#mrs. tetslaff

[a-ghost-zone]

Danny Phantom Screencaps Season 1, Episode 13 - Fright Knight

{ Google Drive Link } * recapped. old post and link is left up just in case.

#danny phantom #danny phantom screencaps #role play resource #danny fenton #sam manson #tucker foley #screencaps #maddie fenton #jack fenton #fright knight #mr lancer #ms tetslaff

[lexosaurus]

The Fog Around Us: Chapter 1

Hello all here's my second fic for the @ecto-implosion! This one with @nightwanderers12081 who did AN INCREDIBLE PIECE OF ART LOOK AT IT!

Please enjoy my accompanying fic!

read on: [ao3]

[see all chapters]

Characters: Danny Fenton, Valerie Gray Tags: Amnesiac Danny Fenton, Enemies to Friends WC: 4476 Summary: Two weeks had passed since Danny Fenton went missing. Two weeks had passed since Phantom had disappeared as well. It couldn't be coincidence.

****

“He can't have gotten far.”

Those were the words Valerie had heard the first day the missing child report had been filed. The first day Danny didn't show up to school.

“You kidding, Fenton?” Dash said, emphasizing Danny's name with the sort of disbelief one would say about a toddler training for the Olympics. “No—no way! He's so annoying, I bet whoever nabbed him will get so pissed at his loser squeaky voice that they'll toss him right out of their truck. They probably didn't even get him out of the city!”

“No way he's gotten far,” Kwan agreed.

The next day in homeroom, it had come from Sam. She hadn't been in school the previous day. Well, she had at first, but after the whispers started going around and the police showed up at the school, she and Tucker had been pulled to the main office all too quickly.

“He can't have gone far,” she whispered to Tucker, who was wringing his red cap around in his fingers. “It's Danny we're talking about. He's probably—you know. He's fine.”

Tucker was silent for a moment. To an outsider, it would look like he simply had nothing to say. But Valerie knew better. She could see how his jaw twitched, just barely suppressing whatever words were swimming around in his mind. It was only after his muscles relaxed that he finally spoke, his voice so quiet that Valerie almost didn't pick up what he said. “I know you want to think that, but Danny wouldn't...do this. He wouldn't slip away without telling us first.”

Whatever temper Tucker swallowed, Sam had no problem spitting out. “You don't know that. You know how he gets!”

“I do know, Sam. There's no way—”

“This is the same guy who—” Sam stuttered, then lowered her voice, hissing something too softly for Valerie to hear.

Tucker's reaction was telling, though. He sighed, not sharply, but still showcasing his frustrations all the same. “This is different. Come on, you know that.”

“I don't want to hear it,” Sam snapped. “He's fine, Tuck.”

And that was that.

Valerie could almost believe them. And god, she yearned to believe them with a fortitude that nearly crushed her heart, but on the third day, she made the mistake of passing by the teacher's lounge.

In an instant, she was plunged back into this new ice-cold reality.

“His parents suspect ghosts,” came the gruff voice of Ms. Tetslaff. “And you know, as wacko as they are, this time? Yeah, I might believe them.”

“It's not too far-fetched. You know that the CPS investigation came up clean. Especially after speaking to Ms. Jasmine Fenton directly, nothing came up that was particularly worrisome from their house. They seem like a good family, albeit a bit to the left. It feels unlikely that any of this could have stemmed from within the home,” Mr. Lancer said.

CPS investigated their house? Valerie thought back, but she didn't remember Danny ever mentioning it. So, why? Why had CPS gone?

“And you know how Mr. Fenton gets whenever a ghost gets near,” Mr. Lancer continued. 

“Oh yeah, he's a jumpy one,” Ms. Tetslaff agreed. “Always the first one out of the class.”

“And the last one back, sporting some sort of bruise,” came the voice of the old history teacher. What was her name, Mrs. Sawyer?

No, her name didn’t matter right now. What, with this information piercing every wall around Valerie's mind.

Danny was...getting hurt? And she hadn't noticed?

But she didn't have long to process this before Mr. Falluca took his chance to interject. “Didn't I tell you? After that whole CPS debacle? I told you all it was ghost related. I told you that the parents are weird, but Danny was always getting hurt around a ghost attack or on his way to school.”

He was what?

Why hadn't Valerie seen anything? Or heard anything?

“And I agreed if you'll recall,” Mr. Lancer said.

“I wouldn't be surprised if a ghost kidnapped him this time,” Mr. Falluca said.

“To get to his parents, most likely. The weekly harassment wasn't getting anywhere, so they had to escalate,” Mr. Lancer concluded.

“Poor kid,” Ms. Tetslaff murmured.

“Indeed. And if that's truly the case, then who knows how far they've gone. They're ghosts, after all.”

But Valerie was through listening to the teacher's gossip. She backed from the door, stumbled over her feet, and bolted around the corner, nearly slamming into some upperclassmen as she did.

No...no way....Danny? Her Danny?

She'd broken up with him so he wouldn't get hurt, hadn't she? She'd predicted this. Ghosts were ruthless and vengeful and ugh, she had let him go to prevent this from happening!

And yet!

And yet...

She skidded to a stop, her heart thundering in her ears. Around her, the hallway bled Casper High red, posters about kindness and unity hung haphazardly over the walls, and the ever-long fractals of lockers wove spiderwebs around her vision.

And yet, he'd been hurt anyway. No, it was worse than that. He'd been hurting the whole time, and she hadn't known. He'd...never told her.

But why would he? It wasn't like he knew that she was the Red Huntress. Maybe if she'd revealed this to him, he would have told her about the ghosts harassing him. Maybe she could have done something. Maybe, maybe it wouldn't have come to this.

Now, it was too late. Danny was gone.

And she had to bear the weight of the blame.

Her breath shortened, and hot tears sprang to her eyes too quickly for her to will away. They spilled down her cheeks and splashed onto the disgusting red and white tile below her.

She should wipe them off, stop crying, suck it up. She couldn't break down now, not while Danny was out there with god only knew which rogue now.

But shit, it was her fault.

Her weakness got to her, and she found herself standing before the row of lockers with her forehead pressed against the cool metal. Her curly hair fell around her, shielding her from the view of any potential onlookers. But thankfully, the science hallway—tucked in its own small corner of the school—was always nearly deserted while classes were in session.

She should have saved Danny. She should have noticed something, anything. What was even the point of having all this gear if she couldn't protect the people she cared about most?

She wanted to crumble, to disintegrate into a pile of dust on the floor. She held her hand against her mouth, choking back sobs that tried to rip from the core of her diaphragm, but she knew that the lunch period was nearly over and it would only be a matter of minutes before the hall was populated once again.

So she breathed. In, then out. First, nothing but a shaky jolt, and then steadier. In and out until the thick tears had reduced to rubble, and her sobs were nothing but hiccups. 

And then she made a promise to herself. One to bring Danny back home.

She may have failed to protect him before, but she wouldn't fail to save him this time.

She wouldn't.

****

The air was still tonight—unusual for this particularly windy fall—and it was as if Valerie could hear every secret Amity Park whispered into the stars. Every owl hoot in the surrounding air, every soft click of someone’s heels on the pavement below. 

There was a certain serenity to these kinds of nights, ones that were bathed in countless stars glittering in the air above. Not that Valerie had really cared about silly things like the stars before. But after she began donning flight in her red suit alone, they became a source of comfort to her. A constant that she could count on—if the clouds allowed so. 

And it was all thanks to one particular boy that she had even looked up in the first place, hadn’t it?

The past two weeks, she found herself leaning on their comfort more as she spent the nights searching, and searching, and searching some more.

But where should she look? She didn’t know. It had been so long that he could be anywhere. There was a chance—a very likely chance—he wasn’t in Amity Park at all.

Especially if what she’d heard about him was true.

It was Johnny 13 who had let it slip. After a week of no leads, of no sleep, Valerie had the rather unfortunate pleasure of running into the biker ghost himself.

Or, maybe the fortunate pleasure. Because after cornering him and pressing her gun to his temple, his silver tongue was all too eager to spill.

“The kid?” Johnny had asked.

“Fenton. Son of the ghost hunters? Maybe you’ve heard of him.” Valerie wedged her gun into his skin just a little more.

“Jeez, cool it. Yeah, I’ve heard of him. Kid’s damn annoying enough on his own without his parents getting involved.”

Confusion sliced through her, but she had only just begun to react when Johnny slid out from her hold, reappearing on her other side.

“What are you talking about?” Valerie whirled around, nearly forgetting to keep her gun out in front of her. “Danny? The son? He doesn’t have anything to do with ghosts!”

Johnny barked a vicious laugh. “Oh, is that what he tells you? Man, you humans are so blind. Well, kid’s a good actor, I’ll give him that.”

Then, black cloaked her vision, and she could hardly escape the swirling shadows before she looked up and realized that Johnny 13 was gone. And then, so was his shadow.

That had happened almost a week ago, and since then she had questioned any ghost that crossed her path, but either no one knew or no one would tell her.

As the days stretched on, her suspicion about who could be behind Danny’s disappearance only grew, molted, and then solidified until there was only one ghost it could be.

The one ghost that had—not-so-coincidentally, Valerie was sure—disappeared as well.

In fact, Valerie was sure she hadn’t seen Phantom since before Danny’s disappearance. She tried to remember and…yeah, he hadn’t made any appearance grande nor small over the past two weeks.

That was unusual for him, the ghost that almost seemed to live in Amity Park for how much time he spent here.

So Phantom had to be involved somehow. He just had to. Perhaps he was the one who took Danny, or he could be just an accomplice. Either way, the timing was too exact for him not to be involved at all.

But he was just. Gone. 

Valerie had searched high and low, but there didn’t seem to be any sign of him anywhere. And if he was the one who took Danny, then where had they gone? The Ghost Zone?

Valerie tried not to think about that possibility too much.

So when a frighteningly familiar ecto-signature reading popped up on her wristband, Valerie didn’t hesitate to jet over to the source of it. He was just around the block—so close—and soon, she would have answers.

That little asshole thought he could just appear after two weeks of Danny’s disappearance as if everyone was going to welcome him back with open arms? As if nothing ever happened?

Yeah, fuck that. 

Drawing her weapons was a subconscious action at this point. Valerie didn’t have to think before her gun of choice had formed in her hand—black, with red on the side. Sleek and deadly, just like her.

She whipped around the corner of a building, looked out into the street, and there he was, hovering thirty feet above the sidewalk. Bathed in white with wild hair floating around him as if underwater and his black and white suit unmistakable against the Amity Park skyline, there was Phantom.

He was slow to face her, but that only worked to her advantage. Because as soon as it clicked in his head what was happening, Valerie was already on him, her gun trained at his forehead, her eyes fiery with weeks of untapped fury as she shouted, “What the hell did you do to him?”

Phantom blinked once, his eyes flickering to the gun, then Valerie, then to the gun again. He blinked again, this time slow, and perhaps so obtuse and obnoxious that Valerie couldn’t help but press her ectoweapon into his aura as she yelled, “I’ll fucking kill you again, Phantom! I’m not playing. Tell me what happened to him! What did you do to Fenton?”

Knitted eyebrows shot up along with his hands, and he jolted back as if seeing the gun for the first time. “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hang on, what are you talking about?”

But that only enraged Valerie even more. “Don’t play dumb with me!”

“Seriously, I don’t know what’s going on! I don’t even know who that is!”

“You disappear for two weeks the same time as Fenton does, and now you’re claiming to not know anything?” Valerie’s glare narrowed as red tinged the edges of her vision. “Seriously, how much of a dumbass do you think I am? Spill! What the fuck happened to him? What did you do?”

He inched back more, his hands clasping, unclasping, then dropping once again. There was a nervous energy around him, and Valerie noticed—odd—that his chest seemed to be rising and falling almost as if he were hyperventilating.

But no, that wasn’t possible. “Answer me!” she snapped.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about! Do I even know you?”

Valerie could have laughed at the sheer audacity of Phantom, but then she looked at him—really looked at him. His wide eyes quivering in anxiety, his ears which seemed to be pointed lower than usual, his panicked stance, and his fast…breathing…and suddenly, Valerie wasn’t sure anymore. Because the Phantom she knew would have made a stupid quip, shot her gun, and darted away.

But this? This Phantom? The one having anxiety before her?

This Phantom was almost pitiful.

She felt her grip on her gun weaken, and her arm lowered ever so slightly. “You don’t…remember me?” she asked.

“I’m sorry, but I think you have me confused for someone else!” he said, drawing his palms up once again in surrender. “I’ve never met you.”

…How?

She tried again, gritting her teeth and drawing her gun back to full force. “Oh no, you don’t get to do that game with me, ghost! Tell me what you did to Danny. Now.”

“I don’t know who that is!” he pleaded. “I’m serious! You have to believe me.”

Why did she believe him?

No, he was a ghost. Ghosts were conniving and evil. They were made to trick humans into getting their way. Valerie knew this. It was as ingrained into her as any self-defense move was.

So then, why? Why could she look into his acid-green eyes and instinctively know that he was telling the truth?

“What do you mean by that?” she pressed further. “I saw you just a few weeks ago. Hell, you live here. I know you do, even if you refuse to admit it.”

“I don’t—I don’t know. Really, I don’t know what you want from me. I’ve never been here, I promise! I was in the Infinite Realms and—”

“What? Where were you?” 

The glow in his eyes flickered, and his nervous energy was suddenly so palpable that Valerie could almost taste it. “The Infinite Realms! You know, where all the ghosts live!”

But…Phantom had only ever called that the Ghost Zone. Like all the other humans did. 

Infinite Realms? Was that…what the ghosts called it?

“I’ve only ever been there, I promise! I just…just woke up there one day, and I’ve been there ever since. I only got here—the Human World—a few minutes ago. There was a portal. Green, swirling light? You know? And I flew through it. I swear that’s the truth,” he insisted. “I promise I’ve never been here before. I didn’t know it was forbidden to come to your territory. I’m sorry! Once another portal comes, I can leave—uh, what’s your name?”

What. The. Fuck.

Valerie hovered in the air, stunned, staring into the eyes of a ghost she knew like the back of her hand, but one who didn’t seem to know…anything about her, about Amity, about anything. 

“You are Phantom, right?” Valerie asked.

“That—that’s what the other ghosts call me,” he said.

So…this was Phantom. It wasn’t some strange clone or anything. So then, what the fuck was going on?

“But you don’t know who I am?”

“No,” he said, then his eyes widened once more. “Am I supposed to?”

A fit of hilarious anger surged through Valerie, and she wanted to snap at him that of course he should know! What was he, stupid? But almost as that spiked her, it dissolved away. 

It wouldn’t have been fair to be angry at this Phantom. This one had no idea who she was, he didn’t know their history, and he apparently knew nothing about Amity Park, which Valerie had more than assumed had become his haunt.

Deep breaths, then. She needed to figure out what the hell was going on, then she could give Phantom a ginormous piece of her mind.

“You’ve been here before,” she explained. “A lot, actually.”

“I haven’t, I swear,” he insisted again in a panic, eyeing the gun that Valerie had forgotten was still between both of them.

She dropped her arm, though she didn’t retract the gun into her suit. One could never know, with ghosts as duplicative as they were.

“You have,” she retorted, now without the gun backing up her words. “I’ve seen you here more times than I can count. I’m The Red Huntress. That ring a bell at all?” 

He shook his head, though his brow was furrowed. “I was born in the Realms like other ghosts, and I’ve only ever been there. I’ve never left!”

This game of ping-pong wasn’t going to work. At least, it could only work so long as Valerie was willing to sacrifice her entire night’s sleep for the cause of Phantom’s mental rehabilitation, which as it stood, she wasn’t. 

Okay then. Time for plan B.

She pulled her cell phone out of the pocket in her suit’s thigh and opened TikTok, typing Phantom into the search bar.

“What are you doing?” a panicked voice asked.

She shushed him, eyeing past all the debate and theory videos until she found what she was looking for. Then, without so much as looking past her thumb clicking on the thumbnail, she shoved her phone in Phantom’s face.

He watched what sounded like some sort of compilation video with eyes expanding to comical proportions. Whatever weird fast “breathing” he’d been doing before was picking up again, and if it weren’t for Valerie’s adept reflexes, he probably would have swiped her phone out of her hands when he made to lunge for it.

“Nuh-uh!” Valerie said, holding her phone back.

“That can’t be right!” Phantom said, turning on her. “I swear, it’s not me!”

“It’s from a month ago, glow-boy!” she said. “There’s literally thousands of videos of you on here from the past year!”

He halted, his body growing rigid. “The past…how long?”

“Year,” Valerie repeated. She clicked another video and turned up her volume in time for the video Phantom to say a truly god-awful pun.

“Year?” Phantom’s voice was breathy. He wasn’t looking at the phone anymore, but Valerie could see him flinch at hearing his voice. “But that…no, that can’t be right.”

“I think your brain is having a hardware issue,” video Phantom said. “Have you tried turning it off and turning it back on?”

“You just don’t understand my BRILLIANCE!” a nasal voice screeched.

“Technus, your brain is slower than an Internet Explorer loading screen. I wouldn’t exactly call that brilliant.”

The Phantom in front of her shook his head incessantly. “That’s not me. It can’t be.” However, his voice sounded anything but convincing.

“It obviously is. What, you think I just made up a bunch of videos to confuse you?” Valerie snorted. “Give me a break.”

“But…I’ve only been a ghost for a few weeks! See? That can’t be me.”

A few weeks?

But that’s…

Valerie swiped down to the next video, this one a close-up of Phantom’s face grinning down at the camera below. He brought his gloved hands up behind his pointed ears like moose antlers, sticking his tongue out as he did. His white fangs poked out of the corners of his lips, his smile stretching until he broke into laughter.

The Phantom before her was sheet white.

“I’m only a few weeks old,” he begged quietly, hiding his eyes behind his hands as if Valerie’s phone screen was displaying imagery too horrific to look at. “This is impossible. I’ve been in the Infinite Realms. It’s…this is…no…”

“Phantom, I’ve known you for months.” Valerie leaned in, but as if sensing her, he reeled back, curling into himself.

