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pokelolmc · 3 years

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Ectoberweek Day 2: (Pulse)

Sadly, my Ectoberweek submissions are a few days behind because of...pesonal reasons. This is what happens when I wing it last-minute, I guess (also, this one turned out much longer than I anticipated).

This one is also a crossover, with Doctor Who (featuring the Ninth Doctor), but hopefully it’s not too much trouble to get the gist of if you haven’t seen it:

ff.net: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13729906/2/EctoberWeek-2020-Collection

‘A faint spectre of a familiar wheezing noise—something roughly halfway between an electric train engine and some contraption from the mind of H.G Wells—drifted through Danny’s window, bolting him unceremoniously up off of his bed in a messy paradox of fear and excitement. A quick ghost-aided hop out of the second-floor window landed Danny safely onto the manicured lawn of his backyard with nary a giveaway crunch of grass. He leapt into a hurried sprint out to his front yard and down the footpath, a prayer on his lips that Jazz—or, god forbid, his parents—wouldn’t find it odd he locked his bedroom door for something as mundane as an alleged “nap”.

He couldn’t tell them why he was leaving, not without admitting a secret he dreaded they wouldn’t understand.

He sadly had little justification to convince him they would, considering the misery of the past hellish year that slipped by his hitherto closest loved ones completely unnoticed, let alone understood. The only person who could understand his discomfort was a once-stranger who had properly noticed, pulled him back to his feet and saved him when everyone else couldn’t.

For someone as guarded in lies as Danny, the hefty pile of trust he invested in the Doctor after only half a year still continually stunned him…

…For all the time that he had been a halfa, Danny adamantly ignored the implications of his own modified biology. As he zeroed his focus in on his early superhero-esque impression of the outcome, the notion of becoming something not entirely human sat tightly folded and stuffed into the belly of his mental closet where it could no longer hurt him—out of sight, out of mind. The notion of an otherworldly, freakish creature—one of the only two on the entire planet—alone amongst a crowd of normal humans, ready to tear him apart should they find out he was not one of their kind…

It reared its ugly head out of depths of his psyche in his nightmares.

An unfortunate doubt had burrowed its deep way into his heart that, no matter how well his family and friends knew him, the intricacies of his situation were impossible for them to understand— unlike him, they all remained fully human…powerless, mundane, living without fear of being found out as something else… Vlad, for all that he was Danny’s fellow in physical nature, remained his moral opposite. Danny lost count of just how many times that broken record had replayed his denial of Plasmius’s contemptible deal to the stubborn maniac. By all accounts, he should’ve had no one to turn to.

However, for all of the paranoid secrecy that lodged the topic close to the vest, Danny felt fare more at ease breaching it with the Doctor, minus the unpleasantness of the touchy subject matter tasting bitter in his mouth…

…“…Something wrong?”

“Can we talk about it inside...?”

The Doctor nodded carefully, letting Danny into the vast exterior of the disguised time machine and locking the door behind him.

The teenager shuffled in as the Doctor paced to a cooler bag resting beyond the edge of the main console to grab a drink for them both, returning to break his companion’s awkward silence.

“I assume this is something difficult, then?”

“Well…yeah.” Danny responded pathetically, rubbing the back of his neck as he averted the man’s gaze. “It kind of occurred to me earlier, but I’ve never wanted to think about it…”

Those ancient eyes pierced immediately into him.

“Does it have to do with your family?”

“No!” he stammered hastily, “It’s just…”

His throat moved as if possessed, his voice lowering carefully from a reflex honed for reasons he wished never had to be.

“I…what do I do? …What if people find out what I am?”…

The Doctor’s eyes blinked almost owlishly for such a scant second that Danny wasn’t even sure if he had just been imagining it, before his features schooled into a pensive frown.

“Oh…”

“I can’t take it! I told myself I was normal, still normal, forever…but I’m just deluding myself!” his hands clenched tightly into shaking fists by his sides, “I’ll never be a normal human like everyone else again! I have powers they don’t; DNA that’s different to theirs—how different is my body, even, to a normal human’s?! How much physical, undeniable proof is there that I’m not normal?! Have I got some sort of freaky biology that would set me apart from everyone in a hospital—that as soon as they took a look at me, they’d know I wasn’t like them?! A monster?! A weird thing that needs to be locked up?! What am I supposed to do when everyone finds out that I’m some freak?! How…how can I live with something like that?!”…

…“Danny, there’s nothing ‘freakish’ about being other than human; normalcy is in the eye of the beholder.”

Danny’s gaze sank to the floor, fighting a losing battle to keep his face restrained, eyes dodging away from the Doctor as he put a hand on the teen’s shoulder.

“You say that…but you don’t know what people are like.”

“Oh, I think a good 700 years of being acquainted with Earth had made sure I know.” The Doctor scoffed.

“You don’t know what being human is like! You don’t know what I’ve lost!” ripped itself from Danny’s trembling throat.

“I don’t, I’ll admit that—but for all it’s worth, why does it have to be something to mourn? There’s nothing wrong with having biology different to a human’s, and that’s not going to change what you’re worth or take away your ability to find a place to call your own.”

“What about my parents and the people in town? Even Tucker and Sam, forgetting what they already know, would still find me weird if they found out how deep it went! It would matter to them!”

“—You already know I’m not human; you just said so.” the Doctor replied simply.

“Do you think it would matter to me?”

Danny choked on a dumbfounded stutter.

“I…I don’t know.”

The older of the duo tapped a hand on Danny’s shoulder, trying to coax the younger’s gaze upwards, with a thoughtful pause…

“Danny, did you know I have two hearts?”

Danny snapped up to look him in the eye.

“It’s true!” the alien crowed in mock defence, “You must’ve forgotten if you don’t remember! I’m sure I’ve mentioned it at least once!”

A cocked brow from the boy told him to return to seriousness, “For all I look like a human to you, Danny, Time Lord biology has quite a few major differences on the inside; mainly, two hearts—additionally, also a respiratory bypass system in the same area. It’s quite useful in situations of air blockages. That is a clear, solid reminder that would prove me vastly different to any human who took a look—and they have, too...a hospital had the unfortunate shock of taking my bloods and chest x-rays in the 1970’s. It’s happened quite a few times since.”

Leather wrinkled as he rolled up one sleeve in response to Danny’s gaping face, offering his bare wrist to him.

“Go ahead—feel my pulse; it’s right there, double time—the vascular valves have to work twice as fast to keep up with a second heart.”

Danny cocked an eyebrow, taken aback for a few short seconds before gingerly taking the Doctor’s wrist in his hand…

…As Danny fumbled to find the right spot and gesture, the Doctor mimed with his own free hand on the wrist to guide Danny on the correct position.

He fought down the light tremors of emotion in his hand as he tried to focus on the right spot beneath the time traveller’s skin, tactile attention peeled for any slight movement.

Thump-thump,

The hybrid’s eyes shot as wide open as dinner plates.

A beat rippled under the pads of his fingers, rapidly fluttering in quickly succeeding rounds of two each third of a second…

…Thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump…

A vague fog spilled into his brain an isolated fact from tenth-grade science—a snippet of the teacher’s comparisons to show the rough scale of average resting heart rates.

The Doctor’s pulse hurried like a human pumped up on terrifying high of adrenaline…all, incredibly, while still at rest. Such a pace remained impossible for a human heart to handle alone…

A chest far more bizarre than any of the freakish physiological anomalies he had ever fathomed or dreaded discovering in his own mutated body.

“How…how fast is that?” Danny stammered in awe, pulling his hand away.

“Roughly around 126 beats per minute, resting.” The Doctor grinned proudly, “That can go up to 150 when I’m running. The hearts themselves are even faster than the pulse—in rounds of four. You think that’s too different from human for you to have no problems with?”…

… He glanced over the other’s smaller frame.

“Want to try yours? Take some vitals to see if there’s anything different we need to know of?”

Danny frowned, unease starting to pool in the bottom of his stomach.

“But, we’re in Amity Park…”

“We’re in Amity Park in the TARDIS” he corrected, “safe from any prying eyes—those walls are impenetrable. There’s no better place than here to take a look—and knowing how your own body adapted to ectoplasm will very likely come in handy later.

If not now, that’s alright—but consider it for later some time; self-knowledge is very important, and courage starts with stepping up to face what frightens you.”

“No…I’ll give it a go now.” Danny decided hesitantly.

“Alright, then.” The Doctor strolled briskly down a branching corridor, disappearing down the amber hallway.

The console room fell into silence, only broken by the faint drone of the TARDIS engines in the background. Left to his own devices in the empty room, curiosity lightly crept in over the upset in Danny’s chest, tempting him into a quick glance at his own wrist.

He’d gotten to check the Doctor’s pulse…so what about his own?...”

Read full story from beginning under cut:

A faint spectre of a familiar wheezing noise—something roughly halfway between an electric train engine and some contraption from the mind of H.G Wells—drifted through Danny’s window. He sprung up off of his bed with the suddenness of a wound-up spring, in a messy paradox of fear and excitement. Hardly a blade of backyard grass crunched under his step as he ejected himself, ghost-aided, from the second story window. He leapt into a hurried sprint out to his front yard and down the footpath, a prayer on his lips that Jazz—or, god forbid, his parents—wouldn’t find it odd he locked his bedroom door for something as mundane as an alleged “nap”.

He couldn’t tell them why he was leaving, not without admitting a secret he dreaded they wouldn’t understand.

For someone as guarded in lies as Danny, the hefty pile of trust he invested in the Doctor after only sixth months still baffled his own judgement.

Sheer serendipity had smashed them into each other in the dirty, deserted alleys of Amity Park in the heat of late spring—in retrospect, it was only sensible that Amity Park’s run-ragged local protector was pulled head-first into the Doctor’s mission to chase down an alien threat to the town. Danny’s experience with danger, quick thinking and compassion received the unbelievable surprise of an approving eye from the peculiar “traveller”—and at the end of an averted crisis, their exchange switched from a currency of snarky banter to their inevitably unveiling secrets. Two pairs of light sapphires locked into each other’s depths, piercing through the icy surfaces to glimpse at mutually familiar reflections of loneliness and pain. With the planting of a hand on Danny’s shoulder, and the man’s lighthearted switch to a casual offer to take him on a trip (he owed the boy one for the help, was his excuse), and Danny had finally witnessed the unthinkable: the miraculous salvaging of the hitherto unsalvageable.

His childhood dream of becoming an astronaut, struck down by the brutal consequences of recklessly buckling to peer pressure at fourteen (sacrificing one half of his life to get his powers, and the other half to the ungrateful town he used them for), had somehow been resurrected from the ashes. In the blinding abyss of despair that tore from him all motivation and vision of his own meaning and future, he had finally regained sight of what he had longed for so long ago:

He was offered a chance to see the stars.

…not just gazing at constellations from the roof he vastly preferred to the entire home that sat underneath, but a chance to spare a glance up close and personal—on the densely populated planets pulled into the stars’ orbits. To bask in the colourful evidence of those stars in an alien sunrise, and set foot on the moons and asteroids bizarre geological impossibilities called their ancient homes…

One trip turned into a second…which, unsurprisingly, turned into a third…

From there, the call of Danny’s responsibility to stay in Amity brought a semi-regular schedule of visits back and forth—from Danny relearning what hope felt like from the firsthand wonders of space, to the Doctor’s frequent check-in visits to the child’s haunted hometown. Hours filled with conversation and strengthening rapport that Danny’s busy double life deprived him of having with his family and friends. A fresh perspective on the universe leapt into his life out of the blue and sat, in a worn leather jacket and raven buzz-cut, listening to his pain and pushing him to heal.

That report nagged at Danny from the recesses of his mind, insisting on the only person he could take his dredged-up dilemma to.

For all the time that he had been a halfa, Danny adamantly ignored the implications of his own modified biology. As he distracted himself with his earlier superhero-esque impression of gaining ghost powers, the notion of becoming something not entirely human sat tightly folded and stuffed into the underbelly of his mental closet where it couldn’t hurt him—out of sight, out of mind. The concept of an otherworldly, freakish creature—one of the only two on the entire planet—alone in a crowd of normal humans with the tenacity to tear him apart as soon as they knew…

It reared its ugly head in his nightmares.

An unfortunate doubt burrowed a deep beeline into his heart that, no matter how well his family and friends knew him, the intricacies of his situation were impossible for them to understand. Unlike him, they all remained fully human…powerless, mundane, living without fear of being found out as something else… Vlad, for all that he was Danny’s fellow in physical nature, remained his moral opposite. Danny lost count of just how many times that broken record had replayed his denial of Plasmius’s contemptible deal to the stubborn maniac. By all accounts, the second halfa should’ve had no one to turn to.

However, for all of the paranoid secrecy that lodged the topic close to the vest, Danny felt almost entirely at ease breaching it with the Doctor—minus the unpleasant sting of the touchy subject matter tasting bitter in his mouth.

His hasty feet scraped to a stop at a sliver of blue wood past a corner. Relieving his straining lungs, his legs strolled the last few metres steadily of their own accord, ceasing before he bumped into the hilariously unfitting shape of a 1960’s British police box at the mouth of an alleyway. An unearthly glow pulsed faintly from the lantern atop the booth, tinting the deep Aegean-blue paint with scant patches of flashing turquoise. A soft orange glow streamed out in beams from the two windows on a pair of double doors at the entrance. Danny’s fingers reached up, sensitively, to the sturdy corner framing of the booth, his eyes catching the ebony sign that read “POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX” along the length of the roof. A shudder through the wood brushed feather-light underneath his fingertips in greeting, the warm purr of an impossibly ancient—and just as volatile—housecat eagerly welcoming its familiar guest.

After a quick rap on the doors, they swung open with a long creak, accompanied by a Northern British accent rising in a pleasant tenor.

“Ah, Danny—right on time again!” faded eyebrows shot up a bare forehead under the familiar black buzz-cut. A welcoming smile spread over half the distance from one embarrassingly prominent ear to another.

“I heard you landing.” the forced cheer in Danny’s words fell in ruins to the awkward, shaky tumble they came out in.

The grin quickly turned into a serious frown, those electric blue irises lowering their gaze in concern.

“…Something wrong?”

“Can we talk about it inside...?”

The Doctor nodded carefully, letting Danny into the vast exterior of the disguised time machine and locking the door behind him.

The teenager shuffled in as the Doctor paced to a cooler bag resting beyond the edge of the main console to grab a drink for them both. He broke his companion’s awkward silence.

“I assume this is something difficult, then?”

“Well…yeah.” Pathetic as it was, it was all the response Danny could momentarily muster. His gaze darted from one side to the other and he rubbed the back of his neck, “It kind of occurred to me earlier, but I’ve never wanted to think about it…”

Those ancient eyes pierced immediately into him with a protective air.

“Does it have to do with your parents?”

“No!” he stammered hastily, “—not exactly, it’s just…”

His throat moved as if possessed, his voice lowering carefully from a reflex honed for reasons he wished never had to be.

“I…what do I do? …What if people find out what I am...?”

The Doctor’s eyes blinked almost owlishly for such a scant second that Danny wasn’t even sure if he had just been imagining it, before his features schooled into a pensive frown.

“Oh…”

Silence.

“Danny, there’s nothing ‘freakish’ about being other than human; normalcy is in the eye of the beholder.”

Danny’s gaze sank to the floor, fighting a losing battle to keep his face restrained, eyes dodging away from the Doctor as he put a hand on the teen’s shoulder.

“You say that…but you don’t know what people are like.”

“Oh, I think a good 700 years of being acquainted with Earth had made sure I know.” The Doctor scoffed.

“You don’t know what being human is like! You don’t know what I’ve lost!” ripped itself from Danny’s trembling throat.

“What about my parents and the people in town? Even Tucker and Sam, forgetting what they already know, would still find me weird if they found out how deep it went! It would matter to them!”

“—You already know I’m not human; you just said so.” the Doctor replied simply.

“Do you think it would matter to me?”

Danny choked on a dumbfounded stutter.

“I…I don’t know.”

The older of the duo tapped a hand on Danny’s shoulder, trying to coax the younger’s gaze upwards, with a thoughtful pause…

“Danny, did you know I have two hearts?”

Danny snapped up to look him in the eye.

“It’s true!” the alien crowed in mock defence, “You must’ve forgotten if you don’t remember! I’m sure I’ve mentioned it at least once!”

Leather wrinkled as he rolled up one sleeve in response to Danny’s gaping face, offering his bare wrist to him.

“Go ahead—feel my pulse; it’s right there, double time—the vascular valves have to work twice as fast to keep up with a second heart.”

Danny cocked an eyebrow, taken aback for a few short seconds before gingerly taking the Doctor’s wrist in his hand.

“Umm…how do I check for a pulse?”

“Take your index and middle finger together and put them on the wrist, underneath the base of the thumb; there’s a palpable vein there in most ‘humanoid’ species, a similar one in Time Lords as well.” As Danny fumbled to find the right spot and gesture, the Doctor mimed with his own free hand on the wrist to guide Danny on the correct position.

He fought down the light tremors of emotion in his hand as he tried to focus on the right spot beneath the time traveller’s skin, tactile attention peeled for any slight movement.

Thump-thump,

The hybrid’s eyes shot as wide open as dinner plates.

A beat rippled under the pads of his fingers, rapidly fluttering in quickly succeeding rounds of two each third of a second. It throbbed as fast as the metal-style Dumpty Humpty song he’d listened to on loop for the last two months, accelerated beyond the rabbiting thud of his heart in his chest when he ran himself ragged in the two-minute mile in ninth grade. The very rhythm of life that kept the Doctor in the universe, pushing his physiology onward, spoke clearly of the hidden contents of his ribcage.

Thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump…

A vague fog spilled into his brain an isolated fact from tenth-grade science—a snippet of the teacher’s comparisons to show the rough scale of average resting heart rates.

The Doctor’s pulse hurried like a human pumped up on terrifying high of adrenaline…all, incredibly, while still at rest. Such a pace remained impossible for a human heart to handle alone…

A chest far more bizarre than any of the freakish physiological anomalies he had ever fathomed or dreaded discovering in his own mutated body.

“How…how fast is that?” Danny stammered in awe, pulling his hand away.

Sixth months of travels, venting and understanding, everything he owed the miraculous alien in front of him, won out beyond questioning.

The halfa shook his head vigorously.

“No…never…”

“Well, with the body I’ve got, yours certainly wouldn’t ever a problem for me. Even if there are people in your town who wouldn’t accept you, I do—and there will be other people out there in the larger universe who would, too. Even if you lose one place, you don’t lose the ability to find another—and I’m sure there are people already in your town who would find a closer place with too. From what you’ve said of your friends and sister, I’m sure they’d handle it fine in the end.”

“But I’m pretty sure they couldn’t take something like that in stride.”

“Oh, come on! What’s a little non-human physiology between friends?” the Doctor jabbed warmly, “An initial shock, inevitable as it is, wouldn’t end bonds that old just like that!”

He glanced over the other’s smaller frame.

“Want to try yours? Take some vitals to see if there’s anything different we need to know of?”

Danny frowned, unease starting to pool in the bottom of his stomach.

“But, we’re in Amity Park…”

If not now, that’s alright—but consider it for later some time; self-knowledge is very important, and courage starts with stepping up to face what frightens you.”

“No…I’ll give it a go now.” Danny decided hesitantly.

“Alright, then.” The Doctor strolled briskly down a branching corridor, disappearing down the amber hallway.

He’d gotten to check the Doctor’s pulse…so what about his own?

A bombardment from his brain halted that train of thought at a railroad crossing, forcing it to make way of a nuisance little car that jeered, ‘Try, and you’ll seal that proof in stone; if that pulse is anything non-human, you’re never unseeing that, you frea—’

Danny pounced at the scathing thought in defensive irritation as it sent his hands into another series of light shivers. Another part of him stepped in to remind him of the Doctor’s words—receiving a reluctant welcome by his conscious.

How different would it be? Was it any different from a full human’s at all? How different was it when he hadn’t really had a strong concept of what a normal human pulse actually felt like in comparison to his own? Using his own heartbeat as a frame of comparison for the Doctor’s was one thing—a point of reference to compare his pulse to another normal person’s, he did not have.

He pulled a deep, slow current of air into his lungs, trying to settle his nerves again as he fumbled with the posture of the middle and index finger, stumbling embarrassingly for a few seconds to find their claim on the thumb-side of his other wrist.

His nostrils flared with another deep breath as he steeled himself in anticipation, seconds dragging their heavy feet as he searched for a feeling of movement in his veins.

He froze in astonishment as plodding pulse gently thrummed to his touch.

Thump…thump…thump…

His…

That was his.

The giver of his own life—half-life—the very perpetuator of his existence; the fundamental thing that kept him alive from the inside, human and post-…the emissary of the complex organic pump at the centre of his once-human body…

A dizzying rush of…something indescribable surged through his body, bringing a surreal tickle of cold everywhere it flowed; the hairs on his arm stood straight upwards atop a desert of countless goosebumps cluttering his thin skin. A breath caught itself in his throat, straining his diaphragm as it pulled tightly around his chest. The sluggish pulse accelerated to a more vigorous flutter under the light touch, as adrenaline hit in the snap-short second his body screamed for air—responding to his own emotions in real time, like a viewing window cut neatly into the exterior steel plating of a mechanical marvel, giving a tantalising glimpse of a small section of the mechanism inside as it continued playing its part in the unknown, concealed whole…

He snapped out of his reverie as the Time Lord re-emerged into the console room, his arms cradling a steel bin stacked with medical equipment, a stethoscope coiled around his neck.

“…You know, I thought you weren’t that kind of doctor…?” Danny probed with shy wit.

“I am now!” he grinned, sapphire orbs glimmering humorously as a quick yank saved a digital thermometer from falling to its death off the top of the overflowing pile.

His head took on a slight tilt like a contemplative owl as he lay down his cargo and eyed the halfa’s fingers drawing a pattern into the skin of his wrist as his mouth seemed to temporarily malfunction.

“My pulse…it’s there.”

“Well, that’s one thing you have over other ghosts, then.”

The halfa probed hesitantly, “Is it too slow? …Is it human?”

“Hold on, let me take a look.” The Doctor insisted, brows squashed downwards in a neat line of concentration as thick, calloused hands took a hold of Danny’s wrist. The concentrated frown descended further as his throat hummed in thought for a few, lagging moments.

“That’s rather slow,” he rated, “Usually, the average resting rate for humans is between sixty and eighty beats per minute. Considering that you’re hardly an elite athlete, you wouldn’t be expected to go below forty to fifty at a healthy rhythm…but here it is.”

An uncomfortable gulp didn’t cure the tension in Danny’s throat.

“…how slow?”

The Doctor’s face stilled for a scant second in a familiar schooling of intense focus; six months of seeing the Time Lord in action told Danny that superhumanly precise calculations of the flow of time were running through that head, measuring speed in all but brief moment, like a supercomputer.

“…45 beats per minute, rounding up the half-seconds.”

“Damn…” his gobsmacked mouth fell open.

“It’s the ghost half affecting the human one, likely.” His friend explained simply. A pair of leather clad arms burrowed into the box and returned with handheld metallic box, snaking around a cuff of rough cloth on a length of rubber tubing, “What would be interesting is to see whether your blood pressure compensates for the heart rate in any manner—and what it does to your temperature, for that matter.”

Danny grimaced in anticipation as the blood pressure cuff slipped over his bicep. For some inexplicable reason, insistent check-ups back in the forgotten times his parents fretted constantly over a risk of childhood ecto-contamination had given him a mild aversion to blood pressure machines. It left a mark so strong, that being thrown violently across the pavement by a volatile ghost while fighting remained a more tolerable preference to having his blood pressure taken.

“It won’t take long,” the Doctor insisted as he picked up the thermometer he’d intercepted earlier, “Just stay still.”

Danny’s upper arm pressed in on itself like a squashed balloon about to burst; he ground his teeth together as a few, unpleasant seconds passed, relief flooding through him as the crushing push of the cuff retracted and gave his limb free room again. The few seconds of a thermometer pressing against his middle ear lasted for a few less, far more comfortable seconds before it chimed a small, synthesised beep.

He watched the Doctor’s eyes widen to the size of dinner plates.

“Well, your blood pressure seems to be within normal human range–not compensating for the slow blood flow at all, something else must be at work...” the Time Lord quickly evened his voice, hastily attempting to salvage the second that he looked taken aback, “…your temperature, though…that’s 26 degrees.”

“WHAT!?”

The Doctor locked onto Danny with a dumbfounded look, “…Celsius.”

Danny groaned.

“You almost gave me a heart attack! …what is it in Fahrenheit?”

“78.8, almost 79.”

“Oh…wow, that’s cold. Average people are around 90-something, right?”

“Yes; 79 would be hypothermic for full humans.” he continued, his voice leaking a hint of fascination, trailing off lightly into a short, pensive silence…

“You’re not a lot colder than I am…” his voice tumbled out airy and absent, hints of buried emotion leaking through his cracks in his straining voice…

…such a foreign tone from the elder that Danny froze.

“Time Lord core temperatures sit generally at around 12 degrees Celsius—around 53 in Fahrenheit. ” he continued, “Any human that cold would be on the brink of death—or already dead.”

As soon as the cracks opened, they sealed themselves shut—the Doctor’s voice evening to a low, serious tone leaking with hints of curiosity, leaving little trace that tension had ever been there, “Whatever is happening in your body, the ghost aspect of your biology is somehow enhancing or interfering with the human body; there has to be a trace of something sourcing all of that…”

Danny blinked as the azure light of a Sonic Screwdriver emerged out of the Doctor’s pocket and intruded into the path of his vision. The shining spot smeared a line of light, alongside the device’s typical warped buzzing, as it swept through the air in all directions along Danny’s body. He fidgeted bemusedly as the screwdriver’s whine spiked to a much higher pitch as it aligned with his chest.

“The scan has just found ectoplasmic energy readings trailing through your entire body,” Danny’s elder translated as he pulled the Sonic Screwdriver back with a deft flick of the wrist, “and it’s all gathering in one place in your chest, like streams of energy all flowing into one, teeming reservoir. There, it’s a singular point of high ectoplasmic concentration, but the overall energy doesn’t seem stationary; it seems to continue flowing around the body, become attracted to the centre point and travel through it before flowing out again, temporarily spiking the energy level in that point.”

“I don’t get it…” Danny frowned.

“It’s like a…core…” The Doctor reasoned, “Like planets have cores, and atoms have nuclei; there’s a central ‘core’ of denser energy all held together in one localised area, and the rest of the energy flows around it, like an atmosphere. As the energy changes, it’s attracted closer to the centre; the centre is the waypoint that keeps all of the ectoplasm in your body on a leash—keeps it flowing and cohesive. I wouldn’t be surprised if it also controlled your ghost half itself.”

In essence, it’s highly likely that ‘core’ is keeping your ghost form together.”

The words assaulted Danny’s ears like a crack of thunder.

His hand glided to his chest, attention peeled for a single movement, a charge, anything…a sign that wasn’t the tell-tale beat of his heart…

As he settled in the very centre—just to the right of his trudging heartbeat—he found it.

A wave of surreal, visceral lightness overwhelmed him, flooding through his very bones.

A rapid, blurry buzzing flashed in and out of existence under his palm, pulsating in his chest like a crackling electrical circuit. Dizzying confusion flooded him as fear and resentment gave way to a profound sense of relief, of near-euphoria. A spark of life erupted from the blurry sphere in his chest to every tissue, every muscle, every vein and bone in his being.

His whole body stiffened in surprise, his diaphragm forcing his lungs to take in a stuttering gasp of awe.

A desperate voice cried out in familiarity from somewhere deep within him, a cry for help, a cry for acceptance…and an overwhelming sense of oneness.

‘…This is me.’

His weak knees threatened to give out underneath him, and the concerned Doctor bolted forward to grapple him under his arms as he collapsed to the TARDIS floor like a ragdoll.

“What happened?!” the words rushed out in a tense demand.

Danny’s head snapped upwards in a swift, stiff motion; their wide eyes locked. Young sapphires bore for relentless, painstaking seconds into ancient ones.

“I can feel it…” he breathed, “It’s there...”

The Doctor’s hands flew to the stethoscope around his neck, hastily uncoiling and fitting the two prongs in his ears in a frenzy as his instructions under pressure came out, clear and sharp.

“That’s it—I’m taking a look. Shirt up, now!”

Lifting the hem of his own shirt became a fumbling mess in the boy’s dazed state as the alien placed the bell end on his chest. The cold metal of the stethoscope sent shots of ice through Danny’s skin.

Seconds drudged on in the apprehensive silence as the Time Lord listened.

“…It’s pulsing…” he concluded at last in a daze.

“That buzzing in and out, right?”

“Yes—can hear the vibration.” He elaborated, “It’s very clearly there, lodged almost over your heart; it’s nearly completely mixed in with its motions…”

His voice lowered thoughtfully.

“They appear to be working in conjunction. As the heart beats, the ectoplasmic core flares up, then quickly peters out...”

A mud of dissonance lurked in Danny’s gut as those lips twitched into a restrained smile—he could’ve sworn those worn eyes above them flickered with a glimpse of conflicting melancholy.

“In a way,” the Doctor proposed, voice trailing off absently, “it functions like a second heart…”

The smile widened warmly, though hints of vulnerable emotion cracked through a strained veil of positivity.

“In a way, you almost have two hearts as well…or perhaps one and-a-half hearts is more accurate, considering its difference to a proper organ.”

The Doctor reached down and grabbed him by the wrist to haul him to his feet; Danny’s other hand clenched instinctively on that similarly cold joint above the clamping hand in response. Two vastly conflicting pulses thundered through the pair’s sensitive tactile reception as they pulled on each other’s weight—one too rapid to be a human not sprinting down a racetrack, the other too plodding and slow for one not in a deep slumber.

Two pulses at opposite ends of a spectrum of the blatantly unearthly, but simultaneously indicators of a vaguely similar common ground…

…common enough to flood Danny’s bones with a primal, euphoric relief of belonging.

“I haven’t met anyone like that in a while—we could start a club, the two of us!” the Doctor smiled proudly, “The two-hearts club…or approximately-two-hearts, I suppose.”

“Y-yeah,” Danny grinned as his uneasy legs strengthened beneath him; the realisation that he was standing without help didn’t loosen his grip on the wrist in his hand.

“The ectoplasmic output is like background electrical interference in your chest, though, so you’ll certainly never want others to be looking at you on an electrocardiogram,” he interjected casually, “but otherwise, you’re perfectly fine.

…just remember, ‘fine’ and ‘human’ are not the same. If you can’t trust your own word, trust mine—not being ‘normal’ or ‘human’ in the eyes of planet Earth doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you. Even if you came across all the close-minded humans out there who’d be happy to shove that opinion down your throat—aware of your secret or not—don’t give them that power over you and they can’t take away the fact that you’re not wrong.”

A small grin split across the half-ghost, half-human hybrid’s face.

Even if for just a small while, he could believe that.

#danny phantom #ectoberweek2020 #ectoberweek2020 day 2 #pulse #doctor who #crossover #danny fenton #ninth doctor #nonhuman biology

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darks-ink · 3 years

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Glow Sticks - Ectoberweek 2020

Almost done! I should really go and finish up the last fic for this event huh?

Rating: Gen Warnings: - Genre: Hurt/Comfort Words: 2,975 Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - canon divergence, Identity reveal

[AO3] [FFN]

---

Quite frankly, Valerie didn’t know what she was doing here.

Yes, she’d gotten invited to a blacklight party by some of the A-listers, but that wasn’t because they cared about her. Hell, there wasn’t even anything special about her. Just about every one of their classmates had gotten invited. Even Danny and his friends were here!

And if she honest with herself, that might just have been why she was here at all. She didn’t care much for parties, not anymore, nor did she care about her lost popularity. Her old friends had abandoned her, and new friends…

Well, aside from Danny, she didn’t really have any of those. And counting Danny as a friend was kind of a stretch, too, after she’d broken up with him. But, god… Valerie needed it. She needed someone to just be normal with.

Steeling herself, Valerie cracked the glow sticks in her hand until they lit up in bright pinks and oranges. With short, resolute motions she curled them around her wrists, turned them into armbands.

Then, before she could change her mind, Valerie entered the darkened room.

It took a moment for her eyes to adjust, but it was immediately clear that almost everyone in her class was here. Definitely busy and crowded. Ugh, why was she here again?

Right. Because she wanted to be a normal teenager for once.

Valerie stepped forward, planning to go and find Danny. Instead she was, almost instantly, intercepted by Star. The girl’s white shirt shone in the blacklight, her teeth equally bright when she grinned at Valerie, curling a hand around Valerie’s arm and tugging her to the side. “Valerie! I didn’t think you would come!”

Yeah, neither did she, to be honest. “I… It was kind of a spontaneous decision.”

“Well, you’re forgiven for not telling me, then.” Star patted Valerie’s hand, then grabbed it and held it closer to her face. “Wow! Look at that paintwork! How long did you prep for this spontaneous decision, Val?”

“Uh…” She pulled her hand away from Star, frowning down at it. Straight lines cut through her flesh like circuitry, glowing a fluorescent pink. A familiar fluorescent pink. “Well, you know… I had the stuff anyway, I figured I could put it on and… then decide?”

Star snorted disbelievingly. “Whatever makes you feel better. I gotta go before Paulina sees me talking to you, but you enjoy yourself, okay?”

“I’ll try,” Valerie told her dryly, playing with the glow sticks around her arm, pretending that she hadn’t been checking out her supposed paint job. “You have fun too, Star.”

The other girl grinned at her, then turned around and darted away into the crowd. Sometimes Val wished they could’ve remained friends, too, but it was hard to ignore that Star chose Paulina over her every single time. No matter how important it was, and how unimportant Paulina was… It was always Paulina, and never Valerie.

And quite frankly, Valerie was done with being the second choice.

She worked her way to a less crowded corner, glancing around to make sure no one was keeping a close eye on her before tucking herself away. On close investigation, both her hands seemed identically pattered, the circuitry perfectly mirrored.

With a frown, she pulled up her sleeves. Yeah, it continued all the way up her arms. It must’ve been from the suit, the new one. She thought it was some kind of nanotech, small machines which tucked away flat against her body, so small they couldn’t be seen. In her darker moments, she considered the possibility that they hid away inside her body, yes, but…

For them to glow under blacklight like this… It must be ectoplasm. Everyone knew that ectoplasm glowed bright under blacklight, and the coloration matched exactly with the shots from the suit.

But, god… what did that mean for her? That she carried so much ectoplasm in her body, so well integrated that she hadn’t even noticed?

