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datawyrms · 6 months

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chapter 2 of mothaganda and by mothaganda i mean the fic that should have been one but is now two and we keep making it LONGER because we have feral bees for brains

By Storm, By Claw, By Sanguine Moon

Chapter 2

For Ectoberhaunt day 19 - Claw (originally for Phantasy Phest)

Words: 6729 Characters: Maddie Fenton, Jack Fenton Warnings: Body horror (of the skin breaking, bone cracking variety)

Once again, this fic is a collaboration between multiple authors! The others are: @akela-nakamura, @datawyrms, @seaglass-skies, and @five-rivers.

Read it on AO3 or below the readmore:

The rain didn’t let up.

All through the night it poured, and Maddie wondered if she should revise her estimate of the weather controller’s power or intelligence downward. Or both.

On the other hand, maybe this was a concerted effort to wear them out before the eclipse even happened.

The power at Fentonworks was still out, despite their best efforts and their nearest neighbors (who were admittedly further away than average - some people just couldn’t stand the slight inconveniences that came with advancing science) being just fine. The sunrise had also found Maddie with a rash at her joints. Some damp must have gotten past the waterproofing. Or maybe the sweat-wicking layer wasn’t up to snuff anymore. Once the power was back on, she’d have to wash the whole thing and check. As for Jack, he’d been complaining of a sore back off and on all morning.

“Try it now!” called Jack from where he’d wedged the upper half of his body into the electrical maintenance box that the city had installed between them and the power grid when– Well, it had hardly been their fault, but the city didn’t see it that way.

Maddie flipped the main power switch in the circuit box back and forth. “Nothing!” she called.

“Hey, Mom?” called Danny from near the door. “We’re going to Tucker’s, since they have power, okay?”

“Okay,” said Maddie, distracted, waving over her shoulder even though she knew he wouldn’t see her. “Have fun!”

“Okay, this time, I’ve got it!” said Jack. “Go ahead!”

Jack had not got it, and now Maddie could hear him grumbling. “Maybe we ought to switch,” she suggested.

“I’m going to the library!” yelled Jazz, not waiting for an answer before slamming the front door behind her.

Really. What were she and Jack supposed to do about that? Well. They’d have to talk eventually. During dinner, maybe?

“One more time, Maddie, one more time!”

Maddie flipped the switch again. This time, the power turned on, and she smiled with relief. At least something was going right this time.

“Great job, Jack! Now we can check the Fenton Devilry Detector readouts!”

They went down into the lab, where the machinery was still gradually humming to life. Monsters frequently had many natural defenses against observation, going far beyond mere camouflage, so Jack and Maddie had to be as clever about finding them as they were about catching them. Some monsters could only be detected by the oldest technology, others by the newest. Some required brand new inventions.

Jack and Maddie could hardly spend all their time monitoring all that equipment all around town, though, so they’d automated their detectors, and made machines to monitor their machines, and programs to collate the data. It was all very complicated, and sent their electricity bill through the roof. It was worth it, though, to know that even creatures that could only be photographed on archaic silver plate couldn’t evade notice because of it. Especially because the monsters like that had to be full of hubris that they’d never be caught. But they would, one day.

Because the Fentons were prepared.

However, it turned out that such a system didn’t hold up well against ordinary human vandalism, storms, or even time. For example, a machine that operated a polaroid on a timer, then took a picture of the resultant polaroid to send back to the Fentonwork’s servers had many points of failure. As such, Maddie wasn’t surprised to see that the main screen was covered in red OFFLINE notifications.

But visual monitoring wasn’t the only kind. They had others, as well. Things akin to seismometers but for certain kinds of magic. They had microphones and EMF readers but these were not what Maddie was looking for. Maddie was looking for something specific.

Through hard-fought trial and error, she and Jack had discovered something critical: Magic didn’t behave like light. It didn’t, precisely, behave as a gas either. But that analogy was closer.

Magic left traces. Magic built up, and magic lingered. They might not be able to watch everything across the city, but when they needed to look for evidence of foul play, they could compare readings in the local ambient magic.

It was this system, that Jack had named the Fenton Devilry Detector, in honor of his ancestor, whose writings had given them the foundation for its construction, that Maddie and Jack rebooted now.

There were no overnight readings logged, an unfortunate consequence of their lab being offline. But the system had been functional right up until the power outage, and what the graphs showed was unmistakable.

“It’s centered right on the house,” said Maddie, tracing the massive spike in detected magic with one finger. Although, calling it a spike might have been inaccurate. Magic levels around Fentonworks in particular, and even Amity Park in general, had always been high, and had been building gradually for months - no doubt due to the monsters that used it finally recognizing Jack and Maddie as a threat. This, though… This was far in excess of even that. This was a sudden, severe change that, if Maddie was reading this right, had pulsed in time with the storm overhead.

It could only be an attack.

An attack, not only on Jack and Maddie, but their family.

Maddie picked at her lower lip, already trying to determine the best way to safeguard her children. Keeping them both home until they figured everything out would be… Well, it would be ideal, but the government wouldn’t see it that way, and from historical evidence, neither would Jazz and Danny. (Especially, Jazz, right now. After last night’s fight, Maddie had no idea where she stood with her daughter.) And whoever had attacked had clearly known about Fentonworks, and had known how to get around at least some of their protections. Talismans might work, if they could get the kids to wear them… Capturing the monsters would be better, but despite Jack’s confidence, they couldn’t count on that yet.

She itched at her elbow.

At least the kids would be safe during the day.

Jack groaned loudly, and started vigorously scratching his stomach. “I don’t know about you, Maddie, but I think some water got into my suit. It’s definitely not sensitive skin safe anymore, oh boy!”

“I have noticed some itching this morning,” Maddie frowned. “I was hoping it was only my suit that had failed. If yours has too, it might be a materials issue. Why don’t we set these aside for testing?”

“Don’t have to ask me twice!” Jack said, cheerful despite still itching at his stomach. Maddie pulled out two new jumpsuits for them, checking to see when they’d last been inspected and had their various protections redone.

Jack pulled out several pieces of testing equipment. He had to pause a couple times to rub his back against the corner of the wall like a bear scratching on a tree. Maddie frowned and hurried to get Jack a new suit. She could feel the itch spreading as well, and had to stop herself from starting to scratch at her neck.

She passed Jack his new jumpsuit, and went to go change in the small decontamination chamber’s locker room. She took a bag in with her, and placed her defective suit inside. Whatever was wrong with it, they didn’t want it to get even more contaminated before they had a chance to analyze it, and they didn’t want whatever had caused it to break down to spread.

Also, they’d been up all night, and they needed to sleep. Leaving the damaged jumpsuits and trusting they’d just remember which ones they were was just tempting trouble.

Maddie inspected her skin. There was a slight rash, but nothing terribly alarming. Still, better to be safe than sorry. She picked up the Fenton Decontamination and Exfoliation Wash, a body wash she and Jack had developed that was designed to purge negative magical influences. It itself contained ‘magical’ substances, but, well, decontamination procedures were never perfect.

For more severe cases of contamination, for example, being struck directly by an effect, or ensnarement by one of the more infectious monsters they knew to exist, there were other measures. Some simple, if tedious, like smudging or ritual purification, others… more dangerous, if not less necessary.

It was important to plan for such things, in as dangerous a line of work as they had chosen.

She lathered it over the first the rash, and then the rest of her body. Something had gotten through the protections of the suit enough to irritate her skin at the joints. It was likely trace amounts had found their way elsewhere, and she just hadn’t reacted yet.

It was best to be thorough, with these things.

The wash stung as she rubbed it into the irritated skin, like aloe vera on sunburn.

She stepped out of the shower, patting her hair dry. Jack was still in, and she decided to wait for him. As tired as she was, she didn’t want to touch any of their more involved projects. This wasn’t the first time she’d pulled an all-nighter, but she and Jack hadn’t slept much lately. Preparations for the eclipse were taking longer than they’d expected. Tools disappeared or were misplaced. Plans were miscommunicated or derailed by distractions. Rather, that’s what seemed to be happening on the surface.

Not for the first time, she wondered if someone was interfering deliberately. Or rather, how many were, and who.

Some of the monsters they’d gotten ahold of had told them things in an effort to weasel out of what was coming. Nothing that could be trusted implicitly, of course. Every monster was a practiced liar, even the ones that couldn’t. Especially the ones that couldn’t.

(There were ways to lie, she knew, while technically telling the truth.)

But enough to wonder, especially about certain more active members of the infestation creeping in this town.

Like Phantom.

Her eyes wandered up to a poster she and Jack had pinned to the wall a few weeks ago. It had been part of a presentation they’d made hoping they could convince the children that monsters, especially fairies, especially that one that loitered around the school, no doubt hoping to find easy kidnapping victims, weren’t to be trusted.

The poster featured a mock up of what their research suggested fairies of that type really looked like under the glamours. The small monsters appeared pretty and harmless, but that appearance was much like the lure of an anglerfish, designed only to draw in victims.

Fairies were small, ugly, insectoid things. Their bodies were segmented, covered in hair-like filaments and exoskeletal plates. Their mouths were grotesqueries that fused canine-like teeth with oversized mandibles. Their wings, instead of being brightly patterned, were likely drab, tattered things, possibly even covered with oily, beetle-like wing cases. Instead of hands, they had long, scythe-like claws that lacked an opposable digit entirely. Even their large eyes, so good at conveying innocence, were in truth more like the bulging, compound eyes of a fly.

Without magic and humans to deceive with it, fairies would be no better than cockroaches. Small, useless things, scuttling in the dark.

But they did have magic, and they did use it to trick humans. Especially human children, which even so-called fairy tales agreed were their favorite prey.

The fairy in the poster was a fairy like that, drawn in detail by Jack and labeled lovingly by Maddie. Jazz and Danny had barely looked at it before dismissing it.

(Her kids had been so dismissive of their work, lately. Everything she and Jack did was met with disbelief. They were nearly scornful of it.)

Maddie sighed and turned away– Then froze. She’d thought– But, no, it had just been a warped reflection in the glass of one of the older computer monitors. They really needed to find a better place for that.

Before she could start to compile a list of better places, Jack came out of the shower, towel wrapped around his head. She smiled. She remembered when Vlad taught them how to do that, back in college.

“Man,” said Jack. “I’m beat. Makes you wish monsters knew what bedtime was, huh?”

“Now, now, Jack,” said Maddie playfully, “if they knew what bedtime was, they wouldn’t stay out where we could catch them half as often.” She patted his shoulder and hid a wince as her suit dragged painfully against the rash at her shoulder. “Let’s get to bed. We’ll be ready to take on all the monsters in the world when we get up.”

Maddie was not ready to take on all the monsters in the world when she woke up. She must have strained herself much more than she’d thought before bed. She hadn’t even run for all that long. But clearly, her muscles disagreed. They protested as she reached for her alarm clock, and she contemplated simply returning to sleep.

But that had never helped with muscle soreness in her experience, and she wanted to catch at least some of the remaining afternoon light, sodden as it was. The work was worth it, of course. But Maddie had never taken well to nocturnal hours on the occasions they’d been required. She’d always been more of an early bird than Jack, and daylight had always made her feel more balanced. She left both her earplugs and her sleeping husband in the bedroom and padded downstairs.

The bottom floor was deserted. The house was quiet with the door to their bedroom shut, and light filtered through the windows in the living room. The couch with its soft cushions was inviting, but Maddie went up the stairs to the roof. There, she settled on the damp edge of the cornice and took a sip, waiting for it to return life to her body.

The kids were probably still out. Maddie could see that Jazz’s car was gone, and Danny loved spending time with his friends.

Despite the stresses of the last day, Maddie smiled. That boy and his friends. They really were as thick as thieves, always out doing something or other. Or in. She couldn’t quite understand the appeal of shooting demons in a video game when you could be going out and doing it in the real world, but she more than approved of the sentiment.

She itched at the crook of her elbow, then pulled a face. Rubbing already irritated skin would only make it worse, even with the soft lining of her jumpsuit.

She finished her coffee, then did some stretches to help with the soreness before returning downstairs. She was hungry, and Jack would be too when he woke. Maybe she could order out Chinese?

She certainly didn't feel like cooking—she could admit, to herself, that she wasn't great at it. She idly opened the drawer with all the local menus, and started digging for the Chinese menu. Her fingers, she noted, ached slightly with the movement.

In fact, she was still pretty sore all over, the stretching having only helped for a short while.

Ah, well. It would fade. It always did. She shook some stiffness out of her joints and dialed the place.

A few minutes later, she went back upstairs to nudge Jack awake. It always took him a little bit to drag himself out of bed, and if he started now he might be downstairs by the time the food arrived.

Maddie didn’t bother saying his name as she pushed open the door; she’d never seen Jack wake to a sound for as long as they’d been married. Instead, she opened the blinds, pulled the blankets down, peeled his sleeping mask off, and–

…frowned.

There was a rash around his eyes. More, it didn’t look like any rash she’d ever seen.

She shook him.

“Bwuh,” Jack said, face screwed up as he grappled with wakefulness.

“Jack,” she said. “There’s something on your face.”

“Sleeping mask,” he said, and tried rolling over.

She didn’t let him. “Jack,” she repeated. “I think the rash is getting worse.”

