#While Danny knows that everyone in the room is a target for vlad | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ashboy-3 · 1 year

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I'm Special to

Written for DannyMay 2023 Prompt: Fantasy Au Fandom: Danny Phantom Characters: Danny, Jazz, Ellie, Sam, Tucker, Jack, Maddie, Vlad Words: 1328 Summary: In a world where everyone is born with a special power young Danny Fenton is born powerless. No one believes him when he says he can see people, they just think it's his imaginary friends until one day his powers are shown in full

“Good morning Liam,” Danny whispered as he waved to a small boy of five, walking through the woods.

“Morning Danny! Did you do anything fun yesterday?” the boy asked.

“Not really. Sam tried to test a new spell on me, but it didn’t really work,” Danny gave a sad shrug.

“What was the spell?”

“Meh it was nothing,” Danny shrugged the boy off as a voice came through the woods.

“Danny, what are you doing out here? You know it’s not safe,” Tucker, a teen his age asked, a boy and arrow strapped to his back.

“I was just out looking for something,” Danny grumbled.

“Ohh Danny, does he have any food?” Liam asked, tugging on Danny’s sleeve.

“I’ll ask him next time,” Danny whispered to the side as Tucker quirked an eyebrow at him.

“Still talking to the air? C’mon let’s get you home before your sister starts to worry,” Tucker sighed as he dragged the black-haired with him through the woods, Danny giving a sad wave bye to Liam.

“Morning Danny.”

“Morning son.”

“Oh, good Morning Danny,”

The voices greeted the teen as Tucker continued to walk him to his house, Danny replying to all of them.

“Really man hearing voices isn’t good. You know you’re not supposed to act like this in public. What is someone sees?” Tucker asked as he closed the door behind him.

“They were just being friendly,” Danny mumbled.

“I know you think that, but no one can hear the voices but you. We don’t know what they might be telling you,” Tucker said, worry filling his voice.

“Jazz!” Tucker screamed as Danny’s sister came running down the hall, a book floating in front of her.

“Oh, Danny there you are! You were gone this morning and I couldn’t find you. I sent out Ellie but she hasn't come back yet,” Jazz patted him down, making sure he was okay.

“Jazz I’m fine,” Danny rolled his eyes, crossing his arms.

“Found him talking in the woods again,” Tucker informed her.

“Really Danny! You know that’s where the hunters go. Honestly, you have no spells under your belt. You could easily be hurt,” Jazz lectured as Danny flinched at the reminder.

“I get it! I’m not normal like the rest of you! I don’t have any spells or special powers! I wasn’t born to be great! All I can hear are these stupid voices!” Danny yelled, running up the stairs toward his room.

“Danny!” Jazz yelled but was stopped by Tucker putting a hand on her shoulder stopping her.

“Give him some time Jazz. I was told Sam just got done trying a new spell on him?”

“And still nothing. Spells and potions don’t work he can avoid special powers, but nothing will give him power. If only Mom and Dad were here to help,” she said sadly as she stared at the portrait on the wall.

“He’ll be fine. He just needs time,” Tucker promised her. “If I see Elle I’ll let her know that Danny’s back. I gotta get back to work,” Tucker waved bye.

Jazz figured she could give a talk to Danny but as she went up to knock on his door she heard voices, well one voice having a conversation, but she never heard a response.

“You’re not a figment of my imagination are you?” Danny asked.

“Of course not my baby boy. You are as special as your sisters,” a woman with hair as orange as Jazz’s spoke softly, laying his head in her lap.

“Then why can’t anyone find my power? Jazz can read any book ten times faster while retaining all the knowledge, Tucker can shoot any target with an arrow no matter how far away, Sam is an expert potions master and healer, and even Ellie can fly and create a powerful blast from her hands. Everyone is a proper mage but me! I’m just bored! All I have are these stupid voices in my head!” Danny cried.

“My Danny boy stupid! Ha! You’re a Fenton! There’s nothing stupid about Fentons!” a bigger guy with the same hair color as Danny spoke loudly.

“Jack! Now is not the time to be loud!” Maddie scolded her husband.

“No, he’s right. I just have to believe I’m special right?” Danny asked them.

“Of course. I’m feeling sleepy. I’m sorry we can’t stay for longer sweetie. We’ll try to be back tomorrow,” Maddie kissed his forehead as the two disappeared into thin air.

“Ready to go on another adventure badger?” a man as old as Jack asked, he had sharp eyes and silver hair.

“Yeah. Maybe getting out of the house will be good for me,” Danny shrugged, opening his window, and getting ready to sneak out. He would have made it to if Jazz didn’t bust in his room, a letter in her hand.

“Danny we have to get to Sam’s now! It’s Ellie! She’s in trouble!” Danny’s eyes widened as he looked towards his mentor who shook his head yes. With no more pauses the two rushed over to the dark purple hut and saw Ellie lying on Sam’s table, breathing heavily with red pouring out of her.

“What happened?” Jazz asked as Sam turned around, mixing a potion as quickly as she could.

“Bandits. They got her by surprise,” Sam’s sentences were short and quick to the point.

“Hey, Danny. Jazz. I don’t think I’m going to make it out of this one. Lost too much blood before I was bought to Sam,” Elle coughed as more blood poured out.

“Don’t talk. You’ll be fine. She’ll be fine right Sam?” Jazz asked tears in her eyes.

Slamming her hands on the counter the siblings could see her shaking. “I’ve done everything I can. Just enjoy your last few minutes with her,” Sam clenched her fist in anger.

Danny was still frozen but felt a push on his back toward his dying sister. Then in front of him was Vlad who looked at him then at his sister.

“Go on Badger. Put your hands on he heart.” Danny did as he was told, no words coming from his mouth as Jazz looked at him in confusion. “Danny what are you?”

“Push your life force into hers. You can do it Daniel,” Vlad placed a hand on top of his, showing him the correct movement. Let the life flow from your fingers into her heart,” Vlad instructed as Danny closed his eyes and the two girls saw gree flow from his fingertips into his dying sister.

Then a powerful shock came inbetween the two and Danny was thrown into a wall and Ellie was sitting up.

“What happened?” she asked, holding her hands.

“Ellie?” Jazz asked, taking a step forward.

“Who else?” she asked with an eye roll as Danny stood up in shock, looking at his hands in wonder. “And who’s that?” she pointed to where Vlad was standing.

“You can see him?” it was almost a whisper from Danny.

“Of course, she can young badger. She now holds some of your life. Some of your power. This makes her able to see all of us that she couldn’t see before,” Vlad explained to the two.

“Ellie your eyes?” Danny pointed.

“What’s wrong with my eyes?” she asked touching her face.

“Their green,” Jazz noticed as she turned on Danny. “What did you do?”

“I only did what Vlad told me to do!” he said panicked.

“Who’s Vlad?” Jazz asked as Ellie put a hand on her older sister's shoulder.

“Jazz I don’t think Danny’s crazy. I think he’s had the power all along. Danny can see ghosts and save those on the verge of death,” Ellie smiled as Jazz’s eyes widen in disbelief.

Later that night we saw the small family of three happily enjoying a family meal like they used to when they were little. Apologies were given and for the first time in a long time, everyone went to sleep happy.

#dannymay2023 #DannyMay 2023 #danny fenton #danny phantom #fantasy au #jazz fenton #maddie fenton #jack fenton #vlad plasmius #sam manson #tucker foley #Dani with an I #Their siblings in this #charcter death

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phantoms-lair · 3 years

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The Phantom Detective Redux Chapter 3

“Vultures, that’s definitely Vlad’s work.” Danny glared at the ceiling. He wished the little girl who also spoke English had told him that over the phone. He could have been flying around trying to find them instead of wasting time getting here.

In all of the mess of last night with him accidently turning Conan into a halfa (and wasn’t THAT unsettling? Was that a new power he could just do? Could Vlad?), he’d never gotten a clear answer as to why Vlad was after Conan.

Like, yeah the kid was scary smart, but Danny hadn’t realized it until he’d spoken to him and as far as he’d known Vlad hadn’t. And his initial guess that it was because he was the detective's son (in an attempt to blackmail said detective) was dashed by Conan admitting he was under a ‘witness protection program’. He doubted Vlad wouldn’t have done the research to show that.

He needed to find some way to keep him safe, but most of the methods he knew for keeping malevolent ghosts out weren’t exactly safe for Halfa use. Which Conan was now for unknown reasons.

He could think about that later. Right now he needed to track the vultures, save his fellow Halfa and-

His train of thought was interrupted by the door slamming open and the girl he had saved yesterday from Skulker storming in with Conan in her arms. She did not look happy.

This was borne out as she began yelling at them in Japanese, only for the small girl to say something involving his name.

“I don’t speak Japanese, but I am very fluent in being thrown under the bus.” Danny said with a mild glare as the angry girl turned on him.

The short walk to the Professor’s (it hadn’t been very far) had given Ran more than enough time to build up a heady steam of indignation. As much as she wanted to shake Conan-Shinichi and demand answers, she couldn’t do that right now. He wasn’t waking up, which scared her and fed her anger even more.

Shinichi had been lying to her. And Agasa had been helping him. And if one couldn’t give her answers, the other would.

She barely stopped to kick off her shoes as she marched in the door. The Professor was there with Ai-chan and someone she didn’t know. In any other circumstance, she’d be more discrete, but she was done.

“Hakase, why did I just see Shinichi turn into Conan? Why did he look so strange? What else have you been keeping from me?”

Everyone in the room looked at her in shock. Surprisingly, it was Ai-chan who spoke first. “Danny did something weird to him. We don’t understand what.” ‘Danny’ glared at her and said something in English. That was all the impetus Ran needed to turn on him. “What did you do to Shinichi?”

He responded in English again. Ran wasn’t doing badly in her lessons, but he spoke too fast and she was too flustered to translate.

Cona-Shinichi held protectively in her arms, she lashed out with her right leg. The boy ducked back, still shouting in English. Ran shifted her weight and struck again.

The kick should have smacked him in the head, if not for the fact that his head detached from his shoulders, floating half a foot above. There were twin thuds as Ran misstepped her landing and Haibara fell to the floor in a dead faint. Agasa didn’t look much better himself.

Danny reached up, grabbed his head, and pulled it back onto his shoulders. Conan was still out cold and the only other English speaker had fainted. Great.

He looked to the Professor in a silent plea for help while the kicky girl just looked at him in terror. The Professor looked at him with a bit of fear in his eyes, but he turned to the girl and began to speak. Danny only hoped they were friendly words.

"Ran-kun, I know was Danny-kun did was scary," And wasn't that underestimation. As much impossible as he had seen in the past day, that took things one step too far. "But he has been trying to help fix whatever it is he did."

"H-He's a monster!" Ran stammered, clutching Shinichi tighter to her.

Agasa winced. Not just for Danny's sake, but for Shinichi's as well. At least he hadn't been awake to hear it. "Danny-kun's not normal, it's true. But that doesn't make him evil."

"What is he?"

"A yūrei hanyou. At least that's as close a translation as Shinichi-kun and I got." Not much use in hiding that little tidbit when she'd seen him transform.

"You mean yōkai hanyou. A yūrei hanyou doesn't make any sense."

"It doesn't and that's driven Shinichi-kun up the wall." Once quite literally. He'd paced to the end of the room and had gotten halfway up a wall before realizing what was happening. Gravity had temporarily reasserted itself, only for him to catch himself mid-fall, levitating a few inches above the floor before falling the rest of the way. But it didn't seem like a good idea to mention it at the moment. "That's the best translation we have though. Danny-kun doesn't speak Japanese."

Ran turned her attention to the harmless looking boy she's just seen decapitate himself. He was a monster and he'd done something to Shinichi, but apparently was trying to help? She needed answers so badly, but didn't think her English comprehension was good enough to understand them. She thought for a moment and cradling Shinichi in one arm she pulled out her phone. She typed a few moments then held up the screen for him to see. On one side was Japanese, on the other the words 'What did you do to him'

He looked at the screen then pulled his own phone out of his pocket and began typing before showing her 'I think he absorbed some of my ectoprism. I don't know how. It's never happened before.'

Ectoprism? Okay she didn't know that word. And somehow Shinichi absorbed it? 'What is ectoprism?'

Danny assumed she meant ectoplasm. 'Basically the essence of ghosts. The accident pushed a lot into my DNA.'

Ran felt a shiver down her spine at the idea of 'Ghost Essense' being shoved into someone's genetics. 'What kind of accident' She regretted it a moment later when he saw her question and just looked sad and uncomfortable.

He was claiming to be part ghost, was she asking about his death? Was that a taboo subject? Somehow the question 'Are you dead?' didn't seem any better. So she switched her question. 'How did you make Shinichi a child?'

He stared at her phone, but this time just looked confused. He fumbled with his phone a bit. 'What is a shinichi?'

She gave him a look and pointed at the child she was holding. He typed back and showed her 'Conan is a shinichi? I don't know why he was older. It was weird. Maybe it's because he's an adult for his age?

That gave Ran pause. Danny's answers had all been about ghostly things, none of it about Shinichi deaging. And the fact that he didn't seem to know his real name was even a name... "Hakase?" Ran asked in a dangerously sweet voice. "Is there a reason Danny-san, who I was just told was responsible for this, doesn't know Shinichi's real name, and in fact seems to think Conan-kun somehow aged up into Shinichi?"

"Ah well, that is to say, the part Danny-kun's responsible for, that only happened last night." Agasa definitely looked nervous as he helped Ai onto her bed.

Her eyes narrowed. "Okay, then why don't you tell me the rest of the story."

Well apparently whatever he'd said had been enough to turn her attention to the Professor. She was still mad, but not at him, so good? He had no idea what was going on, though.

He wished he had someone with him that could help him explain and spoke Japanese and English and... Danny smacked himself in the face then hit a contact number on his phone. "Jazz, are you free? I need some help?"

"Kisaki-san is talking to Mom so sure. Is this about Vlad?"

"Kinda, but not really." Danny sighed. "So Vlad's been targeting this kid I thought was the detective's son-"

"The one you thought could see right through you?"

"...Yes, and you will understand once you meet him, but that's not the problem. The problem is I...kinda turned him into a halfa last night."

There was silence on the other end, then "*What? Danny what the actual fu-wHAT DID YOU DO????”

"I just touched him Jazz. And it was like my transformation ring spread like fire over him." Danny ran a hand through his hair. "And now someone I think is his older sister is here, and I'm using google translate to try and explain, and there's something else going on she's mad at this professor guy over and...Jazz I need help." He heard her sigh over the phone.

"Send me your address, I'll be right there."

Danny hung up and texted her the number. He looked over to the girl and Professor, they were talking about something, something that seemed serious. Also that word shinichi kept popping up. It had something to do with Conan, and he really wished he could find a translation.

The more Agasa talked, the more Ran wanted to scream. She felt hurt, used. She looked at the child who wasn't still wrapped in her arms. She wanted to rage at him, but he still wouldn't wake up and that kept an undercurrent of worry beneath all her anger.

"Was this all just a game to him? A joke I was too stupid to figure out?"

"Ran-kun no he..." Agasa looked at the still unconscious Shinichi. "You've never seen the back and forth. It's torture. He used to scream..." Agasa shut his eyes. In a way he hated that Shinichi had become so used to the pain he didn't anymore. “There was a very real chance each transformation would kill him. As it is, he has permanent heart damage, barring this whole ghost thing that none of us understand."

"If Shinichi-kun were truly selfish, he could have started over. Left everything behind and began a new life. That would have been the smartest thing he could have done. But he clung to the one thing that made his old life worth keeping. He clung to you, because you were the most important thing he has. And he'd rather face death then leave you behind. He never took a cure without the intent to see you."

But Agasa was wrong. She had heard the screams. In the diplomat’s house, and after the case where Shinichi was being impersonated. She’s always convinced herself they were nothing, since nothing appeared to be wrong afterwards, but that sound had shaken her.

And Shinichi was still Shinichi after that last incident, which meant after being in that pain he’d immediately gone through it again

“How are you sure? About the heart damage?” Ran asked quietly.

Agasa was quiet for a moment. “Ai-kun had a bad cold and started to feel pain in her stomach. The doctor wanted to do an ultrasound to check her organs, but she was scared, so Conan volunteered.” He didn’t mention that this had been carefully orchestrated. Not the illness or the kidney infection, but when Ai realized she might get an ultrasound she got the idea to give them a chance to check Shinichi’s internal organs in a way she normally couldn’t.

If the technician hadn’t been focused on the frightened little girl and looking at the screen when she held the scanner over Shinichi’s chest…

“I saw the scarring myself, on the ultrasound screen.” Agasa was very solemn. “He’s been cut off from the temporary cures since, but with so much damage already done-”

“Dai-job-boo-dee-sooka?”

They turned and saw Danny, looking at his screen. He was frowning as though he knew the pronunciation of whatever he was trying to say was off. Finally just turned his phone around so they could see what he was trying to say. Daijōbu desu ka Are you okay?

No, she was very much not okay. She fumbled for a moment with her own phone, now even less willing to put him down. ‘Conan’s heart is hurt’

Danny frowned. The kid was a bit young for romantic heartache so - oh. Oh no.

His face must have given something away, because her eyes narrowed. ‘What’

‘I had a bad idea’ he typed back. He didn’t want to say more, but the look she gave him demanded it. ‘Ectoplasm should not affect a normal person, but if he was probably very close to death’

The response hit Ran in the gut harder than any of the blows she’d taken during her matches. Whatever Danny had done to Shinichi had happened because Shinichi was dying. And he was dying because he refused to give her up.

A sudden knocking at the door startled them all. Danny brightened and ran for the door.

Ran and Agasa shared a confused look.

Danny came back with a young woman with bright red hair. "Hello, you must be Conan's older sister." The girl said in clear, but accented Japanese. "My name's Jazz, Danny's my little brother, he called me to help."

"Your brother?" Ran asked, even as she inwardly shrunk at the reminder of Danny still being under the misconception she had been until not to long ago. "Are you...like him?"

"One hundred percent normal human, if that's what you're asking." Jazz reassured. "But I've been helping my brother adapt for the past years, so I'm very familiar with what's going on." Of course the early days were her weak spot, as she hadn't known till about two months later, and hadn't been let in on everything till the stupid test incident.

"Do you know why he won't wake up?" Ran asked in a small voice.

Jazz asked Danny something in English, then nodded and turned her attention back to Ran. "Basically his system didn't have the ectoplasm reserves for what he tried to pull off to escape the creature that kidnapped him-"

The what that did what now? How many loops was she being left out of?

"-and his body strained itself trying to maintain. He'll sleep until his ectoplasm levels are back at a safe amount. The first time Danny tried pulling a stunt like that, he was out for four hours."

"His ectoplasm levels? I don't understand. Danny-san said that he'd absorbed some ghost-essence from him but..."

Jazz pinched her nose. "Right. Google translate. Okay, so normally ectoplasm, the 'Ghost-Essence', has no effect on humans whatsoever. But there are rare cases that involve a lot of ectoplasm and a fair amount of electricity that can alter a human body to the point where their mitochondria start creating it instead of the usual oxygen based chemical energy. This causes the person to exhibit certain ghost-like traits."

"Yūrei hanyou." Ran whispered.

"In a nutshell." Jazz agreed, making note of the term. She'd take it over halfa, if for no other reason that Vlad must have approved of the term for it to be bandied about so much.

And now Ran understood what Danny had done. No wonder he'd had trouble explaining it, the concept shouldn't exist. This wasn't some one and done magical side effect of absorbing some ectoplasm from Danny, something that shouldn't have even happened if he hadn't been dying by inches.

Co-Shinichi was in the process of becoming a yūrei hanyou. That's why he'd looked so strange as Shinichi. Unbidden, every scary story about people becoming monsters flooded her mind. No. No she could not focus on that because obviously it wasn't true. Danny still had a close connection to his human family. His big sister had stood by him, she'd have to too.

(Though she had no idea how to define her relationship to him at the moment)

"I can answer any questions you have, but we might want to wait until he wakes up, I'm sure he has a bunch too." Jazz continued on, unaware of all the thoughts running through Ran's head.

"He speaks English, wouldn't Danny have-"

Jazz let out a frustrated puff of air. "Oh I have no doubt brother dearest tried explaining. But Danny's not," she glanced at her brother, "he's not the most adept at explaining things even when they're not deeply personal and he's not panicking all over the place, which it seems is what he's been doing. Not that he doesn't have reason. This nice family vacation has turned into a cluster." She sighed deeply. "But one thing I really need to impress is how important this is to keep a secret."

Ran felt something dark curdle in her stomach. That sounded enough like what Agasa-hakase had been saying to bring the bitter feeling back. "Why?"

Jazz clenched her hand worriedly. "Are you familiar with a law in America called the Anti-Ecto Act? It basically states that 'Ectoplasmic Entities', despite being sentient and sapient, are not living people and don't the same - or any- inalienable rights. And they don't differentiate between yūrei hanyou and true ghosts."

"If Danny was discovered, he'd be taken to a government facility. The Agents were boasting about all the painful experiments they were going to perform on him. Thankfully Danny convinced them they were wrong about him." She certainly wasn't going to go into the magic artifact with mind wiping capacity.

