#and that actually pushed Maddie and Jack to study ectoplasm more and create a portal again

[lucifer-is-a-bag-of-dicks]

fuck I still haven't done the rewrite of the Mutant Town AU that I specifically came off hiatus to write, like the Plant Witch Sam and Pharaoh Tucker posts were written to prep this au and I just got wildly distracted so uhhhh

yeah the concept is in the link but the gist is that the people and town becoming mutated by constant ectoplasmic contamination, we all know and love this concept right but I'm gonna expand on it

this is a direct result of the portal being opened, but they aren't getting infected from the portal, the issue is that creating a permanent opening into the ghost zone has weakened the veil between their worlds and Amity Park and the Ghost Zone sort of slip in and out of each other constantly

and because ectoplasm responds strongly to emotions (poltergeists being made from atmospheric emotions for example) it all tends to converge very heavily at the school full of hormonal teenagers

so Casper High becomes its own god damn cryptid, the teachers get so jaded about opening the door to a classroom and finding just a whole ass ghost zone on the other side that they just put a sign on the door telling kids to go to a different room, lockers swap contents with other lockers so kids have started putting their names on the inside so they know who's stuff they've just found

this also means the kids get super affected, like super affected, literally, they all get ghost powers, some are just physical mutations, some are just super abilities, or a general increase in natural ability, like a member of the track team getting super speed

it takes a while for Danny and co. to figure this out, Sam and Tucker should have been warning signs as they've spent the most time around ghosts and the ghost zone, but that's why the Witch Sam and Pharaoh Tucker posts are important

they have powers, but they thought they came exclusively from outside sources, they had no idea that their abilities were also strengthened and influenced by being highly contaminated by ectoplasm, which is why when one day Mikey sneezes and green acid shoots out of his nose and melts his desk, everyone is a little bit startled

the teachers have long since started using ghost detectors after the time Paulina spent a whole week overshadowed by Kitty, so Mikey gets a check over and other than the usual atmospheric reading Lancer gets nothing especially strong from him

there have been concerns about the gradually increasing ectoplasmic content in the air messing with ghost detector results, the devices have to be recalibrated constantly, so Lancer asks the one and only son of the local ghost hunters in the room if he has some other way to check

Danny's parents make him keep a few protective items in his schoolbag, so he tries some gear on him to see if anything comes flying out, but nothing does, Danny isn't too surprised seeing as he couldn't sense a ghost in the room anyway, but it definitely makes things a little concerning

even if it were a repeat of the Spectra incident and he wasn't being overshadowed, the Fenton's tech would have still gotten rid of whatever was causing this if it were an external influence

Mikey is sent home for the day and his parents are told to keep an eye on him

and then the next week, Star drops a pen off her desk and a strand of her hair whips out to grab it, she's also checked for ghost influence and sent home

a few weeks after that it happens again, a kid on the basketball team makes a leap to the net and stays in the air, they have to call in the cheerleaders to climb on top of each other to reach him and pull him down

Danny has been trying to figure out what's happening from the first moment with Mikey, and his parents have also been getting calls from worried parents who want to know if they can fix whatever's happening to their kids

over the next couple of months, every kid in the school has some kind of ability or mutation, Dash heals whoever he touches, which he discovers after punching Nathan in the face and curing his acne, Paulina turns invisible, which freaks her out at first until she realises it's great for eavesdropping, Wes can conjure fire (because I desperately needed him to have a polarising ability to Danny), Kwan becomes empathic and can feel and influence people's emotions

Valerie also had an early mutation that she didn't know about, when Technus gave her a new suit, her body pretty much just absorbed it as a part of her, Technus had not intended this to happen, and was pretty peeved about it, Valerie found out that she had stolen control over the suit when Technus had a big rant about it during a fight, and she put the pieces together once other kids started developing abilities

this whole thing causes a ton of chaos as kids are struggling to control what they can do, so Danny has to step in and help them out, he often has to run off to change into Phantom in order to protect everyone from an ability that's gone haywire, he ends up pretty much running ghost power training courses after school to help them control themselves

he's also gotten stuck in situations where he's had to step in and help someone without having the time to change forms, meaning he has to make up a cover story about having developed his own powers way before everyone else since he's been living on top of a portal for years, he only tells people about his ice powers

