#not junk ectoplasm.

[benvoliotheorphan]

Tbh I think my favorite thing for Danny Phantom/Spider-Man crossovers is the idea that Danny and Peter kind of… weird each other out? Like they get on like a house on fire and admire/respect each other but like also they’ll learn something about the other and just be like “damn…. you live like this??”

#talking to myself #like you would think with all the ghost stuff Danny would have Peter beat on the weird meter #but like idk man some weird shit goes on in comics #but even just going based on the movies like…………. all that multiverse junk? #idk I think Peter overall has him beat #but that won’t stop him from being like ‘dude wtf’ when he hears that Danny had to fight off food that came to life bc ectoplasm #one of my wips is a fic where Peter moves into a house Danny is haunting #and like he’s all creeped out bc ghost shenanigans #but like meanwhile danny is just as unnerved by this unassuming dude who always knows where he is and can also jump to the ceiling #idk im just thinking about this crossover again. I wanna write more.

[deadsetobsessions]

Sea Cryptic! Danny AU- Pt.6

[Pt.1] [Pt.2] [Pt.3] [Pt.4] [Pt.5] [Pt.7]

Danny slumped over the table at the library. He’d feel embarrassed about it if it weren’t for the rest of the floor’s occupants. Around him, students were speed running through the five stages of grief like it was going out of style.

“Fuuuuuuuuuuck.”

“Same.” Danny replied, rolling his head to look at Tim. “I’m feeling like an academic victim instead of an academic weapon right now.”

“I should have stayed dropped out of school,” Tim grumbled.

Danny gasped theatrically. “And deprive the world of your awe-inspiring genius on…” Danny peered at Tim’s books and grinned. “On… the Krebs cycle? Seriously? They’re teaching that again?”

“I know! This is like, the third time.” Tim whined.

“At least you’ll be good at it, right?”

Tim scoffed. “I’m gonna drop out of college and become a stripper.”

“They do make bank,” Danny nodded. “But aren’t you like a millionaire or something?”

Tim brightened. “Oh, you’re right. I don’t need education! I’m filthy rich!”

Danny whacked Tim on the back of the head, laughing quietly.

“Whatever. Let’s go take a break. Snacks?”

“I literally don’t know how you eat so much.”

“Snacks have a separate stomach pouch. Normal food goes one place, junk food and desserts in another.” Danny retorted, quickly packing up his stuff. In reality, he didn’t need that much food. He’s half dead, after all. But food also converts to ectoplasm in his body, and ancients knows Danny needs all the energy he could get.

They made their way out of the campus library, passing stressed out looking students on their way to a taco truck.

“Does this even count as a snack?” Tim asked, amused. He tugged on his book bag, readjusting the vigilante pins on them.

“Is the sky even blue?” Danny snarked back, forking over the cash needed for the best fucking tacos on this side of Gotham. They sat on the benches, asking for an obscene amount of extra lime and cilantro before going to town.

“Holy shit, how many of those can you eat?”

“Dunno,” Danny mumbled though a mouthful or carne asada and pico de gallo. “Hungry.”

Tim snorted, pulling out his phone to scroll as he ate. A moment later, Tim showed Danny his screen.

“Hey, you live near here, right?”

Danny, cheeks bulging with food, peered at Tim’s phone and nodded.

“Oh, cool! Have you seen the green guy around?”

Danny squinted at Tim, tilting his head as he chewed.

“You know, the glowing green guy that’s been blowing up the Gotham Bay tag.”

Oh. Tim was talking about him, Danny!

Danny nodded. He quickly ate his food and wiped his mouth before replying. “Yeah, why?”

“Does he seriously just clean up the bay? Nothing else?”

Mildly offended for some reason, Danny shrugged. “I mean yeah? He doesn’t seem to pop up near any of the shady spots- oh, I saw him save someone from a mugging in front of my apartment once! But like, I think all he does is clean the bay. Which is good, because holy heck, that place is nastyyy.”

“Seriously?” Tim leaned in, looking super interested. “So he’s friendly?”

Danny raised a brow. “Yeah, he seemed pretty nice, I guess. Though, that’s not saying much considering your Rogues tend to be pretty chill when they’re not in the middle of a scheme.”

Tim snorted. “True that. You talked to him? When? Outside of his bay cleanings, right? I’ve noticed that he only talks to the Bats during those.”

Danny stared at Tim. “Tim… are you… stalking the guy?”

What Danny really wanted to say was: “Tim, are you stalking me?”

“I’m not stalking him!” At Danny’s suspicious glare, belied by his sauce stained mouth, Tim sighed. “Okay, maybe I am. But only some minor stalking!”

“Uh-huh.”

“But if you have, you think you could introduce us? Maybe he’d want to be friends?”

Was Tim asking Danny to introduce him to… Danny himself?

“Uh. Why do you even want to meet him?”

“Danny, he’s a glowing green guy that does community service for funsies. And he knows the Bats. That’s cool.”

“And here I thought you wouldn’t know cool if it smacked you in the face.” Danny teased. Well, whatever. He might as well do something nice for Tim. “Sure. I’ll text you when he pops up and see if he’s okay with meeting you.”

Tim grinned at him, a piece of cilantro stuck in his teeth. “Thanks!”

——

Danny made a duplicate of himself and went ghost. Danny and his duplicate looked at each other and sighed.

“We’ve done stupider things.”

“But we’re still not telling Jazz.”

“Agreed.”

Danny paused. Did he just make a deal with himself? No, he’s busy.

Doppelgänger Danny went invisible and left the apartment by going through a wall. Danny followed in a sedate pace, the normal way.

Outside, he pretended to catch sight of a suddenly visible Phantom. He’d heard the heartbeats outside his apartment ever since he got home all those days ago, and he’s pretty sure the vigilantes were watching his place ever since. Luckily, he made sure there weren’t any bugs or hidden cameras- Sam beat cautiousness into his head a while ago- before starting the plan.

One of those heartbeats sounded like Tim’s which left some… interesting connotations.

Danny sighed. Who was he kidding? Of course he’d be friends with a vigilante.

“Hey, Phantom!” Danny shouted, waving. Phantom floated over.

“Danny. Hi. Did you need something?”

“Oh, not really. My friend wanted to meet you, he’s a huuuuge fan. Think you’ve got time today?” Danny held up his phone.

Phantom hummed. “I can stay for a bit. Thirty minutes.”

“Okay, I’ll call him. His name is Tim, by the way. Thanks for taking the time to meet him!”

“No problem.”

Danny texted Tim, and minutely frowned as he picked up the sound of Tim’s ringtone. Shit, that pretty much confirmed his suspicions. He got a text back from Tim.

Timsy

[5 nin]

Nin

Nin

Nin

Min

Danny huffed an amused breath. “He’ll be here in five minutes.”

“Alright.”

Danny texted back an okay.

Five minutes later, a flushed and disheveled Tim peeled onto the street and right to the curb.

“Here!” He said as he tumbled out of the car.

“Damn, bro. You good?”

“Fine- oh my god, you’re the green guy!” Danny had to hand it to Tim. If he didn’t already figure out he was Red Robin, Danny would’ve believed the act. Holy shit, wait, he called his friend broke. Hah!

“It’s Phantom. Nice to meet you, Tom.”

A quick sliver of sullenness flashed over Tim’s face. “It- it’s Tim.”

“Oh, right. Sorry, human names sound so similar.” Danny leaned back and hid a grin as his doppelgänger messed with his friend.

“Oh, wow, you’re not human? What are you then?”

“Oh my god, Tim, you can’t just ask him what he is!” Danny scolded. These vigilantes were really similar.

“Sorry…” Tim apologized.

“It’s fine. To answer your question, I’m dead. Ghost.”

“Do you really pay taxes?”

Phantom tilted his head. “Yes, of course.” By the, Danny meant that he paid both human taxes and oversaw the Zone’s taxes. “You know that saying, something about never escaping from two things and that’s taxes and death? You can escape death- might come back a little wrong- but taxes are in the afterlife too.”

“Come back a little wrong?” Tim asked, eyes suddenly sharp.

“Come back a little,” Phantom gestured to himself. “Green. More emotive and prone to irritation.”

Tim stared.

——

“Jason, are you a ghost?” Dick, crouched on the top of Danny’s apartment building whispered.

Red Hood, crouched in the same area, stayed silent.

——

“How did you die?”

Phantom snarled and disappeared.

Tim whirled around, looking bewildered. Behind him, Danny struggled to stay calm.

“Where’d he go?”

“He probably didn’t want to hurt you.” Danny sighed.

“What? What did I do?”

“You asked him how he died. That’s like, the ultimate social taboo.”

“I didn’t know that!”

“It’s common sense, dude. Trauma like that has to be shared instead of asked about. Generally.” Danny sighed. “Come on, let’s get off the street and I’ll give you a crash course in manners.”

——

Bruce, upon hearing about the conversation, dove headfirst into researching the after life.

“No, go suck a goat’s genitals, Batsy, I am not helping you adopt a being of the infinite realms!” Constantine hung up on him.

“Hn.” Bruce will adopt the child and give him a home. It’s only a matter of when… and what inter-dimensional loopholes he could find and use in the relevant laws.

Jason was right behind him, because he was going to get answers, dammit.

#danny phantom #batman #tim drake #jason todd #bruce wayne #dc x dp #dick grayson #red hood #nightwing #bamf danny phantom #sea cryptic! danny au

[zylev-blog]

Time travel AU featuring Bart + Danny

The reach had taken over the planet. The Justice League had lost a long time ago, and had been killed. The ghost army had also been defeated, and things were grim. This had led to their current predicament: building a ghost portal so they could go find the being known as Clockwork, who was their last hope. If they couldn’t find Clockwork, they truly lost. Earth would be lost. And Bart didn’t want to admit defeat yet.

“No no, you’re swapping the wires.” Danny huffed, taking the wires from his hands.

“I’m not even sure this junk is going to work.” Bart sighed.

“My parents used to make fully functioning guns with scrap.” Danny responded as he added the wires to the wiring harness, “I’m hoping I can do the same.”

“Hoping and working are two different things.” Bart pointed out.

“Look, I died in a portal made by my parents. I know what they look like and how they work. Even before that, I helped them build it. I know what I’m doing.” Danny didn’t look at him as he clicked everything into place.

“I hope so.” Bart’s voice was quiet. “A lot of people died to get the ectoplasm stores from the Reach’s vault.”

Danny didn’t respond at first, only looking away from him with grief written all over his face. The silence stretched for a few minutes before Danny responded with a quiet, “I know.”

Danny got out of the wall and pressed a few buttons on a nearby pin pad. “Let’s go through this again.”

“I know what’s happening next.” Bart rolled his eyes. “If Clockwork lets us go back to the past, we pose as tourists. It’s just a good thing I’m related to the Flash, even if I’ve never met him.”

“Yeah, and my parents aren’t friends with Batman yet with how far back we have to go. I don’t think they’ve ever met yet.” Danny crossed his arms.

“We’ll be fine.” Bart wasn’t sure if he was convincing himself or Danny.

Danny started the portal, and it hummed to life. Green sparked in the middle as the fabric of reality tore open. Both Danny and Bart watched, transfixed, as green swirled around the inside of the portal.

“Yes!” Danny exclaimed, and high fives Bart.

That’s when they heard it. Reach ships were getting closer to their location. He heard the telltale sign of explosions getting closer and closer as everything in their area was destroyed.

“In! In!” Danny exclaimed, starting the self destruct sequence. Bart wasted no time and sped into the portal, and a second later, Danny appeared behind him and the portal closed. Well, it looked like they had no choice now but to go forward.

#dp x batman #dp dc crossover #dc x dp #dp x dc #dp crossover #danny phantom crossover #dcxdp #dpxdc prompts #dpxdc #dc x dp fic #time travel #bart allen #danny is so done #danny fenton

[hailsatanacab]

a father's son

Happy holiday truce, @dashing-through-ecto!! I was your gifter this year, I hope you enjoy the fic! Based on your prompt: "Do you need any help, Dad?"

Word count 2.2k - ao3 link

Things have not been going well for Danny Fenton.

Not only did he fail in intercepting Lancer’s call home, so now Mom and Dad know about his latest grades—he didn’t even get enough answers for an F this time, not when he fell asleep within the first five minutes—but they also caught Jazz taking the trash out for him.

“That’s one of your chores, young man! Heaven knows you don’t have many of them, which is why you need to be responsible and actually do the ones that we give you! It’s just not good enough, Daniel James Fenton, do you hear me?”

The full name.

It’s not often he gets it, but it sucks each and every time he does.

What sucks even more is that now, with what little free time he has, he’s cleaning the lab. It’s just not fair!

Broken glass skitters along the floor as he sweeps it up into the dustpan, ectoplasm still clinging to the bottom of the beaker. 

He can’t even goof off—can’t even use his powers to finish quicker—because his dad is sitting at the workbench tinkering with whatever his newest interest is.

Great. Looks like he’s stuck cleaning the boring, human way.

The lab is quiet, but it isn’t silent. 

Ectoplasm drips, maddeningly, from the gloop stuck on the ceiling. That’s a form of torture, isn’t it? Danny’s pretty sure he’s heard that before, that the constant sound of water droplets will drive someone insane. He can relate, because this is certainly testing him.

Dad’s talking to himself, too, little murmurs about what he’s doing, where he should be soldering, how it should be working and why it isn’t. 

Vaguely, Danny wonders what he’s working on. Sure, it’s probably some ghost thing, but that’s not all they do! His parents made some pretty great advances before the portal switched on and monopolised all of their thoughts.

Yeah, that might be wishful thinking, but stranger things have happened! You never know.

Every 30 seconds, the motor on the ecto-filter whirrs into life, syphoning off the excess, pure ectoplasm from the portal and filtering it into something less volatile. In theory.

Underneath everything, the portal hums.

A droning beat that pulses in the same rhythm as his heart. Sometimes, he catches himself staring at it, leaning closer as it calls to him.

It scares him.

“Shit!” his dad shouts, dropping the soldering iron with a loud clang. 

It’s enough to knock Danny out of whatever daydream he’d lost himself in and he whirls around to see his dad sucking on one of his fingers.

They lock eyes, both widening as they realise what’s happened.

“Ah, I mean, suffering spooks! That really hurt…” He shoves his fingers back into his mouth and his shoulders droop as he considers Danny. “Don’t tell your mother.”

Danny laughs.

“Are you alright?”

“It’d take more than that to put Jack Fenton down! All good, Danno, don’t you worry,” he smiles back before shaking his hand out and turning back to whatever he was working on. “Or, I would be, if this hunk of junk was cooperating with me!”

“What’s up?” Danny asks, curiosity getting the better of him.

Normally, he likes to stay out of the lab, as much as he can. 

Obviously, what Phantom does doesn’t count. Phantom can’t help but come into the lab, set ghosts loose into the Zone, trash whatever weapons his parents have got going on, sneak out into the Zone when he can for some much needed R&R. The ectoplasm just hits different there.

“I’m trying to repurpose this toaster, but the ecto won’t run smoothly through the wiring. I think it keeps getting cooked by the element.”

“Oh? Do you need some help?”

Danny doesn’t like spending time in the lab, because if he’s in the lab then he’s either Phantom and he’s trying hard not to be seen or heard, or he’s Danny and he’s being punished.

But his curiosity is piqued.

“Yeah, come here, have a look! Perhaps another Fenton brain can knock some sense into it!”

So, he does.

Hell, anything beats cleaning the lab.

“You’re trying to run it through here?”

Dad nods and shifts in his seat to give Danny a better view.

“But you can’t, because the ecto is tripping the heating element… which is way higher than a toaster has any right to be, wow. No wonder it’s destabilising the ectoplasm, that would destabilise anything.”

Danny pokes around the casing, wiggling the wires back and forth to get a better look at the absolute mess his dad has made of it all. Sometimes it amazes him that his parents' inventions work at all.

“That’s what I’m thinking! But it has to be that high so we can completely break down the ecto!”

“You want it to break down?”

“Yep!” Dad says, clapping him on the back hard enough that he wheezes. He grins down at him when Danny turns around reproachfully. “Think of it, boyo, if we could figure out how to flash fry that ectoplasm high enough so that it evaporates—which it should do, it’s goopy gross liquid, after all!—then you wouldn’t be stuck down here cleaning for so long! We could take it to the streets after a ghost fight and clean up the whole town!”

Well, it’s not a Nobel Prize level invention… Danny’s pretty sure at this point that his parents would be laughed out by the Nobel committee. But, a quicker cleaning of the lab does sound nice.

It would mean he’d be stuck down here a lot less.

Besides… It's interesting.

“What if we…” Danny trails off and pulls the metal frame towards him, grabbing the tweezers as he goes. Vaguely, he’s aware of his dad leaning over his shoulder, the weight of him watching is a comforting presence that he’s not felt in a long while. 

The real trouble is that you need ectoplasm to affect ectoplasm, and that’s not going to work if the object of the game is to evaporate it. 