“But for a short time we had proof of how people would react to a yūrei hanyou's existence. Those that knew him stood by him, but..to anyone else, he was just a monster, a threat. And I don't know if Japan has an equivalent to the Anti-Ecto Act, but I do know that you place a greater emphasis on conformity than America does. And yūrei hanyou definitely break that mold."

Ran wanted to argue that Shinichi had never conformed to anything, not since preschool when he'd accused the teacher of trying to do something terrible to her. But she knew the difference between excelling and nonconforming, and the truth was Shinichi excelled, physically and mentally.

This was very different. If word got out Conan was Shinichi, these mysterious people in Black Clothes would kill him. If word got out he was a yūrei hanyou, his life would be effectively over. It felt like balancing on the edge of a knife. Shinichi standing on tiptoe, trying to avoid falling into ruin. "How did your parents take it?"

Jazz's expression darkened. "Our parents' work was instrumental in helping draft the Anti-Ecto Act."

"What? How could they?"

"They don't know. Danny always insisted if they did, they'd change. They'd love him anyways. But it's been two years and he hasn't told them. I don't think he's ever going to. In some ways he feels safer with actual malevolent spirits that definitely mean him harm, because he knows they can't hurt him the same way Mom and Dad can." Emotionally or physically. "It's not healthy growing up and hearing your parents talking about how much they'd enjoy ripping apart beings like you 'molecule by molecule'."

Ran shuddered. Hearing it that way, it sounded like the ghosts weren't the scary ones in this scenario. And if Jazz-san was right about Danny not being able to explain things well, Shinichi might have no idea of that added complication. "So what now?"

"The first month to month and a half are going to be the roughest part. His body doesn't know what to do with its ectoplasm, and will have trouble regulating its use. This results in ghost powers that randomly go off, especially in time of high emotions. After that he'll be able to control it more, no more passing out, for example, since his powers will simply fail rather than push him past his limits. Or accidental power usage. Once he hits the two month mark, he'll be fine, it'll just be a bit awkward until then."

Two months. She could keep it together for two months. “Is there any way to wake him up?” She asked. It helped being told this was normal, but not as much as him waking up would.

“We always let Danny sleep it off, although…” Jazz trailed off as she thought for a moment. “Would you be willing to let Danny hold him?”

“Why?” Ran was loath to let Shinichi go, and moreso to Danny, who was the reason Shinichi was turning into a yūrei hanyou in the fist place.

“His body needs ectoplasm right now, and barring letting it generate naturally in his cells, Danny’s the only other source we have.” Jazz explained calmly.

It made sense and she hated it. She held Conan a little closer and almost screamed as Danny suddenly changed in a burst of white light. The last thing she wanted to do was hand Conan over but…

But she’d seen those green eyes and white hair before. On Shinichi. Danny and Shinichi were the same, being afraid of one would be being afraid of the other, and she couldn’t bring herself to be afraid of Shinichi like that.

She reluctantly handed him over. Danny cradled him and his arms began to glow green.

Before she could change her mind, Shinichi’s eyes blinked open and he looked around blankly.

He felt...not warm, but it felt warm. Like in the laying in a sunbeam way, or being cozy in a blanket on a cold morning. But it wasn’t a temperature thing. It was weird.

He opened his eyes and saw Danny in his ghostly state. “Why are you holding me?” he asked dryly.

“More I’m recharging you.” Danny answered back in the same tone. He raised a glowing hand. “You used up all of your ectoplasm and knocked yourself out. Now that you’re back with us, hopefully your sister can calm down a bit. Also what’s a shinichi, she keeps using that word.”

His sister? Wait, he couldn’t mean… “Ran?”

“Who ran?” Danny asked, but Conan ignored him and looked around.

“Shinichi,” she said in a tone that meant the jig was well and truly up.

“Seriously, what does that mean?” Danny grumbled.

Conan gulped and flickered for a moment.

“Nope, gonna need you to stop that.” Danny chided him. “I know you can’t really help it at this point, but you’re still low on power.”

Conan was only half listening to him, half to the one person in the roof he didn’t know. “Invisibility and Intangibility tend to trigger as a fear response, and if he’s like Danny, he’s going to be on the verge of both of those until he’s more settled.” The young woman then turned to him. “Hello Conan, my name is Fenton Jazz. I’m Danny’s older sister and I’m here to hopefully explain things a little better.”

"Now keep in mind, the science of this isn't my main area of expertise, but between listening to my parents ramble my whole life, and helping Danny for the last two years-” Jazz began. She’d gone into full lecture mode. Ran and Agasa were sitting on the couch with Haibara between them, and Conan between Ran and a once more human Danny.

“- I've picked up a few things. Now mind you some of this will be theoretical, but I'll let you know when those things come up and - Danny are you falling asleep?" The last part was said in English.

"I don't speak Japanese Jazz, I'm not going to get anything from your lecture because I can't understand a word of it. Yesterday sucked and Vlad could be doing something at any moment, plus I was just used as a human battery. Lemme rest."

She rolled her eyes. "Ignoring my brother, let's go back to what makes a ghost."

"Death." Said Haibara bluntly.

"Yes, but also no. While the death of a living thing is certainly the most common way ghosts are formed, not all deaths created ghosts, nor are all ghosts the result of something dying. The real answer is ectoplasm.”

“A living being is made up of two parts, a body and soul. Bodies are well documented, souls less so. They're not physical and made up of what I'm going to call, for lack of a better term, spiritual energy. When a living being dies usually the soul passes over or dissipates - we've got nothing to help figure that out so we're not dwelling on it. But very rarely it doesn't. Instead the spiritual energy in the soul is converted to ectoplasm and the being becomes a ghost."

"Unlike spiritual energy, Ectoplasm is..." Jazz faltered for a word. "It's more in your face. Where the soul can't be seen, ectoplasm can't help but express itself. It can be solid or ephemeral, and can mimic any state of matter. It's potential can be almost limitless, however the potential in each individual ghost is limited."

"All ghosts have a core, which is a bit to a ghost what a soul is to a living being. Though it's a part of them, it can't be seen or extracted." Her parents had tried, which she didn’t like dwelling on. "But is ineffably a part of them. The core also functions a bit like a nucleus, as it defines what a ghost’s focus is, what powers they have, and their inherent nature. As a ghost's appearance tends to be a reflection of their self image, that can change over time. But the only way to alter a ghost’s core is by forcing them to experience something literally soul shattering. This...it's something that will never end well and that's all I'll say on the matter." She'd seen it happen to Danny in another timeline and she'd never let anyone go through that if she could help it.

"There are two more kinds of ghosts, but they're not what you want me to be here for, so I'm just going to touch on them briefly. Throw-offs are ghosts that are created by the will of other ghosts, formed of their own ectoplasm but as an independent being. Penelope Spectra, the ghost of an abusive psychologist, created a throw-off named Bertrand to act as her personal assistant. Likewise the self-styled 'Captain Youngblood', the ghost of someone who died as a small child created a parrot to act as both playmate and parental figure. Both of them can shapeshift to better suit their creator's needs, though without a larger sample size I can't say if that's a coincidence or a common trait of Throw-offs."

"The final kind are what I call Spontaneous. The limbo ghosts tend to be stuck in unless they find a way to the world of the living seems to be made primarily of ectoplasm and sometimes unlife just happens. This can range from barely sentient blobs, such as ectopusses, to beings of comparable human intelligence, like Skulker, whom you met yesterday. But for now let's move on to the rarest ectoplasmic beings, which is what you actually need to learn about. Halfas, or as you called them yūrei hanyou."

Jazz motioned to the small boy sitting between Ran and the now snoozing Danny. "Conan-kun here is the fourth to ever exist, as far as we can tell. We only have minor observational data from the first, the third was a special case, so mostly what I'm going on is Danny, since he and his friends have been cataloging data practically since day one."

Agasa nodded, pleased they had thought to do so.

"So yūrei hanyou are usually created by a living person being ground zero for a rift between worlds opening due to ectoplasm being charged with an incredibly powerful electrical current. And by which I mean ‘could kill several people in seconds’ powerful. Thankfully the ectoplasm changes it enough that the person exposed enters what I call the 'Schrödinger State'."

"Alive and dead at the same time." Conan said darkly.

Jazz nodded. "The person's spiritual energy is fully converted to ectoplasm without the soul separating from their body. This gives you access to a ghost form. In addition, as I explained to Ran-san earlier, the mitochondria in each cell are producing ectoplasm instead of it’s normal adenosine triphosphate, which allows you to manifest ghost powers in your human form. But your body hasn’t learned how to regulate it yet. That's why you're unstable right now. Not helping that is because of the energized ectoplasm that creates them, yūrei hanyou are by default some of the most powerful ghosts in existence."

"Really?" Ran asked with some trepidation. She didn't like hearing about ghosts, though the more lecture-like nature of Jazz as opposed to Sonoko's scary stories made it more palpable.

"As I said, despite what living in Amity Park might have you believe, becoming a ghost is really really rare. Much less than 1% of people who die become ghosts and those who do are mostly weak enough that if they make it to the land of the living they can't be seen, heard, or affect anything. Most ghosts need to find a way to siphon energy from elsewhere to boost themselves enough to do anything. Some feed off human emotions, others find a nexus point saturated in ectoplasmic energy. But the process can take years to decades depending on the abundance of the source. And that level of power, the type that takes decades to achieve. That's your starting point."

"Power absorbed through the environment or emotions is reliable, but temporary. They would constantly need to recharge to maintain a steady output." Hence Spectra's need to feed the misery that fed her. Without a flowing source her power consumption far outstripped what her core was capable of. "That's not to say ghosts can't become more powerful in their own right, just that it's not a quick process."

"Here's where we're entering some of the more theoretical stuff, namely how Ghosts can permanently raise their power. One theory is self awareness. Ghosts who are the result of dead humans tend to be composed of memories and emotions from when they were alive. And that in better understanding those, they deepen their own abilities. I won't say it's untrue, but as many ghosts wouldn't have the patience for it, it would be at least highly uncommon."

"Some, shall we say, rather biased individuals believe ghosts can strengthen themselves through human suffering. They are wrong. While ghosts can feed off human emotions, including negative ones, as we established before it's a temporary fix. Then we get to the theory I have the most faith in. Obsession fulfillment."

"What fulfillment?" Conan asked, startled.

Jazz winced. She was used to this part being common knowledge. "I mentioned ghosts tend to be made of emotions and memories. Usually there's something tying it all together into a drive. This drive, usually referred to as a fixation or obsession, is central to the ghost's being and usually forms their identity to a greater degree."

"It's...easier for yūrei hanyou. It's there, but more of a compulsion than an all consuming drive. Something they can choose to ignore, but it won't necessarily be easy to do."

"So I'm going to develop one of these?" Conan's voice was small.

Ran snorted. "Going to? You've been obsessed with mysteries and mystery solving since at least kindergarten. I really doubt there's going to be a noticeable difference."

"Going back to before,” Jazz continued, though it would be cute if Conan-kun’s thing was solving mysteries to be like his father, “it's my personal theory that the best way for ghosts to grow their core is by successfully doing whatever their fixation is focused on. It also explains the growth difference between Vlad and Danny."

Conan had been looking like he was halfway between sulking and being relieved, but he shot straight up at the mention of their culprit. "How so?"

"Vlad's fixation is about having things. Once he had his powers stable, it was easy for him to just take whatever he wanted through force or trickery. He's only been active twenty some years, but his power levels had risen to a degree it takes most ghosts centuries to obtain. Talking with other ghosts I've been able to chart a pretty steady growth - until two years ago."

Conan raised an eyebrow at Jazz's self satisfied smile. "What happened two years ago?"

"Vlad found three things he couldn't obtain through money or power. Ownership of the Green Bay Packers, since they can't be owned by an individual by their charter. The love of his college sweetheart, since Mom has standards. And for Danny to love him like a father and hate our actual Dad. Don't think I have to explain why that's not happening. But because of those three things, he wasn't getting what he wanted. He tried to get them, but it didn't strengthen him since he never actually succeeded."

"Danny's fixation is-" Jazz rolled her eyes fondly, "- being a hero. He's driven to help people who need help, even putting his personal safety at risk. It's something he sadly gets to indulge in often, sometimes multiple times a day. As a result Danny's growth has eclipsed Vlad to the point where he's almost caught up to Vlad's core power level in a mere two years."

It was good to know there was a strong chance Danny could supersede Vlad in not too much time, at least on one playing field, but that brought up a new worry. "So if my thing is solving mysteries, and I solve them fairly frequently, this is going to get worse?"

"Worse is a bad way to think about it." Jazz said gently. "I won't say parts of it aren't going to suck, especially for the next month or so, but it's not all bad. However illogical they may be, powers are useful as long as you have control, and that's something you can have with a bit of work. Can you honestly tell me there's no time being invisible would have been useful as a detective? Or walking through walls would have made an escape easier?"

He didn't like how easily past examples filled his head. Heck, if he's been invisible when spying on Vodka that night, he wouldn't be three feet high now. "I still don't like it."

"Neither did Danny at first. In fact he downright hated it. But now it's so much a part of him, I don't think he'd know what to do if he got back to normal." Honestly probably get himself badly hurt trying to protect other people. "Do you want me to keep going, or is that enough for one day? I know it's a lot."

"If there's nothing vital, I think I'm good." He had more than enough to dwell on.

"I don't know if Danny's mentioned this, but be aware around things meant to ward against spirits, they can be uncomfortable." Jazz advised. "Other than that you should be good."

Ran sighed and glanced at her watch. "We should probably go home. Dad will be getting worried."

"You go. I think I should stay here until I'm a bit more stable." Conan winced, "Imagine trying to explain any of this to him. And it's not like I can hide it." As if to prove his point, he started to sink into the cushions.

"Danny wake up!" Jazz said sharply. Danny shot awake and rolled forward, ready for a fight. Jazz simply pointed to where Conan was stuck in the couch. He rolled his eyes and turned his arms intangible to pull him out. "Would it be okay if my brother stays too? He can help Conan and act as a defense if Vlad tries to silence him again."

"Certainly. There's not a lot of extra bed space but there's somewhere Shinichi and he can go if needed." Agasa said

“Who’s Shinichi?” Jazz asked.

“There’s that word again,” Danny muttered.

There were awkward looks abound, but no one answered either sibling. Jazz sighed. “Unless you have anymore questions, I’ll see you tomorrow Danny.”

Danny blinked. “Tomorrow? Aren’t I going to the hotel with you?”

Jazz rolled her eyes. “I just said you should stay with Conan to help him manage his powers and in case Vlad makes another attempt.”

That made sense but…”I’m guessing, like most of what you’ve been saying, you said it in Japanese. The language you know I don’t speak.” He grinned, knowing he had her.

Jazz stared at him a moment, then pinched her nose. “Point to you. I’m still heading out.”

“Wait,” Danny stopped her. “In your lecture did you mention Halfa’s regeneration ability?”

“No, and you really should start using yūrei hanyou, like they do.” Jazz advised.

Danny rolled his eyes. “And why would I want to change the only word I’ve had for myself for the past two years.”

“Do you really think all those ghosts would use a word to describe Vlad that he didn’t personally approve of?”

Okay, any distance between himself and Vald was good. “Okay, but seriously. Please tell her about yurry hanyo healing.”

“Yūrei hanyou,” Jazz corrected his pronunciation. “And they’ve all had to deal with a lot of new information at once. Non essential things-”

“It’s essential. Trust me.”

Danny looked so serious Jazz sighed and gave in. “Before I go, brother dearest wants me to go into a little more detail on one of the perks of being a yūrei hanyou, namely their healing capacity. Though not instantaneous, they do heal much faster than baseline humans and can recover completely from injuries humans never could without so much as a scar. I have a theory about how it’s related to their core, but that’s far from proven.”

Injuries...like heart scarring. Ran gave Danny a grateful look. “Thank you.” Both for telling her and...she may not have liked the idea of Shinichi becoming a weird ghost hybrid, but from what she’d been told earlier, it very well have saved his life.

Agasa and Ai shared a look of their own. They’d need confirmation but if that were true it would be a huge relief to both of them. Conan glanced around and read the reactions of everyone except for the honestly confused Jazz. “You told them.” He accused Agasa.

“Yes he did.” Ran confirmed. “And I’m glad he did. And- we can talk about this later.” It was obvious Danny and Jazz didn’t know the truth about Shinichi and it wasn’t her place to tell them. “But rest assured, we will.”

Conan gulped and his form flickered again, before vanishing completely from sight.

“It’s a good sign your ectoplasm is regenerating.” Jazz said. “That being said, it’s obvious there’s something you’re not telling us, so if you’re trying to keep other people from figuring it out, you need to be better about the fact that you’re hiding a secret. I won’t ask what it is, we understand better than most how life or death a secret can be. But at least one of your secrets isn’t just your own.” With that, she walked out.

Danny sighed heavily. “I really need to learn Japanese.”

#Phantom Detective #Danny Phantom #Detective Conan #Ghost Writing #I have so many theories of how halfa's work #And Jazz became my mouthpiece #Ran hasn't forgiven him #not completely #but it's a big step forward

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ayamari-no-goshi · 3 years

Text

Verboten 15 | (T)

ff.net | AO3

Fandom: Danny Phantom (DP)

Summary: AU. When Danny was five years old, he went missing for 2 weeks. In the years that follow, his family tried to make sense of what happened, only for the truth to be discovered years later.

Warnings: rated T for violence, mentions of death, language. Be prepared for some very weird things

Parings: Danny/Sam

Notes: originally uploaded to Ff.net. Cross-posted to AO3 and tumblr. This fic is very heavily inspired by folklore surrounding mysterious wilderness disappearances

Chapter 15

It took almost twenty minutes for Danny’s mom to finish her tirade against the police. Watching her flip out on the officers was almost therapeutic, and by the time she was done, he was more amused then terrified. It made the actual interview much easier.

The police were initially skeptical, especially since his dad took the lead on explaining what happened. His childish excitement at getting to chase something made it sound like some made up fantasy, but that changed when Vlad gave his account. With his reputation, they were forced to take it seriously.

The older of the two officers, O’Brian, took the statements as his partner, Kiziah, reviewed the scene for any clues or evidence of how the creature got in the house. Other police offers were on the way to do a proper investigation.

“You’re the one that reported that murder… That was just, I guess it’s two days ago now,” O’Brian mentioned as he glanced at Danny, who nodded. “We chalked up the weirdness of your original statement due to shock, but if you’re telling me this thing is the same perp, I have no idea what we have on our hands.”

“I… I don’t really know if it was the same thing or not, but it looked like it.”

The officer frowned as his partner returned. “No obvious sign of a break in,” Kiziah stated, “but I don’t want to touch anything without an evidence kit. There’s definitely a weird substance in the living room and near the front door that will need analyzed.”

“You didn’t hear anything?” O’Brian looked back towards Danny and his parents.

“To be honest, our family tends to be heavy sleepers,” his mother explained as she gave him a sheepish grin. “Jack can sleep through almost anything, and I tend to wear earplugs.”

“And I am of the opposite,” Vlad stated as he made himself a cup of tea. “However, it wasn’t until I heard Daniel sprint up the stairs and bang on his parents’ door that I awoke.”

“Sorry about that.” Danny winced at he glanced at the man. Vlad didn’t seem as creepy as he had the previous day, but something still seemed off about him.

The man gave him a dismissive wave. “No worries, my dear boy. I believe your actions were more than understandable given the circumstances.”

“Err… I guess you want me to say if I heard anything?” Danny shook his head as the officers stared at him. “I didn’t. It… it was just a feeling, you know? Like when you get a sudden chill.” That statement was true enough. He figured it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to state the more paranormal aspect of it. “I thought I was just being paranoid until I looked down the stairs and that… that thing stared back at me.”

An awkward silence fell as O’Brian took some more notes. It was only broken when Kiziah received some sort of notification and moved to let the investigation team in. They quickly went to work examining the scene and looking for anything out of the ordinary. While they worked, an older man with a scar down the right side of his face took O’Brian and Kiziah aside and spoke with them. Once they finished, the older officer approached Danny and his family.

“I’m Lieutenant Metzger, and I’ve recently been put in charge of the investigation of the recent murders in the city. You’ve probably heard the rumors this is a serial case. Well, that’s true.” A muscle moved in the man’s cheek as he seemed to debate with himself over how much he could tell them. “Due to some of the details, we were under the impression these were ritualistic in nature and called in the FBI for some help.” He sighed before asking, “Is it okay if I sit?”

“Sure,” Danny’s mother shared a confused look with her husband before she asked the officer if he needed some coffee.

When he agreed, he waited until there was a cup in front of him to continue. “Look, I don’t want this being leaked. We don’t need people thinking the police force is wasting money on chasing fairy tales.” Once the Fenton family agreed, he continued, “You aren’t the first one to report something not quite human around the time of the incidences. Due to shock and figuring it was some sort of disguise, we originally disregarded that. However,” he glanced around before he leaned in, “one of my own officers gave a report earlier this week of glancing something inhuman. It actually attacked his patrol car before it vanished. On top of that, I don’t think whatever that thing spilled on your carpet has any sort of mundane explanation behind it.” He sighed and rubbed his eyes, “Mr. and Mrs. Fenton, I’m going to be frank with you. I would like to contract you for some sort of weapon for this thing. From previous experiences, I’m fully aware your… experiments don’t tend to do harm to people, so if… by the off chance, this isn’t something normal, we’ll have a way to stop it.”

