man ran his fingers through his hair as he gave a wary glace towards the teens. "Then you read the story of the monster." Without even waiting for an affirmative, he continued to speak. "Everything points to Danny becoming the thing depicted there. His parents… they somehow knew he would be cursed and did their best to research a way to prevent it… which clearly failed."

"Whoa! Back up! You're telling us that Danny's parents knew what he was… or is…?" The boy's concern was understandable. Winston felt a pang of sympathy for the boy. It must be hard to accept such a story, especially when it involves a friend.

Winston nodded. "Something tells me you had your own share of odd experiences around Danny." He released as sigh as he leaned back against his pillow. "We need to exchange information, but that's going to have to wait. Knowing the doctor's here, they're not going to allow much more time for us to talk."

"But…!"

He held up his hand as a way to silence the two teens. "Trust me, I'm just as worried about Danny, but there isn't much I can do about my current situation right now."

There was a little more argument between the three before a handful of doctors and a rather angry nurse burst into the room. As the nurse scolded him for getting so riled, the teens excused themselves and promised they'd be back at a later date. They needed to exchange information, but there was no way anything would be able to get anything done until the doctors were convinced he wasn't going to fall over dead at any moment.

A sigh escaped him as he started to tune out the doctors' murmuring. He needed to help rescue Danny from Vlad, but how was he going to do that? He was rather incapacitated at the moment. On top of that, Danny was probably already going through changes. Who was to say he would still be the same person when they finally got to him? It was a terrifying thought. If the boy did become that monster, than it would probably become his responsibility to stop him.

If that possibility became fact, would he really be able to handle it? At that point in time, he didn't have an answer, and there was the distinct possibility he probably never would.

===

Notes: A grimoire is traditionally just a book of spells or immense knowledge which can either be directed towards good or evil. There are many legends about them, but my mind has decided to turn towards the darker side. Some were said to contain so much evil they had a life of their own and could devour the memories or lives of their owners.

And, the reference of the damage of the breathing tube is a real thing. When a person is having severe trouble breathing or during certain intense surgeries, a breathing tube will be surgically placed in the throat by making an opening in the neck. Since that's the area of the vocal cords, it has a bad habit of causing damage to them. A person's voice can be altered by such surgery.

I'm also a day late with updating because of sleep deprivation.

#Eidolon #danny phantom #danny phantom au #dp #dp au #danny fenton #sam manson #tucker foley #vlad plasmius #au #alternative universe #fantasy #supernatural #paranormal

[liang-rexy]

My AU "Wings of the Ravens" stuff.

Canon characters are OOC in some ways (compared to canon concepts, you know), and don't say I didn't warn you.

😂

Sam has cool canines. 😂

Tucker smiles, yeah. 😂

And Daniel. (See my current icon? That's basically me now, you know. I am sometimes exhausted and just want to sleep. )

And there's Dark Danny. (This design again because I love seeing sweet dresses. )😂😂😂He's actually quite happy this time. 😂

I changed the patterns of Dark Danny's dress and changed some of the base colours of the whole design. I wanted him to look nicer in this little dress.

I drew him wearing a dress for the third or fourth time (probably more). I have a freaking weird little comic showing Dan in a dark blue dress here. 😂

He looks good in dark colours. Since his skin colour is really light, light colour clothes don't suit him that well (I can still manage to design light colour clothes for him, but he looks better in black or dark blue/red/brown sometimes. ). (He looks cheerful when he's in orange. Just see my previous post. ) Okay the truth is that I have to design the rhythm of value and sometimes I am lazy or tired, so I prefer to draw simple clothes. Honestly I need to design the value thingy better. 😂 (Btw my lineart is getting better and it looks cool. )

I promised to share the haunted dolls with you, and here is the concept art. The haunted doll that I draw a lot has a proper name now.

(This particular one) She's Button Lady, who is a really friendly and sweet neighbor. (Other designs might be used for other haunted dolls or just ordinary dolls. )

I also have some truly fearsome, aggressive and dangerous ghostly characters. The smiling little character is not included. The smiling one is just another lovely neighbor. The characters with six limbs are the truly ominous creatures.

Oh and I am calling them Softies! Hahaha🌚👍👍

These Softies hunt ghosts (I mean some certain "species", such as Ectopuses, Worms, Eels, humanoid ghosts and perhaps more. They are not cannibals btw. ) Then they "suck" the energy out of their prey. Usually, even if a Softie doesn't destroy other ghosts, it can still hurt other ghosts seriously by just passing through the prey, and some ghosts will really just die (ghosts in my AU will die 😂) because of serious injuries. The most horrifying thing is that the prey usually cannot fight back at all (unless with a special weapon or sth), because Softies can't be injured by ordinary ghosts. (They are perhaps like "ghosts" to the ghosts? )

However, Softies are often harmless to terrestrial animals and plants (maybe more?) of Earth.

As for halfas, Softies aren't too interested in them. But these creatures can really hurt halfas if they intend to do so. ( To be honest, I don't want Danny and Vlad to be the "only halfas"in this weird world, so there are more half ghosts, but most of them aren't "half humans". I know this concept is super weird but whatever. )

Alright, so Softies are similar to "soul suckers" ane they are freaking dangerous and scary.

I actually tried to colour a nice Softie with watercolour. I used watercolour to colour a cartoonic character for the first time, and I think it looks fine.

(My drawings aren't scary, and I am aware of this. Just look at the way I draw canon characters, they aren't even creepy. My OCs aren't scary either. And the name "Softie" is a bit rediculous, but it suits them, and I am always serious. My stuff just look like that and it's not like I can make sth kid-unfriendly. I don't want to draw sth that's really terrifying. So let's just pretend that the Softies are creepy. )

Y. Rexy Leung's 52nd original post.

2020. 06. 18.

#au #danny phantom au #渡鸦之翼 #wings of the ravens #danny phantom #danny fenton #sam manson #tucker foley #dark danny #dan phantom #oc #haunted doll #button lady #softie #ghost #character #character design #concept #concept art #danny phantom oc #长文章

[pretty-face-breaker]

W.I.J. Prompt: Do it

C.W. Hayko’s shameless masochism, begging to be hurt, light choking, consensual cutting with knives, creepy/intimate whumper @whumpmasinjuly​

Tagging: @doveotions for Nick and Hayko stuff

- 

The way Nick polished each piece of metal had a certain care to it that Hayko didn’t notice before where each vertical stroke with the cloth left a mirror finish on the blade cleaner than the last. He hadn’t looked away from the rack for at least twenty minutes now. Even Vlad grew curious after Nick missed his request to pass over the torque wrench right beside him.

Still, the glint wasn’t something he could or wanted to miss. Sharpness. Finery. Everything was precise. Didn’t he name his knives too? Hayko peeked up from his orange juice, catching glimpses of the folding knife and how the afternoon sun hit the hardwood handle just right, creating a golden shine up the stripes and before he knew it, he had been staring for over a minute.