“Is that how everyone knew who I was?” Phantom peered up from his hands. 

“Who?”

“The other ghosts. They…they acted like they knew me. Like I should know them. But I’d never met them before.”

Valerie didn’t know what ghosts he was talking about specifically, but she had a general idea. “You have. You do know them.”

Phantom reached for her phone again, and this time Valerie let him have it. But, to her amusement, when he jabbed his finger at her screen, nothing happened.

“You have to take your gloves off.”

Phantom’s brows furrowed, and he surveyed his hands as if seeing the gloves for the first time.

“Do they come off?” he asked himself mildly.

“They do,” Valerie answered, even though she was sure he didn’t expect her to. And sure enough, at his look, she explained, “I’ve seen you do it before.”

“Oh.” 

He handed her phone back to gently peel the white hazmat gloves from his suit. To his shock, but not Valerie’s, as soon as they left the vicinity of his aura, they simply dissolved into a green goo that began falling like rain before evaporating into the air.

“So that’s how that works,” he mused.

On one of his hands was the faint green glow of lightning that spindled up his wrists and disappeared into his suit. It was something that Valerie had seen before but never had the balls to ask about. Considering how much Phantom didn’t seem to know about, well, anything, she was sure as shit not getting that answer tonight either.

But on his other wrist was something interesting. And it was a small, skin-tight metal wristband.

“What’s that?” Valerie nodded toward the wristband.

“Huh?” Phantom asked, following her eyes to the bracelet. “Oh, I don’t know. I woke up with it, so I must have died in it. It’s how our outfits work, I think. Well, until you get powerful enough to change your appearance.”

Valerie filed away that bit of ghost lore for later. Her Phantom was never so forthcoming about the inner workings of ghosts as this. 

“No, you didn’t. I’ve never seen that before, and I’ve seen you with your gloves off.”

“Well, I don’t remember. Maybe I was starting to figure out how to change my appearance before I got like this?” He reached for the phone, clearly uninterested in talking about a silly bracelet when his entire world seemed to be imploding.

Valerie relented, handing it over. But, to his growing agitation and her further amusement again, his fingers had little impact on the screen.

“How the hell do you work one of these?” he growled.

“You might be too cold. What are you trying to do?”

“I’m trying to see if I knew that ghost! The metal one that was attacking me in the Realms yesterday!”

Valerie plucked her phone out of his fingers. “Okay, chill. Did he tell you his name?”

“Yeah. Said it about a million times.” He rolled his eyes. “Skulker, greatest hunter in the Ghost Zone. That’s what he said, anyway.”

“Oh, you definitely know him,” Valerie said, while still typing Ghost Skulker into the TikTok search bar. Sure enough, hundreds of videos appeared before her displaying the same annoying face in various poses on her screen. She clicked on one and handed her phone over to him.

His reaction made Valerie wonder if a ghost could jump out of its own skin. “What?! How? How is this possible?”

“I told you, we all know you! You’ve been around for a little while longer than a few weeks, Phantom!” 

She took the phone from his fingers. Just in time too, because he looked about ready to kneel over.

Could ghosts faint? As soon as the question popped into her mind, she realized that she didn’t want to test that theory. She barely knew what to do when a human fainted, let alone a ghost. And Valerie wasn’t one to start coddling ghosts.

She sighed, then glanced around. “Hey, wanna sit and talk for a minute?” She gestured over to the tall office building nearby. “If you like heights and privacy, I know a good rooftop.”

He squinted as if trying to figure out if he knew that roof. And then Valerie remembered all the nights on patrol, ambushing Phantom on that same building.

She thought back. What had he been doing those nights? 

“Sure,” he said, breaking her out of her thoughts.

Right. She didn’t have time to waste on Phantom’s silly actions. She was here for Danny. And somehow, this amnesiac was connected—she was absolutely certain of it.

They flew over and touched down on the roof, Valerie’s hoverboard retracting into her boots. She looked over to see Phantom’s flight tail morph into legs before he cautiously hit the roof as if he were afraid of breaking it. He looked down curiously at the ply and gravel roof before crouching down and…touching it? With his ungloved fingers?

What the hell?

As if noticing her staring, he answered, “Everything here feels weird. It’s missing that charge.”

“Charge?”

He glanced back at Valerie. “Yeah, the charge from the ectoplasm.”

“You can feel that?”

“You can’t?” 

Okay…yet another weird thing to file about ghosts. Apparently, they had some sort of sixth sense for ectoplasm.

It was like every single word out of this idiot’s mouth left Valerie with more questions. For a moment, she wondered if that was on purpose. If he was using his classic ghostly manipulation to try to distract her from asking about Danny.

But then, she looked back down at him rubbing the grains of rock and pebble between his fingers, and yeah…no freaking way this was an act. Her Phantom was an idiot, but not this stupid.

So what the hell was going on?

****

next chapter

[read all my works here]

#danny phantom #ectoimplosion2023 #phicc #my writing #the fog around us

[scarletsaphire]

Danny missed last gym class through no fault of his own, which is normally fine. It’s just that now they’re putting the self defense moves to work, and Danny’s been paired with Valerie. Great; guess he’ll be getting his ass kicked by her twice in one day.

--

@phicphight fic 3! This one is for @tourettesdog and @lovelyunknown! Prompts used are at the end.

"Mrs. Tetslaff. Mrs. Tetslaff please you don't have to do this," Danny begged.

"Shut it, Fenton," she said, not even sparing him a glance. "Partners are final, no swaps. Besides, being with Gray will do you some good. Maybe if she tosses you around enough, you'll put some effort forward in my class." She chuckled, before turning back to the rest of the class and bringing the whistle to her lips.

Danny made his way back to Sam and Tucker's side as she finished announcing the rest of the pairings. "As if I don't already get my ass handed to me by Val enough. Now I get to experience it in class too."

"If it makes you feel any better," Tucker replied. "I'm also going to get absolutely destroyed."

"Damn right you are," Sam nodded. The two of them had been made partners, probably because Mrs. Tetslaff knew that she wouldn't hold back. Tucker knew it too.

"That does make me feel a bit better," Danny admitted. "At least I won't be suffering alone."

"Okay everybody!" Mrs. Tetslaff's voice cut through their conversation. "Gather with your partners; I'll be coming around to monitor you all, but other than that, its a free for all. Use whatever moves you remember from our self defense class yesterday."

Danny nodded along with the rest of the class before making his way over to where Valerie was standing on the side of the gym. He held up his hand in a not quite wave as he approached, which Valerie returned.

"Hi."

"Hi."

This conversation was going just as well as he thought it would.

"Do you want to start on the offensive?" Valerie asked.

"Uh, yeah. Sure. I can do that. Unless you want to go first?" Danny asked.

"I've been taking karate since I was five. I don't need the practice. You do," Valerie replied. "Besides, even if you do manage to land a good hit, I can probably handle it a lot better than you can, and I don't want you using a bruise to try and get out of this."

Danny hesitated. He could handle this just fine; he'd tussled with plenty of bigger threats before, even without his ghost powers. Hell, he tussled with Val every night, albeit with the aforementioned ghost powers, when the red-gray of her suit blended in with the regular gray clouds and night sky. He wasn't worried about getting hurt.

What he was worried about was the fact that he didn't remember a single thing from his last gym class. Dash had locked him in the locker right before, and then Johnny and Shadow showed up, and they were always time consuming to deal with. Even if dealing with them this time looked a whole lot more like buying them a milkshake.

Either way, by the time he'd managed to make it back to the school, the class had been almost completely over, and the only thing he managed to see was Sam suplexing Tucker onto the mat, which, according to Tucker, hadn't even been a move they were supposed to be practicing. This meant that Danny was yet again stuck in the predicament he was in every single time he had to do anything in this Ancient's forsaken class: how much could he actually, realistically do?

The answer was always a resounding not much. He could normally fake it pretty well, but when he didn't know what he was supposed to know? It became a whole hell of a lot harder.

"Actually..." Danny started slowly.

"You forgot, didn't you?" 

Danny rubbed at the back of his neck.

Valerie rolled her eyes, and the faintest hint of a smile played across her face. "I guess that means I'm going first."

"I guess so."

"Okay, I'm going to do this slowly, so try and pay attention." Valerie made her way directly in front of him. "Hold your hands up like this." Danny copied Valerie's pose, one very different than he'd seen her take during the night. Probably because she didn't have any guns. "You ready?"

Danny gave one nod. He’d barely finished moving his head before Valerie was lunging towards him, fists flying towards his face. It was a conscious effort to not turn intangible, which meant that he didn’t have the brainwidth to try and clock the hit, or dodge out of the way, or do anything that didn’t result in a fist to the face. 

It was good to know Valerie hit hard , even without her suit. 

Danny stumbled backwards, blinking stars out of his vision, hand coming up to his nose that he knew was bleeding. It wasn't broken, at least.

"Oh shit," he heard Valerie say, and in an instant she was by his side. "I did not mean to hit you that hard I swear."

Danny waved her off with his free hand. "Yeah, well, I'm the one who stood there like an idiot." He removed his hand from his face, looking down at it. Yeah, he was definitely bleeding. "I'll be fine."

He looked to her when Valerie didn't give an answer, and was surprised to see her staring down at his hand in shock. "Valerie?" he asked tentatively. Still no answer. "It was an accident, you didn't mean to-"

He was cut off by Valerie grabbing his wrist and dragging him towards the doors of the gym. "Wh- Val! What the hell?" he asked.

"We need to have a talk. Now." Her voice was steely, a tone he couldn't remember her ever using with him. At least, not with human him. It was enough to shut up any future protests, and he allowed himself to be dragged along obediently.

They kept going even after they were out in the hallway, down a few doors until they got to a storage closet that Danny knew was mostly empty. Valerie pulled the door open and shoved him inside, slamming the door behind her.

Danny had absolutely no idea what was happening. 

"I think you have some explaining to do," Valerie said with her arms crossed and her foot tapping a hasty rhythm on the tiled floors.

"I'd love to, I really would, but I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about," Danny asked, raising his hands in mock surrender.

"Oh? Then how are you gonna explain that?" She titled her head towards Danny's bloody hand.

"You punched me in the face!" Danny answered. "Nose bleeds happen when people get punched in the face!"

By her sharp inhale, it was clear that wasn't the answer Valerie was looking for. "It's green Danny."

"Oh." Danny brought his hand back around in front of him, squinting at the now dried blood stain. It looked more like a red-gray than a green-gray to him, but then again, there wasn't much difference between shades of gray. "I didn't know that."

"How do you not know that your blood is green?"

"Frankly, I didn't know my blood was red until I was like. Eight years old. So this isn't the first time this has happened!"

Valerie took a deep breath and brought her hand up to pinch the bridge of her nose. Uh-oh. Danny's natural defense was getting on her nerves. That never ended well. "Ok, your idiocy aside, why the hell is your blood green?"

"That. Is a very good question!" 

Danny ran through every possible excuse he could think of. Some of them might've worked if it was literally anybody else who had figured this out, but Valerie wasn't just some random student who would believe "Fenton Weirdness" as a catch all excuse. She had experience with ghosts, and ectoplasm, and more importantly, was also exposed to the same technology Danny would normally blame this on.

"Would you believe me if I said I snorted ectoplasm before class?"

"Not when you say it like that."

"Well, crap."

--

TourettesDog - Danny is red-green colorblind. This never caused him much trouble before the accident, but now, well… It would have been nice to know beforehand that his blood was the wrong color. LovelyUnknown - Danny's identity is found out in the funniest way possible.

#danny phantom #danny phantom fanfiction #danny fenton #valerie gray #phic phight #identity reveal #team human #phic phight team human

[reallydumbdannyphantomaus]

#danny phantom #poll

[five-rivers]

Cryptid Crawl! Chapter 5

AO3

@currentlylurking, @going-dead, @aggressivelyclueless, @carelisswriting, and @schrodingersfic

.

“Hey, Kwan, you’re in Home Ec., right?”

It was kind of funny to see that kind of haunted, hunted look on a big, bulky jock, but this was Amity Park.  Hannah got to see that expression whenever Fenton had to go to the bathroom.  

“Listen, I’m not going to blame you for this.  I just want to know… why?”

“I don’t know,” said Kwan.  “I think there might have been something about it on the forums, but I thought it was just a joke.”

Hannah had seen the same thread.  She hadn’t thought it was connected.  

“Isn’t that the one the ghosts were in?”

“Ghosts?  Come on, haha,” said Kwan.  “Those guys were just roleplaying, like whatever Nost and Kyle are doing.”

Hannah briefly closed her eyes.  “No, Kwan, they aren’t roleplaying.  Kyle doesn’t even believe in aliens.”

“No one believes in aliens.  That’s just you.”

“Lots of people believe in aliens.  I didn’t make up the whole UFO enthusiast community.  More importantly, you don’t think this is, like, a Spectra thing, do you?”

“Man, I hope not.  Mrs. Tetslaff said this was mandatory and worth twenty percent of our whole grade!”

“It isn’t worth twenty percent of your grade, Mr. Kwan,” said Mr. Lancer, materializing ghostlike out of nowhere.  He was wearing a bright pink apron with the words Eat, Pray, Love embroidered on it in big, loopy, cursive.  “It is, however, mandatory.”

“How much of my grade is it worth, then?” asked Kwan.  

Mr. Lancer sighed.  “Zero.  But, as I said, it is still mandatory.”

“But why?” asked Hannah.  

Mr. Lancer stared at her for a long minute.  “If I tell you,” he said, finally, “I know it’ll be all over the school within an hour.”

“No, it won’t.  I can keep a secret.”

“You can’t, but that’s besides the point.  If it comes from you, I’ll have plausible deniability if the GIW come around.”

“That’s mean.”  She turned to Kwan.  “Did you hear what he just said to me?  Like I’m not trustworthy?”

“You aren’t trustworthy.  One time I left the room for a minute and when I came back you and your friends had made Mikey cry and you had coated the floor with whipped cream.”

“That wasn’t me.”

“You were holding the whipped cream can.”

“I was framed,” said Hannah.  

Mr. Lancer closed his eyes and sighed.  “The cake idea was the only one that got any widespread traction on the Amity forums.  There were, apparently, already some talks about doing something with it on some of the community and business boards.  But we only got into it when Mayor Masters offered to fund the whole thing.”

Hannah gasped.  “You’re on the forums.”

“Despite my age, I do know how to work a computer.”

“But,” said Kwan, “what if it is a ghost thing?  What if the cake is evil?  What if the cake is a lie?”

“It probably is a ghost thing,” allowed Mr. Lancer, “but since Phantom of all people is endorsing it, I think it will be fine.  Also, you’re going to be making the cakes, so if the cakes wind up evil…”  He trailed off.  “I need to go make some more arrangements before we leave. You two should report to your first period classes.”

.

“I can’t believe you and Vlad got the whole school roped into this,” said Sam, kicking a bit of loose gravel off the path.  “What even was the point of this?”

Danny shrugged.  “It was the best idea we had?” he offered.  

“Just because people liked it doesn’t mean it’s going to be functional,” complained Sam.  

“I think people liking it might actually make it more functional,” said Tucker.  “Just saying.”

“I guess,” said Sam.  “But what are you going to do if everyone does come to this cake thing, including the paranormal investigator people?  What then?”

“Come on,” said Danny, “what kind of self-respecting paranormal investigators are going to go to a Community Cake Day when there are ghouls and goblins about?”

“You think these people are self-respecting?”

.

“A ‘Community Cake Day,’ huh?” said Ned.  “You didn’t mention that in your research.”

“That’s because it didn’t come up in my research,” said Az, scowling at the paper taped to the telephone pole.  “It didn’t exist.”

“It’s sponsored by MasterSoft.”

“MasterSoft doesn’t sponsor anything.  That has to be a lie.”  

“Well, Vlad Masters is the mayor, right?  Maybe the guy just really likes cake.  Speaking of which, we could swing by after filming.  Load up on some free cake.”

“Absolutely not!” shouted the producer.  “Do you know how many self-respecting paranormal investigators are seen at tacky small town cake-offs?  None!  Sip!  Silch!  Nada!  Get into positions!  And Jimmy… please, try to emote just a little.  Susan!  Where’s my coffee?”

“‘What self-respecting paranormal investigator,’” repeated Ned mockingly.  “If we were self-respecting, we wouldn’t be doing this.”

“We were doing it before,” pointed out Az.  

“We were in college before.  No one in college has any respect for anything, right, Jimmy?”

“Hn.”

Az patted Jimmy on the shoulder.  “Look at it this way.  Most of that cake is made by high schoolers.  They have even less respect for everything.  And there’s hardly anyone on the streets.  That makes it more spooky.  A real ghost town vibe.”

“Right,” said Ned.  “Real spooky.”

.

“Welcome back, cryptid crawlers, to the latest entry in our cryptid crawl across the continental US!  Today finds us in lovely Amity Park, Illinois, as promised.”  Crawly turned slightly to frame the ‘Welcome to Amity Park!  A Nice Place to Live!’ sign with their hands, before squaring themself to the camera again.  “With me today is my cameraman Bill.  Say hi, Bill!”  

Bill briefly turned the handheld camera towards his own face, then rotated it to point at Crawly again.  

“We all owe Bill a huge thank you, because without him, you’d be getting this on my GoPro.  Anyway.  Amity Park.  Well, my first impression is that it is a little beaten up.  Lots of… weirdly shaped potholes.  They’re in the sidewalks, too.  Usually you don’t get a great view of those in videos.”  Crawly skirted one hole.  “This does look sort of humanoid-shaped, doesn’t it?  Weird.  But, anyway, beyond being beaten up, Amity Park looks fairly average for a town, which is par for the course.  Fresno is a completely normal town, too, after all.  Weird things are normal, so you find weird things in normal places.  Most cryptids don’t live in the Himalayas, and with cities causing habitat destruction to the point where even well-known animals like bears and deer are becoming urbanized–” They’d have to fact check that sentence before they posted the edited video.  They weren’t sure it was actually true.  “--cryptids, too, are moving into cities.”  They nodded sharply at this conclusion.  