It… It didn’t matter. There was nothing she could do to change it, not for now. Later, she would worry about the implications, about how it might affect her. But she was here to have a normal evening, for once in her damn life, and that was exactly what she was going to do. Tonight, this circuitry, this ectoplasmic ghost hunting suit, was no more than a spectacular paint job.

So, with her mind thus made up, and all the important matters locked away behind a wall of determination… Valerie once more set out to track down Danny Fenton.

Not that finding Danny ended up being that difficult. She had barely made it halfway through the room when she heard Dash yelling and, figuring it was either something involving Danny or something involving ghosts, she turned that way.

She found Danny crowded against a wall by several of the jocks, including Dash and Kwan. However Danny had dressed up for the occasion, she couldn’t tell with the jocks between her and him, but it was clearly causing a reaction.

“Dash, man, you still beating up people who won’t fight back to stroke your ego?” Valerie shoved him, creating an opening in the wall of football players so she could see their faces. “If you want a fight so badly I’d love to give you a wooping.”

Dash turned to face her, eyes narrowed and mouth opened to respond. But something about her must’ve made him change his mind, because he snapped his mouth shut.

“Oh, I see,” Dash said after a long moment. “You two freaks are matching. How cute.” He scoffed, then waved to the rest of the jocks. “Come on, let’s go somewhere else before it spreads.”

She watched them storm off before shaking her head and turning to look at Danny properly. He looked ruffled, his hair mussed up and his black shirt askew like Dash had grabbed onto it. Green splatters littered him, like he had sprinkled fluorescent paint all over his clothing as decoration.

Green paint, or… ectoplasm? It certainly looked like the shade of green ectoplasm normally was, and it would be an easy enough resource for Danny to access. But using it to paint his clothes? Really?

“Did you really use ectoplasm for those splatters?” she asked him, incredulously. The look on his face answered her question before he could even open his mouth, and she shook her head. “Never mind. Oh, you got it all over you too. Danny, this stuff is dangerous, you shouldn’t let it…”

She stopped, staring down at the pale hand she held. The ectoplasm she had seen, what she thought was a stain, wasn’t just splattered over his hands. It formed neat lines, perfectly replicating the human vein system with unbelievable detail.

“I, uh. Had Sam paint it?” Danny tried, the lie stupidly poor even without his abysmal skill at lying. “Anyway, I know the dangers of ectoplasm, Val, duh. Don’t you know my parents?”

“Danny, seriously.” She ran a finger down the bright vein on the bottom of his wrist, ignoring the way he cringed. “I can feel that there’s no paint here, just skin. Also, you’re a terrible liar.”

He huffed. “What, and you are? You’re criticizing my paint, but I can’t feel any on your fingers, either.”

“Hm.” She paused, throwing a brief glance down. Right. The circuitry continued down all the way to her fingertips. He would’ve felt the paint when she touched him, too. “I think… we should talk. Somewhere private.”

“Yeah, I guess we should,” he agreed, before sighing, deep and weary. “Let’s go outside.”

Valerie hummed, shifting her hand so she gripped his wrist instead. She didn’t think he would escape into the crowd otherwise, but, well. Better not to risk it. She wanted to get this conversation over with as soon as possible.

She weaved through their partying classmates, Danny right behind her. A few times they got bumped, Danny more so than her, but they made it through well enough. At the door, Valerie released him again, letting him step through first.

“You got somewhere in mind?” she asked, watching him take lead.

“I… might know a spot.” He shot her a brief look over his shoulder, but turned back almost immediately. “I guess we’ll see.”

Well, didn’t that sound ominous. “Guess we will,” she agreed.

Honestly, she felt like she’d left her brain back at the party. First the discovery that her own suit was not only ectoplasmic in nature, but that it had integrated into her body, and now this? Danny, with enough ectoplasm in his veins that they glowed under blacklight? What did it all mean?

She followed Danny outside, then around to the back of the building, where he stopped to peer upwards.

“What, you want to get onto the roof?” she asked skeptically, looking up as well. Sure, she could manage it with her hoverboard, but still… He didn’t know she had that. Did he?

“Not much risk of anyone interfering or overhearing,” Danny pointed out, shrugging. “But I guess we would need to get up there first.”

“And how had you imagined that?” she asked, raising an eyebrow at him. Even if he knew, would he admit as much?

Danny frowned up, then shook his head and met her eyes. “Well… Do you trust me, Valerie?”

What was this, a trick question? If she said yes, would he ask why she hadn’t told him about being a ghost hunter?

“I… guess I do?” she settled on, quirking her eyebrow even further. Tried to come across as questioning as possible. “Why?”

“Just… don’t freak out.” Before she could react to that cryptic statement, he stepped forward, grabbing her by her upper arms. And then, suddenly, the ground was gone.

They floated, Danny just above her, grip sturdy but not painful. He met her eyes steadily, his own as bright fluorescing green as his veins had been under the blacklight.

After what must’ve only been a short moment, Danny lifted them up further. Their flight was stable and fairly fast, and before she knew it, her feet touched down on the surface of the roof.

Danny let her go the moment she stood stable, landing a little distance away from her. The moment he stopped floating the glow from his eyes faded. His face felt much darker without the glow, out here in the dark.

But also… what the hell was that? He’d just… floated, like a ghost? Glowing eyes and all?

“What the hell was that?” she snapped, despite herself. “I know you’re not a ghost, but— that—”

“Yeah,” he agreed wryly, shrugging. “I’m… kind of a half-ghost? I have ghost powers.”

Well. She hadn’t expected him to be so straight-forward about it.

“I… Look,” he said, suddenly, like he was cutting himself off. “I wasn’t planning on telling, okay? No offense, but I know what you’re like with ghosts, so… Some basic self-preservation, right?”

“Right.” She frowned at him, tried to process the fact that he was half ghost. What did that even mean? “But clearly you changed your mind. Why?”

“The lines on your arm.” He gestured vaguely, like he wanted to point at them and then realized they weren’t visible outside the blacklight. “Do you know what that is?”

Right, so he probably knew she was the Red Huntress, huh? “It’s ectoplasm, isn’t it? I thought as much when I saw it glow.”

“Yeah, exactly.” He nodded, his expression softening a little with… relief? “Oh, that’s good, I don’t have to break that news to you then.”

“It’s not the same as with you, though,” she pointed out. “With you, it clearly followed the veins in your body. The lines on me were different, more like circuitry.”

“Circuitry?” Danny repeated. “I guess that that makes sense, since you got your second suit from Technus. The ecto-contamination sucks, though.”

“But it’s not like with you?” she prodded. “You say you’re half-ghost, but I’m not, then?”

“Well…” He paused, clearly considering that. “No, I don’t think so. I think you could become half-ghost, but you’re not currently. The ectoplasm is bonded to you, but it’s not part of your body, not sustaining it like with me. That’s why you only have the suit, and no ghost powers to go with it.”

She considered that. “Sounds like there’s a “but” missing.”

“But, I don’t know how it will hold up,” he admitted with a grimace. “Technus isn’t exactly a human expert, and I don’t expect he made the suit with much of a thought of how it’ll hold up, or how it’ll affect you over time. It’s definitely possible that it might turn you half-ghost over time, slowly leaking ectoplasm into your system.”

Yikes. That didn’t sound very appealing.

“Can it be undone, then?” She cocked her head at him. “I assume it can’t be with you, because you said that it’s sustaining you. But for me?”

Danny hummed. “Maybe. But that’ll make you lose the suit, you realize that, right? And you might remain susceptible to ectoplasmic contamination, so you’ll need to give up on ghost hunting entirely.”

“Oh.” Could she do that? Just give up on ghost hunting like that?

But what if she didn’t? What if she became half-ghost? It didn’t seem to affect Danny too badly, but… But how much did she really know about Danny Fenton?

“Don’t make a decision yet,” Danny said, breaking her out of her thoughts. “Take your time to think it over. We can start with looking into it a little more, figuring out how the suit works. Maybe there’s no danger of it turning you half-ghost at all. Maybe it’ll only happen under the same kind of circumstances as with me, and the suit is just an indicator that it wouldn’t kill you.”

He shrugged. “I really can’t say, not without knowing more. But we can fix that, at least. How does that sound?”

“What would that involve? Learning more?”

“Come back home with me. I’ll call Sam and Tucker once we get there, see if they can come in.” He snorted at her look. “Valerie, honestly. There’s nothing I keep secret from those guys. They literally watched me die, or, well. Half-die. If we want to learn more about the suit, we’re gonna need everyone.”

Danny paused. “Well. Maybe not Jazz. We might need her to run interference instead, to get my parents out of the lab.”

“The more I hear about this, the less I like it,” Valerie admitted with a shake of her head. “But I guess I can’t exactly back out. So, we go to your house next?”

“Yeah.” He raised one hand to rub the back of his neck. “So, uh. Are we walking or flying?”

“I… guess we might as well fly?” She had never flown in company, only ever chased after ghosts, but… “You can ride on my board, maybe?”

He snorted. “No thanks. It doesn’t look like there’s a lot of space on there.” He grinned at her, suddenly. “Besides, I love flying. Definitely my favorite power.”

“Oh.” Well, he would, wouldn’t he? He loves outer space. The gravity-less-ness of ghost flight is probably the closest you can get on Earth. “Fair enough. I guess I’ll try to match your speed, then.”

She let the suit cover her up, the tiny metal plates clicking together to form a protective layer. Even now, knowing what it was made out of… it didn’t feel like ectoplasm.

Metal pooled together underneath her feet, forming her pronged hoverboard. She lifted up slightly, hovering just above the roof.

“Ready?” she asked Danny, who still hadn’t moved. Who had been staring intently at her. Observing the suit, maybe?

“Uh, yeah, one moment.” He shuffled, like he was suddenly uncertain. Then, squaring his shoulders and straightening his back, he met her eyes through the helmet. Light flashed.

And suddenly it was Phantom who stood there, instead of Danny.

“I’m ready,” the ghost said, and… and…

And his voice sounded just like Danny’s, except with a ghostly echo.

How had she missed it before?

“Valerie?” he asked, suddenly a lot closer than he’d been before. “Hey, are you okay? Sorry, I thought you would’ve— No, that’s a stupid excuse. Sorry, I… I guess I was just afraid of telling you outright.”

“What happened to the self-preservation you mentioned earlier?” she blurted out, one hand snapping out to catching the glowing white glove reaching for her. “Because really, Danny, reaching for a ghost hunter whose intentions you don’t know?”

He stilled, shock on his face. “Right. Um. Don’t tell any of the others.”

She snorted, letting go of his wrist again. “I’m starting to think that they spend a lot of time keeping you out of trouble. Since you dated someone who wanted to destroy your alter ego.”

“Do you know how much shit I caught for that?” He shook his head, a wry smile on his face. “I swear, Sam and Tucker were seconds away from killing me themselves.”

“Stop inviting trouble, then, Fenton.” She slapped him on the shoulder, then let her hoverboard raise her higher. “Come on, let’s get going. The sooner we get this over with the better.”

“Yeah, yeah. We both know you can’t keep up with me in flight, anyway.” He shot her that awful cocky grin Phantom loved to sport, then suddenly shot off.

“That’s cheating!” she shouted after him, already dropping into a crouch, pushing her hoverboard to go as fast as she could.

Maybe the suit would turn her into a half-ghost as well. Maybe pushing it like this would only speed up the process. Who knew?

But, really. Would it be so bad? With Danny’s guidance, with his help? Because he would help. She knew him well enough to say that much.

Yeah.

She would be fine.

#danny phantom #ectoberweek2020 #ectoberweek 2020 #dp fanfic #phanfic #phic #valerie gray #danny fenton #dark writes

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darks-ink · 3 years

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Reanimation - Ectoberweek 2020

A family can be a bunch of ghost hunters and 1 (half) ghost child.

[first part]

Rating: Teen Warnings: Implied character death, implied child abuse Genre: Family, Hurt/Comfort Words: 2,439 Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - canon divergence, Sequel, Families of choice/Found family

[AO3] [FFN]

---

Agent O looked up from the report he was working on, trying to surreptitiously glance at the ghost in the van. One of the other agents had put a blanket on her—why did they have blankets in their ghost hunting van?—and she looked… cozy, for lack of a better word. Curled up even smaller than she already was, with the cape wrapped tight around her body, holding it tightly with her small fists, like she was afraid they might take it away from her otherwise.

Knowing what they had seen, where she had come from… O wouldn’t be surprised if it was a fear formed from experience.

She seemed stable enough for now, as long as she wasn’t using any of her powers. Which was good, because O wasn’t sure how they were supposed to stabilize her. When he’d promised to help her, he’d assumed that the scientists back at the base would know.

Hell, he hoped they knew. He’d promised, and knowing what she’d gone through, he would feel terrible going back on that promise now.

Looking down at the report again, he frowned. Turned back to the ghost. Cleared his throat to draw her attention. “Do you… have a name?” Was there any way to find out who these ghosts had been in life? To find out whether Masters had taken children and killed them, turned them into ghosts?

Were there parents, somewhere out there, whose child was gone and left behind the shade sitting opposite of O?

“Danielle,” she muttered, so quiet that O almost missed it. She repeated, a little more determinedly, “Danielle Phantom.”

And there it was again. Not only did she looked like Phantom, she used his name as a last name as well. How odd.

“Any relation to Phantom from Amity Park?” he asked. Had Masters somehow modeled her after Phantom? And if he had, would he have told her?

“Yeah, um.” She glanced away, eyes on her fidgeting hands. “He’s my… cousin.”

“Did Masters tell you that?” Agent L asked before O could work out an answer. “Or did you know that yourself?”

“I…” Danielle paused, clearly working through her answer. “I knew we were related,” she finally settled on. “But Daddy told me to call him my cousin.”

“And your brother?” O prodded, glaring at L over his glasses to get him to back off. “Did you know he was your brother for sure, or did Masters tell you that, too?”

Because it was undeniable that Danielle resembled Phantom more than just a little. Far more than what O would consider normal for humans. For ghosts, who could look like just about anything? It seemed suspect.

Was Phantom the first attempt? An escapee who wouldn’t listen to Masters? If he wanted another ghost just like Phantom, of course he would’ve prioritized her brother over her.

God, if only they had seen the other ghost before he’d destabilized. If he really had looked just like Phantom…

Well, it certainly had implications, didn’t it?

“No, I…” She frowned, then shook her head. “It’s different. We were all siblings, me and my brothers. Bones, Mo, Pixie… So of course he was, too, even if he never got to leave the incubator.”

“I see…” Bones, Mo, Pixie… those must’ve been the other ghosts near the mansion. Bones likely the skeletal ghost and Mo the muscular ghost, which meant that Pixie might’ve been the small one. “Your name seems a little strange, compared to theirs. How come?”

She shrugged, tugging the blankets further up, trying to curl away into it. “I… I was the only one who Daddy named. Bones, Mo, Pixie, we all picked their names. But Daddy called me Danielle…”

Her face crumpled, suddenly, somewhere between sad and outraged. “He didn’t even care about any of them! He only pretended to care about me! I— I—” The glow around her body brightened, the light visible through the blanket. Green coalesced around her clenched fists.

“Shh, shh, calm down,” O hushed, hands out and paused before putting them on her. “Danielle, you’re going to destabilize if you keep this up. Just calm down.”

“No!” she shouted back, her bright eyes snapping up to meet O’s eyes. “They’re all gone already! Nobody is going to care if I go to! Maybe—” The fire in her cut out as sudden as it had come. She sniffled, tears in her eyes. “Maybe we’ll get to reunite someplace else, someplace better.”

“Hey, shh, don’t talk like that.” O finally finished the motion he’d started, placing one hand on her shoulder. Damn this entire squad for being emotionally constipated. “Don’t look at it like that. Just think of it this way. You still remember your brothers, right, even though they’re gone? So as long as you still live, still remember them, they won’t be entirely gone.”

“Besides,” K cut in, finally. “This way, you can help us ensure that Masters gets punished properly, so he won’t ever be able to do what he did to you and your brothers. Don’t you want to help us with that?”

Her glow settled down, finally, as her expression grew determined. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, I would like to do that.”

O drew back, then threw a glance at the report he’d abandoned to the floor. Shook his head as he picked it up, then put it away properly, instead taking out a voice recorder. “Alright, how about we start with this then. You tell us everything you know. We can record it, and you won’t have to talk about any of it again if it hurts too much, okay?”

“Yeah, that sounds good.” She nodded, shifting her shoulders underneath the blanket like she was bracing herself. “Tell me where to start, please?”

---

“Danielle,” O said, disapprovingly, frowning at her. “You know the rules.”

“K said it was fine!” she immediately retorted, gesturing at her plate. Which was, of course, loaded with all kinds of sweets. Sometimes she maybe it rather easy to remember that her apparent age and her mental age didn’t quite line up right.

“Did he now?” O asked, raising an eyebrow at her. “So if I go over there right now and ask him…”

“No, don’t!” She grabbed onto the plate, holding it away from him. “L said I should, not K! But—”

Why was it always L? O made a mental note to speak to the man later, and then to talk to L’s partner M as well, just to be safe.

“Danielle,” he said, more patiently now. “I know you like the sweet things, but you need to eat properly, okay? You need to stay healthy.”

“But the ectoplasmic stuff is yucky.” She made a face, then jerked away when he stepped closer. “You can’t stop me from eating this!”

“Danielle,” O said, again, feeling his patience rapidly deplete. “You can have it after you’ve eaten all your regular food, okay?”

She narrowed her eyes at him, clearly considering it. Finally she heaved a deep sigh and put the plate back down onto the table. “Fine.”

