#But Jack would be physically unable to hurt Danny

[hughmanbean]

Lady Danielle Gotham, nee Phantom

Danny is the Reluctant King Phantom, Essence of Duality, Bringer of Balance, Protector of the Innocent, Victorious Over Plant and Weather Alike, etc. etc.

Dan(te) is the Prince, Cautioning Message, Promonition of Destruction, Wrathful Truth, Experienced Overlord and Conquest, Obsessions Deprived Newly Reborn, etc. etc.

Dani(elle/Ellie) is the Wandering Princess, Widespread Sights, Mirror Turned Painting, and now, most recently, Lady Gotham.

Let's explain.

Ellie has wandered much of their home dimension by now, and even with the Infinite Realms, wants to see an alternate Earth. Clockwork, the doting Grandpa he is, agrees, opening a portal. He says that she can do anything she wants, as long as she doesn't outright obliterate that version. The rest of them see her off, and in she goes.

The first thing she sees is a grave. Though she can't read it, as a woman in black could've been white, so long ago stands in front of it. The woman turns around, and she is

beautiful, shattered, solemn, joyful, mourning, celebrating, ominous, comforting, barely a newly minted town, an old weathered city, and

Tired. So tired. So much has happened, good and bad. She wants to watch her knights grow, to see them flourish. But even a sentient city cannot stay. Too much has changed from before. Too many magics. She has decks of curses, played or kept in her hand, but it is too much. She must reform.

Ellie is approached, and they talk. She's exploring, and this place seems really nice. A bit morbid, perhaps, but nice. Lady Gotham sees potential.

Over a few months they talk, and Lady Gotham gives not only the title, but the very essence of her beloved city to Ellie. She may not reform, and be dispersed. Or she will. But she wants someone to look after it. And Ellie can do that. She's seen so many people and places, understands how complicated it can be, and has a good relationship to the Reluctant King.

Ellie accepts. She's sad to see Lady Gotham go, but knows that nothing can forever. So she decides to check up on Lady Gotham's (who she now is) knights. And those two guys in the sewers. And the other with the bar and birds. And that woman in the catsuit and the assassin one too. All of them, actually. Invisibly, of course. Wouldn't want to do anything stupid.

She also got a cool new outfit! (Created by the essence of Gotham and herself, not that she knows that.) It feels so natural to have it on as she watches. The people she's watching, on the other hand, can feel it. The city's gaze.

Ellie has opinions. I mean, look at Mister Riding Hood! Dirtiest 'plasm she's seen! And the Bat! So many kids! Sewer dudes are actually pretty cool. Fun to hang out with. She's taken to using TVs supplied by Technus and Tucker that she's fed some ecto-essence into to let her watch them. And she's also had small picnics with some of the spirits residing there.

One day, as she's "birdwatching", or just going about her business, they see her. She doesn't notice.

[five-rivers]

Loved chapter 4

Written for Dannymay 2021 Day 3: Portal, even though the connection is sort of tenuous.

.

Bad things happened when Vlad came to Amity Park. For that matter, bad things happened wherever Vlad was. It was part of what made Vlad Vlad. Some part of his otherness, some twist of the shadow-fabric he was made of that left rot and ruin wherever his hem brushed. Of course, Vlad was never affected by this misfortune. In fact, he seemed to suck the luck out of everyone around him. Like a vampire.

Along with sanity. But that was a given for the others, even partial others, like Vlad. Or Danny.

But Vlad didn’t even try to hide or ameliorate the effects he had on people, didn’t try to keep them safe, to make their lives shine like the precious lights they were.

(Danny drummed his fingers on his chest and wondered, if, perhaps, it would feel less empty if Clockwork let him become a jewel box.)

But that was the way Vlad was, and Danny felt him enter Amity Park like nails on a chalkboard. His skin started to itch. His teeth hurt. Pressure pulsed in his head like waves of heat coming off asphalt. Being human, being real, was too tight, too heavy. It would be so easy to slip into the cool waters of the Dream and cut through them to wherever Vlad was.

No. He couldn’t. As shown time and time again, that would just exacerbate things. No matter what Vlad did, it would be worse if they fought, especially if there was anyone there to see it. Like what had happened with Jazz…

Danny was beyond lucky he’d been able to snap her out of whatever Vlad had done to her, but she still was quite right. The Vultures had actually apologized on Vlad’s behalf, after that.

(And wasn’t that strange, standing in the Dream on ground covered by bones and feathers, the Vultures on a dead tree, speaking as one. A thing of terror, apologizing for their ward. For pain suffered through Love. For lines crossed.)

Still. He had better… supervise Vlad, for a lack of a better word. Make sure he wasn’t getting up to anything. He’d go as a human – as himself.

He sighed and splayed his hands out on the table.

“Something wrong?” asked Sam, who had been making a complex sigil out of her fries and ketchup.

“Vlad’s in town,” said Danny. “I—”

The doors to the Nasty Burger were thrown open with a bang as Jazz came running in. She ran halfway through the store, to weak protests from the employee behind the counter, and skidded to a stop in front of their table.

“Vlad’s here,” he said.

“You saw him?” asked Danny, concerned. “Did he try—”

“No,” said Jazz. “I can just—It’s like he’s under my skin, and I—” She made a sound of frustration and gripped both sides of her head with clawed hands.

“Hey,” said Danny, gently, grasping her wrists. “It’s going to be okay. I’ll take care of it.”

“Okay,” said Jazz, breathing deeply. “Alright. I shouldn’t have freaked out like that.”

“It’s okay,” said Danny. He looked back to his friends. “Anyway, I’m going to go see what he wants, okay?”

“I’m coming with you,” said Sam, standing.

“Me too,” said Tucker. “Sort of. Halfway.”

“You really shouldn’t,” said Danny. “You know what happens when we get together.”

“Which is why we want to back you up,” said Sam. “As long as he stays physical, there’s stuff we can do.”

Unless Danny was prepared to do something incredibly inadvisable, there wasn’t much he could do to stop her. “Okay,” he said. “Just… be careful. If it looks like it’s going to turn into a fight, you need to leave.” He didn’t want them to get anymore spiritually messed up than they already were.

“We know, we know, you give us the spiel every time,” said Sam.

Yes, and Sam ignored it every other time. Danny shook his head. “Alright, let’s—”

Danny was promptly interrupted yet again, this time by his parents rushing in wearing… He could loosely call them clothes.

“It’s retro night, baby!” shouted Jack.

It was not retro night. There was no such thing as retro night at the Nasty Burger.

“I’ll take care of them,” said Jazz.

“Thanks,” muttered Danny, sliding out of the booth. “Come on, let’s go out the back.”

The alley behind the Nasty Burger was fetid in a way that made Danny’s shadow lift from the pavement and float on the air. Something that inhabited rats skittered in the corners at Danny’s presence and ran for a storm drain. He breathed shallowly.

“Which way?” prompted Tucker.

“He’s actually coming this way,” said Danny, frowning, debating facing him in this alley, just to see the disgust that would surely paint itself on Vlad’s face, paper-thin mask that it was.

Reality rippled, the surface tension that kept the Dream from bleeding in snapping. A miasma rose from the ground. Vlad stumbled into the alley, clutching at his face, which was melting. No, transforming. No, stretching. No, layering over itself a in dozen sickening ways, all the masks Vlad wore flickering over whatever truth he had all at once.

“Help me,” he grated. His words felt sick, diseased.

“Guys,” said Danny, fighting back the urge to vomit, “run.”

“No!” shrieked Vlad. “Help me!”

And sanity fractured like glass.

.

Whatever Danny’s parents had done to stabilize Vlad had worked, to a degree. It hadn’t fixed the underlying problem, which Danny could still feel slinking through the Dream. It also didn’t fix whatever he’d done to Sam and Tucker, although it had kept it from progressing further.

Danny took a slow, angry breath and ran a mental count of the lives stored inside his chest. They were there, all of them. Whatever happened to Sam and Tucker, they wouldn’t die.

But Danny knew there were fates worse than death.

His fingernails left half moon impressions on his palms as he clenched his fists. The Dream roiled with his fury, the force of it enough to keep Vlad’s diseased thoughts away.