"Feels worse," he said. "Think'm dying."

"Jack Fenton, you are not dying."

"How do you know," said Jack. "I hurt all over."

"So do I. We're sick, Jack. Not dying." She hoped.

"Brave woman. Steel will. S'no wonder I married you. Be a fool not to."

Maddie sighed in exasperation and fondness. That was Jack for you, still complimenting her while claiming to be on his deathbed.

"Flattery will get you nowhere," she said.

"It got me you."

"Jaaack," Maddie said. "Fine, you flatterer. What do you want?"

"Five more minutes?" he asked hopefully.

"I'm setting a timer." Maddie got up to leave, and paused in the doorway. "If you're not up by the time dinner gets here, I'm eating your orange chicken."

A few minutes later, Maddie heard the stairs creak under Jack's feet. A few moments later he appeared in the kitchen doorway, slumped dramatically against the frame.

"Maddie," he said. "I think we've been cursed."

Maddie put another glass away. "Why?" she asked.

"No illness could lay Jack Fenton low like this," he said, too strained to say it with his usual excitement.

"Except for the flu eight years ago," Maddie gently reminded him.

"That was pixies."

"Mmmm," said Maddie, unwilling to start that argument again while nursing a full body ache. She’d checked. Multiple times. It had been the flu, and not anything supernatural.

"And this feels too sudden. And so soon after the attack on our generator..."

"Mmmm," Maddie said again, but with a much different tone.

Jack had a point. On the other hand, running around in the rain at all hours was a much more mundane explanation. They weren’t as young as they used to be. And while their suits should have protected them from the cold and damp, they already knew the material had failed to protect them in at least one way.

"Maybe," she said at last. "Why don't we run those tests once the food gets here? The kids aren't home, so we could eat in the lab."

Jack laughed, but there was a pained edge to it. “Yeah, no Jazz to scold us, huh? Ah. Hah.”

Maddie pressed her lips into a thin line. “Hopefully, they’ll be back soon,” she said, rather than addressing what Jack was clearly thinking. With how upset Jazz was, it was more likely that she’d give them the cold shoulder than scold them.

Or maybe not. It was becoming apparent that she didn’t know her daughter as well as she’d thought. Either of her children, really, she reflected, thinking back on some of Danny’s… odder behavior, recently. She didn’t understand it at all.

They really needed to have that talk.

“Right!” said Jack, finally managing an exclamation point. “To the lab to figure out what felonious fairy is behind our feeble feelings!”

Oh, Jack. He always knew how to cheer Maddie up.

Down to the lab they went.

Usually, the lab felt welcoming. It was as familiar and lived-in to Maddie as the living room upstairs. Usually, the clean lighting, clutter, occult diagrams, and metal tables were just as much a comfort as the dozens of experiments plugging, percolating, or maturing away on the tables. It always felt like protection. It always felt like progress. Progress of knowledge, of their bulwark against the things that stalked the night.

But tonight Maddie felt all of the weight of dirt, concrete, and metal overhead, pressing down, as if to bury them alive.

Ominous and suffocating.

Like a coffin.

Maddie took a deep breath. She hated being sick.

“Ooh,” said Jack. “This is a bad curse. We’ve got to figure it out right away!”

"What makes you say that?" Maddie asked.

"Queasy," said Jack. "And I think my claustrophobia is kicking in. I forgot I had that, after that one time we had that abandoned mine dropped on us."

"I'm feeling that, too." Maddie frowned. But what would trigger those memories? Why would a curse give them a rash and a mild case of claustrophobia? Maybe the creature that cursed them just hadn’t been very strong. Or maybe the curse had been stronger, but their protections had deflected most of it.

Or it wasn't a curse. They hadn't confirmed it yet, after all. And there was more than one way for monsters to hurt humans.

They pulled the suits out of storage. Preparations were interrupted by the arrival of food, but shortly they had takeout boxes at one table, and their compromised suits on another.

(As Jack said, if those monsters thought they’d be stopped by this, they had another thing coming.)

Jack, eagerly following his theory, was assembling their collection of more occult and mystical devices. Most of them would have limited utility in examining the suits, but… Maddie sighed, fondly. Jack would get everything sorted out. From outside, his process might seem chaotic, but he always got fascinating results.

Maddie, for her part, had on her set of magnifying goggles and was going over the inside of her suit inch by inch, starting with the edges and seams. With gloves, of course. While she was assuming the cause of the rash was irritation due to water getting inside the suit lining, assumptions didn’t rule out other causes, like unexpected chemical reactions, or even the curse Jack was so sure of.

So far she hadn’t found any tears. If there weren’t any, she’d take samples of the inner lining to test for common skin irritants. That would be truly tedious work. There were enough chemical irritants in the world that it was quite possible that she’d never figure it out, and have to leave it as a mystery… Unless it also happened to another suit. That would be an unacceptable mystery, and a real danger to herself and Jack.

“Maddie!”

“Hm?” said Maddie, looking up. She experienced a moment of vertigo, and raised her hand to remove her magnifying goggles. “What is it?”

“Look!” He pointed, and Maddie traced his finger to the Fenton branded All-Things-Thaumaturgy Amplified Quantifier.

Maddie inhaled sharply. “Is that…?”

“That’s the reading for the suit,” said Jack, gesturing with the modified microphone attached to the Quantifier. He pointed it at himself, and the line on its graph leapt into the stratosphere. “And that’s me.”

Maddie cursed softly under her breath. “Let me take a look at my readings,” she said, rolling her chair over.

They were the same.

“You know what this means, don’t you?” asked Jack. “This isn’t an instant curse. This is something that’s stuck, and stuck hard.”

Maddie leaned back in her chair, musing over the readings. There was an urgency building in her, but she had to think. Curses were dangerous, wild things, governed by the will and wording of the one who cast it. Curses that didn’t show up immediately, that stuck and built, were especially dangerous—and unpredictable. They weren’t easy to get rid of, nor were they easy to understand.

They had to be methodical about this. They had to find out the nature of the curse, and who cast it. She steeled herself, and looked back at her husband.

”Alright,” said Maddie, “we can narrow down the kind of curse… or at least diagnose the symptoms. From there, we can cross-reference cures, loopholes, and probable perpetrators with our library.”

“Well, feeling awful is one,” said Jack. “Plus the claustrophobia.”

“Maybe a cave or tunnel based creature, then? Like with the mine?” Maddie shook her head. “That doesn’t line up with the storm. And I don’t know why something like that would give us rashes of all things.” She set her elbow on the work bench and leaned forward. “Speaking of which, I really don’t like the look of the rash around your eyes. If we can’t figure out the cause, soon, we might have to focus on stopping the spread.”

“Rash around my eyes?” repeated Jack. He walked over to one of the sinks, and peered into the mirror. “What rash around my eyes?”

He jolted a bit, when he looked into the mirror. The rash had spread, past the rounds of his goggles. It drifted down his cheekbones, climbed his forehead, and was thicker around his eyes themselves. Concern shot down Maddie’s spine—she hadn’t realized how bad it’d gotten. It still didn’t look like any rash she’d seen before. It wasn’t red or inflamed, but it was undeniably a rash. The fact that it had gotten worse, despite showers and new suits, was alarming.

“Oh,” Jack said, blinking in the mirror. He snapped on a new glove, and gently touched the rash. “This is not a good look! Is this a reaction from the curse’s magic with our suits?”

Maddie hummed, even as she grabbed a sterile swab, and a new set of gloves for herself. She stepped over to Jack, running the swab over the rash before putting it into the sterile test tube.

“Maybe,” she said finally. “Take a sample from your goggles, and let’s see if there’s an environmental factor—this rain has been relentless.”

Jack did so, with much less of his usual gusto. Maddie couldn’t blame him—she felt tired and weighed down. Despite having slept for so long, and barely doing anything in the lab, she felt she could easily take another nap.

She couldn’t. They couldn’t. With the eclipse coming, and a curse to solve, they didn’t have time for more sleep. If they couldn’t fix the curse by the time the eclipse arrived, everything they’d worked for would be lost. This was literally a once in a lifetime opportunity!

They had to keep moving, to figure this out.

“Some dastardly monster thinks they can stop us,” Jack muttered, not able to get his usual volume. “A curse has never stopped a Fenton, and it won’t now.”

Maddie smiled to herself, even as she ran tests on the sample she’d taken from Jack’s rash. They wouldn’t be stopped.

Whatever evil being had cursed them, they’d soon regret it!

The curse was harder to pin down than expected. Usually it was a place that was afflicted with these sorts of monsters- cursing actual people took much more power and nefarious intent.

Even so, curses generally exerted their power through something. Effigies. Inscriptions. Sound. Blood. Sometimes more than one. If they could find that part of the curse, destroy that part of the curse, then the curse would start to unravel.

But they hadn’t found anything. Not yet.

At least they had been able to rule out the whole family being a target. Much as Jazz and Danny did their best to duck lifesaving checks, they got enough readings to feel a weight lift from their hearts. It was bad enough that some foul beast was after them without it threatening their children.

Danny’s readings were still uncomfortably high, but not in a new way. Jazz almost seemed like she might also be a target, but her contamination levels plummeted while theirs crept higher. Neither child was struggling with itches or food going foul in their mouths, a huge relief. They could put their whole attention on solving the curse much faster when not at risk of endangering the kids further.

A few days later, Maddie sighed as she took the final step down into the lab, and immediately headed into the corner to peel her wet jumpsuit off.

The rain was heavy today, coming down in fat, icy droplets that sank into the jumpsuit's cloth and stayed there, chilling the skin. By the time she'd finished setting up the battery of traps in the park woodlands, she'd felt icy herself and had been hard pressed to keep her hands steady against the cold.

The curse had made them allergic to the Fenton patented anti-moisture, sweat-wicking formula for sensitive skin, which wouldn't be a huge problem–except it was how they'd waterproofed all their jumpsuits. They'd had to switch to unfinished jumpsuits without the coating–and therefore, without the wet weather protection.

Needless to say, Maddie was looking forward to warming up.

A hot decontamination shower and a toweling later, she reached for a fresh jumpsuit–and froze.

The skin of her arm hadn't changed much from that morning. It was still the same scaly, angry red that covered most of her extremities. But there was something off about the movement of her forearm.

Slowly this time, Maddie repeated the action, making sure to watch her forearm as she did.

There.

It was smooth.

Not the skin. The skin was still rough from the rash. But beneath it–beneath it. Her forearm was smooth.

Maddie was a woman of science, but she was also a woman of action. She trained regularly, she kept herself fit enough to keep up with the human wrecking ball that was Jack. She fought using any number of weapons but liked staves especially, which gave her exceptional muscle development in her forearms.

She fluttered her fingers, and the back of her forearm remained motionless.

Maddie was a woman of action, and her forearm should have had enough muscle definition to see the individual muscles controlling the extension of each finger.

Should have. Usually, did have.

It did not.

Eyes could be fooled, especially while cursed. Instead of making assumptions, she let science find the truth.

The scanner showed dense plates of tissue forming beneath their skin.

They made a grocery run before the curse worsened. They didn't know how bad it would get, after all, and this way they wouldn't need to worry about food for a little while.

Jack was silent in the checkout line. Maddie felt stares prickle at her skin and pretended not to notice the way the cashier's eyes darted to the rash crawling up Maddie's cheek.

When they left, the rain was still coming down in a quiet rush. The sensation of droplets trailing down her face flared into burning when they made contact with the rash. With Jack unable to be as boisterous as he normally was, it felt like they’d lost the sun twice over. The burning pain was an unwelcome substitute in the gloom.

There was something watching them from reflections. It skittered in the corners of their vision, always careful, never quite slow enough to properly see. Or to shoot at.

Maddie saw the nebulous shadow of it in her peripheral vision as she soldered some final details on another set of traps, and pretended she had not.

Belatedly, she felt the hairs of her neck prickle.

She set the piece she was working on to the side, and reached for another, concentrating on the corners of her vision hard enough to make her eyes ache. After a moment, she eased her thumb off the on switch. She didn't need to stab herself with a fully heated soldering iron while trying to finally get a good look at the thing cursing them.

Quietly, she mimed continuing with her work, setting aside a few more pieces as she waited. It shouldn't have been convincing, but the shadow lingered. Apparently, it could be fooled. Good to know. She could make out more details, now. Too many appendages, too long. Huge, larger than she was.

A smear of red where the eyes would be. Similar, then, to Phantom's true form.

Maddie thought of her gun, holstered at her side.

Maddie thought of empathetic magic, and their research on how it might work. On how they thought that something projecting an image elsewhere might still be vulnerable to harm done to the reflection.

Finally, Maddie thought about the curse.

In one smooth blur she dropped the soldering iron, grabbed the gun, took aim, and fired at the thing cursing them–

And was left lightheaded from the sudden rush of adrenaline, arm out and gun pointed at–

At the charred divot in the sheet metal armoring the walls of the lab, directly in the center of her own head's reflection.

Nothing.

It was nothing.

But–if Phantom or something like it was channeling this magic through reflections, through their reflections, maybe that was something.

Maybe it could be disrupted.

They covered mirrors, painted the stainless steel of the laboratory walls, even hid glass.

It didn't work.