Danny’s father immediately lit up in excitement. After rambling some idea, he ran down to the lab to act upon it before anyone could stop him.

“Don’t mind him,” his mother fondly chuckled. “Jack is very enthusiastic about our work.”

“I… uh… take that you’re willing to help us?”

“Oh, absolutely. If this thing is what we think it might possibly be, we were going to do that anyways. But I do need to ask you something. You mentioned you thought the attacks were ritual in nature. I’m not really sure how to ask this, but for those poor people, was there a part of the body missing?”

Metzger’s shoulders tensed at her question as his eyes narrowed. “How did you know about that?”

“Wait… wait, you’re telling me… that thing… what it was holding in its hand…” Danny couldn’t say it. The memory of the blood dripping from that thing’s hand temporarily overwhelmed him. He must have swayed as his mother gently put a hand on his shoulder.

“You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to. If you decide to go help your father, I think he’d gladly welcome the help.”

Danny shook his head at the suggestion. He needed to stay put. It just felt safer with her and the officers around. She must have somehow understood as she gave his shoulder a motherly squeeze.

“You didn’t answer my question.” An irritated edge crept into Metzger’s voice.

His mother calmly turned back to him and returned his gaze. “I didn’t until just now. After Danny relayed his story, it struck a chord with me, and I did some digging. There is folklore in different parts of the US which tells of creatures who steal the life of humans and often a part of the body. If… if that’s what’s happening, then we’re in trouble.”

“What do you think this thing is doing?”

“Nothing good. Throughout history, humankind has offered up blood and other bodily sacrifices to gods, spirits, monsters, and everything in between. While usually the Aztecs come to mind, you can find evidence of this around the world. It’s believed those sacrifices would either strengthen or appease whichever entity was the focus.”

“Maddie, are you suggesting this thing is doing something similar?”

She nodded. “I… We aren’t sure if this thing is trying to strengthen itself or if it’s taking its gains to something else.”

A different memory surfaced in Danny’s mind. “That… when we were being rescued… the… the person that helped us get back… he said the A-listers got targeted for their blood,” he stammered before he could stop himself.

Everyone in the room stared at him. He and his friends really hadn’t talked about Frostbite. They mentioned to the police they thought someone helped them, but purposely left it vague. With how disoriented they were when they were found, the police were under the impression the trauma obscured some of their memories. Well, the cat was out of the bag.

Matzger stared at him. “Are you telling me what happened to your classmates may be related to… to this thing?”

“I don’t know. Maybe? Like I told my mom before you came, the person who grabbed me and my friends isn’t the same… whatever that thing is. But, I don’t know what Dash and them encountered after we got separated.”

“Hmm… what about the person who helped you?”

Danny shook his head. “Not the same person. He called himself Frostbite, and…” How could he even explain Frostbite? He was a ghostly yeti with an ice arm for God’s sake! “I didn’t think he was real,” he eventually stated as he glanced down at his hands. “He was so friendly and helpful. He was so much different than that thing.”

“Honey, you never really talked about this Frostbite person before.” His mother tried to reach out for his hand, but he pulled away.

“I… I thought he was a dream or hallucination or something for a while.” He hoped he sounded sincere. It was somewhat true after all. The fantastical nature of what happen still didn’t seem real to him, but he knew better. “I think he had helpers… there were other voices besides his.”

“That would line up with some of the evidence we have from your case,” Matzger stated as he rubbed his chin. “The injuries of you and your two friends were vastly different than the others who went missing which suggested multiple perpetrators. One of the other boys did mention that he thought they were rescued by a small group of people. I will have to take a closer look at the injuries of your classmates to determine whether or not they match up with our current victims. That should give us an idea if it’s the same thing or something different.”

“Sir,” officer Kiziah interrupted, “we’ve finished our initial sweep. We did have some trouble trying to keep Mr. Fenton out of the way in the basement area, but he’s promised to stay at the one table while we work. He’s apparently drafting some blueprints. Forensics is here and are working on collecting evidence. They’re hoping to talk to you.”

He sighed. “Thank you, Kiziah. Can you explain to them their options during our investigation progress?” After flashing them an apologetic smile which seemed out of place with his features, he told them he would be in touch and excused himself.

After shaking his head at his superior, Kiziah stated while the family could stay in the house during the investigation process, it had the possibility of accidentally contaminating evidence. He recommended for them to stay at a local hotel for a time.

Although his mother seemed hesitant to leave the house, she eventually agreed to head to a hotel after Vlad made a show of being concerned for the family’s safety. It took a bit of time to get his dad to leave the basement, but by the time seven am hit, Danny found himself in the best hotel in Amity Park, per Vlad’s firm recommendations.

After sending his friends a few texts to let them know what happened, that he was fine, and where he was, he told them he’d call them after he got some sleep. Although he wasn’t exactly happy he shared the room with Vlad, the pristine bed ended up being far more important to him than any worries.

…..

Several hours later, Danny woke up to one hundred and three texts, fifty-four missed calls, and eleven voicemails. Sam and Tucker had only one voicemail and call apiece and only a handful of texts. The rest were from his sister. Groaning, he sent Sam and Tucker messages to let them know he’d call them after he contacted his sister.

He really didn’t want to talk to Jazz at the moment. When she was scared, she became spastic, and a spastic Jazz was the last thing he wanted to deal with at the moment. Okay, the third to last think he wanted to deal with. The creepy thing and Plasmius took the top two places.

After taking several minutes to do everything other than call his sister, he finally buckled down and called her. As predicted, she spastically demanded to know if he was okay while berating him for not contacting her sooner. He just let her talk while making the occasional ‘uh huh’, ‘sorry,’ and ‘yeah.’ From experience, he knew it was better to let her get it out of her system.

He put Jazz on speaker while he attempted to find the hotel’s TV remote. Vlad didn’t seem to be in the room which really didn’t bother him. The man didn’t need to listen to Jazz flipping out after all. Eventually, he found the remote next to a message from Vlad stating he and his parents went to discuss something with the police and would be back with food.

“Danny, are you even listening to me?” Jazz demanded. He must have been quiet for too long.

“Uh? Yeah, I just happened to find a note Vlad left. You were saying something about how it was irresponsible for Dad to go running after the thing?”

“Wait, are you telling me you were left alone after everything that happened?”

“Jazz, I’m seventeen. I think I’m perfectly fine being alone for a few hours.”

“You were kidnapped by a crazy man and then were attacked in your own home! Do you really think it’s safe for you to be alone right now?” With that, she flew into a different tirade.

Knowing it would be a while, he decided the TV would be a preferable alternative to his upset sister. He turned it on only to have it immediately turn off. Thinking he accidentally doubled clicked the button, he tried again only to have the same result. Thinking the remote was damaged, he moved to try the button on the machine. Only, it turned on by itself. It and the lights began to dim and flicker, and his breath began to mist.

Glancing around, he watched as a girl emerged from the wall. At first, it seemed she didn’t notice him as she moved towards the opposite wall, but she stopped midway and faced him. She looked human but her entire body seemed insubstantial and almost wispy. Her skin, if it could be called that, was an unearthly white while her blue hair flickered like a flame.

She smirked at him while moving a little closer. “You shouldn’t be here, Baby Pop.” Her sultry and musical voice seemed far away, almost as if it was being broadcasted over an old radio. “Don’t know what you’re doing on this side of the veil, but you shouldn’t stay here.”

“What… what are you talking about? Who are you?” he stammered while vaguely registering Jazz asking him what was wrong.

“I like to slip to this side for some fun, but I might stick around a little longer this time. It’s already chaotic here, and a little more might do me some good. Besides, it seems I need to make a few people remember I still exist.” After appraising him, she gave another smile and headed back towards the wall. “You might want to get out while you can, Baby Pop. Things might get a little hot, and you new guys often aren’t strong enough to deal with the heat.”

“Hey, wait!” He tried to get her to stop, but she just vanished back into the wall. Unsure what to do, he stood in the center of the room dumbfounded until he realized his phone was still on speaker and his sister was calling for him.

“Hey, Jazz, I’m going to have to call you back,” he stated as he moved towards the door. “Something really weird just happened.” He hung up on her as he ran into the hallway looking for some evidence of the ghost.

He barely made it to the elevators when the fire alarm sounded. Not wanting to stick around, he quickly found the stairs and made his way to the lobby as the rest of the guests started to follow suit. By the time he reached the third floor, he began to smell smoke. There had to be a fire. Is that what that ghost meant? Did she somehow set it?

He really hoped that wasn’t the case. He really only needed on potentially supernatural thing causing problems in his life at a time.

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kotalefanzu · 3 years

Text

Pitch Pearl ATUS AU- Part 2

so where we last left off, danny has been experiencing some weird stuff. it all comes to a point when he finds a DP symbol drawn onto his fogged-up mirror.

at this point, danny has to come to terms with what this all means. he has told nobody about his experiences in the ghost zone, let alone explain the significance of the cursed symbol, made by phantom as a way to ‘tease’ him about their unity and relationship. the royal insignia is a crown lit aflame with green fire. nobody in the human realm should know about DP. the only logical and possible answer is phantom is back.

he starts panicking

but days go by, then a few weeks and no ghosts have shown up. none at all.

sometimes he finds little trinkets on his desk or under his pillow or other little places where he would notice them. he’d get a few nightmares here and there as well. nothing big though. he can almost pretend like it isn’t happening, like phantom isn’t here at all.

but then at lunch, the lights flicker off and a glowing green fog slowly rolls in from the walls. the students watch in quiet horror as is solidifies into a misty DP symbol. danny throat closes up and he is paralyzed. a haunting whisper carried into everyone’s ears.

“The Tale of the Ghost King”

they sit blankly as the voice tells a story, the fog twisting and condensing into vague shapes like a storybook.

the king used to be a small ghost, it says, a small ghost that just wanted the best for his people. he freed them from the tyranny of the old king and promised them that no longer would they ever have to be treated like the lowest class. he uplifted them higher than they could imagine. it tells about the king finding a new realm, a new place to explore, and how cruel the people who lived there were, treating them like monsters and beasts. the king decided to find an ambassador to show the humans the ghosts’ true kindness. to show the humans just how stupid and foolish they are. the king slowly realized that as long as the desire to return home persisted, the human would never see the truth, and with a heavy heart concluded for the sake of education, people needed to die. the human was too blind and naive to appreciate his people’s sacrifice and tossed the poor king’s hospitality and love in his face, sealing the gateway so that they could never meet again. it was so silly to think the king would never find another way. they have a new entrance now. this time, the king’s dear gullible human would never escape.

as the mist fades and whispers and gasps break out around the cafeteria, people slowly putting together the story that danny never told, danny shakes with fear and anger at the patronizing and misleading way his fears were brought to light. he wants to scream and cry and hide away and as people begin asking for answers from him, he taps into a power he never wanted to feel again and vanishes.

he isn’t seen for weeks on end, held up in his room and only leaving when the coast is clear. the other fentons stop trying to catch him out of his room because he knows when they are there and they rather make sure he stays alive and doesn’t starve himself. sam and tucker make sure to keep him informed about the school by leaving his homework and copied notes at the door and setting down by it, just gossiping. they don’t know if he is listening or not but the homework and notes are always gone when they come back the next day so they have hope.

danny focuses on trying to locate the portal by meditating and practicing his magic again. his back up plan to escape amity and leave town if he gets short on time. the ghosts can’t drift too far from the portal. he will be safe if he leaves, but it would be better if he doesn’t have to.

the trinkets and gifts continue showing up and danny stores them out of sight so he doesn’t have to look at him. each one gets progressively more and more sentimental and personal until one day as he is making his bed, he catches sight of a glinting object he never wanted to see again.

the circlet.

bile rises to his throat and he rushes out to the bathroom, emptying his guts into the toilet. the sound alerts jazz, who peeks in and finds him sobbing over the toilet seat. she kneels downn by him, gently rubbbing his back. glancing over she spies their parent watching in concern from the doorway. their mom gets him water and their dad gets him some fudge to help clean the taste out. when danny comes back to reality he looks at them and starts crying all over again, basking in the comfort of his family. they expect him to lock himself away again when he has calmed down, but instead he site there for a second before telling them they need to talk.

in the living room, danny explains in with as much detail he can handle about what happened when he was taken away into the ghost zone. he tries to communicate how he didn’t like it and he really didn’t want to do any of it, like they would shun him if he didn’t. he confesses to the powers and promsises that he is still human and he isn’t a ghost. finally he opens up about what’s happening now and what he needs to do if they want to avoid the apocalypse. he tells them that if he cant find the portal, he will need to flee and hope that phantom doesn’t change targets.

they listen quietly and reassuringly up until that moment before completely vetoing that idea. danny is not leaving. this is his home and nobody is going to take that away from him. they tell him that its best if he starts opening up more about what he knows so they can actually help him. danny is hesistant, but agrees.

the day he returns to school, an assembly is held for him to explain the events of the infamous lunch period and what it all meant. students listen in fear and rage as he talks. by the end some are terrified that they will die, some are yelling to sacrifice danny for the protectionn of the town, and some are standing their ground and demanding war. danny barely manages to calm them down again, promising that everything can ba avoided as long as they just find out where the new portal is and close it down.

going back to vladdy bo baddy, he finally comes back to town and has managed to power himself up. he is ready to go flirt with maddie and kill jack, however, when he goes to visit them, he senses a lot of ectoenergy radaiting from the house, more than he would expect without the presence of the portal. vlad is very clueless about the current events and doesn’t really even know much about what went down freshman year. he uses this visit as a way to learn a bit more about the current affairs and greets the family, complimenting maddie, giving a backhanded compliment to jack, kissing up to jazz, and-

he freezes when he looks at danny because there is a lot of ecto energy raidaiting off of him and it but scares him a small bit and excites him. potentially another half, he thinks. after a few hours of small talk, he excuses himself as its getting late and invites them over

maddie is hesistant and tries to find an excuse not to go when danny happily accepts vlads proposal. she reads in between the lines and takes danny’s lead on this. if he thinks going to vlad’s mansion will be beneficial, then its best to trust him.

a few days later, they welcome themselves at vlad’s house and danny tries sensing for the portal. after locating the rift he excuses himself to go use the bathroom and starts trying to track it down. his senses say its behind a wall, but he can’t find the door. he starts messing around with some of the books of bookself that seemed peculiar before quiet footsteps catch his attention. turns out its just a cat.

the cat meows at him and guides him over a bit before pawing at him to pick it up. once lifted, it swipes ato some of the books causing some to fall but one stops mid tilt and a door opens to a hidden lab.

in it, is the portal. danny immediately starts preparing the concentration needed to seal it up. the last time he did it, it was instinctual and he didn’t have a clear grasp on what exactly he did. he needs to fiddle around a bit before he can do it. unfortunately, hologram maddie senses someone in the lab and scans them, sending an alert to vlad about an intruder. vlad rushes off to fight them off half expecting it to be another weak ghost crawling through, but instead sees danny concentrating on destroying the portal. he yells at him, causing danny to fire prematurely and only somewhat seal the portal, but vlad launches into combat before he can continue building up strenght.

vlad goes on a tirade about how clueless he mist be about himself and how halfas work if he thought that was a good idea and explains the importance of having a portal fueling you as a halfa while attacking and shooing away danny who is hellbent on destroying the portal. midway through he transforms when he notices danny isn’t catching onto what he is talking about and when danny still shows confusion, balks. the misunderstanding allows danny a slight moment to build up more energy while engaging vlad in a standstill about what he is and how danny is different. he doesn’t expand to much on it, just clarifying that he indeed is a live and not a halfa or whatever it is. vlad notices danny is about to fire again at the portal and redirect at the last second, restarting the fighting again. thoughout the fight he continues trying to convince danny that he is mostly likely dead and he should be able to transform but none of what he is saying is getting through to danny and its getting frustrating at this point.

the turning point hits when the fenton’s stumble into the lab after hunting down the two missing people across the entire mansion. their arrival, mainly maddie’s, throws off vlad long enough for danny to finally seal up the portal and for the fentons to rip vlad a new for the complete indangerment he brought upon them. luckily the portal is sealed and they are safe now.

everything is quiet for about a month.

one peaceful month of no paranoia, no nightmares, not trinkets.

then danny has a dream, more like a nightmare, about waking up in a too large bed, cold and the sickeningly familiar weight of the circlet on his head. the room is the one that haunted his nightmares for the rest of freshman year and the first few weeks of sophmore. he slowly pulls off the covers, he is dressed in too fancy night garb that he never wanted to wear, and tip toes over to the mirror hanging over the dresser.

his skin is sickly pale and his eyes are glowing a bright icy blue. the circlet is there, heavy and silver with sparkling emerald gems and its so cold andhe jsut stares at himself in the mirror, unfamiliar yet familiar and so very afraid.

he is so out off it he doesn’t notice another figure creeping up behind him until cold, tight arms lock him into place. there is a low amused chuckle and the figure leans up to his ear and whispers the name he tried so hard to forget.

“Starlight~”

“Did you really think that was the end? That I wouldn’t have anticipated you were going to seal up the new portal? You are still so silly.”

danny freezes and tries to question him btu no sound will come out. he can’t talk.

“You know, at first there weren’t any more portals. I was determined after the new rift formed to rush through and drag you back before finishing where I left off. However, unlike you, I think ahead. I decided to take my time with it. To guarantee no repeats. You were planning to run away to where I couldn’t reach you if I dared take a step too far and that was out of the question. What would I have done without you, Starlight? DId you ever take a moment to think about me.”

nails dug into his skin and his voice hitched.

“Luckily I thought about you. One of us has to put in effort into this relationship. I came up with something genius. I asked myself, why not tear more rifts? Once a cut was made, it was easy to make more from it. Why not fill you entire realm up with them, so that any place could be accessed with just a hint of energy? It took me so long, I was almost ready to stop halfway, but I have so much patience when it comes to you. Now I’m finished and there is not place on your stupid little earth that I can’t find you.”

danny’s blood froze from the cold and the fear. phantom only laughed and tightened his grip before pushing away. as consciousness slowly faded in, he heard slight whispers of phantoms last words.

“I’ll see you soon Starlight. You’ll come running back into my arms soon enough.”

he woke up in a cold sweat, jazz standing above him with a grim look.

“Sam and Tucker have gone missing.

29 notes · View notes

cartoonsliveon · 4 years

Text

More Sam Phantom AU Headcanons

Still thinking alot about this so....

1) Sam is still responsible for the sudden change to the school’s lunch menu. Ultra-recyclo vegetarians for the win at last! Danny and Tucker are still very angry about the change because neither of them want to be eating a slice of bread with grass on it. Or be forced to survive off of salads for the next four years. And Tucker is still the one to rat Sam out to the Lunch Lady ghost.

But, instead of Danny having to constantly rescue Sam from the Lunch Lady while his best friends fight over the school menu, Sam is battling the Lunch Lady while also trying to defend the changes she coerced the school board into making. Tucker, being a meat eater, is just angry that he’s being told that he can’t eat the food that he loves so much. He’s just angry about the radical change. Danny joins in because, since they’re best friends with Sam, the bullying has gotten a million times worse from Dash and the other jocks.

Unsurprisingly there’s a lot of tension, where Sam feels hurt that they don’t support her and her desire to make positive changes. But the boys feel that she’s going to far, thinking about what she wants and not what others also want, and that she isn’t considering how this is now impacting them. However, they do eventually make up in the end and, with more pushing to the irate school board, the new school menu is changed to include one main vegetarian meal and one of the tradition school meals. It doesn’t satisfy Lunch Lady but it satisfies Danny and Tucker.

2) Sam is the one being hunted down by Skulker in “One of a Kind”. Because of all the late night ghost hunting, and the fact that Tucker released all the ghosts they captured by accident, she barely manages a C plus on her biology test. Despite getting every question Danny had quizzed her on during the night correct, she’s too exhausted to focus and barely manages to stay awake during it. A C plus isn’t bad, it’s still passing. But knowing that her parents will freak out if they see it, and she doesn’t want it to tank her grades or draw any unwanted parental attention to her, Sam takes on an extra credit assignment about Samson the purple back gorilla. An easy assignment because Sam is already so invested with the idea of releasing Samson back into the wild.

Danny and Tucker still fall asleep on the floor, because they’re bored from watching a gorilla scratch their butt for hours on end. Sam leaves them (after getting her blackmail material for future use) and goes to Samson’s habitat. She does release Samson, because they’re freaking out about Skulker, and she battles the ghost bounty hunter down there. She also continues to be attacked in all of the same places as Danny was, including Fenton Works. This is mainly due to the fact that it’s the closest location to the ghost portal and, from all his time watching Sam and preparing for the hunt has learned that she spends more time at Danny’s house than at her own.