Jazz has always had a tendency to be able to reign in her emotions and keep a cool head, (the only ones who can really push her buttons are Danny and sometimes her parents, at school around other kids who look up to her she's often very in control) meaning she doesn't draw ectoplasm to herself all that much, and though Danny uses the excuse of having lived on top of a ghost portal to explain why he's already so familiar with using his power, it's actually not even remotely true, because the Fentons use specialised air purifiers to keep the atmospheric ectoplasm at a manageable level, the Fenton house ironically has the least atmospheric contamination compared to the rest of the town, that's how Maddie and Jack have had limited mutation to themselves (though they aren't wholly free, they've mostly just gotten physically stronger and tougher)

so even though Jazz develops her power a little earlier than everyone else's, it's not that far ahead, and she actually doesn't even realise she already has one until half the school has developed theirs

Jazz has the power to slow time in a little bubble around herself, she'd been using it without realising while studying, having gotten through hours of work in half that time, she always thought it was just her losing track of time or she was just getting faster at reading, she also spends a lot of time counselling other students and trying to help them sort out their problems, and they'd often comment that they felt like they'd been talking for so much longer than they had, again she just chalked it up to losing track of time

a lot of students had wondered why Danny developed a power early and Jazz hadn't, until someone walked in on Jazz helping a girl through a panic attack in the bathroom, and found them both talking extremely fast, a lot of her friends realised in hindsight that she'd been doing that unwittingly for quite a while, nobody had noticed because she always talked to people privately, so nobody outside her little time bubble had seen it happen

Sam and Tucker come clean about their abilities too, but they also don't give the full rundown, still keeping some things close to the chest to avoid standing out from everyone else

then there's the teachers

adults typically have a better time regulating emotions than teenagers, meaning much like Jazz they aren't drawing as much ectoplasm toward themselves, but this doesn't exempt them from developing something after a while, especially with the heightened stress of managing a school full of volatile super kids

Mr Lancer discovers that he can create shields, after an incident where he jumps in front of some students to protect them from another power gone awry

Tetslaff ends up with a sonic ability, able to project her voice like a megaphone (yes this is a Coach Boomer from Sky High reference don't @ me), Principal Ishiyama develops a physical mutation, growing to twice her size, she likes that she can tower over the students while delivering speeches, but she doesn't like having to stoop through doors all the time, she has the one to her office resized, along with her chair and desk

so as you can imagine, the town ends up erupting into chaos, a lot of kids very much misuse their abilities, Danny does his best as Phantom to teach people to be responsible, but sometimes he has to resort to literally kicking their asses to get them to straighten up

but for the most part, a ton of kids were already looking up to him, and are generally pretty happy to follow his example, especially the more popular kids, it's generally considered not very cool to get your ass kicked by Phantom, so weirdly enough a lot of kids get peer pressured into not causing any real damage or injury with their powers

this doesn't mean they don't absolutely misuse them, they're just more subtle about it

until a ghost shows up, a lot of the kids are more than happy to let loose to protect themselves and their friends, and Phantom for the most part is happy to let them, with some supervision of course, he still has to make sure nobody gets too hurt (including the ghosts)

the entire debacle makes Danny's life simultaneously a whole lot easier AND so much more fucking stressful

#lula's aus #mutant town au #danny phantom #you have no idea how hard it was to find the links to the other posts #tumblr's search system was fucking me around so much

[nocturna-starr]

Intentional Creation

Prompter: @phantomphangphucker

Prompt: Danny created Phantom intentionally and knew full well what he was doing, the first time.

Words: 1508

In Danny’s totally unbiased opinion, his parents were naive. They were creating a portal to another world! Did they not expect said inhabitants from said world to make an appearance in the living realm? Or did they believe that somehow the very creatures they wanted to study wouldn’t be curious themselves?