“Daniel,” croaked Vlad. “Cure me.”

“That’s what Mom and Dad are trying to do.”

“Find a cure for me,” said Vlad, as if he hadn’t heard Danny at all, “and you’ll find a cure for your precious little friends.”

Danny stilled. “You did this on purpose.”

Vlad laughed. “Of course, I did, my dear boy. What value is a simple human mind compared to those such as we?”

Any rage Danny had felt up to this moment paled in comparison. The mirror over the sink cracked down the middle, never to show a true physical reflection again. He hated—

A concerned tug at Danny’s throat jolted him from his thoughts. Clockwork. Clockwork would know what to do. He turned, and without a second glance at Vlad, strode bodily into the Dream.

.

It took Danny even less time than usual to find Clockwork, and, when he did, he immediately found himself at Clockwork’s center, deep within the castle that was his metaphor. Dozens of Chains were fixed to Danny’s collar, each of them completely taut, holding him perfectly immobile, the embrace of a relieved but panicking parent. Clockwork’s emotions, too vast for Danny to fully comprehend, were transmitted directly through those chains, microscopic vibrations raising gooseflesh on Danny’s skin. A wordless noise both distressed and pleased wound its way from Danny’s throat, continuing to echo long after he’d run out of the breath to maintain it.

Clockwork’s avatar cupped Danny’s face in its hands, long fingers almost completely encircling his head. There was more of Clockwork in it that there usually was.

“Clockwork…?” asked Danny, weakly, confused and overwhelmed by the sudden flood of affection.

Poor little one, whispered the avatar, this is what happens when matters are not properly attended to. The Vultures should know better, should take care of him properly… It pressed its forehead to Danny’s, startling a squeak from him.

Danny, reflexively, brought his hands up to clutch at the avatar’s robes.

My poor child. What are they thinking, letting him run around so ill, so that he might infect other children?

Clockwork saw Vlad as a child, too. Not surprising, considering how ancient Clockwork must be, but good to know.

That emotion! It was only a shadow, and even so-!

“Emotion?”

Hatred, hissed Clockwork’s avatar.

The collar around Danny’s neck constricted, a tighter, more Loving, more comforting, hug. Danny gasped, although breathing here was psychological rather than physiological. The cloth of the avatar’s robes began to wind up Danny’s arms.

Even the pale, human shadow of it is not something you should experience, my child.

Danny didn’t like being that angry, but—

Even the concept of it is too much, too heavy. You should not have to bear it. I should not have overlooked it. The avatar’s hands moved to the back of Danny’s head, pressing his face against its shoulder. It must hurt you so,murmured the avatar, carding fingers through Danny’s hair. Fear not. I will excise it. All of it, even the idea of it shall not touch you, shall not sully your thoughts.

The avatar stepped away.

“Wait!” shouted Danny, panicking.

Not being able to hate? Danny had mixed feelings about that, but he doubted he’d be able to talk Clockwork out of it, not with how damaging Hate could be. In the end, it wouldn’t be that much of a loss. Not being able to understand that it existed? Not being aware of hate at all? Being unable to understand that, sometimes, people would go out of their way to hurt one another?

That was dangerous. That would render him unable to even begin to comprehend vast swathes of human history and humanity.

“If I don’t know what it is,” said Danny, “if I don’t know that it exists, how can I protect myself against it?”

A gust of wind blew through Clockwork’s sepulchral hall like the sigh of a giant. It is my duty to protect you, my child.

The sheer possessiveness of the words lingered on Danny’s skin. He wanted to lean into them but held his imaginary breath.

But very well.

Danny let himself relax, slightly, even as the avatar walked to somewhere he couldn’t see, its silent footsteps giving him no clue as to where it was. With only the constant, regular hum and tick of Clockwork’s gears to stimulate him, it was hard for Danny to stay vigilant. He found himself drifting, his thoughts wandering.

Did his hatred of Vlad cause him pain, as Clockwork said? What was it going to be like, to not be able to hate at all, rather than just not being able to Hate? Would he still be angry at Vlad? He hoped so. The man deserved it.

Two points of frigid cold touched the back of his head, contracted into a single point, and pulled. Danny felt something within him come free, and he sagged as much as the chains would allow him.

The avatar walked back into view, and Danny recoiled from the thing he was carrying, clasped in a long, silver pair of tweezers. “Is that,” started Danny, before he swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry. “Was that in me?”

Yes, said Clockwork’s avatar, lowering it into a small, jeweled box. Danny felt relieved as soon as the lid closed on it and he was no longer forced to look at it. At the same time… Fear not, said the avatar. I could never destroy something of you. It will be remade into something more useful.

Danny nodded as much as he could and shuddered. He felt… dirty. Unclean. Just remembering what he’d felt, what he’d thought… It left a deep sense of wrongness.

Come, said Clockwork. I have just the thing for that. You are due for a bath. A cleansing, inside and out.

The metaphor of the chains fell away, leaving just the one, usual, slack one. Danny knew Clockwork could call them back at any time, that, in truth, they had not gone anywhere at all.

“What about Vlad?” he asked, twisting his hands around the hem of his shirt. “And my friends? Can you help them? Please.”

He felt Clockwork examine him appraisingly.

Perhaps the bath can wait for another day.

.

The mirror was a portal, tall and wide as a door, glassy surface gleaming with otherworldly light. The edges were crimped, filigreed, flared. Beyond the reflection, Danny could just make out the suggestion of movement.

It is not real, said the avatar, putting a hand on Danny’s shoulder, but a might-have-been.

“But I can find a way to fix things in there?”

The avatar did not answer. A prickling feeling rose up inside Danny, settling in his stomach. Somehow, this felt similar to when he’d eaten the mirror with the bad future.

It is,confirmed the avatar, briefly nuzzling Danny.

“Why?” asked Danny, just a little horrified.

Is it not satisfying to complete two tasks at once? I told you, back then, that our next task would be to remove those presents that seek to exclude you.

Danny didn’t understand.

You will. Clockwork’s avatar paused, as if thinking. This is what the Vultures should have done for young Vladimir, although they would have accomplished it differently.

“Oh,” said Danny, trying to wrap his head around that.

Clockwork’s avatar nudged him forward. Follow the chain when you are ready to come home.

.

Danny wasn’t connected to anyone in this might-have-been world. It was odd, watching every eye slide off him as if he wasn’t even there. If he wanted to interact with someone directly, he’d have to put a lot of force of will into it.

It was strange. Other than that, everything here seemed perfectly real. Not imaginary at all. The sun shone. People spoke to one another. The grass crunched under his feet.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison lay before him in all its questionable glory.

He’d have to find Vlad and his parents. They had rented a small lab space for their experiments with the Dream and research into the others.

Normally, he’d follow his connection to them to find them, or the disturbance Vlad made in the dream, but neither of those things existed, now. Not yet. Danny didn’t exist yet.

He could just wander, try to seek out questionable lab space, but the university’s campus was large. Normally, he’d ask for directions, but…

Yeah, the no one being able to see or hear him thing really didn’t allow for that.

But there was one other thing he could try to do, one other thing he could try to sense. Their experiments. They should send waves across and through the Dream.

He let his eyes drift closed and walked blind across campus. When he opened them, he was in a lab, watching his parents and Vlad working on a kind of magic circle, inscribed with runes.

A portal, intended to let humans directly access the Dream. A portal that had created Vlad, all because he leaned too close, watched too closely, seen too much, became something else, changed.

Something like anger stirred under his skin. After this, his parents had continued to experiment, continued to try to reach the Dream, to create a weapon against the others, and in doing so both doomed Danny himself and Amity Park by making what amounted to a highway for the others to come to the real world.

But they hadn’t intended to do that, he knew. They’d been trying as best as they could to fix things. Had been trying to defend the world the best they knew, portal or no portal. And speaking of the portal… If others could damage human sanity, if Danny, small and weak and almost-human as he was, could damage human sanity, then how much more could a direct link to the Dream do? Discounting, of course, that normal dreams could lead to the Dream… That connection was more tenuous. Filtered.

His anger was a distraction from what was really bothering him.