Nick didn’t immediately notice but when he did, he passed him a look over his shoulder, shifting on the rolling chair. “See something you like?” He had angled the blade just right to catch Hayko’s reflection whose mouth fell open like a kid that had broken something caught in the act.

He huffed a little defensively. “It’s a nice knife.” One thing he had gotten great at was disguising his fluster. “Where’d you, um, get it from?” Hayko asked cautiously, speaking over the rattle of Vlad’s engine in the garage. 

Nick’s eyebrows pricked up in surprise and a strange smile played on his lips. “I never took you for much of a knife enthusiast.” 

Hayko shrugged. “It’s...just a nice knife and I’m curious.” But that was a lie, it wasn’t just a nice knife. Even now when Nick lazily wiped it up and down, something itched under his skin, a red tingle for danger that made him sick. He wondered what it would feel like, breaking into his chest. What kind of freak? But that didn’t stop him from fantasizing the sharp edge creeping over his face, maybe leaving knicks, maybe sinking a bit lower-

“Earth to the lawyer,” Nick said, waving the knife as Hayko snapped back to the garage and the rattling and Vlad giving him a concerned look.

The Russian put the wrench down. “Are you alright?”

“F-Fine, just, um,” he stumbled, “Nick, can I…can I talk...to you for a second?”

Slowly, the polishing stopped as Nick stared at him, trying to figure him out or catch any face twitch that might give him away or what was going through his head. “Can you talk to me for a second?” he repeated flatly.  

Fuck fuck fuck fuck. “Just i-in the other room really quickly.” 

He seemed to be thinking about it before shrugging noncommittally and huffing a laugh. “Shit. Why not.” Nick stood up and tucked the blade in his waistband before making his way to the back door, and glancing back asked, “What, do you want me to go in first?”

Hayko shot to his feet, quickly clearing his throat. “No, no sorry.” Leaving Vlad with furrowed brows and suspiciously staring after him, he tried not to skip to the door. When the door shut behind them, suddenly words didn’t work the way he remembered. “S-So...I...the knife, have you ever, you know?” He made an awkward stabbing motion to Nick’s amusement. 

“Are you telling me you called me here to ask if I ever stabbed someone with this?” he asked after a second of incredulous silence. “You’ve got a lot of nerve.” 

“That’s not-” he interrupted, “That’s not what I—Have you ever hurt someone, I mean?”

“What, like, in general?” 

Hayko shot out a breath, clenching his teeth. “With the knife.” As if that should be obvious enough.   

Nick didn’t answer, only stared at him in genuine awe before glancing to the door and back to him. “Alright, cut the bullshit,” he said low, leaning a hand on the wall behind him. “What do you want?”  

An embarrassed sound croaked out followed by a nervous laugh. “...Can...you use it on me?” Fuck. The way Nick’s face went from irritation to disbelief to amusement made him want to die. Although he didn’t break eye contact with the taller man who then went from amusement to glee.  

He chuckled. “No.” Nick slipped his hand off the wall and turned to open the door without as much as a second thought until he felt a tug back on his shoulder. He narrowed his eyes back at Hayko. “Did you just?-”

“P-please, Nick, um, can, can you please use it on me?” he asked quietly, retreating his hand from him and backing up at the dangerous change of tone. “You can, you can do whatever you want, just please, I-I want you to.”  He cleared his throat and shrunk away, trying to take up as little space as possible. 

Nick folded his arms across his chest. “And why should I give a shit about what you want?” He was trying to stifle a grin but it broke across his face anyway. “Convince me.” 

Hayko stared forward at his throat, not daring to raise his eyes to meet Nick’s. “I don’t know why I want it but I just do, so if-if you can, if you would, um,” he trailed off, watching as his hand moved to the knife and tossed it up into his grip. 

“Hm. Beg for it,” Nick muttered, having apparently made up his mind. “And do it well or I’ll leave you here high and dry.”  

Taking a shuddering breath, he leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. “Nick, please hurt me, c-carve into me,” Fuck fuck fuck why are you doing this? “Do whatever you want, just please, I want you to do it, I want to, I want you-” He gasped softly as Nick pressed the base of his hand to his throat, his thumb pressing on his jugular and moved it up to his jaw. Then came what he was waiting for so desperately. Blood trickled down his sternum when the blade sank in and Hayko bit his lip when it kept sinking in. 

“You’re good at this,” Nick breathed beside his ear. “Normally, you’re begging me to stop. What’s gotten into you?” A pleased hum escaped him when Hayko gasped in pain and delight, fingers digging in the wall behind him until they grasped for Nick’s shoulder. 

Oh, it hurt. But Hayko was pulled from the present, the edges of his vision darkening with each pang of agony that bled through him, where he could hear his sounds somewhere further down the tunnel bouncing off the walls. Everything was precise, the pain, the pressure on his throat, the cool metal tip swirling on his skin, and he hoped it wouldn’t stop anytime soon. 

“More,” Hayko pleaded, sighing at the responding chuckle.

“More what?” 

“Do it more,” he repeated, too out of breath to specify. Do it more. Do it more.

The knife pulled away after slitting a long streak across his chest and Hayko was brought back, eyes fluttering open and feeling the heat on his face from a lack of air. Nick adjusted his hand to give him a breath which he gladly took. “Why’d...why’d you…” he rasped, noticing the tears running down his face.  

Nick wiped the blade on his cheek and redid the buttons on his shirt that Hayko didn’t recall had ever been undone. “Vovchik might be worried about you. You don’t want him worried, do you now?”  

Swallowing hard, he nodded frantically and wiped his eyes with his sleeve. The itch slowly faded with each passing second he took to catch his breath and when he stumbled back into the garage, Nick was back to polishing the knife like nothing had happened.

...

#whump #whump writing #masochism #knives #begging #choking #my writing #Hayko Grigoryan #Nick Sinclair #begging to be hurt #intimate whumper #creepy whumper #my man sucks at this #you're a lawyer omg #whumpmasinjuly

[originalcontent]

Oooookay. Welcome back. Posting about pathologic part 4 I think? Part 4. We just reached Act 4 too, so everything’s going according to schedule. This gaming session had some ups and downs. Ups: That good good lore, and a lot of quality time spent with my good pals Daniil  and Changeling and also Clara apparently, although she might not be my good pal after all, but w/e. Downs: FUuuuUUUUCKkkk we are so bad at video games, and also the kin folk have become A Lot, holy shit. Where to start.

Okay so this time the game wasn’t actually super stressful for me personally bc this time I kind of just handed off the controls to my sister every time shit got dangerous. She’s a lot better at video games than me. Shoutout @akpaley​ for keeping me from dying from stress in real life.

The drawback of this is that since she’s a lot better at video games she’s also a lot more willing to actually take risks rather than just running away from literally everything. Which I won’t deny, has gotten us a lot of much-needed money and resources but also.