Her fight with Skulker in Danny’s room draws the attention of the Fenton’s and their guest. Jazz is livid. And Danny is trying his best with the equipment he had “borrowed” from the lab and hid in his room to help Sam while Tucker distracts the Fenton’s. Danny is left behind in his room when the two ghosts phase through the floor and Danny slams the door shut behind him as he rushes to go help Sam. Everyone gets a glimpse of his destroyed room, Jazz is angry at the attention he’s getting, she’s also a bit suspicious about the weird noises they all heard.

3) Sam ends up with Locker 724 when a fight with the Box Ghost wrecked hers. Sam ends up switching places with Sidney Poindexter, a nerdy girl from the 1950s who was the favorite target of her own bullies (it would be weird if Sam and Sidney switched places if Sidney was not also a girl). Sidney sees Sam using her ghost powers against Paulina, for all the teasing that she’s getting from her failed assembly for saving the frogs (showing up dressed up in a dress from My Fair Lady completely undermined everything she had planned). And on Dash for all the grief he’s been giving them as well.

Tucker and Danny catch on really quick that it isn’t actually Sam, because the moment Sidney took over, she was hanging with Paulina and the cheerleaders and completely abandoned her efforts to free the frogs. Giant red flags that neither Danny or Tucker could ignore.

4) Knowing that there are ghosts after his dad, Danny manages to convince his parents to let him invite Sam along for the road trip. Danny doesn’t trust that the vultures just turn tail and left, that they might try to follow the family when they leave town. And he also knows how his parents are, it’ll be really hard protecting them and capturing the ghosts when he’s being sheltered like a little kid. Jack has, of course, no problem having another pair of ears to talk off. Maddie is uncertain at first (as she doesn’t want to make it awkward for Sam or for Vlad), but Danny reminds her that Sam’s parents are away on another business trip/social obligation and, although she loves her grand daughter, Grandma Izzy had plans with her elderly friends. Which would leave Sam alone at her house while Danny was in Wisconsin and Tucker was visiting family.

Sam is awoken in the middle of the night by the vultures, and has her fight with Vlad where she gets her halfa butt handed to her. Vlad is, admittably, surprised that Sam is the halfa and incredibly curious how she got her ghost powers. How did Jack Fenton screw up so badly a second time to give someone ghost powers but not get in any kind of trouble nearly killing a teen, especially one from such a wealthy family (being a billionaire, of course Vlad knows of the Mansons). Danny is admittably, incredibly confused when Sam tells him about the ghost she fought. But neither of them suspect Vlad at all until he reveals himself.

When Sam threatens to expose them both to the Fenton’s and everyone else at the reunion, she says “Danny will always have my back and protect me. But once everyone realizes what you were trying to do, well, who’s going to protect you?” because they both know that by exposing Vlad’s plots in trying to dispose of Jack, he’ll lose both Jack and Maddie’s support and friendship.

5) Although Tucker and Danny don’t find out about Sam’s family being rich until the “Attack of the Killer Garage Sale”, when Danny gets invited to Dash’s party because he’s hitting on Jazz, Maddie has always sort of known. Jack does too, sort of, but he constantly forgets or the reality of how rich hasn’t quite hit him like it hit Tucker. Maddie knows, mainly because she wants to know what type of people Danny might be surrounding himself with, as children usually take after their parents. Maddie recognizes that Sam is nothing at all like her parents, and has never said anything because it isn’t really her secret or fact to share. Furthermore, neither Jack nor Maddie are super fond of the Manson’s, for their disapproval towards Danny (and their professions as ghost hunters). And Maddie hates it that they’re so blind to how great a child/teenager Sam is, wanting to pressure her to fit into their mold of a bubbly, carefree socialite heiress.

6) Grandma Izzy discovered Sam’s powers very early on. Although neither of Sam’s parents see it, Grandma Izzy always notices when Sam’s powers act up. When her arms phase through the table or her feet hover above the ground by the slightest inch. When she checks up on Sam late at night when its just the two of them home, she’ll see her grand daughter either floating slightly above the bed of having gone invisible with the blankets obviously still on top of her. And also, unlike almost everyone else in Amity Park who knows Sam, Grandma Izzy recognizes her in her ghost form in a heart beat.

#Danny Phantom #AUs #headcanons

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mischiefandspirits · 4 years

Text

Doppelgänger (2/?)

Previously on Doppelgänger ~ Masterlist ~ Next time on Doppelgänger

Danny, Sam, and Tucker were just 14 when they took a look inside the portal Danny’s parents had built. From there, everything changed. They woke up with white hair, green skin, and powers they could learn to control. They were hybrids, halfas.

They were the hero Doppelgänger.

{Parental Bonding}

“We can possess people!” the trio said, Tucker bouncing in midair. Sam crossed her arms. “That seems really wrong. We didn’t do it on purpose. Imagine how many dates we could get this way. We don’t need dates. We know we want to go to the dance.”

Sam turned human, dropping onto Tucker’s bed with a scowl.

Danny floated closer to her with an apologetic expression.

“Sorry,” he and Tucker said.

“It’s okay. I know you guys aren’t intentionally prying. It’s just kind of annoying sometimes.”

“We’re getting better at keeping things separate,” they said as Tucker sat down at the end of the bed. “Maybe we’ll be able to figure out secrets as we work on it. Do we need to have secrets though?”

“Yes, Danny, we do,” Sam said, poking the boy. “You might have loose lips, but I like my privacy.”

Danny pouted and transformed. “I don’t have loose lips. I just don’t get why anything has to be a secret between us. We’re best friends.”

Sam grabbed his arm and tugged him onto the bed with her.

His pout immediately fled as he curled up in her arms, his head tucking beneath her chin.

Tucker gasped and turned human. “It’s a cuddly Sam day!”

She shot him a glare. “Not for you it isn’t.”

He ignored her and joined them on the bed, pressing up to her back and draping an arm over both his friends. She grumbled, but relaxed back against him as Danny poked his head up to give them both kisses on the cheek.

They rested together for a while before Sam’s phone went off.

She nudged Danny, who’d been dozing. “Come on, it’s getting late. We should get home before someone realizes we aren’t in our beds.”

“No one will check on me before morning,” Danny said with a nuzzle.

She pushed him off the bed.

“Well then.”

Tucker sat up as the two stood and transformed. “Sam, wait.”

They turned to him.

“Uh, you know, since neither of us have dates and you really want to go, the two of us could go to the dance together as friends.”

Danny smiled and Sam tilted her head.

“Really?” they asked.

“Sure. I’ve pretty much struck out with everyone in school anyways and someone has to keep an eye on Danny.”

“Hey! True. HEY!”

{One of a Kind}

Skulker looked between the human boy he was tailing and the ghost child glaring down at him. He could have sworn the half-ghost was the child of the hunters Plasmius had paid him to investigate, not the boy's female friend.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

No, that can’t be. He was sure the girl was the ghost child. He knew he had seen the technology-boy asleep with the hunters’ child!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Skulker gaped at the three ghost children surrounding him. “What are you?”

“We are Doppelgänger, and you are done here,” they somehow said together while sounding like only one.

At least he'd still accomplished the job Plasmius required, Skulker thought as he was pulled into a cylindrical device.

{Attack of the Killer Garage Sale}

“You’re not going to go to the party?” Sam asked as Danny tossed the invite Dash had given him in the trash.

“Sam, I don’t think we’d need our bond to feel your hatred for this entire situation,” Tucker said.

“Sorry.” She’d really been trying to hold back her more jealous and controlling nature since the accident. It wasn’t fair to her partners.

“It’s fine,” Danny said, knocking their shoulders together with a smile. “It’d feel weird without you guys anyways. Who would talk trash about the A-listers in our heads or get turned down by every person in the room?”

“Rude,” Tucker said.

“Besides, what would happen if a ghost showed up. Dash’s place is too far from either of yours for our mind link.”

“That’s true,” Sam agreed.

“You could always just call our phones,” Tucker said and his partners paused, surprised.

“Phones,” Sam chuckled. “How did we forget phones exist?”

“We might be getting too dependent on the mind link,” Danny laughed, rubbing his neck.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sam and Danny looked up as Tucker dropped down onto the couch between them.

“You guys could have helped,” he huffed, passing the thermos to Danny and turning human.

“Tech’s you thing,” Danny said with a shrug, tossing the thermos into his Space Fold.

“Did you need help?” Sam asked, handing Tucker a bowl of popcorn.

He snorted. “Technus, master of technology and destroyer of worlds, was running an old version of Portals XL. It was easy to slip through the cracks with my powers. That’s not the point though.”

{Splitting Images}

Sam and Tucker watched Danny’s parents run off, then turned to their partner. “Watch it, Danny. Your parents almost c-” they stopped, then glared. “Who are you? Where’s Danny?”

The boy who was mostly not Danny frowned. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Sam grabbed him by the front of his shirt and slammed him against the lockers, her eyes glowing yellow.

“Tell us where our partner is now?” she and Tucker said as one and he stepped up next to her, his own eyes purple. “We can feel you’re not him!”

Poindexter immediately caved. He was smart enough to know he’d have a hard time taking on one halfa on in a fight, let alone two.

Sam was a lot more willing to hear out the old school nerd once her own nerd was safely in her arms and the three decided to let Poindexter stick around, so long as he agreed not to hurt or humiliate any of the bullies he went after, only spook them away from their targets. Especially when Danny told them about how Poindexter was treated in his own version of Casper High.

And they thought Dash was bad.

{What You Want}

You said she’s a genie ghost? Why didn’t you just wish her into the thermos? Sam asked.

Tucker and Danny shared a look from where they were hovering over the sick girl’s home.

You both are idiots. Get out of here before one of my parents spot you.

We’re invisible, they pointed out, but said their goodbyes and left all the same.

“Why didn’t we think of wishing her away? Because only one of us got all the common sense when the portal mashed us together. True. Oh, man! What? We forgot to share about the plasmablasts! Shoot, we’re dead. No puns right now, this is serious!”

{Bitter Reunions}

“Bad news,” Danny said as soon as he picked up the group call. “My parents are dragging me and my sister with them to their college reunion in Wisconsin.”

“That sucks,” Tucker hissed.

“Yeah, but our news is worse,” Sam said. “Knock knock.”

Her words were matched with a knock at Danny’s window and he opened the curtains to find Sam floating outside.

“Who’s there?” Tucker asked.

“Sam,” Danny said, gesturing her in.

“Sam who?”

“Sam’s at my window,” Danny snorted as she floated through intangibly. “What’s going on?”

“Wait, she’s at your house? Why? Do I need to come?”

“No, we took care of the problem for now.” Sam reached into the bag she’d strapped to her belt -- Danny could open the Space Fold for her and Tucker from a distance, but they only really did that for the thermos -- and pulled out a torn picture. “Look familiar.”

“Is that my dad?” Danny asked, taking it. The man in the picture certainly looked like his dad did in his collage pictures.

“That’s what we thought too.”

“What’s going on?”

“We took on this group of vulture ghosts just now and they had a picture of Mr. Fenton,” Sam explained. “They said they were on a search and destroy mission.”

“They want to kill Danny’s dad?”

“Why?”

“We don’t know,” Sam sighed. “They got away from us before we could interrogate them properly. We could have used our speed.”

“Sorry, my parents are in an inventing lull so they’re actually paying attention to my curfew,” Danny said, still looking at the picture.

“I still don’t get why Danny’s faster than us.”

“Tiny.”

“You mean smol.”

“No.”

“Yes. And it’s not fair.”

“You take hits better than Sam and I,” Danny pointed out. “And Sam’s stronger than us. It balances out. Now can we get back to the fact that someone put a hit out on my dad?”

“Sorry, we don’t know anything else.”

“At least you guys are going out of town. Hopefully, Sam and I can track down the birds before you get back.”

“Yeah, I hope so.”

Sam took her partner’s hand and pulled him into a hug.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Holy crow.”

“Tell us about it,” Danny groaned.

“We should have been there,” his partners said.

“We’re kind of glad we weren’t,” Danny said, poking his head into the RV for a second to make sure his parents and sister were still asleep. “Who knows what Vlad would have done if he knew about us? He thinks we use the royal we.”

“We can’t believe there’s another halfa out there. And he’s such a creep. Do we think he’d want us? Or only one of us?”

Danny frowned, rubbing his chest. It was weird being in ghost form, hearing his partners in their ghost form, and yet not being a part of the mind link. “We don’t know. And we don’t want to know. He doesn’t need to be anywhere near us. He’s a fruit loop.”

“Agreed.”

{Prisoners of Love, Part 1}

The trio floated back to back as they looked around the Ghost Zone. Danny pressed closer to his partners, eyeing a group of small blobs that he swore was following him, while Sam vibrated with excitement and Tucker snapped pictures with his phone.

“Can we just find the gift already? This place is amazing. No, it's not. It's creepy. And it goes on forever. We don't even know where to start to look! Maybe we can ask for directions?”

Tucker flew up to one of the doors. He knocked and opened it.

“Excuse me,” they said. “Would you be able to -”

“Get. Out. Of. My. ROOM!”

Tucker shut the door.

“Well, that won’t work. This is hopeless. We’re never gonna find that present. Our folks are gonna get divorced and it’s gonna be all our fault.”

Sam wrapped her arms around Danny.

“We’ll figure this out. Maybe we just need to think like a box. Think like a box? Well, the box isn’t a ghost. It’s from the human world.” Danny’s head popped up. “Yes, maybe the ghost zone’s gravity affects human world stuff differently than ghost stuff. If we can track the orbital paths, then we can figure out where the box went. But how would we figure out these orbital paths? We know one way. No.”

Tucker flew down to one of the floating islands, then transformed.

“Stop!” Sam and Danny shouted, flying up to him. “We don’t know how the Ghost Zone will affect a human. Our parents haven’t run any tests yet!”

“I’m fine, see,” Tucker said, gesturing at himself. “I can even breathe just fine. Everything’s okay.”

“For now.”

“I think it’s a little too late to worry about ectoplasmic radiation, so what are you two so worried about.”

“Only one of us is worried. We’re both worried.”

Sam shoved Danny, then shoved Tucker when he started laughing.

The boy yelped and braced himself when the shove knocked him towards a tree.

He passed right through it.

“What the heck?” the two said.

Tucker stood up and set his hand on the tree. Then he pressed down and his hand slipped through the tree, coming out the other side.

Danny dropped down next to him and tried to do the same, but couldn’t get his arm to go through the tree even when he turned intangible.

Sam snapped her fingers.

“Ectoplasm. Everything here is made of ectoplasm. Maybe being in the ghost zone naturally puts everything in a semi-intangible state, which means humans can pass through it if they try.”

“So we’re the ghosts here!” Tucker cheered, bouncing. “Sweet!”

“It’s definitely something to keep in mind.”

Tucker smiled and held up his arms. “Now that that’s settled, let’s see how this human gets affected by ghost gravity.”

Danny hesitated, but Sam shrugged and picked Tucker up and threw him into the void.

He flew a few yards before slowing down until he was just floating in place. They waited a moment, but nothing else happened.

“Well, that was anticlimactic,” Tucker said then transformed.

Danny and Sam flew up to him, all three saying, “That should have worked though. There has to be some sort of orbit or else the box would have just been right outside the portal and we check right after it got knocked in.”

Tucker shrugged and pulled out his phone. Danny’s eyes locked onto it. He grabbed it out of Tucker’s hand and tossed it.

“Hey! Look, it’s moving!”

The trio watched as the phone’s trajectory slowed, then started again slightly to the right of where it had been heading before.

“Humans might just be too heavy or dense for ghost orbit. Or maybe it’s a consciousness thing, like with the intangibility. Whatever it is, let’s just get going. If we lose our phone, we’re going to regret it.”

The three set off drifting a short ways behind the phone. They stuck close enough to be sure they didn’t lose it, but far enough that they wouldn’t accidentally alter its course. Eventually, the phone floated intangibly through one of the doors, this one looking like a rolling warehouse door.

The trio shared a look then opened the door and flew inside.

The lair was just a purple void filled with a variety of random items.

“So this is where all that stuff ends up. It’s like the void of lost items,” they said as Tucker grabbed his phone.

“Yes!” the trio turned to see the Box Ghost flying up. “It all ends up in the possession of THE BOX GHOST!”

“Ugh, this guy. What are you doing here? Don’t you have a cardboard box to haunt.”

Boxy blinked looking between the three before pointing at Sam, who was floating in the middle.

“I am The Box Ghost! Where do you think we go when you release us from your round, cylindrical trap?”

Danny looked unimpressed, Sam crossed her arms and started looking over all the junk, and Tucker ran a hand over his face.

“It is not our turn to deal with this. You mean the Fenton Thermos? The gift has to be here somewhere.”

He looked between them then threw up his arms menacingly. “I am the Box Ghost!”

“We know.”

“And beware! For I am merely ONE of your foes who reside in this realm! In fact, you might say,” the box ghost snorted, “we’re a PACKAGE DEAL!”

“I swear if we laugh at that, we’ll punch us. We’re not laughing at that. It’s the Box Ghost. We would laugh at that. That was a bad pun even for us.” They groaned and Danny floated closer to Boxy, holding his hands up in a show of good faith. “Look, we’re looking for something important, we don’t have time for your box puns.”

Suddenly police sirens sounded and the trio looked around.

“Flee!” Boxy shouted. “Lest you be hermetically sealed and shipped to your doom!” He tried to fly off, but a blast of green energy hit him, causing his wrists to be bound in handcuffs made of energy.

Sam and Tucker flew up to grab Danny’s arms. “Hey, what’s going on? We need to get out of here! Let’s -”

A blast hit them and they were bound together.

“Unauthorized duplication. That’s against the rules.” The trio looked up to see a large white ghost hovering over them. He pulled out a green book. “Or at least it is now.”

“Duplication? Like Plasmius? Wait! This is all a big misunderstanding! We’re not -”

The ghost moved so it was like he was crouched on invisible ground and shoved his face into Tucker’s. He grabbed Tucker’s phone and said, “There may be chaos everywhere in this Ghost Zone, but there’ll be order in my prison.” He stood up and turned to a group of ghosts in riot gear. “Merge them and ship them off.”

One of the ghosts smiled and pointed a police baton at them.

“Hold on! You’ve got the wrong -”

He shot them with a blast and a ring of energy wrapped around them and squeezed. It grew tighter and tighter and their bodies were pressed closer and closer.

“Stop! Wait! Please!”

And then there was a snap. It wasn’t audible. It wasn’t even physical. It was just a feeling as three bodies became one.

Doppelgänger looked down at their hands in shock, their mind a whirl of emotions and thoughts. They barely noticed as the ghost police grabbed their arms and threw them in the back of a prisoner transport van.

“We’re one?” they whispered, staring at their hands.

They certainly didn’t feel like one. They could feel Sam's and Danny's and Tucker’s minds rioting against one another in their head. It was like the trio were all trying to overshadow each other at once. Their body shook with hot and cold and lightning. They tried to pull apart, but the bands on their wrists, ankles, and waist kept their powers dulled and their ectoplasm merged.

The police returned and Doppelgänger shuffled into the corner of the van to keep away from the monsters. Thankfully they only shoved the Box Ghost inside and shut the doors.

Doppelgänger turned to the wall of the van. “If we transform, we can slip out. Can we transform with these bonds? Better question, what would happen if we transformed like this?” They shivered at the idea of being merged in their human forms. “Yeah, no. We need to figure out how to separate, then we can transform and get away from these psychos. Seriously, as if living corrupt police weren’t bad enough. We need to focus. Can this situation get any worse? Our folks are splitting up, our sister’s a basket case, and we’re going to ghost jail.” They curled up, trying to hold themselves as best they could with their bonds. “It will be okay. We’ll be okay. They’ll have to remove the bonds at some point then we can get away. It will be okay.”

#danny phantom #danny fenton #tucker foley #sam manson #Doppelgänger au

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mr-lancers-english-class · 4 years

Text

The Rescue

Vengeful Babes, Dissection, & Identity Reveal

AO3

Word Count: 3753

Dani wasn’t sure how she was going to explain this to Valerie. She was flying as fast as she could and it wasn’t fast enough but she also needed to think but she needed to focus to be able to think and couldn’t focus on that right now, no, because she didn’t need to crash into another jet and so she had to fly first and brainstorm second but there wouldn’t be time to brainstorm later so she needed to think now!

A bird squawked angrily off to her right, shocking Dani out of her thoughts and forcing her to slam to a halt. She glared at the bird as it gave her the stink eye before flying off.

“I’m stopped anyway. I need to catch my breath. I’ll think of something right now,” she muttered to herself. “Alright. What do I know? Danny’s been caught. Danny needs my help. Sam and Tucker are out of town. Jazz is at college. None of the three of them know. Vlad’s minion contacted me to tell me. Because Vlad was caught too. The Fenton’s managed to catch them both. ” Dani took a moment to scream internally. She had thought she’d been free of Vlad, that he couldn’t ever find her. Danny had said he’d changed, that he was becoming more of a crazy uncle figure than a fruitloopy asshole, but Dani was loathe to trust the man. “Vlad knows how to find me. No, if he actually has changed, maybe he doesn’t but his minions do. Skulker definitely does. That’s probably it. Skulker’s always been able to find me, and now maybe this time it’s because Danny and Vlad need help and not because he wants to hunt me for sport.” She barked out a sharp laugh. “Why is my life so weird?”