“I’ll go and grab some from the kitchen, then.” He stepped past her, ruffling her hair on the way. “Behave yourself, or I’ll have P and Q watch over you next time.”

“Noooo,” she whined, sprawling over the table. “I’ll behave, I promise!”

O hummed thoughtfully. “You’d better, little lady.” And with a last wink to her, he left the room.

Time would tell whether she would actually listen or not. O wasn’t sure if it was proper parenting behavior but, to be fair, none of them were proper parents anyway.

Besides, what kind of parenting advice would apply to a young ghost, anyway? Danielle appeared to be about twelve, but her behavior often seemed to fit a child much younger, and she couldn’t remember a life before being a ghost, either.

At least they had managed to stabilize her. It took quite a bit of work to convince the scientists to help stabilize her, rather than experiment on her, but they had managed it. After all, Danielle had been one of their few captures, and her behavior was so complicated that it clearly required further research. Not to mention her similarities to Phantom. Subjecting her to regular research would’ve a waste, no?

O scoffed to himself. A waste, definitely, but not for any of those reasons.

Now all they needed to keep her stable was a steady diet of ectoplasmic contaminated food. And also some regular food, because Danielle burned through quite a bit of energy just by existing.

And boy, was she intent on doing more than just existing. They needed all Agents on base just to keep her safe and occupied sometimes. Over time it had just… somehow become standard fare for all of them. They were all living on base anyway, so why not help take care of the little ghost?

O shook his head to try and dislodge the thoughts and focus on what he was doing. With a resigned sigh he opened the designated Danielle fridge, peering over its contents to find something lunch-worthy. Ah! Sliced ham. Perfect.

Quickly, he set about making some sandwiches, letting his thoughts stray once more. Yes, somehow Danielle had become the base’s shared child. No one present among the Guys in White would dare to harm her anymore. The few scientists that had let their curiosity stray a little too far had been corrected and, when they refused to learn, got fired entirely.

Or, well. They weren’t around anymore, at least. O might be in charge of his team, but he wasn’t that high up. He assumed they must’ve gotten fired, but who knew with government organizations like theirs.

Either way, Danielle was safe among them. She was cared for, protected, and okay. They hadn’t gotten Masters locked away yet, building a perfect foolproof plan first, but he was under constant supervision. No other children would suffer, no other ghosts would be made by his hand.

And, soon enough, he would pay for what he had done.

O finished the sandwiches, cleaning up the supplies and carefully picking up the plate. Now, time to see if Danielle had behaved herself.

He stepped through the doorway, back into the room where he’d left Danielle. Quietly, he inched closer to the table, then put down the plate with sandwiches right between her hand and the plate with sweets.

“Busted,” she murmured, withdrawing her hand.

“Busted,” O echoed with a grin, drawing away the other plate. “Lunch first, Danielle.”

“I know, I know.” She sighed wearily, like it was a huge task, and pulled the sandwiches closer to herself. “But sweets after?”

“Eat all your lunch first, then we’ll see if you have space left.” He sat down opposite of her, the plate with sweets in front of him. “Who’s watching you after?”

“Agent K is,” she said around a bite of food. “Why?”

“Well, we wouldn’t want you to get sick while she’s watching you, would we?” O smiled down at her. If it had been L, he might’ve considered it. It would’ve been a good lesson for both Danielle and L, who had encouraged her. But K? She was a good Agent, and she took good care of Danielle.

O watched Danielle tuck a strand of black hair behind her ear, feeling… satisfied. Yes, they were taking pretty good care of her, all things considered. She’d stabilized, and her core had grown mature enough for her to develop her own unique powers. She was a fully grown ghost now, even if her mind remained young.

Still, he was curious to see if she would grow in body, too. One of the first unique powers she had developed was a minor shapeshifting ability, after all, allowing her to look perfectly human. Which made sense, according to the Agents on base, since Danielle was so human, and spent so much time around humans as well. Of course she would develop powers related to that.

It was perfectly possible that she would continue to develop her shapeshifting ability to allow her to look older as time passed. O would be curious to see it. To see what she would look like, fully grown.

And, yes. Sometimes he wondered if this was what Danielle had looked like before she’d died. If somewhere out there, there were parents who could look at her and know this was their child. But they didn’t know how long Masters had her, or any of the other ghosts. Didn’t know what happened to their parents.

For all they knew, Masters had taken only orphans, or had killed the parents and made them orphans. It was better not to worry about it, when there was nothing to be done about it anymore.

Danielle finished her sandwiches, then turned big, watery, blue eyes onto O. “Please?”

He sighed, then slid the plate with sweets back over to her. “If you get sick, it’ll be your own fault. And L’s.”

“Yes!” she cheered, taking the plate from him. “I’ll be careful, promise!”

“Uh huh,” he said, dry and unconvinced.

She started munching away on the sweets, scattering crumbs all over the table as well as her clothes. Mentally, O made a note to have someone clean the room later.

“Hey,” Danielle said, suddenly, lowering the piece of chocolate she’d been about to bite into. “O? Is there… any chance you guys might take me to Amity Park someday?”

Amity Park? Why?

Apparently he’d taken a moment too long to respond, because she quickly added, “Y’know, to meet my cousin?”

“I… I’ll talk to the others about it, see if we can manage something.” Right. Her cousin. Who they were hunting down for haunting Amity Park. Who might be another one of Masters’ victims, and who might be just as human as Danielle.

That Phantom.

Danielle grinned at him, bright and cheerful. “Thank you!”

O sighed, reaching over to ruffle her hair. “Don’t thank me just yet. I can’t promise anything, just that I’ll try.”

“So? I can thank you for trying, can’t I?” She patted his hand, then suddenly jumped out of her chair. “Oh! I’d better get going before K gets worried.”

“Go, then,” O said, waving her away. “And Danielle? Stay out of trouble.”

“Like K will let me get in trouble,” she answered, blowing a raspberry at him. “Bye, O!” she called back before rushing out of the room, running down one of the hallways.

He listened to her rapidly decreasing footsteps, then heaved a sigh.

Right. Time to look into Phantom and Amity Park once more.

#danny phantom #ectoberweek2020 #ectoberweek 2020 #dp fanfic #phanfic #danielle phantom #guys in white #dark writes #i can't believe i'm going to need to write a third part to this series just to fit in the meeting with Danny

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darks-ink · 3 years

Text

Darkness - Ectoberweek 2020

Yes I wrote this one because I just really wanted to write Vlad and Danny meeting in Antonym-verse, shh. Don’t say anything.

[first part]

Rating: Gen Warnings: - Genre: Supernatural Words: 2,147 Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Sequel

[AO3] [FFN]

---

“Well,” Danny said, humming thoughtfully.

“Well,” the other person agreed, his bright red eyes absurdly visible in the dark room they were in.

Since the man didn’t seem inclined to talk, Danny didn’t bother to, either. Instead he started peering around, blinking his own vivid green eyes. Even though his retained night vision usually did him little good, he was glad to have it, now. He highly doubted ordinary humans would’ve been able to see in the pitch black they were in.

Unfortunately, the room did not include any hints as to where he was, nor why he was here.

“You’re Danny, aren’t you?” the man suddenly asked, his red eyes narrowed. “The Fenton’s adopted son?”

Danny hummed. He wasn’t sure if he was legally adopted, the human world had so much complicated paperwork, but they certainly seemed intent on counting him as their son. “Yeah,” he finally agreed, figuring he should vocalize. “But I don’t think I know you. Do I?”

The man visibly considered that, weighing options against each other. Finally he offered a hand to Danny. “Vlad.”

“Well, you already know my name, obviously.” Danny shot him a grin as he took the hand and shook it. “But I’m Danny.”

“And you’re half-ghost,” Vlad said, a strange emphasis on the ‘half-ghost’. “Aren’t you?”

“Yeah, well, so are you,” Danny pointed out with a shrug. “I think that the more pressing questions are “where are we?” and “how did we get here?”, don’t you?”

Vlad hummed at that, expression somewhere between pleased and aggravated. Someone was digging for information, huh? “Yes, I suppose you’re right. You don’t know either, then?”

“Nope,” he agreed easily, taking his eyes off of Vlad to look around again. The room was empty and featureless, absolutely non-distinct in how bland it was. “But! I don’t think we’re in the Ghost Zone.”

“How can you tell?”

“Not nearly enough ectoplasm in the atmosphere.” Danny leaned over to knock on the wall. “And these are solid. Humans can go through walls in the Ghost Zone.”

“You seem to know a lot about the Ghost Zone.” Vlad’s eyes narrowed once more.

“Yeah, well.” Danny paused, reconsidered. Vlad didn’t seem like a ghost, not like him. Vlad seemed like a human. If Danny could become part human as a ghost, why couldn’t a human become part ghost? “I guess I spent a good bit of time there.”

“And your parents?” Vlad pressed, cold disinterest in his voice.

Danny snorted, dismissive. “You mean my biological parents? Dunno. Can’t remember them. That’s why the Fentons took me in, y’know? Now can we please focus on getting out of wherever this is before we continue the interrogation?”

“Yes, of course,” Vlad said, graciously. Like this was anything to be gracious about. Danny bet that if he’d been in full control of his powers he could’ve beaten the other half-ghost easy. But, alas. He was still fighting to control his core, never mind use his powers properly. He would have to settle for civilized human behavior.

“Good.” Danny turned away from Vlad, walking along the wall, one hand trailing over it. The whole thing felt solid in a uniquely human way. Definitely no ghosts involved here.

The door, when Danny reached it, was no less solid. He grabbed onto the rounded doorknob and jangled it, but there was no give. Definitely locked. “Yeah, we’re not getting out this way.”

Vlad, who still hadn’t moved, the ass, hummed thoughtfully. “I suppose we will have to use our powers to leave, then. I see no cameras of any sort, do you?”

“No,” Danny admitted, releasing the door and looking around just to be sure. “I suppose you’re right. Some intangibility and invisibility should get us out.”

“Yes, indeed.” Vlad crossed his arms, waiting for a moment before arching his brow at Danny. “Well, go on then.”

“Me?” He scoffed. “It was your idea. You go first.”

The man stared at him for a moment longer, his red eyes boring straight into Danny’s, before he sighed. “Fine, then. But only because I suspect I cannot hope to out-stubborn a teenager, let alone one raised by Jack Fenton.”

Danny quirked an eyebrow at that unexpected hostility. Sure, he’d only known Jack for a month or two, but still. He seemed like a good man.

Vlad’s transformation was similar to Danny’s own. A spark of light from the chest, from the core, forming into rings which passed over the body, and shifted it from one state to the other. Admittedly Vlad’s were bizarrely black, while still giving off light, but it didn’t really matter. Not now, at least.

No, Danny was far more interested in Vlad’s ghost form. He looked rather like a typical ghost, up to and including a thematic appearance. And what an appearance. Vlad had gone full vampire on his looks, with pale blue skin, empty red eyes, pointed ears and sharp fangs. His hair, black in ghost form, was swept up into gravity-defying points, and his clothing did not match the suit he’d been wearing at all.

Hell, the guy even wore a cape. What kinda person did that?

But… Vlad had gone and shifted to his ghost form, so Danny supposed he’d better follow suit. Mentally crossing his fingers that his powers would hold—his core was still settling back into proper stability after his accident—he called his core to the forefront of his existence. Light flashed as he, too, transformed into a ghost.

Vlad quirked an eyebrow at him, judgment heavy in the air. “A jumpsuit, boy, really? You are certainly a Fenton, aren’t you?”

“It’s Phantom, actually,” Danny correctly idly. “The jumpsuit is just a coincidence.” He lifted up from the floor, trying to judge how well his core was doing that day. “Now come on, I don’t have all day.”

“And you think I do?” Vlad scoffed, but started floating as well. “I will go first. I expect I will be more likely to recognize where we are than you.”

Well, he wasn’t wrong, but he didn’t have to be so haughty about it. “Sure, knock yourself out.” Danny swept out an arm in a wide arc to underline the statement, throwing in a sarcastic bow as well.

The gesture clearly wasn’t lost on Vlad, but he apparently made the choice to ignore it, flying towards one of the walls and flickering invisible before he hit it. With a roll of his eyes, Danny followed, focusing his senses on the feel of Vlad’s core so he could track the man while invisible.

Outside it was… also dark, admittedly, but not as hopelessly pitch-black as inside. A glance upwards confirmed that it was a regular dark—stars barely visible due to a nearby city, and the new moon that was supposed to come that night.

Vlad was still nearby, although invisible, so Danny let himself drift over. “Well,” he said when he was close enough, keeping his voice low since they were still invisible. “I don’t think we missed much time. The moon phase is correct.”

“Hm. And what do you know of where we are?” Vlad asked, a tone of curiosity layered under the smarminess of his voice. “Or have you spent all your time looking up?”

“I thought you were going to focus on our location?” Danny shook his head, realized Vlad couldn’t see, then decided to look around anyway.

And, huh.

“Well, at least we’re not far from home,” he said, feebly.

They were on the outskirts of Amity Park.

“You aren’t, no.” Vlad huffed, a sound of displeasure. “Unlike you, however, I live in Wisconsin.”

Cool. That meant very little to Danny. He was pretty sure that it was a state in the country he was living in, but where, or how far away it was? Absolutely meaningless.

“Okay, well… If you know the Fentons you can probably stay over?” He let his invisibility drop, since the strain on his core was rather unnecessary. The people of Amity Park didn’t look up enough to care about ghosts in the sky. “And if you didn’t… Well, they probably would let you stay over anyway. They’d love to talk more about your half-ghost-ness.”

“Joy,” Vlad muttered, and he could not possibly have put more distaste in the word. “And you do not care to stay invisible, then?”

“I can’t keep it up forever, dude.” Danny shrugged, letting his legs blend away into a tail as he drifted in the direction towards home. “Besides, I know Amity Park. It’s a safe place to fly without invisibility, trust me.”

Vlad scoffed, but dropped his invisibility as well. “Very well, then. Lead on.”

Danny nodded back, then shifted into proper flight, making sure to keep his speed fairly low. As annoying as it was to have to hold back, he knew he couldn’t make full use of his powers, not while his core was still recovering from the transition. One day, hopefully, he’d get back to his prior strength.

Still, that did make him wonder. It definitely seemed like Vlad was a human who’d become half-ghost. How did that work, compared to Danny himself? How strong was Vlad? Did he need to wait for his core to mature the usual way? That almost seemed easier to Danny than what he was going through. A slow progressive growth, rather than having all these powers and not having the power to use them.

And Vlad had conveniently skipped around explaining how he knew the Fentons, too. Honestly, he was kind of giving Danny the creeps. Something about his behavior was just… off. Weird.

Or maybe that was just how slimy he was, how haughty, how superior. Yugh.

Vlad didn’t try talking to him while they were flying to FentonWorks, although he did raise a questioning eyebrow at the neon sign when they landed behind it.

“The glow of the sign will hide our light,” Danny explained with a shrug. He’d been told by Jazz that the sign was an oddity among humans, but he didn’t think it was that weird. “We can enter the house through the door up here.”

“Why not phase inside?” Vlad asked, crossing his arms. “That way no one will see us.”

“True. But it’s also rude to go inside without announcing yourself.” Danny grinned at Vlad, displaying his own sharp teeth, before releasing his core to shift back to human form. The flashing light was barely visible beyond the glow of the sign. “Coming, Vlad?”

The other half-ghost sighed, making a motion like rolling his eyes—despite the fact that they were empty in his ghost form—but transformed back into human form as well. “I would’ve thought that using ghost powers meant we were no longer following human sensibilities, but it’s your house.”

Human sensibilities? What, has no one ever told this guy the rules of lairs in the Ghost Zone? Yikes. “You do realize that it’s a thing in the Ghost Zone too, right? Not randomly wandering into people’s lairs?”

“And how would you know?” Vlad sneered back, his eyes dark for the first time since Danny had met him. “You’re what, fourteen? And clearly new to being half-ghost, too.”

“Yeah!” Danny snapped, feeling his core kick up a notch. He was so tired of this asshole. “Yeah, I’m new to being half-ghost! Because I was a full ghost before this!”

He leaned in closer to Vlad, seeing the reflection of his glowing eyes in Vlad’s. “Just because you think you’re a big deal doesn’t mean you are. You don’t know shit, Vlad.”

Satisfied that he’d gotten his point across, Danny whirled around, pulling open the door and climbing down the stairs. After a moment, he heard Vlad follow.

“You are… a ghost turned half-human?” Vlad asked, quietly. “Not the reverse?”

“Not like you, no,” Danny confirmed, opening the door to the upper floor hallway. “But the Fentons will still want to talk to you.”

“No.” Vlad stopped before crossing the door. Danny, too, stopped, turning around to face Vlad again. “No, I don’t think that that’s going to happen.”

“What?”

“I thought I had found someone like me. For that, I was willing to put up with Jack Fenton, at least for the moment. But now?” Vlad scoffed, a derisive sound. “For a poor ghostly imitation? No, certainly not. Goodbye, Phantom.”

With that, Vlad whirled around, vanishing from sight. Danny could still track his core—apparently Vlad had shifted forms almost immediately—but he was, in fact, leaving.

“Well. That just happened,” Danny muttered to himself as Vlad left the premises entirely. “Wonder what the chances are that the Fentons know more than one guy named Vlad.”

He shrugged to himself, continuing down to the living room, where his family waited. Guess he had some more mysteries to solve now.