“Although…  It is a little quiet, isn’t it?  Bill, what do you think?”

“Eh, you might be right,” said Bill.  “But sometimes small cities get their rush hours at different times.”

“I suppose,” said Crawly, already turning away.  “Right, so, for this next bit, we’re just going to walk around for a while.  We can interview anyone we come across.  Then, we’ll go investigate the phantom’s,” they snickered, “haunts.”  A colorful flier on a nearby telephone pole caught Crawly’s eye and they paused.  “Oh, hey, there’s a community event happening!  That must be where all the people are.  They’re making cakes.  Want to go when we’re done filming?”

“Sounds good to me,” said Bill.  

“Then it’s a plan!”

.

One good thing about impulsively telling everyone he shared his forum account with the ‘real’ Phantom was that Danny didn’t get beaten up or dragged out into unused hallways after class all that much anymore.  

Of course, it still happened now and again.  Like today.  Although today it wasn’t actually between classes, but in that weird gap between roll call and when they got their assignments with the caterers and bakers.  He’d somehow lost track of Sam and Tucker in the rush, but he wasn’t particularly worried.  

“Fenton,” said Dash, more nasally than usual.  

“Baxter.”  Danny made a face.  “Are you, like, sick or something?”

“No,” said Dash, who was distinctly red-eyed.  

“Have you been…”  Danny decided against accusing Dash of crying.  “Smoking?”

“I’d never jeopardize our chances at state playoffs!” 

“Oh!” exclaimed Paulina.  “Just give him the stuff so you can stop posturing.  Here!”  She shoved a bag at him.

“Uh,” said Danny, hugging the bag to his chest.  “What is this?”

“Your costume.”

“Uh.  What?”

“For messing with the out of town dude.  Dudette?”

“I think someone said they were nonbinary in the forums,” said Danny, bewildered.  He had his own incredibly tacky Phantom costume, and he wasn’t just talking about the one he wore on a daily basis.  

“Whatever.  We’re just making sure you actually show up and do what you said you’d do, so Phantom isn’t left with the mess you caused.”

Danny wasn’t sure why Dash was blaming him for this particular mess, but he’d long ago given up on trying to understand Dash.  However… “Why wouldn’t I have done what I said I was going to do?” He directed the question more at Paulina.  

Dash snorted.  “You can’t even run a forum account by yourself.  If we didn’t make you do it, you’d half-a–”

“Mr. Baxter.”

The three of them turned towards the voice. Mr. Lancer stood at the end of the hallway, eyes glittering.  

“I’m glad I found you three before anything… unfortunate… occurred.  Mr. Baxter, Miss Sanchez, your cohort is working with the team from Creep-tastic Catering in the Culinary Arts kitchen.”

“Come on, Dash,” said Paulina, walking down the hallway.  “We don’t want to leave our friends waiting.”

“Your friends are looking for you, Mr. Fenton,” said Mr. Lancer. 

“Okay,” said Danny, “thanks.  Um.”

Mr. Lancer sighed heavily.  “The three of you have been excluded from all the group lists.  It wasn’t my idea.”

“And we never had this conversation,” said Danny, solemnly.  

“That’s not what I– Oh, what does it matter?  Avoid the actual hunters while you’re wearing all of that, will you?”

“That’s the plan.”

Mr. Lancer’s next sigh was even heavier.  

.

“... and that’s about the gist of it,” said the woman from Poltergeist Pastries.  “Any questions?”

About a dozen hands went up, including Star’s.  The woman looked… intimidated.  

“You there,” she said, pointing somewhere in Star’s general vicinity.  

Star would take it.  “Do you know why we’re doing this?” she asked.  

“It’s a community outreach–”

“No, I mean, why are we really doing this?” clarified Star.  “How is this going to help with the problem?”

“The only problem I see around here is a lack of delicious cakes!”

“Uh,” said Star.  

“No, really,” said the woman, wringing her hands together.  “I think it will help.  And don’t worry,” she continued, pitching her voice even louder, “after you finish your individual and group cakes and have them assessed by our esteemed judges, you’ll be able to participate in the world-record breaking massive cake bake, where we will work together to make a single twenty-five by twenty-five meter square sheet cake.”  She beamed at them.  “Doesn’t that sound like fun?”

“Yeah!” said Ms. Tetslaff, their teacher chaperone.  “We’re going to bake this cake and get those tourists out of here!  Who’s with me?”  She pumped a fist in the air.  

Star was beginning to wonder if she had fallen into some bizarre mirror universe.

.

Danny stepped intangibly through a wall.  He still had things to do, and he was running low on time.  For all he knew, Crawly was already in town.  

“Hey!” he shouted, getting the attention of everyone there.  “Is everyone here?”  He scanned the crowd.  “Where’s Dani?”

“I am only the master of all things electronic and beeping,” said Technus, shrugging, “not unruly, sneaky, teenagers that call my hair ‘whack.’”

Danny groaned and rubbed his hands down the sides of his face.  He didn’t know if he’d have time to find her.  “Skulker?”

“I don’t hunt clones.  Only the originals!”

“There is something seriously wrong with you.  LL, I’ve done what I can to make sure everything is the way you wanted it.”

“We’ll see, ghost boy.  Cookie?”

“No, I– Oh, fine.  It’s not like it’s cursed or anything, is it?”

“It depends on whether or not you’re allergic to peanuts.”

Danny took the cookie but didn’t eat it.  “Is it cursed if I’m not allergic to peanuts?”

“... No.”

Well, that was unconvincing.  Danny put the cookie down on a nearby plate.  “Anyway, you guys follow your end of the deal, I’ll follow mine.  Are we still good?”

“THE BOX GHOST WISHES TO KNOW IF THERE WILL BE ANY BOX CAKES!”

“I don’t know, probably,” said Danny.  “Everyone else?  Are we good?”

There was a faint murmur of agreement.  

“Great.  Be aware that if you cause any trouble, I will make you regret it.”

“We’ll make a proper ghost out of you yet, dipstick!”

“Why do all of your compliments sound like you want to kill me?”

“Probably because they do!”

“Thank you, Sidney.  I’ve got to go before the cryptid people fall into a trans-dimensional pothole Vlad didn’t bother to pave or something stupid.”

.

“Hey, Val.”

Valerie jumped backwards and clutched at her chest.  “Don’t do that to people who are trying to sneak away from somewhere.”

Dani snickered.  “Don’t worry, I have it on pretty good authority that there is life after death.”

“Don’t joke about that.”

“Okay,” said Dani, rising the rest of the way out of the ground.  “So.  You still up for some mayhem?”

Valerie raised an eyebrow.  “What kind of mayhem were you thinking about?”

.

“Okay,” said Tucker, using his stylus to poke at a map of Amity on his PDA.  “According to this… we’ve got… The TV people over here… the internet people over here… and the ghost hunters here…”

“And my parents?”

“Unclear,” said Tucker.  “However…”  He raised his stylus.  “Do you hear that?”

“Yeah,” said Danny.  “It’s the GAV.  Loud as usual.”

“I think it’s probably somewhere north of Descarte and… east…  Maybe east of fifteenth?”

“I think it’s closer than that.  Fourteenth,” said Sam.  

“Yeah, that could be right.”

“Great,” said Danny.  “So, as planned, then?”

Tucker and Sam nodded.  “As planned.”

#danny phantom #phic phight #phic phight 2023

[ursaspecter]

I support trans rights AND trans wrongs. Here he is! Everyone's favorite trashbag husband (with Danny and Vlad for scale). This was a lot of fun to work on and I'm really pleased with how he turned out. He doesn't quite look like he's 24, but my excuse is that Vlad was like 40-something when Dan was created so in my mind, he's just always gonna look older than he really is anyway. As per usual, design notes will be under the cut!

I think I'll take a short hiatus from these redesigns, but when I start them up again, I'll work on the rest of the supporting cast of humans (Paulina, Star, Dash, Kwan, and Mr. Lancer (maybe Coach Tetslaff if I'm feeling up to it)) and then start working on the massive rogues gallery of ghosts.

Tools used: XP Pen Artist 15.6 Pro, Clip Studio Paint Reblogs >>> Likes

I think this might be my most drastic redesign yet. I gave him a wolf cut mullet instead of the fiery ponytail partially because I wanted Ember to be the only ghost with fire hair, and the wolf cut would fit better with the more punk vibe I was going for Dan. Also I think the fire hair looked a little silly in the show's style. When I see it done in other peoples' styles it looks great, but for some reason it just looks goofy in the show. I kept his coveralls, t shirt, and boots from Danny, but added wear and distress to the outfit. His sleeves are ripped off, his shirt collar is torn up, and the cuffs on his pant legs are more wrinkly than Danny's are. His boots are also a little bit more wrinkly, and he doesn't lace them all the way up (probably to give his thicc calves more room). I was originally going to change the trim on his pockets from green to red, but it made his palette look a scosche too Christmassy, so I kept the green. I got rid of his belt so he can have his coveralls unzipped lower since they probably can't zip all the way up anymore anyway. I kept the leg part of the harness though for the same reason I have them on Danny. He thinks they look cool. And any good villain knows you have to look cool to be taken seriously. Duh. I lifted the shadowy gradient on his hands from Vlad. Only now his whole hand is covered instead of just his fingers The last little detail I gave him is that on his right hand he's wearing Jazz's headband.

#my art #digital art #fanart #danny phantom #danny fenton #dark danny #dan phantom #vlad plasmius #danny phantom redesign #if he looks like dio brando that's because i used his face as inspiration whoops sorry i dont watch jjba i just like looking at the beef #also in the wise words of edna mode: NO CAPES.

[samgirl98]

Cain and Abel Wept 18/?

Prev | Next

WARNING: THIS CHAPTER HAS DEPICTIONS OF TORTURE, INCLUDING DISMEMBERMENT, BURNING, AND ACID TORTURE PROCEED WITH CAUTION

Sorry for the shortness of it, I really wanted to drive the emotions, and it came out this brief.

Jason fell in and out of consciousness.

Jason heard bits and pieces from the people around him through the ringing of his ears.

“…Subject doesn’t seem to be able to regenerate organs….” What had they cut out?

“The kidney still hasn’t…ectoplasm doesn’t regenerate…ectoplasm seems to be keeping Subject alive….”

Through the haze, Jason wondered how long he had been in this hell.

Dad, where are you?

____

Three days, that’s how long it has been since Jason had gotten captured.

Danny knew what Jazz said that he shouldn’t blame himself, or he would be taking the blame away from the GIW. But he couldn’t help it.

Damian sat by Danny. They both stewed in the thick silence.

“Your friends still haven’t found the location, akhi, but they will. Anyone who you have in high regard will pull through.

“But will he pull through in time, or will we just find a corpse?”

“Don’t talk like that, Danny. Todd is tough; he’ll pull through; he has to. He’ll stay strong until we rescue him, and then Dr. Thompkins will take care of him. Father won’t spiral, and mother won’t go on a killing rage.”

Danny snorted, “Mother is going to go on a killing spree, alright, and I won’t stop her. They messed with my family; they don’t deserve mercy.”

Damian nodded in understanding. He doubted even father would stop mother.

“Dami, I know I have no right to ask this, but can I hug you?”

“Akhi, you never have to ask.”

Both brothers embraced each other, both worried about what the future would bring.

____

Burning.

They were burning him. Jason wished his tears would put out the flames licking on his hands.

“Subject is simulating crying to rose sympathy. This particular revenant can burn, which coincides with the folklore of burning a body to stop it. Ectoplasm will soon be administered to see if that will heal it.”

 Jason had long since gotten used to seeing his heart beating from his open chest cavity. He laughed hysterically. Not even the Joker had done this much damage, and he was still alive! God, why didn’t he just die? Was this punishment for all the people he had killed? For all the blood on his hands?

“Next, we will text how acid reacts to the Subject’s skin.”

God, let him die.

____

Tucker hadn’t slept for over three days trying to find Jason Todd. Danny hadn’t said it, but Tucker knew that Danny had accepted the Waynes as his fright (though Danny hadn’t noticed yet.), and he knew Danny was blaming himself.

Tucker was glad most of the Casper High students knew about Danny and had decided to help however they could. Mr. Lancer had ‘bought’ the excuse that Tucker was sick and would let him use the school computers to bring down the GIW.

The principal would turn a blind eye and let him stay until late hours and come in early. His parents didn’t know know, but they knew something big was happening, and his mom would pack him as much food as she thought her son would need. Even Ms. Tetslaff was off his back.

Tucker had pinpointed the GIW’s HQ somewhere in Wisconsin, but he couldn’t find where in Wisconsin they were.

Tucker stopped for a few moments to stretch.

He was about to sit when his secured Fenton phone rang.

“This is Tucker. What do you got for me,” he asked as he tried to hack even more of the GIW’s files. Surprisingly, it was easier to get incriminating data rather than their location.

“They made a bunker in 43°8’43” N 87°58’13” W.

Tucker heard a dial tone as Wes hung up.

“Wes, you crazy bastard, you did it.”

Wes had planned to break into the local GIW building in Amity, but Tucker didn’t think the conspiracy theorist would do it.  

Tucker called Bruce Wayne.

“I have coordinates.”

____

“While the Subject does heal from the acid burns, unlike the burns from the fire, the scars linger. We will continue feeding it ectoplasm to see if it makes them disappear.”

Dr. Harry McConnell had never experimented on a revenant before. It was almost like experimenting on a human. The sadist in him relished at the thought. If he could prove that revived people were nothing more than ectoplasmic beings, well, the government would be funding his sadistic pleasures.

“It has been 43 hours since we have had the Subject. During that time, it had no water or food, yet the ectoplasm kept it intact. I suggest the GIW look into rewriting the laws to monitor revived people as some may no longer be human.”

Yes, Dr. McConnell had found his perfect playground.

____

They had a location now, Havenwoods State Forest in Wisconsin.

Soon, Talia would have her eldest back, and the blood of the GIW would paint their white suits red.

____

Damian put on his Robin suit. The rest of his family were getting ready to get their brother/son back from the hands of evil.

Damian would be fighting side-by-side with all of his siblings, and this time, he would not let anyone of them down.

They were going to get his older brother back; blood would be shed, but it wouldn’t be from his family. Today, he wasn’t a Wayne. He was an al Ghul

Here it is! Again, sorry for it being short, but I hope that the emotions came through well. Fun fact, I got the coordinates from Wikipedia so if they aren't to Havenwoods State Forest, blame them lol

And now a poll

#cain and abel wept #dc x dp #dp x dc

[underforeversgrace]

the walls you hide behind (I saw the truth inside the real you) - 9

title: the walls you hide behind (I saw the truth inside the real you)

words: 5,072

Story Summary: Jazz is tired of the ghosts, tired of her parents not doing enough, tired of Phantom's recklessness and her brother's persistent exhaustion. When she yells all of her frustration at her parents after nearly getting killed by a ghost, she gets sent to Vlad's mansion in Wisconsin for the weekend - where she's offered a chance. She could have the ability to fight back, protect her brother and her town. Jazz leaps at the prospect. When she returns to Amity Park at the end of the weekend, it's with abilities and strength of her own, and she's fueled by anger and disdain. And she's got her eyes, first, on Danny Phantom.