These people, they looked like his parents. They were his parents. But… they weren’t. There was no attachment there. Nothing. It was like looking at empty shells. No Love.

It was distressing.

He watched, waiting, making note of the symbols and the placement of the ritual objects and the technological enhancements. There had to be something here that would help explain why Vlad was having such a hard time, while Danny had transitioned to his present existence without much problem.

He leaned over his not-mother’s calculations, then his not-father’s, made note of the differences. Looked at the fire, the knife, and the carved cylinders. Some of them didn’t feel quite right. One of them had been nudged out of alignment by a soda can put down by not-Jack, shifting the circle, making it bigger. Could that be something?

Vlad leaned over to examine the circle, and, at the same time, not-Jack pushed a button on the tape player, which started chanting. Danny could feel the hole boring into reality before the first syllable was finished. They’d made the portal both too well and too poorly.

Danny reached for Vlad and pulled him back, out of the way of the opening portal.

.

Danny may have made a mistake.

He’d saved Vlad from becoming other. In doing so, he’d changed things, altered this entire make-believe world. The way the story was progressing was no longer the same as his own. Which meant that it might be useless for collecting clues for fixing Vlad, Sam, and Tucker. Mostly Sam and Tucker.

(He’d help Vlad if it wouldn’t hurt his friends, he didn’t hate the man, not anymore, didn’t desire his suffering. But his friends were, of course, his main concern.)

But he couldn’t just leave. He’d made note of all the flaws in the portal, but that wasn’t in any way conclusive, wasn’t a guarantee.

And, in the meantime, his not-parents and not-Vlad had continued working on the portal, which they hadn’t shut down, unlike in the proper timeline. Or had it been disrupted by Vlad? He didn’t remember the exact sequence of events. His parents had never been clear.

But the portal was on, it was working, and it was wrong. Everything was wrong. The portal was in a class of things that should-not-be.

Just like Danny, in this world. He… With the portal, and the way things were going, he shouldn’t exist here, the butterfly effect would keep him from being born, and he was becoming painfully aware of that fact. Literally painfully. It was starting to hurt, being here, a throb in the back of his head.

Or was that the portal?

Either way…

(He couldn’t shake the suspicion that he was breaking things just by being here. Everything was going wrong. So many little accidents.)

(Or was that the portal?)

He kept watching.

It had been… a while, now. It was easy to lose track of time like this, with no one to talk to. Days? Maybe? He’d been drifting, which should have been troubling.

Maybe he should go back. Cut losses.

(Besides, it was disturbing watching his parents flirting with each other. And Vlad. Even if they weren’t really themselves.)

Then his parents wheeled in a… What was that? He walked closer. This was about the same size around as the pillars that had done this to him.

Danny would never forget those, after all.

Something hummed inside him, picking up a kind of resonance between the active portal and the pillar.

The ground fragmented beneath his feet.

Reality followed soon after.

.

He found himself nowhere with nothing. Only nowhere and nothing.

Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no.

What had he done? He’d, he’d destroyed a world, he’d—

There was a gentle, but insistent tug on his chain. He followed it home.

.

He clung to Clockwork’s avatar, gasping, as if he was the only real thing in the world. His emotions were too much, too great, uncontained and roiling. They battered him like a stormy sea.

It’s alright, it’s alright, comforted the avatar. It wasn’t real, and now it never will be. All those worlds where you would not be. All gone.

No. No. No. Horror buzzed in his brain. He couldn’t have destroyed so much.

Never were,continued the avatar, Clockwork apparently oblivious. All disproven. Paradox. You could not be and yet you were. You were in the places you were not. So, now you exist, in all these places, in everywhere that could be, and always will. It stroked Danny, brushing away tears. Only one more to go, until you never were not, my beloved child, until you always were mine, as you were meant to be.

Danny keened into the robes of Clockwork’s avatar, distraught. Wind ruffled his hair.

Considering the point in time in which you were placed, said the avatar, Vladimir will be well again.

Danny looked up, hopeful for the first time in hours.

Mostly. The underlying cause has been removed. You should bring the rest to your… progenitors. They are at least competent in this area.

Danny nodded vigorously and attempted to extract himself from the avatar’s grasp. He was unsuccessful, although the avatar did adjust its grip on him.

You have had a difficult day, it observed. It then presented Danny with a cookie.

Confused, Danny took it.

A gift, said the avatar, Clockwork having evidently returned to his normal laconic mode.

“What’s it made of?” asked Danny, suspicious.

Love. What else?

.

“How do you feel?” asked Danny.

“Weird,” said Sam. “But okay.”

“What was it like?”

Sam shrugged. “It was like…” She waved her hand. “Watching a thousand different movies of my life, but they were all wrong. Like if they were crappy biopics done fifty years after I died or something.”

“Speak for yourself,” grunted Tucker. “I just got a lot of sand. So, so much sand. And sun. Do I have a sunburn?”

“No?” said Danny. “You look fine.”

“Ugh, I forgot you were white. You don’t know what sunburns look like.”

“I’d argue,” said Sam, “but you’re not wrong.” She fell back against her pillows. “I just want to sleep.”

“Same,” said Tucker. “I never want to see the sun again.”

“We’ll make a goth of you yet,” joked Sam, tossing a pillow at him.

“Okay,” said Danny, backing away. “Should I get the lights?”

“You don’t mind?”

“Sleep well,” he said. He hoped they would.

(Because he would not.)

[dp-marvel94]

Face to Face- Chapter 35

Summary: When Danny went through the ghost catcher, he expected to be cured of the ghostliness that had haunted him since the accident, not to wake up on the lab floor with his parents saying he’d been overshadowed but everything’s back to normal now. But why does Danny Fenton cry himself to sleep to then dream of flying? Why does Phantom, the ghost who was supposedly possessing Danny remember a life that wasn’t his? Most of all, why do both the human and the ghost feel that something vital is missing, in their very soul? Or: Trying to cure himself of his powers one month after the accident, Danny accidentally splits himself but neither his ghost nor his human half know that that is what they did

First -> Last -> Next

Word Count: 5,122

Also on AO3 and Fanfiction.net

Note: I'm back with a new chapter, luckily a little faster than last time. XD Since I posted the last chapter, I also posted my Invisobang story so I hope you check out that story if you're interest. After reading this update though, of course ;) Happy Reading!

In the lab, Fenton paced back and forth, anxiety buzzing in his veins. This was turning into the most stressful ten minutes of his life. Err...no, the accident was more stressful. Or telling his parents about Phantom. Or getting lost in the Ghost Zone just an hour ago. Or...actually he’d been under a lot of stress recently.

“Danny.” Jazz interrupted his frantic activity. “Is everything okay?”

The boy froze, turning to look at his sister. He bit his lip. Things weren’t okay but…. Fenton closed his eyes, slightly pushing his perception away from the lab to…. His breath hitched. Neon green bloomed in his mind’s eyes. A flash of blue and...the image was fuzzy, from a distance but...there in front of him were two ghosts on a motorcycle and out of the corner of his eye...Mom! His heart fluttered, beating faster in a mix of relief and anxiety. Phantom’s lips were moving but the exchange of words felt far away. Fenton couldn’t pick them up, nor those of the other three people. Finally, the other two ghosts left and...tears... Mom was crying. She was hugging him. She-

“Son?”

Fenton pulled back, gasping. His eyes blinked open. The...lab? Right, he was here in the lab, waiting for Phantom to come back with Mom. Mom….His heart ached, even as he let out a breath of relief. “We found her. Mom’s okay.”

“She is?” Dad asked, eyes widening hopefully.

Fenton nodded. “Phantom’s got her. They’re flying back now.”

The large man visibly sagged in his seat, tension easing. Jazz let out a sigh of relief. The human Danny let out a breath as well before flopping down onto one of the stools. The trio sat in silence for a small eternity, held in eager and somewhat nervous anticipation. Fenton’s eyes flickered to the portal, searching for any sign of movement. Then….the green mist rippled; he could almost feel the cold dampness on his skin. Fenton blinked and two figures slipped through the portal. The boy’s shoulders relaxed, face softening with relief.

“Mom.” He breathed, as Jazz exclaimed the word. 