The first time it happened, they thought it was a fluke. A result of improper weapons safety due to their single minded focus on the curse. Jack had placed one of their newer weapons on the table, a thing of gleaming metal, automatic aim, salt and iron ammunition, and an alert function. It was as yet unnamed, but compact and efficient. It was a favorite of Maddie’s.

But Jack had placed it down, and Maddie had found herself catching a glimpse of a red laser, hearing the humming whine of the auto aim—and she ducked, just in time for the weapon to lose its target. Just in time for it not to fire.

Jack had been horrified. He’d checked the weapon over a dozen times, and nothing had seemed amiss.

They concluded it was either an accidental slip that had primed the weapon, and something possibly needing adjustment in its targeting code.

They moved on with their research on the curse.

The hair on Maddie’s head came off in chunks.

At least, the hair that didn't thicken and stiffen until she had a twin set of antennae emerging from her forehead.

They kept the blinds closed. When a package delivery came, Maddie signed for it with her hood up.

The second time it happened, it was something simple. She’d needed a break from their research, from the headache she genuinely couldn’t tell if it was from the curse or from the stress of it. She couldn’t think straight, and as much as it rankled, she knew she’d be useless in doing more research.

She’d pulled out some simple protections and a couple of small net projects. They needed nets of various sizes for the upcoming eclipse, and while Jack liked to show off with the large ones, Maddie did enjoy weaving together the smaller ones.

The net itself was itchy against her skin, but it was made of a new weave of fibers, embedded with near gossamer iron and silver. There was also a new mix of herbs she’d had some luck with, but she needed to mix up more to soak the net in.

With the net on her lap, and the various herbs around her, she’d begun to mix.

And had managed to spill some of the garlic, sage, St. John’s Wort, and yarrow mixture on her hands and down her arms.

It had taken her several moments of frustrated clean up for her to realize what was happening—and for the pain to kick in.

The mixture was burning her, and where she’d touched the net felt raw and prickly.

Her stomach sank as she moved robotically over to the sink.

Just how deep did this curse run?

Breaking mirrors was bad luck. Fortunately, it was unnecessary when you had a sandblaster. It even worked on steel.

The third time, Maddie clutched the toilet, thinking, thinking, trying to think of what she might have eaten, what she might have done to feel like this. They’d barely been out of the house. It had to be the curse again. Was this it? Had it been taking her through this horrible transformation only to kill her like a stomach bug? She hadn’t eaten anything she didn’t eat all the time.

The ingredients. Pasta, tomatoes, onions, garlic–

Garlic.

Like in the mixture that had burned her so badly only a few days ago.

Jack's hair was wiry, and too stiff. Too thick.

They had only two leads. What was happening to their reflections and what was happening to themselves. They didn’t want to let the curse run its course, didn’t want to see the form it ultimately took, so, when covering or defacing the mirrors didn’t work, they studied them.

When viewed straight on, their reflections seemed… not normal, not with what was happening to them, but not otherwise supernaturally altered. But from the corners of their eyes, they were more. More changed. More alien. More monstrous.

Maddie and Jack designed new machines, new tools for measurement, new methods. They compared the readings of mirrors that were reflecting them to mirrors that were not. They set cameras to record their reflections. They argued and built and tested and…

And all they knew for sure was that mirrors were involved somehow.

Entering the kitchen was like walking headfirst into a wall of acidic fumes. They had to throw out some of the herbs with tongs, and their eyes and noses burned for hours after.

Among all their tests, all their increasingly frantic research, the house became a minefield. Weapons began to track them with increasing frequency, alarms went off when they entered the house or the grounds. It felt like every fifteen minutes they got a new alert on their phones, on their equipment about monsters in their house.

No matter how many times they searched, or how well, they never found a thing.

No one but themselves.

Jazz was out of the house for hours at a time. Danny had become a shadow, fluttering in and out at odd times.

Maddie tried, several times, to talk to her daughter but it seemed something got in the way every time. A new alarm would go off, or a weapon would malfunction and start to aim, or Maddie would forget and reach for something and feel the burn of herbs or certain metals.

As the days went on and the curse worsened, so too did things around the house. Every protection they had built into the very walls of their home was now a weapon against them.

Maddie feared they were running out of time.

Maddie scratched absently at the rash covering most of their bodies, and felt skin slide.

Her hair didn't.

Her hair didn't, and through it she could feel the texture of the flesh sloughing off, suddenly too loud, too wet, too much too much too much.

When she emerged from the shower, her arms and hands were segmented. Behind her, the shower looked like a crime scene.

(After that, they had to shut down the internal alarms—they were nothing but a never ending shriek, and neither she nor Jack could figure out how to make it stop targeting them but still protect their home.)

They did research. Not the scientific kind of research that they liked best, but delving through old and unreliable secondary and tertiary sources, trying to pick out strands of truth from among the razor-wires of misunderstandings and outright fabrication. Some books, Maddie hadn’t picked up since Danny was born.

One had ‘good’ fairies. That other had humans inadvertently casting curses on their family members. The one she’d just discarded had talked about monsters that had once been human, when Maddie knew that was impossible. None of their data supported such a transformation.

But it didn’t matter what their data supported when this was happening to them. When their appearances were so warped that they’d resorted to communicating to their children solely through notes and text messages. When so many of the protective wards they’d built up around their more sensitive or more dangerous equipment made them shy away.

They were desperate. It showed.

They tried dozens of cutesy neopagan countercharms. They worked through purification rituals with limited or even singular attestation. They pulled out screwdrivers and hammers and systematically removed and broke every mirror in the house and the MAV, despite the years of bad luck common wisdom claimed they should get with each one.

It didn’t work. None of it worked.

When Jack's eyes began to bulge from his sockets, growing until they were the size of tennis balls, it was no longer a surprise but a horrible confirmation: Phantom had cursed them to become like him.

It was a foul, monstrous trick befitting a wolf in child’s clothing like Phantom. They knew they weren’t monsters, not ‘fae’, but whatever magic it had woven was enough to convince their own eyes and tools. In a home primed and ready to fight off all foul creatures of the shadows, that was no small danger. There were safeguards they could no longer safely disable.

At this rate, they’d be unable to even stay in their own home.

#danny phantom #fic #fantasyau

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datawyrms · 6 months

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Clockwork's Odyssey

After far too long, it is my utmost pleasure to bring to you the fanfic I have been working on all summer for Invisobang 2023: "Clockwork's Odyssey!"

Synopsis: Several weeks after the events of “The Ultimate Enemy,” Danny begins to starve from a ghostly hunger that seems impossible to sate. To his surprise, Clockwork appears with a proposition: join him on an adventure into the Ghost Zone, which will provide the nourishment he needs. Danny accepts despite his better judgment, but as they descend into places where time and reality seem blurred — and where Clockwork’s secrets come to light — he begins to wonder what kind of nightmare he got himself into.

Read on AO3

If you like Lost Time, then this is the fic for you. ;)

This year, I was partnered with the absolutely incredible artist @andre93a, who created an astonishing cover image for my fanfic. Thank you so very much! It was unreal to be paired with someone of your skill!

I also received so much help from the wonderful @underforeversgrace, who beta read the fic and listened to me scream about far too many things. Thanks for helping me keep my sanity while somehow also keeping yours.

And a huge thanks to @bibliophilea, @kinglazrus and @strawberrycamel for making Invisobang 2023 a thing and keeping it running! It was such a blast to be part of it, and I'm so, so thankful for all the friendships I made along the way!

I'll be posting deleted scenes and author commentary on my blog in the time between chapters, so make sure to check me out over at @astatia-ghast.

And with all that said -- how 'bout an excerpt?

------

He's so hungry.

He's so hungry, and Amity Park is crumbling.

A gargantuan creak and smash rip the air as the last remnant of the FentonWorks logo crashes to the ground. It lands a few feet to Danny's left, casting great reverberations through the pavement, but he pays it no mind. He can't, really; oh, how dearly he would love to pay it mind, but there is only one sensation taking command of his mind at the moment.

Sam is lying inert beneath him, framed by his hands and knees. She has been dead for a while, but Danny hasn't yet found it within himself to halt his cannibalization of her soul.

His wicked fangs hover hardly an inch from her flesh as he draws in deep breaths, struggling in vain to extract the last remnants of her fear and sorrow. He should have stopped drinking long ago, when her spirit had grown dull and her body weak, but just as it had with every other soul in this forsaken city, his hunger could not be sated.

The last drops of the horror she had died with vanish into his maw and seep into his core like water into dry earth. It is done. She has been drained.

And he is still hungry.

------

Continue reading on AO3

Thank you so much for your support! This project has been, well, an odyssey!

#danny phantom #dp #it is hereeeeee #i have loved all the tidbits #fellow invisobang sufferers xD

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datawyrms · 7 months

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Enjoy Jazz getting to say some Choice Words! and why it's two fics instead of one since this is more for Jazz and the Fentons and the first bit was So Very Danny :v

By Storm, By Claw, By Sanguine Moon

Remember how I said stay tuned for a sequel to Stargazer, Moonweaver, Net? This is that sequel! You can also read it here.

This was conceived of for Phantasy Phest, but written for Ectoberhaunt 2023: Tabletop.

This fic was a collaboration! The authors are @akela-nakamura, @datawyrms, @seaglass-skies, @jackdaw-sprite, and myself.

“The sky goes dark, and a cold wind rises. In the distance- thunder, growing closer! The forest goes quiet, holding its breath.” A heavy pause, then, “Suddenly the wind howls! But you know you can’t seek shelter. There is something lurking in these ruins, and if you aren’t careful. It. Will. Find. You.”

A low whistle breaks the atmosphere sharply enough that not even the very real wind rattling the equally real windows can bring it back. Tucker shoots a glare Danny’s way, slowly lowering his hands from where they’d been wiggling dramatically in the air. All it gets him is a sheepish grin and an apologetic shrug. He pushes his glasses up his nose with a huff, ignoring Sam’s snickering, and turns his glare back to the screen in front of him.

“Anyway. Roll for perception.”

The rattle of dice was followed by a couple of groans and a soft yes! from Jazz.

"Okay, what did you guys get?" Tucker asked, peering at the dice on the table. "Oh."

"I think we can safely say I don't know what's happening," Danny said at his expression.

"Yeeah. Sam?"

"Twelve."

"Jazz?"

Jazz bounced a little in her seat. "Twenty one!" She knew playing a ranger was a good choice.

"Okay, okay.” Tucker took a deep breath and looked back at his laptop. “As the thunder rolls like great wheels in the sky, the wind whips at you. It flattens the grass around you in vicious ripples and grabs at your clothes. The ruins stay motionless around you, unmoved by the building storm.

“And yet, beneath the keening of the wind in your ears, you hear something else. It’s rhythmic, sharp. Repetitive. And it sounds like–

“Snap. Snap. Snap.”

Tucker smiled.

“Sam,” he said. “You see that it’s coming from a ragged banner, fluttering in the wind.”

Sam frowned in thought.

“You,” Tucker pointed at Jazz, “see a little head poking around one of the fallen pillars. It's got a beard, and its hair looks kind of weird."

"What do I see?" asked Danny.

"You're staring at the sun, I think." said Sam.

"You’re not the DM,” said Danny. “Tucker?”

“The sun is no longer visible,” said Tucker. Before Danny could gloat, he added, ”You’re staring at where it was.”

While Danny pouted in betrayal, Jazz was mentally rifling through the manuals she’d read as research before playing. Something small and bearded, and it had weird hair. Or something was wrong with the hair. Or something was in the hair?

But there weren’t that many short bearded races eccentric enough to do any of that.

She hazarded a guess. “Is it a gnome?”

Tucker raised an eyebrow. “Roll for knowledge nature.”

That was a yes! And Danny had said she didn’t need to read everything to be prepared.

It was not a gnome.

It was something smaller and weirder called a grig, and as Tucker described it escorting them from the (apparently cursed) ruins, Jazz looked out the window.

The rain was still pouring down outside, dense enough to make white cloud the farther houses on their street and gather in mist along the ground. Water streamed down the glass in rivulets, leaving the image of the street distorted.

The reflection of their room in the window was warm by comparison, all yellows and creams and scattered paper.

And a little bit of green.

Jazz smiled back at her brother in the windows’ reflection, not letting on that she'd seen the subtle iridescence of his eyes. He'd tell her when he was ready, and until then she'd just be supportive. And patient, even if she could feel a horde of questions burning in the back of her mind.

“The grig sits on a log and pulls a doll-sized fiddle from his pack,” said Tucker, and Jazz returned her attention to the game.

“He puts it to his chin,” and Tucker mimed holding a fiddle to his chin –

“I thought that was violins,” said Danny.

“Danny, I am going to commit some violins,” said Tucker.

“Never mind.”

“He puts it to his chin,” repeated Tucker, “And begins to play. And it’s beautiful.”

He consulted his laptop and fiddled with some keys. With a decisive tap on the spacebar, music began to play. Tucker spoke over it.

“The music fills the air like raindrops on leaves. Slowly, it grows to a musical crescendo and you find your spirits bolstered, your burdens lessened. It’s as though there’s air beneath your feet and you could –almost– begin to dance. But he stops after just a few more chords and chuckles under his breath.

“‘Nah,’ the grig says. ‘I won’t do that to ya.’”

“Do what?” asked Jazz before she could help herself.