“Don’t worry Danno! No ghost would dare cross through Jack Fenton’s portal!”

Sure.

“Danny, your parents are the experts, right? Just leave it to them! Everything will be okay!”

Yep… Nothing to worry about…

“Ghosts aren’t even real!”

Was everyone around him actually this stupid?

He should be playing the newest update for DOOM or studying for Mr. Lancer’s test on the Merchant of Venice. He should not be studying his parents research to make sure they didn’t blow up the house or contaminate him and Jazz again like they did the last time Jack and Maddie Fenton tried to invent a green energy source.

Suddenly Danny heard a knock on the door.

“Danny, it’s Jazz. Aren’t you going to get some sleep? We have school tomorrow!”

“Just looking over some papers.” Danny called. He heard his sister huff, but fortunately she didn’t push the issue forward. No doubt she herself would be up all night studying some new psychology book she had found in the library.

And she said that she was nothing like their parents.

He found himself glancing at the numbers. Math may not be his best subject, but to his untrained eye the calculations his mother made had no mistakes. The machine they were going to finish would certainly rip a hole into another dimension.

Then his dad would tell anyone and everyone who would listen that he would protect them from the threat he himself had created. His dad would go up against the wrong supernatural creature and…

Despite how much his father annoyed him, Danny loved the man. He couldn’t imagine a world without Jack Fenton. His mother, a former cop, might be able to handle the situation slightly better, but even she would become overwhelmed by the ghosts eventually. They needed someone who was on the same power level as the ghosts and who would protect humanity rather than harm it.

Didn’t his parents say that someone had gotten ectoradiation due to their naivety the first time they had built s portal? What was his name again… Paul… Chad? It didn’t matter. Maybe it was possible to replicate something like that! But instead of being contaminated, maybe one could fuse with the ectoplasm.  But who could he convince to give up their humanity for the world?

Danny put down the papers. Didn’t Sam say she wanted to make a difference?

xXx

“Whoa! I can’t believe it dude! Your parents actually made a real portal.” Danny’s best friend Tucker Foley gawked at the expensive machinery in the wall.

“Yeah, if only it worked.” Danny eyed the knobs at the side of the portal. Everything was still in position fortunately. His dad for once in his life had decided not to fiddle with something he had not done.

“It’s actually pretty cool, even not working. Imagine the worlds that are barely out of reach.” Sam sighed.

Danny smiled. Sam was still innocent. He hoped that her optimism, despite being a ghost, would remain. It would suck if he had to repeat the experiment all over again. Tucker wouldn’t be as powerful a ghost. Anyone after that would be a malicious ghost that Jack Fenton would have the honour of destroying.

The goth gently touched the portal, as if it were something sacred. It was like she knew her place of death was here. Tucker snapped a couple of pictures. Danny watched them, noting each soft smile or excited look sent his way. Would they feel this way when the portal took everything they knew in a couple of minutes?

“Wanna look inside?” Danny asked. He felt his heart begin to race. This was the moment that would forever change humanity. In the future, kids would be talking about the origin story of Sammy Geist or Tucker Ghouly. Would they see him as a good person, or a mad scientist? Would they understand why he did this and not judge him only on his actions? Or would they allow his name to fade to time because no one would ever know that the accident wasn’t an accident?

“Sure Danny!” Sam grinned. Without a second thought she walked inside.

“I’m good dude. I’d rather not be inside, and the thing click on.” Tucker didn’t look up from his PDA.

Maybe he should have tried to get Sam to dress in a Hazmat suit. The extra protection could have led her into a false sense of security which would allow for mistakes to occur. The Hazmat suit also could have acted as a disguise. Sam Manson, Amity Park’s most famous goth, would never have been caught dead in one of those.

“What are all of these wires for? What about all these buttons? Tuck you’re the tech guru, you should really come inside.” Sam called.