So what if they don’t introduce the reactive ecto until the end?

He makes quick work of stripping down what his dad’s already done and starts again, this time focussing on keeping the heat contained separately away from the ectoplasm. Just as he’s piecing together a trigger to concurrently shoot a blast of ecto towards the heated tip, Dad exclaims as he realises where he’s going with it.

“Oh! Danny, you’re a genius! Look at that!” Dad laughs and squints closer at what Danny’s doing. “Just wait until your mother sees this, she’s going to be so happy!”

Danny can’t help but grin as he ductapes everything to a piece of toaster casing to give it the first test try. Dad’s enthusiasm is catching as he whoops when the first puddle of ectoplasm burns off in acrid smoke.

They spend another couple of hours perfecting it, welding a case together and branding it with the Fenton F.

It’s not pretty—but then again, when are his parents’ inventions?—a long stick with a cattle-prod-like taser at the end. Instead of electricity, it launches ectoplasm from one rod and superheats the other. When activated, all you need to do is touch the tip to a puddle and poof! It’s gone.

Danny shivers as he watches another pool go up.

But, no! He’s thinking about it wrong. It’s not a cattle-prod, it’s more like one of those sticks you see people using on the highway to jab at the litter on the floor. It’s for cleaning. It’s going to make his lab cleaning chores way easier! It’s—

“Danny, just look at it!”

Danny looks at it, and then back to his father’s face when he can’t bear to see the smoking ecto anymore. It’s painfully happy and Danny does his best to be happy, too.

“Here!” Dad shoves the contraption into Danny’s arms. “You use that and finish what you’re doing and then when you’re done—I can’t believe I’m saying this, galloping ghouls, I’m so happy, I’m working with my boy—we can get to work transferring it over to the Jack o’ Nine Tails! Imagine it, Danny, with one whip and that pesky poltergeist Phantom will be gone!”

Danny freezes.

It feels as if Dad’s just dumped a bucket of ice water over him.

“Poof! Up in smoke!”

The fumes are getting to him. That must be it. His head is swimming and his stomach is churning. There’s a ringing in his ears and it melds with the sharp, stinging whirr of ectoplasm sizzling. It pulses in time with the portal behind him.

He stumbles, almost goes down—almost throws up—but it doesn’t matter. Dad doesn’t see him, already turned away back to the work bench.

It doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t matter.

You know what, it’s okay! It’ll be okay, Danny can sneak back down here later tonight and he can undo it all, it doesn’t matter!

Take a deep breath, now, finish cleaning the lab, ignore Dad—it doesn’t matter—and get this over with. Being here makes his skin crawl, he needs to finish—

“I’m so proud of you, Danny.”

For the second time, Danny stops.

Dad doesn’t say anything else, just sits with his back to him, opening and closing his hand over a screwdriver with the Jack o’ Nine Tails splayed out in front of him.

It takes longer than Danny wants to find his voice, but he manages to croak out, “What?”

“I’m proud of you, Danno. I know this year hasn’t been easy for you, don’t think we haven’t noticed. Your mom and I have been talking about how you're doing at school. We're not blind. We know kids can be cruel, and that Dash Baxter… But we're so proud of you for not rising to it. We love you so much, Danny.”

A lump grows in Danny’s throat and his eyes prickle.

His fingers bleach white where they grip the Fenton Evaporator too tight.

“Look at what you can do when you try, Danny! This is the boy that I know, this is the Danny that I love. I’m so proud of what we’ve done here today. It’ll make the world a better place, just you wait! Now, come on, boyo, pass me that soldering iron and let’s really get stuck in!”

And… And Danny does.

With shaky limbs and tears threatening to spill, Danny reaches over and passes Dad the soldering iron, watching as he gets to work, and when his dad asks him to get his hands dirty—“Here, run this wire up the rope, there’s a good boy!”—he does.

Danny does it all and he does it well.

He sucks in a deep breath, swipes a hand over his eyes, and he helps his dad.

He laughs when Dad tells his stupid jokes:

“Quick! What’s red, white, and blue all over?”

“I don’t know, Dad, what’s red, white, and blue all over?”

“A ghost that we’ve beaten into oblivion!”

And he hopes that his mom is going to be just as proud as Dad says she will be when she sees what they’ve done.

It’s easy, really.

If he doesn’t think about it, if he tucks his mind away and just lets his hands get on with it, then he’s just helping his dad and he can do that. He can do it.

He can do it.

So, no, he doesn’t sabotage what they’ve built. He doesn’t add in a failsafe. He doesn’t loosen a few screws, or overload the element, or untwist a few wires.

Danny does his best and at the end of the day his dad holds up the new and improved Jack o’ Nine Tails and absolutely beams at him. A work of art, he calls it.

Danny doesn’t sabotage it then and he won’t sabotage it later, because it’s a work of art. This is what he and his dad built. Together.

Danny can’t help but grin back, happiness curling in his belly even as it gives a sickening lurch.

He doesn’t eat dinner that night, he can’t.

He stays downstairs long enough to present the new weapon to Mom—very pointedly ignoring Jazz’s look—and then he heads upstairs. There’s an English essay he needs to get started on, after all.

He doesn’t miss the look Mom and Dad share, the fond tenderness, the love, the hope, all directed at him.

He’s happy.

They’re happy.

They’re proud of him.

And despite it all, he had fun today! 

When he lays down on his bed, he smiles and he can’t stop the laughter bubbling up as he thinks about his dad. At one point, he had been holding up a circular piece of metal he’d cannibalised from the lamp shade to his eyes, moving it back and forth as he pulled his funny faces, and some of that full belly laugh creeps back in as he remembers doing the same back.

He laughs so hard until he cries, and he cries, and he cries. 

Today, he and his dad built a weapon. 

Tomorrow, it'll be used on him, but that's okay. 

It's okay because today, today his dad was proud.

#danny phantom #holiday truce #holiday truce 2023 #jack fenton #angst fic #hope you enjoy!! sorry it's slightly late 😬 #and happy holiday truce!!!!

[zeestarfishalien]

Unwanted Farewells

[Day 5 DPxDC Week: Jason Todd // Soulmate AU // Funeral Rites ]

• Anger Management ship (Jasmine Fenton x Jason Todd) No relevant warnings beyond the usual DP stuff

Jazz has always had it the worst. Danny might have been the one to die but Jazz is the one who lost not only her soulmate, but her little brother too. It doesn’t matter that he’s still around, he knows the grief weighs on her sometimes. She overcompensates by being a massive mother hen and general pain in the neck but he tries not to get too upset with her about it.

With Dani with an “i” fresh out of high school and Jazz’s birthday coming up soon, he wants to do something special. He spends a lot of time bribing Ghost Writer in order to research his idea out.

It’s probably the most time and effort he’s put into a project that wasn’t about space.

Proposing the idea to her is the one big thing this all hinges on. He’s not 100% sure she’ll be on board with this but he’d like to try.

And trying is what kicks off the first part of his plan. It’s a little awkward to bring up the fact that he doesn’t have a grave and would like one. It’s almost physically painful to see the grief it brings to Jazz’s eyes. She tries to hide it but Danny has always been able to read her better than he lets on. It’s part of the process though. He needs her to see how this goes and feels. How it’s a celebration of life and honoring those who have passed and not just a somber reminder to the living of what they’ve lost. He needs her to see what it means to him. And what it would mean to her soulmate.

He makes the grave marker of course. They’re not about to buy one when he has the strength and abilities to carve it out himself. He makes sure that it’s vague unless you know him. No names, no identifying markers like age or dates. It’s simple and meaningful for him.

{May he rest here between walks among the stars, our friend and brother beloved}

From there it’s pretty much all fun and games. Literally.

Same brings the games while she has Tucker pack out the food. It’s a combination of some of Grandma Ida’s homemade desserts and various junk foods. Even Tucker brings some cookies his mom helped him figure out how to make.

Jazz is in charge of the drinks while Danny and Dani handled all the decorating. It’s a combination of solidified ectoplasm, his ice, and various flowers they’ve gathered and strung together in a flower chain.

It’s a smashing success and he sees something in Jazz release. Some niggling worry or grief she carried that is no longer there.

Now, he decides, it’s time for part two.

What throws part two for a loop is when Dani with an “i” brings up that she’d like a grave and proper funeral rites as well.

It’s not a setback. Definitely not when he sees how much more relaxed and content Jazz is at Dani with an i’s wake.

It’s only a couple days from her birthday when he brings it up. The funeral practices for soulmates are as varied as they are sacred. He proposes her options via a PowerPoint he put far too many hours into.

By the time he finishes rambling, she’s got this sort of startled look on her face.

He twists his shirt in his hands as he stands awaiting her judgement. The longer she’s silent, the more convinced Danny is that she’ll reject the whole thing and not talk to him for a month.

Okay, maybe a week but still a week is a long time.

Suddenly Jazz is crying and oh ancients he’s really messed up this time. She’s not even mad just straight up upset by his offer.

But then she’s hugging him, telling him she loves him, and thanking him.

It’s not as hard as Danny feared to actually track down the location of a Jason Todd who died before Jazz reached 16 (she never wanted to look him up before, didn’t want to know what she was missing) and the day before her 25th birthday Danny, Dani, and Jazz all pile into her little car to make the drive to Gotham, homemade foods in tow.

Danny and Dani made sure to swipe one of Vlad’s special rich dude credit cards to fund their trip and the stop at multiple flower shops to get enough flowers to make flower chains and crowns for all of them.

It’s closing in on evening, the day of Jazz’s birthday when they finally roll up and upload everything. They didn’t bring any lights, but none of them really need much light to see for eating food and drinking sodas. Jazz brought some jasmine tea and an extra cup to place on Jason’s grave. They make a funky, dark evening of it, but finally Jazz grows more somber and keeps taking long looks at the gravestone so Danny and Dani decide to make themselves scarce.

They’re about halfway across the cemetery when out of the shadows steps the looming menace of Red Hood.

“The fuck are you doing at that grave?”

It’s not his voice or his tone, but the sub vocal ghost speak that makes Danny and Dani freeze up ramrod straight.

That’s a revenant and they’re trespassing on his resting place without permission.

So of course like any sane person, Danny says something stupid. But he just can’t believe out of all the ridiculous coincidences to exist in the world, that Jazz’s soulmate is undead like him seems just too far to believe.

“Jason?”

Almost late despite having the day off work bc I had to go shopping and bc of where I live, shopping is essentially a full day affair. This is shorter than I’d like it but I also kinda enjoy where it ends XD imagine their next moments however you please or feel free to add onto this.

#angermanagement #soulmateau #dpxdc #dcxdp #jazz/jason #dpxdc week 2023

[wolfjackle-creates]

Ghost!Robin Part 11

Time for another WIP Wednesday! I'm not sure if I'll have anything for next week. I'm working on a one shot right now as I can and wrapping up stuff for my final week of work which is taking a ton of time. Though I did get on a roll today and wrote a bit more than I'm posting, so maybe I'll have something.

Story Summary: Danny was invited to dinner at Wayne Manor to meet Jazz's boyfriend and his family for the first time. He worked hard to make sure no ghost business would interrupt the evening. But when he arrived, all he could focus on was the ghost of the dead Robin that seemed to haunt Jason. Looks like he was breaking his promise.

First, Previous

Word Count: 1.4k

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“Hn. What is the range on these devices?” asked Bruce.

Danny shrugged. “My stuff? From anywhere. I track through the Infinite Realms, not by Earth. GIW? Jason-Robin, they’ll be able to detect something from probably ten miles out of city limits, but they’d need to be within half a mile to get an accurate location. The Fentons? Mile or so. They get an exact location or nothing.”

Tim asked, “Is it likely the Fenton’s will come to Gotham?”

“Not sure,” admitted Danny. “But they sell commercially, so other ghost hunters might have their equipment. Jazz, pass the Fenton Finder?”

Damian couldn’t keep the incredulity out of his voice when he finally saw the blocky silver device with a circular, green screen on it and bits sticking up out of the front. “Why is there a light bulb attached to it?”

Even Robin looked at the device with a raised eyebrow and sent out a silent this real? his way.

“It flashes when a ghost is nearby,” Danny replied to both of them.

Tim hummed in interest. “Are the visible antennae necessary? Why are there multiple?”

“Most of my parents designs were cobbled together with whatever they could cannibalize from other household electronics and junk yards. Hence the less stream-lined appearance compared to the Guys in White’s stuff.”

He flicked the switch to turn it on and instantly the light bulb was flashing red, the radar screen turned on showing several dots in close vicinity to the center, and a robotic voice said, “You are surrounded by multiple ghosts. You’d have to be an idiot to not notice the ghosts all around you.”

Danny let it read out it’s warning again before flicking it back off. He had to laugh at the looks of complete bafflement on basically everyone’s faces. Even Bruce raised an eyebrow at it.

“Yeah, that’s my parents for you. FentonWorks designs are at least easy to spot. Not the the Guys in White’s stuff is much better. That horrible white on everything…” Danny shuddered. “I hate white.”

Bruce hummed. “Will you be able to provide us with some of these devices so we can study them on our own?”

Danny bit at his lower lip. “Probably. But it’ll have to wait until after I get you the information on how to safely work with ectoplasm. If Tim and Barbara are your big tech people, they’re not liminal at all and will have to be careful when handling it.”

Tim added, “We do have extensive experience working with toxic chemicals. Many of the Gotham rogues use chemical warfare.”

“Right. Yeah, I’ll have Tucker send you the safety sheets on it and we’ll see what devices I’ve got or can make duplicates of to get to you. I’ll be sure you get all three styles of hand-held trackers and their schematics. Maybe I’ll even be able to get you the schematics for a larger tracking system like what my parents have set up in Amity.”

Barbara nodded. “That would be great. What sort of set up do your parents have in your home town?”

“So they’ve set up sensors all over the city that detect ectoplasmic activity. The signal gets sent back to the computer in the ops center they built on top of their house, and they can pin the exact location of any ghost to within a foot or two anywhere within, like, five miles of the city limits. That data is also shared with the computer in their GAV.”

Jason bumped Jazz’s shoulder with his. “I know I’m gonna regret this, but what’s the ‘GAV’?”

Jazz sighed and answered. “It stands for Ghost Assault Vehicle. It’s a modified RV that’s basically a tank. Jack and Maddie simply have to press a button and a dozen ghost weapons will protrude from the vehicle and aim for any nearby ghost. And that’s without Maddie shoving her entire upper body out the window while holding a bazooka.”

“Yep. I regret asking. How badly am I gonna want to murder your parents by the time I’m done learning about them?”

“They are not my parents.” Jazz’s voice was hard.

At the same time, Danny answered, “Depends. How do you feel about genocidal mad scientists?”

Jason just let his head bang on the table. Robin flew over to him and patted him on the back. Jason seemed to subconsciously lean into the touch.

“Now,” said Danny. “I promised I’d show the rest of you these scanners up close.”

“That would be appreciated,” said Bruce. “We also have a few more questions about you and your parents.”

“And I need you to tell me more about these Lazarus pits because those sound like they’re a disaster.”

Alfred cleared his throat. “And I believe that will have to be the end of this meeting tonight. It is getting late and at least some of you will insist on going on patrol tonight still.”

A few people grumbled at Alfred’s words, but no one argued.

Danny made his way to the other side of the table and went over how to use the devices again. He pretended not to notice the way Jazz flinched when he turned on the Fenton Finder and it called out its warning again.

Jason did put an arm around her in response, though, so he figured she’d be all right.

“So that’s that,” he said once he turned off the last device. “I won’t be showing you any weapons until after we get you up to date on ghost biology and culture. If you run into issues in the meantime, you can call Jazz or me and we’ll take care of it.”

Bruce nodded. “We’ll be following up with our own experts as well.”

“Of course,” agreed Danny. “I figured. Now, you had some more questions?”

Tim asked, “You mentioned to me and Alfred that a member of Justice League Dark stopped by Amity. Can you tell us more about that?”

“I mean, there’s not much to tell,” said Danny. “It was John Constantine. And at the time I had no idea how famous he was. Would’ve asked for an autograph if I had, but oh well. This was shortly after I defeated Pariah Dark, the previous Ghost King. He came in, asked if I needed help. I told him I got it covered, he gave me a phone number, and that was that.”

Bruce hummed. “Yes, that sounds like Constantine. We will speak to him.”

“Why?” asked Danny. “It was exactly what I wanted. A check in to confirm I was okay and someone to reach out to on Earth if I got in over my head. It’s just by that time I started getting allies in the Realms. The big concern Earth-side was ghost hunters. And the worst of them were government sanctioned so I wasn’t sure if I should reach out to the Justice League since you guys also work with the US government.”

Jason let out a noise that Danny could only think of as a growl. “He should have spent enough time there to answer questions like that.”