“Ya don’t know, miss?” Tucker said, still in the grig’s voice.

Oh right. This was supposed to be in character. And Jazz was playing a ranger. “Maybe?” She reached for her dice, rolling them between her fingers. They were, she had quickly discovered, surprisingly fun to fidget with.

“Knowledge nature,” Tucker suggested in a stage whisper.

Jazz straightened in her seat and rolled the d20, watching as it settled. “Eighteen?”

“They’re good enough musicians to weave spells with their music like bards, and can trap people in dances for hours. They do it as a prank, sometimes.”

Jazz remembered the siren from a few months back and winced.

“Thank you for not doing that,” she said.

“It just didn’t seem like it’d be funny enough,” said Tucker, back in character.

“Wow, reassuring,” said Sam.

Tucker smiled.

“And that’s less reassuring,” Danny commented. “I roll diplomacy for him to not do that. Twenty five.”

“What do you say?” asked Tucker.

Danny thought before responding.

“That was some of the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard. You’re very talented. Where did you learn to play like that?”

“You’re right it’s a talent! Everyone in the clan’s got music in their bodies, right down to their feet,” Tucker said. And then he switched back out of the grig’s twang. “He puts his legs together and rubs, and they fill the air with a deep hum. His wings tremble from the effort and the sound.”

“That’s not a trick I’d ever manage,” said Danny. He sounded impressed.

“Not you! And not those lepre-cons,” said Tucker in the grig’s voice, snarling on the last word.

“Leprechauns?” asked Danny.

The start of whatever Tucker was going to say was cut off with a crash as the basement door was kicked open with a heavy thunk immediately followed by Jack Fenton’s booming voice. “Did somebody say leprechauns?!” He charged into the room, swinging some kind of… something vaguely resembling a gun, forcing Sam to duck and earning a yelp from Danny as he dove under the table.

Tucker was quick to pipe up, slapping a hand down over the monster manual in front of him. “Nope! No leprechauns! No, uh, sir. Not here!”

Maddie’s voice trailed into the room more slowly than her husband’s, followed by the woman herself. “Now, dear, you know the Fenton Fae Fryer isn’t ready to use yet!”

Danny’s hiss of “The what-” went ignored.

“But it will be! Soon! And those monsters won’t know what hit them!”

“That’s right dear! Now, kids, remember to stay inside after dark this week- I know, I know it’s raining, but the rain’ll let up eventually, and with the eclipse coming up you can’t be too careful!”

Sam looked like she wanted to say something, but stopped when she caught Tucker shaking his head at her. She sat back in her seat with a huff.

“Darn right!” Jack chimed in from where he’d finally set the huge weapon down on the kitchen counter. “This is a huge opportunity for hunting! All those monstrous meddlers will think they’re too strong to bother hiding like the foul fiendish felons that they are!”

“We’ll remind them why humans drove them into hiding in the first place!” Maddie chimed in. “Oh, I hope we can keep some captive specimens too, there’s so much to learn! The small ones just fall apart so easily, we can barely do even a single test…”

Jack squeezed his hand into a dramatic fist. “Of course we’re gonna capture ‘em! We’re gonna grab those ghastly goons or my name’s not Jack Fenton!”

With a whoop, he punched the air.

Jazz had been glaring at her parents, shoulders tense, but something twitched in the corner of her vision. When she looked, Danny’s reflection in the window was haunted. A pit formed in Jazz’s stomach, and her heart sparked with anger.

Danny was one of the ‘small ones’ in his other form. She didn’t think they’d managed to catch any like him. She didn’t think he would still be here if they had, but–

“Now, Jack. We’re not guaranteed to have success just yet,” her mother said, but she was smiling at Jack’s cheer. “We haven’t finished baiting everything. And without first-hand data to back up our research, it’s just that much harder to hunt efficiently, much less decide what bait is effective. Knowledge is power, of course!”

“And we’ll have plenty to work with soon, baby! We’ll catch one this time for sure! Maybe one of those ‘fairies’ that keep tricking the kids–”

Jazz shoved her chair back with a horrendous screech and slammed the fist still holding her dice down on the table, ignoring the one that went flying off across the room and the brilliant flare of lightning that had the overhead lights flickering. “No. No nono, no. You are not doing this tonight!

“Maybe, just maybe, for once in your life you should try to understand instead of just finding better ways to kill people who never did anything to you!”

"Jazz," said Maddie in a tone of forced patience, "they aren't people. These things are monsters, even the small, pretty ones."

Danny had sunk so low in his chair that his chin was level with the tabletop. He looked like he’d rather be anywhere else.

"Especially the small pretty ones!" shouted Jack.

Danny flinched.

A bibliophile, Jazz had read the words ‘shaking with rage’ dozens of times. She’d always thought it was a turn of phrase. A metaphor. A literary device. But here she was, physically trembling. Not all of the static on her skin could be attributed to the lightning outside.

“Have you two even bothered to confirm that?” she asked. ”Or have you just gone around committing atrocities for the fun of it?”

“Don’t you take that tone with us, young lady! We’re just trying to keep you safe!”

“You’re not trying to keep anyone safe with your awful, deranged experiments! I don’t know how you even call yourselves scientists!”

Thunder crashed, as if it had only been waiting for her cue.

She looked between their shocked faces. Heaved one breath, two, and ran up the stairs towards her bedroom.

Maddie ran after her. “Jasmine Marie Fenton!”

Jazz whipped around and almost snarled at the look of indignation on her mother’s face. Static jumped to her hand from the doorknob as she reached for it, but she didn’t flinch. Instead, she squeezed it so hard she was surprised it didn’t come off.

(She was fairly certain the few dice she still held in her other hand had fractured. It was too bad. She’d liked those.)

“Do you two even hear yourselves? ‘Especially the pretty ones?’ ‘The small ones just fall apart so easily?’ You want to see monsters? Take a look at your reflections!”

WHAM.

Jazz looked at the darkness in surprise. She hadn’t expected the door to slam shut quite like that. It had rattled the windows with a force she’d felt in her chest. And then there was the darkness.

Oh. It was a power outage.

In the sudden quiet, Jazz heard her mother’s footsteps returning down the stairs, and then muted conversation. The front door opened, then shut.

She took the three steps to her window, and peered out. Her parents were standing on the front stairs, headlamps strapped over their hazmat hoods and their arms full of pre-loaded net-launchers.

They were still going hunting, then. After all that.

Jazz turned from the window before either of them could look up at her watching them and get ideas about whether she regretted her words. She didn’t.

As she followed Jack out onto the street, Maddie sighed. “That girl, I swear. I don’t know where she gets these ideas in her head…”

Jack sighed. “I think it’s just a phase, Mads. Kids and the internet these days, you know?”

“Maybe,” Maddie said. She looked up at Jazz’s window before she turned her attention back to her husband. “Either way, I’m not thrilled with her tone. We’ll have to have a talk.”

“That’s the spirit!” Jack bellowed, grinning wide. “She’ll see that we were right, soon enough. Everyone will, after we catch one of those dastardly fae! Or a hobgoblin! Or a vampire! Or a sidewinder! Or a dragon!”

“Yes, dear. But first we need to figure out what took out the power, and…” Maddie narrowed her eyes at the still-dark Fentonworks building behind them. “That’s strange. The generator should have brought everything back online by now.”

“I bet it was those dastardly gremlins! Well, if they think they’re gonna stop us from wrapping them all up in triple-strand hemp braid reinforced by silver-iron alloy, pinning them down with steel-jawed monster-chompers, or canning them up tight with the Fenton Thermos, then they’ve got another think coming!”

Lightning continued to flash overhead, bright enough to see color, and for the puddles and windows around them to flare brightly with reflected light. The ozone and charge in the air, combined with the strange lighting and lack of normal city noises conspired to give a magical cast to the night.

Magical meaning dangerous, in Maddie’s vocabulary.

Usually, she wouldn’t leave the children home alone with the power off, but lightning alone wouldn’t knock out the electricity at Fentonworks, and they’d monster-proofed the backup generator to within an inch of its lifetime warranty. Whatever was out here was their responsibility to deal with, as monster hunters. Jazz, Danny, and his friends would be safe, behind the wards of Fentonworks. This was for everyone else. For all the citizens of Amity Park and the wider world who had been convinced that the supernatural didn’t exist, who were vulnerable, unprotected, unaware of the dangers they faced constantly.

Even if Jazz couldn’t appreciate that.

“This way!” cried Jack, shaking her from her partial reverie.

She shook her head before following him. That was a bad habit to get into while on a hunt. But then, fighting with her children had always unsettled her.

She followed Jack across the half-flooded road. It would take days for things to dry, even if the rain let up.

But the rain would let up sooner or later. This storm may or may not be natural in origin, but they had good evidence that there was at least one creature that could manipulate the weather in the region. No such creature would allow clouds to reduce the amount of power it could gain from basking under a Blood Moon, much less a Blood Moon that was both a supermoon and a blue moon.

That only made it more important to catch whatever this was. As excited as she and Jack were about the opportunity presented by the carelessness of monsters and the loss of their illusions, the lunar eclipse would be a dangerous time indeed. Reducing the number of monsters present even by one would make everyone much safer.

Jack skidded to a stop and fired one of his nets. Its weighted edges wrapped around the glass sides of a bus shelter.

“I think I really got it this time!” said Jack, bounding forward as Maddie covered him. Nothing was going to sneak up on her husband on her watch.

On the other hand…

“Jack, sweetie, I don’t think there’s anything in the bus stop.” Her goggles, which had been treated with their Fenton Paranormal Peeper Powder (not for direct use on eyes) (patent pending), weren’t picking up so much as a glimmer.

“Not in the bus stop! Down there!” Jack pointed at a storm drain just under the overhang of the bus stop shelter.

Gun ready, Maddie approached it.

The shadows between the grate bars gave way to the pale glare from her headlamp, throwing the inside into stark relief. The light sliced across water-stained concrete walls, reaching down until it met light.

The water at the bottom of the drain was stagnant, the drain so full of rotten leaves that they piled above the water in places, outlined in the brilliant white of her headlamp and bright enough to leave scribbled lines dancing in her vision.

The only motion Maddie could see in it was in her own face.

“Nothing,” she sighed. Chasing mirages again. And wasn’t that a metaphor for life?

“Oh,” said Jack. His face appeared alongside hers in the water. “Sorry, Mads, I really did think I saw something.”

Maddie patted him on the shoulder and surveyed the surrounding street. The light from her headlamp bounced off of the mirrors of parked cars and the windows of nearby businesses. All dark.

But a few streets over, there was still light, still power.

“Maybe you did, but something interested in electricity is going to go that way.” She pointed. “Let’s sweep these streets.”

Jazz didn’t sleep until her parents made their way home, defeated.

She didn’t know if it was worry for them, as they ran around in a lightning storm, or if it was fear for everything else that could be out there that kept her awake.

But if she had to guess, it’d be the latter.

Omake:

“Well, uh. I guess game night’s over?” Danny asked. He was still under the table, having hidden when Jazz started yelling.

With a thunk, Tucker’s head met the table next to his laptop. It was followed by a swish, a rustle, and the clatter of dice falling to the floor. The room was still pitch black, only the occasional flicker of lightning casting any light.

“Well,” Sam sighed. “At least your house is never boring.” Danny let out a dry laugh, missing most of its humor.

“I could use a little more boring.”

“Good luck with that,” Tucker said, his voiced muffled by the table. Danny sighed, having not yet moved.

Good luck, indeed.

Stay tuned for more!

#dp #danny phantom #au #we had much fun #if we cough loud enough we can pretend it's still phantasy phest too

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datawyrms · 7 months

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the fluffy boi! all his fault it's two fics instead of one you know just too precious

This is how moth!Danny looks in the Lunar Moth Fae AU I'm collaborating in with @jackdaw-sprite, @datawyrms, @seaglass-skies, and @akela-nakamura!

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datawyrms · 7 months

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'and that's how a multichapter turned into a huge oneshot and a second, separate thing' because I am a menace :v

Stargazer, Moonweaver, Net

Hey, you. Yes, you. Have you ever wondered, hey, what would it look like if @five-rivers, @jackdaw-sprite, @seaglass-skies, @datawyrms, and @akela-nakamura all worked together on a fic for Phantasy Phest? No? Too specific? Well, if you had, it would look exactly like this fic here.

AO3 link

Tags: Lost Time, The portal accident, Phantasy Phest 2023, Alternate Universe - Modern Fantasy, Fairies, Blood Drinking, Moths, Clockwork has low opinions of the Fenton Parents, Transformation, Body Horror, Danny gets to say Fuck

Word Count: 11,197

Fic continues after cut.

"Ohno. Oh, no, no no nooooooo."

The stars were bright tonight.

Danny could even see them from where he was at the edge of a large clearing, where the trees stopped to wreathe the base of a hill.

Unusually, Danny didn't care.

"Nooooo," he said again under his breath.

Danny pushed at the net again. It reeked of garlic and sage the same way his parents’ nets always did, and the cord was rough and knobbly between his fingers. They must have woven this one with something extra.

He needed to get out. But with his flashlight fallen somewhere he could barely see the net or where it might end.

His flashlight. Where was his flashlight? Danny crouched, and began to grope at the ground around him. It couldn't have rolled too far, right?