At the same time, Dad stood. “Maddie!”

The large man barreled forward, just as Phantom was moving to help Mom to her feet. Dad swept the woman and the ghost boy up in a hug.

“Jack.” The woman gasped, slightly surprised.

At the same time, the ghost boy let out a startled squeak. Fenton winced in sympathy. 

“You’re both okay.” Dad continued, undeterred.

“Yeah.” Phantom breathed, squirming slightly in the hold. For just a moment, the ghost flickered intangible. Then he stumbled away from the pair of adults. 

Both parents pulled out of their hug and turned to face Phantom. At the same time, Fenton stepped forward to stand beside his other half.

“Sorry.” Phantom blushed, looking down. “Didn’t mean to do...that.”

“It’s alright, son.” Dad soothed. “I got a little excited there.” A small smile graced his face. “I’m just so happy everyone’s here and safe.”

“Me too.” Jazz stepped forward, joining the rest of the family. She wrapped her arms around her mother in a hug. “You’re alright? Right Mom?”

“Yes, sweetie. I’m fine.” The woman nodded. “Your brother found me.” Mom looked up, her eyes meeting Phantom’s over Jazz’s shoulder. Her expression softened before her gaze flickered to the human Danny.

Fenton swallowed, feeling his stomach flop even as he held the gaze. After a long pause, the woman gave Jazz a pat on the shoulder and pulled out of the embrace. She then stepped around her daughter, approaching both versions of Danny. Her wide, misty eyes glanced between the two.

“Danny, baby.” Worry creased her forehead. “After you...after Phantom flew off...I thought...I didn’t know… if that would affect your other half but….” Her lips quivered. “Are you both okay?”

The human boy winced at the question, wrapping his arms around his waist. He glanced at his other half before answering. “We’re fine… at least physically.” His voice tapered to a whisper at the last word.

Guilt flickered across Mom’s face. “We have...we have a lot to talk about. But…” Her eyes shone with affection. “I’m so happy you came looking for me. And you came home.”

Phantom shrugged, trying to look casual. “I wasn’t gonna just leave you there.” He muttered.

The woman opened her mouth, thinking to reply. Her mouth closed and then she sighed. “Still...I was so scared, when you ran off. I’m...I’m just so happy you’re safe.”

Fenton looked down, guilt swirling through him. He remained still, even as his mom stepped forward, wrapping one arm around him and the other around his ghost half. “I love both of you so much.” She whispered.

A sense of deja vu overtook the human Danny as he couldn’t find it in him to reply. This had happened just minutes ago with Phantom, hadn’t it? And yet...the memory of that interaction passed through his mind, with the same conflicting emotions. He wanted to believe Mom’s words, he really did. But… ‘if Mom doesn't love you, then she doesn't really love me.’ Mom could say the words but if she didn’t really mean them...if she still didn’t accept Phantom….

The ghost boy pulled away and a moment later, his human followed. Both boys looked down, unable to look at their mother. Then there was a cough to the side. “Let’s go upstairs.” Dad said surprisingly softly. “Your mother’s right. We need to talk about things.”

Fenton looked up. He swallowed nervously, even as he nodded. The group of five trudged up the stairs, Dad first, followed by Jazz, then Mom, and finally the Dannys with Phantom coming last. The ghost glanced back at the lab, his eyes flickering to the portal. Fenton paused, brows furrowing as he noticed the action. Then he gently grabbed his other self’s arm and pulled him up the stairs. 

No words were said; none were necessary, but emotions were shared through the touch. Anxiety, fear, relief, hope, pain. So many feelings. Fenton didn’t know how to handle them. Everything hurt but...he hoped. Mom had said she was sorry earlier to Phantom, hadn’t she? She was acting like she was sorry but…

Fenton looked up to find his mother sitting in the armchair, looking uncomfortable. In front of him, Dad placed his hand gently on his sister’s arm. “Jazz, please go upstairs. Your mother and I need to talk to your brother.” The words were serious and melancholic but said gently.

The other teen frowned, starting to argue. “But...I can help. Danny...he needs me-”

“Jazz, honey.” Mom interrupted. “Please. I...we can handle this. I know...I know I made mistakes.” Again, her cheeks reddened with guilt. “But… It will be okay; we can fix this.”

Jazz’s brow wrinkled, a severe look flashing across her face. Then her expression softened. She turned to look at both versions of her brother, who were still hovering nervously at the threshold between the kitchen and living room. “Danny, do you...want me here for this?” Her eyes flickered to their mother before her voice quieted. “I told you earlier, I’d go with you to talk to her if you wanted.” She frowned, raising an eyebrow pointedly.

Phantom blushed, his face turning green as he shifted nervously in the air. “No. It’s...it’s okay. Dad’ll be here.” 

Jazz’s frown deepened, her eyes meeting Fenton’s. “Are you sure?”

The human boy nodded. “Yeah. It’s...you should go upstairs.”

His sister stayed staring for a long moment, still looking very much displeased. Then she heaved a heavy sigh. “Fine. I’ll go.” She turned back towards the stairs, her deeply worried expression changing into something severe and maybe even judgmental as her eyes passed over their mom. Then Jazz walked across the run and up the stairs. Soon, she disappeared down the hall and the sound of a door closing rang through the quiet house.

More tense silence froze Fenton in his spot, his heart pounding anxiously in his chest. His eyes carefully avoided the adults who were both now sitting. 

Dad spoke up first, from his seat in the recliner. “Come on and sit down, son.” He leaned forward, patting the couch.

The pair of Dannys glanced at each other before Fenton started forward with his ghost half following after. Both sat side by side on the couch, shoulders tense and heads hung low. Fenton balled his fists in his lap. Now that his relief about Mom being safe had drained out of him… the pain, every word of that argument came flooding back. The human felt his ghost half shift in his seat beside him and so he looked to his side. Phantom opened his mouth briefly, looking like he wanted to speak, but then his jaw snapped closed. Fenton bit his own lip. He understood the feeling; neither of them knew what to say, how to start.

Mom made the decision for them. “Danny.” She started softly and Fenton looked up. “I am so sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled at you. I shouldn’t...I shouldn’t have said any of what I said. I...I promised I would listen to you but... but I didn’t and…” She sniffled. “I just...I just yelled at you and…” Her voice shook with emotion. “You said...you thought I didn’t love Phantom. I...I made you think that but… I swear, I love you so much. You’re my baby and...I… I’d do anything for you. I love… I love you so-”

“Stop.” Phantom cut her off, voice pained. Fenton could feel his heart aching as the emotional dam broke. “You...you say that but… you said...you said I’m not supposed to be a ghost. You keep...you keep acting like there’s something wrong with me. And you wouldn’t even… even admit it. That...that you treat me different from Fenton or…” Mom winced at the words but they kept pouring out of the ghost. “Or barely look at me...or touch me… or…” Phantom sniffled, eyes watering. “I can’t...I can’t be what you want. I can’t be...be normal. I...I tried and this is what happened. All that horrible stuff you think...think about ghosts...you still think that about me. And…” His voice cracked, no more words able to come through as he started crying.

Fenton was crying too, feeling every single word in his heart even if they hadn’t been said with his mouth. He cried too, wrapping one arm around Phantom in a useless attempt at self-soothing. Even after Mom’s attempted apologies, even after she’d ventured into the Ghost Zone without a plan to find him, even after everything, the fears welled up. He felt sick with it, his insides churning.

The human boy barely registered when the couch shifted. “Danny. Danny baby, I’m… I’m so sorry.” Fenton looked to the side, following the sound of his mother’s voice. He winced. The woman had moved to sit beside Phantom, her arms wrapped around him. The ghost didn’t react, helpless in his tears. Mom pulled him closer. “No. I don’t...I don’t think that about you. I know you’re...you’re good. You’re not a...a monster. I never... never should have said that. I was wrong.”

Fenton whined, low in his throat. “Then why… why do you treat us… us differently? Why wouldn’t… wouldn’t you admit it?”

One of the woman’s hands moved to grab the human’s shoulder. “I hadn’t even realized it but… you’re right about… everything you… Phantom accused me of. I was treating you two differently. You were right about me… about me.... Hesi… hesitating to touch you… or look at you.”