Danny snorted. “Less than a week before he arrived, our entire town was removed from Earth and brought into the Infinite Realms for multiple days. Something would’ve been very wrong with him if he’d stuck around longer than it took to confirm it wasn’t likely to happen again.”

“I’m sorry,” asked Steph, “what is that about your entire town being transported off earth?”

“Don’t you know? My friends and I figured that’s why you sent Constantine to us.”

Barbara shook her head as she clicked around her computer. “There’s nothing in the Justice League files about it.”

“Huh. Well that’s how I became the Ghost King. The previous king was released by an idiot and lured to Amity. Ended up bringing the entire town into the Realms. His goal was to take over the town then the rest of earth. I defeated him in single combat while some other ghosts helped hold back his armies. No one bothered to tell me until later that that meant won his titles as well.”

Dick was frowning at him. “Why did you have to be the one to defeat him?”

Danny just blinked at him in confusion. “Who else was there? My accident is what activated the portal and started letting ghosts through. By making me half ghost, I had the powers necessary to contain the ones who caused problems. My parents were incompetent at best. So I just did what had to be done. Besides, if I hadn’t been an idiot, the portal never would’ve turned on in the first place. So it was my responsibility to fix it.”

----------

Next

And no one at the table liked that answer! The end of the dinner is finally in sight! I know I'm overlooking characters. I'll do some editing to make sure everyone gets a say before I eventually get around to posting this to AO3. (It's a good part of the reason I haven't started cross posting, tbh. That and I like to have stories fully finished before I start posting.)

Hope you all enjoy.

Tag List Part 1:

@addie-lover-of-stories, @justwannabecat, @gin2212, @amercurio, @regonold, @overtherose, @readerzj, @sjrose1216, @echoednonny, @deeterzz, @blu-lilac, @number-one-jew, @rowanaway-fromthisbs, @vythika96, @tired-yet-awaken, @themirrorghost, @emeraldcorpral, @all-mights-asscheeks, @darkhinauniverse, @blep-23, @phandomhyperfixationblog, @larkcoe1, @thegatorsgoose, @job-ross-the-second, @britcision, @lenacraft, @bubblemixer, @androgynouslordofescapism, @purefrickingspite, @leftmiraclechaos, @lizisipancardo, @starlight-sparks, @miraculousandmore, @gildedphoenix, @sometimesthingsfallapart, @letmesayfuxk, @phoenixcatch7, @skulld3mort-1fan, @abaowo, @dhampir-princess, @idkmrpianoman, @sarina-elais, @ballzfrog-blog, @undead-essence, @spookytragedyshark, @flyingpansaurus, @akintoabitch, @marivictal, @8-29pm, @justreadingthefanfics, @happybear135, @kisatamao, @spoopyspoony, @adorablechaos, @sara0055, @screamingtofillthevoid

#dpxdc #danny fenton #jazz fenton #all the bats #anger management #my writing #were finally moving past the distrust! #at least a bit #constantine felt a chill go down his spine #he's gonna be spending longer than he'd like avoiding bats after this night #danny has no idea what he just unleashed on the wizard

[americas1suiteheart]

Weird Science | Chapter IV

Egon Spengler x Fem! Reader (But can be read as NB)

Summary; Basically just a timeskip to when Y/n actually becomes a Ghostbuster. I don't know what else I could've put here because it's that simple.

Notes; I literally started writing this an hour after I saw Frozen Empire (it was great, watch it if you haven't already). Really happy about this though and that it got me to write out another chapter.

Warnings; Mentions of smoking and foul language, as always.

Chapter 4/? | <Previous Chapter

꒷꒦︶꒷꒦︶︶꒷︶︶︶︶꒦꒷꒦︶︶꒷꒦︶︶꒦︶︶︶꒦꒷

You stood in the laundry room, now covered in slightly dry ectoplasm from the suits that you just put in the wash. The boys went out on a mission and all three of them got slimed by a class 2 apparition, leaving all three of their suits soaked.

It was just a joy that being part of the Ghostbusters means that you get to wash and scrub off slime off of coveralls, the Ecto-1, and some of their equipment as your own suit and Proton Pack were still in the making.

The whole proton pack thing was partially your fault that it wasn't done yet.

Since you'd been working with the boys, with nothing to do you would just tinker around and put the Proton Pack together, of course other than having to take care of all of the ectoplasm. With you being in the lab so often, you got to know Egon a *little* bit more.

Him and you were both quiet, so conversation wasn't really a big thing especially when you were trying to concentrate on something that could go wrong when a small thing is misplaced.

"Hey, Y/n. Me and Peter are going to get some takeout, do you want anything?" Ray asks, leaning on the door frame.

"Awesome! I'll just have what I usually get. Do you guys need any cash to help pay?" You say, getting off of the washer to pull your wallet out.

"No, it's alright, don't worry about it. You've been cleaning off all of the ectoplasm off of everything you don't have to worry about it."

"Alright, thank you, Ray."

"Of course, we should be back in 10 minutes. Don't have too much fun doing the laundry." Ray shouts as he leaves the laundry room.

Right.

You head up into the lab so you could try to get more progress on the Proton Pack, only to see Egon working on it, too.

"Hey, Egon."

Egon quickly looks up, dropping one of the tools that he was using out of his hands, earning a small grunt of frustration from him.

"Sorry! I didn't mean to alarm you. Here." You apologize, going up to him and pulling a crunch bar from your pocket.

You had quite a sweet tooth yourself, so carrying around sweets with you was common. Ray had always poked fun at you about it, saying how I'm a scientist and was eating all the junk that people advise you not to, but he couldn't really say anything, or maybe he could, as both of you smoked regularly.

Egon looked at you and took the candy bar from your hands and putting it into his lab coat pocket, maybe not the best place to store it. "Thank you."

You nod and bend down to pick up the tool that fell on the ground, handing it to him.

"So, what are you working on, now?" You ask, putting your hands on your hips as you look at the machinery.

"I was working on the motherboard. I'd misplaced one of the wires going into it. That's why it wasn't making the proton wand work correctly, but it's an easy fix that will only take a few minutes."

"Okay, well do you need any help with it?" You ask leaning on the table.

"No, it's fine. But thank you." Egon says, continuing on what he was fixing.

"Okay then. Ray and Peter went out to get takeout for us, so they'll be back in a bit. I'll be in the garage getting that slime off of the Ecto-1 if you need me." You walk away.

"Hey, Y/n!" Egon called out.

"Yes, Egon?"

Egon hesitated for a second and went back to his work. "Nothing, sorry."

You knit your eyebrows in confusion. "Alright. Let me know if you need anything." You say, leaving the lab and going down to the garage.

I wonder what that was about? You thought to yourself.

"No, it was your fault, you're the one that didn't ask." Peter says, clearly sounding annoyed.

"We go there all the time, and the meal even said it came with peanut sauce! You can't blame me for it!"

Peter always seemed to like to argue, and about the stupidest shit, too. You shook your head, walking to the source of the bickering.

"What are you two fighting about this time?"

"Ray forgot to ask for peanut sauce." Peter says, crossing his arms like an upset child.

"It's not that big of a problem, Peter. Calm down so we can eat." You sigh, making your way into the "dining area" or "living area". Though, you couldn't really consider it that, it was only somewhat close to that because of the couch and small table inside.

You take a piece of small machinery that you were working on off of the table and place it on the couch, hoping that no one would sit on it.

Ray was unpacking the contents of the bag and placing them onto the table.

"This is your stuff, Peter. Then, Y/n, yours is over here. This one's mine, and then this one's Egon's. Okay, lets chow down." Ray says, looking into each box individually.

You sit in your seat and open your boxes of food and grabbing a fork to eat.

Egon walks in and everyone else sits down and eats their food in silence.

Today wasn't really eventful, the boys surprisingly didn't have a single call today, so they either worked on something else or lazed about.

Egon took the candy bar out of his lab coat and began to unwrap it.

"Did someone give you a little treat, Egon?" Peter says in a singsong tone.

Egon shoots daggers at him, you doing the same as Peter looks at you.

"I'm going to head off now. I'm tired of the events of today. Goodbye now!" Peter says, getting up and cleaning up after himself.

"Oh, you're tired from doing nothing?" You say.

"Yup! See you guys tomorrow!"

Peter still managed to be just as obnoxious as he was in college, if not maybe a little less. You have no clue how Ray and Egon managed to handle his antics and overall personality for all these years and counting. You were barely able to handle him for more than a couple of hours.

You sigh and get up from the table. "Okay, well I'm gonna head out now, too. Thank you for the food, Ray. Don't miss me too much."

"Alright goodnight, Y/n. Be safe!" Ray says, waving goodbye to you.

"Will do. Goodnight, guys."

After you had walked out of the firehouse and at least a block down you realized that you had forgotten to put the laundry into the dryer.

Shoot! I'll just go back and put them in, I'm not that far and I don't want it to get all weird overnight.

You make your way back into the building and head into the laundry room and take out the suits, then put them into the dryer and turn it on.

"Y/n? What are you still doing here? You left 10 minutes ago."

You turn around to see Egon standing in the doorway with a laundry basket in his hands.

"Oh, I forgot to put your guys' suits into the dryer so I came back to put them in." You say, rubbing your hands on your pants to get rid of the slit dampness that came from transporting the laundry.

"You didn't have to do that. I could've put them in myself."

"Well I guess it's a little too late for that now, huh? Thank you though, Egon." You laugh lightly.

"Uh, yeah. I fixed that motherboard by the way, I think the only thing left to do is connect all the wires of the proton wand to the pack. If you don't mind helping me with that tomorrow.." Egon says, adjusting his glasses up on his nose.

"Yeah, of course. Thank you for fixing it by the way. I'll have to get you another "treat" for tomorrow." You say, quoting what Peter had said earlier.

"Right. Well, goodnight, Y/n. I'll see you tomorrow."

"Goodnight, Egon." You place your hand on Egon's arm and leave. You could've sworn you heard a sharp inhale coming from him.

꒷꒦︶꒷꒦︶︶꒷︶︶︶︶꒦꒷꒦︶︶꒷꒦︶︶꒦︶︶︶꒦꒷

I think I got this done in like four or five days and I think it came out okay. Thank you for the comments and stuff that I got from this, it makes me really happy to hear that you guys like it!!

@dragonashtray (Here's that reminder!!)

#egon spengler #Harold Ramis #ghostbusters #ghostbusters 1984 #peter venkman #ray stantz #janine melnitz #egon spengler x reader #bill murray #dan akroyd

[five-rivers]

Velveteen

Phic phight for @bibliophilea !

It was rich, velveteen black, strewn with diamond dust and the distant, misty gauze of nebulae.  The Earth and moon were both crescent-shaped far below, their curves and colors bright with reflected sunlight and the twinkle of cities.  The silence up here was complete, a rarefied and encompassing peace. At the same time, the gentle fizz of ectoplasm exposed to vacuum prickled over her skin.

Dani could understand why Danny liked it.  

The cold.  The quiet.  All fears made irrelevant by distance and enormity.  Everything was so big.  Everything was so small. 

Danny flew up next to her, beaming, already back from his tour collecting the space junk from this particular segment of orbit.  He created a bubble shield around The two of them and filled it with a haze of ectoplasm.  

“Well?  What do you think?” he asked.  His voice sounded off.  Ectoplasm wasn't air.  

“It's cool,” said Dani.  

“I know, right?  Can you believe we're only, like, a hundred miles up?  That's like driving to Chicago.”

Dani had been to Chicago before.  She hadn't driven there.  Or driven anywhere, actually.  Flying was better, but boats were also good.  

Flying straight up had also been a good deal less interesting than flying to Chicago.  

“You'd think more stuff would be here if it's only as far away as Chicago is from Amity.”

Danny shrugged.  “Up is hard.  But not for us!”  He did a little spin.  “If it wasn't for the Anti-Ecto acts, we'd totally be shoo-ins for NASA.  We'd save them so much money.”

“That could be fun,” said Dani, looking out past the shield, at the stars.  “Working together.”

Danny gently nudged her shoulder.  “You don't have to force yourself, you know.  Sam and Tucker aren't clamoring to find a way up here.”

“Yeah, but I'm your sister.”  And she was supposed to be him.  She'd be lying if she said it didn't make her feel… less real.  

As Jazz had told her ages ago, trauma didn't disappear overnight.

“Jazz isn't here, either.  It's okay.”

For a second, Dani wondered if he had read her mind, bringing up Jazz like that, but then she put Danny's statement back in context.  

“It is cool.  Being out here.”

“It's okay if you don't like it.”

“I do like it.”

“Dani, I'm not going to love you less just because we don't have the same hobbies.”

Well.  What was she supposed to say to that?

It was officially getting too serious and sappy around here. 

Dani let out a very put-upon sigh.  “It is nice.  But it's so empty.  And it took an hour to fly here.”

Danny's smile was soft, understanding.  “A bit much, huh?”  He settled back against the curve of the shield.  “What would you like to do, if it wasn't for the Anti-Ecto acts?”

“I don't know,” said Dani, floating down to rest beside him.  The shield and ectoplasm made the stars twinkle and blur again, but it was more comfortable to see them this way.  “Marine biology, maybe.  Or ocean wildlife rehabilitation.  Those sound cool.”

“Huh.  Maybe our next field trip could be to the bottom of the ocean.”

“Oh, yeah, that sounds cool.  Not that this isn't, I mean–”  She felt the tips of her ears flush with ectoplasm.  

Danny started to laugh.  

#danny phantom #phic phight

[bennydwight]

A dialogue snippet that turned into this:

Standoff (TGAMM Oneshot: Spoilers for season 2)

Summary: Half-feral, trapped in a snare barely big enough for his fluctuating form and Oliver Chen's gun trained directly at his head, Scratch is out of options.

So why isn't Ollie taking the shot?

Intrinsically, Scratch was a pretty simple, lazy guy. He liked an easy routine, a familiar path. The hardest work he did most days was figuring out how to avoid hard work. He didn’t have the patience for strategy (why, when cheating was faster and easier?) and trying to think in multiple directions at once just sapped his strength and made his head hurt. All that variety, all that junk humans did to ‘better their mind’ was just so hard.

Astonishingly, it was made ten times harder when he was near bursting out of a containment unit, a wide barreled gun trained directly between his eyes.

He couldn’t even pinpoint where everything had gone wrong, too much focus funneled into clamping down on a base instinct: trapped in a snare barely large enough for his normal size and his afterlife on the line, Scratch’s scare form had started to take over.

He strained against the effort of keeping his ectoplasm intact, phantom breaths coming in rapid huffs even as his teeth lengthened, spines burst from his arms, his shape swelled and pressed dangerously against unyielding steel and electrons. Somewhere, quietly in the back of his mind and underneath the screaming need to SCARE SCARE SCARE SCARE, he realized dimly that he’d never been afraid of being crushed until now, after he’d gained the ability to phase through objects at will. Well, most objects. Go figure.

So it was here, desperately trying to reign in his higher processes, that through an animalistic red haze Scratch glowered into the eyes of his captor. Ollie stood mere feet away, that biohazard-yellow gun a shield between him and his helpless prey, and Scratch acknowledged a terrible gleam of satisfaction as even now the weapon trembled in the boy’s hands.

Across the other side of the warehouse, behind the orangey shimmer of the Chens’s forcefield, Molly lay prone, the tiny movement of her breaths the only reason any of the Ghost Chasers were still alive. Esther knelt next to her, first-aid kit in hand, expression one of barely-contained terror. Not his doing, but he’d take credit. Maybe next time she’d learn not to chuck a knockout bomb at a child. Well, at him. Molly had taken the metaphorical bullet (not a pretty mental image, given the circumstances), and if anything happened to her then Scratch was going to make all their lives a living hell.

Provided he got out unscathed. Somewhere, out of the thick of battle, Andrea fought to take the snare’s electronics offline, and no doubt June was blocking every attack with equal fervor. And even with legs as long as Libby’s, it would take too much time for her to reach the McGee’s house and bring back Pete and Sharon. Time Scratch didn’t have.

Imprisoned, half feral with the urge to survive, and one finger twitch away from total erasure, Scratch was out of options. Just him and Ollie, and the trap and the gun.

And the father.

Ruben stood, face and hands pressed against the forcefield, vibrating with adrenaline. His attention laser focused to his son, caught on the opposite side with the enemy (that was Scratch, he had enemies now), the shouts of excitement and encouragement died at Ollie’s hesitation and veered distinctly into confusion and urgency.

“Finish it, Ollie, it’s trying to take attack form! End it before it escapes!”

Ollie’s only acknowledgement was the hitch of his shoulders, eyes locked with Scratch in a way that felt like he was missing context. Scratch had seen this boy’s hatred firsthand, he put things on the internet that should not be there, so what stopped him now?

A memory flashed to mind: Molly throwing herself in front of the knockout bomb, and someone shouting ‘NO’ nearby, and Scratch swelled painfully against the snare as a fresh wave of rage tore through his ectoplasm like the hiss from behind his fangs.

Ah. So now he knew.