The net folded up into his face, scratchy and unexpected. Danny flinched back but kept going, moving his hands in a circle. They met dead leaves and earth, and more than once he touched slimy and wet things he hoped were slugs.

He didn't find anything that felt like a flashlight.

"Heck," said Danny.

He sat down on the ground. The damp seeped into his pants but at this point that was a distant concern.

Maybe he could just find the edge of the net. It was a net. It had an edge. And his parents weren't always great at traps.

Danny pulled the net hand over hand in one direction and stopped when he felt something thicker cross over an arm.

He groped at it. It felt like the edge. Or an edge. One side didn't have all the net stuff. With mounting relief he followed it with his fingers–and discovered that it was attached to an opening only about large enough to slip a hand through.

There wasn't a tie that he could feel.

He couldn't find any other holes in it.

The relief withered. He was caught, alone, in the dead of night, in one of his parents' stupid monster catching nets. Without a flashlight.

And his parents, at best, might find him in the morning.

"Heck," said Danny, again.

Then he remembered he was alone, deep in the woods in the middle of the night, and no one would hear him.

"Fuck."

If only, Danny thought a while later, he'd brought his pocket knife. Or literally any knife. Something sharp to cut through the ropes.

None of the rocks he could reach had worked, though that was probably a little because he still couldn't see much of anything. It was really hard to wear through rope when you were doing it with a rock, blind. And through a net.

He was cold. His butt was colder from sitting in the leaves earlier. He kind of wanted to do it again, as a measure of his suffering. He wanted to be home, dry, and warm even more.

Maybe he could just wait for morning. Maybe his parents would know the trap had gone off, and come to check it. Maybe they'd check it anyway. They were the town crackpots for a reason. They didn't just believe in fictional creatures, they did so enthusiastically and with the kind of prejudice that made them set net traps in the woods. For one of their own innocent children to get caught in when he was only trying to stargaze on a clear night before school started in a few weeks. See some constellations, spot a few meteors, maybe a handful of planets, that kind of thing.

Never mind that he’d maybe snuck out. Because he knew they’d freak out about him going into the woods alone. Because they believed in faeries.

Gosh, he hoped this didn't get back to Dash.

At least the stars were bright tonight.

He sighed and looked up, eyes automatically picking out familiar constellations. The Big Dipper was easiest, although finding the rest of Ursa Major was less familiar. All seven stars of Ursa Minor were easily visible, which again highlighted how good the seeing was. Then there were the other circumpolars. Draco, Cepheus, Cassiopeia… He could see the V of Andromeda, where it blended with Pegasus, and he could almost convince himself that–

An owl - he thought it was an owl - hooted somewhere nearby. He jumped, which had the side effect of reminding him that, yes, he was still in a net. He rubbed his shoulders and neck where they’d been rammed into the net. Straining against rope shouldn’t have felt like running into a wall, but he supposed he did have his weight on the bottom of it.

But he soon had other things to worry about than his parents’ irrational net design.

(Seriously, why was there enough room to stand up in this net? What were they even trying to catch? At first, he’d thought he could just walk away, back to town, even inside the net, but it was tied to something. Maybe one of the trees?)

Sounds started to rise up from all around the clearing. First the high-pitched chirr of crickets, then croaking, buzzing, and chirping. Small noises, from small things.

But with those small noises, Danny started to notice rustling and creaking and– Was that a dog howling or a wolf? Were there even any wolves here? He remembered a unit in science last year where the teacher talked about wolves going extinct in some states.

The stars were bright tonight. The woods around him? Not so much.

“People spend nights outside all the time,” he said out loud. The word probably would have been more impactful if they weren’t whispered. “All the time. People go camping and hiking and stuff for fun.” Never mind that they were usually more prepared to do so than Danny currently was. And that most of the time, they could decide to just leave and go home or get a hotel room if camping got to be too much for them. He continued, more loudly, “I just have to wait for morning. They’ll find me in the morning. And– and if they don’t, I’ll be able to see. I’ll be able to get myself out. I’ll be fine.”

If nothing ate him first.

No. No. That was– What out here could even eat him, anyway? Wolves, yeah, okay, but were there wolves? Still unclear. Bears? If there weren’t wolves, he doubted there were bears. He’d never heard of any bears out here, anyway. What else could eat a human who wasn’t, well, already dead? Cougars? That one school, a couple districts over, had a cougar for a mascot, didn’t they? That didn’t really mean anything, though. What else, what else… Feral pigs? Those were supposed to be invasive around here, weren’t they? Danny had kind of laughed at the idea of it in class, but, here, now, in the dark, was a different story.

He was pretty sure anything else was too small. So. Three things out of how many animals? Thousands? Yeah. Yeah, the odds of those three specific animals showing up to bother him were low. Yes. Nothing wrong with the math there. No siree.

(And the stuff his parents were worried about, the stuff they’d set this trap for, that stuff didn’t exist at all, so he didn’t have to worry about it. There were no werewolves, no chimerae, no hobgoblins, and definitely no fairies. Wasn’t even worth thinking about.)

A branch snapped. Then another.

He’d thought the owl was close, but this sounded closer. And those didn’t sound like small branches.

A deer? There definitely were deer here. Sam talked about deer resistant and repellent garden plants, sometimes. Deer could get big. Like, reindeer were huge, right?

It was dark under the trees, but by starlight alone Danny could still perceive a shadow moving among other shadows. Something tall. Something not shaped anything like a deer.

The shadow came closer.

Danny held his breath and shrunk down against the nearest tree. He couldn’t fight a bear. Not even when he wasn’t caught in a net.

"Hello."

"Hi," said Danny back, on autopilot.

Danny continued staring at the shadow for several more tense moments before it occurred to him that it had talked.

"Wait, you can talk?" Danny asked.

"It would appear so," said the shadow, and did not move. Now that Danny was looking and thinking rather than just freaking out, the shadow looked, well, pretty humanoid. Tall, sure, and wearing a long coat with a hood - or maybe a dress? And that could be long hair. Significantly less weird in the middle of the summer than a coat - but humanoid.

Human, he should say. Outside of, like, parrots, there weren’t a lot of other things that could talk. No matter what his parents said.

"Um. I'm a little stuck," said Danny.

"Really?" The shadow did not sound surprised.

"Can you, I don't know, cut the net loose? Please?"

The shadow hummed. "I think the more interesting question is why you're stuck in the first place. One does not frequently encounter those such as yourself in the woods so late at night."

Oh, wow. Danny could empathize with the curiosity. He really could. This was a weird situation to come across, and whoever this was, they must be just as confused as Danny. But he also really didn’t want to explain anything about this to a stranger. And he would really rather be out while talking to what was, yet again, a complete stranger.

… Humans were pretty dangerous themselves, come to think of it.

“Yeah, I guess not.” He swallowed. “Why are you out here, anyway?” Maybe he was being rude, but the shadow had asked first.

The shadow shifted, looking up. Starlight limned pale skin and a sharp, straight nose in shades of gray. “The stars. The sun is too bright during the day. It is easier to see them at night.”

“Oh,” said Danny. Maybe, hopefully, not a murderer, then. Just another person out stargazing. A weird person but… Danny didn’t exactly have room to talk. “Yeah. Me, too. Since the moon isn’t up and all. I just, uh, ran into this. Trap. Thing.” He tugged at the net. “And now I can’t get out.”

The shadow’s head tipped back down. “Can’t you?”

“I really can’t. I can’t even figure out how it’s tied on. Do you, like, have a flashlight or something?”

“I do not.”

“Not even, like, one on your phone?”

“No.” The shadow leaned forward, and might have held out a hand, but if they did, they didn’t touch anything that Danny could feel. “What a curious and terrible thing,” murmured the shadow. “What cruelty and carelessness, to leave it to trap the unwary.”

Danny winced. Yeah. Yeah, okay, it kind of was, and it was probably a small miracle that no one else had ever gotten trapped in one of these things.

That Danny knew of.

He pushed the thought of his parents absent-mindedly forgetting to check one of these traps, or only checking them once a week, out of his mind. His parents were crazy and kind of forgetful and… well, the point was, he would have heard if something had… happened.

They wouldn’t do that, anyway.

“Yeah. But, um. Even without the flashlight, please, help? Just, maybe if you could untie me, or if you have…” Did he really want this guy to have a knife? Not really. Still. “Something to cut with, maybe?”

“I cannot cut the net in which you find yourself.” The shadow shifted again. “However, I will stay with you until you are free.”

“Maybe if you tried some of the knots, you could get me out, though,” pointed out Danny.

“I have encountered ropes like this in the past. They do not agree with my skin.”

“What, like, you're allergic?” asked Danny.

“Something like that.”

Just his luck. He was found, but the person to find him was… incredibly strange. And not very useful. And had possibly run into his parents’ nets before and had a reaction to them.

“Okay. But maybe you could call for help? I mean, I know you said you don’t have a phone, but you could go get someone who can get me out?”

“Child,” said the shadow, with a touch of amusement, “there are things in these woods that would eat you whole. I am equipped to deal with them. You are not. It would be irresponsible of me to leave you while they wander.” They settled themselves nearby. “Besides, I can see the stars here as well as I could elsewhere in these woods.”

“Eat me?” squeaked Danny. He'd thought about bears earlier, but not, like, out loud. Talking about them out loud was different. He cleared his throat. “You mean like bears?”

“In some respects,” said the shadow, still amused.

"Okay, um." Danny really did not like confirmation that there were bears around. He could have gone without knowing that. Except he probably should know. Considering he was in a net.

The net.

Which the stranger somehow thought he'd be able to escape on his own?

"Hey, um. I have been trying to get out for a while," said Danny. "It hasn't been working. You're sure you can't do anything to help?"

"There is more than one kind of trap here."

Danny blinked.

Crap. That would be just like his parents, wouldn’t it? They couldn’t leave it at just one stupid trap in a public space, they have more. “Where?”

“You will not be able to see it from your perspective, but I have no doubt it would close were I to attempt to free you.”

“Great,” said Danny. He took in a shuddering breath. “Great. And you, what, think I’ll be able to avoid it on my own? When I can’t even see it? Or is this a ‘wait until morning’ thing?”

“You will, at least, be less liable to be eaten by wild animals at that point. And more able to untie knots with the light of day.”

Okay, yeah. Danny had been thinking both of those things as well, but with someone here, he’d hoped…

He rubbed his eyes, tiredly, and, to his absolute horror, his stomach rumbled.

“Are you hungry?” asked the shadow, as if Danny wasn’t already embarrassed enough.

Danny mumbled something indistinct. He had eaten. Just… The main course had… Well, some things were better left unsaid. The salad (courtesy of Jazz) had been okay, and so had the carrots. He’d felt full right after dinner. He had.

But, yeah. He was hungry. Dinner had been hours and hours ago at this point.

“I have food enough to share.”

“Uh,” said Danny. “Okay?”

Something moved under his nose, and he flinched. He hadn’t seen the shadow move.

“Um, I’m not sure I can…” He tried to wedge his fingers into one of the holes of the net. He’d lost track of the opening.

“They are small. They will fit. Hold out your hands.”

Danny, only a little skeptical, held out his hands. As promised, several round, slightly damp things, like largeish marbles, were dropped into them through the holes in the net.

“What are these?”

“Star jelly.”

“Like, from starfruit or something?” asked Danny, interested. He squished one between his fingers. It was springy, like a gummy. But still. Damp.

“Or something,” said the stranger.

“Why is it damp?”

“It hasn’t dried.”

Well. That was almost no information at all.

“But it’s edible?”

“I enjoy them regularly.”

Danny huffed slightly. This guy was weird. Again, that was the pot calling the kettle black, but Danny didn’t go around offering weird food to strangers.

No, he went around getting trapped in nets.

And he was hungry.

And it wasn’t like he hadn’t eaten weirder things. His parents could be creative.

Maybe he wasn’t supposed to accept food from strangers, but… This guy was his getting caught in a net buddy. And he had to admit, he was pretty mad at his parents right now. It’d serve them right, that Danny was eating someone else’s food.

Did that make sense? Maybe not. But it wasn’t like any of the stuff Sam or Jazz did made any sense, either.

Plus, it had ‘star’ in the name. He basically had to try out at least one.

He squished the smallest between his fingers one last time, then popped it in his mouth.

He chewed.

There was no burst of flavor. It tasted… pretty bland, actually. All the way through. But the texture was okay. Mostly. It was at least better than what had happened to the chicken fated for dinner.

So. Probably not poison.

(Although why anyone would bother to poison him when he was quite literally trapped in a net was beyond him.)

“I also have a variety of mushrooms.”

Who was this guy? The last hippie in Amity Park? A revolutionary war survivor?

“Do you have hardtack, too?” asked Danny, unable to help himself.

“I have biscuits.”

Oh thank goodness. Normal food.

“Can I have one?”

Something distinctly cracker-like was placed in his hand.

Danny didn’t even bother snarking, he just ate it. The texture was flaky, the flavor nutty and buttery and just salty enough to coat the whole of his tongue with flavor. He crunched into it again and the layers almost shattered between his teeth, then melted in his mouth like butter in a hot pan.

Danny swallowed. He’d never had a cracker that good.

“Can I have another?” he asked. Then, as more fell into his hands, “Where did you even get these? They’re great.”