“Why?” Phantom whimpered.

There was a pause, a sniffle. Then the woman answered. “I’ve been...I’ve just been so afraid.”

The ghost flinched, briefly flickering invisible. “Of...me?” The words were so quiet, so broken.

Mom shook her head vigorously. “No. No. Never. I’ve just...I’m...I’m so afraid of hurting you again.”

That made Phantom pull out of the hug. “What?” He frowned, Fenton copying the action.

“I’ve...I’ve already hurt you so much. The...the accident...the portal...my portal, my invention already hurt you. And...and I split you in half and…”

“Maddie.” Dad finally interrupted the words. “Both of us did that, not just you. That...this is both of our faults.”

The woman looked up, shaking her head. “No. But I’m...I’m the one that shot him, Jack. I...I shot you…” Her eyes flickered to Phantom. “I...I shot you and I’m...I’ve been so scared of hurting you again. I’ve been… been trying to keep you at an arm’s length to protect you. But I didn’t realize I was still hurting you.”

Fenton pursed his lips, at a loss of what to say. His ghost half had no such problem, anger briefly flashing across his face. “Yeah, well...you still did. You still….you still said I’m wrong and unnatural. You still said I’m supposed to be alive, like I have any control over that. You still said I wasn’t supposed to be a ghost.”

Mom glanced down, guilt darkening her checks before she looked up again. “You’re right I did say those things. I shouldn’t...have wanted you to be something you can’t be. It’s just…” She sighed, eyes watering again. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

Ghost Danny grimaced, eyes narrowing harshly. “Really?”

The woman swallowed, looking even more guilty. “At least...that’s not what I intended. I meant...none of this was supposed to happen. The accident… it shouldn’t have happened. You...you shouldn’t have been hurt...you shouldn’t...shouldn’t have d...died because of my...my invention. But…” She gasped, voice trembling. “It was my negligence, my carelessness that did this to you. It was...it was my fault. You never should have been down there. I never should have made you clean the lab. It never should have been your responsibility.” She took a shaky breath. “But when...when I found you down in the basement after the accident..you weren’t...you weren’t breathing.”

Fenton gasped. “Really? I didn’t… I didn’t know that.”

Mom didn’t directly reply, pinching her eyes closed. “That was the worst five minutes of my life. I’d thought...I thought I’d lost you.” The grief was enough to bring new tears to both boy’s eyes. “But...your heart restarted and you seemed miraculously okay after the hospital and then...and then I learned about this…” Her eyes opened, looking at Phantom. “The portal...my portal killed you. It killed you. And...I’m so scared of losing you again. There’s so much I don’t know about ghosts. And-”

“No. Mom, that’s not…” Phantom interrupted. “You didn’t...you didn’t lose me. You’re not going to lose...to lose me.”

“I know that. I know that now.” Mom replied with conviction, looking at the ghost. “You’re still here. And that...that makes me so happy.” One hand moved to cup Phantom’s check. “I’m so happy you’re still here.” Her eyes moved to Fenton, her other hand touching his face. “I’m so happy that you survived. You’re still alive...at least partially.”

The words were not as comforting as she likely intended. The human Danny bit his lip. “But...what if...what if I wasn't?”

“What if I was just Phantom?” His ghost half continued the thought. “What if I was just a ghost?”

For just a brief moment, Mom’s eyes widened in surprise. A complicated mix of emotions crossed her face- wariness, uncertainty, fear, sorrow. Then she swallowed, a new determination passing her features. “Then...it would...it would still hurt but...I’d be happy to still have my son here, even if he was different.”

Ghost Danny didn’t pull away, even as hurt flashed across his features. Instead, his hand reached up to grab the woman’s other arm, the one that was reaching for Fenton’s face. The action drew his mother’s eyes. “But Mom…” He bit his lip. “I’m already different. That’s what I’ve been trying to get you to understand. I’m a ghost...a real ghost. And I don’t... I don’t want to be an exception just because I’m part human or because I’m your son. I just…” Tears ran down his face. “I just want you to accept me for who I am, ghostliness included.”

Mom’s eyes widened again, her hands pulling away. She studied Phantom’s face, before her eyes flickered to Fenton. “You...all of you thinks that.” It wasn’t a question so much as a statement. Then the woman shook her head. “Of course you think that. You keep telling me that and…” An understanding passed over her face. “I’m still not listening. I...I really need to do better, don’t I?”

Fenton and Phantom didn’t say anything. What could they say? It was true and all of them knew it.

“Both of us should do better, Maddie.” Dad spoke, making both boys gasp softly. They’d forgotten that he was here. The man blushed, looking guilty. “I should have noticed what was happening and pushed to talk about things sooner.”

The human felt his heart clinch. Oh how differently things could have gone if they’d tried to have this conversation as the four of them first, instead of Mom and Phantom alone.

Mom shook her head. “That might be true. But… this is on me. I should have noticed.” Her eyes flickered between the two Dannys again. “I shouldn’t have made you feel like this. I was too caught up in my own grief and fear. I haven’t been the Mom that you’ve needed.” She paused, conviction shining in her eyes alongside the guilt. “I should have noticed you were hurting and... it was because of my behavior. I messed up but I want to do better.” She took a breath. “How can I do that? How can I make this up to you?”

For a long moment, both Dannys were silent, processing the apology. Fenton bit his lip. It...it sounded authentic. That conviction, admitting to mistakes, the willingness to take responsibility. And they’d...they had wanted this apology so badly. But...should they trust it? Maybe, start with….

The two Danny shared a glance, contemplating how to reply to the question. Finally Phantom sighed. “We don’t...we don’t know. Maybe…” He wrung his hands in his lap. “Don’t freak out if I use my powers or...you know...talk about being a ghost.”

“Yeah.” Fenton agreed, mustering all the confidence he could. “It’s not like it’s a bad word. It’s just...how I am now and...I’m okay with it.” The boy said the words and for once, no guilt accompanied them. They were...they were the truth.

The same could not be said of their parents. Mom’s lip turned down, her face reddening with guilt. “Sweetie...That...that should go without saying.”

“But,” Phantom softly argued. “You have freaked out….or…” He blushed. “You….well...you’ve looked at me weird, like you’re...un...uncomfortable.” Getting out the words was so hard. “So...so….I don’t feel like I can use my powers or talk about...stuff.”

“Hey, Danny-boy. It’s okay.” Dad said. “We talked about this, remember? You can talk to your Mom and me about anything. I want you to come to us if something’s bothering you. Or if you just want to talk. Or not talk, just hangout. We’re here for you.”

For just a brief moment, the guilt returned. Dad had said that last night. But...both Dannys were still hesitant.

“But you are right.” Mom continued. “This is your home. You’re supposed to feel comfortable here, like you can be completely yourself. And I have not been making you feel that way. And…” She took a breath. “You are a ghost and you have ghost powers. They're your powers.” The words were said with only the slightest hesitance, like they still hurt at some level but...Mom was trying. The woman put hands together, looking more determined. “So how about this? I gave my full permission to train your powers.”

Phantom blinked, startled. “What?” At the same time, Fenton asked more excitedly. “Really?!”

“Yes.” Mom confirmed with a nod of her head. She held up a finger. “In the lab with us and…” She glanced at the other adult, whose eyes shone with a hint of excitement. “We’ll have a training session in the next few days, before we finish with the Ghost Catcher. If that’s alright with you.”

The ghost boy looked at his counterpart before answering tentatively. “Yeah. We can do that but...what about just...general ghost power use?”

Fenton didn’t say anything, pleasantly surprised by the bluntness.

“Danny. They’re your powers.” Mom continued after a pause. “You said...it feels natural to use them. I meant what I said before, it would be cruel to forbid you from flying and… I do trust you.” She vowed. 

There was a pause as both Dannys took in the words, again surprised. Phantom bit his lip. “You do? But…”

Mom reached out to touch his arm. “Yes, Danny. I trust you. And I should have never let that waver, not with this.” She comfortingly squeezed, eyes flickering to Fenton. “I know that having ghost powers hasn’t changed you deep down, not where it counts. You’re still my son who’s responsible and knows to be reasonably careful.”