Like that room. What the fuck was up with that?

#danny phantom #ectoberweek2020 #ectoberweek 2020 #dp fanfic #phanfic #danny fenton #vlad masters #whoo i finished 6 out of 7 fics for this event!#they're all kinda short but hush that's good #i wanted to stop writing monstrous one-shots that never ended #dark writes

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darks-ink · 3 years

Text

Rewind - Ectoberweek 2020

Acknowledging canon episodes? In my fanfic? It’s more likely than you think. Also I’m experimenting by adding the links onto this post so lemme know whether this shows up in the tag or not.

Rating: Gen Warnings: - Genre: Hurt/Comfort Words: 2,834 Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Masters of All Time, Families of choice/Found family

[AO3] [FFN]

---

“What do you mean, you can’t?” Danny darted around Clockwork, refusing to let him turn away. “Clockwork!”

The ghost sighed, heavily and wearily, and looked down at Danny. “I cannot. It is that simple.”

“But that’s— that’s nonsense,” Danny insisted, gesturing wildly. “You’re the ghost of time! How can you not rewind this and fix it?!”

“I warned you, Daniel, that this would be a permanent change.” Clockwork blinked slowly, as if trying to convey some sort of emotion with his empty red eyes. “You did not heed my warning, or considered yourself above it. Now, you must live with the consequences.”

“But you’re—”

“Not all-powerful, no matter what you might think,” Clockwork cut in, narrowing his eyes. “You have altered the past, despite my warning not to. To travel back again would risk the stability of the timeline entirely. Would you rather see all of reality destroyed?”

Clockwork hummed before Danny could answer. “I would not, therefore I will not allow it to be so. The past has been set in stone, but the future is still malleable. Make it into something you can live with.”

“But…” Danny bit back his automatic response. There was no point. He’d tried fighting Clockwork before, and gotten his ass handed to him as a result. He sighed instead. “Can you at least take me back to Mom and Dad, then? The Portal looked like it blew up after I flew through it, and I don’t know where to find another.”

At that, Clockwork smiled. Or, Danny though it was a smile, at least. A small twitch of the ghost’s lips. “That, I can do.”

“Thanks, Clockwork.” Danny watched as the ghost swung his staff, a portal opening in its wake. “And… sorry, I guess.”

“Apology accepted.” Clockwork floated aside, waving a hand towards the portal. “Goodbye, Daniel.”

Danny nodded back, before flying through the portal. Welp. Time to face the music.

The portal spat him out in Amity Park, near his house. For a moment, Danny paused, considering the possibility that it brought him here because he consider Amity to be his home, no matter what. But then he realized that there was a car parked in front of the garage, one far too fancy for the neighborhood. His parents must’ve come this way, taking one of Vlad’s cars.

Thus satisfied, he flew down, phasing through the front door. No need to be secretive—both Jack and Maddie knew his secret already.

Still, he was surprised to find them both in the living room, apparently trying to clean up the place. Maddie saw him first, her body stilling. And how strange was it, that he found it comforting to see her here, in her cyan jumpsuit, with red goggles over her eyes? (That was weird, right? Danny felt like it should be weird.)

“Danny,” she said, quiet with surprise. “What are you doing here?”

At her words, Jack also looked up from where he was standing. He, too, looked almost exactly like his counterpart from Danny’s own timeline. Except with ecto-acne, of course.

“I, uh.” Danny shrugged, unsure. He felt thrown off by seeing his parents like this. It was almost right, but just slightly off. “Clockwork couldn’t undo it. Apparently the timeline is too unstable, or something. So I have to… stay in this world, I guess.”

“Oh, honey, I’m so sorry.” She straightened up from her crouch, walking closer to him. “I— It probably won’t be easy, but you can stay with us for as long as you need to. Right, Jack?”

“Of course!” his dad immediately responded, nodding vigorously. “We’re… figuring stuff out, of course. But it’s thanks to you that we reunited in the first place. And you’re our kid!” He grinned, wide and loving, in that typical Jack Fenton way. “Even if the way you got here is a little weird, you’re still our family!”

“I…” He landed, noiselessly. Hesitated for a moment. Then closed the space between him and Maddie, wrapping his arms around her. “Thanks. Both of you. I’m sorry.”

The enormous warm arms of Jack Fenton came up around them. “Don’t be, kiddo. You have nothing to be sorry for,” he rumbled, underlined with an almost audible buzz of his core. It emitted a palpable feeling of family.

“No, but, I…” Danny sighed, crushing his head against Maddie’s shoulder. “It’s my fault. All of this is! I tried going back in time to change the past, to make it so Vlad wouldn’t get ecto-acne so he couldn’t infect my friends with it, but instead you became half-ghost.”

Danny drew a shaky breath, trying to fight past the emotions welling in his throat. They needed to understand. “It’s all my fault! Without my meddling, none of this would’ve happened!”

“Sounds to me,” his mom began, her thin fingers gently combing through his hair, “like you tried to help your friends, Danny.” She clicked her tongue. “Maybe not in the best way possible, but the intention was good.”

“I can’t imagine that Vlad would’ve dealt with being half-ghost much better than I,” Jack added, faint laughter in his voice. “Never mind the ecto-acne. But, of course! That’s how you recognized it!”

“Yeah, um.” Danny drew back from the hug a little. “I can… tell you guys, I guess? About my timeline. The differences, at least.”

“That’d be nice,” Maddie agreed, as Jack’s arms released them. She looked around, and Danny could read the reluctance in her body language, even despite the goggles. “We might have to clear some more stuff before we have the space to sit.”

“We could always sit on the floor?” Jack suggested, shrugging at her look. “Or Danny and I can float as ghosts.”

“Right.” Maddie shook her head, wandering over to the single chair not covered in debris and trash and reaching up to her hood. “If that works for you two, that might be the most convenient.” She paused, frowning at Danny, hood pulled off but still in hand. “But… if Vlad was the one who became half-ghost in your timeline, why are you half-ghost as well, Danny?”

“I, uh.” He shrugged, lifting his feet off of the ground to sit in mid-air. “Became half-ghost in an accident of my own.”

The frown he received from both parents very clearly asked for him to elaborate, so he did. “Okay, so. The point of divergence is the accident in college, obviously. In my timeline, Vlad got hit by the explosion, not Jack, so he becomes half-ghost and stuff. You two, Jack and Maddie, get together, especially since Vlad was cutting contact. You decide to become ghost researchers together and move to Amity Park.”

He paused to gesture to the house around them. “Specifically, you move here, to this specific house. You make it your place of business as well, called FentonWorks. Big neon sign on the front of the building, the basement downstairs becomes a lab, and at some point you two built the Ops Center at the top, which can also be used for inventing stuff. I’m… obviously not very informed of the details, since I was the second kid and you two talked very little about the past. Only,” here he made a face, “ghosts. Everything was always about ghosts.

“Anyway,” he continued, after a short pause to take a breath. “You two have Jazz first, and then me two years later. At some point after that, you start working on a new Portal, full scale, down in the lab. It takes forever to build, because you’re trying to be careful about it, I guess? But you finish it, eventually, when Jazz is sixteen and I fourteen.”

Maddie narrowed her eyes, darting them over his body. The question is clear as day: isn’t he basically fourteen?

“So,” Danny trumped on, ignoring the silent question, “After years of work, their Portal was finally finished! The ultimate proof that ghosts were real! And then it didn’t turn on.”

“It didn’t?” Jack gasped, clearly startled. Danny realized that, somehow, he’d missed the man shifting into his ghost form. “But—”

“It didn’t,” Danny interrupted, holding up a hand. “Because apparently, someone had built a secondary power switch inside the Portal, and they had forgotten to turn it on. So when they plugged in the power, the Portal didn’t turn on.”

There was clear calculation in the eyes of both of his parents, now. Danny continued his explanation before they could figure it out. Needed to tell his story to his parents, for once. He didn’t think he would ever get a chance to tell his actual parents, after all.

“Later that day, after Jazz convinced you two to take a break, my friends talked me into checking out the Portal. Just the three of us, since Tucker was interested in technology and Sam was interested in all things goth and occult.” He shrugged, almost fatalistically. “Sam suggested I take a closer look, and I did. Only, I didn’t realize that the power was still plugged in, so when I accidentally hit the power switch inside…”

“Oh!” Maddie gasped. “Oh, how terrible!”

“That must’ve hurt like hell,” Jack agreed, a painful grimace on his face. It looked strange, the genuine emotional expression with the blue skin, the pointed fangs poking out of his mouth. “Your parents must’ve felt awful, to know that they put their kid in such danger!”

“Well…” Danny made a face. “They kinda… didn’t know? They were both avid ghost hunters, both full of hate towards ghosts. I considered telling them, at first, but then they saw their first ghosts and…” Danny sighed. “I guess I was just scared that I’d be just a ghost to them. That they wouldn’t believe me.”

“That’s… That’s awful.” Jack floated over to nudge Danny. “Kiddo, if your dad was anything like me, I promise you, he would’ve cared.”

“I know.” Danny shook his head dismissively. “I know. That wasn’t why I was worried. I was afraid that they wouldn’t believe that I was me, that I was their son. That they would think that I had hurt or replaced their own kid.”

Maddie touched his shoulder, and Danny jerked, surprised. When had she stood up? Walked over? “Well… At least it is of no concern anymore, right? You’re here now, with us, and we believe you.”

It felt like something had crawled into his gut and died. “Yeah,” he said, with terribly faked enthusiasm. “Yeah, right.”

“It’s not much of a comfort, is it?” Maddie made a face. “I’m sorry. I guess I have very little parenting experience, compared to your actual mother.”

“Honestly?” He snorted. “It makes very little difference. Like I said, she and Dad spent most of the time in the lab, or otherwise occupied with ghost research.”

Maddie clicked her tongue, distaste clear on her face. “Well, isn’t that a waste. They have such a lovely son, and they don’t even enjoy his presence?”

“Well, y’know.” Danny shrugged, trying to ignore the pleased whirring of his core. “They try, now, but with all the ghosts we’re all kinda distracted. Them with trying to catch some for their research, and I with trying to protect the townspeople from the ghosts.”

Jack’s expression visibly brightened—as did the glow around his body. “You’re a ghost hunter! A ghost-fighting superhero! Just like I tried to be!”

“Uh.” Danny felt his brain skip over, then remembered. Somewhere in the blathering when he first arrived, Jack had mentioned that he’d tried using his powers for good. “Yeah, I guess so. But I had a little more success with it.” He grinned sheepishly.

“We should team up!” Jack exclaimed, wrapping an arm around Danny’s shoulders. “The two of us, and Maddie, if she wants to! We’d be a fantastic team!”

Danny laughed, a little uncertain. “Well, maybe. But we’ll need a Thermos to catch the ghosts, and a Portal to dump them back into the Ghost Zone, first. Those were kind of my major tools in managing. And Sam and Tucker, of course.”

“Oh?” Maddie asked, perking up. “Sam and Tucker? You mentioned them before, I think. Are those your friends?”

“Yeah, they… I guess they don’t know me, here.” He sighed, feeling himself drift down closer to the floor, away from his dad’s arm. “They… We were best friends, to the absolute end. Even after the stuff in the lab, the half-ghost stuff, the constant attacking ghosts and hunting them down, they stuck by my side.”

“I’m sorry, kiddo.” Jack landed as well, although unlike Danny, he landed on his feet. “But they’ll be around, right? It might not be the same, but they’re not gone.”

“Might as well be,” Danny huffed. He shook his head. “It won’t be the same. Without the years of shared experiences…”

Maddie and Jack shared a look—not quite as conversational as the ones his parents shared, but a good enough substitute—before apparently deciding to change the topic altogether.

“Why don’t we see if we can clear some rooms upstairs?” Maddie asked, clapping her hands together. “We’ll need at least two rooms clear enough for use, preferably three.”

“Three?” Danny echoed, frowning at them. “You’re not sharing?”

“We haven’t seen each other in years, Danny,” she pointed out, getting up from the chair. “We’re still reconnecting, never mind actually getting together.”

“Right,” he agreed, following her to the stairs. “But you are moving in?”

“Friends can share a house,” Jack pointed out, shifting back to his human form in a flash of white light, and reminding Danny to do the same. “And this way she won’t have to worry about getting kicked out of Vlad’s mansion while all the paperwork and stuff is happening.”

“And I never liked the mansion much,” Maddie admitted with a wry smile. “I liked the Vlad I knew, way back when, but over time it became clear that that wasn’t the real Vlad. I’d been thinking about divorcing him for longer, but… I don’t know. There was no one else I knew, nowhere I could go.”

“Not even to Aunt Alicia? I mean, she’s divorced as well, isn’t she?”

“I… didn’t realize she had married in the first place.” Maddie’s steps faltered for a moment before she continued up the stairs. “I guess I was afraid that she would judge me for marrying Vlad in the first place. I don’t know… It seems rather illogical, now, but I figured I could put up with Vlad well enough. And with his money I could afford my research, even if I had to do it behind his back.”

They stopped in the hallway upstairs, looking around. Danny resisted the urge to grimace. Somehow upstairs was even more of a mess than downstairs had been.

“Which room was yours, in your timeline?” Jack asked, sidling up to Danny.

“Uh.” He carefully stepped past the mess, stopping in front of his door. Or the door that belonged to the room that was his, in his own timeline. “This one. And Jazz had that one,” he pointed over to the room that his sister used. “The one next to mine was a guest room.”

Jack nodded. “Right, that makes sense! You can take that room if you want, Danny. Mads, you can take the other room if you want. The one next to here I used as a lab for a while, so cleaning…”

“Won’t be easy, got it.” She nodded as well. “I’ll take the other one. Let’s start with clearing out this one, shall we?”

“Let’s.” Danny pushed open the door, bracing himself mentally for the whiplash of seeing his room without it being his room.

As a result, he was almost toppled over by the cat that rushed past his legs.

“Jasmine!” Jack cheered, crouching down to pick up the fluffy white thing. “Is this where you’ve been hiding, honey?”

“Well,” Danny said, then stopped. He had no clue what to say. He didn’t even know what he thought of this.

“Well,” he tried again. “At least now I know who picked the name for Jazz, and who picked mine.”

Maddie snorted, gently pushing him into the room. “Personally, I think Danny is a great name, honey.”

“Thanks,” he retorted, eyes darting over the room. It was dark—the curtains were closed despite the time of day—but his night vision was pretty solid. “It’s short for Daniel.”

“And Jazz for Jasmine, then? That’s cute.” She ruffled his hair as she stepped past him, drawing open the curtains. “Hm. we certainly have our work cut out for us.”

“Yeah,” Danny agreed, looking at the piles of he-didn’t-know-what lying around. There was a bed buried in one of the piles, which suggested it might’ve been a guest room at some point. Or used by someone else, before Jack moved in. “And we still need to clear yours, too.”

“Better get working then,” Maddie decided, shaking her head as she crouched down. “Things won’t get better on their own, after all.”

#danny phantom #ectoberweek2020 #ectoberweek 2020 #dp fanfic #phanfic #phic #danny fenton #jack fenton #maddie fenton #dark writes

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darks-ink · 3 years

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Cloak - Ectoberweek 2020

The danger of just starting a story blindly and assuming you’ll come up with the rest along the way is that sometimes you just... don’t come up with the rest. But! I think this stands well enough on its own. Just a short little ficlet.

Rating: Gen Warnings: - Genre: Friendship Words: 703 Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Sequel

[AO3] [FFN]

---

Danny hummed, eyes roving over the cloaked ghost in front of him. Black cloth draped all over her, swathing her body loosely, and leaving only the white of her gloves and boots uncovered. Even the cyan vines of her suit were hidden in its folds.

“I think it looks good,” he said, underlining the statement with a pleased emotion through their link.

“I think you’re an idiot,” Sam retorted, rolling her eyes. She reached up with one hand, grabbing the hood connected to the cloak and pulling it over her head.

Drawn so low, it hid almost her entire face in darkness, leaving only the bright cyan of her eyes visible.

“I don’t know, he’s got a point.” Cautious optimism from Tucker’s side of the link. “It’s very spooky.”

“Besides,” Danny added via the link, “We weren’t going as ourselves anyway, were we? This is just the sort of costume one might expect from a bunch of ghosts, yeah?”

“Ugh,” Sam answered aloud. Then, telepathically, “If this goes to hell, I’m blaming you.”

“Just like we blamed Tucker for the Accident?” Danny snorted, dry amusement in the link from all sides.

“Now you’re just being a jerk for no reason.” Tucker jostled him. “And that after I supported you in this.”

“Love you, Tuck.” Danny winked at him, grinning at the outpouring of fondness from Tucker.

“Alright, alright, let’s stay focused.” Light flashed as Sam returned to her human form, the cloak still draped all over her. “Do we have enough for everyone?”

“Of course we do.” Tucker clicked his tongue, disappointment in the link. “Who do you take us for, Sam? Amateurs?”

“I’m taking you for the idiot you are, Tucker.” She scoffed, but the amusement in the link was undeniable. “Any props?”

“Nah.” Danny shrugged, then continued in the privacy of their link, “We thought it would make us too recognizable if we bought any. Too much risk of getting linked back.”

“He did consider going into the Ghost Zone to find some stuff to use, but I thought that that was a terrible idea,” Tucker added on. “We’ve barely been in there. No point in risking it for something this stupid, yeah?”

Sam rolled her eyes at Danny, stabbing him with feelings of exactly how stupid she found him. “Yeah. Good job on stopping that moron, Tucker.”