Chapter 9 of 10: I Can't See, But I'll Follow You

AO3

Tumblr Chapter One

Tumblr Chapter Ten Will Be Here

Beta by: @probably-dead

(Also, check out the AO3 link for some really awesome art by @englandamericaitaly!)

~~~

Weeks bled into months as Jazz slowly integrated with ‘Team Phantom,’ as Tucker kept calling them. She learned her way around their parents’ equipment so she could ‘help’ fight ghosts.

The more time passed, the more guilt she felt at not fessing up about being the Trapper, but also the more she realized she simply couldn’t. Too long had passed with her lying to them, too many more lies by omission and outright dishonesty had occurred in the months since the incident with Dan.

Her parents’ weapons were easier to learn than she’d anticipated, at least, largely due to the fact that, apparently, Vlad had entirely ripped off their designs in her own weapons. She knew how to work them because they were exactly the same as what she used as the Trapper. She wished she could say that was the biggest surprise when it came to Vlad. Unfortunately, a few days after the entire CAT incident, Plasmius had shown up to fight Phantom and Jazz had gotten the entire story about Vlad while bandaging up burns littering Danny’s body.

The next time he’d shown up, the Trapper had had a lot of fun beating the hell out of the vampiric ghost. She wasn’t sure why Plasmius had taken it easy on her during their scuffle, but she knew he had. Her best guess was he didn’t want to risk hurting his ‘pawn,’ which she did know was how he saw her.

Vlad had known her brother was Phantom when he’d made Jazz into a weapon and pointed her at Danny like a loaded gun, when he’d cleverly stoked her stubbornness and made her suffer. It was a poetic irony, she supposed. She’d learned more about Danny’s accident, knew he had felt agony just like she had. Her pain had lasted longer, she’d surmised, but his torment had been worse, his had killed him.

Maybe that was why she had to continue to suffer - why karma had declared her an enemy. He had died and she hadn’t. Everytime she came close to confessing, something would come up, some shame she had would be remembered. She had only been hunting him for a few months, but those handful were enough to leave a lifetime of shame in their wake. Jazz wondered, sometimes, how her parents would finally react when they learned the truth - she wasn’t a fool, she knew they’d learn eventually - but the longer it took them to figure it out, the more scars they gave their son.

Jazz was tired. She was tired of the ghosts, tired of the pain, tired of the lies, the bandages she gave to Danny and, in hiding, gave to herself. She was just tired. She honestly wasn’t sure anymore who was more exhausted - herself or her brother. Both of them still fought, still protected the city, but Jazz did so by herself. Danny had his friends and Jazz to fall back on.

Jazz had no one, because of her own fear of confessing to her brother. Yet still, the Trapper appeared whenever she could, desperately still trying to keep Danny out of as many fights as possible, even though he could more than hold his own.

It came as a surprise, then, when Mrs. Tetslaff cornered her one day after gym.

“I need to talk to you about your brother,” she said gruffly and Jazz forced down a sigh.

“Yes?” She answered, resigned. Jazz had never disliked a teacher until all of this began - how blind were they, to miss the bruises and scrapes littering her and her brother?

“He’s failing gym. The President’s test is coming up and he needs a gym buddy to whip his scrawny butt into shape so he doesn’t fail.”

Jazz crinkled her nose in irritation. Danny was a verifiable badass - he may not be able to bench press a bus when he was human, but he could still juggle bowling balls like they weighed nothing, and that didn’t even mention his stamina or speed. “Really?”

Tetslaff snorted. “You seen your brother, kid? Boy’s a twig who could get knocked over by a soft breeze.”

Jazz had to bite back her laugh - between herself and Danny, they were the two most dangerous people in this school, by a large margin. She may not be as super powered as him, but she was no regular human. “I see what you mean,” she lied. “What do you need from me?”

“Well, on account of your whole… family thing… I just don’t feel comfortable assigning another student to be his gym buddy, too much chance of ending up at FentonWorks.”

Jazz leaned her head back, unable to stop the groan that escaped her. “But since I live there, I’m a great choice, right?”

Tetslaff shrugged. “You’re fit enough, especially when compared to your brother.”

Again, Jazz wanted to remind this lady that the two of them had the power to level this school, but she didn’t. It was petty, anyway. “I’ll work with him this evening.”

The gym teacher did something with her face that roughly approximated a grin and handed Jazz a piece of paper going over what all would be tested. Pull ups, push ups, running a mile, crunches, and squats. Jazz managed to hide her eye roll until after she’d turned and walked away.

“How are you failing gym?” Jazz asked, exasperated, as soon as she found Danny after the final bell, hanging out with Sam and Tucker as usual, isolated off in a corner of Casper’s grounds.

Danny shrugged. “I can’t really explain suddenly becoming an Olympic level athlete, can I?”

“Especially not when he’s been a fitness failure for fourteen years up until then,” Tucker added, grinning. His grin was quickly replaced by a yelp when Danny volleyed a small ectoblast at his friend, who leaped out of the way.

“You’re failing too, Tucker,” Sam added, rolling her eyes.

“How?” Jazz asked. “You people fight ghosts! And you,” she added, poking at Danny with her finger to drive home her point, “aren’t human! You can easily at least get a C in this class!”

Danny flinched slightly at her words and Jazz looked at him in confusion. She’d heard him say dozens of times by now how he wasn’t human, said it with humor. “That’s the problem, isn’t it?” Danny said.

“What?”

“You don’t know what it’s like, Jazz. To suddenly not be human anymore, to have abilities you don’t understand and can’t control,” Danny explained. I know more about that than you think I do, she thought grimly, remembering how she had to learn to stop jumping on accident when she walked after her own transformation. “I don’t have… I don’t know, control? The ability to tell what’s enough and what’s too much? So I don’t give any.”

“You don’t know at what point it stops looking human and starts looking ghostly?” She asked, understanding.

Danny nodded. “I don’t know where the limit is. So I do the absolute bare minimum.”

“Then we have a problem,” Jazz said, pulling the President’s Test guidelines from her pocket and handing it to him. “You have to pass this or you’re going to fail. Tetslaff stopped me earlier and made me your designated fitness buddy.”

Danny and Tucker groaned, but Sam cackled. “I told you there was no way Tucker would get a buddy and you wouldn’t, Danny!”

“But I can’t!” Danny protested, scowling as he read the sheet Jazz gave him. “I’m not that good an actor. I don’t know how to try to hold myself back while acting like I don’t know what I’m doing!”

“C’mon, little brother,” Jazz said with a sigh. “We’ll work on your acting skills and try to establish a baseline of how to pretend to be normal.”

“Wanna fly home?” He asked, grinning, his earlier low mood gone.

“Of course,” she answered with a smile. She’d been right when she guessed Danny’s favorite ability was flight. They double checked the coast was clear before he triggered his transformation, Sam and Tucker waving farewell as Danny reached out for Jazz and she took his hand. She shivered as he shared his power with her, lifting the two of them with ease far into the sky.

“I’m sorry about how I reacted to the human comment,” he said suddenly, when they were high above the ground.

“It’s fine,” Jazz said, waving it away. “I didn’t know it still bugged you, I’m sorry for bringing it up.”

“I didn’t think it still bugged me either,” Danny admitted, the two of them drifting leisurely through the sky. “I thought I got over it. It’s been a year, y’know? You’re supposed to get used to things after some time has passed.”

“Danny, you’re allowed to still be emotional about a traumatic event.”

“It wasn’t that bad…”

“Danny.” Jazz said sternly.

He sighed. “Okay, it was awful. An eleven on a scale out of ten. But I survived and it made me superhuman. I’m supposed to be fine by now.”

Jazz looked at him sadly as he lowered them to the ground in an alley near the house. “Trauma with a happy ending is still trauma, Danny. Please, at least with me, don’t bottle it up? I understand more than you think I do.”

Danny just shrugged, flickering back to his human half and shoving his hands into his pockets. “I appreciate the pep talk Jazz, but you can never understand what I’ve gone through, what I’ve had to do to survive. The lying, the secret identity, the missed classes and skipped sleep… the pain,” his voice broke at the word, “you just can’t understand.”

You mean all the things I’ve grown familiar with, too? The struggle of hiding yourself, of forming lie after lie? The pain as you heal from injuries, the pain of feeling like you’re being ripped apart from the inside because you made a stupid choice? I’ve got twice as much, now - hiding my own secrets along with yours.

“Even if I can’t fully understand it, let me be your safety net, okay? I know there are some things you just can’t tell Sam or Tucker, ever, but I want you to feel safe telling anything to me,” Jazz said, patting his shoulder reassuringly. And hope you still feel safe around me if you learn what I am.

Danny shrugged again, forcing her hand away. “I don’t want to talk about this right now. We have gym stuff to work on. Do you have any bright ideas on how I can pretend to be human?”

“First, by remembering you are human,” she said, unlocking the gate to the back yard with Danny following behind. “Then we’ll get an idea of the upper limit of your abilities as a human and figure out what a C minus student’s limits would actually be.”

“C minus?”

“Would pre-accident you do any better than that?”

“Shut up.”

Jazz laughed as she pulled the grading sheet from her pocket, smoothing it out. “Okay, so, first I think we should look at running, because -“

“Get down!” Danny yelled, grabbing her arms and granting her his intangibility as concussive blasts sounded around them, her ears ringing as the shockwaves settled. Danny pushed her behind him, transforming back into Phantom as she stumbled and fell, a crater now formed in the ground.

“That ghost sense of yours really is nearly useless, isn’t it?” Jazz asked, clutching her head even as she swore internally. She had trained herself to ignore the signals screaming Ghost! at her the more time she’d spent around Danny.

“I’m busy, Skulker,” Danny said, squatting into a protective stance, firmly between Jazz and the hunter.

“You’re never too busy for me, ghost child,” Skulker proudly declared.

“Yeah, I can be. Actually, just assume I always am,” he said, shooting at Skulker with an ectoblast.

“Aw, I’m injured, whelp,” Skulker mock-whined, dodging the blast and lobbying one of his own in return, grinning wickedly at Jazz. Danny swore as he realized Skulker hadn’t aimed at him, jumping in front of Jazz and throwing up a shield.

Skulker opened his mouth to say something but with a flash of light he was suddenly gone without a trace. Danny lowered the shield, turning and reaching out to help Jazz up.

“What was -" Jazz started, accepting the offered hand, only to be yet again cut off as the same white light suddenly enveloped her and Danny. “- that?” She finished, rubbing the blind spots from her eyes, only to suddenly find herself in some sort of jungle, surrounded by green that reached so high above her it nearly blotted out the blue of the sky high above.

“If I had an allowance, I’d be willing to bet all of it on ‘another Fenton invention’ being the culprit,” Danny said.

“Did they teleport us?” Jazz asked, still trying to blink the dark spots from her vision.

“No, but I think we just got a guest role on the next Honey, I Shrunk the Kids movie,” Danny said, pointing straight upwards. Jazz had to squint through the fading blackness until she finally realized she was still beside the house, the bright orange blob in the sky being her father leaning out the Ops Center window. “Dad had said something a few nights ago about working on an invention to shrink ghosts in size.”

“I hope it has a reverse button,” Jazz grumbled, wiping dirt from her pants.

“So do I.”

“So now we have to get all the way up there. Can you fly us?” she asked, eyeing the wall of the house - it may as well be miles away.

“‘Course I can,” Danny said. Jazz grabbed his hand and he lifted them, but almost immediately he began straining to catch his breath. He sat her down on top of a blade of grass, taller than any tree Jazz had ever seen. He collapsed to his knees on the blade next to her, a sheen of sweat across his face. “Uh. Maybe not. My powers. Something feels wrong. My core -” Danny clutched at his chest, visibly fighting to breathe.

Jazz managed to not panic, though just barely. Danny didn’t have to breathe as much as a normal human - she didn’t think she’d seen him fight for air since his accident, even punches to the stomach that knocked the wind out of her didn’t phase him. “Are you okay?” Danny glared at her and she held her hands up in mock surrender. “Sorry. Standard question.”

“We’re gonna have to go the long way,” Danny decided. Jazz briefly considered outing her secret and flying them up herself, but decided that admitting she was her brother’s ‘enemy’ while he was so weak he could barely fly wasn’t the best idea. Danny flew back over to her and had them halfway back down when gravity suddenly grabbed at them both, sending them tumbling to the ground.

Jazz landed on her shoulder and she bit her tongue painfully to keep from crying out. The nanobots stirred angrily below her flesh, a swarm of ants demanding to be released in response to her pain and rising adrenaline. “Are you okay?” She managed, forcing herself to her feet and going to Danny’s side. He was curled into a ball, again grabbing at his chest.

“No,” Danny groaned, visibly having to force himself to sit up. “My core. Using my powers hurts.”

“C’mon,” Jazz said, helping Danny to his feet, even as he leaned heavily against her injured shoulder. She winced but Danny thankfully didn’t notice, too absorbed in his own problems. “We have to get to the Ops Center and reverse this.”

She helped him forward for several staggering steps until he pulled his weight off of her. “I think I’m okay, the pain’s gone away. So long as I avoid using my powers, maybe I’ll be alright,” Danny said.

In typical Fenton’s Luck fashion, as soon as the words were out of his mouth, a flash of white briefly obscured his feet. Both of them covered their eyes from the sudden bright light.

“Well. That can’t be good,” Danny said, looking at his red tennis shoes.

“Has this ever happened before? A partial transformation?” Jazz asked, the sight of Phantom’s suit and Fenton’s shoes somehow unnerving. The two continued to the door as they talked.

“Only once - the first time I used my Ghostly Wail, it was really draining. But this feels… different? Like my core is… I don’t know, diminishing?”

“The weapon that shrunk us. Could it shrink your core out of existence?” Jazz asked, frowning. 

Danny paled, the possibility seemingly aging him far beyond his fourteen years. “That would kill me.”

“What?” Jazz asked, stopping and grabbing his arm, forcing him to turn to face her. “What do you mean?”

“It… it was something future Vlad told me. I killed - uh, Phantom killed me, I mean, Fenton. You know what I mean. But my human body didn’t decay right. I - he - future human me - resembled a charred corpse within hours of his - my? - murder.”

“Ancients,” Jazz muttered, horrified. “That’s how dark Phantom killed, uh, him?”

Danny shook his head. “No. It’s how the portal killed me. Apparently, my human side’s death was quick and didn’t leave visible injuries. No, the body began burning to a crisp after the death.”

“Wait. Are you telling me that without your ghost half…?”

“My core is what keeps me alive. As gross as it is, Vlad did tests on future me’s corpse to see why it… did that. I don’t know the science of how he figured that out - I don’t think I want to know what happened to my body - but without my core, I’m a goner. If my core is fading… The only reason Vlad lived is because he isn’t fully half and half, like I am.”

“Then we need to hurry,” Jazz said, her heart dropping as she gazed up, realizing what she had to do - her secret versus her brother’s life? His life won, every time. “Danny, I -”

Their conversation was again interrupted by blasts, but Danny wasn’t able to protect her this time. Jazz screamed when the blasts sent her flying and she slammed into a boulder-sized pebble head first, gasping for air as pain flooded her senses, dimming the rest of the world and scattering coherence to the wind.

“Jazz!” Someone yelled, her brain too fuzzy to recognize the distorted voice, though it was familiar.

She struggled to her feet, hearing nearby sounds of fighting as though she had cotton in her ears. Groaning, she touched where the pain was the worst, on the back of her head. Jazz stared at her hand and knew she should be more concerned by the red paint on it… but she had something else to do. What was it? She couldn’t remember. There was something screaming in her head, there was a pull in her chest.

“Jazz!” The familiar-but-unable-to-be-placed voice said as a weight forced her to the ground and heat rushed around her. Oh, the person had tackled her. Why? Her entire body hurt already, and that didn’t help. Rude. “Jazz, come on! Damn it Skulker, if you’ve hurt her, it will be your head on my wall!”

What an odd name - Skulker. Did he skulk a lot? Maybe a friend of Sam’s… “Jazz, please!” Danny said, shaking her shoulders. When had she stood up? Oh! The voice was Danny!

“Danny? You sound weird…” Jazz said. Or, at least, she thinks she said it? She had gotten distracted remembering that time Danny had inhaled helium at a birthday party for one of the neighbor’s kids. What was that kid’s name…?

A robotic laugh grated against her aching skull and her entire body tensed on instinct. This voice was familiar too, but it carried a sense of danger, entirely different than Danny’s comfortable familiarity had been. “As if you could beat me, whelp.”

Jazz turned her head to look at the figure the uncomfortable voice came from, squinting. Her vision was still blurred, she could make out a lot of silvery gray and blue, backlit by a light she couldn’t find the source of.

Something shuddered beneath her skin - not painful, but not pleasurable either. She scratched at her arm, expecting to see a bug or a bite or something that caused the feeling, and was surprised to find nothing, just unblemished skin.

“How many times have I beaten you by now? A rusty trash can puts up more of a fight!” Danny said.

Jazz stared at him. Had her brother always had white hair? Was hers white too? She pulled her braid forward, confirming it was red and not white. That white… there was something important about that white.

“You’re powerless, ghost child. You’re nothing against me without death’s gifts.”

Death? Ghosts? Was Skulker going to hurt Danny? The thought triggered a surge of energy, still in her skin, and she forced it down. She didn’t know why she did that - there was a sense of… fear?

She groaned and closed her eyes, her thoughts were so muddled. Her aches and pains had aches and pains, she felt like there was something inside her skin that shouldn’t be there, something was wrong but she couldn’t figure out what, and, damn it, why was everything still so blurry?

“I don’t need my powers to beat you into a pulp,” Danny growled, placing himself between Jazz and Skulker. Wait, that’s wrong, isn’t she supposed to protect him? She’s the older sister! She began to protest when a white flash around Danny’s legs interrupted her. She stared at his legs in confusion, realizing he was now in jeans instead of the black jumpsuit he’d had on. How’d he change so fast? Why was he in that ridiculous jumpsuit anyway?

“Let’s find out if that’s true, then.” Skulker said with a smirk, raising his arm and aiming at Danny’s chest, numerous weapons erupting from the suit. She heard them whir right before they fired.

“No!” Jazz yelled, rushing forward and pushing Danny to the ground, bracing to take the blasts, that she had no doubt would be fatal to her, might even still kill Danny, too. The power within her screamed, begging her to let it out. She gave in, disregarding the fear, not knowing what would happen. Warmth rushed down her entire body and fabric suddenly covered every inch of her. She heard the shots explode, but she was uninjured?

Jazz looked up, seeing the world was slightly tinted around her. At first she thought it was because of the mask she now wore - how had that happened? - but realized that wasn’t it. A sheer, purple bubble wrapped about the two of them, Skulker beyond it.

“Jazz?” Danny whispered beneath her, terror lacing his words.

Right! Ghost! He was scared of the ghost! Why else would he be scared?

She stood up slowly, still slightly wobbly, her entire body aching. Whatever power she’d summoned seemed to be soothing the injuries to a manageable level, at least. Or she was in shock.

…She hoped it was the magical healing suit option and not shock.