“And to fess up if you’ve messed up or accidentally broken something.” Dad added with wide affectionate eyes. “Which you probably will. You’ve got my clumsiness.” The corner of his lip turned up. “And those powers are tricky. So, it’ll be alright, right son?”

“Um...yeah.” Fenton replied, with a slight blush as a warm feeling rose in his chest. Did that...was he actually starting to feel better?

“And speaking of fessing up…” Mom said. “I am so proud of you for talking about this with us now. And earlier...it took a while but you told us about your powers and you told us what the ghost catcher really did. And I’m proud of you for that.” The woman offered a slight smile. Then her lips turned down again, more serious. “You trusted me with the truth. And I know I’ve broken that trust. I want to earn it back. So...do you think we can work on that?”

Fenton’s heart squeezed. He glanced at Phantom and… “Yeah. We can...we can try.” And he would try. Both parts of him would but there was a lot of trust that needed to be rebuilt. 

Mom gave a nod. “Alright. We can start with what we talked about, the training and freely using your powers. And…” Her eyes focused on Phantom, eyes again wide with conviction. “From now on, if you’re uncomfortable, tell me. This is your house; you’re supposed to feel like you can be yourself.”

The ghost’s lip twitch. “O...Okay.” Beside him, Fenton swallowed. Well...that was a tall order. He couldn’t...he couldn’t promise that.

Dad seemed to notice the discomfort. “Or tell me.” The man added. “Just don’t keep bottling it all up, son. Your mother and I just want to help you. We want you to be happy and safe.”

“And we’ll do everything we can to do that.” Mom continued. “Is there anything else you need us to do?”

The human Danny bit his lip and glanced at his ghost. Okay...they could consider being more willing to talk to Mom and Dad. And training and using their powers freely was exciting. But still, there was more.

Fenton sighed. “About your theories about ghosts….uhh….” The boy trailed off, unsure where to exactly start on the problems there.

“Your mom and I already talked about rethinking them.” Dad started.

“Or rather, throwing out the old hypotheses all together.” The woman frowned. “We need to look at everything with fresh eyes. And gather more information. Like I said...there’s so much we don’t know.”

“But what we do know is, we can’t assume any ghost we find will be thoughtless or emotionless.” Dad added with a nodd.

“Or malevolent.” Mom said. “We’ll proceed with an open mind and hope for the best. We do want to go through the portal at some point and observe ghosts in their native environment.” The corner of her lip turned up. “Maybe we can find some other humanoid ghosts to talk to...just talk to.” Her expression then shifted, turning more serious. “But...this won’t be until after we get you re-fused. As we’ve said, you’re our priority, Danny.”

Both Dannys nodded, considering the statement. Then Phantom agreed, biting his lip. “That sounds good. I’m...uh...glad you’re gonna rethink studying ghosts. Just talking’s good.”

From his seat in the recliner, Dad’s eyes widened slightly. “Oh, speaking of talking to ghosts…” A hint of excitement lit in his eyes. “You said that you talked to a ghost who helped you find a portal back home. You said he was called...Sidney?”

Mom’s eyes widened, flickered to her husband and then to Phantom. “What?!”

“Uhh...yeah…” The ghost boy rubbed the back of his neck. “His name’s Sidney.” His eyes met Mom’s. “So...long story short, there’s like...a metaphysical line between me and Fenton because...same person. So I...uh...followed it to find him and the line led me to a portal that’s actually in Sidney’s lair and opens up into one of the locker’s at school.”

The woman blinked. “So… you found a portal...inside this ghost’s...lair?” Phantom nodded. “And it leads to...a locker in your school?” This time, Fenton nodded. “And this portal...you got back home through it?” Both Fenton and Phantom nodded. “Which means...you went back through our portal to find me.” Mom blew out a sigh, her voice a mix of surprise, amazement, and a little worry.

“Yeah.” Phantom shrugged, though his cheeks flushed green. “I wasn’t gonna leave you.”

The adult’s face softened. “Oh sweetie…” She shook her head. “So this ghost...you talked to him?”

The ghost boy nodded. “Yeah. He actually taught me some stuff about the Ghost Zone and uhh...ghost etiquette, I guess. And apparently...the ghosts have a word of people like me. We’re called halfas.”

Both adults blinked, taking in the words for a long moment. Then Dad’s eyes lit up. “Halfa! Human you said that earlier, in the Fenton GAV. What else did you learn?!”

Fenton slumped slightly, overwhelmed by the sudden excitement. “Can we...uh..maybe talk about this later?”

Dad’s expression fell, disappointed. A hurt look flashed across Mom’s face. “Danny sweetie...whatever happened, you can tell us. I promise we’ll keep an open mind.”

The human boy’s eyes widened slightly, guilt briefly flaring in him at the reaction. “No Mom, it’s not that. It’s just...there’s a lot.”

Phantom nodded. “I learned a lot. Tons. It’ll be...a long conversation and…”

“I’m tired.” Fenton continued, sudden weariness overtaking him as he yawned. “I heard...I saw everything that happened...in the lab.” He paused briefly, stomach only slightly flopping at the memory.  “And...I got kinda pulled to Phantom when we ran off…” Mom and Dad both looked confused so he clarified. “My part of our mind...It’s like...I wasn’t aware of what our human body was doing because...I was with Phantom.”

Dad frowned. “So...like two people in one body? But...you’re the same person?”

Phantom shrugged. “Yeah it’s confusing. It didn’t last very long but...a lot happened and...I’m tired too...like mentally and emotionally so…” He trailed off, unsure.

Mom’s expression softened. “I understand, Danny. We can talk about that later. You can go upstairs and take a nap if you want to.” She moved from where she was stilling to crouch in front of both boys on the couch. “I’m so happy you’re back and you’re safe.” She leaned forward to kiss Phantom’s head... “And I love you so much. Phantom and Fenton.” And then Fenton’s. “Ghost and Human.” Neither boy flinched at the kiss, nor did they shy away as her eyes met Phantom’s before flickering to Fenton’s. “Thank you for talking to me and giving me another chance.”

“Yeah. Mom. We love you too.” Both Dannys said in synch.

And they did; that had never changed. Everything that had happened before, all the words and actions, all the pain, all of that hurt badly, so badly. But...that was because they loved their parents.

Mom stood and stepped to the side and Dad moved to kneel in her place. His big arms wrapped around the pair. “I’m happy you’re safe too. And...I know it was hard but...I’m glad all of that’s in the open now. Now we can start dealing with it and getting better.”

Fenton squeezed back, returning the hug. “Yeah. You’re right.”

“You’re right. Thanks Dad.” Phantom squeezed as well.

The man pulled away, his eyes watering. He enthusiastically patted both boys' knees. “Now go take that nap. I want you bright-eyed and bushy tailed to tell me all about your adventure in the Ghost Zone.”

That earned a chuckle from Phantom even as he blushed. “Yeah. That’s a word for it.”

Fenton shook his head, the corner of his own lip turning up. He glanced up, catching a slight glimpse of Mom’s subtle smile as Dad stood and stepped back. The human boy rose to his feet. “Come on, Phantom.”

“I’m coming.” The ghost also rose and floated beside his human as the pair went up to their room.

[dannyphantom-justiceleauge]

I'm glad you agree with Dani having wind powers. I have been thinking about the other halfa's and their powers and why they have them. Vlad is fire, which is volatile and hurts others but it can also keep people warm (perhaps there is hope for him in another universe) and is something often used in human invention and Vlad is very smart. Danny is his opposite, Ice. Unlike fire, ice could be used to subdue his enemies without hurting them (1/2)

(2/2) However Ice is also be sharp and dangerous (he can be mean sometimes) and it is cold, which could maybe represent how alone he feels. It could also be tied into his love for space as space is cold. If Jazz was a ghost, I think she would have water powers, since it's like a melted version of her brothers ice (lol). She is cool and collected and prefers to talk things out and understand rather than fight. She can also be rather overbearing sometimes, like an ocean. Sorry if this is long.