“Actually Sam, I think you should get out.” Tucker warned. Did Tucker suspect something? Danny had never even written his thoughts down in a journal let alone share them with anyone else! How could his best friend even know?

Why did he suddenly feel so guilty?

“Just a sec Tucker!” Sam called. Her hand grazed a large red button. Danny wanted to tell her to push it or to startle her and cause her to “accidentally” press it. Yet the words refused to come from out of him. Why did he feel so terrible for wanting to save the world? What was one life to billions? It wasn’t like she was actually going to die!

Why was his life more important than Sam’s?

“Hey Sam, I want a turn to see!” Danny found himself calling. He watched as she safely exited the portal. He grabbed the suit his father had made especially for him and put it on.

Sam grinned, ripping off the picture of his dad’s face that he insisted on putting on everything. “You aren’t going in with that on, are you?”

“I guess not.” Danny tried to smile.

“Nervous? Just think of all the cool worlds that this portal can connect to.” Sam grinned.

He nodded, hoping to disguise his dread as minor fear. He took a step in the portal and began walking towards the button that Jack and Maddie Fenton in their infinite wisdom had chosen to keep. Time seemed to slow the closer he got to it. He could hear his own heart beat and feel every breath he took. Once he was transformed, would he miss feeling of breathing?  There was no going back. If he chickened out now, Danny knew he would never build the courage to do this again. Then the world would be doomed.

Once he was close enough, Danny “tripped” and pressed the button. His walk of death couldn’t compare to the absolute freeze in time that occurred just after he pressed the button. The youngest Fenton swore he heard the phrase “All is as it should be…” before the light engulfed him into a world of agony.

He was glad that he didn’t force his best friends to experience it. His essence was ripped apart then sewn back together again. His heart raced before falling into a slow and steady rhythm. He was Danny Fenton, then he was nothing. He was human, until he wasn’t. Everything became dark.

He saw flashes of his life slip by and flashes of the future. He heard the screams of the dying and cries of those who were living for the first time. He felt sudden felt a weight that he had never known fall off of his shoulders. The freedom was only felt for a couple of seconds (or was it years?) before a much heavier weight was flung onto him.

He felt himself begin to walk. A light and a voice beckoned him forward. He felt something grabbing his leg, trying to keep him away. He knew he had to fight against it. If he stayed, then there would be no one to fight against his parents’ mistakes.

As he moved forward, the thing clutching his leg felt heavier and heavier. His steps became smaller and smaller. Maybe it was best if he stayed behind? Just as the it seemed that the thing would win, he broke free. He raced to the light, determined to not be trapped again.

“DANNY! DANNY!” Her heard a woman cry.

As he came closer, the light became a doorway. He smiled and stumbled across.

“Danny is that you?” Sam cried.

It worked?! Danny grinned. Everything would be fine now. Tomorrow there would be problems, but now there could be solutions. Ghosts would attack and he would be right there to stop them. The lack of sleep the previous night and the exhaustion of the portal claimed him. Danny fell into his last peaceful rest.

#phic phight 2021 #danny phantom #danny fenton #au

[imekitty]

A prompt that might be from hell. This takes place in an AU where giving danny powers was always the plan: Jack stood by as Maddie deliberately designed the portal to give Danny powers. He stood by his wife's more ruthless hunting. He actually helped her get back at Vlad for what he did to her and danny in the Rockies. But he has a line. And Maddie just crossed it.

This is the worst version of Maddie and I love her.

This addresses the beginning of the prompt, sorry. I just really liked it and wanted to write it first! And then maybe I can address the final part later.

—–

“Jack, I found a perfect candidate,” said Maddie. “Someone whose DNA would meld with ectoplasmic properties so beautifully. Someone who could be a very stable ghost hybrid.”

Jack joined her at the counter in their lab. Ever since their old college friend, Vlad Masters, had become a ghost hybrid, they had been trying to determine if they could create their own, someone who could handle the spectral mutation without the gruesome side effects Vlad suffered.

“Really? Who?” asked Jack, glancing over her notes.