“I’m feeling very bullied right now,” Danny informed the two of them, ignoring the laughter over the link.

“You deserve it,” Sam told him, grabbing onto the cloak and phasing it off. “There, now it won’t mess up my hair when I try to take it off.”

“Casual usage of ghost powers for the win!” Tucker cheered over the link, holding out his fist for a fist bump.

Sam rolled her eyes but did, in fact, fist bump Tucker.

“We’re a mess.” Danny sighed, shaking his head morosely. “The Halloween party is going to be the death of us.”

“Well, we all knew it was coming,” Tucker decided with a shrug, wry amusement in the link. “Now we’ve all been responsible for it.”

And, honestly? Danny couldn’t deny that. Between Sam, who had pushed him into investigating the Portal, and Tucker, who had jinxed them, it was only Danny who hadn’t gotten them killed yet.

Hm. He supposed he was the one who let them into the lab in the first place.

Eh. Didn’t matter.

---

“We are so dead,” Tucker grumbled across the link, tugging the hood of his cloak down lower.

“Technically we already were, since we’re ghosts,” Danny pointed out. “Also, I thought you were on my side with this?”

“Someone changed his mind.” Sam chuckled across the link, her electric blue eyes narrowing in mirth. “Seriously though, Tucker, it’ll be fine. We’re all in this together.”

“That has literally never kept us safe,” Tucker pointed out, narrowing his own golden eyes. “I’m pretty sure it has, in fact, endangered us. Remember that? Remember us being together when Danny went to check out the Portal?”

Danny sighed, letting his exasperation flood the link. “Guys, really? We’re all cloaked up, we’re right outside the school. We’re not backing out now.”

“No, we’re not,” Sam confirmed, determination spreading through the link. “Let’s go!”

#danny phantom #ectoberweek2020 #ectoberweek 2020 #dark writes

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darks-ink · 3 years

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Fog - Ectoberweek 2020

Another year, another fic writing anniversary. Might be a little rough because I am rusty, yikes.

Rating: Gen Warnings: - Genre: Supernatural Words: 3,176 Relationships: - Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Seer Valerie Gray, Supernatural elements, Developing friendships

[AO3] [FFN]

---

The first time Valerie had asked her dad why it was always so foggy in Amity Park, he’d laughed kindly, and explained to her how fog worked. She had accepted the explanation, worked through it a while—as children were wont to do—and then realized it didn’t actually explain anything.

The second time she asked, he frowned at her, telling her it wasn’t foggy at all. She had looked at the green mist seeping from between the tiles of the sidewalk, pouring out of the dirt between the roots of trees and grass, and resolved not to ask again.

Of course, that didn’t stop her from asking Star. Star, after all, was her best friend, and surely she would understand what Valerie meant. Right?

But Star hadn’t understood either. Claimed that she didn’t see the fog that seemed impossible to miss. And worse still, Paulina overheard. Overheard, and spread rumors all around the school. Before Valerie knew, everyone in the school thought she was crazy, that she saw things that weren’t real.

Valerie had looked at the coalescing mist, watched it thicken and coil into the shape of a cat, and decided that she would just have to figure it out herself.

And, honestly? She had. It wasn’t perfect, of course, but she thought she had done fairly well for herself. Not that she could ever tell anyone what she knew, what she could see. She just had to take one look at the Fentons, at how far their children had been cast out for the crime of being related to people so sure of the existence of ghosts.

She herself had clawed her back way to mildly reputable, over time. Valerie Gray had no plans to go back to that pit of nonexistence.

So, yes. She could see ghosts. Or, maybe not ghosts proper. Spirits seemed to be a closer description. The natural presence of ectoplasm in the very atmosphere of Amity Park, seeping into their reality from another dimension.

Loathe as she was to say it, she was pretty sure the Fentons were at least somewhat right about ghosts. They lived primarily in a different dimension, sustained by its ectoplasm. In places where the boundary between their own dimension and the so-called Ghost Zone grew thin, this ectoplasm could seep through.

It was the ectoplasm in the air which supported lingering spirits, however briefly. Never long enough for them to develop into a proper ghost—which apparently could be seen by anyone—but enough for Valerie to see them. The recently diseased remained incorporeal, soft and foggy like the green mist they were made out of.

It was… Well, not okay, certainly, but… normal? For her, at least. There was no danger to it, not really. The lingering spirits were short-lived, couldn’t touch, and didn’t make sounds. Often, they didn’t even realize she could see them. And why would they, when no one else could?

So by age fourteen, in her first year of high school, Valerie had quite settled into this pattern of existence. Yes, she could see ghosts, and no, she didn’t plan on doing anything with that skill. What could she do with it? Become an ecto-scientist like the Fentons, dismissed for the rest of her life? Please. No, she was perfectly satisfied with living an ordinary life, without ever acknowledging her ability to see ghosts and spirits.

Until, one perfectly ordinary day, not too long after the school year had started… Danny Fenton changed.

Now, Valerie didn’t know him all that well. She had fought too hard to become a respectable kid to throw it away on outcasts like him, pity or no. And pity him, she did, because she knew what it felt like. To be pushed away just because they were different.

But, unlike her, Danny Fenton had friends. He might’ve wanted better, but he wasn’t alone. He would make do. It wasn’t her problem, so she didn’t bother with him.

Seeing him walk into Lancer’s classroom absolutely wreathed in ecto-green smoke made her reconsider her previous conclusion. Because that? That wasn’t normal. She had, quite frankly, never seen anything like that before.

It took considerable effort to keep her eyes off of Fenton. The fog continued to pour out of him, thicker than most spirits could manage. Something must’ve happened at his home, with his parents’ inventions. Something which caused him to emit ectoplasm in such high amounts.

Well, maybe it was just his body expelling it? That would explain it, yeah? It would stop eventually, once all ectoplasm was gone, and then everything would be fine again.

Besides, it didn’t seem like he injured or dying or whatever else could cause it. So. Nothing to worry about.

Except it didn’t go away. Not entirely. Over time, the fog seemed to… change. No longer did it seep out of Danny like it poured out of the ground, but now it seemed to coil around him. Like it had settled in his flesh, a perfect mimic of his body except in the soft mist of ectoplasm. It was almost like the few times she had seen spirits pass through physical objects, but not… not quite.

Quietly, Valerie resolved to continue to ignore it. It wasn’t her problem. Just because she could see spirits and ectoplasm and what-not didn’t mean she had to be responsible for it, did it? Danny’s own parents were ghost experts. If something was wrong with him, surely they would know?

So she turned a blind eye, unwilling to get involved with any kind of ghostly business.

The first ghost she saw, therefore, wasn’t in real life. It was on the television.

Of course, no one seemed to realize it was a ghost. A massive lumbering heap of flesh—meat products, apparently—which had lumbered around near the school briefly before disappearing. All kinds of explanations popped up, but none quite rung true—and none could deny the shaky video footage.

Shaky video footage, on which Valerie could clearly see the dense green fog in the meat, binding it together with some kind of ectoplasmic force.

The footage didn’t last long enough to see the thing disappear, but witnesses said that it suddenly fell apart, showering the parking lot with seemingly mundane meat products. The clean-up had been a huge mess, or so they said.

It left Valerie feeling… off-balance. For years, she’d learned about her ability, figured out what was what. It seemed stable, certain. There were limits, things that were always the same. Ectoplasm, and spirits. And now, for the second time within a month, she saw something she didn’t know.

So she gritted her teeth, and decided to check out the leftovers of… whatever it was that had lumbered around her school.

Looking back, she wasn’t sure why she had expected to learn anything useful from the leftover meat. A little ectoplasm clung to it still, when she found some that the clean-up had missed, but it was rapidly evaporating away. Nothing worth noting.

The whole event became a turning point, anyway. Within weeks, ghosts became an undeniable reality in Amity Park.

If nothing else, it at least gave her an excuse to learn more about her ability. Ghosts didn’t look much like spirits, she found out. Their bodies were made out of dense ectoplasm, clearly corporeal, and perfectly visible to everyone. They did, however, emit ectoplasmic mist—apparently they just constantly leaked the stuff when they weren’t in the Zone.

Which led her back to Danny Fenton. The way he smoked was certainly similar to how proper ghosts emitted ectoplasm, but it wasn’t quite the same. Nor was it quite the same as when ghosts overshadowed humans, or when ghosts possessed or otherwise controlled objects.

No, Danny Fenton remained unique in his condition. And honestly? It kind of pissed Valerie off. Yes, the introduction of proper ghosts to Amity Park had forced her to learn more about her ability, and yes, she still refused to acknowledge its existence to anyone but herself. But she still wanted to know, to understand.

And Valerie Gray is no coward. She wanted to know, so she would know, damn it all. Curiosity might’ve killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back, no? And she’d spent several months trying to satisfy this bit of curiosity. Now all she had to do was corner Danny Fenton and demand the truth from him.

---

Okay, so cornering Fenton was easier said than done, Valerie discovered. He was, apparently, incredibly slippery. Multiple times, she had followed him into a dead end, just to find no one else present. At this point, she was fairly certain that his ghostly infection had come with ghost powers.

Which would just figure, wouldn’t it? Count on the universe to give her the ability to see ectoplasm constantly, while someone like Fenton gets something cool like intangibility? And now that she had a running theory, she needed actual confirmation, too!

She rattled her fingers on the desk she was sitting behind, staring at Lancer but not taking in any of the words he was saying. Well, shit. She’d totally zoned out in the middle of class. That would probably come back to bite her in the ass.

A few seats closer to the front, Fenton jerked in his seat, blowing out a denser cloud of foggy ectoplasm. Usually this was promptly followed by him trying to excuse himself out of class. And, well. That was a good opportunity, wasn’t it?

Quickly, faster than Danny could, she put up her hand. Lancer paused, frowning, but called on her anyway.

“Can I go to the toilet?”

Lancer heaved a weary sigh but nodded nonetheless, and Valerie sped out of the classroom, steadily ignoring Danny’s frustrated look. She waited outside the classroom, not wanting anyone to see her lingering but not willing to risk missing Danny altogether.

Luckily, she didn’t have to wait long. Within minutes, Danny Fenton stormed through the classroom door, clearly in a rush.

Valerie stuck out her leg, intending to trip him up, or at least slow him down.

Instead, Fenton’s leg became soft and fuzzy in an awfully familiar way, and went straight through hers.

“Uh,” he said, immediately pausing to stare at her. “You didn’t see that.”

She snorted, despite herself. “It was hard to miss, Fenton.”

“Yeah, well…” He paused, seemingly lost for words. “Forget you saw it?”

“Definitely not.” She pushed away from the wall, stepping closer to him. “I wanted to talk to you about that, anyway.”

Danny swallowed, eyes darting side to side. “About what, exactly?”

“Something’s up with you.” She looked around the hallway as well, making sure to keep him in her peripherals. “But we can talk somewhere a little more desolate, if you want.”

“I kind of… need to get going?” he tried, feebly. “Seriously, Valerie, I can’t…”

He definitely looked like he might start running any minute. Well, no time for the subtle approach then. Just as well, she supposed. She wasn’t very good at subtle. “I can see ectoplasm.”

Danny… stopped. Froze in his tracks. “I’m-- what? Sorry, what?”

“I can see ectoplasm,” she repeated, turning around to face him properly. “And spirits, when they’re around. I would’ve said ghosts, but everyone can see ghosts, now that they’re actually around.”

“But isn’t ectoplasm…” he gestured vaguely, catching up to her again. “Kind of everywhere?”

“It’s constantly seeping out of the ground, yeah.” She grinned. “And ghosts evaporate the stuff. So do you, but it’s not quite the same. And you kept disappearing after I cornered you into dead ends, so I figured it was something ghost-related.”

He made a face. “I’m bad at this. I also seriously need to get going, Val, I wasn’t kidding about that.”

“What, because you put out a burst of extra ectoplasm?” She frowned at him. “You gonna pass out because you expelled too much, or something?”

“You saw that? Ugh.” He shook his head, visibly refocusing. “Anyway, no. That was my ghost sense, which tells me that there’s a ghost nearby. Which is probably gonna attack any minute now, so…”

“So?” she repeated, raising an eyebrow. “Call your parents, or whatever you wanted to do. I finally got my opportunity to get these questions answered, I’m not letting you slip away that easy.”

Fenton shot her a look that was caught somewhere between exhausted and frustrated. “If anything happens, I’m blaming you.”

“What, were you gonna beat it up?” She snorted, then sobered at his blank look. “Oh, well. Don’t let me stop you, I’d love to see that.”

“Shut up.” He stopped next to his locker, turning away from her to unlock it. “What did you want, anyway?”

“To satisfy my curiosity.” She shrugged at the incredulous look he threw at her. “Is that so hard to believe? I’ve lived with this ability for years, I knew every aspect of it. Even now with the ghosts around, I’ve figured out almost all the bits. Your ectoplasmic contamination is the only thing that I don’t understand.”

“And you were hoping I would explain?” His locker clicked open, and Danny reached inside to take out a shiny thermos, styled with ecto-green like every other Fenton product. “There’s nothing, Valerie. Don’t worry about it.”

She scoffed. “I’m not worried, I’m curious. What’s the harm in telling me, anyway? I already know you can go intangible like a ghost, and it’s not like I’ll tell.”

“Sure you won’t.” He rolled his eyes, closing his locker once more. Apparently the thermos was all he wanted from it. “And I’m supposed to just, what, rely on your ability and desire to keep a secret?”

“Please. Last time I tried to tell anyone about my own abilities, I was kicked down to the bottom of the popularity ladder. I have no plans to go back.” Her eyes trailed away from him, catching on the increase of ectoplasm on the other end of the hallway. “The only thing that’ll happen if I try to tell anyone is that they’ll think I’m crazy. Again.”

“Yeah, or my parents hear and think I’m a ghost again.” He looked up from the thermos in his hands, frowning at her. “What’re you looking at?”

The ectoplasm pulled together, coalescing into something dense enough to be a ghost, even if it lacked the color. It clearly wasn’t a spirit, not nearly life-like enough for it, despite it’s vaguely humanoid shape.

“You ever seen a ghost look like a bulking robot before?” she asked, faux casual, turning to look at Fenton. “Big plane-like wings, some kinda mohawk?”

“Shit,” he muttered, peering into the direction where the ghost was. “You can really see him?”

“Well, I was trying not to let him know that, because he doesn’t look very nice.” She rolled her eyes. “You know him, then?”

“Skulker.” Danny shook his head, hands wringing around the thermos. “Fuck, and there’s no way I can catch him unaware with the Thermos. I’ll have to fight him.”

“What, you?” She quirked an eyebrow at him. “Well, don’t let me stop you, I guess.”

Danny straightened up properly. “Don’t tell anyone about this.” Then he paused, looked down at the thermos in his hands, and shoved it at her. “Use this when he gets distracted.”

“Uh, okay?” she replied, taking the thing in her hands. It didn’t seem like a weapon to her, but it would be just like Jack Fenton to disguise a ghost hunting weapon as a thermos, of all things. “What do you plan on doing?”

“Not dying, hopefully,” Danny grumbled, and then he— changed. The ectoplasm that steamed off of him suddenly thickened, until Danny was hidden in dense fog. Light flashed within it, like a thunderstorm.

When the ectoplasm reduced back to normal amounts, a ghost stood where Danny had been.

“Shit,” he muttered, combing a hand through his unnaturally white hair, “I still can’t see him.”

“You’re an idiot.” She sighed, turning to look back at the hulking mohawk ghost. “At the end of the hallway, can’t miss him.”

“Thanks, Val.” The ghost-that-had-been-Danny kicked off of the ground, zipping towards the first one.

What had the world come to?

Lucky for her, she didn’t need to play seeing-eye person much longer, because the robot ghost dropped his invisibility when Danny came close enough.

Instead she stood there, watching the two ghosts fight. With a thermos-shaped Fenton invention of unknown purpose in her hands. Great.

It wasn’t even a good fight. The robot ghost relied almost entirely on guns which shot ectoplasm-based lasers, while Danny kept trying to get in close and punch the thing. Not even some kind of martial arts, no, just teenage-level brawling. Ugh.

He was flung into the wall next to her, slumping down with a groan. She clicked her tongue at him. “Not very impressive.”

“Thanks,” he grumbled back, pushing himself to his feet. His voice, even through the warbling echo that all ghosts possessed, was clearly frustrated. “Could you do better?”

“Well, I am a trained black belt,” she pointed out, before holding out the thermos. “What does this do, anyway?”

“Catches ghosts.” He rose into the air, but his flight was shaky. “Please don’t point it at me.”

“Well, duh.” She stepped back, allowing him a straight shot at the robot ghost. “Go distract him, will you?”

“Since when are you in charge?” Danny grumbled, but he flew off anyway, darting around the other ghost and drawing him back in her direction.

Valerie shook her head, wondering vaguely how she’d gotten into this situation. How many years had she sworn not to get involved into anything related to her ability to see ghosts? And now here she was.

“Here, Skulker Skulker Skulker,” Danny jeered, pitching his voice like he was calling to a runaway dog. “Here, Skulkie Skulkie Skulkie!”

The other ghost snarled, lunging forward at Danny.

Valerie stepped forward, uncapping the thermos in the same movement, and pressed it against the side of the ghost. It swore, but was unable to escape the coiling vortex of the device, sucked into it in the blink of an eye.

“Huh.” She blinked, automatically capping the Thermos again. “That worked better than expected.”