~ ~ ~

it’s interesting to think what the various halfa’s elements would be. makes me think of the into the spiderverse au. i like the idea that jazz would be water. it suits her. cool and collected, even sometimes associated with healing. but equally capable of devastation if used for violence. since psychology is her thing, i’d also draw a comparison to that. it’s used to help and heal, but when used by people like spectra it can be the most damaging attack possible. it can destroy people on a level deeper than physical. i’d likewise suggest that jazz would be the one to figure out bloodbending as a concept for this world, but would proceed to avoid using it. if she ever has a dark dan version of herself, i could see Black Jasmine being far more terrifying than him. when jazz goes bad, she’d go really bad

though in terms of what would push her to that point, it think it’d probably be more difficult and less difficult than what happened to danny. she is all about control and discipline. she’d use denial and psychology to manage for as long as possible. that is if it’s something that no one could have predicted or stopped. an accident. but if say it was a failure on the school or societies part... if say a case of bullying landed danny trapped in a locker during a ghost attack, unable to escape, and he died because of an attack that she was involved in. if he died with her not even aware that he was feet from her and in danger...

well i could see her losing herself in her guilt and anger at the world. he could have been saved. if he wasn’t being bullied, if the teachers had done something, if the ghost hadn’t attacked, if she had known he was there. like i said dark jazz is scary.

that aside, i also want all potential halfas to have elements associated with them now. we’re all pretty much agreed that tucker is electric type, due to his love of technology, but also his impulsiveness. electricity can do a lot of damage when not controlled properly and we’ve seen tucker on more than one occasion struggle with control. he’s overconfident and surprisingly reckless at times. when he’s in his element he’s fantastic but he’s been known to abuse power when he has it. i think that would be his main conflict as tucker ghouly, controlling his powers and using them responsibly.

sam would be representative of the element wood. which is associated with flexibility, durability, and strong emotions. because she’s our resident plant girl. she is willful and passionate but also stubborn and demanding. she demands the most of herself but also others, she wants everyone to thrive but sometimes forgets what’s best for her isn’t what’s best for other. her conflict might end up being empathy, because while she has it in spades, she doesn’t always know how to use it, if that makes sense. she tends to take things as a personal attack on her and her veiws when people disagree with her, which can be pretty dangerous, especially when people absolutely have reasons for their own opinions. she needs to learn to listen to others, if she’s going to be a proper hero

that would leave the final element, metal to val. metal is the most stubborn and inflexible of the elements. she’s strong and disciplined, unyielding in her attacks and views. but as we know that’s for better or worse. she really difficult to convince she’s wrong. she’d probably end up being one of the strongest out of them, she’d figure out the most ways to use her powers and how to shape metal to her advantage. i’m actually struck by the fun idea of val using her metal powers to make jewelry and running a small business selling it. this val would still manage to create a body armor and probably be better at maintaining anonymity with her ghost activity. though i also see her as overworking herself. she tries to do everything and ends up failing classes, alienating her friends, and too exhausted to think straight..she became a ghost before she was friends with danny, so i like the idea of them ending up friends, probably during the flour baby episode, and danny being the one to finally convince her to chill out and manage her health better. full human danny, is still all about helping people and is probably more stable and viably smart when he has time to do his homework. he’d probably offer to help her study and manage her business when too busy, and just having someone to lean on means everything to val.

until of course, plasimius kills jack fenton, and danny goes down the path of seeking vengeance and fighting ghosts. i actually don’t thing they’d know each others hunter identities at first, so they’d initially be fighting for real. danny is almost as stubborn as val. (ice is also inflexable until given the time to melt. and cold and harsh and deadly when angry). i see the green hunter being the most dangerous thing val has faced so far because danny is unrelenting. once she figures out who she’s fighting (i see her giving fenton a necklace of a star when he’s human and hunter losing the necklace during a fight and val discovering it and initially thinking it was stolen but figuring out the truth throughout the episode) fighting someone innocent, who’s justified, but still wrong, she’d be forced to learn to be more flexible and understanding, just to convince danny to stop. because let’s be real, she agrees with danny. plasmius killed his father, if she were in his shoes, he’d do the same thing, but she needs him to understand that she’s not the bad guy. not all ghosts are bad.

she’d also need to learn to be more flexible just to fight vlad/plasmius. because he is manipulative and her straight foward way of thinking and fighting would get her in trouble with him. i could see him framing her for a lot. he’d also be hanging around danny as vlad and manipulating danny that way. she’d essentially be fighting 2 different people who turn out to be the same person. vlad, the billionaire friend of the fentons who’s inserting himself into the grieving family’s lives and encouraging danny to fight vigilante justice. and plasmiaus the op ghost who literally murders people who get in his way. vlad would absolutely do everything he can to keep up the facade of innocent human. leaving all the damage to his ghost half. and val would struggle to prove that he’s evil.

that was a bit of a tangent, anyway. all of the halfa’s having elements associated with them and eventually having an ultimate team up in a universe that brings them together to fight something or another. a team up of the elements. vlad being there and joining the team up as still a villain who the team is suspicious of, but who they need to win. perhaps pariah dark escapes again but this time the mech isn’t available. and danny isn’t strong enough to face him alone. so parallel dimension team up. actually maybe not main danny’s universe. maybe it’s one of the other universes that can’t manage pariah dark on their own. possibly val’s again? if jack’s dead they don’t have a mech. might even be able to incorporate maddie inventing parallel-dimensional summoning in her attempts to bring jack back. bonus points if it’s vlad who’s funding this, knowing full well anyone summon would be unstable and turn to goo soon after arriving.

can you tell i love the into the dannyverse au? this was fun - Hestia

@nastyburger @guardianrex @five-rivers @ibelieveinahappilyeverafter @enigmaris

[spinwrites]

the sacrifices of children

Danny Phantom drabble. This is set early on in season 1, in which Danny deals with the emotional sacrifices of getting shot at by his parents. 

Me? A fanfic writer projecting onto this kid? Never.

-

The first time she swung the barrel end of her gun at him, his joints locked up, his mouth went dry, and the ectoblasts in his palms sizzled and popped into nothing. 

“Mom.” 

The wind in the distance between them ripped his word away, and the blast ripped through his stomach.

He didn’t know if it was his stomach for sure – maybe it was his diaphragm, or his kidneys; he was a physics-lover and knew jack shit about physiology – but it rendered him unable to fly. So, he heaved himself out of her line of fire, running for the fall-painted trees rimming the park. The oranges and reds of the foliage burned bright like the afterimage of the white noon sun, superimposed before his vision as he ducked beneath the dark cover of the leaves.

As he trampled further past the branches and twigs that bit at the skin beneath his jumpsuit, this niggled at the back of his mind: he was a ghost, he could turn intangible; he should try. But the thought felt distant compared to the loud crumple of leaves – bled dry, ripped open by the force of their boots against them – and the head-pounding need to get away – from Mom – that he shoved it aside and twisted his head about, praying for a place to hide.

Nothing was making sense. All the trees looked featureless, smears of vibrant autumn color against harsh, dry bark, towering over him. The canopy let in smatterings of light, and his gaze leapt from sunlit patch to sunlit patch, until as if God had given him an answer, a low-hanging tree swollen with leaves lay just out of reach of the light.

White-gloved fingers dug into the bark, and he pulled himself up, biting hard into his lip as he glanced down and strained not to stain the trunk with his ghostly blood. It would be evidence. He couldn’t leave evidence. 

The tree was almost twice his height, and up he scrambled, feeling as though he were reliving his childhood, how Mom had encouraged him to climb up trees with Jazz in another spot in this very park, hands braced at his back in case he fell. He couldn’t not think about it as he made his way up, but when his hand reached for the leaves he grit his teeth and willed himself intangible.

It worked. He crumpled into the indent atop the trunk, feeling his breaths coming in quick. 

And then, oh and then, did the pain set in.

It struck him like a snake in waiting, coldness slithering into his extremities, tears and sweat stinging his eyes. But he didn’t dare close them; he let his vision swim and stay on the crisscrossing of branches and leaves above him. He pressed his lips together, didn’t dare breathe, and strained his hearing for the crunch of footsteps below. 

Leaves crackled.

Was that her? Or was that the wind above?