“I baked them myself.”

Well. That explained why he didn’t have a phone. He was a hippie of some variety. Danny didn’t comment aloud, though, too busy plowing his way through another cracker. He spent a little while chewing in blissful silence before he could swallow.

“They’re great,” Danny repeated, and had another one. And another.

“Ah,” said the shadow, “I believe that was the first proper shooting star of the night.”

“What?” said Danny, looking up from his impromptu meal. He licked his fingers, then stretched out the net, the better to see through it. “Really? Where?”

“From the neighborhood of Cassiopeia, crossing her and going north.” A pointed finger stood out in silhouette against the slightly brighter sky, tracing an imaginary line.

Danny sighed. “I can’t believe I missed it.” The Perseid meteor shower was, after all, one of the main reasons he risked sneaking out.

“Many meteor showers reach their peak shortly before dawn,” said the shadow. “As we will be here for some time yet, I believe you will have the opportunity to see many more.”

“But the first one…” Danny said, trailing off.

“The first from our perspective. This shower has been going on for some time. For someone to our east, perhaps it is, instead, the last.”

Danny grumbled.

First the net and now this…

Something golden green streaked across the sky and he perked up. That one had been nice. A breath later, a smaller, shorter one flashed at the edge of his vision, a tiny needle of light.

“See? There will be more for you to wish on.”

“That’s really not why I wanted to see them,” said Danny, wrinkling his nose. Wishing was, well. It was the sort of thing little kids did. It wasn’t scientific. It was the kind of thing his parents strictly forbade.

“It isn’t?”

“I…they’re cool. And it’s nice. Or it would be, if it weren’t for this net.”

“What would it hurt to make a wish?”

Danny sighed. It wasn’t like they were wrong. This situation was stupid and illogical. So.

“I wish I could get out of this stupid net. Before my parents find out about any of this.”

The stranger hummed in interest. “They don’t know?”

“They sure know about the net,” griped Danny. He didn’t take his eyes off the sky, but he did tug on the ropes to make his point. The rope was homemade, twisted with nonstandard fibers along with more common silk and hemp, rubbed with garlic and sage. It was distinctive. It was familiar. It was something he'd probably tripped on a dozen times when it was left half-finished on the living-room floor. “But it's not like I told them I was sneaking out. Like, who's going to tell their parents they're breaking rules?”

The shadow hummed again. "That is true."

Danny was distracted from replying or continuing by a pale, oddly oblong blur to the north. It stayed in place, even as colorful shooting stars passed it by.

"Is that–?" gasped Danny. He leaned forward against the tension in the ropes and a similar, less tangible ache in his chest, as if he could get closer to the sky.

The oblong blur widened into several similar streaks, like thumbprints on glass. Green, pink, and purple began to seep into them.

"There must have been a solar storm I didn't know about," said Danny as meteors shot through the undulating curtain of the Aurora. Delight was dancing in his stomach and thrumming along his limbs at the sight. "We hardly ever get the Aurora this far south."

"It is an auspicious night for stargazing, then," said the shadow, "and one I am indeed glad to share, despite the circumstances."

The thing was, they were right. Despite the net, stargazing with someone who liked it as much as he did was nice. It was really nice, despite the net. Nice enough to wish, quite sincerely, and on a meteor that fell across the sky in that very moment, that they could do it again. It probably would have been nice even without the Perseids and the Aurora, but with them he was practically giddy.

Briefly, Danny imagined how this meeting might have gone sans net.

Okay. Honestly, Danny probably would have run for it. Weird adult in the middle of the night, after all. He had briefly wondered if the guy was an axe murderer.

He rolled his shoulders. His back was starting to get sore - probably a combination of the net and how long he'd been looking up, but he didn't want to take his eyes off the light show even for a second.

"My name's Danny, by the way." They were kind of sort of friends now. Stargazing buddies. Net buddies, even. Danny couldn't refer to the as 'the shadow' or as 'the guy who sat with me all night the time I was trapped in one of my parents' nets' forever, and he doubted the shadow wanted to keep mentally referring to him as 'that weirdo kid who got stuck in a net' for eternity, either.

"I am honored that you would trust me with your name," said the shadow, tone strangely formal.

"Uh, you're welcome?" Danny said.

"I go by Clockwork."

Wow. This guy really was strange, huh? Was that his legal name? Just a nickname? A screen name? Had he changed his legal name to that?

"Nice to meet you, Clockwork," said Danny, for lack of a better response.

"I am pleased to make your acquaintance, as well."

Pleased to make your acquaintance. Well. Danny's parents were eccentric too (see also: net. see also also: believing said net was going to catch faeries and demons.) and he was now almost eighty percent sure this guy wasn't an axe murderer.

Danny shifted under the net. He could try and shake hands, but the excitement and delight hadn't faded much at all and it was hard to focus on formalities when so much of him was full of so much energy.

Wait.

That was weird, wasn't it? Danny frowned. Should he have taken random food from a stranger? Clockwork had mushrooms, too. Had the star jelly been not just edible but an edible?

Was he high right now?

"Clockwork," Danny began, and the Aurora bloomed across the sky. The moment filled with shared murmurs of admiration, and by the time it died the thought had passed.

Even if the energy hadn't.

He flexed his fingers. Maybe he’d run through some kind of itchy plant? That might explain the tingle on his skin.

There was a hollow, almost melodic popping noise from the vicinity of the shadow. The vicinity of Clockwork, he corrected himself.

“You should try to stay hydrated,” said Clockwork.

A scent both floral and salty wafted up to Danny’s nose. The green glimmer of the Aurora reflected off the glassy lip of a bottle. “Is– Is that alcohol?” asked Danny. “Are you offering me alcohol? Wine?”

“I am not,” said Clockwork. “This is far more nourishing.”

“‘This’ being what, exactly?” asked Danny, still vaguely suspicious.

“It is mostly sugar and water. Fruit juice, salt, nectar, among other things. As you would call them, electrolytes. You have exerted yourself. It has not been purposefully fermented.”

This guy and his weird food. Still, that didn’t seem…bad, exactly. Danny was thirsty, and he liked gatorade, and that was kind of similar, right? And he was curious.

The crackers had been good. And even the star jelly had been edible.

It took some experimentation to hold the bottle firmly through the net. The body of it was too large to fit through any of the holes. But the mouth and neck of the bottle could go through, and Clockwork seemed content to hold it until Danny figured it out.

The liquid inside was thicker than he had expected. Sweeter and saltier, too. The flavor was… interesting. A little sour, a little bitter, a little… savory? It definitely tasted like flowers smelled. Only, it also tasted like something else? A lot of something elses.

He pulled the bottle back and licked his lips thoughtfully. He… didn’t hate it. It sure wasn’t something he’d just drink on his own, though. On the other hand, taking that sip had made him realize how thirsty he actually was. Which was very thirsty. He must have gotten more dried out than he’d thought, first walking here and then fighting the net for who knew how long.

He took another sip, trying to focus on the flavors he hadn’t quite been able to name.

And another.

Something in him settled as he drank. He hadn’t realized how nervous he’d been. Was it nervousness? He’d thought it was excitement. Delight. Something positive. But now it was settling into something softer. Calmer. And yet the sky was no less compelling.

Maybe it was a different sort of happiness, now that the unexpected relief and delight of a fellow stargazer out here had calmed his nerves. Maybe he hadn’t managed to calm down until now, and the drink was finally letting him?

Regardless, his limbs weren't so tense anymore, and breaths he hadn’t realized had become so short were drawing long and even now, and that was a relief.

He alternated sips with looking up at the stars. The Aurora undulated slowly, and was periodically pierced by meteors. The stars behind the curtains of light were harder to see, but he could still pick out his favorites coming and going, first hidden, then not. The motion of the lights almost made them seem as if they were moving. It was hypnotizing.

He tilted the bottle back once more, and made a disappointed sound deep in his throat when he realized it was empty. Huh. He must have liked it alright after all. That wasn’t a small bottle. In fact, it was bigger than he’d originally thought when Clockwork had first given it to him.

… He hoped this didn’t make him have to pee. He was in the woods, but standing next to, um. Well. An impromptu bathroom. Until dawn, at least. Would make the net thing much worse.

“Done already?” asked Clockwork.

“I guess I was thirstier than I thought.”

“You had been exerting yourself for some time.” Clockwork plucked the bottle out of Danny’s hands. “But I believe that you will soon see the fruits of your exertions.”

Danny sighed and leaned more deeply against the tree he was attached to. Subtly, he rubbed his back against the bark. The soreness was getting worse. “Not unless you see a rescue party.”

Clockwork hummed. “I do not. But perhaps you will not need one. The weave of the net seems looser, now. Can your hands fit through?”

Danny tested it. His hand fit through one of the holes easily. And another. It was the same with the third he tried.

“What,” he said.

“It is progress, is it not?”

“I don’t know how,” Danny said. “It’s not like Mom and Dad don’t tie these things at every connection. I didn’t think they could slide.”

“And yet your hands can fit through.”

“Yeah. I just wish I knew how that happened.”

“Dawn will come,” said Clockwork. “You will be able to see it then. Perhaps you worked them loose with your straining.”

“I guess,” said Danny, still wondering.

“And with dawn, you will be free, one way or another. For now, shall we focus on this spectacular sky?”

“Yeah,” said Danny.

He’d never seen a night sky like this before, after all. Even if he was stuck under a net, he had a …not a friend. But a fellow stargazer who was just as appreciative. And he was full, and no longer thirsty, and even the cold of the wet earth beneath him wasn’t as cutting with Clockwork’s company.

He settled in again to watch the lightshow, and worried at the cords of the net as he did. It wasn’t like he couldn’t do both, after all.

The stars flashed. The sky spun. Clockwork and Danny both exclaimed and pointed at particularly impressive meteors. Clockwork noted the visible planets and occasionally pointed out asterisms Danny had never heard of before. The Veil, the Key, the Mistletoe, the Dancing Maidens, the Hive, the Moth. He half suspected Clockwork was just making them, and the stories that went with them, up to entertain Danny. But, then, Danny was entertained. He couldn’t complain. Even when Clockwork tried to get away with calling Libra The Balance, Danny found his objections were more laughter than indignation.

The eastern horizon began to blush pale. Danny found himself almost disappointed at the sight, even if he’d be able to get out of the net soon. And really see Clockwork. After stargazing for hours together, it felt odd that he still didn’t know what the man looked like even though his voice was becoming as familiar as a friend’s.

He rubbed one of the net cords between his fingers. Was it just him, or did it seem… scratchier? Thicker?

He stroked the skin on his palms. Did he have rope burn, maybe? He had been pulling on the cords for hours. And who knew what his parents had soaked the nets in after they’d been woven? Danny sure tried not to.

More importantly, before too much longer the sun would drown out the meteors and the Aurora both. He wanted to press this sight into his mind to keep forever and ever. And not just the sight, but the feeling of… He couldn’t put a name to it, to what he felt, sitting here with Clockwork

It just felt important.

A meteor fell. He wished it would last. Another meteor, brighter. He wished that even after Clockwork inevitably found out who Danny’s parents were and what they were like in person, he would still want to be ‘acquaintances.’ Friends. Whatever. He was weird enough. Probably. Like Sam and Tucker.

He wished–

A huge fireball bloomed directly overhead, a celestial arrow angling down, north, wreathed in blinding green. It took Danny’s breath away.

He wished he could do this again. He wished he could cast off the shadow of his parents’ weird fae traps and property damage and hatred of creatures that didn’t even exist. He wished he could have the space and time to figure out who he was and who he could be, whether that was an astronaut, an astronomer, a screw up, whatever Jazz was trying to convince him to be that week, or, heck, even someone just as strange as his parents and Clockwork. He wished he could be himself, could just shed the image of what they and almost everyone else seemed to see in him.

Also, the net.

Some of the net fell heavily around Danny’s shoulders, then slid off them. He didn’t look down, still entranced by the after-image. Then pain, white hot and as sharp as a knife, drove into his temples and back. It took his breath away.

He dropped to his hands and knees, gasping for air and squeezing his eyes so tightly that tears began to slip out. What had happened? What was wrong with him? He hissed out a shaky breath that was dangerously close to a sob as the pain redoubled, strengthening and strengthening again until static pulsed in the dark of his shut eyes.

It felt as though his head were splitting open.

The pain lanced down his back and he revised the thought. It felt as though he were splitting open.

And then his face came apart.

And then there were only scattered fragments. Scratching. Growing. Stretching. The feeling of fingers on earth. The feeling fingers of earth. Unfolding. Squeezing. Balance; a knife’s edge.

A great and overwhelming sense of space.

Like a leaf before a storm, Danny trembled.

Eventually, it ebbed.

He was clinging to the ground with all his might, which wasn’t much; the whatever-it-was had left him weak. His limbs felt like jelly and seemed half as cooperative. He was gasping for air, each breath harsh enough to sting his throat. There was a blanket over him and he had the halfway-delirious thought that if Clockwork had a blanket he’d have appreciated it sooner than this.

He couldn’t feel the net.

Had Clockwork gotten him out once it got light enough out? It seemed much brighter now, even if the thought of opening his eyes made Danny wince.

There was a painful, high-pitched chirr sound in the background. It hurt Danny’s ears and made him wonder if there was an injured animal nearby.