The shield wobbled as she did, lasting just another moment before evaporating. Mirroring Danny’s earlier actions, she planted herself firmly between him and the ghost.

“Trapper,” Skulker growled, disdain twisting his features before being replaced by humor. “Of course you’re the Violet Trapper.” Skulker tilted his head to the side, trying to talk past her, to Danny. “There is not a single person in your family who doesn’t hate the ghost child, is there?”

“Leave my brother alone,” Jazz said, finally giving herself over entirely to instinct, not trying to think about what she was doing or how she was doing it. Her body knew which way it wanted to move - she just had to let it.

She held her arms out to either side and shuddered as heat rushed down them. She closed her hands around the knife and gun as they formed. She didn’t study the small, pistol-like weapon that formed - she knew where the trigger was, even if she wasn’t sure how she knew.

Jazz fired and the fight was on. Somehow, she quickly gained the upper hand and she managed to get into close combat. She realized hand-to-hand (or knife-to-suit, at times) was where she excelled. She fought through the pain, through the confusion, through the muddled thoughts.

Skulker’s hand came flying towards her face and she turned, trying to duck around him, realizing too late she’d fallen for a ploy. His other hand, clenched into a fist, met her face with a crunch and was thrown backwards again. She was back on her feet before she registered the pain.

“Maybe I should take your pelt, too,” Skulker mused, stalking towards her. “A matching set can be just as valuable as a one of a kind trophy. I think I’ll - No!” His words were cut off as his form began to shudder, dissolving into a swirling blue light that had appeared.

She watched in fascination as he disappeared into a device in Danny’s hand, cursing and protesting the whole time, until Danny slapped a lid onto the… was that a thermos?

“Oh thank God, you’re alright!” She hurried forward, arms thrown out as she tried to hug her brother.

He flinched and evaded her hug. He remained just out of arm's reach, his face blank. “You. It’s you.”

Oh, had he not realized she had transformed or whatever it was she did? She concentrated on pulling the mask back and grinned when she felt it disappear. “It’s me!” She said, frowning when she felt a metallic taste in her mouth. She lifted her hand - still holding the knife - and wiped her mouth against the back of it. “Oh, ew,” she grumbled at the streak of red that stood out starkly from the purple of her glove.

“You’re the Violet Trapper. It’s you,” he repeated, voice breaking as tears began to fall from his eyes.

“Is that what this suit is? I can’t… my head…” Jazz closed her eyes, the throbbing in her head (and the rest of her body) beginning to climb as the adrenaline faded.

“Do you remember how to fly?”

She blinked at him a few times. She was human - humans can’t fly! She nearly said as much, but that same instinct she’d fought with held her tongue.

Fly.

It felt silly, ordering her body to do something impossible. She knew it would obey, though. A hoverboard appeared below her feet, lifting her several inches from the ground.

“I think so,” she said, adjusting her feet until the balance felt better. Danny cautiously moved closer. Jazz offered her hand to help him up but he just flinched again. She let her hand drop, the ache in her chest having nothing to do with physical injury. Why was he acting like this around her? She loved him, didn’t he know that? He did finally step up, though he went behind her.

She adjusted her feet again but the motion made her dizzy and she pitched forward slightly, sudden motion sickness bringing nausea with it. Danny’s cold arms wrapped around her waist - since when was he taller than her? - and held her steady.

“Fly us to the Ops Center. Pass out after. It helps to focus on the task, push the pain and exhaustion down even though it’s all you can feel right now. Just focus on getting to the next step and knowing rest will be there after,” Danny explained.

“You sound like you’re speaking from experience,” she mumbled, though she obeyed. Danny helped her navigate, she couldn’t look down. She’d never been one for vertigo, why was she now?

Oh, wait. That hadn’t been red paint on the back of her head, had it?

They flew into the open window and Danny pointed at a weapon on a table. “I think that’s it. Set us down next to it.”

Jazz managed to sit them down next to the device, though she quickly found herself on her knees, clutching her stomach as she dry heaved, pain like a knife in her head.

“Jazz? Jazz!”

She looked up, coming face to face with Danny. Worry burned on his face and in his eyes- she got the feeling he’d been calling her name for several seconds before she heard it.

“I’ve got the weapon set to reverse what it did and get us back to normal size, okay? I need you to press a button. I’ll help you as soon as I’m big, okay? We just can’t risk you passing out if we use it on you first. Can you do this for me?”

The words didn’t make a lot of sense but she understood ‘push a button.’ She held her arm up, still clad in the purple suit, and Danny helped her to her feet after a moment’s hesitation.

“C’mon, the adrenaline fade is causing you to crash and feel that head wound. Stay with me, Jazz. Stay with me.” A voice said at her side. Who…? Oh yeah, Danny! And Danny was… someone important.

A whimper escaped her as she tried to think, which only made her head hurt more.

“I’ve got you, Jazz. You’re okay. Damn it, she’s crashing hard.” The last sentence was mumbled and she barely heard it. Jazz. She was Jazz, right? He wrapped an arm around her waist and propped her against his side. She leaned her entire weight against him. She was struggling to remember him - and herself - but he was safe. She couldn’t remember his name right now, but she knew his presence meant she was safe.

He stopped in front of… something. A wall, maybe? He helped her lean against it, making sure her legs didn’t collapse beneath her. “Okay, I’m going to stand over there. When I say so, push the button, okay?”

“‘Kay,” she mumbled, struggling to hold on to his words. Push button. Wait for him, then push button. Button. Button. Button.

“Now!”

Button! Right, button! She pressed as hard as she could on the button. She felt the click of the mechanism and was briefly aware of a flash of light, but froze when she saw her brother, now a giant.

Now with black hair.

Memories rushed back and darkness consumed her, even as she saw that same flash of light heading for her.

#grace writes #danny phantom #danny fenton #jazz fenton

[monotype-on-phantom]

Hi. I just rewatched the show's first episode, and it turns out there are more teachers than Mr Lancer! At the secret steak buffet in the teachers lounge there are 7 other teachers. A couple you only see the backs of their heads, and only 3 get to gasp when it's discovered the entire buffet is missing (stolen by Lunch Lady to make her first Meat Monster Suite). But any one of them could be used to inspire an OC teacher if you need one.

Well yeah, Ms Tetslaff was around pretty much the whole time as the Health and Gym teacher, and Mr. Falluca is in a few episodes as the Math teacher.

Of course, those two aren't anywhere among the bunch of teachers you're talking about in Mystery Meat. As always, though, the background characters can have some very interesting designs, and you're absolutely right! People can absolutely use these guys as the basis for an OC teacher.

#mystery meat #background characters #screencap taken from the wiki this time bc my dvds are packed up #it's a long story

[ghostboidanny]

This is OUR hero

Ao3 link

Danny Phantom’s secret identity is a very well kept secret. Not by Danny Fenton, even though he might believe that. Oh no, that boy is awful at keeping secrets. What with yelling “going ghost” in public places and using ghost abilities constantly. But the people of Amity Park … the people are excellent at keeping his secret for him. And they do not like any outsiders trying to hurt their little hero. 

A 5+1 story where different Amity Parkers finds out Danny Phantom and Danny Fenton is one and the same and can't do anything to help him. And then one time they can help him.

Prompts by @kinglazrus @ave-aria @q-gorgeous @hauntedchilis @mystyrust LovelyUnknown @apinklion01 @warvikwrites @datawyrms

Chapter 1: Danny sucks at keeping his identity secret for 11000 words

1. Mr Lancer

Lancer was counting his students, all of them huddled in the gym, the buzz of a ghost shield overhead. Most students were shaking, a few were even crying. Ghosts had been attacking Amity for a few months now, the attacks slowly becoming more and more serious. And it hadn’t been until this week that the school finally implemented an evacuation plan. The shield had been installed just days prior. 

While he went his rounds, he did his best to comfort students. Offering a kind word here or a pat on the back there. It didn't do much in the great scheme of things but it was something. The only thing he really could do.

None of his schooling had ever prepared him for ghosts, after all.

He reached the last student on his list and his heart sank. One was missing. Daniel Fenton. And all of a sudden he remembered that the boy had requested to go to the bathroom a few minutes before the ghost alarm went off. Was he trapped out there somewhere, hurt and afraid? Before his mind could summon up too many awful images, he came to a decision. He had to find Daniel and bring him safely back here. 

"Ms Tetslaff" he called out, gaining her and a few of the students’ attention. "Daniel Fenton is missing so I'll go search for him."

She opened her mouth, as if she wanted to protest, but quickly closed it again. Maybe she realized it would be pointless by the expression on his face. Lancer would find his student and bring him back safely, no matter what anyone said. However, two students did put up a protest. Samantha Manson and Tucker Foley. When they heard his proclamation they hurried over to him.  

“Mr Lancer, there’s no need to go search for Danny”, Samantha started. “Since he’s terrified of ghosts he’s really good at hiding whenever one shows up.” 

“Yeah!” Tucker agreed. “Even if you go searching for him you most likely won't find him. And his parents are ghosts hunters, he knows how to take care of himself. No need to look for him.”

They did make some good points, in that Lancer had never once been able to find Daniel in the past during a ghost attack. He truly must be good at hiding. Still, he needed to make sure the boy was hiding inside the ghost shield instead. No matter how good he may be, the ghosts only needed to be lucky once and it would be over. 

“I’m afraid I can’t let that stop me”, Lancer said. “As your teacher it is my responsibility to keep you safe while in school. Now don’t you worry, I’ll find Mr Fenton and bring him here safely.”

The two children looked at each other, grimacing, but didn’t continue protesting. It was strange, Lancer thought, how the two of them didn’t seem more worried about their friend. But that was something to consider later, after he had found Daniel.

He walked to the open door leading out of the gym and paused there for a second. Green and shimmering the ghost shield stood just before him, and once he stepped through it ghosts would be able to attack him. At least he couldn’t see any down the corridor outside. Not that it meant much when it came to ghosts. Taking a deep breath to steady himself, he forced himself to step through the shield. Since he wasn’t immediately attacked he relaxed a bit, but he still had to keep his guard up while searching for Daniel. 

Lancer crept through the empty hallways, peering into classrooms and bathrooms, trying to find any sign of his missing student. Occasionally he would call out Daniel's name, softly, so as to make sure nothing else overheard. 

And as he walked the signs of battle were becoming clearer. Overturned trash cans. Papers strewn about. Dents in lockers. And the sound of fighting.

Lancer swallowed, his heart racing in his chest. He wanted to keep a wide berth of the battle, but what if Daniel was caught in the middle of it? What if he needed help? He just … had to check. Then he could run away again.

Closer and closer to the battle he walked until he stood outside the broken doors to the cafeteria. He kept close to the wall and poked his head around the doorway just enough to peek inside. 

The cafeteria was a mess. Overturned and broken tables were scattered about. Plates in pieces all over the floor. A few windows had been smashed in. And there was a hole in the floor. He cursed silently. That would cost a lot to repair. 

But what really caught his attention was the two ghosts in the room. He immediately recognized Phantom. He was floating in mid air, holding his signature thermos in one hand. On the ground before him stood another ghost, the Lunch Lady, if Lancer remembered correctly. She looked like one at least. 

“Meet your cutlery doom!” The Lunch Lady yelled and sent a barge of cutlery towards Phantom, who just barely managed to dodge them in time. But by the end of the barge, the Lunch Lady barely seemed able to fly, her aura dimmed to almost nothing. 

“Really cutting to the chase, huh?” Phantom yelled back, a smirk on his lips. “Well, soup can I!” He pointed the thermos at her and turned it on. The other ghost was trapped in the blue beam and was sucked in with an angry scream. He capped the thermos and the silence that followed almost seemed to echo in Lancer’s ears. 

"That will be at least a day in the thermos," the ghost boy muttered. He looked around the cafeteria and grimaced. Lancer ducked behind the door to not be seen.  "Oof, that's a lot of damage."

The ghost landed, wobbling a bit on his feet. He cursed and pressed a hand against his side. When he pulled it back it was green with ectoplasm. Seemed like he hadn’t managed to dodge all the cutlery after all. "Damn it. This will need stitches."

He sighed and walked over to the server counters, ceramic crunching beneath his feet. He pulled out a bunch of paper towels. Then, a white ring appeared around his waist. Lancer tensed, fearing it was some sort of attack. While Phantom fought off other ghosts, he had done some violent things in the past. The Fentons’ always warned everyone who would listen that even seemingly friendly ghosts only acted that way to manipulate people. They said that all ghosts were malicious and evil in their nature. Lancer found it hard to believe with this particular ghost, but better safe than sorry. 

The ring split in two, one traveling up his body and the other down. And wherever the rings passed Phantom … changed. Instead of a black and white body suit, a white t-shirt and blue jeans appeared. Instead of white hair, it turned black. Instead of Phantom, there stood his missing student Daniel Fenton. 

Lancer’s mouth dropped open, his eyes bugging out of his skull. His student … was Phantom? His student … was dead?

There was suddenly a lump in his throat and he had to swallow heavily to keep the tears down. Daniel was dead. How? When? Suddenly far too many things about Daniel’s concerning behavior made far too much sense. The way he always disappeared whenever ghosts appeared. The missing homework and assignments, the constant tardiness, falling asleep in class, the grades that had plummeted a few months ago. All of it had started right around when Phantom first started to appear. His student had been dead for months and he hadn't noticed. 

The sound of Daniel cursing brought him out of his mind. He peered back into the cafeteria and saw that Daniel had pulled his t-shirt up to study the slash across the ribs, at the same place Phantom had been wounded. Except now he was bleeding red instead of green. A very human color. But on the other hand, Daniel looked very human overall right now. That white ring must have been some sort of shapeshifting power, making him appear human. That would explain why no one had ever figured out they were the same. Though now when he knew, the similarities between ghost and boy were glaring. 

“Yeah, this will absolutely need stitches”, Daniel said, sighing as if it was a minor annoyance instead of a serious wound. “Damn it, no way I’ll get it done before school resumes again. I really don’t need Mr Lancer to give me another detention.”

Lancer’s stomach flipped. He had been giving Daniel an awful lot of detention, in hope that it would make the boy change his ways. He had been so clever and hard working at the beginning of the year and it had pained Lancer to see his grades slip. He’d thought that some pushing would turn the trend around. Shame and guilt bubbled up in him. Phantom had been seen fighting ghosts at all hours of the day and night. And on top of all the ghost fights, ghost hunters kept coming after him. His own parents kept hunting him. And Lancer had only made his life harder. 

There had to be something he could do to help Daniel. He was just a kid and way in over his head. But as Lancer looked around the wrecked cafeteria and thought back to all the battles he’d seen the boy fight, he had the sour realization that there wasn’t much he could do. He had no idea how to fight ghosts. He didn’t know anything about first aid besides putting a bandaid over a cut. The Great Gatsby, he couldn't even go to the CPS about the abuse Daniel’s parents were subjecting him to, not without outing him as a ghost. There was nothing he could do. 

Nothing he could do except … 

Lancer snuck back through the school to the gym. The shield had automatically deactivated once the ghosts disappeared and the other teachers had started to corral the students back to their classrooms. He caught sight of Samantha and Tucker whispering to each other. When they saw him they eyed him warily and he did his best to keep his face neutral. At least it seemed Daniel had two loyal friends to help him. 

In hindsight it was obvious they were Phantom’s mysterious human helpers that many an Amity Parker had theorized existed but couldn’t confirm. They constantly had an excuse ready as to why Daniel was missing and more than one time they too had been absent during ghost fights, presumably to help their friend fight. It left a sour feeling in Lancer’s stomach to know three teenagers were this city’s first line of defense, but he also had to accept there was nothing he could do about that. 

Lancer didn’t say anything to either of them, just collected his class and led them back to the classroom. The students were so used to ghost fights by now, that it only took a couple of minutes before they had calmed down enough that he could continue the lesson. 

A few minutes later, the door to the classroom opened and Daniel stuck his head in, a resigned expression on his face. Lancer suppressed a grimace, feeling his shame bubble up again. He nodded at the boy, not stopping his lecture, and felt even more ashamed at how confused but relieved Daniel looked when he wasn’t given detention. He slunk back to his seat, between Tucker and Samantha, who finally relaxed now when their friend had returned safely. 

Yes, there wasn’t much Lancer could do to help. Not up against supernatural beings that could tear buildings apart with their bare hands. Not when his student was the only one that could stand up against them. 

But at the very least he could make school a little bit easier for him. That, and keep the boys secret safe. 

2. The A-listers

“I’m telling you!” Wes yelled and Dash sighed, already annoyed despite the other boy barely having started talking. Next to him Paulina rolled her eyes and started examining her nails, perfect as always. Star and Kwan followed their lead, acting annoyed but indifferent. “Danny Fenton is Phantom! Just listen to the names! Danny Fenton, Danny Phantom, it’s practically the same. And they look the same too, except for the color change!”

Paulina gasped, affronted. She marched up to Wes and pointed one long nail at his nose. Wes immediately shut up, carefully taking a step back. “My darling perfect Phantom doesn't look anything like that little freak Fenton!”

Dash snorted. “Yeah and no way Fentoenail would have the guts to fight anything, let alone a ghost! He screams and runs away when someone as much as mentions ghosts. I wail on him all the time and I tell you, he’s a coward and a weakling. He’s nothing like Phantom.”

Wes swallowed, but that fanatic glow was still shining in his eyes. “I’m telling you, Fenton is Phantom and I’ll prove it to you! I’ll prove it to everyone!”

Dash cracked his knuckles and Wes covered. “If you weren’t a sports bro I’d give you a wailing for saying such things about Phantom. Phantom is a hero, the best hero ever! And I won’t have you compare him to Fentino. Now, scram.”

Wes gave them all a sour look, but did as commanded. He hurried away from them, probably looking for his next victim to ambush with his theory. Paulina snorted, an undignified sound she only made when no one but the A-listers were around, and leaned against Dash. 

“What a loser. I can’t believe I almost let him be an A-lister. His whole obsession over Fenton and Phantom is so creepy! Those two are as different as two people can be. Last week he tried to prove it by saying that Phantom only ever appears where Fenton is, which is crazy! Phantom is seen all over town. Like here at school, by the Nasty Burger, the mall and arcade, the old observatory…” her voice grew weaker and weaker until eventually she stopped talking altogether. Dash gave her a confused look. Paulina was frowning, which she almost never did as she claimed it would give her wrinkles. 