With a quick inhale, Dani took off flying as hard as she could towards Amity Park. It was only a few more minutes away. She could feel the ectoplasm in the air grow thicker, and her speed increased accordingly.

“Danny and Vlad are caught by the Fenton’s and everyone who knows their secrets are out of town except Valerie. And Valerie doesn’t really like either of them, though maybe not as much.” Dani thought back to the last phone call she’d had with her girlfriend. Valerie had mentioned that she and Phantom had a truce, that they had started to work together more to stop the ghosts, and that, for the first time in the three years she had been the Red Huntress, she was getting enough sleep and finishing most of her homework. Though she hadn’t talked to Danny in a while, Dani was pretty sure the same could be said of him. It had taken too long for both of them to be willing to work with the other.

“But Valerie doesn’t know. She knows about me, but she doesn’t know about Danny or Vlad.” Dani slowed down as she entered the Amity Park airspace. The air was practically glowing with latent ectoplasm. “The less she knows about halfas the better, but also Danny should have told her forever ago and it would have made life so much easier for both of them. Agh! Why is he such an idiot?!” She veered off to the north and turned invisible. After a minute of scanning the identical apartments, she was pretty sure she had found Valerie’s. Lowering herself to the window, Dani knocked four times, paused, and knocked twice more.

The door inside slammed open. Valerie dashed across the floor, dove over her bed, and crashed into the wall with enough force to shake the ceiling lights. Throwing open the window, she whisper-shouted “Dannielle!”

Dani took that as her cue to re-enter the visible spectrum and slide through the open window. “Valerie! It’s so good to see-” She was cut off as Valerie smothered her in a hug. Dani melted in to Valerie’s arms and was very disappointed when the other girl pulled away. Disappointment was immediately replaced with a warm kiss. Valerie held Dani’s face, while Dani brought her hands up into Valerie’s hair and kissed back. It had been months since they’d seen each other in person and Dani never wanted this kiss to end.

And then she remember why she was back in Amity Park.

Dani pulled away from Valerie with a sharp inhale. Valerie tilted her head and gave her an odd look.

“What’s wrong, baby?” Valerie let go of Dani’s face and found her hands instead. “Something tells me you’re not back just to visit.” Dani shook her head miserably. Tears welled up in her eyes, but she forced herself to hold them in, at least until she could explain what was going on. Crying was so messy. It made life difficult when you had to worry about leaking eyes and hitching breaths, Dani decided.

“I need your help,” Dani whispered.

“Of course, Dani. You know I’m always here for you,” Valerie whispered back.

“It’s a, uh, it’s a ghost thing.”

Valerie’s eyes hardened into something dangerous. “Who’s ass do I need to kick?” Dani giggled once through the slow tears that were now streaking down her face.

“The Fentons’?” She tried to smile, but it was difficult.

“The Fentons? What did they do?”

“They got Phantom.” Dani could practically see the gears turning in Valerie’s head as she mouthed ‘The Fentons have Phantom’ a few times. “And, and Plasmius, but he’s not really my priority.”

“They have Plasmius too? The Fentons caught Vlad and Phantom?” Valerie quickly maneuvered to the other side of the room to close her door. It wouldn’t do well for her dad to get home and see her plotting with Phantom’s identical clone.

“Yeah, a few hours ago. Skulker found me to tell me and- wait, I never said Vlad. I said Plasmius,” she said slowly. Valerie knew Dani wasn’t exactly a full ghost or a full human, and also that Dani was literally a clone of another being who happened to have a hodge-podge mix of memories from said being. Valerie did not know that Danny and Vlad were halfas, or really even about the existence of halfas. Unless-

“No, I know that’s what you said, baby. But, well, Vlad Masters is Plasmius and oh you already knew-” Valerie saw the look in Dani’s eyes and put it together faster than Dani would have expected. “He’s like you, isn’t he? Plasmius?”

“Sort of. He’s more human, and he’s not a clone. We’re called halfas, but Vlad is mostly just a human infected with ghostliness and I’m technically a clone of a halfa and not a full halfa.” Dani paused. This was getting closer to Danny’s secret than she would like. Unfortunately, Valerie was smart, and Dani knew she already had theories.

“I take it Phantom is a halfa?” Dani nodded. “And the Fenton’s have caught him. And they’re probably going to experiment on him.” Dani nodded, smaller this time. “So we need to rescue him. And Vlad,” Valerie added as an afterthought. “Do you have a plan?”

Dani took a deep breath before speaking. “Sort of. Maybe. I sneak into FentonWorks while you cause a big distraction somewhere, something that looks really dangerous. The problem is that, according to Skulker, there’s a ghost shield around the house that basically puts a full stop to anything ghostly inside. No powers.”

“Then I should be the one to sneak in to FentonWorks. It’ll be easier for me to escape, and I don’t want you to get caught too,” Valerie suggested. Dani shook her head.

“You’d be just as powerless as me. Your suit is powered by ectoplasmic energy, and is possibly psychically linked to you, though I’m mostly guessing on that one. You would be weaponless, and also, if they saw you, the Fenton’s would definitely recognize you. I at least have some anonymity. Plus, I can escape into the Ghost Zone easier. You’ve got a big target on your back in there.”

“Makes sense. So I need to make a distraction” Dani nodded. “Okay. I have an idea.”

Exactly six minutes later, Dani was crouched on a roof opposite FentonWorks in her human form. Valerie had split off towards the park with a quick kiss three blocks back to enact her part of the plan. Right now, she would be off launching flash grenades in the middle of the park, making a big light show with some loud noises, but little property damage. Dani was waiting for the Fenton’s to notice and leave. It was taking too long and it was stressing her out and they needed to go because her cousin was in there and she needed to get to Danny and-

“Let’s go Maddie! There’s a powerful ghost in the park! Phantom will be here when we get back, and we can get a third strong ghost.” Jack Fenton had slammed the front door open with enough force to crack the wood. Maddie Fenton was right behind him carrying three thermoses, a vacuum, and at least seven ectoguns ranging in size from finger-gun to military-grade rocket launchers.

“To the RV!” Maddie shouted with easily as much enthusiasm though likely twice as loud. Dani winced at the volume. The neighbors might wake up, which would cause problems. As it was, she appeared to be okay for now.

Dani watched as the RV screeched down the street and turned the corner towards the park. She fired off a quick text to Valerie, JF and MF are on their way, be safe <3, before jumping down from the roof to land lightly on the empty street. It was almost two in the morning, so every other streetlight was off. She would have to make sure to thank Vlad for that later. It made it significantly easier to see the Fenton’s shield.

“And now I just walk through, make sure I’m not using any powers, no powers, all good…” She scrunched up her shoulders in anticipation of the sting that came with crossing a shield, and was through in half a second. “Alright, the door. Is it unlocked? Nope! Okay, so, um,” She didn’t bother searching for a key, preferring to aim the Fenton Wrist Ray Valerie made her wear at the look. It melted to nothing in a single shot and the door swung open. “Right then, now down to the lab!” She whispered with mock excitement.

Every single light on the first floor was turned on. Dani imagined that the Fenton’s hadn’t left the basement since they captured Danny, and so probably had no idea it had gotten so late. Danny would occasionally tell her about his parents, how obsessive they could be.

She found the door to the basement laboratory easily. It was right next to the kitchen, which seemed like a potentially very dangerous idea, and was covered in bright yellow warnings about ectoplasm, radiation, and general danger. She quickly snuck down the stairs, trying to be as quiet as possible despite knowing she was alone in the house. If she got caught, well, from a purely selfish note, that would be very bad.

The stairs led into a large cluttered room that was surprisingly open. On the far wall, the closed portal sat menacingly. In the middle was a table. Lying on the table, limbs and head strapped down with glowing leather, was Phantom. His black suit with trademark logo was missing from the waist up, where a gaping hole showing his innards was instead. Thankfully, he appeared to be asleep. Dani almost threw up then and there. She settled for light gagging instead.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out to see Valerie’s reply.

The Fenton’s haven’t figured out it’s me yet. They’re still running around the park.

It buzzed again with a follow up.

You be safe too babe.

Dani almost smiled before remembering where she was and who else was in the room. She glanced up to find Danny staring at her over his open stomach and yelped, dropping her phone. It clattered to the floor with a distressing sound.

“Danny?”

“Hey cuz!” He was way too enthusiastic, Dani thought, given that he should be even more dead. “How are you?”

“Are- are you okay?” she whispered.

“Oh yeah, no I’m fine, I think. I mean, there’s this,” He glanced down at the dissection. “And whatever they strapped me down with is biting and I can’t phase through it, but other than that, I think I’m okay.” Dani bent over to pick up her phone. The screen wasn’t cracked, thankfully, but the case had a sizable dent in one corner.

“So, um, how do I get you out?” She looked back at Danny, pointedly ignoring the gaping wound.

“There’s a button on the side of the table. It’ll turn off the phase-proofing part, and I can get out from there.” Dani found the aforementioned button, and was distressed that it required a DNA sample.

“It, well, it needs DNA. I guess so other ghosts don’t come and break their cousins out.”

Danny laughed incredulously. His intestines jiggled. Dani swallowed bile.

“Everything in here is DNA coded to my parents, Jazz, and I. You’re the same DNA as me, so it should work.” Dani tried the button, and with a sharp prick of her finger to draw blood, it depressed. There was a generic powering down sound, and suddenly the leather stopped glowing.

Danny sat up as he phased his head and arms through their straps. After taking a second to rub his wrists and try and get the blood flowing, he reached into his chest and removed a few metal devices. He then took the clamps holding his skin open and released them, folding his chest back into shape. Once everything was starting to heal correctly, he hopped down off the table.

It had been at least six months since Dani had seen her “cousin” in person, and she was a bit shocked to see that he was now at least an inch and a half taller than her. She was tall by human standards, almost six feet, but Danny had shot up. He was going to be close to his dad’s height, she thought numbly, trying to ignore the green stains on Danny’s chest.

“...back soon, so we need to go,” Danny finished saying. Dani blinked as she realized he’d been talking. “Dani? Dannielle?”

“I’m here. I’m good. Um, can you repeat what you were saying?”

“We need to dash. My parents will be back soon. At least something we just did will have triggered an alarm. “

“Oh, yeah, that. Um, we could go out the front, but I don’t have my powers right now so that’s riskier. The best option is the portal.”

“Seeing as I’m a bit stuck as Phantom right now, you need to open the portal. Same DNA lock, that sort of thing. Shouldn’t be any harder than the Fenton Ghost Straps.”

“You’re stuck as Phantom?” Dani asked, maneuvering around the vast piles of who-knew-whats to get to the portal.

“Well, not really, but I heal a lot faster as Phantom and ectoplasm stains are significantly easier to get out of clothing. Also, if it comes up, I don’t want to have to explain blood stains. My parents ask more questions when it’s blood,” Danny said. He was poking at the Y-shaped incision on his chest that was now at least no longer flapping with each step. Dani looked away.

“How come you have your powers at all right now? The ghost shield is shutting me down pretty heavily.” Dani asked, keeping her back to her cousin, because god that was a disgusting sound and would he please just stop?

“Weird thing I discovered about shields. The more time you spend around them, the less the affect you. And it’s not just me. Dora, Johnny, Kitty, and Amorpho are all significantly less affected by shields now that I’ve been inviting them into town sometimes.”

“Huh. Weird,” Dani said. “So, which button is it?”

Danny came up next to her at a large control panel. “It’s this one here. Same thing as before, it’ll need a small blood sample, but you’re blood is identical to mine, so my parents won’t know.”

Dani pressed the button, and the portal slid open. Green energy shot out with a quiet roar as the basement turned the same shade as Danny’s organs. Dani was saved from this thought by her phone buzzing again, this time insistently.

“Give me a sec. Gotta take this,” she said over her shoulder. Danny nodded. She answered it.

“Dannielle? Are you there? Get out now!” Valerie’s voice was almost drowned out by the sounds of high winds. “The Fenton’s are coming back quickly. They’re like, two blocks out.”

Dani was proud that she didn’t panic. High stress situations were far too common in her young life, which, as disappointed as she was by this, helped in future high stress situations.

“On our way out. Phantom’s fine. We’re going through the portal. See you in a few minutes.”

“Sounds good. Love you.”

“Love you.” Dani smiled as she hung up. She turned back to Danny and was greeted with pleasant surprise. “I’ll tell you once we’re safe in the Ghost Zone.” Danny laughed.

“The Ghost Zone is never safe.” And he dove headfirst into the open portal. Dani heard the door upstairs slam open with no lock to impede the Fenton adults. Oh well. That’s what they get for kidnapping her cousin. She followed Danny through the portal without a glance back.

Immediately, she could feel her powers flow through her. She transformed giddily into her own ghost self and did a few loop-de-loops. Danny was waiting for her with a smile.

“So… you’re dating someone?” Dani groaned.

“Yeah, I am. We’ve been dating for almost a year now.”

“Do I get the honor of knowing how this person is?” The two halfas flew deeper into the Zone.

“We’re about to meet up with her.”

“Is she a ghost?” Danny did a barrel roll over top of Dani so he could fly sideways, on his stomach with his legs crossed in the air behind him and his chin resting on his hands. Dani rolled her eyes.

“No, she’s human.”

“So I take it she knows? About you? Does she know about me?” Danny rolled onto his back so he was looking at Dany upside down.

“Yes she knows about me. No she doesn’t know about you, but I think she suspects something.” Dani stopped and watched as her cousin went speeding by.

“And where exactly is she?” Danny asked, making his way back to Dani.

“In the human realm.” Dani reached her hands out into the air infront of her, and with less concentration needed than the last time she tried this, opened a rent in the fabric of reality.

The small portal, no larger than a bean bag, was swirling green and purple and smelled vaguely of cinnamon and apples. Danny whistled.

“You’ve gotten strong. I haven’t been able to do portals at all.”

“Well, I can’t hold them for long, so please do enter.” Danny flew through the hole in the fabric of the Ghost Zone. Dani took a deep breath and followed suit.

They emerged above Valerie’s apartment. Dani alighted on the gravel roof, and detransformed. Danny stayed hovering at her shoulder height. Within a minute, Dani could hear the whine of Valerie’s hover board, and soon spotted her girlfriend flying high above the city.

The Red Huntress circled the apartment once, before slowly lowering and retracting her hoverboard. She landed on both feet, and Dani lept forward to hug her. After far too short, Dani pulled away, because her cousin was spluttering behind her. She turned back to look at him, and was very releived to see that his jumpsuit had reformed. That’s good, she thought, because that was disgusting and I almost lost my lunch, and that would have gone badly for both of us.

“You’re dating Valerie?!” Danny practically shouted. Both Dani and Valerie shushed him equally as loudly. “Why didn’t you tell me? What? You’re dating Valerie?”

“Yes I am,” said Dani, at the same time that Valerie said “And just how do you know who I am?” They looked at each other and had a quick wordless conversation. It ended with Valerie retracting her full suit. Dani leaned in to kiss her cheek.

“You know who I am, Phantom.” It almost sounded like a question, but Danny had spent too much time around Valerie in the last four years of high school to mistake it as such. “You’ve known for a while now. And I suppose, I know who you are too.” Danny remained silent, so she continued. “I’ve known for a while, I just didn’t want to think about it.” Dani reached for Valerie’s hand and gave a light squeeze.

“I should have told you a while ago, Val. Sorry about that,” Danny muttered, landing lightly on the roof. “If I may ask, what gave it away?”

“You mean besides the name?” Danny nodded with a laugh. “How much Dani looks like you. Both sides of you. You guys do mention clone a fair amount, and even I’m not that blind.”

Danny let his transformation rings wash over him, and although she knew, Valerie was still a bit surprised to see Danny Fenton standing on her roof.

“So, then, now that all this is in the open, does anyone want food?” Danny asked, changing the subject. He stretched his arms up over his head. “Being dissected takes a lot of energy, and I am starving!” Dani smiled at her cousin. Valerie barked out a laugh.

“I guess, yeah.”

“Well then, to the Nasty Burger! Dinner is on me!” Danny transformed back and began to fly off. Dani and Valerie followed close behind.

“It’s four in the morning, Danny,” Dani yelled into the wind. “I think this counts as breakfast.”

“Time is irrelevant. Burgers normally means dinner, so dinner it shall be.” All three teenagers laughed.

“Are you guys just going to go in like this?” Valerie shouted.

“Wouldn’t be the first time, Val. Minimum wage workers tend not to ask too many questions about ghosts at ungodly hours.”

They flew for a minute, trading light banter, before Valerie came to a screeching halt. Dani and Danny circled back around and hovered with her.

“Um, guys, did anyone get Vlad?”

#phango19 #phangoweek19 #phango #danny phantom #dani phantom #valerie gray #vengeful babes #identity reveal #dissection #mild gore #not too descriptive gore but gore nonetheless

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freshwater--mermaid · 6 years

Text

Ersatz Ch 24: A Tourist in the Waking World

Danny felt restless, standing so near to the Ghost Zone, but forced himself to focus on the task in front of him.

His increased 'curiosity' in his parents' research had the unintended effect of both making his parents proud, and causing his mother to insist that he help them with their latest studies.

His participation was limited to following exact instructions from Maddie about where to cut or what tools to retrieve. He was strictly not allowed to handle the ghosts otherwise, due to the risk of them escaping when being transported to and from the exam table.

Currently, Maddie was hovering beside him, watching his movements closely after instructing him to slice an ectoplasm sample in two.

Readjusting his grip on the scalpel, Danny lowered it toward the green blob. It had been taken earlier that day from one of the captured rats, and now Maddie wanted to test the sample against various temperatures.

She would start with both extremes; one half was to be frozen, while the other would be brought to boiling point.

The sharp blade cut neatly through the sample, splitting it down the middle. It was clearly beginning to rot already, its glow entirely gone. Maddie frowned as she noted this on her clipboard.

Danny wanted to shudder in revulsion at the memory of the acrid, old ectoplasm he's desperately eaten not too long ago. He was glad for the steady supply of new ghosts that had been roaming about recently. He never wanted to get that hungry ever again.

It had Danny feeling almost regretful that soon Halloween would pass, and the ghost sightings would dwindle back down to a minimum. He'd taken to hunting down any small ghosts he could find each night, easily tracking them with his parents busy in their lab most nights. And upon asking his mother about the exact functions of the Fenton thermos, he'd happily discovered that it could hold multiple ghosts at once, releasing them one at a time. He had used this knowledge to begin collecting the little spirits he captured for when he needed them.

However, one thought brought down his happy mood each time his mind wandered to the ghosts he had stored away. If there were this many of them pouring through the portal every day, then how many more were possibly lingering on the other side. In his home. With his body.

Danny's eyes were pulled once again to the closed metal doors, and he fought to stand still as his mom went about collecting the samples. His grip tightened on the scalpel, wishing vehemently that they'd forget about their stupid tests and go out ghost hunting for the night. Who cared what temperature did to ectoplasm, anyway?

Closing his eyes, Danny turned his head away and stepped back from the table. He looked toward his father's side of the lab. Jack was upstairs taking a snack break, and the finished ecto rifle sat alone on his desk, gleaming under the bright lights. The sight of it did not improve Danny's mood.

Maddie clearly didn't need anything more from him, fully absorbed in her work, and Danny had no interest in watching the experiment unfold. He stretched out his arm and dropped the blade onto the metal table with a light clang, removing his gloves and heading silently for the stairs.

Nothing upstairs could hold his attention, either. His father's loud eating and the buzz of the television got on his nerves within seconds, and he quickly walked to his room.

There he ended up sitting on his bed, staring down at his ever-growing pile of due assignments. At this rate he was going to start failing classes.

'Oh well.' he thought despondently. 'What's the point of keeping up with school? As soon as the next mandatory physical comes up I'm screwed, anyway.'

And there was the final nail in the coffin. The cherry on top of this pile of negative thoughts that had been plaguing Danny lately.

The realisation that his secret was temporary.

It had come to him just a few days ago, when he'd been standing outside the school awaiting his friends' arrival that morning. They had both walked up, laughing at some joke or piece of conversation that Danny wasn't listening to. What had caught his attention were the visible streams of breath that both teens exhaled as they spoke. They were also shivering quite a bit, arms crossed over jackets to keep out the sharp chill that Danny hadn't even been aware of. He himself had worn a short-sleeved shirt that day, forgetting to bring along his old hoodie.

That moment had sparked off the self-consciousness and worry. How was he supposed to fit in with everyone when he couldn't even remember to breathe or maintain a pulse, let alone react to the weather?

Sam had been right. Her statement from weeks before coming to haunt Danny. Eventually the clues would outweigh the doubts. People were seeing ghosts now. They were becoming part of Amity Park's day-to-day happenings. Soon it would take no leap of faith to suspect that the creepy kid who didn't make little spirals of visible breath might be dead.