Something pressed down gently on the back of his neck, where the fuzzy, fluffy edge of the blanket rested. It removed itself, then returned at the top of his head, whereupon it slid down to the top of his back.

Oh. Oh. He was being petted. Comforted. That must be someone’s hand. Clockwork’s?

It felt… unusually satisfying. Especially when they fluffed the ruff of the blanket which Danny was strangely aware of.

Very gradually, the tension in his body began to ease, and he was able to start cataloging the parts of his body that hurt, which was all of them. But there were a few that hurt more. His eyes. His ears. His temples and the sides of his head. His entire back. His shoulders, neck, ears, and large parts of his spine felt like every hair on them had been individually plucked out and then sandpapered. Speaking of his spine, that felt as if it had been stretched, pulled to bits. And his back still felt like it had been stabbed. Multiple times. Especially around his shoulder blades and at the base of his spine.

Other than that, he was just sore, everywhere.

The quality of the chirr sound he’d been hearing started to change, morphing into a sort of purr. One that rose and fell in time with the hand petting Danny.

Huh.

His hand flexed on the ground. Something was… There was something very off here, beyond the pain, but that was getting better, and he was starting to feel almost… comfortable.

His weight shifted again, and the ground shifted under it.

It was warm.

It was…damp? Wet. There was something wet under his hands. Carefully, worried that it would move again, Danny took one hand off the ground and brought it to his face to sniff.

It smelled good. It smelled wonderful, salty and hearty and just a little bit like chicken soup.

He licked it.

“There we are,” said Clockwork, softly. “Take as much as you need.”

Danny needed a lot, right now. His throat was raw, and he was thirsty and suddenly starving, and beyond that the pain that was still leaving echoes through his body. This was warmth and comfort and he wanted both.

He lowered his head and began to lap directly from the source, and warmth and comfort steadily filled him like the morning sun.

He pulled back, not exactly satiated, but needing something else, something different, now. He made a soft, pleading sound, more like a chirp or a keen than anything human. He didn’t understand what was going on, but part of him trusted he would be cared for. Loved. He’d already been given so much he didn’t know he needed…

Another plea escaped his throat. It blended with the softening chirr, fitting with it far better than Danny felt it should.

Something soft and sweet-smelling tickled his cheeks, and Danny dove in, his tongue coming out to search for what he knew was there.

Sweet.

Sweet, but not in the way of candy or even sugar. This was softer, perfumed, more reminiscent of honey but lacking that sharp note.

He wanted more.

As he pushed his face deeper into the… container… something touched his… Touched… What? It was touching his… not his head, but something over it, something attached, something he could feel, and now that he could feel it, was thinking about it, whatever it was, he could feel its movements, as even the sigh-soft breeze pushed it around.

It– No, they were something fine. Something soft and delicate. Something light and flexible and oh so very sensitive.

The hand, Clockwork’s hand, stroked down his back again, and Danny realized he could feel the fluff of the blanket the same way he’d been able to feel the things on his head. And it trailed past that, to his horribly sore back, and down, all the way down, past where his back should end.

Down, to where Danny could feel something laying across a foot. Down, to where he could feel a hard object under him.

Something twitched, and the thing across his foot fell away. The hard something vanished, too, replaced with the soft ground he found himself on.

Danny chirred, confused.

Oh. He had been the one making that sound all along. But. That wasn’t a sound he could make. It wasn’t.

He had to see what was going on.

Opening his eyes was, perhaps, the single hardest thing he had ever done. It wasn’t that they were stuck closed or anything, they were just so heavy, and a large part of him just didn’t want to know, wanted to stay half asleep, wanted to keep being held and petted.

Red. A deep, rich red puddled around him on the strange, soft ground. And the ground was uneven, and covered with small ridges and creases where it didn’t vanish beneath the red. Which was welling up from the ground like a spring.

Danny was wrist-deep in it.

A short distance from his face lay the biggest flower Danny had ever seen. It was bigger than his head, its pale petals stained liberally with the red. Handprints. The red stains were in the shape of handprints. Danny’s handprints.

The red looked– Well, it looked a lot like– Like a scene from a horror movie– But it was coming from the ground, it couldn’t be. It couldn’t be blood.

Danny had been drinking this. What had he been thinking?

“Are you feeling better?” asked Clockwork.

Danny looked around for him. Then, he looked up.

The very first thing he noticed was that there were still stars in the sky. It was still dark, the Aurora was still bright. The meteors were still falling.

Why could he see?

Why could he see so much more? He’d only ever seen the stars like this in long-exposure photographs. The light pollution was way too strong this close to the city.

There were other, closer things. The leaves on the trees were green, but they weren’t just green. Their veins seemed to glow with soft pinks and blues. He could see insects and birds, too, all of them strangely bright to his eyes, like they had swallowed stars.

Then, there was Clockwork. It had to be Clockwork. There wasn’t anything or anyone else it could be.

“I will interpret that as a yes,” said Clockwork, smiling down at him with love clear in all six eyes.

He had the nose Danny had seen before, yes, and long, silk-white hair, but everything else was so far beyond what Danny had imagined that it was hard to even comprehend.

And yet it suited him perfectly.

His skin was blue, like summer twilight, warm and rich.

His face glowed in the same soft, steady way as the birds, and set in it, his eyes were a kindly red. There were four on his right side but his left had only two; a deep black scar tore its way down most of his face and left two empty sockets in its wake. It was interrupted only by his primary eye on that side, and Danny felt tender relief that the old wound hadn’t taken that one, too.

White filaments made up a thick ruff around the collar of his– No, that wasn't a cloak, those were wings. Huge, dramatic, moth-like wings, layered over one another. There had to be dozens of them, all the way down his back. They were as dark and starry as the sky on the outside, but some were turned towards Danny to show the luminous, moon-pale undersides.

Below that–below that, Danny couldn’t see. The ground he was on was too high, and Clockwork too large. The ground–

He wasn’t on the ground.

Finally, like disjointed pieces of a puzzle, the details became whole. The uneven place where he lay, with its softness and whorls of ridges and creases. The warmth of it, and the placement.

The–the blood.

He was on Clockwork’s upturned hand.

Forget the rest of it. When, and how, did Clockwork get so big?

Danny chirred a question. Wordless, overwhelmed and wondering.

(And why was Clockwork bleeding?)

“You are safe, little one. My little one.”

Danny chirred again, a little cross. That didn’t answer anything.

Clockwork only smiled, and then there was a gentle rocking motion as they moved. Like clouds, the trees in the distance slid sideways with deceptive speed.

Danny settled, feeling sleepy, slow, and stupid, but still safe. Like he should be able to make this all make sense, like this should make sense, if he was just a little more awake and aware, but that it didn’t matter if he couldn’t, because he would be protected.

And then, Clockwork tilted, and his hand jostled, and though he didn’t become more visible, they were suddenly surrounded by great spikes of grass and flowers, stories tall. Some of them drooped, heavy with seeds or droplets of dew. They hung huge and heavy from the stalks, like fruit ripe to bursting.

Danny blinked. Frowned. Blinked again.

There was something, an idea, that made sense. But it hung just out of reach, blurry, and every time he reached for it, the thought passed through his mental fingers like the morning mist.

It was, it should have been, obvious.

Clockwork would know. Danny chirred his question again.

“It will come to you,” Clockwork said. ”Give it time.”

Clockwork cleaned him off gently with a huge, damp cloth, taking special care with his ruff, antennae, and wings. He mopped up the blood pooling beneath Danny as well, with a reassurance that Danny was welcome to more if he needed it. With another hand, he laid another huge flower down next to him. The stem where Clockwork had held it glowed briefly, before it faded into the relative dark of early morning, leaving the flower with the same odd coloration as the tree leaves earlier.

Dawn was still hours off. He wasn’t in the net.

Danny looked up.

He’d wondered what it would be like to stargaze with Clockwork without the net. Apparently, the answer was wonderful.

The stars were still so beautiful. More beautiful, now. There was such an incredible array of color and brightness in the sky, like a living painting. There was scarcely any black left in it.

Danny blinked, slow. He rubbed his face with his hands, lingering over his ears - which felt long and soft, like a cat’s or a rabbit’s, he must really be sleepy - and the long fluffy things that had sprouted from his head. They twitched under his fingers.

He looked up at Clockwork, still hoping for an answer and… Clockwork had things growing from his head, too, now that he looked. He’d mistaken them for hair, before, but while Clockwork certainly had plenty of that, braided, beaded, and beribboned, that wasn’t all he had.

They were antennae. Four of them. White, fluffy, and softly glowing. They were much longer, compared to Clockwork’s body, than Danny’s were compared to his. Danny raised his hands to feel his again. He had two. And, maybe, behind each, a ticklish little nub.

It felt…right, that they should both have antennae, though. Satisfying. Comforting, like a hug. Like the stroking had been, and the blood.

What else did Danny and Clockwork share, now?

Danny’s eyes trailed carefully over Clockwork’s face.

Danny was pretty sure he only had two eyes, but he touched his face again, just to make sure. Then his ears… Clockwork had big, long ears, too, the edges of them soft with white fur. Just like his ruff. Danny’s ruff was black shot with silver and… it was growing from his skin. It wasn’t part of a blanket, which meant…

He twisted his head to check.

There was no blanket. Danny had wings. They were wrinkled and slightly damp, but they were wings, just like Clockwork’s, although he didn’t have nearly as many. Two sets, to Clockwork’s uncountably many.

He also had a tail. And only two arms, to Clockwork’s four. Somehow, in the moment, this seemed less important than the wings.

His eyes kept returning to his wings.

The outsides looked just like the darker parts of the sky did now, streaked with meteor silver and edged with Auroral green. The insides were the same vivid colors as the Aurora itself. Pinks, purples, blues, and greens all dancing together.

They were beautiful. He definitely, definitely should not have them.

He wanted them.

He shouldn’t want them.

He did.

He drew them close to his body and looked up.

There was a huff of fond laughter. “Remember to fan them out, my little fledgeling. We want them to dry well.”

Oh. Right. Danny unfolded his wings again, a little embarrassed he’d forgotten.

And then he returned his attention to the stars. He was determined to enjoy this for however much longer this might last. Maybe this would all make sense in the morning. Maybe all of this would be taken away from him. Either way, neither was true now.

Now, Danny was here with Clockwork, looking up.

Now, the sky was vast and beautiful.

Later, his eyes started to feel heavy again. He pulled the flower close, and began to absent-mindedly chew on the petals in an attempt to stay awake. He didn’t want to miss anything else.

Despite his efforts, his eyes began to droop. His head kept falling into his neck fluff, and the flower tumbled from his hands.

Clockwork plucked it from where it fell, and replaced it with a blanket, just Danny’s size.

“Some inevitabilities we must fight,” said Clockwork, “but this isn’t one of them, my dear child.”

For another few moments, he kept his eyes stubbornly on the sky. Another pair of meteors fell, and he wished, perhaps selfishly, that this could last forever.

But, he admitted to himself with a sigh, he was very tired.

Danny curled up in Clockwork’s hand, tucking his head under the wings he was careful to keep fanned, and his tail around his head.

“Rest, my little one,” said Clockwork’s voice, already distant. “We can talk more when you are rested.”

And Danny did.

Dawn.

The kiss of the sun on the horizon. The beginning of a new day. The banishment of all things of the night.

Danny jackknifed straight up as if its fire had been poured directly into his veins, heart pounding. He woke just in time to see his new wings, his beautiful, terrible, fully spread wings evaporate like the morning dew.

The antennae, the tail, and the fur that had grown around his neck and shoulders and down his spine stayed.

More concerningly from Danny’s perspective, his perspective didn’t change. He stayed small, just the right size to fit snugly in the palm of Clockwork’s hand.

Clockwork’s wings stayed. So did his extra eyes, his antennae, his skin color, and everything.

This wasn’t a dream.

Or there really had been drugs in the food Clockwork gave him.

Why, oh why, was that the best case scenario right now? Why was the best possible answer to the question of what was happening that he was just really really high?

Because if he was just drugged, that meant he was only normal human stupid. People took stupid drugs accidentally and on purpose all the time. But if it wasn’t drugs, if this was real… That meant he’d somehow wandered into a world where his parents were right, had always been right, and he was probably about to get eaten.

“I would not, and will not, eat you,” said Clockwork. “I never would.”

“I don’t know what you would or wouldn’t do!” hissed Danny, pulling on his hair. “You turned me into some kind of– of moth boy.”

“You would have turned regardless, trapped so thoroughly and so long on a faerie door on a night like that. I simply made sure that it was kinder.”

“Kinder than what?”

“Any number of things. Any number of fates. They do not give much more mind to cruelty than your parents.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It was their trap you fell into, dear one. Without their actions, you could be human, still; safe and warm at home. Though,” and here Clockwork smiled so gently that Danny couldn’t help but be comforted despite himself. “You are safe, and you are warm. And you could be home as well.”

Danny hunched his shoulders. “What,” he squeaked, “is that supposed to mean?”

“I mean that as you are, you would be in danger with those who made the net that trapped you. I mean that you would be welcome in my home, and cared for, and safe. You are not the first lost and lonely child I have found. Nor the first with parents who should have protected them, and did not.”

“You’ve kidnapped other kids?”