He had to shake her to break her out of whatever stupe she’d fallen in. She startled and then chuckled, though it sounded forced. “Anyhow, it’s crazy! If nothing else you can’t be dead and alive at the same time.”

“Don’t you remember a few weeks ago?” Star suddenly said, voice serious. She was tapping her finger against her chin in thought. “When we all suddenly got ghost powers for a short while? None of us were dead.”

“T-that doesn't mean anything. It was just a freak one time thing … thing! Don’t say you believe Wes now, Star?”

Star immediately raised her hands and shook her hands. “Of course not! I’m just saying being human and being a ghost at the same time maybe isn’t such an impossible thing. But no way Fenton and Phantom are the same.”

“That’s right!” Paulina said, voice hard as steel. “Let’s forget this foolish thing and just go to class.”

“Yeah, come on”, Dash said. But when he sat in class that day, he kept stealing glances of Fenton, wondering. And based on the way Paulina and the other A-listers did the same, he was sure none of them had forgotten it either. 

👻👻👻

The subject wasn’t breached again until a few days later, when the four of them were hanging out together at Paulina’s house. Paulina and Star were doing each other’s nails while they were chatting about what had happened at school and different ghost fights that day. It was in the middle of talking about how handsome Phantom had looked while fighting the technology ghost that Paulina paused. 

“Do … do you guys remember what Wes said?” she asked, her voice uncharacteristically weak. 

“Wes says a lot of things”, Kwan said. 

“The things he said about … Fenton being Phantom”, Paulina clarified. The other A-listers immediately straightened up, staring at her. 

“Lina, you don’t believe him, do you?” Star asked. 

“No!” she immediately protested, then paused. “Maybe…” when the others all opened their mouths to protest she held up her hands, silencing them. “It's just … the more I think about it the more Wes is right about some things. Like Phantom and Fenton always appearing close to each other. And like Star said, there was that one time we all had ghost powers, and we weren’t dead. So maybe … Fenton is Phantom?”

Kwan shook his head. “But surely his parents would have noticed? They’re ghost hunters! If Fenton is Phantom surely they wouldn’t be constantly hunting him?”

“Lots of parents hurt their kids for less than that”, Dash muttered and Kwan leaned over to put a hand on his shoulder. They all looked at him in sympathy and he shuffled in discomfort. He didn’t want their pity. “Just saying.”

“I know I was the one to say we had ghost powers without being ghosts so technically Danny could have ghost powers”, Star piped up, breaking the tension. “But I was just saying stuff, I didn’t actually believe it.”

“Yeah, but it makes too much sense and Wes has a lot of evidence”, Paulina said. She groaned and was about to bury her hands in her hair before she remembered the wet nail polish and stopped with a jerk.  

“Maybe … we can get some evidence”, Star said, looking contemplative. 

“What kind of evidence?” Kwan said at the same time as Dash said: “How?”

She bit her lip. “Well … if Fenton really is Phantom, we should be able to catch him in the act. So what if we trap Fenton in something that he can only escape with ghost powers and then film him to see what he does? Dash stuffs him in lockers all the time so we could do that, no one would even think it strange. And then we make sure his friends can’t come save him and put up a camera to film what happens. And boom, we have proof.”

“Star!” Paulina said with a squeal. “You’re a genius! Let's do it. Either we find Fenton really is Phantom or we can put this silly thing behind us forever.”

👻👻👻

It took a couple of days to get it all together and to get an opportunity to corner Fenton alone. The boy seemed to disappear the moment everyone’s back was turned to him and then he’d reappear a bit later without anyone seeing him return. Not to mention that Phantom did show up whenever Fenton was missing. The A-listers were starting to feel more confident about their plan, but also more scared about it. They needed proof, definite proof, one way or the other to finally be able to put this all behind them. 

And a week after their talk at Paulina’s house, the plan was in motion. Fenton was alone in the corridor, his friends nowhere to be seen, so Dash marched up to him. 

“Fentonio!” He yelled and Fenton startled, jumping high in the air. He swirled around and for a moment Dash could have sworn his eyes were green, then he blinked and they were blue - as they always were. 

“H-hello Dash”, Fenton stammered out and backed away as Dash stalked closer. He backed all the way into the lockers and looked like he wanted to back right through them too if he could. “Can we not do this today?”

Dash smirked, though beneath it there was a touch of unease. If Fenton really was Phantom he was about to beat up his hero. “What? Have somewhere to be, freak?”

“Kinda, yeah, not that you would understand.”

“Are you messing with me?” He cracked his knuckles and Fenton cringed at the sound. “You’ll regret that.”

“Now, let's just calm down and let me go for today. I really am in a rush. You can wail on me twice as hard tomorrow if you want.”

“Ha! No way!” He grabbed Fenton by the front of his shirt and lifted him up by it until the shorter boy was forced to stand on his tiptoes or he’d be strangled. “I’m not letting you get away from me today. Into the locker you go.”

“Dash! No wait!” Fenton protested and tried to wriggle out of his grip, but Dash only hauled him up by his arm. He pulled Fenton forward to have room to access the locker behind him - Kwan’s locker to be precise. They had all cleared enough space in their lockers to room the boy so that Dash could put him in whichever was closest. All to make sure he couldn't escape. 

He opened it and then pushed Fenton inside, not caring for his loud protests and kicking legs. Though a part of him wondered at Fenton’s restraint. Because if he was Phantom, then he’d seen him kick through metal and brick walls. He could have easily kicked Dash with enough force to break free. Dash certainly would have. 

The locker closed, cutting off Fenton’s voice. The moment it closed his friends rushed out from where they’d been hiding around the corner. Opposite the locker they quickly set up a small camera to film whatever would occur. Hopefully, it was small enough that Fenton wouldn’t notice it if he was Phantom. 

Once the other A-listers were done they all hurried away from the scene, going to the football field to wait. Dash and Kwan threw a football between each other while Star and Paulina practiced some light cheerleading moves. They waited about an hour before returning to the lockers. 

The camera was still there and the girls quickly took it down. Kwan and Dash on the other hand walked over to the locker and opened it. It was empty. Now, that didn’t have to mean anything by itself. Any number of people could have walked by and heard Fenton, therefore helping him out. But it still made Dash’s stomach tingle with excitement and a bit of fear. 

The four of them hurried out of school and back to Paulina’s place. Once they had all settled in place so they could see the small screen of the camera, she let it play. They could see themselves standing around the camera before hurrying away. Then, for several minutes nothing happened. Dash started to wiggle in place, feeling inpatient, but Paulina snapped at him to sit still. 

Then, as the five minute mark of the video passed, there was a bright flash of light from inside the locker. It blinded the camera for a moment. Once the light died down, a translucent head stuck out through the locker. A moment later the whole body followed suit. Except, they weren’t staring at Fenton, but at Phantom. 

Their town’s ghostly superhero landed on his feet in the corridor and stretched out his back with a series of cracks. “Man”, he said, and they startled at his echoing voice. “Those locker’s don’t get any bigger.” He looked at something above the camera and groaned. “Oh no! I’m already late for the meet up with Tucker and Sam. Damn that Dash! Of all days to stick me in a locker he has to choose the day when I have to go to the Far Frozen for an appointment.”

With another groan, he jumped into the air and stayed there, floating, before turning invisible and disappearing. 

The video continued playing, showing an empty corridor, but none of the A-listers moved to turn it off. They looked at each other, mouth agape, then turned back to the camera where Phantom … Fenton had disappeared. 

“Did that just happen?” Paulina whispered, almost afraid to raise her voice. Afraid of what, she didn’t know. 

“Yeah”, Dash breathed, as he felt the same fear. Fenton was Phantom. Wes was right. 

They looked at each other for a few more seconds before Star jerked forward, scooping up the camera. Before either of them could protest - not that any of them would - she was deleting the video. Dash shivered, that thing was dangerous. No one else could be allowed to see it. And as they looked at each other, they all silently decided to not say a word. 

👻👻👻

The next day at school Dash didn’t search Fenton out to wail at him like he usually did. In fact, he didn’t try to bully any of his usual targets. There was a heavy, sour feeling in his stomach. Phantom was a hero … Fenton was a hero. He had been beating a hero up. And Fenton had never retaliated, despite having the strength to literally throw buses with the same ease Dash threw footballs. 

He and the other A-listers were all subdued, and kept glancing at each other. None of them had spoken about yesterday and none could do that now either. Saying it out loud meant acknowledging it. Meant having to face their guilt for all the things they’ve done to their hero. 

But then, Wes went up to them. “You have to see this! Once you have, I know you will believe me about Fenton being Phantom.”

Before any of them could say anything, he’d pulled out two photographs. One was of Danny Fenton, the other of Danny Phantom. Both were obviously taken without the boy noticing the photographer, though the Phantom one was much blurrier. Despite that, it was unmistakable now when they knew. The boys in the photographs looked exactly the same except for the color of their hair and eyes. Because they were the same. 

Dash and Paulina looked at each other, then at Kwan and Star. Without any of them saying anything they all came to the same decision. 

“How dare you compare Fenton to Phantom!” Paulina screeched. “Phantom is perfect in every way and there is no way I’d date that loser Fenton. If you don’t stop this I’ll ruin your social standing - more than you’ve already ruined it yourself, anyhow.”

“Oh lay off, Wes”, Dash said with his best irritated grunt. “Fentonnail looks nothing like Phantom. Phantom is a hero, Fenton is a nobody.” He snatched the photographs from Wes before he could react and crumbled them, not caring for Wes’ protests. “You better stop doing this shit right now or I’ll give you the wailing of a lifetime! “

Star started counting up all sorts of differences between Fenton and Phantom while Kwan  stepped up next to Dash to flex his muscles. Wes pailed. “O-okay, fine don’t believe me! One day I’ll prove you wrong!”

Wes turned tail and practically ran away from them, muttering the whole time. Dash relaxed and he could hear someone else sigh. He turned towards the others, sharing a shaky grin with them. None of them had been able to speak about what they saw that day, and none of them really knew how to act around Fenton now that they knew. But this they could do. They could keep their hero’s secret and make his life a little bit easier. It was the least they could do for the many times Fen- Phan- … Danny had saved their lives. 

3. Valerie

Valerie ducked beneath a missile fired by Skulker. It hit the tree behind her instead, blowing it to smithereens. Pieces of bark and wood rained down over her. She growled and fired up one of her guns, shooting back. It missed and Skulker gave her a cocky grin, which only made her angrier. 

“Need a hand?” a new, far too familiar voice asked from her right. Phantom. The ghost she hated above any other - next to the ghost dog. He had destroyed her life! Val swung her gun around in his direction and fired. Unfortunately, the bastard dodged the shot. At least it made him back away from her, his hands held up in surrender. 

“Welp!” Skulker yelled. “Finally you come out to play! I thought I would have to hunt you down. I, the ghost zone's greatest hunter, will defeat you today and take your pelt to hang on my wall!”

“Ugh, that will never not be disgusting”, Phantom said with a shudder. And though Valerie didn’t say anything, silently she agreed. Burning hatred for Phantom or not, when she finally took the ghost down, it would be swiftly. Even though ghosts didn’t feel any pain or other emotions, it would be wrong to drag out the final blow. “Give it up, Skulker, the only thing you can hunt is your own tail!”

“How dare you!” Skulker roared and sent another missile Phantom’s way. He dodged and instead it blew up another tree. In retaliation, Phantom charged up an ecto blast of his own, which hit Skulker’s missile launcher, blowing it to shreds. He growled, even more enraged now. “I will have your head for that!”

“You have to catch me first!” Phantom yelled back, as infuriatingly smug as always. God, Valerie wanted to shoot that look off his face, but out of the two of them, Skulker was the more dangerous enemy to the citizens of Amity Park. She had to focus on him. But once he was gone …

Skulker also seemed to find it infuriating, as he roared and activated several weapons on his suit at the same time. Valerie enjoyed Phantom’s ‘oh shit’ look for a second before the weapons fired. They all flew straight towards Phantom, but they also left Skulker vulnerable. 

Valerie used the chance she had been given and fired a series of blasts at Skulker. They hit several more weapons, disabling them, and left a sizable dent in Skulker’s chestplate. Behind her she heard the sound of explosions followed by Phantom screaming out in pain, but didn’t bother turning around. He either made it or he didn’t, either way it didn’t matter to her. 

“Stay out of this, little huntress”, Skulker growled and fired a net at her. It caught her board. A moment later electricity coursed through it, and though she was spared, it disabled the board. Her heart jumped into her throat as the board went into free fall.

Luckily, they hadn’t been far above the ground and she could jump into the soft grass. Rolling to diminish the force of impact even more, she only gained bruises from the fall. But as she got up on her knees, another net fell over her. Her arms got tangled and she growled in frustration as she couldn't get free. 

Skulker floated down to her with a cruel smirk on his metallic face. He had a gun trained right at her. “Say goodbye.”

“Goodbye”, Phantom said, landing before Valerie and blasting Skulker away. The ghost boy was covered in soot and in several places his suit had been torn, green ectoplasm dripping from wounds. He was favoring one leg over the other. 

Blast after blast Phantom sent Skulker’s way, making him take step after step backwards under the immense force. Then, there was a sudden chill in the air and Valerie knew what was about to happen. Ice spread rapidly from Phantom’s feet, covering the grass and reaching Skulker in a matter of seconds. It climbed up Skulker’s body, freezing him in place all the way up to his chest. 

Now when the immediate threat was over, Valerie concentrated on cutting herself free of the net. She summoned an ecto knife from her suit and it easily cut through the net. Meanwhile, she could hear Skulker swearing, then the sound of metal tearing. Skulker’s voice abruptly became high pitched and tiny, telling her that Phantom had managed to pull the head off to reach the tiny ghost inside. 

“I will get my revenge for this, welp!” Skulker was yelling. “One day I will have your pelt on my wall!

“Yeah, yeah”, Phantom said with a sigh. “Save it for someone who cares.” And then the sound of Phantom's signature thermos activating could be heard, as well as Skulker’s enraged screams. Then silence. 

Which meant Valerie now only had seconds to spare before Phantom disappeared. She tore the net off her and summoned an ecto weapon. In front of her, Phantom was panting lightly in a mockery of breath, his hands pressed against his side. Green ectoplasm was leaking through his fingers sluggishly. With a groan he slowly rose into the air.

Valerie grinned in triumph. Phantom’s wounds made him much slower than usual. Rather than disappearing in the blink of an eye, he seemed to have trouble staying afloat at all. He made a pitiful sight. Unfortunately for Phantom, she had no sympathy for ghostly pests. 

Taking aim right at his back, Valerie fired. The shot hit bullseye. With a scream, Phantom fell to the ground, a burn on his back already leaking more ectoplasm. He hit the ground with a thud and didn’t get up again. 

“Ha! I finally got you!” She yelled and sprang to her feet, hurrying over to Phantom. He might still get away if she didn't hurry and catch him immediately. But as she neared Phantom’s prone form, a white light appeared at his waist. She slowed, fearing this was some new sort of attack, and looked on in wary confusion as the light became a ring around his waist. A ring that split into two, one traveling up his body towards his head and the other towards his feet.

Everywhere the rings traveled, Phantom’s body changed. A white t-shirt and jeans replaced the black and white jumpsuit. Sneakers replaced white boots. And black hair replaced white. Valerie’s heart dropped into her stomach. 

That … that was Danny Fenton, who she would recognize anywhere. 

Frozen in place, she could only stare at the boy who had replaced the ghost. Danny Fenton and Danny Phantom. Boy and ghost. Friend and enemy. They were one and the same. And she had just shot him in the back. 

That last thought finally unfroze her limbs, sending her scrambling forwards. She threw herself to her knees at his side and pulled his shirt up. At his back, right where she’d shot Phantom, was a burn mark, bleeding red.

I shot him, I shot Danny, she thought, feeling as if she was about to throw up. Memories of Dani rose to her mind unbridled. Dani, the halfa. Dani who she and Phantom had saved together, and who had looked so much like Phantom. Hadn’t they called each other cousins? She should have seen it earlier. They were both halfas. And she had just shot him. 

Tears blurred her eyesight and she deactivated her helmet to viciously wipe at them. She had no right to cry. Not until she had helped Danny. At least she always carried a first aid bag with her, in case she or any civilian got hurt. She pulled it out, throwing things out wildly until she found the burn cream. She slathered it thickly over Danny’s back and even unconscious his breath hitched in pain. 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry”, she repeated, almost like a mantra, as she treated the wound. Once she had covered it in gauze she turned him around, remembering that he’d had more wounds from the fights. The sight of his face made a fresh wave of tears fall down her face. How could she not have seen it before? Danny and Phantom looked exactly alike except for the color change. 

Sniffing, she pulled his shirt up and started to clean out the cuts and burns she found all over his chest. Feeling across the ribs, she also feared that a couple of them might be broken, but there was nothing she could do about that. Past observations always showed that Phantom had completely healed from any wounds between battles, so she could only hope that Danny had the same ability to heal even in human form. 

The thought to take him to the hospital briefly passed through her mind before she discarded it. If she didn’t want to go to the hospital because she didn’t want to answer any questions about how she got injured, she imagined Danny would want to go to a hospital even less. 

Soon enough all wounds she could find had been bandaged. A few had looked deep enough that they might need stitches, which she couldn't do here, out in the open and exposed. She let herself fall backwards into a sitting position, staring at her bloodied hands. Tears landed on them, creating small clean spots. 

Danny was Phantom and she had just shot him in the back. She could have killed him. Oh god, what was she going to do now? There was no way he’d forgive her for this! And she wasn't sure she even deserved it. She’d hunted him for months! She’d hurt him countless times! 

Was a part of her even more angry now than before? Yes. Danny had dated her despite being Phantom at the time. And he had still played a role in destroying her life, though now she couldn't help but think about all the times he’d tried to explain that the damned dog hadn’t been his. 

She … she needed time to think, to process. And before she’d done that she couldn't talk to Danny about this. Not until she knew how she felt. 

Looking over his unconscious form, she grimaced. She couldn't leave him like this either. 

Slowly, she got back on her feet and walked over to her hoverboard. With her knife she cut the net off and once she’d done that it came back to life. Stepping onto it, she willed it to shift to become bigger; big enough for two people, one sitting down and other lying in their lap. She floated over to Danny and pulled him into her arms. He groaned in pain and she stiffened, afraid he was waking up, but after a few seconds he remained unmoving. 