Would his parents be the ones to find out first, he wondered. Maddie's keen eye could so easily pick up on the evidence if she took just one moment from her work to actually look at Danny. Even when she fretted over him, face filled with concern, she never seemed to actually take him in. He knew it was because of her guilt. The pained guilt that never really left her since the incident at Vlad's home. And as much as it saddened Danny, it was a great advantage to his current situation. He needed that distance between them; it was probably the only thing keeping her from noticing all of his increased oddities.

How would she react, knowing that he was dead. Knowing that he had died in that portal she had painstakingly pieced together over so many years. Would she be hurt? Would she cry and fall to the floor and plead his forgiveness for getting him killed? Or worse still. Would she see an opportunity. A chance to study an advanced form of ghost. One more powerful than any spectre she'd come across in her entire life. Maddie couldn't even comprehend a ghost like him. He'd gotten as much from her long lectures as she plucked samples from the little squawking rats. There was just no way in her mind that a ghost could possibly be so human as to actually fool her. He'd nearly smiled at her when she gave that confidant comment.

How would it feel to shatter that self-assurance? Would it feel gratifying, or just horrible.

Danny figured the latter, and rubbed a hand hard across his face. He frowned down at his textbooks, unable to take sitting still any longer. He had to get out and clear his head.

In the open air he could forget who he was, all of his problems scattering into the wind, seeming less dire. He could shirk his way around any future doctor appointments, and he could copy his friends' homework, and soon his parents would take to the streets once more, in search of new test subjects.

They were running out of the little blobs and rats, surprisingly enough. They had taken most of them apart completely, with Danny present to observe or lend a hand on a few occasions. He did feel sad for the small creatures, but couldn't help but be fascinated by everything his parents were discovering about the ghosts.

Sadly, since the test subjects were all so weak, Danny wasn't sure how well anything he learned from them would apply to himself. When cut open, they contained only globs of ectoplasm, while Danny could most definitely feel the intact bone structure beneath his skin.

And the lunch lady had organs. Green, misshapen organs, but definitely internal structures.

Danny hovered over an empty street, a hand drifting down to press against his stomach. He wondered what his insides looked like now. Not that he'd volunteer to be sliced open. No, best not to follow that line of thinking.

Shaking his head, Danny shot upward, flying around absently, no destination in mind.

A sudden burst of light caught his attention, his head whipping around toward the source. Even from several blocks away, the Fenton ghost shield shined like a beacon.

Curiosity and worry drew him back toward his home, though Danny assured himself it was most likely more little ghosts running amok. Maybe he'd get a chance to catch one before his parents got to them.

As he neared the house, careful to stay in the darkness, a white line swam across the ground below, moving swiftly away from the Fenton residence. Its strange shape and movement bewildered Danny, and he followed after it to get a better look.

The white creature lurched to the side, fading into a nearby home. Danny flew to the building, debating whether or not he should follow.

Screams from within ended his internal debate, and Danny quickly turned invisible before diving through the wall. What he came upon was like something out of a cheap scifi horror movie.

A teenage girl, clad in only a short nightgown, stood cowering in the corner of her bedroom. A disturbingly large, glowing snake raised up as it hissed at her. Its long fangs dripped as it opened its jaws wide, advancing on the girl.

Flying forward, Danny grabbed her by the arm and pulled her out of the way as the snake lunged. She was just as scared by the invisible grip on her, however, and immediately began to scream and flail about.

Danny grimaced at her in annoyance, grabbing her other arm and lifting her off the ground, planning on flying them both out of there.

That was when the door flew open and the lights turned on, revealing a burly man standing in the doorway and wielding a baseball bat. The man lost all bravado as he took in the sight before him. His daughter, hanging suspended in the air as she kicked and screamed. And a very big snake coiling up on the other side of the room.

For a few seconds he stood there, frozen, only his eyes moving as they swept back and forth between both spectacles. He was obviously deciding which target to go for first, and soon made his choice.

Apparently an invisible foe was less intimidating than a large, reptilian one. The man leapt forward and began swinging his bat wildly in the air around his daughter. When one swing came too close to Danny, he couldn't help but let out a startled "Hey!" in response.

The shout gave all three of them pause, but then seemed to ignite new strength within the father. He gripped the bat in both hands, swinging hard toward where the voice had come from. The strike landed, hitting Danny directly on the head.

Reeling, he dropped the girl to the floor, focusing on remaining unseen as his vision blurred. As it cleared, he could see that the snake was once again rising up, intent on continuing its attack.

Seeing no other option, Danny clenched his teeth and shot forward. He collided with the snake, grabbing hold and turning them both intangible. They flew upward and out of the house, into the open night air.

Danny quickly released the writhing ghost, shivering in revulsion as he put distance between them. The creature coiled around itself in the air, baring its long teeth at Danny and letting out a loud hiss.

Not waiting for it to make the first move, Danny charged up a ball of energy in his hand, sending it at the snake.

It connected, sending sparks of green dancing along the scaled body. The snake cried out and curled up tighter, muscles tensing. Danny realised too late what it was doing, and as he readied another blast, it struck out at him.

The energy in his hand shot off into the sky as he tried to dodge. One of the fangs sliced into his side as the snake dove past him. Blood began soaking into his torn shirt, and Danny pressed a hand against the wound, watching as the snake continued its descent, landing on the street below and winding away.

Danny glared at its retreating form, ready to follow after and get some revenge, when a loud blast sounded off from behind. A large green streak sailed over the snake's body, barely missing it.

"I see it, Maddie!" Jack's voice arose from the dark street below. "It's making a run for it!"

Danny turned invisible once more, following after the snake as his father tried to catch up. He didn't want the snake attacking more helpless people, and since his dad looked to be alone, he also didn't want him to get hurt. He imagined what those long fangs could do to a regular person.

Flying lower, Danny fired off small, quick shots at the glowing white creature. It began swerving widely on the road in an attempt to avoid him, but a few blasts hit, causing it to halt in the middle of the road.

An approaching car's headlights shone on the huge ghost, and the driver slammed their brakes, tires squealing, before quickly reversing and turning in the opposite direction. The snake watched after it, distracted.

Danny began charging up a more powerful ball of energy in his hand, but it dissipated as another large blast of green hit the snake dead on. It's white skin bubbled, peeling away as it flopped around it pain.

Jack had reached them, and Danny quickly glanced down at himself to make sure he was still invisible. Small drops of blood falling from seemingly nowhere was his only give-away. Hopefully his father wouldn't notice.

Jack didn't, and he grinned widely at the stunned snake, his ecto rifle propped up on his shoulder. Danny felt a thrill of fear as he realised that it was the new, improved model. It took a moment to power up for another attack, a high singing emanating from the gun, getting louder. The blast sounded almost like a canon, and Danny flinched away from it, flying far back as the ecto blast hit the snake again.

This time full chunks of the ghost's body flew off, splattering across the road. Danny felt the fear from before falling over him again, stricken in place as he watched the upper half of the animal writhe about on the road. Jack had definitely not been lying when he said he wanted to give the gun more power. It seemed he may have even overdone it.

But Jack didn't seem interested in capturing this particular specimen tonight. Instead, he charged the rifle up, striking his target a third and final time. The glow from the weapon cast shadows over his dad's face, morphing his grin from its usual bright beam into something sinister and malevolent.

There were only white and green bits of the creature left smeared across the black asphalt. Jack laid his gun on the ground, walking toward the remains with a proud stride. Danny turned and rocketed out of there, fearful that the man would soon take notice of the blood slowly collecting on the sidewalk.

The only thought passing through Danny's head as he flew was that he never, ever wanted to be on the barrel end of that gun. Ever.

He could still see the Fenton shield shining brightly, and groaned aloud. Giving up on returning home for the night, Danny began flying to the nearest safe place he could think of.

~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~*

Tucker really didn't like being woken up to someone's hand clamped over his mouth. Especially when the owner of that hand was floating over his bed and looking down at him with glowing eyes.

The high pitched scream that followed was muffled by Danny's hand, and the hovering teen barely stifled his laughter as recognition dawned in Tucker's eyes.

The boy was less than thrilled, batting Danny away and sitting up.

"What the heck, dude?" he said lowly, reaching for his glasses so that he could glare at Danny properly.

As soon as he did, though, his gaze zeroed in on the red staining the lower half of his friend's shirt.

"What happened?" he asked, his voice rising.

"Calm down, it's stopped bleeding." Danny replied with an easy smile, his feet touching down upon the carpet noiselessly. "Soon it'll heal up completely. But I need to borrow one of your shirts for now."

"Yeah, sure." Tucker said, feeling faint as his eyes stayed glued on the wound.

Danny rifled through Tucker's closet briefly before pulling out a shirt. He then peeled off the ruined one, wincing as it caught on the dried blood.

Tucker muttered a few choice words and looked away as the long slice in Danny's skin was revealed, traveling in a nearly straight line across his stomach. Fresh blood leaked out in thin trails, and Danny frowned down at himself.

"Be right back." he said, disappearing through Tucker's bedroom wall.

He stepped inside the bathroom, where he knew Mrs Foley kept a well-stocked first aid kit. He'd need to bandage over the wound before it healed, or risk staining the new shirt as well. Danny wished it would get on with it, already. The persistent stinging was getting on his nerves.

When Danny returned to Tucker's room, the other teen was already laying out thick blankets across the floor, throwing one of his pillows on top. He scrubbed tiredly at his eyes as he went back to his bed, climbing under the covers with a yawn.

"Should I even ask?" he said as he removed his glasses.

"I'll tell you and Sam about it tomorrow." Danny promised, sitting down on the makeshift bed and pulling out his cellphone.

"I've got an alarm set so that I can get back to my place before Jazz tries to break my door down, so I'll be gone by the time you wake up."

"Cool." Tucker mumbled, already half-asleep.

Checking his alarm, Danny set the phone down and laid back against the blankets, pulling one over himself. He let himself relax, floating adrift in his own thoughts. It may not have been the night sky of Amity Park, but being out of his own home was still freeing somehow. Eventually he fell asleep as well.

~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~*

Halloween day was heralded in with the sight of costumed kids walking to school. All of the banners and posters that the students of Caper High had worked on days before were now displayed all over the walls of the main hall.

Danny had barely managed to make it out of the house with an angry Jazz trying to "get him into the holiday spirit". She herself was dressed up as a doctor, and had been downright scandalised when Danny had commented that he didn't feel like dressing up. She had immediately begun trying to force different last-minute ideas onto him. In the end he managed to dodge the bed sheet, purple wig, and cat ears, making it out the front door in his plain jeans, shirt and hoodie.

He arrived at school to see Sam and Tucker waiting for him. Sam wore darker-than-usual makeup, her eyes overtaken by thick black. Her lips were dark red, with two little streams of fake blood running down the corners. She was clearly going for a spider theme, with little black and red arachnids adorning everything from the pattern on her dress to her jewelry. All of her earrings were little spiders and cobwebs, and there was even a spider hairclip resting on the unshaved part of her head.

By contrast, Tucker looked very out of place, standing next to her in a white long-sleeved shirt and jeans. He and Sam greeted Danny as he approached, and Tucker smirked heavily as he gestured at himself.

"Go ahead, ask me what I am." he said, already laughing.

"What are you?" Danny humored him.

"I'm a ghost!" Tucker held both arms out. "Get it? 'Cause they look like normal people!"

Sam rolled her eyes as Tucker cackled at his own joke. Danny couldn't help but smile as well. The three friends ascended the front steps and entered the school. The hallway was filled with kids admiring each others' costumes, and the trio had to do a bit of maneuvering before they could reach their lockers.

"Hey, one of you guys let me borrow your English homework." Danny said, spinning his combination into the lock.

"Danny." Sam scolded. "You have to stop ditching out on our study afternoons."

Danny bit back his reply, which was that he had better things to do. There was no way that wouldn't come across as mean. So he silently opened his locker and began putting away textbooks.

"Hey," Tucker spoke up from Sam's other side, his voice lowered. "Did that cut heal over yet? You still have to tell us why you crashed at my place last night."

Sam whipped her head between the two boys, eyes widening. Danny quickly held up both hands and smiled reassuringly at them both.

"Yes, it's gone. Not even a scar. And also yes, I'll explain the whole story at lunch."

Concern flickered behind Sam's eyes, but knowing that he couldn't very well talk about it openly in the hall, she didn't press the matter. She quickly moved on to a new subject as they headed down the hall.

"So are you going to be sticking around to help set up the haunted house tonight? Not that it can even be called that at this point." Sam asked, disappointment sharp in her voice.

Danny's sympathy for her, as well as his desire to not abandon his friends again, warred with the fact that he wanted to be back at his house by that afternoon. His parents would not spend Halloween night cooped up in their lab, and would instead take to the streets to hunt out any remaining ghosts. That would leave the Fenton portal unguarded, for the first time in too long.

"I can stay to set things up and hang out for a bit, but then I have to leave." Danny finally answered.

Sam opened her mouth to reply, but stopped short as her gaze flickered to something behind Danny. A pair of arms wrapped around his shoulders, but before Danny could react they quickly pulled away. He turned around to see Paulina rubbing her arms and frowning at him.

"Danny, you're freezing!" she exclaimed.

"Uh, yeah. They keep it way too cold in this place." Danny replied, shrugging.

Paulina blinked at him for a moment, before Tucker stepped in between the two, a big smile on his face.

"Wow, your costume is amazing!" he said, clearly not needing to feign the admiration.

Paulina blushed and giggled, hands gripping her skirts to give them a twirl. She wore a long, multi-layered victorian gown. Its pale pink fabric was complimented by white gloves that went almost all the way up each arm. The finishing touch was an elaborate crystal necklace that sat neatly upon her shoulders. She glowed a few moments more under Tucker's gaze before turning her attention to Sam.

"I can't wait to see your little haunted house tonight! It's going to be so cute!" she beamed at the goth girl.

"Thanks again for helping out, Paulina." Sam returned the smile, albeit with less shine.

The warning bell put an end to any further discussion, and everyone headed for their home rooms. Paulina followed behind Danny, and he could feel her stare as they neared their classroom.

"Are you feeling sick, Danny?" she asked. "You've been quiet a lot lately. And you're like really, really cold. Maybe we should skip this class and go hang around out back. Some time in the sun should do the trick!"

"No, I'm fine, Paulina. Really." Danny answered, entering the classroom.

Lancer was already there, and his reminder of the annual haunted house drowned out any further words Paulina may have had. Danny slouched into a seat near the front, his mind already drifting off, while Paulina joined a few of her friends at the back.

~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~*

Tucker and Sam shivered as they listened to Danny finish his story about the encounter with the snake, minus a few details regarding how much his father had creeped him out, or the reason he'd gone flying in the first place.

"And thankfully they had the shield lowered by this morning. I flew into my room just as Jazz was threatening to break my door down." Danny smiled at the mental image of his sister ranting to his empty bedroom.

Tucker shivered, this time not from the cold.

"Giant ghost snake. Like we needed that in the city."

"So your dad really killed it? Like, completely?" Sam asked, frowning.

Only she would show open concern for an oversized ectoplasmic reptile. Danny honestly expected to find her standing outside of his house one day protesting the experiments his parents did on their captured subjects.

"Yeah, I guess he didn't have a Fenton thermos with him." Danny said, fingers picking at the worn end of one of his sleeves.

"Well, now that story time is over can we go back inside?" Sam asked, arms crossed tightly over her chest.

"It's your fault for wearing that dress." Tucker smiled.

"I look awesome." Sam replied with a theatrical flourish of her hand. Her eyes then turned back to Danny, quirking an eyebrow.

"And what are you supposed to be, anyway? A ghost like Tucker?" she smirked.

"Didn't feel like coming up with a funny costume idea." Danny shrugged.

Accepting the nonchalant reply, Sam led the way back into the building.

~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~*

Sam stared down at the little jack o' lantern display she and Tucker had made weeks before, now sitting on a table near the doors. She turned and looked out over the rest of the room. The large cafeteria was dimly lit, with the hand-crafted decorations hung up by her, Danny and Tucker. Fake cobwebs and little spiders were also spread around, along with the Biology class's skeleton propped up on its stand.

Various students stood around drinking punch and sampling the snack table, involved in their conversations. Lancer was the official chaperone for the event, and was clearly fighting to stay awake and alert as he sat in his chair. Tucker and Danny stood nearby, holding plates and looking bored. Tucker's plate was empty, and he occasionally stole a cookie from Danny, who didn't bother to even pretend to eat.

Sam couldn't help the bitter disappointment that still welled up within her. She'd wanted this year's haunted house to actually live up to its name, and not just be a social hangout like every year past. But without financial aid from her parents she'd just not had the money to achieve her goal. She was still refusing to talk to them, sending glares their way as they passed by in the halls of their home.

Tucker could be heard laughing, a pair of confused-looking students staring at him. He and Danny had been asked a few times that day just what they were supposed to be, and each time Tucker was all too happy to answer.

"We're ghosts!" he'd say, breaking off into a new bout of laughter, uncaring of the bewildered reactions of the other students.

~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~*

Danny looked toward the clock hanging against the far wall. Halloween night had officially begun an hour ago, and his parents were probably halfway across Amity Park scaring trick-or-treaters. He really hoped the police didn't get involved this year.

He wanted to stick around and help Tucker and Sam clean the place up after everyone left, but knowing that the portal was unguarded was making it hard to stand still. He swore he could hear his old body calling for him, letting him know just how long it had been since he'd paid a visit.

He quickly gave his goodbyes and apologies to his friends before exiting out the back of the school. In the dark shadows he went invisible, lifting into the sky and flying as fast as he could toward home.

He'd been half-expecting to find a stream of ghosts pouring through the portal, what with how Vlad and his parents built up this night as a peak for ghostly activity. But as he dropped into the lab, he found it empty and silent, not a spirit or person in sight.

Relieved that he would get a night of peace, Danny quickly entered the portal. The other lab was empty as well, but Danny's mood was quickly torn down when several blasts were heard nearby.

Danny flew through the shadowed home, ignoring the call that urged him to go upstairs. He looked up the stairs, frowning as he turned and headed for the front door. Whoever was messing up his time here was about to have their butt blasted to the other side of the Ghost Zone.

Flinging the door open, Danny's eyes swept across the void landscape. Another blast rang out, and an arc of deep purple flames shot off into the distance.

Danny lifted out of the doorway, rising up over the walls of his house. He had to blink a few times to fully take in the sight that greeted him several yards away from Fenton Works.

"Mr Masters?" Danny shouted out in shock.

His cry drew the elder man's attention. His expression looked nearly as surprised as Danny as he looked at the boy. His opponent, a hulking ghost in armor, took the opportunity to strike out with a ball of flame. It hit Vlad in the chest, and he was sent backward from the force of it. The flames bit into his skin and clothes. His shirt was singed in places while the skin around his neck and chest blistered a painful-looking red.

Realising that he had to help, Danny dove over the rooftop, gathering energy into his hand and throwing it at the strange new ghost. A part of Danny's mind took a moment to admire the guy's style. His shiny black armor with purple flamed accents was definitely cool. He honestly looked like something off of Doomed.

In one smooth maneuver, the ghost pulled out his sword and struck Danny's ecto blast, sending it sailing away.

"Another fool dares to challenge me?" his voice echoed out from within the shadowed helm.

His unseen gaze held Danny for a second, before he turned once again to Vlad as the man sent two waves of ectoplasm toward him.

"Stay back, Daniel!" Vlad cautioned as he continued his attack.

Danny heeded him and backed away. He still sent out blasts toward the other ghost, hoping to distract him. Unfortunately he was a skilled fighter, dodging easily around the attacks while still focusing his attention primarily on Vlad.

He unsheathed his sword again, swinging it toward Vlad. The man dodged around him and sent out a line of ectoplasm. It solidified into a blade of his own, and Vlad began using it to block the incoming strikes. Danny noted how Vlad was completely on the defensive now, focusing solely on keeping the enemy's sword from hitting him.

They were both completely ignoring him, and Danny decided that this freed him up to move in closer, focusing a large ball of energy in between his hands. He neared the armored ghost and sent the charged energy right into his back. White sparks danced along the armor, and the ghost let out a cry.

His shadowed face turned toward Danny, who suddenly realised that it might have been a bad idea to get this close. He loomed over Danny, casting the boy in shadow, and raised his sword.

And then Vlad was swooping in from nowhere, sending a close-ranged blast at the ghost with one hand and grabbing Danny with the other. He flung the teen out, continuing his fight as Danny spun around dizzyingly.

After a few seconds he managed to right himself, annoyed and confused as to why Vlad had knocked him away. Did he think Danny couldn't handle a fight? Danny frowned at the man, who was once again displaying some cool powers by creating a shield out of ectoplasm, blocking the incoming blows. That annoyed Danny, too. Just how was he able to do that?

"Enough of this!" the ghost thundered, startling Danny out of his thoughts. "You have wasted enough of my time."

If at all possible, the ghost's efforts doubled, and Vlad was barely evading blasts of flame and the strike of metal against his shield.

Danny flew back toward them, not willing to let Vlad struggle on his own, despite what the man might think. He flew around the two as they battled, firing off quick shots as he went. As the minutes dragged by, Danny was grateful that they were in the Ghost Zone, or surely he'd be exhausted by now. Still, he wished this fight would end soon. He had only a few hours to spend here before his parents returned, and he did not want to sneak through the lab with them present again.