“We’re so close, Ollie,” Ruben continued to not shut up, voice like fingernails down Scratch’s strained self-control. “Our family’s whole legacy has led up to this! You can give us everything we’ve ever dreamed, just pull the trigger!”

The monster was caged, and still fear shone like a beacon behind Ollie’s eyes. Everything they’d worked for at his feet and he still didn’t move. Didn’t look away.

Scratch was not a smart man on the best of days and now, claws scoring uneven grooves in the ground as their length oscillated with his concentration, he was grossly, hilariously far from his best. “Do it kid,” Scratch snarled, sucking harsh breaths from between gritted teeth. “You know what it’ll cost ya.”

“Do it, Ollie! This is our only chance!”

A long beat passed.

Ollie’s hands shook, but his trigger finger didn’t waver.

From outside, a roar, and then a scream. Good old Geoff. The Chens’s heads whipped towards the door, and their combined fear-smell nearly whited out Scratch’s mind for good.

“Go help June!” Ollie’s voice pitched high with terror, and something else that tugged Scratch’s mind back to clarity. Surprise registered through the darkness clouding his mind as his parents obeyed, gathering a limp Molly into their arms, and a strange quiet settled over the warehouse.

And then, there were two.

Most of the threat and the fear-smell were gone, but Ollie still had a gun to his head and Scratch was still angry. His hue shifted, deepening to a sickly green, mouth stretching wide in a grotesque grin. “So what’ll it be, Ollie? Gonna finish me yourself? Or gonna make your daddy do it for you?” The snare creaked ominously as his growth strained the limits. The ropes of plasma burned fierce red lines through the green, but he barely registered the pain. “Either way, she’ll never talk to you again. Won’t even look at you. She thought better of you, y’know. Tried her darnedest to change your mind. You want her to wake up and find out she failed?”

Ollie’s eyes hardened, and Scratch’s temperature dropped several degrees. He really should’ve known better by now than to make calculated risks, this one might’ve just cost him his life.

Ollie’s hand moved, and Scratch bit back a flinch before watching it dip into a pocket and emerge with a square device. As he pressed the giant, terrifying button right in the middle, Scratch braced for pain.

Instead, the pressure around him retreated, and Scratch floated up into the air. Free.

Free, and alone with the Ghost Chaser, who kept the gun trained on his head even as scared tears pooled at the corners of his eyes.

They stared at each other in a stalemate, Ollie unwilling to put down his weapon and Scratch wobbling between forms as he considered whether to put his uncomfortably pent-up scare energy to good use. Or at least entertaining use.

“Run,” Ollie whispered, and Scratch couldn’t tell if it was a threat or a plea.

The instinct-induced haze lessened. If Ollie took the shot, he’d be disappointing Molly. (Who was he kidding, life without Scratch? He’d be devastating Molly!) But if Scratch proved the Chens thoughts on ghosts right, he’d be doing the same thing.

Ollie hefted the gun higher, looking no keener to use it. “Run,” he repeated.

The easy way out. No lie, Scratch had considered it immediately. Molly was safe enough with the Chens, and all he wanted was to disappear into a dark corner and forget this whole nightmare ever happened. He could run, and they’d be more careful, and this whole debacle meant Molly would stop hanging out with Ollie, and Scratch’s life could go back to normal. Save being on the run. Forever.

(Or until the Chens died out, and with Scratch’s luck this would absolutely turn into a multigenerational blood feud.)

Facts were: he was outed, and so was Molly’s connection to him. They’d never be safe, not while the Chens were determined to cleanse the world of ghostkind.

Scratch took a deep breath and thought of his family, and the last of his spines smoothed and his colour returned to its natural blue and his shape stabilized. It might’ve been easier to go underground, but even these past few months of avoiding their (many, many) ghost traps had triggered an exhaustion that would’ve been called bone-deep if he’d had bones. He didn’t want to put his family through that, and frankly, Scratch was just damn tired. All he wanted was to sleep for a century.

He'd finish this first.

“Look, Ollie,” he started, relieved to find the bass in his voice had returned to normal. “As far as ghosts go, I’m a pretty lazy guy. Rather take a nap, y’know? All that exercise ain’t good for you.”

Ollie’s eyes darted to the side, face screwing up in that ‘um actually’ wince that Molly liked to adopt whenever she annoyed him enough to bring up the flat-earth theory. The first flicker of character he’d shown since this whole standoff started. “Not how that works, but what do you mean?”

Scratch smiled at his mortal enemy, and somehow it felt natural. “Means I’m tired of running, kid.”

 END

#the ghost and molly mcgee #tgamm #tgamm season 2 #tgamm spoilers #scratch #ollie chen #oliver chen #writing #oneshot #art #background intolerant #set post canon #tw gun mention #i love the concept of instinctual shapeshifting so lots of that #probably wrote scratch too much like a werewolf but whatevs #semi feral scratch #ruben isnt a bad dude #the real antagonist is parental expectations

[hannahmanderr]

Supernova - Chapter 1: The Aftershock

(AO3)

aftershock: noun 1) a small earthquake or tremor that follows a major earthquake.

2) the effect, result, or repercussion of an event; aftermath; consequence

3) what Danny finds himself having to deal with all of a sudden

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“I swear, you kids drink all those ‘Monstras’ or whatever they’re called and then come to class wonderin’ why you’re feeling like crap,” Tetslaff grumbled as she held the back of her hand up to Danny’s clammy forehead.

“Danny doesn’t drink energy drinks,” Sam said, indignant.

“Then what’s that stuff he’s always bringing to school to drink?” The question came from Star, who was one of the others in the class who’d come over to investigate the commotion. She jabbed a finger at one of the puddles of ectoplasm on the mat. “Because that is so not water.”

“Did she really just call them ‘Monstras?’” Tucker mumbled to himself.

Danny didn’t process any of this. For all he knew, he could be a million miles away from what was happening and he wouldn’t know the difference. Everything sounded far away and muddy, as if he were listening to it underwater. His limbs felt thick, like they didn’t even belong to him. Not to mention that he was still distracted by the remnants of that feeling that had overpowered him so suddenly. Whatever it had been. 

Really, nothing he’d ever experienced had yanked on his core as hard as that had. He’d felt drains on his core before, but this had been entirely different. Could it even be considered a drain? He couldn’t tell if he’d lost any of his energy.

A shiver ran down his spine. To have such a fundamental part of his being end up so violently displaced, so utterly violated… Even now, it was still out of sync with his heart and making his stomach churn threateningly again. 

And had he just been imagining hearing someone shouting?

“... take him to the nurse’s office?” Tetslaff was asking the small crowd. “ Not you , Foley! You’ll be lucky if I let you loose on your own durin’ class again before you graduate.”

“No,” Danny heard himself say. He was the one moving his mouth, right? Why did his tongue feel like sandpaper? “Don’t need the nurse. Just hot.”

And he was hot. Abnormally so. As in he hadn’t been this hot since before the accident. His core sputtered a few weak coils of his cold energy, but couldn’t manage much more than that so soon after such an experience.

“Sorry, Coach, I tried to tell him he needed to keep up with drinking his water today.” He was vaguely aware of his aluminum water bottle being pressed into his grasp by Sam. “He just wouldn’t listen to me.”

Normally, he would’ve been annoyed with the jab at his expense, but his head was still too full of fuzz to even really have room to be annoyed. Instead, he swirled the water bottle and discovered that not everything had spilled out onto the mat, so he took a tentative sip. The results were nearly instantaneous; the ectoplasm buzzed pleasantly through his core and sent a jolt of clarity into his brain. Not enough to completely clear the fog, but it was better than nothing.

Tetslaff eyed him skeptically. “You sure you don’t wanna get checked out? Dehydration is nothin’ to laugh at.”

“Yeah.” He nodded as enthusiastically as he could without setting off another wave of vertigo. “I just… need to sit for a second.”

“Aw, what’sa matter?” Brady Ibarra cooed from behind Star. “Fenton can’t handle a wittle baby workout?”

“Can it, Ibarra!” Tetslaff barked. “Alright, Manson, take him off the field. I don’t want him back out here for at least ten minutes. Nuh-uh, you stay right there Foley! You’ve got a hot date with a mat and some crunches. And the rest of you, get back to it! If you don’t have those sheets done before the bell rings, you’ll be runnin’ laps next time!”

She snatched the water bottle out of Danny’s grasp. “And you, if I catch you drinkin’ this junk durin’ gym again, you can bet your sorry bottom we’ll be havin’ a little chat with your parents. Here,” she shoved the bottle at Sam, “empty that out and get him some real water.”

Sam pulled Danny up by the elbow and dragged him toward the bleachers, away from the echo of Tucker’s complaints. “What the heck was that?” she hissed as soon as they were out of earshot.

“I don’t know.” He plopped down on the sun-warmed seats with a wince. Ouch . Too hot. Core still out of whack. Must’ve been too obvious, since Sam glanced over her shoulder and, after seeing Tetslaff busy telling Tucker to get onto a clean mat, handed the bottle back to Danny. He took a few greedy, grateful gulps.

“What do you mean you don’t know? And stop drinking that so fast, you’ll make yourself sick.”

He pulled the bottle out of his mouth and breathed in deeply before saying, “This is the stuff that keeps me from getting sick. And I mean, I don’t know.” Another swig. The familiar chill was finally beginning to return. “One minute I was fine and then just… I don’t know.”

“You totally froze up.” She looked over her shoulder again before taking a seat next to him. “Whatever it was, it definitely wasn’t normal. I’ve never seen anything like it.” 

“I thought we’ve established nothing about me is normal these days.”

“You know what I mean, you idiot,” Sam said, giving him her trademark Manson Eye Roll. “Like did you see the ectoplasm? It just doesn’t do that on its own.”

Danny hummed and finished off the rest of the bottle. Darn. If only half of it hadn’t decided to levitate itself out of the bottle and onto the gym mat. “I mean, it kind of does that in the Zone. Float around and stuff?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Were you the one doing it?”

“Wha- no, that wasn’t me. At least, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t me.” He paused. “I was kind of distracted by whatever was going on in here,” he said, gesturing towards his sternum. His core. 

Boy, Sam could really look like Mom, or even Jazz when she scrutinized him like this. “Something happened with your core?”

He sighed and rested his head in his hands. Back on the field, Tucker struggled with his crunches. Poor Tuck, having to deal with Tetslaff’s wrath all on his own. “I don’t know how to describe it. It was like… like someone just grabbed it or something. I don’t know. And then I just - I could’ve sworn I heard something. And saw something.”

“What, like another ghost?”

He shook his head. “No, this was different. But I don’t know if I can explain it that well…” A couple of ghost language words came to mind that would’ve been helpful to describe it, but none of them translated well to English. 

The memory of the faint light burned clearly in his mind. Too far to reach, and flickering violently, like a birthday candle being blown out, but it had definitely been there. At least, he thought. He was still somewhat doubting that the memory of the whole experience was actually real. The shouting he thought he’d heard included.

But it hadn’t really been shouting…

Had it?

Sam was still watching him critically. Really, he wished she would give him a second to just breathe without having her breathing down his back. It didn’t help that Tucker would be demanding answers in the locker room. 

So he couldn’t give a perfect description of it. Whatever it was. Big deal. He wasn’t about to keel over dead because of it. 

“I don’t like this,” she said. “What if someone’s doing this to you? Trying to take you out indirectly so they can swoop in and take over the world or whatever?”

It was a possibility, to be fair, but it was a small one at best. “I don’t think so. Ghosts are kind of sensitive about cores. Like it’s just kind of one of those things you just don’t mess around with. It’d be like… I dunno, getting into someone’s brain and screwing around with how it works, or something.”

“You realize Spectra literally fed off your core that one time? And fed off of the souls of the entire student body?”

“Yeah, well, Spectra’s kind of the exception, not the rule. Most ghosts aren’t like that.”

She huffed and crossed her arms. “Whatever. I still don’t like it.” 

The feeling of her eyes on him was making his skin crawl at this point. There was a good reason he tried to stay out of the spotlight as much as possible. “So what do you think we should do about it?”

Sam considered this for a moment. “We should probably get you checked out by your doctor or something. What was her name? Fluffy… something?”

“You mean Flurryfoot? I don’t know, it doesn’t feel important enough to make a long trip all the way to the Far Frozen, you know?”

“It’s your core , Danny. Do people just brush it off when they have a heart attack or whatever?”

Danny slid back on the bleachers until his butt fell onto the row of concrete behind him and buried his head into his knees. “I’m pretty sure this wasn’t the ghost equivalent of a heart attack,” he mumbled into his gym shorts. 

He was grateful for Sam’s concern of course, and he knew he was lucky to have friends like her and Tucker, but really, could she not make such a big deal out of it?

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Pandora cursed in ancient Greek. “I should’ve known,” she muttered. Her flaming helmet flared, making Fleetfloe wince. Sure, she had possibly the strongest ice core next to Frostbite, but being so close to so much fire was still uncomfortable.

Pandora tossed the letter Fleetfloe had given her onto the throne and stormed out of the room. Fleetfloe sprinted after her. 

“I told them,” Pandora was grumbling. “They didn’t listen. I knew something like this would happen, and they didn’t listen!”

“My lady,” Fleetfloe said hesitantly, “I must return to the Chief with a response as quickly as possible. Those were my instructions.”

Pandora stopped in the middle of the hallway and turned to look down at the messenger yeti, as if just remembering she was there. The yetis of the Far Frozen towered at seven or eight feet on average, but Pandora stood even taller at a dazzling ten feet. Just the sight made Fleetfloe feel even smaller and more susceptible to the rage Pandora was notorious for.

“Yes, yes,” Pandora said. “My apologies. I am… No. It’s okay. I’ll send you with a return message as soon as I can make the proper preparations.”

“Preparations, my lady?”

 Pandora pushed open a great set of doors into a room that was strangely empty. Even stranger were the seven doors spread across the walls, each completely unique from the next. One stood tall and elegant, made of a wood so dark it appeared black. Another more so resembled a human sewer entrance, round and metal, though the material rippled like a curtain in an unseen breeze.

For a moment, Pandora simply stood in the center of the room before saying, “I need to consult with Frostbite about this. In person. Frostbite… and the others.”

Fleetfloe gasped. “You don’t mean…?”

“Yes.” Pandora closed her eyes and sighed. “The Ancient Council must convene at once.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

They didn’t get to go to the Far Frozen right after school. 

For a moment, Danny wondered if Clockwork was pranking him. The scene was familiar - eerily familiar. He had to do a double take just to make sure he wasn’t experiencing some major deja vu. Especially since the last time he’d walked in on a situation like this, he’d ended up finding out that Pariah Dark had been unleashed.

“Danny!” Dad shouted, bouncing out of his seat. “Look who decided to join us today!”

A totally spontaneous visit, I’m sure , he snarked to himself, trying to ignore how his stomach dropped to his feet. “Hi, Uncle Vlad,” he said through a pained smile.

If Vlad was here, then that pretty much confirmed whatever had happened earlier that morning had been important. Crap. 

“Ah, Daniel! It’s been a while since I’ve seen you,” Vlad said, his voice dripping with faux warmth. Danny resisted the urge to bite back that no , it had not been a while, seeing as how he’d had to fight Mr. Mayor himself off from overshadowing one of the city administrators just last week. But, you know. Semantics.

Sam, however, was not as afraid of unleashing her vitriol. “What are you doing here?” she snapped. 

Vlad stood and brushed imaginary dust off of his suit. “Why such hostility? Am I not allowed to drop by and catch up with my dearest friend?”

“Catch up on evil ,” Tucker whispered under his breath. The following oomph told Danny that Sam’s elbow had decided to find a nice spot to jab Tucker in the ribs. Apparently, she didn’t approve of the dig. Either that, or she was trying to be at least a little conscientious about Dad’s presence. But it wasn’t like Tucker didn’t know how to keep things subtle.

Focus, Fenton . Fruitloop first. Friends could handle themselves and Dad. Besides, he already knew how to handle the old man. 

“I guess that makes sense,” he said, moving further into the living room and dumping his backpack unceremoniously on the floor. “There hasn’t been much time for you two to talk. I mean, Dad has been super busy and all. He’s been working on, what, at least three new inventions, and Dad, didn’t you just sign off on another contract with the city?”

Yeah. He could totally play the sneaky banter game.

Vlad’s smile turned so tight it turned his lips white. “Yes, well, if young Phantom wouldn’t be so careless during his fights, perhaps that contract wouldn’t be necessary, hm?”

Dad, oblivious to the scowl that erupted on Danny’s face, just grinned broadly and slung an arm around Vlad’s shoulders. “See? Now this is local leadership at its finest! Looking out for the town and stopping troublemakers in their tracks!”

“You know what they say,” Sam said, “never trust a politician.”

“My, such divisive words.” Vlad wriggled his way out from under Dad’s arm. “I’m sure one day you children will understand the importance of the measures I must take to keep our fair city safe. The youth of today just don’t care for civic duty like they should!”