“Yeah, sometimes my parents can get it right.” Danny touched down next to her, soundlessly. “Uh. Thanks, I guess.”

Again, the ectoplasm pouring off of him thickened, clouding him for a brief moment as light flashed. When it fogged away, it left a regular looking Danny Fenton.

Valerie glanced down to make sure the device was locked, then turned to Danny. “You can have it back in return for more answers.”

He snorted, shaking his head with a wry smile on his face. “Should’ve figured as much. Guess I can’t get out of it, huh?”

“What’s the point in hiding if you’ve already shown me… whatever that was supposed to be?”

“Eh, fair point.” He shrugged, almost fatalistically. “Let’s get early lunch and I’ll tell you whatever you want to know, deal?”

She considered him for a moment. “Deal.”

#danny phantom #ectoberweek2020 #dp fanfic #phanfic #valerie gray #danny fenton #dark writes

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darks-ink · 3 years

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Pulse - Ectoberweek 2020

Another day, another AU from my ideas file. Warning for general Accident-related spookiness. Also look it’s the fic where I let my followers decide if I was gonna write Tucker POV or Sam POV.

Rating: Gen Warnings: - Genre: Friendship Words: 2,395 Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Ghosts

[AO3] [FFN]

---

“So,” Tucker said, before falling silent. Hoped to prompt one of the others into speaking up instead.

“So,” Danny echoed. “What happened?”

“Why are you asking us?” Tucker flailed upright so he could look at Danny. “You’re the one who went into the Portal!”

“Well, yeah, but—” He gestured vaguely. “You two are acting weird. What happened after the Portal turned on?”

“What, you don’t remember?” Sam leaned forward, frowning at Danny.

Danny scoffed. “Obviously not.”

How could he not remember? That he’d come out of the Portal looking like he’d died, like the perfect image of a ghost? “Dude, you’re joking, right? How could you not have noticed?”

“Noticed what? Come on, just tell me!”

“He really doesn’t remember.” Sam reached over to tug on Tucker’s leg. “Tuck, what if it’s like a possession thing?”

“It’s not a possession thing,” Tucker dismissed immediately. “What kinda possession would change the host into a ghost as well. It’s just…” He trailed off.

Danny made a face. “I don’t think I like where this is heading. What do you guys mean, a possession thing? What happened, seriously?”

Honestly, Tucker didn’t think he could explain. And based on the look Sam was throwing him, neither could she. Still, he cleared his throat and tried. “Well, it was just… weird, y’know? When you came out of the Portal. You weren’t really yourself.”

“Your colors were all weird,” Sam continued at Danny’s quirked eyebrow. “Your suit had gone black with white gloves, your hair was crazy pale, and your eyes had gone green. And,” she flapped her hand, “there was also the fact that you glowed.”

“I… glowed?” Danny repeated, slowly and questioningly. “What, like a ghost?”

“Exactly like a ghost,” Tucker confirmed, crossing his arms and staring at Danny. He looked just like he always did. Warm and fleshy and not at all like what they’d seen just before. “And the way you were looking at us, you’d think that you didn’t recognize us. Either of us.”

“Weird.” Danny frowned, one hand closing around the wrist of the other. Almost like a nervous gesture, except one that Danny had never shown before. “I don’t… remember any of that. But clearly it went away. Right?”

“Yeah, no, exactly.” Tucker nodded quickly, uncrossing his arms so he could mimic an explosion. “There was a flash of light and then suddenly, there you were again. Back to normal.”

Danny hummed. “I… think I remember the flash of light? Maybe. But I thought it was the after-effects of the Portal.”

“Who knows, maybe it was.” Tucker shrugged, mentally crossing his fingers and hoping to god it was. “A one-off caused by the ectoplasmic exposure, or whatever.”

“We’ll need to keep an eye on it anyway,” Sam pointed out, shifting her eyes from Tucker back to Danny. “It might not happen again, but we don’t know what that was, let alone what kind of effects it might’ve had.”

“Right.” Danny nodded, once, strongly. “You two are here for the rest of the weekend anyway. We’ll see after that.”

---

The rest of the day passed by normally, and briefly, Tucker entertained the hope that it really had been a one-off. But during the night he woke to a bright flash of light, and lo and behold, there was the ghostly version of Danny again.

“Man, really,” he grumbled, rubbing the heel of his hand over his eyes to try and get the grit out. “You’re bright as hell, dude, couldn’t you have done this during the day?”

Danny’s glow brightened in response, his vivid green eyes narrowing in a frown. “I’m sorry?”

“Sure don’t sound very sorry.” And he didn’t. Mostly, he just sounded very confused. “Go wake up Sam, will you? If I’m suffering we all are.”

A slow, almost deliberate blink was his response, before Danny turned away to look at Sam. He shifted closer, his gaze wandering back to Tucker. Then, still watching Tucker, Danny stretched out his leg and kicked Sam in the shoulder.

Sam grunted, hand swatting at Danny’s leg. “I will kill you.”

“Um,” Danny said, pulling his leg back towards himself. And then continued pulling himself away from Sam, actually lifting off of his bed entirely, until he floated a foot or so above it.

“If you fall I’m not gonna catch you, dude,” Tucker told him, even though he probably would try to catch him, if Danny had gone high enough that he might hurt himself. Still, he didn’t need to know that. “Do you even know what you’re doing?”

“Yeah?” Danny turned to frown at him again. “Yeah, definitely.” He sounded plenty convinced, too.

Didn’t sound nearly as confident when Sam grabbed his arm suddenly, lunging up from the floor where she had been lying. Danny yelped, tugging himself free with a bout of something which Tucker was sure was ghostly intangibility.

“Alright, that’s cheating,” Sam claimed, opening her hand, still holding it out in Danny’s direction. “Give me your hand.”

“Why?” he asked her, slowly moving the hand back in her direction, eyes narrowed. They glowed brightly in the dark of the room. “What’re you gonna do?”

She snatched his hand up, fingers burrowing past the hem of his white glove. “Checking something.”

Oh. She was… oh.

“No pulse,” she reported, before moving her fingers to tug on the edge of Danny’s glove. “And this seems to be part of his body.”

“Well,” Tucker said, before pausing to swallow past the block in his throat. “I guess his pulse will come back when he goes back to normal? He seems pretty ghostly right now.”

Sam hummed, pinching the sleeve of Danny’s jumpsuit, ignoring the look Danny was throwing her way. “The clothes is a ghost thing too, I think. The Fentons always claimed that their shapes were simple and only had one layer, or something like that.”

“Right, yeah, I remember that.” Maybe they should’ve looked into the whole ghost thing a little more. Danny was looking very much like a ghost right now, and Tucker kinda wished he knew more.

Like if his friend was gonna be okay.

“I don’t understand what’s happening,” Danny said, flat and a little hopelessly. He jangled the arm Sam was holding, but didn’t seem very intent on throwing her off.

“Welcome to the club,” she said with a snort, pinching him again. “You don’t feel this?”

“No?” Danny frowned at her, utter confusion clear on his face. “Am I supposed to?”

“Something here seems weird,” Tucker commented. He paused. “Weirder than it already was. Danny, man, what is up with you?”

“Who, me?” Danny asked, twisting around to look at Tucker again. “I really don’t know what’s happening.”

Sam paused, releasing her pinching grip but still holding on to Danny’s arm. “Danny, what are you saying?”

“Danny?” he repeated, tone questioning. “Why are you calling me that?”

Tucker felt his heart stop. He stared at Danny, incredulously, but there wasn’t even the slightest hint of joking.

“Because… it’s your name?” he managed, feebly, not looking away from Danny. “You’re our best friend, Danny Fenton. Don’t you remember?”

The ghost of his best friend blinked at him, then at Sam. “I… no? I don’t remember anything.”

“Sooo… About the Fenton’s theory that ghosts don’t remember anything,” Sam said, voice quiet. Uncharacteristically shaken. “I mean… Before, Danny didn’t remember this either. It’s like… two separate states?”

“Oh, yeah, I remember now!” Danny exclaimed, still looking at Sam. “I saw you two earlier, briefly! But then light flashed, and now I’m here.” He looked around, curiously. “Where is here?”

Well, way to drive the point home, buddy. “Okay, so. The accident made it so that he’s, what, both human and ghost, and the two states just kind of switch around? Fuck, Sam.”

“I know,” she hissed back, cautiously releasing Danny’s arm. “Stay in your room, okay Danny?” Seeing him frown, she added, “That’s this room. Stay in this room, okay?”

“Sure,” he agreed easily, floating off to peer at some of the decorations Danny had in his room.

“Do you think we should tell his parents?” Tucker asked, scooting closer to Sam, keeping an eye on Danny. Or, Danny’s ghost, he supposed, since they apparently weren’t the same person. “I mean, if this starts happening more… He won’t be able to recognize them, or convince them of being Danny.”

Sam made a face. “Yeah, but… I dunno, Tuck, what if they try to hurt him? Experiment on him?”

They watched Danny poke around in his own room for a moment. Quietly, Sam continued, “Maybe he can hold it off. He didn’t shift until now, right? Maybe Danny’s control slipped while he was asleep. If we tell him to be careful he’ll stay out of trouble, right?”

“I don’t know, Sam.” Tucker sighed, deeply and wearily. “I really don’t know. Man, we’re just fourteen. Why are we dealing with this kinda stuff?” He looked over at Sam’s stricken face. “I mean— It’s not our fault. It’s not anyone’s fault, okay? Don’t blame yourself. We couldn’t have known.”

“Yeah, but—”

“No, Sam. Either everyone’s to blame for this, or no one is.” He pointed at Danny’s ghost, who was now trying to peel off one of the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling. “He could’ve refused to go in. I could’ve stopped him. His parents could’ve done a better job of locking up the lab, or the Portal, or anything. This isn’t just your fault, okay? Stop blaming yourself.”

Sam hummed, a disbelieving sound, but she didn’t protest, so Tucker would consider it a win.

Silence fell again as they watched the ghost frown at the sticky star on his hand. Then, almost hesitantly, he stuck the star to his chest.

“Man,” Tucker said, then paused when he realized he didn’t know where he’d been going with that sentence.

“Yeah,” Sam agreed quietly. Then, raising her voice some, she called over to Danny. “Hey, aren’t you tired or something? Let’s go to sleep, Danny.”

Again, bright green eyes turned to them. “I’m not tired,” he said simply. “Ghosts don’t sleep.” Then he frowned, and added, “I thought I wasn’t Danny? Not really?”

“Sorta kinda.” Tucker shrugged. “You’re like, his ghost, I guess? You don’t want to be Danny?”

“Seems confusing,” the ghost admitted, lowering himself until he floated at eye level to them. “He was Danny first, right? And I’m just his ghost. So I could be like… Phantom, or something.”

“Phantom,” Tucker echoed, dryly. “You really want to go by a synonym of ghost?”

The ghost in question shrugged. “Why not? And you said my—his—last name was Fenton, yeah? So it’s kind of a pun.”

Tucker groaned, even as Sam laughed, softly. “I should’ve figured, man. Your love for puns is immortal and undying.”

Phantom grinned at him, revealing green gums and pointed fangs, which Tucker somehow hadn’t noticed before. “Well, something had to carry over, yeah?”

“I guess,” Tucker agreed, sounding much more disgruntled than he felt. It was weird, yes, but it was also kinda nice, to see a little more Danny in Phantom. “Look, you might not need sleep because you’re a ghost, but Sam and I do. Can we trust you to stay in this room and out of trouble?”

“Of course,” Phantom immediately assured him, before pausing. “Um. What constitutes as trouble, exactly?”

“Staying in this room should be good enough for now,” Sam said, gesturing around them. “But if anyone who isn’t us comes in, or knocks… I dunno, hide? Go invisible, maybe, if you can maintain it for long enough.”

“Your parents are ghost hunters. If they see you, they’ll probably try to hurt you,” Tucker tagged on. “You look just like Danny, but they’re not gonna stop and consider that, especially if you won’t have his memories to convince them.”

Phantom’s expression grew serious, and he nodded. “Got it. Stay here, stay out of sight.”

“Try not to be too loud, as well. Making a lot of noise will probably lead to them coming here to make sure we’re doing alright.” Sam narrowed her eyes. “And we’ll be trying to sleep, and loud noises don’t help with that.”

He nodded again. “Stay here, stay out of sight, don’t be loud. Anything else?”

“If you think you’re gonna switch back to Danny, maybe try to get yourself back to the bed? But other than that, no, I guess that that’s it.” Tucker sighed, sitting down on his pile of blankets. “Good night, Phantom.”

“Good night, Tucker, Sam,” he replied, floating away a little but not taking his eyes off of them. Apparently he was curious to see what sleep meant. Great. Brilliant.

Tucker shook his head, tucking himself back into his nest of blankets. From where he laid, he could see Sam do the same.

When they both remained still for a while, Phantom lost interest, going back to checking out the room. His room.

Through squinted eyes, Tucker watched him. Phantom hadn’t even noticed that he hadn’t taken off his glasses. Didn’t know the importance of it, probably.

On the other side of the room, Tucker could see Sam watching as well. They both knew damn well that they wouldn’t get a minute of sleep, not while Danny was… not Danny. While Phantom was around.

Tucker wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting from Phantom. He seemed to follow the Fentons’ ghost rules pretty closely, except he didn’t appear malevolent in the least. Even while he thought that no one was watching him, he did as had been asked: remained in the room, remained quiet.

Admittedly he didn’t do a great job of getting himself back to the bed when he shifted back, because light flashed and Danny Fenton collapsed onto the floor with an uncomfortably loud thud, but, well. He might not have noticed it was coming.

Tucker exchanged a grimace with Sam, then both of them got up to check over their best friend. Danny was fast asleep, grumbling under his breath when they nudged him. He would probably have a bruise from the landing, but hey. Could’ve been worse.

Wrapping his fingers around Danny’s ankles, Tucker watched Sam grab Danny’s wrists, and they lifted him back to the bed. And when they stepped away, Sam nodded at him, and said, quietly, “He’s got a pulse.”

Well. Tucker certainly slept better afterwards.

#danny phantom #ectoberweek2020 #dp fanfic #phanfic #phic #dark writes #someone plz confirm for me whether these are appearing in the tags properly or not #i assume it's working but you never know with this website

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pokelolmc · 3 years

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Ectoberweek Day 1: (Fog)

(I only just remembered about Ectoberweek when I saw people posting their things for Day 1, and I really wanted to participate in some sort of fandom event this year so I scrambled to find the prompt list and started writing my stuff last minute lol. No preparation time--RIP me. This particular one came from a massive inspiration burst between the prompt and a DP crossover idea I had a few months ago, but never wrote. This oneshot is more of a DP-only nod to the other media than a crossover, but I might create a larger crossover story based on it and include it on ff.net if anyone’s interested. Kudos to anyone who gets what this is based off of--it’s probably obvious though.)

(Also, I deeply apologise for how long it is)

Ectoberweek Day 1: Fog

(‘… It wasn’t until the semi-rare encounter of all four Fentons at the breakfast table together that the weather change, bless Danny’s obliviousness, crossed his mind again.

“Be careful on your way out, kids!” his mother called as his chair screeched across the dining room floor and he grabbed his backpack off the couch, “The forecast predicts a fog this morning!”

“The forecast?” Jazz cocked an incredulous eyebrow at the ghost-hunting matriarch from her position in the front foyer, “Have you looked out the window yet?! It’s so thick I can barely see the house across the street!”

“Yeah, I saw it out the window when I woke up, but I didn’t think it would be that bad.” Danny hummed with a frown as he flipped his remaining backpack strap over the other shoulder. You’re not gonna be driving, are you?”

“Of course not!” His sister replied, aghast, “I’m going to walk this time. They’re starting school late to accommodate for the transportation hindrances.”

“And you didn’t tell me that earlier!?” he cried indignantly.

“I knew it would motivate you to slack around and leave the house late, so I decided it would be better to let you know when we were leaving.” She replied, hiding a teasing, know-it-all smile behind a farce of flippancy.

Danny groaned at her attempts to improve his punctuality—apparently, being overbearing now involved withholding vital information— and trailed behind her as she opened the door, his lower jaw swinging loosely on its hinges as the door did, at the firsthand view granted to him of the world beyond…

…The slight chill of mid-autumn fled back in time to the start of September to rush through Danny’s ill-prepared t-shirt and jeans and provoke an involuntary shudder. Jazz’s protective hand clenched firmly onto his wrist so as not to lose him, her free hand reaching to lock the door behind them. Icy blue eyes squinted harshly in the direction they needed to go, straining through the deep field of whiteness like the time he had tried on Tucker’s glasses for the heck of it. As Jazz fished a flashlight out of her schoolbag, they trudged carefully to the corner of their block…

…“Hey, you there!”

Danny froze as Jazz turned to point her flashlight in the direction of the siren lights, the large figure of a policemen striding towards them from across the road...’)

(Full story starts from beginning under cut)

The empty air shimmered, not a cloud in the sky, as the summer holidays reached their end. Amity Park remained—for the most part—plodding along the boundaries of mundanity (or… at least what remained mundane by Amity Park standards); parents treated their kids to their last weekday lunches at the cinemas or public pool, teenagers grumbled seemingly endless streams of complaints about their incomplete summer homework—all between the flurry of evacuations away from the daily ghost who decided to interrupt everyone’s fun.