WELCOME TO THE FUCKING DEATH SPIRAL PART OF THE GAME. I guess it had to happen eventually, right? Fuuuuuuuck us, do you have any fucking idea how much shit you have to redo when you’re randomly shanked by some dude every fifteen minutes? And they’re harder to fight every time we come back, apparently, and also our health is like permanently half gone? Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck why are there not more clocks.

Victor Kain, you were the one who made the clocks?? I could fucking kiss you. I owe you my life. Or like, six hundred of my lives. Hhh.

Okay, seriously though, the clock lore is actually kind of sick. Victor told us that they’re smaller versions of the cathedral, and we were like “!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THaT’S WHerE wE RESET THE GaME IN THe PROLOGUE!!!!!!! METAPHYSICS!!!!!!!!!” The Kains are so cool.

(Maria Kaina got infected tho. Sorry, you. :( Although technically that happens later.)

Um, we gave the rest of our shmowder to Khan. We’re out now. We’ve been looking for more but haven’t found anything.

Also we made a random potion, and the plague showed up and was like “fuck you,” and I was like “damn, calm the hell down, you’re the one fucking killing people.”

Met with the Saburovs more. They were like “we have another suspect!” and I was like “yeah they probably don’t but w/e” and my sister was like “they’re in an infected land and we should probably save their lives” and I was like “why do we care about helping the Saburovs again, literally all they do is accuse random people of killing my dad, the Kains are obviously the best family, we should just be throwing in with them” and she was like “that’s not all they do, they also run the guards, you know those guys who patrol plague districts?” and I was like “okay fuck you’re right let’s visit them” and it turns out that that there was actually some super cool lore pertaining to the town’s mistresses. Also, god if they don’t have some cool reflections. I love everything about this town’s history.

Afterwards we randomly decided to visit Yulia for literally no reason, and she was like “I’m glad you’re here, I have a lot of super heavy important shit to discuss with you about the Inquisition that will be here tomorrow, it sure is convenient that you’re in my neighborhood for some reason even though I live in an incredibly inconvenient location?” Also she knows something about the nature of Artemy, Daniil, and Clara-or maybe the Changeling but she called her Clara? Oh yeah, Daniil was there too for some reason. Poor guy, I don’t think he’s okay. He cried on my shoulder a lot, he was endearingly open and earnest and for once I felt bad about the dialogue options wherein Artemy throws shade.

And then Clara happened to be standing outside literally right then? I wonder if that was going to be a big quest location and we just happened to arrive right before the game told us to go there anyway. I think that’s it actually. We’re so good, damn. Clara keeps pulling shit and then immediately trying to reconcile and asking for help. I really like her, but we really shouldn’t be trusting her right?

Oh Murky was also there and she set up a meeting between us and her “friend” and that night we went and Clara and Changeling were both there and I’m so confused???? What is her deal? But!! Changeling facilitated a deal between me and the plague! And Murky is now off the hit list!!!!!!!!!! Does this mean she’ll live? Anyway the plague started talking to us, and our infection rose a bit in an unhealable way, and, dumbasses that we were, said “wow this is probably all just the natural consequence of the bargain we made. Guess there’s literally nothing we can do to address this.” (Spoiler: That is not the case, the cost of the pact was literally just that we became infected and would have to cure it with fire before it killed us. We figured that out eventually, I promise.)

Fast forward to the next day after we finish the day’s entire fucking plotline, when we have done literally nothing so our infection’s increased a shit ton and it starts actually killing us. And since we only have like half our potential health bar from getting killed so much, we literally can’t survive long enough to treat it. We run around trying to cure ourselves and die like ten more times before we finally accept that we just have to go back in time to before the infection was this bad, try to get cured immediately, and redo the whole day. There’s a whole fucking skeleton out by the theatre by now btw. Fucking death spirals. This play session took a long fucking time okay?

Alright, flash backward again. After talking with Changeling, we visit Stakh because after rescuing him twice in a row he promised we could talk. We go to his house and he’s sleeping, or maybe just pretending to sleep, but either way Artemy has the absolute sweetest little monologue, just talking to him, and so much has happened but I can tell there’s still a lot of tenderness there between them even if it’s buried deep, and it’s just such a soft scene against such a harsh story.

Guess who’s dead by morning.

The next day Aglaya showed up and was like “see me immediately,” so obviously we visit Capella and then town hall first off. Daniil’s there, he bitches to me about Aglaya for a bit. So cute, we really are friends. I promise to help him with corpse duty bc Capella wanted me to visit Grace anyway. We talk to the official people at the official desks, one is collecting babies, one is giving me some lunch money as a very good reward for being a very good little surgeon, and one is telling me that actually money is illegal now but here are some free coupons that actually are too cheap to buy anything with.

Aglaya is the woman from the prologue! Hhhh things are really building to a point, aren’t they. I wonder how Yulia knows her. But damn, the whole village was out there waiting to meet with her weren’t they.

I made a deal with the rat prophet to clear some space in the graveyard so Grace would be okay. Dunno what will come of that. I’ve been seeing him everywhere lately though.

I met with Oyun and gave him my dad’s house. I met with Aspity and was like “did you kill Stakh” and she gave me some vague shit, and in general I am very upset at the kinfolk right now but I tried to save them anyway. Went to the termitary and did the whole termitary thing. Wow that sure is a place, right? God, have I ever mentioned how much I love all the screaming soundtracks  in this game.

Damn, Taya’s whole child queen vibe is unsettling.

The whole termitary is horrible, and what the kin folk have been put through is horrible, but their obsession with blood and strength legit terrifies me. I’ve spent all my time until now trying to convince everyone that they aren’t bad, and that they aren’t to blame for the disease, but now they want to kill? And they really really really want me to be a killer too. And the whole thing with Taya is creepy as fuck too, she’s just a kid. Anyway, we’re sending Vlad the older to them, I don’t know whether he or his son deserves to be torn apart more, but Changeling was really upset at the idea of Vlad the younger going there, so I guess we’re backing her. We run all around town making sure the right Olgimsky is going, and then we realize we actually have a few hours left so we take a hospital shift too! And then we die of disease like six times.

Okay, flash forward again, we’ve gone back, gotten some guy to molotov cocktail us, redone the entire termitary thing, saved the game on Vlad’s clock after sending him to his doom (sorry dude). That’s where we’re at currently.

(Only it’s not actually, we went back and spent like an hour going back and forth between the termitary and Oyun again trying to deal with their shit, and everyone was like “murder all dissenters :D” and I was like “what the fuck” and the day was almost over but then a dude stabbed us and we randomly died, and none of these places had clocks, so at that point we were basically like “yeah it’s after midnight, let’s just call it quits.”)