Maddie perked up and bounced on her toes as she clutched a couple papers to her chest. “Our son.”

Every muscle in Jack’s face froze. “What?”

“Yes!” Maddie pointed to her calculations, her samples, her tests. “He’s perfect. His body would handle the mutation splendidly. He would not only survive but thrive. He’d be…” She breathed in, her eyes fluttering. “Incredible.”

“But you’re not serious, right?” Jack gestured to her notes. “We can’t do this to Danny.”

“But he’s all we have, Jack!” Maddie gripped her notes tighter, causing them to crinkle. “We’ve been trying to figure this out for almost fifteen years now! Not a single person we’ve tested has come even close to what we need.”

She held her hands out over the counter, over all of her work, all of her experimentation on their son’s hair and skin cells and blood, bits and pieces of their boy he had no idea she had been collecting and playing with.

“We are never going to find someone like this again,” she said.

“But we can’t,” insisted Jack, not even believing he had to insist this at all.

“It won’t hurt him,” said Maddie. “It will only make him stronger. He’ll be healthier. He’ll live longer. He’ll look young longer. He won’t have to be afraid of anyone or anything.”

“You say ‘will’ instead of ‘would’ like you’ve already decided this is what’s going to happen,” said Jack.

He looked at her hard. She held his gaze.

He knew there was no changing her mind.

—

“Here, let me show you,” said Maddie as she stood in front of their ghost portal. “I’ve calibrated everything to Danny’s specifications.”

Jack poked his head in the portal. “And you’re sure this will work?”

“Of course! It worked for Vlad, didn’t it? And Danny’s body will handle this far better than Vlad’s did. He’ll be stable immediately.”

Maddie’s arms waved up and down and around as she explained her plan. Jack hardly moved at all as she spoke.

“There’s a sensor here,” said Maddie. “It’s keyed in to Danny’s biological signature. So when he trips the sensor, about ten seconds later, the portal will switch on and administer a perfect shock of ectoplasmic energy, the perfect combination that will rearrange his molecules into something part ghost, part human.”

Jack’s eyes darted around the interior of the darkened portal as he imagined the powerful field of energy he knew it was capable of creating.

“And the portal will only switch on when he’s in here alone,” Maddie continued. “If it detects anyone else, it won’t switch on. So see, it’s perfectly safe. No one else will get hurt. And Danny definitely won’t die.”

“You said this wouldn’t hurt him,” said Jack. Accusing.

“Well.” Maddie sucked in her bottom lip. “It might hurt him a little. Because the current needs to be high for this to work. But only for a few seconds, and I promise I made both the current and voltage as low as I possibly could.”

“You’re kidding!” cried Jack. “You’re kidding! You must be kidding!”

Maddie pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes.

“You’re not kidding,” murmured Jack.

—

“Take a look at this,” said Maddie. She held up two pieces of fabric, one black, one white. “It’s what we make our suits out of. I just zapped these in the portal at the specifications set for Danny. This one used to be white, and this one used to be black. They inverted their colors!”

“Uh huh,” said Jack. “And that’s important because?”

“Whatever Danny wears when he’s zapped is going to become embedded with ghost properties. It needs to be something that can withstand the shock as well as his body can. It needs to be something strong and resistant.”

She showed him the patterns she had been sketching for a protective suit. Mostly white with black accents.

“The colors should reverse when zapped,” said Maddie. “Do you think he’ll like it?”

Jack had no answer for her.

—

“Danny, come down here,” Maddie called from the lab.

Danny made his way down the stairs. Jack kept his back turned as he pretended to be very busy at his own workstation.

“Here. I made this for you.” Maddie handed him the finished jumpsuit. “It’s designed to protect you from ectoplasmic spills or contamination. I’m making one for Jazz too, but I just figured I’d give you yours now since it’s done.”

Danny took the suit from her and looked it over. “Thanks, but why do I need one?”

“Oh, you know.” Maddie shrugged. “Just in case you ever want to help us in the lab. We want you to be protected.”