Frustrated, Danny dove in closer, powering up a second large ball of electricity. If he could stun the ghost again, then Vlad might be able to land a strike. That could be all they needed to end this fight and turn this guy into a floating mass of ectoplasm.

The powerful blast hit across his chestplate, shocks traveling across it, and the armored ghost nearly dropped his sword.

A low growl emanated from the shadowed face, and quicker than Danny could blink his opponent was practically on top of him. He swung the sword up in an arc, and Danny dove backward, just out of reach. The hulking ghost kept up his momentum, following after Danny as he retreated, bringing the sword in a second time.

Danny could distantly hear the sound of Vlad calling his name in alarm as the edge of the sword made contact with him. It went through him, leaving no mark, and Danny had but one second to look down at himself in bewilderment.

And then everything went black.

~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~*

Danny's eyes rolled up into the back of his head, his body going limp and drifting downward.

Vlad cursed the child for his foolishness, glaring at the knight as he turned back toward him, no doubt planning on delivering him to the same fate. He had dearly hoped that Danny would be too distracted to come here this night.

As the ghost charged him, he dropped and flew under him, heading right for Danny. He grabbed hold of the slowly falling boy and flew toward the nearby lair. He dropped quickly all the way down into the lab, gritting his teeth in frustration. The knight would be following behind in mere moments.

He could not leave Danny to float helplessly about unattended in the Ghost Zone. There were still many small spirits hiding around, who would not pass up an opportunity to steal bites out an unconscious ghost.

It seemed that the knight would gain access to the human world, after all. Vlad had hoped to avoid that. Not for the sake of the citizens of Amity Park; it would only be one night, after all, and then the ghost would be bound in slumber for one more year.

But a supernatural attack on such a large scale would attract certain attention. Attention that Vlad hoped would never set its sights on this little city. Too much was here that could be discovered, namely Danny and the portal. And neither was exactly hidden.

Vlad had truly hoped that by engaging the knight in battle, he could have kept him away from the portal's pull just long enough for Halloween night to pass. He'd known it would be a close fight, and that getting cut with that sword was a high risk. What cruel fate had deigned that Danny's lair materialise so damnably close to that castle…

He had no more time for grim thoughts. As a crash sounded from above, Vlad dove through the portal and into the lab. He ascended into the boy's bedroom, dropping the unconscious teen onto his bed.

With his eyes closed and mouth slack, he looked as if he were simply sleeping. But Vlad knew better. He knew that Danny's mind existed in a cage now, and that only Halloween's end would release him.

He hoped that the boy's mind survived the hours to come. After all, one couldn't exactly mentor and mold a child who's mind had been shattered beyond help.

Vlad made a mental note to increase his observation of the boy after this night. If Danny slipped up and revealed himself, it would have far-reaching repercussions.

A roar reverberated through the house, shaking its foundation. Vlad turned away from the child, knowing that he'd need to draw the knight out of the Fenton home and into the streets. After that, he might as well stick around and watch the events unfold. It was sure to be an interesting night.

#ersatz au #i'll get these chs all caught up to the other sites i swear #the fright knight #danny phantom #vlad masters

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phantomrose96 · 6 years

Text

Souls Follow After

Half an hour late--here’s my Christmas Truce fic for @bloodblossomtea, who requested something based on an old fic of mine, Minds Follow!

So, here’s the companion piece to Minds Follow: Souls Follow After

The death of Daniel Fenton had been called a lot of things.

“Tragic” ranked among the most common, near-tied with “heroic” and “untimely” and “heart-breaking.” Every new media account blended the themes, calling Daniel soft-spoken and meek and kind, unpopular and unnoticed and bullied, culminating into a sacrifice all the more tragic, all the more heroic, all the more heart-breaking when he gave his life for the sake of his classmates.

Vlad Masters had stopped listening to the media accounts.

He saw it differently, in a light the papers and newscasters and forums didn’t capture.

It had been a betrayal.

Daniel had cut their game short.

He’d thrown his life away with no regard for what it meant to those around him, no thought spared for how many of Vlad’s plans came crumbling down, long-term intentions and near-solidified future snipped short.

Vlad raged, and Vlad grieved. He mourned for his son who’d died, his child in everything but blood, and he destroyed his lab in an outpouring of rage for the manner in which Daniel had gone out. It had been that one most irritating trait, that one so distinctly un-Vlad-like quality that Vlad so despised, that Daniel so reveled in—that self-sacrifice for others. It had been as though Daniel’s final words were “I’m nothing like you Vlad,” and as though he had died before Vlad could offer so much as a single word in rebuttal.

Vlad called in with his condolences to Maddie, as any politician and any bachelor would, but he did not expect anything to come of this. That family of him, Maddie, and Daniel no longer existed, and that resentment of his spilled over to Maddie. She’d raised her son to be like this. She shared the blame.

Vlad did not attend the funeral. It was the right choice. He wouldn’t have wanted to be present when Danny turned up anyway.

Because unlike everyone else, Vlad Masters was not interested in giving Danny a second chance. When his ghost form appeared at his own funeral, disoriented but still so charmingly Danny, everyone had been so quick to forgive. Joyful, tearful, thankful relief greeted him from a gathering of loved ones and admirers who had believed him truly dead. Vlad alone wasn’t so quick to forgive.

He’d considered it. In the mangled twist of emotions gripping his heart, sipping wine in a living room so far away and removed from Amity Park, he thought about revoking his grudge. Maybe he would still pursue what had been rightfully his. That family and that half-ghost—…whole-ghost son. But the more Vlad considered it, the more he seethed against the pieces that Daniel had irrevocably tainted.

Daniel had thrown away his half-ghost identity, that single uniting tether between him and Vlad, setting them apart as the two isolated individuals who could ever hope to understand each other. Daniel had revoked that. And he’d imprinted himself on society as that thing Vlad so despised—a “hero.” The childish kind. The comic book kind. The kind that threw their life away for high school nobodies, useless sniveling pathetic teenagers who’d only ever mocked him.

And, perhaps the thing that Vlad detested the most about the whole situation—Daniel was now holding all the cards. He made this clear to Vlad with an irritatingly smug phone call a few days prior, because now Danny’s identity was common knowledge, and so now Vlad’s identity was held hostage. Danny offered to keep Vlad’s identity secret under the condition that 1) Vlad stayed away from Amity Park. 2) Vlad no longer targeted his dad. 3) Vlad forked over $10,000 to Danny, for the hell of it.

The $10,000 was nothing. It was the blow against his pride that stopped the words in Vlad’s throat. He hated it all, but more than anything, he hated being held by the neck.

So he did what made most sense. He moved on.

Vlad wouldn’t say he lost. That wasn’t in his vocabulary. Instead, Daniel just wasn’t worth his time anymore. He was an idiot, a traitor, a fool, and worst of all a ghost. Not a half ghost. Just a ghost, a ball of proto-plasm, a construct of filthy spiritual energy. He had no claim to his humanity anymore, so he had no claim to Vlad’s interest.

Vlad buried himself in projects far more important. Vlad’s networking through the ghost zone expanded. Plans to successfully acquire Pariah Dark’s powers formed from the ether. His A.I.s advanced, a Maddie who understood him intimately, and now a Daniel who would never betray him. They’d rule at his side, timeless and ageless, important features since Vlad intended to procure the immortality that came with the Crown of Fire.

Money bought power, and experts, and silence. His laboratory evolved into a labyrinth of cutting-edge breakthroughs and ghost weaponry the likes of which no one had seen, the likes of which Maddie and Jack Fenton could only dream of. As the years passed, the contact that Jack made with Vlad slowed to a trickle, and stopped all-together. Vlad left all of Jack’s messages unopened and unread. He wanted nothing more to do with the Fentons, as he understood finally the truth of the matter: they had only held him back. He never needed Daniel, dead now. Nor Maddie, dead to him now. Nor Jack, who was simply not worth the energy to make dead.

The A.I.s developed. They understood him. They valued him. They called him “Dear” and “Dad.” The Maddie A.I. occupied the bed with him at night, gentle light and soft buzzing warming the room. The Daniel A.I. Vlad altered over time. He removed the most Jack-like features from the boy’s face—that wide nose and flat jaw, those blue eyes, that idiotic stubbornness—telltale in the crease of his brow and quirk of the eyebrow. Vlad took them away. He swapped them for features recognizable in himself.

They were Maddie and Daniel Masters. Ten years on, the name “Fenton” hardly crossed Vlad’s mind.

…

When the phone rang, it was a number instantly recognizable. It was embedded in Vlad’s memory from years back.

On a whim, Vlad answered.

“Hello.”

“Vlad?’

Vlad trailed his hand along the arm of his recliner, sweeping around it and sitting down, legs crossed, leaning into the phone. “Oh if it isn’t Maddie Fenton. What a pleasant surprise hasn’t it been ages? How are you? To what do I owe this distinct pleasure, my old flame?”

A beat of silence followed.

“Hi Vlad… Yeah it’s um. It’s been a while. I’m fine. But it’s um, it’s Danny…”

Vlad investigated his manicured nails. There was such an organic nuance to Maddie Fenton’s voice, something he hadn’t quite perfected in Maddie Masters. It was almost nostalgic to hear that again, so…lacking in adoration for him. He’d train the Maddie A.I. on this voice recording. Maybe he could barter to get Daniel on the line as well.

“Oh how is the young lad? Last I saw him he was only a teenager. When, ten years back? How time flies. Has he married that little goth friend of his yet?”

“…No, Vlad. Danny’s not—It’s um… it’s more complicated than that.”

Vlad bounced his foot. That was right, Maddie used to over-enunciate the first syllable of her words, pitching up. He’d tweak Maddie Masters’s speech program to incorporate it.

“Complicated how, my darling?”

“It’s something about his ghost form… He’s been acting strange. Slowly. For a while Jack and I thought he was maybe um, just coping with losing his friends to college.”

“Has he attended college?”

“No.”

Vlad faltered at this, jaw tensing. His foot stilled, and an old tinge of anger licked just beneath his ribcage.

“I see. He’s given up all aspirations of the future to stay home and play hero. Typical of him. It’s rather cute.”

“Yes but… no, Vlad. God um… I thought Jack told you.”

“Jack?” Vlad eased. The Fentons weren’t his problem anymore. He’d answered the phone out of simple nostalgia. Vlad kicked the recliner footrest up. “I haven’t heard from old Jacky in years. How is he?”

“Jack… No he’s messaged you. He—it—never mind. Danny. Something’s off with him—been off with him. Ghost theory. Well it—he—sorry, Vlad. I thought you knew most of this from Jack.”

“Knew what?”

“I’ll—” Through the phone, Vlad heard the sound of a door shutting. “I’ll start over. Danny’s not been himself. Slowly. Since the incident. He can’t leave the town, and he’s been…” Static crackled through. “Jack and I have theories. It would be easier to explain in person. Samples and tests. But, explanations don’t fix anything. We’re at a loss. You’re the only other expert who maybe. I know you don’t owe us any favors, but if you could just—somewhere in your soul find it to… We still live in the same house Vlad. We aren’t going anywhere. If you could come by, and maybe just, see if you can find something we can’t.”

Vlad pursed his lips. He’d been growing rather bored lately, and Wisconsin winter had been growing cold.

“Ooh, sorry Maddie Dear. I’m quite the busy man these days. It’s just not feasible.”

“I’ll have dinner with you.” The phoneline crackled again, the shifting of hands. “I talked it over with Jack. I know what sort of man you are Vlad. I still am your friend Vlad… even if I don’t trust all of the person you’ve grown into.”

Vlad let a smile pass over his lips. “You’re assuming that I haven’t moved on from you.”

“Vlad, please…? For Danny, if not for me.”

Vlad stood, and stretched, and mulled the offer over in his head. He quirked an eyebrow, and nodded only to himself as he realized, if nothing else, it was a perfect opportunity to record Maddie’s mannerisms in person. And his A.I. deserved only the best training data.

“Alright Maddie. I’ll see what works with my schedule, and I’ll let you know.”

…

Jack had grayed. Maddie herself was not far behind. Vlad eyed her thinning hair and bag-creased eyes with a twinge of smugness. Maddie Masters retained her youth.

“Hey there, V-man, safe trip…? Um, do you still go by V-man?”

Vlad set his suitcase down, and he shook Jack’s outstretched hand. “I never went by V-man.”

“Oh, haha.” Jack looked away after a moment, hand moving to the back of his neck. He was just as hefty as he’d been ten years back, orange-clad and aging. His small eyes were watery, veined with crows feet. Laugh lines ridged through his cheeks, set above peppery stubble. He’d lost something. His buoyant energy had vanished. “Been a while, yeah? Um, y’know I’ve sent some messages to ya here and there. They must’ve gotten lost in your spam filter, huh?”

“Oh, must have.”

Vlad broke off conversation, and he stepped over the Fenton threshold to Maddie, who he pulled into an all-consuming hug. He let it linger, smelling her scent, tracing the contours of her back. As much as he preferred his Maddie A.I., he had not yet figured out scent and touch. Future models, he planned, would have a physical body.

Finally, Maddie pushed away.

“It’s nice to see you Vlad… Thanks for finding the time to come out here.”

“Oh it’s all my pleasure,” Vlad answered, his eyes roving over Maddie, drinking her in. She’d aged too, once-smooth skin scrunching with wrinkles, cheeks more pallid, more sallow than the rosy ones he’d fallen in love with. Her eyes were tired, and Vlad was so glad that Maddie Masters was eternally pleased to see him.

Vlad broke away from her. “Now, I was thinking Italian for dinner. Or, if you would prefer, an upscale Hibachi restaurant. Money is no object, my dear.”

Maddie studied him, eyes wide, words chosen carefully. “Danny. He’s in the basement.

“Oh right, the little badger. It’s such a shame to hear he’s been feeling off.”

“I sent you a document,” Maddie continued. She stepped closer to the basement, eyes lingering behind on Vlad, as if pleading him to follow. “It’s all of what Jack and I have theorized so far. Experimental procedures and results. Have you read it yet?”

Vlad waved her off. “My apologies. I haven’t found the time. I am very busy these days. I’m sure you can get me up to speed.” He followed, arms folded behind his back, attention set on the basement. Maddie walked next to him, visibly tense.

“He hasn’t left the basement in a few days now,” Maddie continued.

“I think he’ll change his tune when he sees me.”

Maddie remained silent. She set a hand to the basement door, easing it open cautiously. Vlad paused behind her, stealing glances. She’d lost weight, instantly obvious in comparison to the Maddie A.I., who’d been a flawless duplicate of Maddie Fenton ten years back. Vlad pondered absently on how much Daniel may or may not have changed. Certainly something mental had changed—it was what he’d been called in for. But the state of Daniel Fenton had no bearing on Daniel Masters, so it mattered to Vlad little.

Vlad followed Maddie down the creaking stairs, and ten years’ worth of petty, vengeful thoughts filtered through his mind. It may have been his last chance to make Daniel owe up to the grief he brought into Vlad’s life.

The lights were off, the portal open. Vlad blinked as he noticed the gleam, starkly emerald and blindingly bright, swirling through darkness, casting a swath of light that sent shadows dancing across the wall. Someone small stood just in front of the blaze—floated, rather. Tail flickering listlessly, gloves trailing worn patterns into the dusty portal edge, eyes hypnotized in the gleam.

Maddie folded her arms in against her stomach, taking a step back as Vlad overtook her, a twisting discomfort swamping through his mind.

“Daniel? Haven’t aged much my boy, have you?”

Vlad paused. Danny did not move. His tail flicked, his hands traced, his eyes remained consumed in the brightness before him.

“Daniel.”

No response. Vlad pressed forward. He stood beside Danny, right hand raised to shield his eyes from the brightness of the portal. His brow furrowed, investigating the glassy nothing that seemed to exist behind Danny’s eyes.

He turned to Maddie. “Certain ghosts possess hypnotic powers. He could potentially—”

Maddie shook her head, resigned. “Jack and I ruled that out already. It’s not hypnosis. This was gradual…”

Heavy footsteps creaked down the first few stairs. Vlad glanced, finding Jack hovering just as the door to the stairwell.

Vlad ignored him, fixing his attention back on Danny. “So it’s something to do with his ghost core then?”

Danny’s eyes sparked, shoulders dropping, head perking. He twisted to face Vlad, a single, sudden, jerking movement. “Ghost?”

Vlad stared. The spark in Danny’s eyes seemed to be little more than an echo, glassy glazed and empty, like a recording. Like a reflection. Like a memory, rather than a person in and of himself.

“Is that what you’re doing Daniel? You’re hunting ghosts?”

“Where?” Danny asked, firecracker-like excitement. His tail flicked, and he floated closer to Vlad, until mere inches separated them. Vlad stepped back. Danny’s breath froze over.

It was as though the gun fired. Danny pounced, throwing himself against the portal with the fervor of an animal at feeding time. His gloves skimmed the swirling surface, tracing ripples through the portal as his aura flared like fire around him.

��Show yourself!” Danny shouted. “How’s about an ectoblast that fires off at mach 3? If the blast doesn’t wreck you, the shockwave will!”

“That’s all he responds to,” Maddie said quietly. “Ghost.” She moved beside Vlad, putting a hand out to rest on Danny’s shoulder. The boy studied it quizzically, rolling his shoulder to free himself. Maddie let her hand drop without resistance. “We think it’s—”

“An obsession.”

“…Yeah,” Maddie conceded.

Vlad rubbed his forehead a moment, thoughts sober. His smug giddiness drained away, replaced with something dense in his chest. “Why though?”

Maddie leaned a shoulder against the portal. “We have… a couple theories. It’s maybe a flaw in…what he is. That ghost-human hybrid… It made something about him unstable.”

Vlad chewed his lip, feeling out a twinge of power beneath his palm. “No. I don’t believe that theory. What else?”

“…A ghost sickness, perhaps…”

Vlad shook his head.

“No.” He offered no further elaboration. The Fentons were not entitled to his research.

Maddie’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Jack doesn’t like this theory, but I’m—it’s what I’m most convinced of.” She moved forward again, and trailed her hand along Danny’s cheek. He’d calmed down once more, only hazily aware of his surroundings, eyes fixated on the portal. “I think it’s… maybe that Danny wasn’t meant to come back. And it was this obsession that brought him back. He died saving people. It’s what his ghost half knows to do. Fight the ghosts. Save the town.”

Maddie lowered her hand to Danny’s shoulder once more, turning him to face her. He turned, but he did not look at her. His eyes saw through her. Scanning. Eternally searching. She leaned in and kissed his forehead, lingering against him, eyes shut to forget.

When she leaned back, she continued. “It was his obsession that came back, that’s his ghostly fuel, and the rest of him just came along, the parts that were supposed to be dead. We didn’t notice. We didn’t do anything. Those pieces can’t live in the human world. …And they rotted away. And they left behind just what a ghost is… just an echo.”

Vlad backed away.

“Something doesn’t make sense. So many ghosts still have their identity. This is different.”

“If Mads is right, then… it’s our fault,” Jack answered, easing down a few more steps. “He had other things keeping his spirit alive, back when he was in school and had his friends and his sister. He had a job even, once. But those things… Danny graduated, and his friends went to college, and he just kinda… He lost those other things that mighta been keeping him healthy… Danny can’t leave—it’s this radius—some kind of barrier that keeps him a certain distance from the portal. And it just kept shrinking. It—we were trying to make it easy on him. He was losing so much. So when he doubled-down on ghost-hunting… I was excited. We let him… We let him just… boil down to an obsession…”

Vlad hesitated. “Maddie, Jack, would you two kindly leave the basement for a few minutes? I’d like to speak to Daniel.”

“Why?” Maddie asked.

“Just something I would like to test.”

“What, though?”

“Do you want my help or not?”

“Yes but—”

“Then leave. I won’t harm him. It’ll be quick.”

Reluctantly, Maddie backed away. She retreated to the steps, climbing until Jack set a heavy hand to her shoulder and guided her out. Vlad heard the door click shut behind him.

“Now then.” Vlad squared his feet, breathing deep, allowing a sudden lash of power to envelop his body. It swept over him, chilling, invigorating, sparking like electricity. Aura swamped him, skin turning pale sickly blue, eyes red, fangs glistening, cape sweeping out behind him. Vlad rolled his shoulders, and he cracked his neck.

“Ghost.”

Danny turned with an instantaneous flicker. His eyes were consumed in fire, deliriously giddy and yet hardly present. He fired off a blast that Vlad absorbed into his shield.

“Daniel, we’re going to have a little chat about this.”

Danny lunged, firing off round after round of ectoblast. Vlad dodged and blocked with ease, spinning and catching Danny by the neck. The boy choked, sputtered somewhat, and then squirmed under Vlad’s grip. Vlad turned, and slammed him against the portal edge.

“Listen, Daniel. It’s Vlad. Vlad Masters. Vlad Plasmius. If there’s an ounce of the real you left in this shell you’ll recognize that name. Tell me you recognize the name!”

Danny’s struggling eased. He stared back instead, eyes filmy and neon. He blinked, brows twisting in pained concentration, his face just as young and boyish as the last day Vlad had seen him a decade before.