Anything else......oh, the warehouses are at risk again. Notkin and Sticky, what would I do if anything happened to them. I hope my medicines are good enough, I gave some to Bad Grief too but now all there really is to do is wait. :(

Oh, I once again have thoughts on how fucking theatrical is it that everything in the game is simultaneously literal and metaphorical, it’s gorgeous, and have I mentioned the costuming choices for the Orderlies and the Plague, hhhhhhhh, not to say anything nice about Mark fucking Immortell, but he knows what he’s doing with this thing. Listen if this post weren’t already way too long I would just gush about the theatrical elements again, but sadly it is too long.

Okay, that was our latest session! We’ll be back either very soon or in like three weeks.

#kj plays pathologic #pathologic #pathologc 2 #this got so fucking long holy shit #also: can anyone tell me how old clara/changeling is? #teenager? twenties? #i initially guessed the latter but i'm growing unsure #theorizing that if clara's a teenager she might be the eighth? bc i still have no clue who that is and clara doesn't appear on the character #screen #but if she's an adult then that wouldn't make any sense

[five-rivers]

Long Night in the Valley Chapter 15

It's been a bit, hasn't it?

.

.

.

Toshinori pushed himself up off the ground with trembling arms. Although, by the position of the sun, it hadn’t been for long, he’d blacked out when—

“Oh, no,” said Toshinori. His head throbbed at the sound, making the edges of his vision go dark and fuzzy.

When All for One had broken through into the shared mindscape.

“Oh, no,” he repeated.

Where was Izuku? He had to find—Oh, thank goodness, Izuku was right there. He let out a sigh of relief.

His relief was short-lived. Izuku, to put it lightly, did not look well. His eyes were open, but only glazed slivers. His breath was coming shallow and fast, not quite to the point of hyperventilating, but it was a close thing. His skin was pale, except for deep, bruise-like circles under his eyes. He was sweating more than Toshinori had ever seen him sweat (which was really saying something; Izuku broke out into nervous sweats with some frequency). Perhaps most concerningly, he was shaking like a leaf.

Izuku was, Toshinori realized, still maintaining the effect of Two’s quirk.

He tried to reach inside himself, contact his predecessors, but swiftly pulled his mental fingers back, as if they had been burned. Bad idea.

“Izuku,” he said, “can you hear me?”

Izuku made a small, pained noise that tore at Toshinori’s heart.

“I’m going to pick you up, okay?” he said. Izuku didn’t answer, but then Toshinori didn’t expect him to.

The simple act forced Toshinori to call on the embers of One for All. Not enough to make his muscles swell, but enough to give him the strength of an ordinary, healthy man. His muscles and his remaining intact lung screamed in protest, not to mention his scars. He ignored them.

He stumbled forward, priorities shuffling themselves. They’d been trying to escape, but if Izuku was this ill… he needed a doctor. An exorcist might be a good idea, too, what with All for One running around in their heads.

But to get a doctor, they’d have to put themselves in commission hands, and Toshinori could feel the echoes of Two and Three telling him exactly how stupid that would be.

The commission had sent Hawks after Izuku. Toshinori had no doubt they’d throw him in Tartarus, and the treatment of criminals in Tartarus was one of the few things Toshinori had publicly disagreed with the HPSC on in his hero persona. Not that it had gone anywhere. He simply hadn’t had the time to really push it and the commission had somehow managed to paint him as somehow too good, too forgiving, to be trusted when it came to the disposition of terrible villains.

“’ll be’kay,” mumbled Izuku, the sentiment clearer over their mental link. “N’ospital.”

“Okay,” said Toshinori, slightly breathless. “Let’s—Let’s keep going, then. Find a good place to camp out, far away from Todoroki Touya, here. Yep.” He was aware he was rambling, and needlessly at that, but he couldn’t help it.

One foot in front of the other.

Was that a car running?

Toshinori, keen on getting help and care for Izuku, even if it meant hijacking a car, changed directions slightly. Of course, it would be ideal if there were friendly bystanders who didn’t believe the hero commissions lies and had a medical license and a healing quirk, but Toshinori would be more than happy with—

He stopped. Laughed. Laughed some more, a little hysterically. There, abandoned in a ditch like a beached sailing ship, was Vlad King’s much abused car.

Sure, it would have been reported stolen by now, and the police and heroes would be looking for it, but that was a problem for future-Toshinori. Present-Toshinori, on the other hand, was simply grateful for the windfall, and wary – the presence of the car could indicate the proximity of the League of Villains.

He gently put Izuku down in the passenger seat, turned the car off and made sure it was in the appropriate gear, then walked around to the back of the car and lifted it out of the ditch.

If his muscles had been complaining before—

He staggered back to the driver’s seat, leaning heavily on the side of the car the whole time. Blood dripped from his mouth. “This is nothing, my boy, nothing,” he said in what he hoped was a reassuring tone, as he felt Izuku’s concern press heavily against him. “Used to have worse every day of the week.”

Toshinori got the sense that Izuku was not, in fact, reassured. Nevertheless, he grinned, pouring every drop of his fabled ‘everything will be alright’ smile into the expression. Even if Izuku couldn’t see it, Toshinori needed some of the comfort that came with donning a familiar mask

“Let’s see if we can get to the Wild Wild Pussycats today, after all.”

.

“Eri-chan,” began Abe, tapping together her papers. She’d drawn the short stick. Ito was interviewing one of the older students, and Abe got the feral child.

“No,” said Eri.

“I didn’t even ask you a question yet.”

“Only people I like get to call me -chan. That’s the rule. Prinzible Nezu said so.”

“Principal,” corrected Nezu, cheerfully, like the unhelpful rodent rat bastard he was. If only she could have gotten him kicked out… but, no, he and Present Mic were both sitting in on the interview.

“PrincipalNezu told me, and he’s in charge.”

“You tell ‘em, Eri-chan!” said Present Mic, just a little more loudly than was comfortable.

.

Eri nodded to let Present Mic know the noise-cancelling earplugs were working.

.

“In this situation,” said Abe, sternly, “I am in charge.”

The girl tilted her head, and suddenly her expression went from ‘pouting child’ to ‘superior being contemplating an uppity insect.’

“Eri-san,” began Abe.

“No,” said Eri.

Abe looked up incredulously. What was wrong with -san?

She decided to ignore it. “You spoke with—”

Eri began to scream like a teakettle whistling.

“Can’t you control her?” Abe demanded, turning to Nezu, who chittered.

“This is very good progress!” he said, barely loud enough to hear over the ongoing shriek. “Before now, Eri-chan was too hesitant to act out or misbehave in any way, fearing the punishment that her former and completely unqualified caretakers would inflict upon her.”

Abe didn’t know which was more longwinded, the still-screaming child or the rodent principal. Her body was so tiny, how was she still screaming?

.

Eri clicked off the Present Mic-themed combo audio recorder and player in her pocket at the same time she shut her mouth. Principal Nezu was right! This was fun! At least, it would be if Deku was here.