The rage of an impassioned Sam flooded Danny and left him with a sour tang in his mouth. Some negative emotions were bearable, in terms of consumability at least, but Sam Manson’s ire? Not so much.

Vlad must have been able to taste it too, because his oily smile only widened.

Sam did not notice either of these reactions. She stomped towards Vlad with a finger jabbed towards his face. “Listen here, you little -”

“ Okay , Sam!” Tucker cut her off by grabbing onto her arm. Danny perfectly mirrored the move. “Didn’t you have something you wanted to do? Something important ?” In sync, the two boys started to guide her out of the living room and towards the lab. 

“Please, don’t go on my account. I was just about to leave anyway. Such important mayoral duties I must attend to! I must sign off on those plans to develop that drab little community garden that’s been such an eyesore.”

This time, the wave of rage nearly toppled Danny over. He gritted his teeth and, with Tucker, dragged Sam into the kitchen, which turned out to be a task much easier said than done when the subject of the dragging was determined to protest the destruction of the community garden. Very loudly .

“I swear, if you make us go deaf before we’re 30, I will never forgive you, woman,” Tucker said as they began to descend the staircase into the lab.

If it had been anyone else who’d made the comment, Sam would’ve probably gone ballistic, but Tucker and Danny both had long since earned the pass to sling such digs at her. Danny figured she’d probably return the favor before long.

As it was, her anger remained directed towards Vlad. “He can’t do that! Do you know how hard we worked to get all the permits and stuff to build that garden? It took months to get the city council to approve the plans! And doesn’t he realize that we’re donating the vegetables to the school so we can actually have healthy school lunches, which, oh look! Another thing the mayor should be looking into fixing instead of schmoozing up to big donors and trying to make another quick buck off -”

“He was bluffing!” Danny interrupted. Ancients, his ears needed a break. He would always love Sam to death of course - or at least, whatever came next for a dead-but-not-quite-dead freak like him - but more often than not, she could let her tirades get loud, and it was killer on his sensitive ears.

Huh. The death puns were strong today.

They reached the bottom of the staircase, and Sam immediately whirled on him with her hands on her hips. “Oh really? And since when did you get the power to read minds?”

“I don’t need the power to read minds, he’s done the same exact thing to me too, you know!” His fingers curled into his palms. “That’s - it’s just what he does, alright? He says a bunch of crap that gets you all riled up so you end up making a mistake.”

“That’s quite clever, little badger.” Danny turned just in time to see Vlad emerge from the stairwell. “And it only took you two years to figure out!”

Danny opened his mouth to order Vlad out of his basement, but Sam beat him to the punch. “I swear, if you don’t march up those stairs and rescind whatever stupid development project you’ve got planned for the community garden, I’ll… I’ll -”

“Oh, relax. For once, Daniel was right about calling a bluff. Those plans were rejected by the city council weeks ago. Besides, I have far more important matters to worry about.” He pushed past her easily and approached Danny. “We need to talk.”

“Sorry. Not interested,” Danny said, his voice clipped. “Just get out of my house, Vlad. I’m too tired to put up with your crap today.”

“Hm. I don’t think I will.” When Danny turned to storm away, Vlad caught his shoulder and forced him back around. “Now, can I implore you to act your age for at least five minutes? The sooner you cooperate, the sooner I can get out of your hair.”

Ugh. Why did his enemies have to make good points sometimes? “Fine. You can have five minutes, so you better make it quick.”

“I’ll cut to the chase,” Vlad said dryly. He leaned down just a couple inches more, and Danny’s already tightly curled fingers dug even deeper into his hand. “Tell me what your parents have been working on recently.”

Well. It certainly hadn’t been the question he’d been expecting. “... Why? So you can steal it or something?” 

“Daniel, I swear -”

“Okay, okay. Sorry . You want the truth? ‘Cause I honestly don’t know. I’ve been… busy lately.”

Vlad raised an eyebrow. “Busy doing what? Attacks have been down recently.”

“He’s got a life too, you know!” Tucker protested from the side. “You’re not the only one with things to do.”

“And it’s not like I would tell you, anyway.” He wasn’t exactly keen on telling him about the visits to Long Now, for one thing. Or the Far Frozen. Although, it would be kind of funny to see his reaction to that, given the cheesehead’s last encounter with the yetis.

Vlad looked to the ceiling and inhaled. “ Fine . Then tell me about what happened to you this morning.”

Ah, there it was. The question he’d been waiting for. Might as well make him work for the answer. How could he deny his duty as a sixteen year old to annoy crummy adults as much as possible? “How do you know anything special happened to me this morning?”

“Quite frankly? Because the same thing happened to me, and I’d like to know exactly what it was,” Vlad said, matter-of-fact. “Oh, don’t look so surprised. I wouldn’t bother to ask if I didn’t already suspect you’d been through it too.”

“It’s not that.” Danny fought the urge to give the man a cheeky grin. “I’m just surprised the oh-so-powerful Vlad Plasmius would ever admit to a moment of weakness.”

Red tinged the edges of Vlad’s eyes. “This is serious , boy!” he growled. “There are very few things that can affect a core so strongly and from such a distance, and I’m sure you can figure out for yourself that none of them are good. There could be a dire threat right under our noses, and I for one would much rather get the jump on it than the other way around. I can imagine you’d like to do the same.”

Faint memories of the disquieting sensation of his core put out of rhythm bubbled in his chest. Even now, hours later, he couldn’t tell if the dull unease that had settled in the center of his chest was a true remnant of earlier events or simply the results of an overreaction. And if Vlad had felt it too… “What could’ve done it?” he asked quietly. No more games.

Vlad sighed, and the fire in his eyes died away. “Like I said, there are very few natural forces that could have such an effect on a core. After all, it’s impossible for a ghost to have the power to interfere with another ghost’s core from a distance.”

“Wait, really?” He… admittedly hadn’t known that. 

“There’s a reason why ghosts with parasitic natures must make direct contact with their victim. Or why spectral healers always interact directly with a patient’s core. They must physically handle it in order to have any real effect.”

Huh. Well, that would explain some of the more… invasive portions of checkups with Frostbite and Flurryfoot. “They can still use technology and stuff, though, right?”

He was vaguely aware of Sam and Tucker, still standing off to the side, watching with barely restrained interest. If there was one thing he could never quite explain to them well enough, one thing they just could never understand, it had to be ghost cores and all the complexities that accompanied them. They probably had just as many questions as he did, if not more.

“Yes,” Vlad answered, “although such technology would have to be extremely complex. And information on other natural tools and forces and spells to interact with cores has been lost to history, or has been classified as forbidden knowledge by the Ancient Council.”

“So, then you think it wasn’t a ghost?”

Vlad hummed and took a few steps closer to the closed portal. His eyes narrowed as he contemplated the hazard-striped doors. “I’m not completely discounting the possibility. Not all ghosts are beholden to the superstitions associated with interfering with a core. It wouldn’t be impossible for someone to get a hold of an artifact, or perhaps a healer’s instrument. Difficult, yes, but not impossible. But that’s why I wanted to ask about Jack and Maddie’s latest projects. It’s also possible that they created something that could’ve had the same effect, whether they intended to or not.”

Danny hesitated for a moment. “I mean, Dad’s had a few new projects, but I’m pretty sure they’re all ecto-guns of some sort. At least, I think.”

“Well, I wouldn’t put it past Jack to bumble his way into something so destructive.” He eyed Danny critically. “You’re sure they haven’t been working on anything else?”

Ignore the cheap shot, Fenton . Danny nodded. He hesitated again, then asked, “I - you don’t think… the Guys in White could’ve done it, do you?”

Vlad’s response wasn’t immediate. That was the farthest thing from reassuring. “My sources within the organization lately have been… inconsistent, at best. I’m still working on getting more reliable means of collecting information on the inside.”

“You mean doing more spying?” Sam accused.

He shot her a wry smile. “Would you rather have no information on them at all?”

For a moment, she was uncharacteristically speechless. “Well, I - I don’t… it’s not like Tucker hasn’t been able to get into their system before…”

“And I suppose it’s somehow morally correct for you to spy on them?”

Sam’s face flushed red, and she slowly closed her mouth.

Vlad regarded her with a smug look. “I believe my point has been made. Anyway,” he turned back to Danny, “my best estimates indicate that the GIW are not capable of creating such a technology at this time. But… I would be foolish to completely count them out of the picture.”

Danny blew out a breath. Right. This was information he could deal with. He’d handled the GIW before. It wasn’t like the prospect of the GIW having technology that could affect cores from a distance was loads more terrifying than the prospect of a ghost having that power.

No, nothing like that at all.

“So wait, if neither of you knows what happened, what are we supposed to do?” Tucker asked. “Sit around and wait till whoever it was decides to try and do it again?”

“You are more than welcome to do that, if that’s your attitude.” Vlad didn’t take his eyes off the portal he’d returned to studying. “ I plan on investigating the matter further. I for one am not too keen on allowing someone to galavant around prying into my core. If you’re alright with that, I suppose that’s your prerogative.”

“Look, if you’re just gonna antagonize my friends, then the only thing you’ll be investigating is my fist in your face,” Danny snapped. The day’s events had long since worn his patience down, and now the potential threat of the Guys in White having something that could mess with him so badly only frayed his nerves further. Maybe he’d been able to tolerate a bit more of the banter earlier, but not now.

Vlad merely glanced at Danny, unfazed. “I suppose you wouldn’t be interested in collaborating our efforts then, hmm?”

“When have I ever been interested in working with you?”

It was then that Danny’s core pulled .

A silent gasp tore at his throat as he fell to his knees and the same feeling that had overwhelmed him earlier that morning once again flooded his body. Somewhere in the corner of his mind, he was vaguely aware of Sam and Tucker rushing over to him and Vlad doubling over. If any of them were saying anything, he couldn’t hear over the rushing roar of white noise that filled his ears. 

The only thing he could truly focus on was the agonizingly piercing sensation of his core being ripped away from him. Whether it was actually being torn out of his chest, he couldn’t tell, but he couldn’t help but feel the panic well up inside him that someone had actually taken hold of it and was trying to claw it out, determined to do so at any cost. It was too much. Too much .

I need… I need…

A scream echoed in his mind. This time, it was undeniable.

Except it wasn’t a scream of fear, or a scream of pain, like he would’ve anticipated. This was a wail of anguish, the kind that came from a refugee seeing their home go up in flames and ash. Or from parents who’d just found out their child had died.

Was it his own?

And just as quickly as it had come on, the feeling faded. The hold around his core eased, and his senses slowly returned. Ragged breaths blew his sweat soaked bangs out of his eyes. Nausea swirled ominously in his stomach. Please don’t throw up again , he begged himself, but the irregular rhythm his core had settled into and the feverish warmth washing over him didn’t help those prospects.

He opened his eyes (when had he closed them?) to find himself face down on the linoleum of the lab floor. Sam and Tucker each had a hand on him; their worry filled the air with a pungent taste. With a weak groan, he turned his head so his cheek rested against the floor, and he was surprised to see Vlad’s shoes fill his vision. The older hybrid also hovered over him, apparently having recovered from his own episode faster than Danny.

One of the hands on his shoulders shook him vigorously. “Danny, please ,” Sam was pleading. Her voice was thick with concern.

“Easy,” Vlad said. He still sounded like he was trying to catch his breath. “Give him space.”

If Danny could’ve moved his arm more than a few inches, he would’ve swatted it at Vlad. The last thing he needed right now was the fruitloop’s phony concern. “Lee m’lone,” he slurred. Maybe it was slightly childish, but he couldn’t be bothered to care.

Especially with that scream still echoing in his ears.

“Why was… whatever that was way worse for him and not you?” Tucker asked, a frantic edge creeping into his voice. 

Vlad didn’t answer right away. Instead, he stood up and walked out of Danny’s range of sight. A second later, he heard Vlad digging around in one of his parent’s storage fridges. “Where does he keep the supplements he takes?”

There was a slight hesitation from his friends. Danny didn’t need to see to know the two of them had some sort of silent exchange (the surge of the sweeter flavor of their loyalty to him told him as much).

“Most of it is in his room,” Sam finally admitted after whatever unspoken conversation they had. 

A heavy sigh came from Vlad’s direction. “ Where in his room?” he asked. “I’ll go get it.”

“Yeah, fat chance,” Tucker scoffed, standing up. “Like we’d let you have free reign in his room. I’ll go get it. You can just stay right there, where Sam can keep an eye on you.” And Danny , came the implied addition.

As the thud of his boots disappeared up the steps, Sam helped Danny into a sitting position. “You’re warm again,” she murmured as she propped his back up against her shoulder.

“Tell m’somethin’ I don’ know.” Well, at least he hadn’t sounded like a wasted frat boy in front of his whole gym class. Brady Ibarra definitely wouldn’t have let him live that down.

Ugh. An ice bath sounded so good right then. Like the one Frostbite had let him take in their bathhouse that one time, with the silky cold water and the swirls of ectoplasm and the yummy smelling bubbles…

Sam fixed Vlad with a hard glare. “So? You gonna answer the question or what? Because I’m starting to think it’s awfully convenient that somehow Danny’s a heck of a lot worse off than you.”

Vlad pinched the bridge of his nose, and Danny got the sense that he’d been thrown off by the episode more than he cared to let on. “Honestly, girl, what would I have to gain by subjecting myself to this? I could achieve the same ends with far more direct measures,” he bit out.

That much was probably true. Vlad could be very underhanded, but in Danny’s experience, those underhanded techniques got used way more often when he played his mind games. When he was out for blood (or ectoplasm), he tended to get straight to the point.

Not to mention Vlad was definitely not the kind of man to purposefully put himself into this vulnerable of a position.

Vulnerable . Why couldn’t he have thought of that word earlier? 

“But do y’know why?” Danny asked quietly. Any accusation he might’ve mustered before had evaporated as soon as his core had been pulled on again. Vlad might be a dirty, morally gray jerk of a man, but he really couldn’t imagine his archenemy going to such unthinkable lengths just to get at him. Sure, torturing, undermining democracy, and cloning weren’t off the table, but messing with cores was too far.

He just wanted to know what was happening at this point.

Vlad’s eyes bore into his. A reproachful twinkle reflected off of the man’s pupils, but something else danced behind them. Could that be… concern? Care?

“I’m afraid not,” he finally admitted, matching Danny’s volume. “Not without knowing the source of the disturbance.”

“That’s reassuring,” Sam said under her breath. 

A single red spark flickered at Vlad’s fingertip. “Believe it or not, I am not all-knowing. For all we know, the explanation could be as simple as Daniel having a younger core than I. His has not had the same amount of time to develop as mine has had.”

Tucker came thundering down the steps, a water bottle plastered with the NASA logo in hand. “I couldn’t find any of the vials,” he said in between gasps for breath. “I think this should have enough in it.”

Danny took the bottle with a grateful smile and began guzzling it down. Like before, the effects of the ectoplasm were practically instant. With a new surge of energy, he adjusted himself so he wasn’t leaning against Sam any more. That was better.

“Not so fast, little badger,” Vlad said, plucking the bottle out of Danny’s grasp, much to the disappointment of the latter. “These are the supplements you normally take, yes?”

“Yeah, and? Buy your own if you want some that bad.” Ah, there was the return of that Fenton fire.

Vlad merely rolled his eyes in response. He took an empty vial off one of the lab tables and rinsed it out before pouring a little bit of the bottle’s contents in it. “Trust me, my boy, you’ll thank me later. There is no reason you should need to drink a whole bottle in one sitting.” He handed the bottle back to Danny.

“I don’t drink it all in one go,” he grumbled, but he accepted it and took another sip.

“I want to analyze the makeup of this concentration,” Vlad continued, as if Danny hadn’t said anything. “For one, I can help you find a stronger blend to help you receive the same effect in a much smaller dose. No more need to chug ectoplasm like some uncultured animal.”

Danny nearly choked on his sip of ectoplasm, and Sam snapped, “Better an ‘uncultured animal’ than a creep who picks fights with a teenager.”

Danny rested a hand on Sam’s shin and, despite his core’s discomfort, tried to channel some of his cooler energy to her to counter Vlad’s heated aura beginning to encroach on them. It was a trick he’d picked up from Clockwork after having it used against him more than once: redirecting his intake of emotional energy into an output to help influence the environment around him. He tried to avoid using it on his friends and family too often (getting used to the idea of eating their emotions was bad enough, let alone intentionally influencing them), but he was definitely not in the mood to get into any sort of fight.

Questionable or not, it seemed to work. Sam’s muscles released their tension under his hand, and he vaguely felt Vlad’s aura retreat a touch. Which was a relief. He didn’t know if his core could handle much more at the moment.

“As I was saying,” the older hybrid said tightly, apparently trying to keep his own anger under control, “even if it’s heavily diluted, it’s clear that this specific concentration does seem to have a strong positive effect on you, in the wake of the interference with your core. If I can reverse engineer this formula and test it against samples of your energy, I might be able to narrow down a possible explanation as to what is causing this interference, or at least how to better counteract it.”