At least it was dark outside, meaning no one would see her flying slowly through Amity towards Fentonworks. Danny remained unconscious the whole way and if it hadn't been for the steady rise and fall of his chest, she would be freaking out. She still was of course, but at least he was alive - kinda. To her relief she discovered that his bedroom window was open upon arrival. Small mercies. She floated through the window and over to his bed. There, she gently laid him down and pulled the covers over him. 

She hesitated for a moment, looking down on his unconscious form. His brow was furrowed and sometimes while taking a deep breath, he would grimace as in pain. She pushed his black hair out of his face, smoothing it down, and leaned in to whisper.

“I truly am sorry, Danny. And … once I’m ready I’ll tell you that when you’re awake too.” And with those last words she turned her back on him and disappeared back through the window, her mind whirling.  

4. Maddie

Maddie had Phantom in her sights. While she much preferred close range weapons, she knew how to use all of the weapons she and her husband created together. And considering how elusive this one ghost had shown itself prone to be, sometimes subterfuge was necessary. Which is why she was currently hiding behind a couple of bushes late at night, her gun trained right at the ghost. 

It was floating on its back a couple of meters in the air, right in the middle of the park. Its ectoplasm green eyes were trained on the cloudless night sky above, trailing them across the stars visible. It reminded her a bit of her son, Danny. He used to always sneak out on cloudless nights to catch a peak of the stars. There had been many times she’d caught him red handed and sent him off to bed. But it had always been with an exaggerated fondness. Her little astronaut, dreaming of the stars. Not like now, when she found him sneaking in and out of the house constantly, cloudless sky or not, and refusing to tell her why. 

With a shake of her head, she forced all thoughts of Danny away. She couldn’t allow herself distractions right now. Phantom was before her, not her son, and this might be her one chance to take it down. 

She aimed right at the ghost’s back and squeezed the trigger. The shot went off, loud in the still night, and Phantom started to turn towards it, eyes opened wide in faked alarm. Its sudden movement made the shot miss dead center, but it hit the ghost on the shoulder. With a cry meant to imitate a human's cry of pain in an attempt to manipulate her, the ghost dropped from the sky. It landed with a heavy thud on the ground, hand clutching its shoulder. Green ectoplasm was slowly trickling from the wound. 

Maddie jumped out of her cover, gun aimed at the ghost’s head. Now she had the opportunity to take it out once and for all. The ghost paled when it caught sight of her. 

“M-mom?” It said, its voice perfectly replicating how Danny sounded when afraid. Maddie froze in place, breath caught in her lungs. In that moment Phantom looked eerily like her son. Hurt and bleeding because of her. 

A moment later, she shook the nostalgia off. This was not her son. This was a ghost. An imprint of post-human consciousness. It was just trying to imitate her son to manipulate her. Enraged, she raised her gun to fire at it again, but in that moment it turned invisible. Swearing silently, she turned on the special layer in her goggles that made her able to see ghosts even when invisible. But Phantom was still nowhere to be seen. It must have turned intangible and slid into the ground. The ghost was gone. 

“Damn it, I was so close!” she swore and her shoulders slumped in defeat. She had allowed herself a moment of weakness, had fallen for its manipulation, and it had allowed it to escape. 

Defeated, she decided to call it a night and return home. No way the ghost would allow itself to be caught off guard again anytime soon. But Maddie could be patient. She’d get it next time. 

👻👻👻

The next morning Maddie went about her morning routine as she always did. Putting on the coffee, taking a shower, getting dressed and starting on breakfast. Then, once it became clear Danny wasn’t getting up by himself - like usual - she went to wake him up.

Knocking on the door didn't result in any answer but that was normal. She opened the door and walked inside, seeing Danny sleeping on his side. The room was a mess, like normal, and she sighed. But there was one thing in particular that caught her eye. She frowned and walked closer, noticing the corner of a first aid bag sticking out from under the bed. She pulled it out and her heart started beating a bit quicker at just how much of the bandages had been used up. 

She and Jack had been concerned for months since Danny had been drawing away from them, staying out late, sneaking out at all hours of the day. And sometimes he’d be injured. But no matter how many times they tried to ask him about it, he refused to answer. They were worried he’d gotten into some sort of trouble, maybe a gang, maybe the bullying had just become worse. Whatever it was, it must be bad to have transformed their happy child into the miserable teenager he now was. 

Maddie reached out to shake Danny’s shoulder but jumped back in surprise when Danny woke up with a loud cry. His hand flew to the shoulder she had touched, his whole face scrunching up in pain. As she watched he slowly sat up in bed, winching. He was injured. 

“Danny!” she exclaimed, worry lacing thick in her stomach. “You’re hurt! Let me help you!”

She reached out towards him again but stopped when he flinched away from her, a look of fear on his face. Hurt joined the worry in her stomach, making her feel sick. He didn’t trust her, he seemed afraid of her. 

“I’m fine!” Danny said in a high pitched voice, clearly lying. “Perfectly peachy.”

“Danny”, she said in her disappointed mom voice. He grimaced but only insisted again that he was fine. Maddie sighed. “If you don’t want to tell me you don’t have to, but just … please try to be more careful in the future?”

The look he gave her was sour, so much so that she wanted to reprimand him for it, but he was obviously in pain right now so she’d let it slide. “I’ll try.” Under his breath, so quiet she barely heard him, he said, “I’ll dodge next time.”

“Well, go get gleaned up and come down for breakfast. And better hurry with it or you’ll be late for school.” Danny nodded and she left his room to give him privacy. Though she couldn’t help worrying about his wound. 

How had he gotten hurt? And so bad he needed bandages? Why did he not want to talk to her or Jack about it? It just didn’t make any sense! 

She sat down at the dinner table, taking a deep sip from her cup. As she did, unbridled the memory of last night popped into her head. You shot Phantom in that same shoulder, a voice whispered in the back of her head. She frowned and shook her head to dispel the thought. What did it matter if Phantom got hurt in the same shoulder as Danny? That had nothing to do with each other. Must be her mind playing tricks on her since Phantom calling her mom had thrown her off her game.

👻👻👻

The next clue she didn’t see in person, but on the news. Lance Thunder was reporting on the most recent ghost fight. It’s a rerun from earlier that day, or she and Jack would already be on the way to the scene to fight the ghost themselves. 

It was a fight between Phantom and that technology ghost that causes so many problems for the city. In both property damage and in the amount of blackouts it has caused. As usual, Phantom arrived only moments after the ghost appeared. Maddie and Jack had built more and more sophisticated systems for detecting ghosts and had made the Fenton Assault VehicleTM faster and yet they always appear minutes after Phantom. Even the other ghost hunter, the Red Huntress, was usually faster than them. Though at least the GIW were the slowest of them all to appear. Still, it was infuriating that a ghost was better at ghost hunting than them. 

As usual, Phantom was also very quick at dealing with the ghost. Jack and Maddie didn’t get there until the fight was already over. Lance Thunder catching the fight on camera was pure luck, as usually he too is too late to the scene. Apparently he and his crew had already been nearby to film something else when the ghosts appeared. 

At least it gave Maddie a chance to observe the ghosts, to try and gauge any weaknesses from the footage. 

The fight was fast and Phantom threw around its usual infuriating quips. Within ten minutes the ghost was defeated, though she couldn’t really tell how Phantom had defeated the technology ghost. One minute they had been exchanging blows, the technology ghost seeming to have the upper hand, and the next all the electronics it was using had just stopped working. But she guessed it was too much to ask for a ghost - non-sentient as they were - to have any sort of finesse while controlling items. 

Phantom had come out victorious, though with a big gash across its shin, dripping ectoplasm in a steady stream down on the ground. As usual, within moments of it having sucked the other ghost into its stolen Fenton thermos, Phantom disappeared. When she and Jack had appeared at the scene moments later, it was gone without a trace. 

Truly infuriating that, Phantom’s ability to go up in smoke. None of the other ghosts shared that ability and they couldn’t figure out how it did it. 

Her thoughts were interrupted by the front door opening. She turned around and saw Danny walk into the house. She smiled at him but didn’t get one in return. Instead Danny frowned at her before looking away. 

Not letting that deter her, she started up a conversation. “How was school, darling?”

“Good”, Danny mumbled, not meeting her eyes. 

“You didn’t get another detention, did you?” she asked, her tone sharper. He’d gotten far too many of those lately and despite the number of groundings they had given him, nothing seemed to help. 

“No, not today. Everything was fine.” He still wasn’t looking at her though and before she could say anything else he turned and walked towards the kitchen, probably to get a snack. As he walked, she noticed that he was limping. Her heart sank into her stomach. He was injured again. But, considering how he responded every time she asked about his health, she knew he would deny being hurt if she brought it up. 

Sighing, she watched him limp away before turning to the TV again. It was showing the best moments from the fight, including the moment Phantom floated victorious over its fallen opponent. Her eye caught on its injured leg. The same leg Danny had been favoring. 

Another injury shared between Danny and Phantom. But no … no, it was just a coincidence. A ghost couldn't be human and a human couldn't be a ghost. It was literally impossible, as ectoplasm couldn't coexist with living material. If she so much as mentioned such a possibility to any other ghost hunter they’d laugh in her face. The time the students of Casper High momentarily gained ghost powers had been a fluke. A one time thing caused by a ghost infecting them with ectoplasm. It would have eventually killed the students if they hadn’t been cured. If Danny was Phantom he would have to be dead and her son was not dead. 

Danny could not be Phantom. 

But despite that thought, she couldn’t help but notice a very worrisome pattern. Almost obsessively, she started to watch all new battles Phantom engaged in. Not to find a weakness - even if she told Jack that was why she was doing it, as she was not ready to admit even to him what she had started to suspect deep down - but to see where and how he - it - had been wounded. Then she would compare it with Danny. 

The picture it painted was damning. The small wounds - tiny cuts and bruises - she could not find on her son’s body. But the big ones? The big ones were there. Danny would limp when Phantom injured a leg. He’d wince when she hugged him if Phantom got a hit to the ribs. He’d shy away from shoulder pats if Phantom had taken a blast to them. 

Danny kept getting injured in the same places Phantom got injured. 

Maddie didn’t know what to think. Her mind felt scrambled, as if someone had put her brain through a mixer. She didn’t know what to do, especially since Danny refused to talk to her, would barely even look at her. 

She just … had to know.

👻👻👻

It was the middle of the night when Maddie peeked into Danny’s room. She sighed soundlessly at finding him in bed, sleeping, for once. At least he was here, safe, right now. 

She sneaked into the room on silent feet, tiptoeing over dirty clothes, schoolbooks and a random plate lying on his floor. Right up to his bed she sneaked. Danny was lying on his stomach, something she knew he usually never did. But she also remembered Phantom earlier that evening getting knocked back first into the ground with such force it created quite a sizable crater. If her earlier observations held true, Danny was sleeping on his stomach because he had hurt his back. 

Usually, she would have confirmed the latest injury already, while he was awake. It was quite easy to sneak in a pat down disguised as a motherly pat on the back. But this last week Danny had started to avoid all touch, from both her and Jack. She had a sinking feeling it was because all her touches had hurt him lately. 

But it left her with no choice, even if it made her feel creepy. She had to check if he was injured while he was asleep. 

Inch by inch she peeled back the comforter to expose Danny’s pajama clad body. Halfway through the motion, she froze, as Danny mumbled something and shifted. After a few seconds though, he stilled again. At least she could pretend she was putting the comforter back if he woke and noticed her here. 

Eventually, the comforter was pulled back far enough and she left it to pool by Danny’s hips. She grabbed hold of the bottom of the pajama shirt and was about to pull it up when Danny shifted in his sleep again. A whine left his lips and then something that sounded like a choked off sob. 

Once again, Danny settled down after a few seconds and she started to pull the shirt up. A white bandage came into sight, wrapped around Danny’s back. She pulled the shirt up further and saw that the bandage extended across his whole ribcage. In one place at the dead center of his back, the bandages even had a dark spot. Blood. Sighing warily, she started to pull his shirt back again, now when she had confirmed that Danny once again was injured in the same place as Phantom had been that day. 

Before she could though, Danny started to whimper and then to speak. Frozen in place, she could only listen and hope she hadn’t woken him. 

“No”, he mumbled, so quiet she could barely hear him over the beating of her own heart. “P-please no… don’t hurt me.”

Maddie felt like crying. She didn’t know why Danny kept getting hurt, but she suspected Phantom had somehow created a bond between itself and her son. Maybe the ghost transferred the wound to her son. Either way, she hated herself for failing to protect Danny. She should probably wake him up, free him from his terrible nightmare. But she hesitated. If she listened in, maybe Danny would reveal what was troubling him. Considering he was so tight lipped while awake it might be her only chance to figure it out. 

“P-please, I’m still your son”, Danny begged and Maddie’s blood froze to ice in her veins. What? “I p-promise, I’m still Danny. No! Don’t hurt me, mom! I’m still Danny!”

It felt like a ghost had reached intangibly through her chest and ripped her lungs out. She just couldn't seem to breathe properly. Tears started dripping down her face. Danny, her baby boy, was afraid of her. She had never before felt more like a huge failure of a parent. Her dad had raised her with the idea that fearing and respecting him was more important than trust and love and she had promised herself to do better. And yet here she was, listening to her son having a nightmare about her hurting him. 

She just… had no idea what could have caused her son to have so little trust in her. To fear her. 

"Mom, no! I'm still human! I'm only half ghost! P-please don't dissect me! I'm still me!"

She gasped, horror freezing the blood in her veins into ice. Half ghost. What did that mean? It was impossible to be half ghost. Except … those kids did have ghost powers for a while. And ever since Danny got into that accident with the portal she and Jack had known he was a bit ecto contaminated. A human could have some ectoplasm in them. 

And … The memory arose of Phantom floating on his back, admiring the stars. So much like Danny lying on his back on the roof, admiring the stars. Phantom spotting her and calling her mom, looking and sounding so much like Danny that she’d frozen in place. 

Phantom getting injured in the shoulder, Danny having a wound on his shoulder too. She looked down at his back and the huge bandage that covered it. Hadn’t she snuck in here tonight because she wanted to confirm if Phantom’s latest injury had been transferred to Danny or not? Had she not started to see more and more connections between the ghost and her son?

Half ghost, half human. Phantom wasn't transferring it’s- his injuries to Danny.  Phantom was Danny. 

It must have been the portal accident. There was no other explanation. Her baby had died - half died? - and she hadn't known. And Danny hadn’t trusted her enough to tell her. Instead, he feared her. Feared what she would do to him if she found out. Dissect rang through her head and she had to bite back a sob. Worst thing was that she couldn't even deny that Danny hadn’t had anything to fear. If she just a few hours earlier had gotten her hands on Phantom she would have dissected i- him. She had told Danny to his face that she wanted to dissect him. 

She was the worst mother ever. And now she was too much of a coward to even reach out and wake Danny from his nightmare. Because … what if he woke up and was still afraid of her? What if he woke up and got more afraid than he’d been while having a nightmare? 

Suddenly, she couldn't stand to be in here any longer, listening to her son having a nightmare about her hurting him. Gently as she could in her hurry to get out of here, she pulled his pajama top back into place and placed his comforter over his body again. Then she snuck out of the room, closing the door behind her. 

She couldn't return to her and Jack’s bedroom. He was sleeping peacefully in there, unaware that her whole life had been turned on its head in a matter of seconds. Instead she stumbled down the stairs into the living room and curled up on the couch. She pulled a blanket over her, trying to stop the chills that made her whole body shake. Or maybe it was the sobs that made her shake. 

Maddie didn’t know what to do. Her son was afraid of her. She knew she had to do something to make him not afraid of her again, but she didn't know what or how. If she just outright asked him about this she feared it would just make him spiral, make him more afraid of her. 

And Jack! She had to tell him, but how? They had been abusing their son, she knew it would absolutely crush him to find out. Jack loved his children, he would hate himself for hurting them. 

Well, one thing was clear at least. She would stop hunting Phantom. She would never again make a weapon that could hurt her son, never again make any indication that she even wanted to hurt him. She would make herself into a person Danny could trust again, until he felt safe enough to tell her himself. And if he didn’t trust her … then she would accept that too.   

5. Literally just … so many people

“I’m going ghost!” could be heard echoing through the mall and the dozen of people who had hidden away behind the counter in the food mall peered over said counter as a flash of bright white light almost blinded them. In front of them were Danny Fenton, the ghost hunters’ son. There was a bright white ring around his waist. The ring split into two and one traveled up his body, the other down. Wherever they went they transformed the boy, turning him into Danny Phantom, the resident town hero. 

The boy? Ghost? The ghost boy jumped into the air and flew towards the other ghost in the mall, a huge ghost bunny. Meanwhile, the people behind the counter slowly slid back down under cover. They all looked at each other in shock. 

“Danny Phantom is … alive? And he’s Danny Fenton, the son of our ghost hunters?” One brave soul said, the others nodded numbly. “We … we can’t tell anyone about this ever, can we?” They all shock their heads in silent agreement. “Alright … let's try and forget that ever happened.”

So when the fight ended and Danny Phantom turned into Danny Fenton with another bright flash, the people behind the counter stayed huddled there for another few minutes until the boy had left. Silently, they climbed out of their hiding place and went about their day. Though the next time each person who had been present saw their hero, they yelled an encouraging word or two at him. The painfully young boy looked at them in surprise before a happy grin spread over his face. 

👻👻👻

Lance Thunder was smoothing down his hair, anxiously looking towards the ghost current wreaking havoc a couple of meters from them. It was that technology ghost. Tetanus or something. He glanced at the camera. “Are we live yet?”

“Not yet, we’re having some technological problems”, his camera man reported back and fiddled with the settings on the camera he carried. 