“I get to pick what you call me,” said Eri, patiently. Since this person wasn’t smart enough to see that Deku was only the best hero ever and not a bad guy, she’d have to explain slowly.

The person evidently wasn’t even smart enough to breathe, as she was slowly turning purple.

“What,” she said, in stilted tones, “would you like me to call you.”

Eri let the smile Aizawa had taught her spread across her face. “Eri-sama.”

“Is that a joke?”

“It’s very important to respect the boundaries children establish, Abe-san,” said Nezu.

.

Katsuki blinked. It was about time he woke up. Stupid dream time dilation or whatever. Stupid boring soy sauce face and his stupid boring mindscape dreamscape whatever hellscape. There was a limit to what you could do in a square mile that mostly consisted of a tape-covered jungle gym and a boring apartment building. Katsuki had found it, and, after spending a good period of time being angry about it, had decided to go to sleep.

Dream time dilation or whatever the commission proctor had been going on about after the first billionty-and-one stupid hours, it didn’t matter, Katsuki hated it, it was just taking too damn long. If he didn’t have to do this to keep his provisional license, he’d tell the commission to shove this stupid pointless training up it’s—

About a minute after he should have twigged to something wrong, Katsuki realized the ceiling was too familiar.

He sat up. Why the hell was he in UA’s infirmary?

And not just him, about half the class was here with him.

He scowled. So, something had gone wrong with the test after all, and it looked like Deku wasn’t involved. Stupid nerd would hold it over him.

“Hey!” shouted Katsuki, spotting Recovery Girl. “What the f—”

“Language!” scolded Recovery Girl, shrilly, practically teleporting across the room to jab Katsuki with her cane. “You’re in a school, young man.”

“I know that!” protested Katsuki. “But why the f—” he faltered under the force Recovery Girl’s gaze even as she started to run through the checklist she usually did for people who’d been knocked out like wimps. “Fudge. Am I here.”

“I think the more pertinent question is, how are you awake? There should be at least one more hour, if not two, left to that quirk.”

“I went to sleep,” said Katsuki, attempting to fend her off.

“Well, you wouldn’t be waking up if—”

“No. In the shhhtupid dreamscape thing. I went to sleep.”

Recovery Girl paused for a moment, then sighed. “I don’t suppose you were the one whose mind they were exploring?”

“No. That was soy sauce face. Why are we back here? And where’s the nerd?”

Recovery Girl seemed to droop at his question, and a heaviness filled the air. “That’s a long story.”

“Did we get attacked by Dusty McGee again?”

“No.”

“So, what did happen?” snapped Katsuki. “The nerd break out a new quirk in the middle of the training or something?”

Recovery Girl’s eye twitched, and she sat down on a nearby stool, taking a deep breath.

“The hero commission suspected Midoriya of working with the League of Villains and attempted to use the training to interrogate him. Under the influence of at least one mental quirk, Midoriya fled. At about the same time, All Might left and met up with him, after which the commission accused Midoriya of kidnapping All Might. They haven’t given him an S-Rank villain classification, but I suspect that’s just because the paperwork hasn’t gone through yet.”

All right. Honestly, with his creepy stalker notebooks and obsessive All Might shrine room, Deku probably seemed like a prime kidnapping suspect to an outsider, but considering that Katsuki had witnessed Deku and All Might’s sickeningly sweet interpersonal interactions, somehow managing to be a goddamn third wheel to some sort of surrogate parent-child found family drama nonsense…

“Has anyone told ‘em it’s more likely the other way around? And that if it was, it’d probably be for the nerd’s own good, too?”

Recovery Girl nodded tiredly.

“They hiding out here?”

“Midoriya is a wanted criminal.”

“So what?”

“We’re a school.”

“You’ve lost me.”

Recovery Girl sighed. “No, Midoriya is not here.”

“Well, that’s stupid. What are we doing about it?”

“Right now? You are doing nothing. Commission investigators are in the building, and it would be better if they thought you were still unconscious.”

Katsuki grumbled. “Should go and try to bring him back.”

“What, so he can be arrested?”

“No!” said Katsuki, defensively. “But he’s probably running around out there making everything worse!”

“Bakugo,” said Recovery Girl, patting his leg, “from what I’ve heard, the only thing that could possibly make this worse is being found.”

.

“Can you describe to me the circumstances under which you lost your quirk?” asked Ito, the other commission investigator.

“Sure!” said Mirio, hoping the man couldn’t detect his discomfort at the subject. Even if he’d made that split second choice to shield Eri with his body with full knowledge of the consequences, to jump in front of Nemoto’s bullet, it was still a traumatic experience. It still hurt, even if he didn’t regret it.

He took a deep breath. “Well, it was during the Shie Hassaikai raid. I had gone ahead to confront Chisaki Kai and rescue Eri. There were a few other yakuza with him, members of the Eight Bullets. Nemoto Shin, Sakaki Deidoro, and, ah, Chrono, I think. I can’t remember his proper name.”

“That’s fine. Please continue.”

“I engaged with Sakaki and Nemoto while Chisaki and Chrono went ahead. I was affected by their quirks, but managed to get by… It was a hard battle!” he interjected, suddenly. He belatedly realized he wanted to draw out this line of questioning, and dove into a supremely detailed description of his fight with Sakaki and Nemoto. It was funny, too, and he saw Ito getting sucked in.

Sir would have been proud.

“And then, I chased after Chrono and Chisaki!” said Mirio, gesticulating wildly to illustrate his movements. He continued narrating the battle, the wild swings of fate, Eri’s hope and fear, the strikes and counterstrikes! Just like when he’d first debriefed after the raid.

Weirdly enough, going through it like this also made him feel better. Less like he was reliving a terrible, painful moment in his life, and more like he was telling a very dramatic story.

“—aaaaaaand,” he wrapped up, “Chisaki tossed the gun with the erasure bullets to Nemoto – I hadn’t realized he was still conscious. I’d been too worried about getting to Eri.” He shrugged. “I got shot.”

“Despite your quirk?”

“I didn’t want Eri to be hit.”

“Even though the loss of her quirk might have been a blessing for her? Considering the difficulty she has using it and the pain it gives her.”

Mirio felt his smile settle into something blander and more dangerous than his usual beaming grins. “Are you suggesting that I should have let a six-year-old be shot?”

“Not at all,” said Ito, making a mark. “Now, where was Midoriya at this time?”

“He hadn’t caught up to us, yet,” said Mirio. “He was with Sir.”

“Who?”

“Sir Nighteye,” clarified Mirio. “Before that, they were with Rock Lock and some of the others, I believe.”

“But you don’t know for sure.”

“I wasn’t there, so… no, not really. But the exact situation should be on file, from our debrief, and Rock Lock can confirm or clarify.”