Danny rubbed his thumbs against the fabric. “Well. Thanks. I guess.”

“Ectoplasmic contamination is dangerous, Danny,” said Maddie very seriously. “You really shouldn’t ever be around it without protection. This is why Dad and I wear our suits all the time. Really, you shouldn’t even be down here at all without wearing one.”

She gestured to their ghost portal.

“Even just stepping into that portal when it’s inactivated can expose you to dangerous levels of spectral energy,” said Maddie. “You understand, Danny?”

“Um…yeah.” Danny studied the suit again. “Why isn’t it orange like Dad’s?”

“I just like these colors. Don’t you?”

“I don’t know. It might’ve looked cooler if the colors had been reversed. You know, like black with white gloves?”

Maddie smiled. “Hmm. Interesting.”

Jack’s hand shook as he wrote, turning his notes into illegible scrawls.

Maddie stood up with a heavy sigh and walked toward the portal. “It sure is a shame we can’t get this portal to work, though.”

“Really? It still won’t do anything?” asked Danny.

“Mmm hmm. We’ve pretty much given up on it by now.”

Jack hunched over and shut his eyes.

—

“Danny, Jazz is studying at the library, and your father and I are going to be gone for three hours,” said Maddie.

Danny was slumped on the couch where he was playing a video game with Tucker while Sam watched.

“Okay,” said Danny, not looking up from his game.

“Three. Hours,” said Maddie more firmly. “Do you understand? You three will have the house to yourself for a while.”

Danny creased his brow. “Okay?”

“So look after the house while we’re gone, please.” Maddie slung her purse over her shoulder. “And don’t get into any trouble, okay? Remember our lab is off limits.”

Sam sat up a little straighter. Danny nodded. Jack kept his glassy gaze trained on Maddie, who appeared to be fighting back a grin.

They were leaving their lab completely unlocked. There was no security surrounding their portal at all. Full access to anyone who wanted to investigate it.

And Sam was right here and had just heard their lab was off limits. Exactly what the rebel goth teen needed to push Danny to break the rules and do something he normally would never do.

Jack followed Maddie out of the house. Once the front door was shut behind them, she let her grin break through.

“I really hope this works,” said Maddie. “I really hope he does it. All he has to do is step inside alone. That’s it. Do you think it will work?”

Jack wrapped an arm around her and led her to their parked RV.

—

A few weeks later at breakfast, Jack pretended not to notice as Danny dropped his spoon through his intangible hand and gasped.

“That’s strange,” said Maddie, holding up a device that was beeping loudly. “Our reader says that a ghost is nearby. But that can’t be right. There are no ghosts here, are there?”

She looked across the table at Danny and Jazz.

“Do you two see any ghosts?” she asked.

“No,” said Jazz with a roll of her eyes.

“No,” said Danny with a tremor in his voice.

Jack leaned over to look at the screen on the device. It was not a ghost detector. Of course. They didn’t need one right now. They knew their son was a ghost already.

Rather, it revealed the intensity of the ghostly energy in the room. Energy obviously radiating from Danny. Energy that was spiking in perfect correlation with his anxiety.

Jack’s gaze moved to Maddie’s face. She looked so giddy, so enthralled.

She had taken this too far. He knew that. This wasn’t right. What they had done to their son, what they had turned him into, this was horrible.

And Danny was scared.

Jack turned his attention back to the device. The measurements moved across the screen in mesmerizing patterns. His eyes followed them, spellbound. Data right here and right now they could use for their research, data they could now easily obtain whenever they wanted, right in their own house.

Horrible.

But…

Fascinating.

And maybe a little exciting.

Part 2

#danny phantom #maddie fenton #jack fenton #danny fenton #imekitty writes #planned au #prompt writing #angst #honorable-asshole #this is very contrived to fit in with what we see in canon hahahahahaha #this isn't written that well sorry #soooooo much to cram into as little space as possible #it would need its own full-length fic to be any good #but i hope the idea gets across at least?