“Why would you do that? Why not just study your own stuff?” Tucker asked.

“Daniel and I are two different people,” Vlad replied easily. “Much like each human has their own, unique genetic makeup, the core makeup of each ghost is unique to that ghost. I could test my own energy to narrow down the possibilities, and I fully intend to do so, but that wouldn’t do much in terms of helping Daniel.”

“Wait, what?” Danny blinked in surprise. “You actually want to help me?”

Danny’s interjection caught Vlad off guard. He looked up from the glowing vial with wide eyes. An instant later, they glazed over with his usual air of confidence, but the initial reaction was unmistakable.

“Why so shocked?” he said with a bonafide chuckle. A chuckle . If that didn’t prove he’d been thrown off, even if just for a moment, then nothing would. “You do realize you are far more valuable to me safe and healthy than you are harmed, do you? What good would any of my plans be if something happened to you?”

Danny narrowed his eyes the tiniest bit. The comeback had been too… normal. Something wasn’t right about it. Still, out of some far-fetched desperation to keep this from becoming weirder than it already had, he scoffed and said, “That’s rich coming from the guy who’s beat me up more than practically anyone else in the Realms.”

If Vlad didn’t want to share with the class, then whatever. He didn’t have the patience to squeeze the truth out of him.

“It’s all been for your own good, dear boy,” Vlad said, putting a stopper in the vial. “One day, you’ll understand.”

“ So many creep alarms going off right now,” Sam said under her breath. Danny chose to ignore the comment. Fruitloops were gonna fruitloop.

With a flourish of black light, Masters became Plasmius. “I expect to hear of any developments you may encounter,” he said, looking at each of the teens in turn. Of course, his eyes lingered on Danny the longest. Maybe Sam had a point about the creep thing.

“Bold of you to assume we’ll just tell you things.” Danny folded his arms across his chest. Did he look as confident as he hoped? Probably not, but at least he wasn’t slurring his speech anymore. Seeing Plasmius always managed to stir the decidedly ghostlier part of him that pushed him to start posturing, trying to make himself seem like more of a threat than he truly was. He couldn’t help it.

He didn’t like it.

Vlad raised an eyebrow. “Believe me, Daniel, this is not a situation in which you want to shun my services. I highly suggest reconsidering.”

Reconsidering? Had he even made a decision? 

Why was Vlad even being so intense about this anyway?

Well, he kind of had an idea. Vlad wanted to see to it that this hole in his defenses was dealt with quickly. That had to be it, right? When had Vlad ever been one to just leave a potential weakness sitting out there?

Danny met Tucker’s eyes. The latter looked unsure about the entire situation, but gave Danny a tentative shrug. Whatever you think is best, man , Danny could practically hear him say.

He turned to look at Sam next. She had a much stronger eye of suspicion than Tucker, and it was clear from the look on her face that she didn’t want anything to do with Vlad. Part of Danny wanted her to argue with him, try to convince him that this was a horrible idea.

Instead, the hardness in her jaw softened just the slightest, and she closed her eyes. For you , she seemed to say. I’m only willing to do this to help you .

With a resolved sigh, Danny returned his gaze to Plasmius’. “If we work together on this, and you stab us in the back,” he threatened, “I’ll drag you back to the Observants’ Tribunal myself. They still have it out for you for releasing Vortex, you know.”

“Then I think you’ll find yourself pleasantly surprised.” Vlad smiled, revealing his sharp fangs. “Oh, and Daniel? You say that thinking you’d be able to keep me down long enough to bring me there.” With a cackle and a sweep of his cape, he disappeared out of the lab.

Danny’s shoulders dropped as soon as he felt the presence of Vlad’s core fade away. “Stupid, cocky fruitloop,” he muttered, staggering to his feet. Sam grabbed his elbow to steady him.

“Was anything about that weird for anyone else?” Tucker asked. “Like Vlad ? Wanting to work with us ?”

“You know he’s doing it just to get at Danny!” Sam exploded. She must’ve really been working to hold her tongue while Vlad had still been there. “He probably thinks he’ll be able to convince you that you’re better off with him or something. I’m still not convinced that he’s not just faking it and doing something to Danny behind all our backs!”

Danny bit his lip. Something had been off about Vlad, and like he’d already deduced, he knew why , especially since his own reasoning was similar, but could Sam and Tucker understand? Could they understand how terrifying it felt to have the looming threat of this unseen force, just waiting, primed and ready to seize his core again and try and rip it from him? Would they get that every ghostly instinct of his was screaming at him to run and hide somewhere in the Zone where no one would be able to touch his core, where he could protect this side of himself from being so brutally violated?

No. They were only human. They couldn’t understand.

Probably the thing that sucked the most about the only other person like you (other than your clone) being your worst enemy.

“Even if he tries,” he chose to say, “it won’t work. You know that.”

“Yeah… I know…” Sam sighed, and her posture drooped. It suddenly struck Danny how emotionally exhausting this all had to be for her, too. For both her and Tucker. This was the second time in 12 hours that they’d just seen him go through some sort of terrifying episode. He had no clue what happened outside of his own body during those episodes. The thought that he could be at fault for scaring them so badly made him feel sick all over again.

Without thinking, he grabbed a hand from each of them. When they looked at him in surprise, he offered them as warm of a smile as he could muster. “Hey. I promise, alright? It’ll be okay. We’re not gonna let some old man get the best of us.”

Tucker reacted much faster than Sam. He grinned and squeezed Danny’s hand. “True that. Besides, if he decides to turn heel, then I’ve still got some payback I’ve been waiting to give for those anti-tech laws he tried to pass when he first got elected. He’ll find out security at City Hall isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

Sam eventually smiled as well, though the concern was far more evident in her face. “That’s assuming there’s anything left after I get done with him,” she said with a weak laugh. She met Danny’s eyes and squeezed his hand too.

A metallic knock echoed through the lab.

The three friends turned their heads all in different directions. “What the heck?” Danny craned his neck to look up the stairwell. “I thought that door up there was wood.”

“But the tables are metal,” Sam said. She swiped a random ecto-rifle from the table closest to her. “So are the fridge doors.”

“Yeah, and so’s that,” Tucker said. His voice had turned uneasy, and when Danny turned to look, he had a finger pointed at the closed portal doors.

A familiar tingle worked its way up from his core and into his throat. “Grab a weapon,” Danny ordered, to which Tucker happily obliged. He himself called forth a healthy buildup of green energy.

He tried to ignore the uncomfortable flutter that came from his core as a result.

He pressed a cautious thumb into the Fenton Genetic Lock, and the hydraulics in the portal doors began to hiss as the mechanisms opened. Otherworldly green light spilled into the lab as the doors inched apart. Danny became hyper-aware of Sam’s finger tensing against the trigger of her rifle, of Tucker’s shallow breathing, of the bluish mist seeping through his lips. Right there . It was…

A woman’s head poked through the portal.

“Oh!” she exclaimed when she saw the three teens with their attacks primed. “Am I interrupting something?”

Danny’s energy fizzled out around his hand. “Uh…”

The ghost’s burgundy colored eyes landed on him, and her face split into a wide smile. “Ah, perfect!” She stepped the rest of the way through the portal and made a beeline for Danny, dropping to her knees at his feet. 

“What is even happening right now,” Sam said.

“O, Danny Fenton-Phantom of the Mortal Realm, Pariah’s Bane, brave warrior and favored ally of Her Ladyship, Pandora of Asphodel,” the woman recited, “an audience has been requested of you by my Lady Pandora and Chief Frostbite of the Far Frozen. They require your presence at once!”

The three friends stared in stunned silence at her bowed form.

“Do you think this counts as a development?” Tucker asked.

#danny phantom #danny phantom fanfic #danny phantom ghost king #ghost king au #hannah writes #supernova #sam manson #tucker foley #vlad masters #it'll pick up soon i promise lol

[talzane]

Ever had a family member suddenly decide that they're vegan/vegetarian/whatever, and then another family member is overcome with the sudden urge to tell everybody at every restaurant y'all go to because, "well what if they need to know?" It's all supportive but also...judgmental or creepy. I honestly think it is a way to feel in control of the situation.

That seems like Jack and Maddie Fenton about Danny being a ghost.

Danny told his parents he was a ghost, and after far too many questions, a lab analysis--whether he agreed to it or not--and several weeks of grieving, during which Danny was grounded for, "going into the lab when we told you not to," his parents had been so supportive!

"Of course Principal Ishiyama needs to know, sweetie, somebody has to excuse all your tardies when you're fighting ghosts!"

"Mr. Lancer and Falluca, too, Mads. They've been worried about our Danny!"

"I'll have you know my son is the greatest ghost hunter in the whole wide world! Right, Danny-boy?"

"Nobody understands ghosts like us, *we* know about hybrids, Vladdie, and that's why you should officially hire us as Amity Park's ghost hunting task force!"

"Don't talk about D-E-A-T-H around him, he's D-E-A-D, remember, Jack? We have to be sensitive, that's what Jazz said."

"Back away from my son, you ectoplasmic manifestation of post-human consciousness! Not you, Sweetie!"

"Don't you touch one hair on my half dead son's head, Wisconsin Ghost!"

"Danny, I'm glad to see you alive again! You're spending too much time as a ghost, we hardly ever see you!"

"Danny, maybe you should spend more time as a human with your friends, you know your dad and I can take care of those pesky ghosts."

"Danny, you should really only be human in the lab. We've talked about this! It could be dangerous."

"Young man, when we said you were grounded, we meant no floating above the couch, either! Don't you turn your ears intangible to avoid listening to me either!"

"Look at this, Danny! We just finished installing a ghost monitoring system in the house so Maddie and I can know whenever you're home! Isn't it great?"

"Danny, you need to stop eating so much junk food! How are you going to stay in fighting shape if this is all you eat?"

"I know you're a ghost, Danny, but you need to stop eating all of our ectoplasm samples. Those are for research, why don't you eat *your* ectoplasm?"

"Make sure you don't put blood blossoms in his food, he can't eat those!" (Thanks for telling everyone.)

"How dare you prank my poor, baby boy with a shock pen! He was electrocuted!"

"We're not interested in hypnotherapy, Danny was mind controlled once and we don't want to bring that back up."

*Sigh*, "We'll take the stairs, I guess, Danny has a fear of cramped, metal spaces. One accident with the portal and now he's afraid of everything."

"You don't need Frostbite, sweetie, we can treat you downstairs, in the lab! You are a ghost after all, and they are our specialty!"

Of course they're being supportive, everything they've said has been, "positive," and, "encouraging," towards Danny; no way in the Zone is it at all making him feel discriminated against.

#danny phantom #danny fenton #jack and maddie #dp au

[decibly]

"Is that the best you got, Technus?" Danny taunted as he dodged a pile of wires that had launched themselves at him, ripping themselves out of old pieces of junk.

" Of course not, ghost boy!" The other ghost yelled, throwing a random chunk of metal at Danny, who instinctively went intangible and allowed it to phase through him easily.

“You sure? I think you’re getting worse, actually!”

Technus let out a snarl, picked up a rusty old washing machine that began sparking with neon green lightning, and threw it full-force at Danny. He put up a quick shield, throwing out his right arm as his left reached for the thermos in a now instinctual anticipation of an opening, Just as the washing machine-turned-deadly projectile impacted his shield, it forced him backwards into yet another pile of trash in the junkyard.

“Ow! Shit, that hurts!” Danny yelped as the pile of rusty scraps that used to be a washing machine clunked its way down to the ground. His left arm had gotten crushed behind him, so he grabbed the thermos with his right arm and quickly captured Technus. He went into the thermos easily, and then in an act of habit so ingrained Danny had found himself doing it after capturing an ectopus that hadn’t tried even to fight back, checked himself over for injuries.

It actually seemed like he had gotten away relatively unharmed this time… apart from his arm. It wasn’t bleeding, but it was twisted in a way that Danny knew would hurt like hell once the adrenaline wore off. Danny wasn’t entirely certain, but he was pretty sure that it was broken. That was… bad, to say the least. How was he going to explain this away to his parents?

“Mum, Dad? I think I broke my arm!” Danny yelled out from the top of the stairs that headed down to lab, going straight for the point. He didn’t at all feel like talking around it for even a tiny bit, not with how much his arm hurt every time it so much as got blown on by a breeze.

“WHAT?” his dad yelled back.

“I THINK I BROKE MY ARM!” Danny yelled back even louder.

“WE’LL BE UP IN JUST A MOMENT, SWEETIE!” his mum yelled back.

It was this moment when Danny realised that not spending the (incredily excruciating and painful) walk back was probably one of the more idiotic things that he had done in the last 30 hours, along with not having slept. Maybe if he just told them a modified version of the truth? That would probably be easier than just coming up with a whole new lie.

Just then, both of Danny’s parents reached the top of the stairs, with neon green ectoplasm splattered over both of their hazmat suits. 

“So, Danno, you’re– oh dear! Maddie, it’s time for emergency fudge!” Jack raced over to the kitchen, stumbling a bit in his hurry.

Meanwhile, Maddie just frowned. “Darling, I think you might be right about that arm being broken. We’re going to need to take you to the hospital to get that looked at and x-rayed. How did it happen?”

Danny felt his face heat up a bit. “I, um, went for a walk? And there was a ghost fight, uh, not one that was too big but still pretty destructive, y’know? I kinda, you know, get a little bit caught up in it and I got hit with, um, well I’m not really sure, but it was made of metal, and- well- oh hey, Dad’s back!” Danny immediately reached for a piece of fudge on the truly massie pile on the plate that Jack had brought back from the kitchen and shoved it into his mouth, cutting off the conversation.

Several hours later, Maddie and Danny were headed back home to Jack and Jazz and Danny had a dark blue cast on his left arm that he was going to draw constellations on. Not for the first time, he was glad that it wasn’t his right arm that had been broken.

“Are you feeling okay, Danny?” Maddie asked.

He hummed a bit, then spoke. “It doesn’t hurt too much. I’ll be fine.”

Neither of them said anything more, giving Maddie plenty of time to think in the silence about why her son lied to her so much that she couldn’t even tell the difference between true or false anymore.

A few days after Danny broke his arm, Maddie and Jack got an alert for a ghost attack at Casper High. Ghost activity had been on an odd low for a few days now, so there was nothing to distract them from getting into the GAV aside from their inventing, which they probably needed a distraction from at this point. Wordlessly, aside from a “Wooo!” from Jack, the two of them grabbed a few new weapons that needed more field testing and raced up the stairs, out the door and into the GAV to head towards the high school.

Once they got there, it was obvious where the ghosts were. Phantom’s voice could easily he heard bantering with the inane box-themed ghost over by the football pitch from where Jack had haphazardly parked the GAV half on the footpath outside the school.  Maddie hoisted a large bazooka up onto her back and sprinted over to the location of the fight, trusting that Jack would be close enough behind her. As she rounded a corner, Phantom came crashing down a few meters in front of her, landing on his back before pushing himself back up.

Well, he tried. Instead, his left arm gave out from beneath him and he hissed. Maddie’s eyes darted over to see what could’ve been the reason, and she saw– she saw–

Danny’s cast.

Phantom was wearing Danny’s cast, complete with the constellations and the slightly wonky Big Dipper.

Danny– Danny Phantom– Danny Fenton–

Maddie sank to her knees.

#dannymay #dannymay2023 #danny phantom #danny fenton #maddie fenton #bones #casts #identity reveal #i swear jack was meant to have a bigger role #and jazz was going to show up #but maddie just forced her way in and said “no”

[charcoalhawk]

No Safe Harbor

He’s not surprised that his parents haven’t realized that he hasn’t been home in over a week, after almost seventeen years the pain of being forgotten barely registers.

This is my Truce gift to @lemon-snake, sorry about the wait and I hope you enjoy!

I ended up using two of your prompts: Danny discovering Vlad bugs his house and Vlad showing up to Danny’s parent teacher conference because Maddie and Jack are busy.

There is ectoplasm on the dining room table. There is, in fact, a lot of shit on the dining room table that should not be on the dining room table.

Danny carefully skirts around the edge of the kitchen towards the fridge, but once he gets closer he can see that the fridge is bolted shut. So he’s either going to have to pull from his stash of food hidden in his closet, or eat fast food for the next few days.

If Jazz was still living here she probably would have already gotten into a shouting match, she was always a lot more proactive about calling out their parents when they pulled shit like this.

But Jazz is off at college, finally able to enjoy being a young adult and dealing with boring normal human problems. She had asked Danny to keep her in the loop with what was happening at home, and to tell her if their parents got sucked down another research hole and he needed her to remind them to take care of Danny and themselves.

He had mostly held to that promise, but as the months passed it was just easier to stay with Tucker or Sam for a few days when his parents lost themselves to their research.