“Only the parts he saw,” said Ito. “Did you try to use your quirk after that? Or did you simply assume it was gone?”

“Of course, I tried to use it!” said Mirio, feeling somewhat offended. “I’d trained it to be reflexive. Right after, I kept thinking my quirk would protect me, and moving too slow to dodge attacks. I got really beaten up.”

“And was this before or after Midoriya Izuku arrived?”

“Before, mostly,” said Mirio. “It isn’t like the fight stopped the minute he showed up.”

“And you are certain your quirk stopped working before Midoriya arrived.”

“I’m sure.”

“How did you know you were hit by a permanent quirk-erasing bullet?” asked Ito.

“Well, when my quirk didn’t come back we were pretty sure,” said Mirio.

“But you didn’t know beforehand, for certain, that the bullets were permanent.”

Crap. Mirio had screwed up somewhere in there. He could feel it.

“I think Nemoto and Chisaki were shouting at each other about it during the fight,” said Mirio. “They were pretty proud of it.”

“But you did not know, for sure, that your quirk loss was permanent,” insisted Ito. “There was no way for you to know that their claims about the bullets were true.”

“I mean… not really,” said Mirio. “But, again, here I am without a quirk.”

“Yes… but that isn’t the only way a person can lose a quirk, is it?”

“The Scourge of Kamino was already in Tartarus when the Shie Hassaikai raid took place,” said Mirio. “I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”

“Did Midoriya Izuku come into contact with you before the end of the day?”

“We talked, yeah,” said Mirio.

“Physical contact.”

“Actually… no,” said Mirio. “After the fight, we were both whisked off to the hospital, separately. Midoriya came to visit me after we both got patched up, he felt guilty about not getting to me and Eri sooner, and--” Oh, dear, he’d have to think back on that conversation a bit more. Later. He swallowed. “--and… Sir’s death…” He looked down at his hands. “Sir… in retrospect, he didn’t like Midoriya very much, but his death hit Midoriya hard. First death in the line of duty. It… it was the first time I’d seen a hero die, too.”

“You’re quite certain he didn’t touch you? At all?” asked Ito, undeterred by Mirio’s not-at-all-feigned grief.

“Pretty sure, yeah,” said Mirio, now annoyed by the investigator’s callousness.

“I see.”

.

Ochako rubbed her eyes, but the darkness stayed. “What,” she said out loud, her voice somehow doing the opposite of echoing, “what happened?”

“I don’t know,” said Todoroki. He had positioned himself so as to guard her back.

“There was a bang,” said Iida, “and then…” He trailed off, clearly finding just as much difficulty in describing the event as Ochako did thinking about it.

“They were talking about All for One getting in,” said Ochako. “You don’t think…?”

“Maybe we timed out the quirk and we’re about to wake up,” said Iida, optimistically.

“Where’s Aizawa-sensei?” asked Todoroki.

“I don’t know,” said Ochako. “He was standing with us… I mean, I couldn’t see you guys at first, either.”

“I’m here,” said Aizawa.

Ochako turned to see their teacher methodically scanning their black surroundings, his eyes red. “Do you know what happened?” she asked. “Do you think this is just, I don’t know, a new transition? A memory?”

“I don’t know,” said Aizawa. He blinked, eyes returning to their normal colors.

“It isn’t,” said an unfamiliar voice. The figure of a young man with uncut white hair slowly faded out of the darkness. “Hello.” He raised a hand. “I’m One. Or, I guess, you can call me Kazuki. Sorry about the landscape. Most of our mental resources were just rerouted.”

“Does this have something to do with that vault thing Izuku mentioned?” asked Ochako.

“Yes, sadly,” said One. “My brother’s broken out. Which means you really shouldn’t be here. All our minds are about to become battlefields. I have some techniques that might help you get out, but--”

“Six told me there was something taken from Midoriya that we could get back, if the vault was open. Is that still a thing?”

One raised a fist to his lips, and pressed down. “You understand, don’t you, that to search for this is to go into my brother’s mind?”

“If it’s to help Midoriya,” said Todoroki, stepping forward, “we’ll do anything.”

“That is very admirable of you,” said One. “I do mean that, I really do, and I’ve seen your heroics and spirit through Izuku’s eyes. But I’m not sending children to fight my brother. Eraserhead, you’d be going alone.”

“I can work with that,” said Aizawa.

“But we won’t be in any real danger!” protested Ochako. “The worst that could happen to us is that we’ll run out of time and wake up. Right?”

“Don’t underestimate my brother. Judging from the fight at Kamino, he lost a lot of quirk control and strength after his first fight with Eight, or else he’d never have been captured. But that’s only if we take it at face value. I don’t doubt that he has five or six plans in place to escape Tartarus and steal every interesting quirk in there, thereby increasing his power exponentially, or even healing himself.”

Ochako blinked. How would anyone heal from… Wait. “Overhaul.”

One’s smile was a bitter thing. “I certainly wouldn’t have put the two of them in the same prison.”

The villain at Kamino, already strong enough to go toe to toe with All Might, with Overhaul's power? Ochako shuddered.

"What did he take from Midoriya?" asked Aizawa. "I'm going to need to know before I do this."

"You're sure you want to do this, then?"

"I haven't decided."

One sighed and pushed his hair back, out of his face. Ochako was struck, momentarily, by how the color of his eyes perfectly matched Izuku's.

"My brother took what he always takes," said One. "His quirk."

"But!" protested Ochako. "He has a quirk! He has..." she trailed off as another revelation hit her.

"He…" said Iida, next to her, "has several quirks."

"He has your quirk," said Todoroki with one-hundred-percent unwavering confidence.

"You had a quirk like All for One," said Aizawa. "But considering what we've seen… the quirk to pass on quirks?"

"That's why you call yourselves by numbers! Because that's the order you had the quirk in!" added Ochako.

"I prefer thinking of it as the ability to share quirks," said One, "but since everyone but Eight and Nine is dead, the distinction is academic."

Aizawa sighed and ran a hand over his face. "Okay, let me get this straight. You and... your brother both had meta quirks. He could… give and take quirks. You could just pass your own quirk on. He decided to become a criminal mastermind. You decided to, I don't know, invest your quirk until someone had enough quirks to fight your brother?"

"And they're all related," said Todoroki.

"And you're all related," said Aizawa with an air of suffering.

"It was significantly less intentional and more complicated than that, but, yes, those are the basics."

"And, for some reason, All Might thought that it was a good idea to pick a teenager for the job."

"In his defense, Eight thought my brother was dead. The one you should really be throwing shade at is Seven."

"I have questions."

One tilted his head. "Normally, I would answer them, but we're running out of time."

Aizawa sighed. "Alright. I'll do it."

"We want to help, too!" said Ochako.

"Three will find a way to ghost murder me if I get you involved in a fight with my brother."

"So would I, incidentally," said Aizawa, "and then I'd expel all of them."