Danny set a hand against Vlad’s chokehold, inquisitive, stressed, the tiniest spark of thoughts trying to form behind glazed nothing.

Then Danny squeezed, and Vlad’s fingers cracked, and Vlad howled, dropping Daniel to the floor.

“Thought you had me, didn’t you ghost? How’s about an ectoblast that fires off at mach 3? If the blast doesn’t wreck you, the shockwave will!”

“Daniel, stop.” Vlad closed in. “It’s bad enough you died. It’s bad enough you betrayed me. It’s absolutely unacceptable that you tarnish your own dignity in this way. Is this how you’d like me to remember you, oh Hero of Amity Park? Like this?”

Danny raised his hand. Green energy gathered in his palm. “Hey ghost, how’s about an ectoblast that fires off at mach 3?”

Vlad snarled, and then he screamed, and he let off a single shot of violet energy that struck Danny dead center. The boy flew back, cracking against the lab wall. And the rage welling in Vlad’s chest—the anger of betrayal, of loss, of grief, of insult to the boy he’d once called his son—all vanished in a sudden new ice front. Some other all-consuming feeling that climbed his throat and snuffed the fire in his chest.

After having given up so many years ago, he realized with a jolt that, perhaps, he was staring at his own future after all. Not the one with Daniel dressed in a tailored tuxedo, and Maddie in a ballgown by his side, as guests made of the world’s most affluential people flocked to the Masters’ mansion for Vlad and Maddie’s engagement party.

This was a different future, one of empty feral eyes and one-liners, repeated on record, until all identity had sapped away. Vlad stared at Danny’s bruised ghost form, and he understood instantly. Daniel’s transition to full ghosthood hadn’t been a measure to separate himself to Vlad. Rather, Daniel had just gone ahead first. He died and found the future that, someday, may be the fate awaiting Vlad. Empty eyes and repeated one-liners about, what exactly? His A.I.s? Maddie? Danny himself?

Vlad gave one last look at the green nothing staring back at him. And then the lab door burst open. And Vlad vanished through the wall.

…

Maddie had reached out to Vlad three more times since then. The first time had been the very same day, leaving a heart-felt apology for whatever had provoked Danny to attack Vlad like that, and begging that he not give up on helping. There was still hope. She was still available for dinner.

The next time she called came a decade later, the day that Maddie’s sister died. Maddie left a message, rambling and incoherent, broken mutterings seeking reassurance. She’d been leaning on her sister for support all these years, and breast cancer had taken her away. She had no one left to tell the things that hurt Jack too much to hear about. Danny hadn’t spoken in years. Jazz almost never called home. Maddie had these dreams, recurring nightmares, that she went to the basement and found Jazz there too, empty eyes on the portal, gone. She wanted to shut the portal down. She wanted nothing more to do with it. She was afraid that Danny might vanish all together if she did that.

She left this all in a message. Vlad did not pick up.

The third phone call came after seven more years. She was calling because Jack had died, peacefully, in his sleep. He felt no pain. He did not suffer. It was just her now, her and Danny, in the house. And Maddie could not sleep at night. Not without Jack’s snoring beside her, not without his warmth. Not with the sound of the portal humming through the night. And then she trailed off, silent, voicemail recording nothing but the shallow sound of her breath. Vlad had not answered. Maddie put the phone down.

Perhaps she did it because she had no one to stop her. Maddie pulled the RV out of the garage, and she kicked the engine to life, and she drove. It took two days, hardly sleeping, hardly stopping, just the nav and the hum of the engine around her. It was easier not to think like this, easier to believe none of it had happened.

When Maddie pulled up to the Masters’ mansion, she took out the key she’d stuffed in her pocket, a decades-old relic, given to her back when Vlad still craved her company—“if she should so ever get tired of that bumbling fool she married.”

Maddie let herself in, and the mansion was dark. She flicked on light after light, calling out Vlad’s name, scanning the walls with wary eyes. A thin layer of dust coated the windows, the book shelves, the sills, the light switches that Maddie flicked. Looming granite archways felt hollow, abandoned, like the dark catacombs of a cave, untouched. The living room was icily cold, a window left cracked, water damage staining down the length of wall beneath it. The wind blew, and the window howled. Maddie kept on.

She came to the library, and she pulled out dusty book after dusty book. She knew Vlad Masters well enough to know he had a lab hidden away somewhere—that an empty house did not necessarily mean he was not in it. And she knew Vlad Masters well enough to know he would hide it away in the most grandiose way possible.

One of the statues clicked under her touch, cold and copper-headed, and the nearby wall opened up to a stairwell below.

Maddie followed it, shivering with the temperature drop. Her breath curled in front of her, crystalized. She hunched her shoulders in and braced herself. Marble stairs carried her footsteps with resounding echoes, clacking forward, consumed in the dark nothing ahead of her.

At the bottom, the floor leveled out, and another few steps brought her around the corner, where everything she expected met her eye. Crackling equipment stretched floor to ceiling, strung up with wires and flashing warning colors. The air turned sharp and citrusy, poorly ventilated. Maddie walked, heels clacking, carrying her through rooms of lab tables lined with beakers whose contents had solidified to the bottom, incubation tubes large enough to house humans and lit from the inside, monitors flickering with jagged static images. The citrus smell turned to rot as she came upon the last room.

“Vlad?”

Maddie looked around her, peering through darkness.

“Vlad?” her own voice echoed back.

Maddie spun, and found herself staring into her reflection. Though it wasn’t her reflection exactly—it was a younger Maddie, eyes bright and untroubled, hair curled, jumpsuit unzipped just a fraction down the front. This reflection batted her eyes. “Are you ready to snuggle, Vlad?”

Maddie let out a strangled gasp and kicked back. She knocked against a table, and grabbed it to steady herself.

“Dad?”

When Maddie turned, it was as though chains had tightened around her heart. Danny watched her from the other side of the room—her Danny—human Danny—his hair dark and his head quirked, blinking quizzically. “Are you home yet, Dad? I was hoping you could show me how to use my powers.”

“Do you like them?”

Maddie gave a third startle, ducking forward and clutching at her chest with a pained gasp. She looked up, eyes wide, certain she’d grown too old for surprises like these.

She squinted, recognition bubbling beneath the fear. It was a familiar form, glistening fangs, pallid blue skin, piercing red eyes.

“It’s you! The Wisconsin Ghost. You’re still here?”

“Please. Call me Plasmius.”

“Are you home yet, Dad? I was hoping you could show me how to use my powers.”

Maddie pushed herself away from the table. “You’re still around.”

“Indeed I am. Does that surprise you?” the ghost asked. He quirked an eyebrow and stepped closer. A fiery acid-green crown sat atop his head, casting a light ghoulish and sickly across his face.

Maddie didn’t answer. It wasn’t worth dwelling on anymore.

“I’m looking for Vlad.”

“Vlad dear, I baked you a pie. Let’s cuddle up.”

Maddie flinched, but managed to ignore her own voice. Another side-long glance revealed that her look alike flickered and wavered, her form cold blue and transparent. The fake Maddie smiled, and it was a look full of love.

“Why are you looking for Vlad?” Plasmius answered. He inspected his manicured nails, a ring as bright as his crown nestled on one finger.

“I don’t have anyone else to turn to anymore,” Maddie answered. She watched the Danny hologram from the corner of her eye. There was emotion in his eyes. It twisted Maddie’s heart to recognize it.

“Maybe consider making a few new friends then. Vlad isn’t really around much to be your emotional shoulder to cry on.”

“Where is he?”

“Preoccupied, at the moment. He’s absolutely crushed with work.”

“Dad, are you home yet?”

Maddie shut her eyes. She breathed deep. Jack. Oh god, Jack…

Her nose curled, on the air, something rotten drifted. Under different circumstances, Maddie might have fought away the thought that crossed her mind. Lately though, she’d been dealing with enough grief to believe it.

“He’s dead, isn’t he?” Maddie looked up, inspecting the emotionless nothing in the Wisconsin Ghost’s eyes. “…Did you kill him?”

“Oh… in a sense, I suppose.” The ghost shrugged, and he flashed a fanged smile. He jerked his head toward the corner of the lab. “A nasty accident, but for the best I might say. Don’t dig too far through the fallen machinery over there, you might not like what you find rotting beneath.”

Maddie shivered. She didn’t let it show on her face.

“Are you saying it was a lab accident?”

“I’m afraid so. I’d almost be embarrassed—crushed to death beneath some poorly-anchored machinery.”

“And why are you here?”

Plasmius’s face split into an awful grin. He reveled in the moment. “Did you really think young Daniel was the only half-ghost among us?”

Maddie’s heart pounded, pieces clicking. Icy dread washed through her core, shriveling up a part of her that she thought had been too wrung-out to feel anymore. She gripped a hand to the table, and lowered herself slowly.

“…God.” It was a name she’d heard him shout to the portal, time and time again. Plasmius. Images of the 20 year reunion party flashed through her mind. Incidents of Phantom and Plasmius gripped in battle. This cruel, twisted, awful creature, from a world made of cruel and twisted and awful creatures. The last man she had come to for help. “I really have no one then…? Is that really you Vlad?”

“I’m sorry to say it is.” He swept his hand across his body, dark under the sparse lighting, lit by the flaming crown on his head. “In the not-quite-flesh.”

“Are you going to go in the same way too?” Maddie asked quietly. She glanced around the lab, fizzled and dying and abandoned equipment.

“Hey Dad, do you have some time to play football later?”

“The same was as Daniel? No, dear Maddie, I will not.” Vlad gestured behind him, capturing the distant shimmer of a portal tucked away in the very back end of the lab. “I’m only here for a brief visit. My alarm system tripped so I figured it would only be polite of me to come say hello to you after all these years. And to pass along my gratitude.”

Maddie stared at him, losing the will to properly care. Whatever happened to him, or to her at this point, it hardly mattered, not with the way everything had slipped away around her. She fixed her eyes on the Danny hologram once more. He waved. Maddie did not wave back.

“Visiting Daniel was a bit of a wake up call, my dear. I ran some choice experiments after that visit, and your theory was spot on. Daniel gave into his obsession, trying to exist in the human world as a ghost, and he let the rest of himself rot away.”

Maddie glanced to him. Vlad spread his arms wide, cape billowing out. The crown threw shadows against the wall.

“When I woke up from my accident, just a ghost form torn out of a body that had been crushed unrecognizable beneath a two-ton monitor—well, I knew what I needed to do.” He stepped forward, pausing just in front of Maddie and crouching to her level. Vlad gave a fanged smile and tilted his head. “I did exactly what could have saved young Daniel.”

Maddie’s head jerked up. The thought sent something writhing through her, a discomfort like suffocating guilt. “We could have saved him?”

“Most assuredly. It worked for me.” Vlad stood again. “I cut all ties with my obsession.” And he turned, and walked a path over shattered remnants of equipment and fizzling cable. “I cut all ties with you.”

“Were you…really that obsessed with me…?”

“I was consumed with you,” Vlad answered, spinning back, lashing out, his form towering and ghastly to behold. He reeled himself in, and smiled once more. “With you and Daniel both, with the family we would made. My desperation drove me to make a family of my own.”

“How’s about that pie, dear?”

Maddie locked eyes with herself, an expression untroubled, frozen, echoing someone she might have been. Maddie breathed out, her breath in crystals.

“But, I did what had to be done. I stopped caring. These A.I.s? They’ve been frozen here for fifteen years. So has this whole lab. They’re nothing to me—they don’t think, they don’t feel, they’re heartless, empty worthless. I don’t care for them. And I don’t care for you. And I don’t care for Daniel rotting in your lab. I don’t care for anyone really but myself. I’ve beaten my obsession. I get to live my afterlife on my own terms.”

“…You’re a monster,” Maddie whispered in response.

“No.” Vlad retreated, his feet beating a path toward the portal at the far end of the room. He turned once more, eyes locked on Maddie, and he tapped a single finger against the crown on his head. “I’m the king of monsters.”

He vanished, whisked from sight into the swirling matrix of the portal, and it closed down behind him. It threw the lab into utter darkness, pricked only by the glimmering hollow light of the A.I.’s left behind in the lab.

“Hey Mom, when Dad gets home, can we all watch a movie as a family?”

Maddie sunk low to the ground. She crumpled forward, and buried her head in her arms.

“Yes Daniel, your father would love that.”

Maddie did not move. She hardly breathed, because she refused to cry again so soon. She steeled herself, and lost herself to the dark nothing around her.

“Good. I miss him.”

#Danny Phantom #dp fanfiction #bloodblossomtea #dark fic #dp #christmas truce 2017

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nabtime · 7 years

Text

Reasons I Very Much Disliked the 10 Years Later Video Butch decided was probably profitable and decided to post. Like.... Let’s start with characters...

Jazz. My sweet fav Jazz. All of the designs felt pretty wrong and out of character but this one felt the most so. Butch didn’t even mention psychology, which offended me the most, and it’s like, yeah maybe Jazz grew out of her love for psychology by the time 10 years later rolled around but considering how central it was to her character? Doubtful. Like??? Butch do you know these characters at all? How in any way shape or form was Jazz technologically inclined? To the point she’d be as hooked up to wires and such as she was? That didn’t make sense at all. Maybe for Tucker, the most tech savy person ever, but not for Jazz.

Yes she wanted to help her brother out and nearly desperately wanted to be part of team Phantom but I don’t think she’d give up everything she loved for it. Also Jazz would absolutely not want to be on the side lines. Even when she was messing up with the weapons she was still right there in the middle of the action. We also know she can kick butt physically, like her mom, even if she’s bad with weapons, like her dad.

Honestly? I would see Jazz as a top researcher on the Psychology of Ghosts. She would most definitely have the drive and the passion to be able to not only spearhead a new avenue of research based on everything about a ghost’s brain/feelings/thoughts/etc but also be a sort of permanent head of that department. Ghosts are a sentient species that are also completely separate from humans. That’s GROUNDBREAKING.

Not to mention that it’s a way she knows she can help without completely resorting to violence. Jazz is compassionate and nosy. She’s a busy-body that wants to fix everyone’s problems. She’s both sensitive and insensitive. She’s aggressive about being caring. And I don’t think that would be something that would just go away. I know Butch has already stated that Ghosts aren’t Ghosts but Monster (Yeah, okay man) but ignoring that I think Jazz would most certainly offer Ghost Therapy sessions Pro Bono to help them pass on. And even with the Monster thing, I still think she’d offer therapy, even if it’s just to offer comfort and the ability to integrate within human society.

Anyway, I was real mad about how badly Jazz was treated. Her entire character was made some two-dimensional sidekick with no substance. The depth of the female characters is what made DP so great, Butch, we don’t need you ruining that just to make things look cool.

Jack. I... guess I agree with him that Jack would think being a half robot is cool, but like... Why? Why would he have gotten that scarred up? Yes, I get it, the usual “When you’re famous you make a lot of enemies.” But like.... I dunno I think the show wouldn’t necessarily take such an edgy dystopian turn like he wants us to believe. He kept just... talking about action and action scenes. And, honestly? That’s incredibly boring. And completely unnecessary. Action scenes are good but you have to have something to propel them. Something to make you care. One would think that Danny and his crew would be working to make the world a better place. To make it more peaceful. That��s what heroes are supposed to do. Not gratuitously get into fights with anyone who’s trying to pick one. Like???

Also this completely would take away character growth, both with Jack’s design and Maddie’s. Why are they still treating ghosts like subhumans? Like evil monsters? Since they’re literally wearing the DP insignia I’d assume they know about Danny’s half-ghost persona, so why would they still be hunting ghosts the same way?????

Honestly, with the way the show was headed before it ended you could tell there was a lesson in there about how there’s humanity even in beings you think are monsters. These mecha-ultra-action-oriented designs leave no room for that. I want to see a peaceful ambassador Danny trying his best to negotiate between ghosts and humans! I want to see Jack and Maddie supporting him! The conflict shouldn’t come from random fight scenes, but from things going awry! Let me see negotiations go sour because Jack accidentally said something loud and obnoxious. Let me see him resolve it after some character growth. One of the things about the original DP was that the grown ups had no accountability. Let me see them grow too. Show me that even adults can learn from their mistakes.

In the end Jack looked like a horribly colored Santa that’s too trigger happy. Also? With the way everything was action oriented and revolving around violence... I dunno, when you treat your enemies like targets and forego all compassion, are you really the hero anymore? Even if he escaped the fate of Dan, it seems to me like Danny is still a bit of a villain like this. :/

Maddie. Just. Let me. AAAAAAA. No. First of all that haircut. Maddie would never. There’s no reason for her to change her hair that drastically and just, ugh. And those clothes on a 50 year old woman? I dunno, women can wear what they like at any age but it just doesn’t fit Maddie’s style. Anyway. Also, Butch totally degraded Maddie’s character to just “bad-ass action woman that fights a lot, has big weapons, and is bad ass.” Totally taking away her maternal side. Totally disregarding the fact that she’s often the brains of the operation behind the weapons. And totally making another awesomely dimensional female character flat and without substance. Congrats Butch.

Secondly, can we talk about those ghosts on a leash? Omfg. Whoo boy. Let’s talk about how many things wrong with that there are. Just. Yeah, remember a few paragraphs ago I was talking about the “humanity in monsters” bla bla bla. WELL. One: cruel. Two: weird. Three: wrong. Like on a basic moral level. Anyway, like I’m going to stop there with that because I don’t want to think about it anymore. Eugh.

Vlad. Lmao, let’s take one of the best motivated, best background story given child’s cartoon character and say his most interesting trait is his being a Greenbay Packers fan. Like, yeah it’s a pretty cool thing about him, but come on Butch.

Also, i like how even you are ignoring Phantom Planet and you made that horrible mess. You dug your grave now lie in it.

A clone??? Can we talk about the moral implications??? Like yes, I know Vlad is a villain and he does bad things but like??? We already went through this as a plot point we don’t need to go through it again. Vlad may be obsessive but he’s smart enough to know when to give up a failed plan. He’d start a new one. But anyway the moral implications of a clone. I’m not talking about Vlad, I’m talking about society. That is obviously a clone of Danny. That was obviously unconsensual. Vlad would blow his cover as a civilian and be revealed as a villain to the public this way, assuming he still has a cover. How does he live?????As a constant villain??? Wouldn’t he be arrested??? I just. Logistics man. And with the weight of Danny as a trustworthy superhero now, and the fact that its pretty obvious everyone knows Danny’s identities, Vlad has no leverage over Danny to keep his secret. Danny could full on spill everything about how evil vlad is. And what about team Phantom?? Wouldn’t they try to take the clone away from an abusive asshole like they did with Dani?? How does the clone feel??? This is a literal whole new character!!!

I’m not even going to talk about the tiger.

VLAD. DOES. NOT. WANT. TO. BE. A. KING!!!! That’s so totally not his villain MO!!!!!! What was so great about Vlad was that he didn’t want things like that. He wanted power, yes. But only to further his plans. He wanted three things: Maddie, revenge on Jack, and Danny as his protege. That’s what made him interesting!!!!! Not every villain has to be power hungry!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Medieval vlad having a sword so he can just go into battle and just smash things. Wow, okay, right back to the action with no substance and also totally ignoring the classiness and finesse that vlad usually utilizes in fights. but okay.

Oh! Well look! Phantom Planet actually mentioned!!! Also the alien enslavement thing was actually a pretty cool plot thing so KUDOS TO YOU BUTCH SOMETHING I LIKED!!!! But, how, may i ask, are you going to deal with aliens existing? are they going to never be mentioned again?? are they going to come looking for vlad on earth? how will they clash with the ghosts? will danny have to reluctantly notice that his once archnemesis is not who he used to be and take pity on his wretched new state in order to help fight against the aliens? will vlad beg for dannys help or want to fight him for revenge? that’s some good plot right there.

Side note: “Maybe if I do a Danny Phantom 10 Years Later part three video, I’ll do an aged up version of Young Blood.” Butch. The whole point of Young Blood is that he’s young. Like forever young. BUTCH. THIS IS YOUR OWN SHOW. BUTCH!!!

Anyway. Dani. Is she evil? She was under the influence of Vlad after all. NO???!?!?! Literally that was the whole plot of her character arch Butch. She was taken away from that influence and allowed to roam free, If anything I think she’d gain lots of wisdom and worldly experience from her travels.

“I kind of buffed her up” 👀 👀 👀 👌 👌 👌 👌 💯 💯 💯 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 !!!

But also back to, “By party I mean she likes to destroy ghosts” BUTCH. I already went over this. Everything action oriented like this totally takes away from the original series and makes everything boring with no purpose. No drive. Also while yes I love her design, i think its ignoring whatever experiences she might have had while traveling. and makes her yet another flat female character. She’s there to look sexy and hit things and thats it. there’s, again, no substance. Whatever.

Also, how does she make a reappearance in the series?? Has she integrated into the family? (Thatd be rad). Does she just pop up from time to time? is she there for back up in case theres a need for reinforecements?

i have questions butch.

Anyway

this has been long. bye

#danny phantom #yes im sure everyone has posted their opinions by now #but i needed to vent #naps hc

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