This is the first time Danny has been home all week, he was able to sneak over to stay at Tucker’s for a few days but after the second time he was caught brushing his teeth there in the morning he decided it was better to just sleep in The Zone.

“Oh hey Danno!” The front of his dad’s jumpsuit is rumpled like he’s been wearing the same one for multiple days, “sorry but the fridge is out of commission for a few days, we’ll order pizza tonight. You must’ve had a lot of homework these past few days, we’ve barely seen you!”

He’s not surprised that his parents haven’t realized that he hasn’t been home in over a week, after almost seventeen years the pain of being forgotten barely registers.

What is going to be painful is this.

“I-“ ancients Danny hates having to do this, “there’s a parent-teacher conference tonight, Mr. Lancer asked me to remind you guys about it because apparently you didn’t answer his email about attending.”

“Why would Mr. Lancer have you doing that Danny?” His mom sounded genuinely confused, reaching up to push back some hair that had come out from her hood and smearing ectoplasm after her. “It was just a general email letting all the parents know, there was no need to reply because we weren’t planning on going. Your grades are doing great, and you would have already come to us if something was wrong.”

Danny feels his stomach drop, and it takes considerably more will then he would like to stop himself from stomping out of the room right there.

Because that hadn’t been a general email. Mr. Lancer had kept him after class today to ask him to remind his parents about the meeting tonight, and judging by his barely suppressed frown it wasn’t going to be a pleasant meeting.

“No actually, Mr. Lancer apparently really wants to sit down with you guys about some things, he said he mentioned in the email some of his concerns?”

———

Danny takes another glance at the clock on the wall, 4:45pm, his parents are almost twenty minutes late.

He’s left at least ten texts to each of them asking where the hell they are, but knowing them their phones are either dead or buried under a bunch of junk in their lab.

Mr. Lancer also takes a glance at the clock, and with a sigh begins to pack up the remaining papers from previous classes.

“I’m sorry for keeping you so late Danny, I’ll email your parents tonight and hopefully we can reschedule. Do you need a ride home?”

“No Mr. Lancer, I’m fine. Actually I was wondering if-“

His question is interrupted with a series or rapid knocks on the classroom door, and Danny foolishly hopes in that moment that his parents simply hadn’t responded to his texts because they had been busy driving, before it opens to reveal Vlad-fucking-Masters.

“Oh I’m so terribly sorry for being late,” Vlad gives his best normal human smile, “I had to practically run to get here and I was so worried about young Daniel here that I-“

“Mr. Masters,” Mr. Lancer’s face scrunches like he can’t decide whether to smile or grimace, “as nice as a surprise this is, I’m afraid this is a confidential meeting between myself and Danny’s guardians, now if you have concerns I’m sure we could find the time to sit down another day and discuss them in detail.”

“Oh I completely understand,” a wide smile, “but you see I’m actually here as a trusted adult for young Daniel here. Maddie and I decided it would be wise to have someone who lived closer by to be written down as an emergency contact in case either of the children needed it.

Like today, poor Madeline called me explaining that she had almost forgotten about this event, but due to an experiment at home would be unable to attend. And so she called and luckily I was visiting Amity this week and rushed over.”

Mr. Lancer seriously looks like he’s about to call bullshit, but a last glance at the clock has him slumping with defeat.

“Well, seeing as you were so kind as to actually show up, I think I could discuss some of my concerns here, Danny you’re welcome to leave-“

“Oh no Mr. Lancer,” Danny so wishes one of his powers was the ability to set things on fire with a glare, “if it's ok with you I’ll stay. I’d like to hear what good ol’ uncle Vlad has to say.”

———

It’s a rare night where the school is mostly empty, any after school activities had been canceled so that the conferences could be held, and now at almost six pm the entire school is abandoned.

Danny is able to keep quiet until they are out of sight of the school, but once he’s sure Mr. Lancer can’t see them; he surges to grab Vlad and hoist him up by his stupid suit, and in moments they are both transformed and hovering miles above the town.

“What the fuck are you doing here!”

Vlad gives him the look you would give a particularly stupid child, and given that Danny has spent more than enough time with Vlad over the past two years, he is unfortunately very familiar with that particular look.

With a casual swat he sends Danny flying back and moves to adjust his now missing tie.

“I am just trying to help you Daniel!”

“Oh bullshit. You couldn’t give less of a damn about my education, and you especially had no right to show up to a meeting like this. And what is up with that guardian crap? You know mom would never have put you down as an emergency contact.”

“Ah yes, I may have been stretching that a bit, but you see I am in fact listed as an emergency contact for you and Jazz when she was a minor. Jack,” and Vlad spits the name like it was an infectious disease, “was so kind as to add me when I expressed my concerns about it.”

And doesn’t that just make Danny’s blood boil. But regardless of his dad being way too damn forgiving, there’s something much more important he needs to know.

“You know what, I don’t even really care about that right now, what I do care about is,” He shoos his hand like he’s trying to chase off an annoying fly, ”how the hell did you know all that shit! I most certainly didn’t tell you, mom would rather shoot you then tell you something was wrong, and even dad isn’t that trusting.”

“Oh,” and now that it’s just them Vlad’s smile has become a thing of nightmares, “I have my ways Daniel.”

“What? Do you just always have a duplicate hanging around our house? You fucking creep.”

“Please, I’m too important to waste my valuable time with something that barbaric and simple.”

“What then? Spies, bugs- I swear to the crown if you have my house bugged Plasmius I’ll wring you by your stupid cape-“

“And what if I do!”

Where previously Vlad had looked smug and aloof, his gaze is now blazing focused, something that makes Danny’s skin crawl.

“You have not stayed in that house for over a week, Daniel! You barely stay more than a few hours and in the past three months you’ve been sleeping ancients know where in the Zone! You are constantly burdening you friends by forcing them to house you-“

“I’m not making them do anything!”

“I do understand not wanting to be in that house.” And here Vlad almost looks sad, “The mess, the weapons crawling out of every corner, being forced to live in the place you died. It can not be healthy for a young man. Regardless, that house is too dangerous, one wrong move and our, your secret will be discovered. And you know your parents, they will not take this kindly.”

“Oh fuck off! You don’t actually give a shit about me, you only care because it would put you in danger, and the fact that I’d rather stay anywhere that isn’t with you.”

“My home is open to you, and your mother and sister should they ever need it. I do care, little badger, don’t ignore an offer for help because you are too prideful and arrogant to accept it.”

This argument isn’t getting Danny anywhere, and he has one more question before he’s going to blast Plasmius in his stupid face.

“We’ll see how much you’re laughing when I tell Mom and Dad that you lied and said they called you about the meeting, when Mr. Lancer doesn’t follow up there are bound to be questions. How do you think mom will respond to knowing that you're spying on us?”

“Oh but that’s not what happened at all!” He’s right back to being smug, almost seeming to settle down in an invisible chair. “If your parents ask,” and here he looks doubtful, “you are going to tell them that you texted dear old uncle Vlad to come once you realized your parents accidentally forgot about the meeting.”

“And why the hell would I do that?”

“Because, the alternative is me going right now and possessing them both to make them think they called me, and we both know how tampering with memories can, ah, potentially harm an individual.”

Danny remembers, a few months after gaining his powers, overshadowing Mr. Lancer to make him think he had given Danny an extension on an essay he hadn’t bothered to finish.

Was it a frivolous use of his powers? Yes? Did he really care at the time? No.

He had thought everything had been fine, until a few days later when Mr. Lancer collapsed in class. Later it was reported that Mr. Lancer had suffered a brain bleed due to an unknown injury. There had been no physical evidence of anything having happened to him, but it hadn’t taken long for whispers of a ghost attack to start circulating.

After that Danny had been very careful to never overshadow someone, he had never been sure that what he had done was what had caused the injury, but he had wanted to be safe rather than sorry.

The threat finally forces the fight to leave him, and with one last venomous glare Danny leaves. Vlad doesn’t chase him, but Danny knows it’s because he’s already lost the battle for today.

———

“Oh Danny! We were wondering where you were, you said you were going to help with the lab this weekend.”

“I ah- was actually at the school.”

“The school- oh fudge the parent-teacher conference! Danno I’m so sorry we just got wrapped up in this experiment, I’ll go email Mr. Lancer right now and apologize, do you know when he would be willing to reschedule?”

“Uh, actually Vlad showed up for the meeting, apparently he’s listed as an emergency contact and uh, when I realized that you guys might have forgotten I reached out to him and luckily he was in Amity.”

“Oh good ol Vladdie! I’m so glad he convinced me to add him as a contact, he really is so kind.”

His mom’s face puckered like she had been force-fed an entire orchard of lemons.

“Yes, he does have his moments…”

———

As he’s lying in his room later that night his eyes catch a glimmer from the corner of the room up on his bookshelf.

After a second of deliberation he moves, reaching out to just barely snag the small object as it seemed to skitter away.

Holding it up the object at first seems incomprehensible, but after a minute Danny realizes with growing dread that what he has in his hand is a tiny camera with a microphone attached.

Without a second thought he crushes the device, if Vlad planted one he likely has at least a dozen if not more.

And its without a doubt the frootloop’s handiwork, no other ghost would bother with something like this, and the GIW doesn’t have access to enough ectoplasm to make devices capable of intangibility.

But what can he do about the rest? Vlad would expect him to destroy one if he found it, but then he would just set up more in new locations. At least if he knows where they all are he can know where to avoid.

Grinding the remains of the machine in his palm he slips intangibly down to the basement, glancing briefly at his parents who are both passed out over various diagrams and half formed weapons.

Looks like he’s going to be spending a lot more nights in the Zone.

#2022 holiday truce #2022 dp holiday truce #danny fenton #vlad plasmius #jack fenton #maddie fenton #no beta we die #manipulation

[auroraphantasma]

I ask you about your ectoplasm headcanons. :)

hang on i gotta break out the google docs for this;

Ectoplasm consumption and density explained, aka why do ghosts eat:

Ghosts are of course are very capable of generating ectoplasm and easily able to sustain themselves on the zone's general ambience but outside of it it gets a bit trickier: see, in a soup of energy its very easy to keep yourself up but outside you have to rely on whatever quality ectoplasm your core can supply to you.

The newer you are, the less reliable quality it will most likely produce, thin and flimsy like water, and the more likely your interaction with the material world will be hell. thin/weak ectoplasm will result in: uncontrollable invisibility and tangibility, limited visibility to species (example: only animals or psychic people can see you).

Size is also a key factor here, for if you have an unreliable ectoplasm, the smaller you are the more likely you will fall apart outside the zone.

Of course there are alternate sources of energy to help keep you up, such as feeding off of emotions, or if your core is elemental said element you possess, or a lair/haunting you claimed in the living realm to help create a hub for your plasm or food.

Human food usually is better for higher density spirits for obvious reasons but not much better diet wise than junk food. It helps as much as any fuel in the tank but doesn't really give much of a boost. ghost food however are technically a healthy choice because they are made out of either pure ectoplasm in cases or harvested from ghost "livestock" (actual ghostly live stock in most cases and bothersome conscious less beast that had to be dealt with for the better of the public in a few other).

Acquiring higher density ectoplasmic food also helps the ghost core strengthen its own quality (it could absolutely figure it out on its own but it would be like trying to get a dough right without the recipe). 

Higher density also allows for better interaction with the material world, easier to interact with objects and all that, it also makes healing/regenerating much easier (ghost forms are dictated by their cores and the ectoplasm morphs into the cores ideal mold. Denser ectoplasm means an easier "refill" to the missing part for the cost of reduced density. Of course forms can be damaged by either direct core damage or objects created directly for the harm of ectoplasm).

This also means a ghost with higher density could "sacrifice" a limb for a less dense ghost to help them or get more strength. It also allows them to last longer against concoctions meant to dissolve or destroy ectoplasm, as they got more to burn before it gets lethal to the ghost.

Now ask me about ghost "livestock".

#danny phantom #ectoplasm head cannons #brought to you by me having to watch Micro management a few too many times #and every episodes where ghosts eat #headcanon

[jessilynallendilla]

Danny Phantom Episode Breakdown

Part 2

FUCK UP FACTS IN BOLD

4 ATTACK OF THE KILLER GARAGE SALE 

Jazz is trying to tutor Dash in basic algebra and he’s distracted by her hotness and he’s disproving her thesis that no one is untutorable he can’t even pronounce that word 

Danny still can't control his powers making him a klutz and Dash calls him Fentonowski and a twink 

Jazz is unimpressed he was rude to her brother then tried to ask her out to a party but she’ll go on one condition 

First appearance of Technus ghost Master of Science and Electrical Technology and Danny’s the one who accidentally released him from the portal 

Danny also accidentally gives him the idea to use the technology in the lab to take over the world Technus declares it a great idea and Danny should consider tutoring 

Using the new Fenton Weasel to suck up Technus Danny overloads it causing it to explode green ectoplasm (presumably Technus’s remains) everywhere Jack doesn’t notice any difference in the mess 

Sam offers to pay them the 80+ dollars so they can get into the new amusement park Tucker refuses since he can’t pay her back 

Danny is distracted that everyone including the perfectly flawless Paulina is getting invites to Dash’s hottest party of the year 

Sam tells them in the social circuit they’re invisible it won’t matter in five years but the point they have each other is ignored when Dash gives Danny an invite because Jazz made him 

Now that he’s invited the cool kids notice him 

The next day even Tucker notices Danny acting different now that he’s a part of the in-crowd Kwan calls him "Fentonmiester" (Valerie is with him is she reaming him for ditching their date for the dance) 

Dash gives Danny the magazine Jock’s Quarterly picturing the expected outfit to wear a “chique” sweat suit (the magazine says it has an exclusive Butch Hartman interview) 

Dash won’t be embarrassed so threatens Danny to wear one  

Sam says she almost hates to offer Danny the money for it (so she’s willing to help out her friends even though she doesn’t like their choices) but is cut off by Paulina telling Danny to listen to her “totally krunk” CD and Sam is annoyed by Danny ditching them again 

Maddie's and Jack’s invention to cook hotdogs ten times faster than a microwave reanimates the hotdogs 

As inventors the Fenton’s have plenty of money (so who’s buying these weapons and patents) but as parents they want Danny to earn his own money to understand its value either get a job or sell his old junk and comic books 

Maddie wants the exploded Ghost Weasel to go to the shed and is annoyed it hasn’t been cleaned out in years 

Jack is attached to the junk even though he doesn’t know what it does but does think some of should be gotten rid of giving Danny an idea 

Now the ectoplasm ominously glows 

The next day Dany sells the old junk 

Tucker makes a crack about Lancer being bald and Lancer threatens that he’ll remember it when he’s grading tests 

Sam tells Danny he’s still welcome to hang out at her place Saturday Danny notes they’ve never been to her place 

Danny gets the last twenty he needs from selling Dash “Fentina” computer upgrades and ditches his friends to clean up while he buys the sweats and while Sam complains Tucker also ditches her 

Later Tucker questions that Sam tipped the pizza guy a ten Sam deflects saying she thought it was a one 

Tucker is speechless at Sam’s home theater set up (she has a Jaws poster)  

Sam confesses her family is filthy rich her great grandad Izzy invented the machine that puts cellophane on toothpicks 

Lancer can’t think of a better way to spend a Saturday night than shaving the animal on his back but when he turns it on it glows possessed and grows longer blades shaves an # and flies out the window 

As Danny is driving his moped the shaver attacks him and turns its blades into a cleaver 

It turns into a giant pair of scissors during the fight and Danny tosses it far away and just manages to save his outfit from being ran over 

He sees a bit of glowing wire on the ground noting he should be concerned but has a party to get to 

Sam is annoyed by Tucker asking how rich she is Sam can’t buy a bowling alley as they already have one and there's no room for a second 

Sam’s grandmother bowls a strike (she calls herself Bubbie Yiddish for grandmother already hinting that Sam and her family is Jewish) 

When asked why Sam hangs out with them when she's stinking rich she confesses she didn't want to buy popularity tucker tells her to tell that to Danny  

The remote Sam bought from him is ominously glowing and it cuts to Dash’s computer screen making an evil grin (so after being blown into ectoplasm can ghosts reform after a while) 

The Fenton’s keep the reanimated hotdogs in the fridge 

Danny asks Jazz if new look is “stoopid” Jazz says it is stupid and reveals she’s not going to the party despite being the only reason Dash invited her 

Jack is now freaked out because the stuff is missing from the shed Danny lies that he didn’t see anything 

Jack decides to secure the lab in the meantime and has the hotdogs cover him for protection 

When Danny gets to the party Dash reveals since he’s wasn’t part of his posse he didn’t send him the email that the dress code was changed to loser chique now everyone is dressed like Danny Sam and Tucker Paulina sees Danny's outfit and gags asking if his mom dressed him 

Technus takes over Dash’s computer calling all mechanized spirits to him 

Sam has a toaster from Denmark the glows and floats in the air 

Sam figures that the junk Danny sold was contaminated with ghost stuff 

They gleefully go to ruin Danny's big jock party to warn hm of the haunted technology 