Iida cleared his throat. "Is there any way for us to help without coming into contact with All for One?”

“Yes,” said One, clapping his hands together. “Getting out before that Suzuki fellow does and giving Izuku some good publicity.”

One’s image seemed to waver and split, then, as if Ochako had crossed her eyes. She blinked, hard, but after that there were still two of them.

“I’ll lead you to my brother’s mind,” said one of the Ones, waving at Aizawa.

“I’ll stay and try to help the rest of you get out,” said the second One. “We should - Oh.”

“Oh?” repeated Aizawa. “‘Oh,’ what?”

“Oh, we forgot about someone,” said One.

.

“Oh,” said All for One, catching sight of an anomaly. “Who is this little intruder to our gathering?”

“Just some government lackey,” said Miranda, hands still for now, but in a position where she could likely summon ball lightning in a matter of minutes. “Not someone you can use as a hostage.”

“Actually,” said Ryuji, who, unusually, had yet to disappear from All for One’s senses, “if you could figure out a way to get rid of him, it would be convenient.”

“Two!” snapped Nana.

“Come on, we were all thinking it,” said Ryuji.

“You can’t use a him as a murder weapon,” hissed Nana. “Nine will get in trouble.”

“You’rethe one who repeatedly dropped him from a dozen stories up. And the one who was fantasizing about murdering him in real life.”

“That daydream could have belonged to anyone.”

“It had Gran Torino in it.”

“Eight knows Gran, too!”

All for One coughed, returning the full attention of the vestiges to himself. “Is this a pathetic attempt at a distraction?”

“Do you know any other adjectives?” asked his little brother, who was slouching off to the side with his hands in his pockets.

All for One sneered. “Are you not taking this seriously?”

“Not really, no,” said Kazuki, “and neither are you, or else we’d be fighting already. We both know that what you can affect here is limited.” He started counting off on his fingers. “You can’t bring us back with you, you can’t affect Nine’s morality, you can’t take the stockpile, you--”

“I knew it!” shrieked the little intruder, jabbing a finger at All for One. “I knew it! You’re All for One! Midoriya is working for you!”

“Hey, if you’re going to do the sibling thing and prove me wrong about the whole ‘can’t do anything’ thing, can I suggest you start with him?”

All for One narrowed his eyes and scanned his relatives. There was an uncharacteristic lack of protest.

“Are you briar patching?”

“No,” said Hibiki, “they’re quite serious. I personally would prefer it if you didn’t kill him, but not enough to risk myself.”

He could always trust Hibiki to be blunt and straightforward. He got it from his wonderfully forthright and businesslike mother. He hadn’t loved her like he loved his current, still-living spouse, but she had been refreshing.

“Mood,” said Rokuya.

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” said dear, sweet Izuku, raising a hand, “but I’m not actually comfortable letting All for One kill him in front of us.”

“Don’t try that now! You’ve shown your true colors, traitor!”

“Don’t worry, kid,” said Daigoro, “we’re pretty sure he won’t be able to.”

“Torture, then.”

“Not sure he can do worse than Nana did.”

“All I did was drop him!” protested Nana.

“Repeatedly, from a great height,” Miranda reminded her.

Everyone was much more relaxed, now, and… were they ignoring him? They were!

“Are you all under the effect of a quirk?”

“Yeah,” said Kazuki. “How else do you think this is happening?”

“No, I mean… your personalities… they’re all…” He gestured at the One for All users who had stopped to watch him.

“Niichan, I’ve tried to tell you this before, but at least for me, I’m not all that great a person. You just suck so enormously that I look like a saint in comparison.”

“That’s not true!”

“It is,” said Kazuki. “I mean, think back to our first argument. I was less concerned with your overall morality and more concerned with the fact that the demon king alway loses--”

“Excuse you, but I’ve beaten every one of you.”

“No you haven’t,” said Hibiki. “I, at least, died with no input from you.”

“Killing you is obviously different from beating you,” said All for One.

“I mean, by the time you chucked me in that vault, it had evolved to a moral and ethical complaint,” said Kazuki, his one visible eye unfocused in remembrance. “But it started out with me worried about you getting yourself killed.”

“No it didn’t.”

“It really did. You know, I don’t think I ever told you this, but if you’d been twenty percent more ethical? I would have absolutely been on your side.”

“What.”

“I mean, it was you, the government, and ragtag resistance groups, and the government sucked.”

“I can confirm that,” said Miranda, “and it continues to be disgustingly corrupt. But since you’re also swimming through the human experimentation cesspit, we’re staying where we are. Don’t get any ideas.” She ended the sentence with a hiss and fog started rolling in.

“I agree that if you stayed away from the kidnapping, murder, and cult stuff, I would have probably stayed with you,” said Ryuji. “Except you did do all that stuff… Why are we even talking about this?”

“I would add personal freedom to the list of things I’d want from you in the hypothetical world where we stayed on the same side,” said Hibiki, “but, otherwise, I agree.”

All for One blinked several times, a small part of his mind cherishing the fact that he had eyes. “Do you all feel that way?” he asked, oddly touched but also strangely disturbed.

“No,” said Daigoro, “the rest of us hate you and the government just about equally.”

All for One turned his gaze to the quivering ‘government lackey.’ “I see. So, I suppose I have the government to thank for this turn of events. Hm? What did you do to have these soft-hearted fools so upset with you?”

The little man squeaked and jabbed something like an epi-pen into his leg. A second later, he vanished.

“Wait,” said Izuku. “Wait. THAT’S how to get out? That’s so stupid! Can we do that?” The last was said as an aside to Nana.

“Not with him here,” said Miranda. Her voice had dropped back into its more dangerous registers.

“Oh, so we are going to fight after all,” said All for One, clapping his hands and smiling. “What fun.”

.

“I can’t believe you distracted him and got Suzuki to leave like that,” said Aizawa as they stepped out of the fog.

“Well, my brother always did like to hear the sound of his own voice. And be a jerk, but I’m sure that was obvious,” said One. They came to a stop in front of a normal-looking apartment building. One sighed. “This is where we lived,” he said. “Before…” He sighed again.

Aizawa examined One out of the corner of his eyes. He looked tired.

“How much of what you said back there was true?”

���Huh? Most of it, really. My successors built me up as some kind of big good, but I was never anything but a normal guy with a slightly more functional moral compass than my brother.”

From what Aizawa had seen so far, he suspected One was seriously underselling himself.

“I’m sorry,” said One, “but I’m going to have to leave you here. Nine’s quirk should look like a younger version of himself. He couldn’t have been any older than five when it was taken.”

“Anything else I should know about?”

“Sorry, not really… I’ve not exactly been inside my brother’s head. If you manage to find a switch labeled ‘empathy,’ you might take a second to flip it on. Or not. Could be booby trapped. Wouldn’t put it past him.”

“Great,” said Aizawa.

.