“Alright, let me know when we start, I always embarrass myself in front of the camera because you never warn me. I swear, sometimes I wonder if you want to em-”

“I’m going ghost!” The loud yell interrupted Lance mid sentence and he turned, annoyed, to see who it was. It was Daniel Fenton, those dreadful ghost hunters’ son. He stood in an alley a few meters from them, his back to them. His arms were raised above his head and with a bright flash a white ring appeared around his waist. It moved across his body, revealing a black and white hazmat suit. In just a few seconds Danny Phantom, town hero, had taken the boy’s place.

A second later, Phantom was flying towards the ghost in the distance, yelling out a taunt and hitting it in the face. Lance was left staring in shock over what he’d just seen. The ghost hunters’ son was a ghost. Their hero was a teenager who was hunted by his own parents. And the whole town, Lance included, had at least at one point been hostile towards him. A teenager. A child. 

Abruptly, he remembered the camera. The cameraman’s mouth had also fallen open in shock. “Please tell me you didn't catch that on live video”, Lance all but begged. 

The cameraman shook himself and then the same fear Lance felt entered his eyes. He turned towards the camera and examined it for an agonizing few seconds before breathing out in relief. “No, we’re still having problems connecting to the network.”

Lance sagged against the brick wall he was hiding behind. “Thank God! There’s no way his parents wouldn’t have found out if it’d been sent live and I don’t want to be the one responsible for Phantom getting dissected - or is it vivisected? - by them.” He sent a hard glare at his cameraman. “We keep quiet about this, you hear me?”

“Loud and clear!” the cameraman squeaked. 

A moment later the camera finally came to life and Lance Thunder smoothed his hair into place with a big smile, starting his reporting. No mention of Phantom being alive was made that day. 

👻👻👻

Police officer Jason Bergstrom sighed and massaged his temples. “Sir”, he called out as his captain walked past his station. The older man paused, and even before Jason had said anything, his face was morphing into an expression of exasperation. “Another traffic camera caught Fenton transforming on tape.”

The captain sighed. “God damn it. Yo, Carl!” he called out and the other police officer looked up from his computer. “He got caught again.”

Carl groaned and reluctantly got up from his seat to walk over to the wall. There hung a small whiteboard. On the top it said “days since our last incident” and beneath it was a big three. Carl erased the three and wrote down a zero instead. More police officers had noticed the comotion and a few bills of money exchanged hands. Most just looked exhausted though. 

The captain turned back to Jason. “Any signs of injuries?”

“Not what I could tell, but the video is dark and from far away. At least he wasn’t limping or showing any obvious signs of injury. Doesn't say much, considering how good he appears to be at hiding injuries.”

“Alright, well you know what to do.”

Jason nodded and turned back to the computer to delete the footage. When he became a police officer he had not imagined he’d be spending most of his day looking over the city’s video footage. Not for any signs of crime - those were rare outside of ghost related ones - but for any camera that might have caught the resident ghost hunters' son on tape transforming into the town's ghostly superhero. 

“Are you sure there isn’t anything more we can do for the boy?” Carl asked. 

“We’ve been over this already”, the captain said. “Ghosts don’t have any legal rights, meaning if we went to the government with our concerns they’d take the boy away for experimentation. The only thing we can do is send child protective services the Fentons’ way, but considering they keep returning without any incidents to report despite we all knowing that house is one huge OSHA violation, the kid must be overshadowing the workers to turn them away. So unless you wanna be the one responsible for a 14 year old boy getting tortured there isn’t much we can do besides this.”

Carl sagged in place, and some of the other officers did too. It was a topic that often came up for debate in the department. Especially after big battles when the boy was obviously injured or when his parents had been spotted shooting at him. And each time the captain reminded them that they did not have the law at their side in this case.

All Jason and the others could do was delete any evidence they had to keep it out of the government's hands and try to make the boy’s life a little bit easier without having him find out they were doing anything at all. Credible deniability and all that. Still, it rankled on them all. 

#dp #danny fenton #danny phantom #mr lancer #valerie gray #maddie fenton #dash baxter #paulina sanchez #identity reveal #violence cw #injury cw #phic phight #phic phight 2022 #indrel writes

[a-ghost-zone]

Danny Phantom Screencaps Season 1, Episode 13 - Fright Knight

{ Google Drive Link }

#danny phantom #danny phantom screencaps #dp #screencaps #rp resource #role play resource #Fright Knight #danny fenton #mr lancer #sam manson #maddie fenton #jack fenton #tucker foley #dash baxter #ms tetslaff

[ao3feed-brucewayne]

Child of Themyscira

read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/p2KX1Ws by Fuyu_FoxWriter Danny gets adopted by Diana and the rest of these BAMF amazon women Words: 8146, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English Fandoms: Danny Phantom, DC Extended Universe Rating: Not Rated Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Characters: Danny Fenton, Sam Manson, Tucker Foley, Diana (Wonder Woman), Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson, Mr. Lancer (Danny Phantom), Dash Baxter, Kwan (Danny Phantom), Ms. Tetslaff (Danny Phantom), Valerie Gray, Wesley Weston, Original Female Character(s), Jazz Fenton, Jack Fenton (Danny Phantom), Maddie Fenton Relationships: Danny Fenton & Tucker Foley & Sam Manson, Danny Fenton & Jazz Fenton, Johnny 13/Kitty (Danny Phantom), Diana (Wonder Woman) & Danny Fenton, Danny Fenton & Original Female Character(s) Additional Tags: Protective Diana (Wonder Woman), momma Diana, Danny Fenton is a Little Shit, Danny Fenton is Not the Ghost King, Danny joins the teen titans, One Shot, BAMF Danny Fenton, Not Phantom Planet Compliant (Danny Phantom) read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/p2KX1Ws

#IFTTT #bruce wayne #batman #the caped crusader #the dark knight #dcu #ao3 #ao3feed

[inthememetime]

🦂 with Danny as character A and Tucker or Sam as character B (or both, you decide)

Excellent choice! Danny is hurt. Sam and Tucker feel karma is going a little too slowly. TWs: bullying, pranks (against the bullies), a little foul language. Read on AO3 here!

Karma might be a bad bitch, but she was moving a little too slow in Sam's opinion. "Danny," Tucker tried- Sam wasn't getting through to him-, "bro, just kick Dash's ass."

Sam tuned out the now-familiar excuses. If he unexpectedly gained super strength overnight, people might start to believe Wes. With his luck, the teachers would assume Danny started it. The worst was, in her opinion, "if I stop taking hits, who'll he go for next?"

It was awful because it was so unselfish. He wasn't fishing for attention, he just had a protection obsession that went off for everyone but himself. She couldn't be mad at him for it, and yet she was furious. At Danny, at herself and Tucker for not convincing him, and above all, Dash motherfucking Baxter.

Did Vlad ever do human experimentation? Would he appreciate one of Danny's bullies, gift-wrapped?

Nah. He'd probably try to use it somehow to get a favor from Danny.

"Danny, did you do the Chem homework yet?"

Danny turned to her, relief plain on his face. "Yeah, except for the last question. I can't figure out to balance it."

"I'll show you. Tuck?"

Tucker spluttered. "Sam, I was making progress!"

"No, you weren't. That's ok, we'll handle the problem."

Danny's relief turned to apprehension. "What do you mean by that?"

Sam smiled. It was not a nice one. "Let's look at the Chem homework. Don't worry about a thing."

"Wait, I-"

Tucker grinned. "No worries, Danny, we got you, man."

"But- it's not fair for you two to have to fight my battles for me."

She laughed. "Hey Tucker, remind me how many times Danny's fought our battles for us?"

"In general, or this week?"

"Hey!"

-

It started with an itch. Sam ducked her head to hide her smile when Dash went from the occasional light scratch to viciously scratching at his arms and neck.

"Mr. Baxter, see the nurse please, or stop disrupting class," Mr. Lancer drawled.

She studiously ignored Danny's look of suspicion.

Dash, Kwan, and Dale all missed school the next day due to an 'unexplained illness'- itching powder.

-

Mr. Henderson, the Social Studies teacher, scowled furiously at Dale. "I'm serious, Mr. H! I don't know how that got there!"

"You conveniently forget to turn in your assignment a week ago and after at Coach Tetslaff's request, I give you an extension, you show up with a presentation on 'Why Mr. Henderson Sucks'," he said in disbelief.

"But-"

"Office," he repeated.

"Yes sir," he said in defeat. Sam and Tucker shared a conspiratorial look at the back of the class. The message, a note saying 'bullying is paid back in spades', had been delivered the same day as the itching powder. Either the main four would change their ways or she and Tucker would be using every trick and prank they could think of.

The worse the bullying, the worse the payback. Dash and Kwan had just yelled and shoved some people around- itching powder. Dale had broken Danny's nose with no consequences, then written 'loser' on Mikey's forehead- again with no consequences- Tucker had slipped an extra USB, nearly identical, into Dale's pocket.

It was time for the school to learn actions had consequences.

-

Within two more weeks, Kwan had completely stopped hanging out with Dale, and was vocally encouraging Dash to stop. After he'd pantsed Danny in the hall, and received no punishment from the teachers, the entire football team had discovered their uniform pants bedazzled with 'spank me, Daddy'- and a picture of Dash, Dale, and Kwan.

The hours of picking off all the rhinestones had apparently cured Kwan of his interest in bullying. When he physically pulled Dale away from a freshman, he mysteriously 'found' his missing badge- a $5 replacement fee was nothing to joke about when he didn't have a job and didn't want to be grounded.

-

Sidney was happy to help with their next prank- fart spray in Dash and Dale's locker. Curiously, there seemed to be a split in the football team. Coach Tetslaff was no longer protecting Dash and Dale after the rhinestone incident, so now both boys were receiving regular lunch, after-school, and Saturday detentions.

Early September, Dale was pulled from the team. Now that no one was doing his homework for him, his grades were too low to play. Shortly after, he was transferred to Elmerton High.

Tucker remotely changed Dash's ringtone to Queen's 'Another One Bites the Dust'.

-

Nature hated a vacuum, but no one was particularly interested in the 'Curse of Casper High'. Dash's own offenses rapidly decreased as pressure from the other players and coach mounted exponentially.

-

"Job well done," Sam said to Tucker and the ghost of Sidney Poindexter.

"Thanks, guys," Danny managed- grateful and upset all at once. She didn't take it personally, and Sidney looked almost pathetically understanding. After all, they were both helping him and tap-dancing on his obsession.

"Anytime."

Tucker snorted. "Karma's a bitch, but we move faster."

#danny phantom #inthememetime #sam manson #tucker foley #sidney poindexter #dash baxter #dale #kwan ishiyama #bullying

[clawofthewild]

Clawsome Fic of the Day

Emergency Contact by @lexosaurus (22k, in-progress)

In my list of fics to cover for the Clawsome fics series, there is an entire section of Mr. Lancer-centric fics. *thinly-veiled childhood desire to be adopted by a teacher jumpscare* I love fics exploring and developing his relationship with Danny, of which this one takes the cake, even unfinished. Lancer is just so soft and kind to him, as is Ms. Tetslaff, which I wouldn’t’ve known to ask for but highly appreciated. This, juxtaposed with parental vivisection makes for a simultaneously heartwarming and heartbreaking story. I eagerly await its third and final chapter in a way that is totally normal. 

#clawsome fic of the day #danny phantom #fic recs #mr. lancer my beloved #I am barking and growling and biting at this fic

[reallydumbdannyphantomaus]

⭐️? for the fanfic directors cut ask game

!!! thank you! I've always wanted to talk a little more about this scene from switch part 2 ch 3:

Danny hadn’t thought it was possible for Paulina’s face to get redder right then, but it did. And it was definitely anger this time, her lips curling in a sneer as the rest of the class let out a chorus of oooo’s at her expense.

Then she wrenched her eyes closed, screwing up her face with effort, and blinked out some tears. She started sobbing, her hand over her mouth. If he didn’t know any better, Danny would never guess she was acting.

“Coach Tetslaff,” she said, hiccupping, “did you hear what—what Kwan just called me?”

Tetslaff sighed. “Unfortunately. Mr. Huang, while I appreciate you standing up for my coworker, I can’t accept that kind of language, especially used against your own classmates. Go see Principal Ishiyama.” Paulina smiled in victory. “Both of you.”

Paulina’s mouth dropped open and her sobs suddenly cut off. “Me too? But—”

“No buts!” Tetslaff slammed her hand on her desk. Paulina flinched. “Maybe this will teach you kids to think before you speak.”

Kwan said nothing as he gathered his bag and headed for the door, but he shot Danny a grin and a wink as he left.

Tetslaff cleared her throat. “Ms. Sanchez, I suggest you get a move on.”

Face still wet with tears, she strode for the door with her head held high even as her classmates snickered around her. He’d never seen her be the object of derision before. In fact, now that he thought about it, this was the first time he’d seen Paulina face a consequence.

because this was one of those scenes where i really wanted to demonstrate just how manipulative paulina could be, how she knew just how to pull the strings for just about any situation. but, it also shows that when people don't just take her shit, there's very little she can do about it. she so dependent on people buying whatever she's selling that when people (like kwan and tetslaff) see through it, she's got nothing left to stand on. it's a pretty empty life that she's built for herself, but she has no idea how else she could live.

idk, i just always really liked this scene because it shows that paulina isn't this invincible force of the school like she'd seemed up to that point, where everyone scuttles about at her command, but still just a teenage girl depending on everyone to see her as invincible so no one looks any deeper. or, at least, that was my intent.

send me a specific scene from a fic (or a ⭐️ for a scene of my choice) to get the director's commentary

#danny phantom #ask games #dp switch #behind the scenes #paulina sanchez

[omegasmileyface]

Of All the People - ch. 5

a little one to close out today's chapters. still written by @attackradish and also me and also @ectolemonades with art in chapter one from @/toasty-ghosti :3

whole fic summary: After a stupid dare puts Dash Baxter in the lab at Fentonworks during the middle of a ghost fight, he finds himself a little more spectral than usual. Apparently Danny Fenton’s gone through the same thing (someone has got to call OSHA on these guys eventually), and who could better help Dash than his hero? His lame, stubborn hero?

warnings: existential crises. In later chapters, Spectra.

words: 971

AO3 link

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===

Would practice ever end?

Dash ran line drills alongside half the team after losing a practice scrimmage. He’d messed up simple plays, but his mind was occupied with finishing out practice, leaving no room to berate himself over his mistakes.

His head pounded, his lungs burned, his leg throbbed, and he could feel every single ache in his body at once.

One minute the 30-yard line was in sight, the next the AstroTurf was rushing toward his face. He tried to swiftly pick himself up to finish the drill, but his left leg failed to give any support.

Dread washed over him when he heard Tetslaff’s whistle. Two of his teammates got on either side of him and hauled him to his feet while the coach jogged over to them.

“You’re done for the day, Baxter. Go home and get some rest, you look like Hell.”

“Coach, I’m fine." Dash's voice was strained from the fatigue of his lungs. "Just let me take 10 and I’ll be ready to go again.”

“No, go home. Probably wouldn’t hurt to go see a doctor, too.” Tetslaff redirected her attention to Kwan. “Park, you’re dismissed from practice to help him out of here.”

Kwan called Dash's mom as they walked off the field, arms around shoulders in unspoken support. Dash looked over his shoulder, where practice had already resumed without him.

===

Dash was lucky his own doctor was available for urgent care the next day. He didn't want this to be shared with anybody else.

"You would have told me if something really bad happened, right, sweetie?"

Dash swatted his mom's petting hands off of his head, even as she pouted. "Yes, Mom, I just got this ache out of nowhere."

"If you say so. Gosh, I hope it's nothing serious, I know how excited you were to get to State again this year."

"I'll be fine. Besides, they need me on the team! I'll feel great again after tomorrow."

When a nurse came out and called his name, Dash tried to ignore his mom blowing him a kiss before pulling out a magazine. If he didn't see it, no one else did, either.

He was as silent as possible as the nurse took his measurements.

"Huh. Your heart rate and blood pressure are both a bit low. Has your morning routine been any different today than usual?"

Dash's worry must have shown on his face, because the nurse was quick to move on.

"I'll leave a note of that so you can talk to Dr. Lopez about it privately. That's it, she'll be in in just a few minutes. Have a nice day, Mr. Baxter!"

Fuck, goddammit, he hadn't even seen his doctor yet and there was something suspicious for her to see. At this rate, forget football, he'd get kicked out of town because the GIW would come and kidnap him!

Dash practically leapt out of his skin when the doctor knocked on the door and stepped in.

"Hi, Dash! Are you having a good day?"

Dash nodded, still not trusting himself to speak.

"That's good. Just let me check up on everything before we get to looking at that leg injury."

Dash's heartbeat, the one that was apparently unusually slow, only sped up as Dr. Lopez read over the clipboard. Eventually, she gave a contemplative hum and frowned a bit without looking at Dash.

"It looks like your body isn't quite up to speed for the day. Did you take a nap before coming? Make sure you're drinking water after you wake up, whether in the morning or not. This could point to something, so give me a call if you start to find yourself unusually tired during the day."

"...Yes, ma'am."

Once Dash half-heartedly described his leg pains, his doctor suggested a quick X-Ray on-site to make sure there was nothing wrong with the bone.

There was something wrong with the bone. Apparently, it looked to be healing from a break. A mostly-healed one, like he had broken it months ago. He hadn't, obviously. Thank God Dr. Lopez accepted "I got hurt in a ghost fight" for an explanation as to how it could be so unnatural.

…Still. There was a fracture. Whatever had happened to Dash's leg that night didn't disappear when Danny apparently pulled healing magic out of nowhere. And his doctor couldn't find anything wrong with his chest when she listened in, just shaky breathing and complaints about pain.

She was convinced it would pass with time, and the femur would heal naturally, but Dash wasn't as sold. Dying was permanent. It's not the kind of thing you heal from.

Dr. Lopez told him to keep exercise light. Take Ibuprofen when in pain, no more than 1600 mg a day. Call her if he needed anything stronger. And no sports. Come back in two weeks and they'd see if he was in better shape. But Dash wouldn't be in better shape. The two weeks would pass and no part of Dash would be healed. The bench would change to a car ride home and Dash wouldn't even be able to do anything for the football team anymore, and that was the one thing he could still do right these days but he'd never be able to play again and who would he be? Who is Dash Baxter without his one right fit?

Dash figured losing his identity, his place, his use, his life, would be the first thing to happen when he died. Instantaneous. No more Dash Baxter.

Turns out it was just slow enough to let him mourn.

He didn't hear a word his mom said when she checked out of the clinic and drove him home. For all he knew, she wasn't even talking to him anymore. Who was there to talk to, anyway?

#''what the fuck‚ fenton‚ i thought being part ghost was going to slay absolute penis!'' #we definitely know how to write about football haha :) its not like all 3 of us have been nerds all our lives #danny phantom #invisobang 2022 #my writing #swagger bishie #halfa!dash #halfa dash au #dash baxter #teddy ghost #check ao3 for more tags!