Loud choruses—comprising more of exasperated sighs and angry diatribes than a cacophony of panic—exploded from the throats of passers-by as that annoying overall-clad spectre swiped all of the boxes from the local supermarket, or the sickly lime glow of a faded raccoon dashed down the streets, its tail rippling from fur to mist behind it. Any terrified screams—that the more violent ghostly destruction of overhead buildings elicited from civilians—quickly gave way to relieved cries and cheers as the familiar ebony and white blur of their town hero whipped into the offending ghost like a homing torpedo, flashing fists outstretched.

As the brawling duo of spectres threw each other across town, a throng of transfixed gazes followed. Avid fans stayed to track every powerful blow with their phones, while others nonchalantly turned back to their previous business as if the paranormal interruption had never occurred. With the inevitable pull-through of their ghostly protector, and the hasty response of the well-oiled machine that was the local paramedic corps, all casualties lay flat at a constant zero. After almost two years of adjusting to ghost attacks, Amity Park had established a comfortable routine—ghosts attacked, everyone evacuated, Danny Phantom swooped in to end the destruction and the injured were assisted, then get safely back along with your day. In the end, it never paid to worry; everything came out the other end okay, and the town remained safe. The morale in Amity mirrored the all-summer-long weather forecast—warm, bright and clear.

Their town hero couldn’t entirely agree as he ascended away from the battle, exhausted. Fatigue wore down at Danny like sandpaper on a knife blade, grinding him blunt and sending his energy into an insidious decline. However, for all it was worth, at least the routine never changed—at least, in the end, the weather he soared through prolonged in him a reminder of the town’s warm cheer and hope each time another ghost was taken care of; for all that he suffered, and all he was forced to lie, others remained safe because of him.

A deep groan cut through Danny as his mind decided to surprise him with the reminder of the hectic workload he would drown in as the school year began again. Hopefully, that safety and routine would at least make it easier—he begged that the morale from the summer would not peter out as its skies did…

He was wrong.

Everything turned upside down on the anniversary of the Accident.

Surprisingly, the event it commemorated was not the culprit; instead, it was the deciding moment that Danny woke up to tiredly yank back his curtains into the first school week of the year…

…and his eyes met the obstruction of a windowful of fog.

It wasn’t until the semi-rare encounter of all four Fentons at the breakfast table together that the weather change, bless Danny’s obliviousness, crossed his mind again.

“Yeah, I saw it out the window when I woke up, but I didn’t think it would be that bad.” Danny hummed with a frown as he flipped his remaining backpack strap over the other shoulder. “You’re not gonna be driving, are you?”

“Of course not!” His sister replied, aghast, “I’m going to walk this time. They’re starting school late to accommodate for the transportation hindrances.”

“And you didn’t tell me that earlier!?” he cried indignantly.

A dense, off-white mist engulfed the entire street like the stifling weight of a lead blanket, the houses across the street reduced to incomplete outlines and the asphalt of the road off of the footpath faint in the viewing distance. Fences, letterboxes and road signs short distances away had been almost, irony not unnoticed, turned into ghosts—fitting squarely into an ancient, redundant impression that Danny’s mind had rendered of the beings before he himself had become half of one; faded, unsolid wisps of what physically was, so scantly visible to the heavily relied upon sense of human sight that one might be of the impression it was hardly even there and nothing in the world could touch it. He almost imagined reaching out to the street sign on the corner and watching his fully tangible hand go straight through it.

The slight chill of mid-autumn fled back in time to the start of September to rush through Danny’s ill-prepared t-shirt and jeans and provoke an involuntary shudder. Jazz’s protective hand clenched firmly onto his wrist so as not to lose him, her free hand reaching to lock the door behind them. Icy blue eyes squinted harshly in the direction they needed to go, straining through the deep field of whiteness like the time he had tried on Tucker’s glasses for the heck of it. As Jazz fished a flashlight out of her schoolbag, they trudged carefully to the corner of their block.

Danny’s stomach dropped lower and lower, like a climber scraping down a flattened slope, with each step, a feeling as dense as the fog resting heavier in his legs. He gulped down a wave of uneasiness that begged for each gruelling minute to pass by more quickly, the very sight and feel of the fog setting off a primal buzz of warning in his chest. As they crossed the intersection at the next block, his racing heart was ready to snap—a scathing complaint about Jazz’s persistent grip on his wrist poised itself to leap from his lips, but muscular instinct tensed his mouth shut.

Red and blue beams flashed on an off on the corner of the crossing and intersected with the topaz glow of Jazz’s flashlight, shimmering clouds of condensation with the universally iconic colours of the law.

“Hey, you there!”

Danny froze as Jazz turned to point her flashlight in the direction of the siren lights, the large figure of a policemen striding towards them from across the road.

“Are you kids headed to Casper High?”

“Yes, sir.” Jazz replied politely, quickly yanking her hand off of Danny’s arm, “I can’t drive because of the fog.”

“Well, good thinking on your part—with that light, too.” He commented, his calm voice stiffening slightly, “Listen, the route to Casper had to change this morning—the road ahead is closed off; you’ll need to take a short detour down the next corner.”

“What’s the matter?” Jazz’s brow furrowed uneasily, “Did something happen?”

“That’s not for you kids to know—police business.” The man sighed calmly, “You just get on ahead to school, and don’t come down here on the way back in the afternoon, alright?”

Danny almost jumped as an irregular dance of footsteps and shaky groan drew closer to them from across the road.

“Ugggh, what an awful sight! How could somebody do this?! I’m sorry sir, I can’t handle this—AAAAAGGH!”

The officer rolled his eyes as a lanky figure in a suit and tie brushed past Danny with a strangled scream, the slow, stumbling gait transforming instantly into a crazed, almost drunken-looking rush down the street. A disgusting gurgling sound bubbled faintly out of an alleyway not far behind them. Danny flinched and Jazz’s lips contorted into a grimace.

“Dammit, Peterson what are you doing?!” the first policeman barked, “Why would you join the police in the first place if you’re that squeamish?!”

…Squeamish?

Once again, Danny’s instinct took a tight hold of his gut and thrashed it to hell as the sound of wet retching faded into an awkward pause.

“…Don’t mind him. He’s not really that…competent.” The officer ushered, pushing the two siblings hurriedly down the corner to the detour route, “Now, you two don’t have too much longer to get to school, so move it along.”

“Of course, sir…” Jazz defended with a surprised stutter at the forceful shove, “We’ll be on our way.”

Each second they walked away from the police dispatch dragged out into an eternity, the sounds of chatter and the flashing of the sirens fading away into still, eerie silence. The siblings held their proverbial breaths in tight chests as they reached the distance outside of the officers’ ear shots. Jazz turned to exchange glances with her brother, grabbing onto his wrist again and clenching tightly, her teal eyes holding an unsaid worry about the encounter she dared not speak aloud. Danny pulled away with an annoyed huff until she let go, his mind pounding him with a show of false bravado to combat the ton of unease that piled into his stomach like a vat of sludge. Jazz’s mouth eventually opened, with what remained of a desperate attempt to say something.

“…a cold morning and fog, during a warm start to September…? Did it rain last night and we never knew?”

One thing for certain crossed Danny’s mind as he started to lag behind her.

There was something about that fog that felt so wrong.

#danny phantom #ectoberweek2020 #danny phantom fanfiction #danny fenton #jazz fenton #fog #this is one of the first times I've tried to write darker DP and the only one I've ever posted #these are the last words of a mad masochist going into Ectoberweek with no preparation rip me

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darks-ink · 4 years

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Fic Masterlist 1: Events

Apparently my last masterlist/archive got too link-heavy so I’m splitting it up in three parts! wowie. Here’s #1, dedicated to fics written for all kinds of events! (and yeah, these are all Danny Phantom fics lol. the other guys get their own post)

Last updated: November 3rd 2021 Links: 150/250

Ectoberweek 2018

AO3 series

Witching Hour: Maddie set out to learn more about the Witching Hour, but instead she learns a little more about Amity Park’s most mysterious ghost. [family, bonding] [Tumblr] [AO3] [FFN]

Disappearance: Series rewrite in which Danny had his accident all alone—and then disappeared into the Ghost Zone. Continued in Harvest. [hurt/comfort, family, identity reveal] [Tumblr] [AO3] [FFN]

Necromancy: Danny didn’t survive the accident, and his ghost never stumbled out of the Portal either. But nothing can keep Sam away from her best friend. [angst] [Tumblr] [AO3] [FFN]

Corruption: One must learn from the past to change the future. [angst] [Tumblr] [AO3] [FFN]

Harvest: Vlad learns about, and from, Danny. Sequel to Disappearance. [hurt/comfort, identity reveal] [Tumblr] [AO3] [FFN]

Unearthed: Danny Fenton’s body is found, but the boy never died. Or did he? Continued in Buried, basis for Disinterred. [crime, hurt/comfort, identity reveal] [Tumblr] [AO3] [FFN]

Spells – Harry Potter crossover: Danny has always known that, unlike his friends, he has no magic. So when he tries again, years later, the results are rather… unexpected. Prequel to Weirdward, rewritten as Spells 2.0. [friendship] [Tumblr] [AO3] [FFN]

Ectoberweek 2019

AO3 series

Fangs: Danny Fenton, half-ghsot and teenager, enjoys his first day of school, and meets some future friends. Continued in The Visit. [friendship] [Tumblr] [AO3] [FFN]

Stalker: Phantom is not Fenton. If only Danny’s friends believed him when he said as much. [angst, hurt/comfort] [Tumblr] [AO3] [FFN]

Electricity: Electricity is just one of the many powers Danny gets access to but, like all others, it requires a bit of figuring out. [humor] [Tumblr] [AO3] [FFN]

Artifact: After the Reality Gauntlet is destroyed, Danny is ready to spend the rest of his summer relaxing. But he keeps waking up to the same day, over and over again. [hurt/comfort, family, identity reveal] [Tumblr] [AO3] [FFN]

Grave Robber: The GIW, tipped off by an anonymous caller, investigate Vlad Master’s mansion, where they discover a very special ghost. [hurt/comfort] [Tumblr] [AO3] [FFN]

Exorcism: Sure that Danny was suffering from overshadowing ghosts, Maddie purges his system of all ectoplasm. But he still didn’t seem to get any better. [angst] [Tumblr] [AO3] [FFN]

Ectoberweek 2020

AO3 series

Fog: Valerie Gray had always been able to See. See ectoplasm, see spirits, all that fun stuff. By the time she entered high school, she was fairly sure she'd seen just about everything there was to see. Until, one day, Danny Fenton changed. [friendship] [Tumblr] [AO3] [FFN]

Pulse: Sam and Tucker attempt to deal the change of their best friend after his accident in the lab. [friendship] [Tumblr] [AO3] [FFN]

Rewind: After changing the past and altering the timeline, Danny is forced to stay in a world where he was never born. [family, found family] [Tumblr] [AO3] [FFN]

Darkness: Danny, still new to being half-human, finds himself in a room with someone almost like him: a half-ghost. Sequel to Antonym. [identity reveal - sorta kinda] [Tumblr] [AO3] [FFN]

Reanimation: What started as a plan to stabilize the Phantom-like ghost they found under Masters' control somehow spiraled completely out of control. And, quite frankly, Agent O wasn't sure he minded. Sequel to Grave Robber. [found family, hurt/comfort] [Tumblr] [AO3] [FFN]

Glow Sticks: Later, Valerie would worry about the implications, about how it might affect her. But she was here to have a normal evening, for once in her damn life, and that was exactly what she was going to do. [friendship, identity reveal] [Tumblr] [AO3] [FFN]

Cloak: The trio come up with a set of matching Halloween costumes. Sequel to Third Time (’s a Charm). [friendship] [Tumblr] [AO3] [FFN]

Ectoberweek 2021

AO3 series

Boo!: Intent on pulling a joke on his son, Jack discovers an unexpected secret. [humor, identity reveal] [Tumblr] [AO3]

Pumpkin: art piece [Tumblr]

Cobwebs: An unexpected visitor graces Sam's room. [alternate half-ghost(s)] [Tumblr] [AO3]

Insect: art piece [Tumblr]

Echo: That morning, when Danny came down, he no longer sounded like himself. [implied identity reveal] [Tumblr] [AO3]

Summoning: The trio discusses the possibility of summoning Phantom. [friendship] [Tumblr] [AO3]

Blood Moon: art piece [Tumblr]

Phic Phight 2019

AO3 series

Captivity: The Wisconsin Ghost. Plasmius. Whatever name they call him, Maddie has him captured now. [identity reveal] [Tumblr] [AO3] [FFN]

Dog Days: Jack Fenton thought all ghosts were evil, until he met a certain ghost dog. [fluff] [Tumblr] [AO3] [FFN]

Cacoethes: Danny was raised by two ghost-hating parents. Yet, somehow, he befriends not one but two ghosts. [hurt/comfort, friendship] [Tumblr] [AO3] [FFN]

Distortion: He’s flying. Or is he? [mystery, supernatural] [Tumblr] [AO3] [FFN]

Unveiled: Jack finds a hidden lab in Vlad’s mansion. But why had it been kept a secret from him and Maddie? [hurt/comfort, family, identity reveal] [Tumblr] [AO3] [FFN]

Rise Above Myself: Danny is off to college, leaving Vlad in charge of keeping ghosts out of Amity Park. [hurt/comfort] [Tumblr] [AO3] [FFN]

Grounded: Valerie is underground, and she can’t remember how she got there. Her suit has no information to offer her, either. [hurt/comfort, identity reveal, alternate half-ghost(s)] [Tumblr] [AO3] [FFN]

Unseen: After getting hit by his parents’ newest invention and being unable to shift back to human form, Danny is forced to go to school as Phantom. [humor, post-reveal] [Tumblr] [AO3] [FFN]

Phic Phight 2020

AO3 series

Antonym: When the Fentons fire up their newly invented Ghost Portal, it unexpectedly spits out a kid. But why does he keep insisting he’s a ghost? [family] [Tumblr] [AO3] [FFN]

Synonym: No matter how she tried, Sam couldn’t convince Danny to go back into the Portal. So the world would have to settle for her, no matter how temporarily. [angst, alternate half-ghost(s)] [Tumblr] [AO3] [FFN]

Naturalistic Observation: The Fentons take a new spin on ghost research by observing a very special game of dodgeball. [fluff] [Tumblr] [AO3] [FFN]

Third Time (‘s a Charm): Why go through the ordeal of being half-ghost alone if you can do it with your best friends? [friendship, alternate half-ghost(s)] [Tumblr] [AO3] [FFN]

Parasite: Vlad had given up on being freed from Plasmius’ grip ages ago. All he wanted, now, was for Plasmius’ reign to end. Before he could do too much damage. [angst] [Tumblr] [AO3] [FFN]

To Be: After Danny’s inhibitors break during chemistry class, his fellow students and even his teachers fight to make him feel accepted. [fluff, post-reveal] [Tumblr] [AO3] [FFN]

Of Tweets and Twats: Amity Park’s constant ghost troubles finally get it on the radar of the internet. And boy, are they unimpressed. [humor, Twitter-fic] [AO3]

Self-Perception: A ghost’s appearance is based on their self-image. How they see themselves. So when you’ve been told your entire life that ghosts are monsters, well… That does things to one’s appearance, that’s for sure. [hurt/comfort, identity reveal] [Tumblr] [AO3] [FFN]

Parental Woes: Humans form families of flesh and blood, while ghosts form theirs based on connections in their cores. But what does that mean for a half-ghost? [family, hurt/comfort, identity reveal] [Tumblr] [AO3] [FFN]

Got My Reasons: Maddie and Jack find Phantom heavily injured in the GAV and patch him up. [angst, hurt/comfort, family] [Tumblr] [AO3] [FFN]

Living So Dangerous: Phantom had tried to kill her. It was undeniable. Now she just had to end him before he could finish the job. [hurt/comfort, friendship] [Tumblr] [AO3] [FFN]

Phic Phight 2021

AO3 series

Reversal: Sometimes Valerie wished she could show Phantom what it was like to be her. She doubted that he would care--the ghost only thought about himself--but the roleswap would at least annoy him, surely. [identity reveal] [Tumblr] [AO3]

Spark: Danny discovers he isn't the only one in Amity Park with ghostly traits. [alternate half-ghost(s)] [Tumblr] [AO3]

Ephemeral: Tucker Ghouley, hoping for a quiet patrol for once, finds his peace disturbed by the sudden appearance of three half-ghosts from alternate universes. How is he meant to get them back? [friendship, alternate half-ghost(s)] [Tumblr] [AO3]

Christmas/Holiday Truce

Warmth – Truce 2018: Team Phantom celebrate their ghost-free Christmas. [friendship, fluff] [Tumblr] [AO3] [FFN]

Recovery – Truce 2018: Dani and Vlad celebrate their first Christmas as a family. [family, fluff] [Tumblr] [AO3] [FFN]

Just To Be Seen By My Eyes – Truce 2019: After receiving painting after painting from a mysterious ‘DP’, Jack just wished to know who it was that kept making those beautiful creations. But, as he discovers, sometimes you’re better off not knowing. [family] [Tumblr] [AO3] [FFN]

What We Are – Truce 2020:

Vlad Masters, young half-ghost, finally meets his uncle. And discovers that the man is a half-ghost, just like him. [roleswap AU] [Tumblr] [AO3] [FFN]

Phango

How Rare And Beautiful It Is (To Even Exist) – Phango19: The Trio look back on the years they’ve known each other, and the way they came together as a family. [hurt/comfort, family, friendship] [AO3] [FFN]

#fic archive

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