“Midoriya-san,” said Mr. Compress. “We’ve been searching for quite some time now, I hate to say it, but I rather suspect that your son has thoroughly escaped.”

“Escaped,” repeated Midoriya. “Like a prisoner.”

Mr. Compress coughed into his fist. Tomura glared at him through a fog of exhaustion. He was wearing a mask. Why bother with the fist at all? Sometimes, Tomura felt like the only sane person on a planet of aliens.

“Honestly, we didn’t even know he was in the area, Midoriya-san. But… Perhaps at this point, the best course of action would be to return to our, uh… temporary base so that you can get some clothes. I’m sure Dabi will have something that can fit you.”

“Or maybe,” said Toga, hesitantly, “Magne might have had something?”

“Excellent idea, Himiko! Yes, I’m sure Magne’s clothes will be much more appropriate.”

“I don’t know that dressing her in a dead woman’s clothes is a good idea?” whispered Twice.

“Normally,” said Midoriya Inko, “I would say that the fires of my anger at Hisashi provide me with enough warmth to scorch the ground I walk on but—” she shivered, “—unfortunately you may be right. I’m not a young woman anymore, and Izuku would want me to be safe and healthy. So that I can give Hisashi a… firm talking to.”

Tomura shuddered. The ice in her tone was more frigid than the toilet seat in their stupid unheated bathroom at night.

… He hoped Sensei didn’t get a mind reading quirk in the near future. He definitely didn’t want him to know about that metaphor.

“Machia, will you be a dear and take us back? And Mr. Compress, would you put Dr. Garaki back in one of your marbles? I suspect he’ll be… more comfortable that way.”

At least Tomura wasn’t the doctor.

Machia leaned down and let them all get on, though not before fixing Tomura with a glare and delivering some glitchy threat about the ‘Little Lord’ and ‘playing nice.’ Completely redundant, what with Midoriya Inko’s much more pertinent and detailed threat regarding the same thing.

“Hey,” said Twice. “Do you guys smell--? It’s like a barbecue!”

Himiko sniffed the air. “It does smell kinda smokey, guys. Do you think Dabi got in a fight, too?”

“With who?” asked Tomura.

“Well, Izu-chan has to still be around here somewhere, right?” asked Himiko, putting a finger to her lips.

Machia sped up.

“It’s probably just the wind blowing someone’s bonfire smoke this way,” said Spinner.

Machia slowed down again.

Tomura frowned. “There shouldn’t be anyone close enough for that,” he said. If Dabi had set the forest on fire and given away their position, he was going to murder him.

Machia sped up again.

They came into sight of their current base and the source of the smoke.

These happened to be the same thing.

“I’m going to kill Dabi,” said Tomura.

“Are we sure it was him?” asked Twice.

“I don’t care.”

#bnha #boku no hero academia #fic #fanfic #long night in the valley

[calciumcryptid]

Introduction, plus background info for the Hero! Hatsume AU:

Lady Nagant, Dabi, and Toga are all heroes (Toga is in her second year)

Rei divorced Endeavor before Touya could burn up.

It’s a difficult process, but Endeavor didn’t have much choice, lest the case go public.

The Todoroki family has a distant, but somewhat cordial relationship with Endeavor.

Dabi becomes a hero, not only to prove his father wrong, but also so he could inspire people with “defective” quirks like him.

Rei opts to pay more attention to Touya, as his mental health was very fragile at this point.

In this AU, before Toga went to U.A, she’s in a really bad place mentally. It’s after she stabbed that boy with the box cutter, and ran away from home.

At this point, Vlad King found her in an abandoned warehouse, crying.

After a confrontation, she eventually calms down when she realises he means no harm.

They talk things out: Toga tells Vlad about repressing her quirk, and trying so hard to be normal, that she hurt an innocent boy.

Vlad (who no doubt was definitely called a villain because of his quirk) eventually comforts her, and tells her that the people around her were wrong to try to force her to be something she wasn’t.

He does however tell her (gently) that she should not have stabbed that boy, but hopefully he would be alright.

He ends up taking her home to her parents, (and chews them both out when he thinks she’s out of earshot).

Toga ends up going to therapy, and talks with Vlad a lot.

She ends up deciding that she wants to be a hero, and Vlad is happy to train her.

She is currently in her second year of U.A, and has her provisional license! She’s extremely talented, and is shaping up to be one of the next big three!

Also, instead of Mirio taking on One for All, like most Support course! Midoriya AUs, it’s going to be Melissa Shield who takes the quirk.

Her father is more likely to have the resources to get Melissa to train properly, and also make sure All Might isn’t pushing Melissa too hard.

Not only that, but it fits the “only quirkless people will be able to take OFA” plot point, as Melissa is quirkless.

However, Melissa doesn’t appear in the story until the I-island incident. She only comes to U.A after the forest camp incident though, as David thought it would be a good idea for her to go when the villain attacks died down so as not to draw attention to her quirk.

It’s a sad goodbye, but she has to go.

Now, onto Hatsume’s part!

Hatsume and Chinen (my oc) are both trained by Snipe

Snipe discovers Hatsume being ganged up on by a group of bullies from her school. He goes over to help, but not before hearing her say “I’ll be a hero! Better than all of you!”

So after the bullies leave, he asks her if she was serious, and she says yes.

Snipe gives Hatsume his card, and tells her to meet him outside of U.A on Sunday and to bring some gym clothes.

(Snipe meets Chinen in a similar way, but Chinen (in parallel to Midoriya with All Might) asks if somebody with a creepy quirk like her could become a hero. Snipe says yes, without hesitation, and offers to train her. She accepts)

For several months, both girls train their bodies, and quirks. Also, Chinen studies quirk analysis with Nezu, and Midoriya. Hatsume and Midoriya don’t really talk much, not until a few days before the sports festival when she needs her guns fixed.

Snipe is a master gunman, so he teaches Hatsume the basics, and goes from there.

Hatsume makes a lot of mistakes at first, but keeps her canon approach to failure. Snipe is a good and patient mentor, so it balances out.

I also want to say that Midoriya gives up on his dream of becoming a hero, and turns to support. He meets Power Loader one day (idk how yet), and Power Loader offers to train him.

Hatsume works really hard, and sometimes even falls asleep training. Snipe has to continuously get her to rest.

Chinen trains with Snipe, but also wants to be able to analyse on the fly, so Snipe arranges for her to work with Nezu. Midoriya also works on analysis with Nezu, so he and Chinen wind up becoming friends.

In the beginning, Hatsume wants to become a hero to prove that she can do it, whether or not her quirk is suited for it. As time goes on however, Hatsume realises that she also wants to help people, and inspire others.

Sorry this is so long, but this is the first part!

I love this!!!

All of my mutuals are so big brained it is unreal!

Just, Snipe content :)

Not to mention the Hatsume agenda!!!

#floof ghostie