“I have adopted other children. Other children, who were not cared for as they should have been, not loved as they deserved. As you deserve.”

“My parents love me just fine,” Danny snapped.

“I see,” said Clockwork, and he seemed sad. “And your presence here in the night? Alone, without even a light to see by?”

“I snuck out. And I brought a flashlight with me.”

“Alone,” said Clockwork.

“I thought the woods were safe.”

“Why? Did your parents tell you they were?” asked Clockwork, eyes narrowed and nose flaring.

“No! No, they said they were full of monsters.”

“So they didn’t teach you we could be dangerous?”

“No, I–I didn’t believe them.”

“My child, humans can be dangerous. Even to other humans. Surely, you know–”

“I know that,” interrupted Danny. “I didn’t think you existed.”

Clockwork frowned. “Your parents set cruel traps for the unwary.”

“Because they are crazy. Were crazy?” Danny moaned, burying his head in his hands. He resisted the urge to start preening his antennae and fluff. “I don’t even know anymore.”

“Their cruelty is the same,” said Clockwork, “Regardless of whether you believed the target existed. And they let you go hungry.”

“That wasn’t their fault. They made dinner. It just… didn’t work out.”

“Then whose fault was it?” asked Clockwork. “Yours? Your sister’s? As parents, they should provide for you, not leave you to fend for yourself.”

“They didn’t leave us to fend for ourselves,” scoffed Danny, crossing his arms.

“What do you call them leaving to go test what was left of that chicken?”

“That was– Okay, but what happened to the chicken was really weird–”

“It was not the first time, or the only time, that they abandoned you in favor of crafting their weapons and traps.”

Danny shook his head. “They love us. They love me.”

“Sometimes, that is not enough.”

“Sometimes it is. Of course it is. They love me. They love me enough to–” Danny swallowed, fighting down grief and horror. “I’m not leaving them. Or Jazz.”

Swallowing hadn’t helped. It had only shoved the churning knot of emotion down into his chest where it could reach awful vines around his heart and squeeze.

His hands were shaking.

God, what would Jazz do if he randomly disappeared? They annoyed the heck out of each other, and Jazz definitely held some of the things she did for him over his head for guilt trips, but he didn’t doubt she loved him. He didn’t doubt she would be frantic if he vanished.

He chirred again, mournfully, and only looked up again at Clockwork’s light touch.

“If love is enough,” said Clockwork, softly, ”then shouldn’t it be enough that I love you?”

“I–I don’t know,” said Danny.

Because the thing was, he didn’t doubt that Clockwork loved him. Nor that Clockwork would nurture and protect him, as he already had. It was easy, terribly easy, to imagine snuggling under Clockwork’s wings or into his ruff and trusting that he would be safe.

Danny pinched his eyes shut. “I’m going back.”

“As you are? Knowing how they would treat those they consider monsters?”

“Yes. They’re my parents. They love me.”

“Through this forest, and all of its dangers?”

“Yes.”

“Through all the hazards of that human city?”

“Yes.”

“Nothing I can do will dissuade you?”

“No.” Although, Danny reflected, Clockwork could certainly stop him physically. All he would have to do was hold him. But Danny would fight him. He’d fight, and he’d never stop fighting, and trying to get back home, no matter what. No matter how much Clockwork seemed to care for him, or how gentle and kind he was.

Clockwork sighed. “Then I have no choice. I will let you return.”

“You– You will?” asked Danny, suspiciously. It couldn’t be that easy, could it?

“Yes. But I would not have you killed out of hand, my child, as would certainly happen if you were to return as you are now. First, let me show you how to change.”

“I don’t want to change anymore,” said Danny. “I don’t. I don’t.” The fear was a beating heart inside of him, the idea of more change, unknown and untraveled.

“Perhaps I should say, change back.”

“I can be human again?” A needle of hope lanced through his chest. But would he ever see Clockwork again?

“Not precisely,” said Clockwork, before Danny could dwell. “No more than you are now. But it was the doorway that changed you, and doorways are of the between rather than here or there. Thus, you are of both sides of the door, not just one. You are still half human.”

Danny sat down. “I am?” he asked, voice wavering. He wasn’t going to cry. Not now.

“Yes,” said Clockwork. “You are half human… and half faerie. Half of their house, and half of mine, tied by blood, if not birth.”

Danny remembered. He remembered drinking Clockwork’s blood (again, what had he been thinking?) and how good it had tasted.

He hoped that wasn’t going to be, like, a recurring thing.

“So, what do I do?” he asked.

“First,” said Clockwork, “you ought to take off your clothing, so it doesn’t tear.”

“So it doesn’t…?” Danny looked down at himself. Maybe he should have realized earlier, but he wasn’t wearing the clothes he’d put on yesterday. Which made sense. At his current size, they would have been far too big. Instead, he was wearing simple white layered robes that had openings in the back for his wings and tail.

“I will have to get you something enchanted to change sizes, or to come when you transform, should you choose to remain and change often,” continued Clockwork. “But I was able to make these on short notice, and they were suitable for the night.”

“You made these?” asked Danny, oddly touched. He was supposed to be mad at Clockwork. He was supposed to be afraid of him. But both of those feelings just ran out of his hands like water out of a fist.

“I did,” said Clockwork.

“What happened to my clothes?”

Clockwork shifted one of his wings, showing what was beneath it. Silver buckles and pocket watches shone brightly against dark silk and leather. Other things, like bottles, herbs, and what looked like a small spyglass hung from belts or were secreted in pockets. Danny’s ratty jeans and t-shirt stood out like a sore thumb.

“Oh,” said Danny. “Okay. Um.” His hands curled around the edge of the tunic-like top portion of the robes. “Don’t look.”

Clockwork closed his eyes.

“Now what?” asked Danny, who very much was not enjoying being naked in the open like this.

“We are creatures of the night sky,” said Clockwork, eyes still shut. “We are of the Stars and the Moon.”

“The moon is up during the day, too. It’s up right now.”

“So it is,” agreed Clockwork. “But so is the Sun that drowns out the Stars.”

“The sun is also a star.”

“So it is. But it is not like other Stars.”

“Yes, it is.”

“It is not like other stars to us, or to humans. It is the light by which so many see. It is what divides day from night. It is, you see, what has clipped your wings.” Danny shifted slightly, the missing weight of his wings both foreign and familiar.

(There was so much to unpack. He hadn’t any time.)

“Why is it different?”

“Its proximity, perhaps. We can discuss it at a later time, if you wish. I would enjoy such a conversation.”

Danny hadn’t really thought about there being a ‘later’ with Clockwork, but… The thought of never seeing Clockwork again made his heart squeeze painfully, so he shoved it away.

“In any case,” continued Clockwork, “for those like yourself to change, you reach for one or the other. For the day or the night. The light or the dark. The Moon or the Sun. However you would like to think about it. You give precedence within yourself to one or the other.”

“Is it harder when they’re close to one another in the sky, like now?” Danny asked.

Clockwork smiled, though he kept his eyes shut. “As I do not transform that way, I do not know myself. My other children may have more comparable experiences, and we all are more comfortable under the phase we were born under.”

“I don’t think I’m going to be running into your children any time soon,” said Danny. Seeing them would, after all, mean that Clockwork had succeeded in kidnapping Danny, too. Even if it meant that he’d see Clockwork again…

“Even so. You will be able to see for yourself before long. Reach out, now. Can you feel them?”

Clockwork had a lot of confidence in Danny being able to figure this out quickly, huh.

(Despite still being mad at Clockwork - he was mad, he was - Danny didn’t want to disappoint him.)

Reach out… to something inside himself. Which was also outside himself? He wasn’t entirely clear on how literal the connection to the moon and sun was. But… Right. Okay. He could do this. He didn’t want to be a little gremlin moth thing that Clockwork - or, heck, an average bird - could carry off at a moment’s notice.

He closed his eyes.

Day and night. Light and Dark. Moon and sun. This was the kind of Yin and Yang stuff Sam sometimes got into. Balance and changing balance.

If he was reaching for the sun - for the Sun, the idea of the Sun - he should reach for heat, shouldn’t he? Heat and life and truth.

He could feel it, on his skin, warming him, cutting through the coolness of the morning. He imagined that warmth sinking through him, filling him up.

But there was warmth inside him, too. It built in his chest and left his lungs with every breath. It churned in his heart and coursed through his veins like the blood that helped to carry it. It was easy to take that, and imagine light to accompany it, centered at his heart. To imagine it reaching out as the sunlight reached in. He imagined it growing, brightening, pushing out against the inside of his skin, chasing away the dark, chasing away the moonlight and starlight and Aurora. Gold, chasing out black and silver.

Except… not entirely.

The sun was also a star, and all moonlight had once been sunlight. They mixed at the edges, blending comfortably, linked inexorably.

(There was magic he would be able to touch through this link that few others could. He understood this instinctively - but he was not yet ready for it, and the feeling was pushed away, put aside for a later, more appropriate day.)

This was the Sun, a tiny spark of it held within himself.

(There was the Moon, dark but no less itself, no less present and pulling for its invisibility during the day.)

And… the balance shifted.

He wouldn’t be able to explain what it felt like, to fall back into his skin. Not now. Not today.

Maybe not even if he lived a hundred years.

(Maybe he would, something whispered in his ear. Who knew how long moth-things lived?)

But he found himself at his proper human teenager size, cradled in Clockwork’s arms, no fluff or tail in sight.

Still naked, though.

He snatched his clothes from Clockwork, and, blushing furiously, ran behind a tree to change.

It was strange, walking next to Clockwork. The… Danny wasn’t actually sure what Clockwork was. Mothman? Moth monster? Anyway, Clockwork was still way taller than him, and the way his ruff and wings made him seem bulkier made Danny feel a little bit better about initially mistaking him for a bear.

The walk itself was still weird and awkward. Danny kept drifting closer to Clockwork, and then when Clockwork’s wings ruffled out towards him, as if to part or turn back to let him shelter under them, he flinched away, walking as far apart as the trees would allow.

Danny wondered if one of the things Clockwork had given him to eat had been some kind of… family love potion, and if it would ever wear off. Despite no longer having any fur, his skin still itched for Clockwork to touch him, pet him, hold him.

Although, for that to be perfect, he’d need to change back. Shrink back down until Clockwork could hold him securely in one hand and pet him, head to tail, with the other.

Which– No. No. He was never going to turn back into a moth. He wasn’t going to think about it. He wasn’t ever going to have antennae, or wings, or a tail ever again.

… Clockwork had a tail. A long one, longer than Danny’s had been, compared to his body. It trailed on the ground like the train of a dress, and both the left and right side of it was completely lined with moth wings, as opposed to Danny’s where there were only wings next to the little bulb at the end. Which Clockwork also had. It flickered with light, like a lightning-bug’s tail.

Danny wondered if his tail would do that, too, under the right circumstances.

Not that it mattered. Again, weird fairy door magic or whatever, he was going to be human from now on. Yep.

(Wow, the more he thought that, the less convincing he got. That was sad, actually.)

They reached the edge of the forest. Amity Park seemed to sparkle in the light. Too bright. Too artificial. Unreal, after the events of the night.

“Here is where we part, for now,” said Clockwork. “If you need me, you will be able to find me.” Could he say anything that didn’t sound ominous and weighty?

“Right,” said Danny. He hesitated, then, impulsively, hugged Clockwork. He shouldn’t have. Clockwork was exactly the kind of monster his parents had always warned him about, and was an admitted serial kidnapper who had spied on his family and turned him into a moth.

But he couldn’t imagine leaving without hugging Clockwork. Just once.

Clockwork hugged him back, with all four arms and what had to be a dozen wings. It was the best hug he’d ever had - even if it was also the most terrifying.

Then, Clockwork leaned down so that his lips were next to Danny’s ear. He whispered to him a simple handful of words. Most of them were familiar. His name. His full name, the one on his birth certificate, the one his parents and sister used when they were really upset with him. But… one of them he hadn’t heard before. Not once. Not ever.

It was still his name.

He knew this with the same surety as he knew the rest of his name. He also knew it hadn’t been his name before last night.

It was his name… because it was Clockwork’s. It was a family name, belonging to him as indelibly and as truly as the name ‘Fenton,’ one that bound him not only to Clockwork, but to the rest of Clockwork’s kin.

It did more than that, too. When Clockwork spoke his name, his true, full name, it was as if every molecule in his body had been magnetized and his name was a magnet. He was held still by it, at perfect attention. Whatever Clockwork wanted to say, whatever he wanted to do, Danny had no choice but compliance.

Not that, in the moment, he wanted another choice.

“Follow your conscience, my dear, sweet child,” said Clockwork. “I want that for you, always. But when you do, please… Have a care for yourself, too. Do not needlessly throw yourself into deadly danger.”

Danny, pinned to Clockwork’s chest, nodded.

Clockwork, with palpable reluctance, released him, hands tracing along his cheeks before falling away. “Be safe, Danny.”

Danny nodded again, and stepped backwards, out of the trees and into the sunlight. He didn’t know why he felt so sad, all of a sudden. He was going home. He’d avoided being permanently kidnapped or eaten. He was fine.

He turned away.

He was going home.

Stay tuned for the sequel. :)

#dp #danny phantom #phantasy phest 2023 #theres so many lost time brainworms #i should do more but tired

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