Danny has a terrible time at the party and goes upstairs realizes even though they all all dressed like his friends they aren't (there’s a buff dude dressed like Sam) 

Danny's ghost sense alerts him to the swarm of haunted tech in Dash's room 

Technus’s new tech form is glitchy because Dash didn’t install the upgrade yet and stupidly announces it out loud so Technus can hear and Technus declares it another great idea Danny should be a teacher 

Danny gets blasted into Dash’s closet and finds his collection of letterman jackets and pink and blue teddy bears 

The fight trashes Dash's bedroom and accidentally inserts the upgrade disc 

Tucker gets the Fenton thermos and says Danny should carry it in a lunch box 

The fight gets to Sam and Tucker and the giant Technus mech asks who’s your daddy Danny's punching has absolutely no effect 

Sam and Tucker refuse to help until Danny apologizes that he was stupid and shallow to choose to hang out with the popular kids over them and won't do it again  

Sam declares the old version of Portals XL technus is running on is vaporware the worst software ever 

Technus has a remote that can transform Danny into a cowboy Vanna White and Spock  

Tucker can't bypass the program because Technus had upgraded 

Sam makes a call to have the latest version of Portals XL delivered Tucker makes a pass at the delivery lady 

Sam gets Technus to scream out his name and shout out his motive distracting him as she plugs him into Tucker’s PDA because every new version of Portals XL has a gigantic hole in its security system 

Danny shoves a giant claw into the disc drive and Technus yells that it doesn’t go there as he is shut down 

Danny sucks Technus into the thermos which depossesses the tech (and no one in the city noticed the giant shouting mecha) 

Danny put al the old stuff back in the shed and his dad is checking it all for government bugs (is he that paranoid or is the government really watching them) 

Danny has to return the sweats to return everyone's money and apologizes again for how he treated them he should know how it feels to be invisible 

Dash opens his locker causing an avalanche of teddy bears (why is he still wearing his geek chique outfit)  

Danny says he learned one person's trash is another's revenge 

5 SPLITTING IMAGES 

Sam roped her friends into helping her with her agenda to save the frogs since she claims dissecting frogs is bad and offers humane alternative of mechanical frogs “I can’t believe it’s not a frog cadaver” (why are the robots slimy) 

The Box Ghost attacks and when having scalpels thrown at him Danny thinks Sam has a point about dissection (oh oh Danny don’t go on tumblr or AO3) 

In the auditorium the Box ghost launches costumes and props from the musical My Fair Lady and a depowered Danny 

Sam goes on stage and announces she has something sick and disgusting going on their school she’s about to show them when the curtain is pulled up it reveals Danny in a dress and tucker says he should take it off it’s weird (but that soft pink does looks nice on him) 

Sam is angry at Danny for ruining her assembly and Tucker says that puce bra wasn’t his color 

Because Boxy trashed his locker he was assigned a new one 724 (it’s extremely rusty did maintenance just ignore it and never replaced it) 

Danny is apparently ignorant about the legend of this locker being curse and touches the mysterious mirror inside it 

Dash bullies him by shoving him in his new locker 

Danny is petty with his powers again and possess Dash to slam his head on the lockers repeatedly and dunk himself in the janitor’s mop bucket 

When they leave and eerie voice from the locker chants bullies  

Maddie and Jack heard Danny got a new haunted locker and will stake it out during school Jazz tries to defend him by saying he doesn’t need them confirming he’s a clumsy nerd 

Jack wrecks the kitchen trying out the new Ghost Gloves 

As some jocks bully the marching band tuba player the 724 locker door flies open knocking one out  

As Paulina flirts with the AV nerd to distract him as Kwan ties his shoes together the locker causes a trophy to fall on Kwan's head making him knock into a fire extinguisher and spray foam in Paulina’s hair and the spirit also reties the kid’s shoes 

At lunch Danny swears to Sam it wasn’t him then he possesses Dash and tosses the tray of food on Paulina (so his crush on her is over I take it) 

Sam tries to tell Danny he shouldn’t use his powers like that but sees Lancer and books it outta there 

Tucker then expositions the legend of the haunted locker  

It was originally owned by a Poindexter named Sidney back in the fifties 1954-1958 it was class of 55 Sidney was the most bullied kid in Casper High history to the point it was a graduation requirement and he was shoved in his locker so much it’s believed his spirit haunts it (so did Sidney kill himself or did he die from a prank gone wrong) 

Sam comes back with the box of frogs she smuggled out of the biology lab 

Dash throws food at Danny and he’s had enough (the jumping frogs reflecting in Danny’s sclera look weird) 

Danny gives Dash and atomic wedgie and dumps the frogs in his pants as revenge (him standing in the shadows of a deserted hallway looks menacing) 

Sidney is finally free of his locker the doorway has been opened (so objects can be portals to the Ghost Zone well some cultures do believe mirror can be a way into the afterlife) 

Sidney accuses Danny of being a bully and poltergeists the school Lancer sees the exploding lab equipment and shouts “Great Gatsby” 

Jazz tells her parents there’s nothing weird in the school as the student body runs out the doors screaming in terror 

Sidney calls tucker a nerd which he takes offense to (he’s a techno geek) 

In the fight Danny depowers shocking Sidney that he’s the Halfa everybody in the Ghost Zone talks about him he’s half a boy half a ghost 

Sidney is angry he was using his powers for evil and won't listen as Danny tries to explain why he took over Dash’s body giving Sidney the idea to take over his body (Danny’s body glows green and he starts to painfully contort is this what happens when the host fights back or when a ghost possesses another ghost in the fight for control)  

Danny’s spirit is sent to Sidney’s world as Sidney (in Danny’s body he has Sidney’s red eyes from the possession and in Sidney’s world Danny sees in the mirror he looks like Sidney but has his green eyes) 

Tucker covers Danny/Sidney from his parents (so can people slightly see the outline of a ghost when they’re technically intangible) 

As Sidney Danny is bullied by the students (if this is Sidney’s lair why is it so awful if it goes with the suicide theory are ghosts punished for it in the afterlife or could Sidney just not picture a life for him other than being abused) 

When Danny tries to escape the school it’s just floating in the Ghost Zone and he almost falls (so can he not use his powers here or did he panic and forget to fly) 

Danny/Sidney is just happy to have friends and they ask if he’s alright since his voice is weird (he’s been using dated slang) Danny/Sidney says it’s puberty  

Danny/Sidney uses his powers to get Dash (who also notices he’s talking weird and also thinks its puberty) a bunch of sodas from the machine since he thinks he’s a poor kid that already lost a bunch of quarters from the school bullies he tosses them to everyone calling them egg creams (the drink doesn’t contain neither egg nor cream) 

Danny is able to possess the mirror enough to open the locker on the living plane and see what Sidney is doing and his friends can't hear him 

Kwan invites Danny/Sidney to touch football when Danny/Sidney sees the locker open he slams it closed throwing Danny back in the ghost school 

Danny forces enough energy through the mirror to track his friends to the football field and write in the dirt 

Dash and his goons leave Danny/Sidney to get pummeled by the opposing team’s tackle but he uses his intangibility to escape impressing them with his game (Sam and Tucker look happy he has this moment)  

Danny’s message for them to open locker 724 is ruined by his parents hunting for the ghost but Maddie doesn’t believe their machine when it says Danny is a ghost  

Jack gives Tucker the Ghost Gloes as he goes to the bathroom 

As they’ll be staking out the school all night Dash declares there’ll be a party at Fenton’s house Danny/Sidney asks where he lives (so the ghost doesn't have the memories or habits of the person they are possessing)  

Tucker thinks something’s up since Danny’s acting off Sam plans to use his residual popularity for her save the frogs crusade 

As Sam and Tucker go to get more frog pins Danny contacts them from the locker mirror and tells them Sidney took over his body and sent him to this bizzarro spirit world 

Danny proves it’s really him by saying in the second-grade tucker threw up in Sam's lunch box and blamed it on Ricky Marsh Sam kicked him off the monkey bars for it 

The mirror is some kind of portal but he can't phase through it he thinks it serves him right for using his powers to act like a bully now he’ll be bullied for the rest of eternity 

They need to send Sidney back in so Sam gets Danny/Sidney saying a nerd is being shoved inside his locker (Danny/Sidney just assumes it’s Tucker) 

Tucker uses the ghost gloves to shove Danny/Sidney through the mirror 

Danny/Sidney fights Danny but he’s terrible at it “You may have my powers but you sure don’t know how to use ‘em course I don’t know how to use them but at least I know how not to use ’em better than you do” 

 The students watched as they believe Sidney is fighting the Halfa and winning 

Danny gets thrown into his locker but takes the mirror threatening to smash it stranding them both there (so is this Ghost School cut off from the rest of the Ghost Zone then how did they know about Danny being a Halfa) 

Danny/Sidney takes the bait and possesses Danny again Sidney’s body contorts as Danny gets his body back and escapes through the mirror 

Sidney’s plans of revenge are put on hold as the fight with Danny made him popular 

Danny falls out of the locker landing on Lancer as he’s carrying the frogs releasing them 

Danny says he used his powers to become the kind of person he hates and won't do it again so they believe it’s the real him 

Danny then smashes the mirror getting him in trouble with Lancer for destroying school property (but it was Sidney’s mirror school lockers don’t have mirrors) 

Lancer would hold him responsible for the escaped frogs too but as upstanding students like Dash have a problem with it he’ll overlook the frogs then tells Sam she could learn from them about activism 

Lancer assigns Danny a new locker (why the locker wasn’t damaged just the mirror or did you just now decide it’s a rusty piece of shit) 

Danny’s new locker is in the band room and he loses his new popularity  

The Box ghost then steals Sam’s mechanical frog declaring he’s now the mechanical frog ghost but changes his mind when it starts sparking (all it will take is one student with an over protective parent to be electrocuted for the school to go back to real frogs and avoid a lawsuit) 

#danny phantom #long post #dpeb

[spenglercore]

Sharing a WIP from later in When Protons Collide. No major spoilers, but I'll add a readmore just in case, and there are some notations in brackets. Egon gets tapped to crawl through the HVAC ducts in a commercial building in pursuit of An Entity and things get wildly embarrassing.

Bit of context: Victoria does roller derby almost every weekend, and she also lifts in her spare time to maintain core strength and she is also only 5'4".

"Well…shit. We don't have a ladder do we?" Vic asked as she stared up at the vent grate the ectoplasm was dripping from. "Not unless you have one in your pocket." Ray sighed. For a moment, nobody said a word as they all wracked their brains for a solution.

"I could always give one of you a leg up, no problem." Victoria offered with a shrug. "That would work. Who gets the honor of crawling through commercial ductwork?" Egon asked, half-sarcastic. Usually these sorts of things fell to Peter by default. But this time, as the silence stretched, he caught movement out of the corner of his eye and when he turned to see Ray and Winston looking at him expectantly. "What." "Well, you're the tallest." Peter shrugged. Egon raised an eyebrow. And? Then it hit him. "No." He turned and jabbed a finger at Peter for good measure, but then Ray spoke up. "You're also the lightest of us, if I remember right," He pointed out. "No," Egon repeated as he turned back to Ray. "Oh come on, you're built like a two-by-four! Not like you'd get stuck." Winston said. He'd been called unattractive in far worse ways, but having attention drawn to his body type in front of Victoria made him self conscious and he could feel his face go red as he glared at Winston and opened his mouth to protest again, but he was interrupted by Ray. "Hell, you'd probably have enough room to send a trap back out once you nab the wormy little critter." The more he thought about it, the more he realized he couldn't argue; he was best suited to go after the [need name for lil worm dudes] where it was hiding. Despite Victoria being more than capable of lifting any of them, it would be easier for her to heft the lightest person there, whom she'd also already proven she could pick up without breaking a sweat, and the odds of getting stuck somehow were definitely not in his favor. "And hey," Peter said as he clapped a hand on Egon's shoulder. "I always get tapped for this kind of thing, usually by you wanting me to gather some kind of snot for you to analyze and quite honestly? I'm starting to think you have a fetish." Egon had never wished so badly that he could vaporize the man with his mind. Instead he settled for channeling as much 'fuck you' into one look as he could. "Fine." He acquiesced reluctantly. "Hoo, if looks could kill!" Winston laughed. [add more; after a mildly awkward face to face boost into the vent, Egon catches The Thing and then has to worm his way out backwards and things go sideways]

He felt his left boot connect with Victoria's shoulder, and took a moment to make sure his footing was solid. "You're good!" Came the tinny reply. He braced his arms against the top and bottom surfaces of the duct, then slowly lowered his right foot, and a hand gripped the bottom of his boot around the arch. "Okay I got you, just let yourself down slow!" Easier said than done, there wasn't exactly anything to grab ahold of inside a commercial duct made of smooth sheet metal. Once he started to bend his left knee, he felt his right foot take his weight as it settled into her interlocked hands, which meant he no longer had to support himself entirely by his arms and shoulders wedged into the sides of the duct. As he slowly lowered himself further, he felt Victoria jostle and quickly tried to pull himself back up. "Oh fuckssake get your junk out of my face!!" At first, he thought that one of the items attached to his belt had hit her as he lowered himself out of the HVAC system, but it didn't take him long to realize that positioned as he was would put the jumpsuit's fly at face level. That junk. He was glad that his top half was still obscured inside the duct; he could feel his face burning and he wanted to disappear. But his only choice to resolve the situation was to keep going and get down as quickly as possible. Egon tried to lean back, so as not to violate Vic's personal space more than he already had. This in turn pushed his foot forward, which put him off balance. He tried to compensate by bending his leg, but that just shoved his kneecap into Vic's sternum. And just as he decided to try and straighten his leg again, his hand slipped. And there was nothing to grab to arrest himself. "Shit!" As he tried to reposition his left hand, his right slipped. "Shit, SHIT!" To her credit, he felt Victoria crouch down as he slipped backwards out of the vent in attempt to minimize his fall. But having one foot on her shoulder and the other in her hands caused his weight to further shift away from the wall, and several things happened in quick succession. As he fell down and back, Victoria let go of his right foot, and the lack of support caused his left foot to support more weight, which in turn meant that his mass shifted still further from the wall and out into empty space. Her left hand snapped out, and somehow she managed to grab the front of his jumpsuit in an attempt to stop him from hitting the ground. It didn't work. He already had enough momentum that all Victoria did was get yanked down with him. As he hit the ground, all he could think of was Newton's Principle of Inertia. This was going to hurt.

Hitting the ground flat on his back was bad enough, but hitting the ground and then immediately being hit in the midsection by a couple hundred pounds of his coworker succeeded in completely and utterly knocking the wind out of him. He let out an undignified strangled noise and tried to curl up, but he only succeeded in giving Victoria a very awkward hug as he gasped repeatedly to try and catch his breath. "Egon?! Are you okay?" He felt Victoria sit up on her knees, which now meant his legs were on either side of her torso. He squeezed his eyes shut as he silently cursed his psyche for supplying approximately 17 much more intimate scenarios that involved the sensation of her hips pressed against the inside of his thighs. "Fine," he half-wheezed. He hadn't quite gotten his voice back yet.

Egon gasped again and coughed, then felt Victoria shift against his legs. Assuming she was going to extricate herself from him, he pushed himself into a halfway sitting position braced on one elbow, his other hand pressed to his chest just below his ribs as he took another deep breath. "You sure?" He went to nod 'yes', but his eyes snapped open at the sudden and unexpected feeling of hands on either side of his face, and what breath he'd gotten back seemed to get stuck somewhere in his chest; Victoria's face was less than two inches from his, and suddenly all thoughts seemed to disappear, except for one. Kiss me. Please… He felt his face go hot, and hoped that it would just be taken as a side effect from his recent exertions and not his brain suddenly being fixated on the concept of kissing with a ferocity he was not prepared for. Don't forget to breathe, imbecile! He exhaled a breath he hadn't noticed he was holding, and nodded. Maybe he was just seeing things, or reading too much into Victoria's own physiological response to strenuous physical activity, but she seemed just as pink in the face as he probably was, and she wasn't saying anything, just….looking at him… "Are you guys gonna make out right there on the floor, or can we leave now?" Victoria let go of his face as Egon started and twisted one way, then the other, just in time to see Ray give Peter a pained look. Any and all interest he had in kissing evaporated, and an intense embarrassment took it's place. "Can it, Venkman!" He almost yelled. Egon cringed mentally as soon as he spoke; his response had been far too defensive, especially considering how rarely he rose to his friend's usual provocations. Peter's response was to raise his eyebrows and laugh. "Ooh looks like I hit a nerve." He said in a teasing, sing-song tone before Ray smacked him in the back of the head.

#WPC #ghostbusters fic #WIP #fic snippet #the square pair #egon spengler #ray stantz #peter venkman #winston zeddemore #ghostbusters OC #mutual pining