He wondered, then, if he should turn back human. His mother might have brought along his father’s ghost detection device; she had shown it to him over toast and orange juice that morning. Little hand-held devices with indicators that glowed red in response to ectoplasmic activity within a kilometer’s radius.

But a tiny, wild voice pounded this thought into his head: if he released his hold over his ghost, the ectoplasm would transform into blood, and the blood would sink into the fabric of his white shirt. How could he return to his mother, whom he had abandoned in the park in search of the ghost? How could he look her in the eyes and stammer a lie about why flakes of blood clung to his skin, why its metallic whiff permeated his clothes?

Whose blood is this? He imagined her crying. Who hurt you, Danny?

No. It wasn’t worth a little ectoplasm lost, not when his body could now easily make more.

With the comfort of a decision made, he relaxed into the rough bark against his shoulders, let the branches surround him like the bars of a cage, and prayed he would not be found.

-

Written: 31 May 2020 | DannyMay 2020 Day 29, Heat

[shinegone]

subject  line :   talk  about  dan  and  his  relationship  to  jack . from :  ooc  ,  @pattyurs​

      in  his  early  childhood,  danny  absolutely  adored  his  father.  it  was  safe  to  say  that  he  was  daniel’s  “ favorite  parent ”  on  the  surface.  he  listened  better  --  seemed  to  want  his  attention  more  but  it’s  deeper  than  that.  in  the  five  years  that  jack  torrance  was  in  his  life,  it  was  fraught  with  instability  and  concern.  the  one  constant  in  his  life  was  his  mother,  wendy  providing  nothing  but  safety,  love,  and  unconditional  comfort.  and  danny,  as  a  child  knew  that.  he  didn’t  have  to  clamor  for  her  love,  he  didn’t  wonder  if  she  really  loved  him,  it  was  KNOWN  --  unable  to  be  doubted.  however,  with  his  father’s  volatility,  drinking  and  whiplash  temper  it  left  a  lot  of  unknowns.  there  was  something  in  him  to  earn  his  father’s  love,  doing  all  he  could  to  SECURE  that  affection.  and  that  left  him  leaning  more  towards  him,  his  childish  need  to  be  loved,  to  ‘ not  make  him  mad ’  even  if  there  was  no  TELLING  what  would  trigger  it.

and  then,  jack  broke  his  arm.  it  was  at  a  time  in  his  very  early  childhood  where  he  didn’t  understand  what  he  had  done  wrong.  he  was  three  and  a  half,  almost  four.  at  that  age,  you  take  your  cues  from  your  parents,  you  learn  how  the  world  works  and  what  is  EXPECTED  of  you.  but  with  jack’s  hairpin  temper,  it  was  difficult  to  know  what  was  wrong,  at  the  wrong  time.  and  what  could  be  right  at  a  DIFFERENT  TIME,  but  something  would  make  it  WRONG  as  well.  that  left  him  with  the  concept  of  the  unexpected,  to  be  wary,  to  be  on  your  toes  because  SOMETHING  could  be  the  wrongthing  and  ...  it  was  terrifying.  to  live  with  that,  to  see  that  RED  in  his  father’s  eyes.  but  even  with  jack  only  breaking  his  arm  accidentally  it  always  lingered  in  the  back  of  his  mind.  a  POSSIBLE  OUTCOME.  sure,  he  never  hurt  him  physically  again  ( before  the  overlook ),  and  never  saw  his  mother  be  hurt  but  it  doesn’t  matter.  being  hurt  by  a  parent  revokes  some  of  that  trust,  some  of  that  safety  that  he  should’ve  felt  with  his  father.

but  he  still  loved  him.  he  still  understood  that  his  daddy  wasn’t  bad,  he  just  sometimes  did  --  bad  things.  that  he  drank  and  THAT  was  bad,  calling  it  the  bad  thing.  and  some  of  that  RESPONSIBILITY  that  should’ve  been  put  on  jack,  some  of  that  blame  was  squirrelled  away.  it  wasn’t  his  fault,  he  was  troubled,  and  trying,  and  there  were  good  times  so  . . .  he  couldn’t  build  that  dislike,  that  mistrust.  he  just  had  to  be  careful.  a  sympathy  formed,  and  given  his  psychic  inclinations  to  see  in  people’s  heads  gave  him  INSIGHT  --  that  of  course  he  couldn’t  understand.  an  adult’s  mind  was  busier,  more  complicated  -- the  thoughts  and  concerns  often  getting  away  from  the boy.  but  his  empathy  almost  made  him  split  the  two  jacks.  the  smiling,  happy,  would  help  him  read  and  play  airplane  jack  against  that  angry,  smelling  of  beer  and  gin  --  dismissive  jack.  but  that’s  how  he  had  to  cope,  both  loving  too  much  and  fearing  separation  from  either  parent.

the  overlook,  changed  absolutely  everything  however.  but  danny  was  a  boy  that  loved  his  father  more  than  anything,  knowing  that  he  was  hurting,  but  not  having  the  tools  nor  the  wisdom  to  help.  

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Hello! Could you do ☀️ (sun) for Nate 🌙 (moon) for Jake ❄️ (snow) for Chris 🔥 (fire) for Kauri and 💎 (diamond) for Danny, please?

☀️ What makes your OC genuinely happy? A person, an item, their hobby? Where is the place they’re happiest, or most at home? What is the happiest they’ve ever been?

Nate - Books make Nate happiest. Old books with bindings starting to give from time and a thousand fingers turning the pages. 18th and 19th century books on supernatural creatures, Mary Shelley's invention of an entire genre. These things make him happy. Danny makes him happy, and one day Mina, too. Even Ryan, eventually, though he'll never admit it. As far as place... Other than the house with Danny and Mina, he was happiest in his old roommate's house, before the roommate was murdered and Nate abducted. He was... really happy there, for a while. The happiest Nate will ever be is just... home, with Danny, with nothing hunting them. Safe.

**

🌙 If your OC could have one wish come true what would it be and why? Would there be consequences to this wish or would they regret it once they get what they want? What would they give in return for this wish to come true?

Jake: He would either wish that his dad had never been abusive or that the pet trade would be made illegal tomorrow/had never happened. Both of those things would mean Jake would be someone else entirely and wouldn't have let Chris or any of the other rescues - but also that they wouldn't have needed rescuing. And it might be worth the sacrifice of the people he cares about getting to live better loves where they never needed to meet him.

**

❄️ What makes your OC sad, so sad that they can’t help but cry all day? How do they cheer themself up? Does their sadness upset any of their loved ones too?

Chris: Sometimes he misses people but he can't remember who they are. Only that their absence hurts him nearly physically. Sometimes he misses his Sir on his kind days, the touch of his hands, and he is angry at himself for it. On those days he holes up or watches TV and stares into space or climbs trees to be alone. Sometimes he climbs out onto the roof, up over to the top, and sits there looking down wondering if, even though he is learning to hate his Sir, that he will still miss him forever.

**

🔥 If your OC known for having temper tantrums? If not, what gets them really angry? What makes their blood BOIL? Is there anyway to calm them down or are they unstoppable? What are they like when they’re angry? Do they take it out on their loved ones?

Kauri: He's not exactly known for his temper, but for hiding it. Kauri is an expert at plastering a sunny smile over all his thoughts, no matter how dark. It has never been safe to be angry, so he just isn't. Or you won't know it, unless he cares deeply about you. He and @the-host-and-colton's Dustin/Colton seem unable to interact for more than a couple of days without fighting over some aspect of their very different ways of viewing the world and the dangerous way Kauri lives - and Kauri deals with this anger the way he deals with every vulnerability.

He runs. He disappears for a day, a week, three weeks... Then reappears or answers the phone like nothing ever happened.

What makes him angriest? Treating him like what he wants or feels isn't real or trustworthy. Talking down to him. Telling him not to answer the phone when Dustin calls. Calling @spiffythespook's Jack names because only Jack gets to call himself those things. Anyone being mean to or arguing with Dustin OR Jack, ever, at any time.

Even if he gets mad, though, Kauri can be easily pressured into dropping the anger and needing to make nice, to calm the anger down, to be good. He's easy to threaten and frighten.

**

💎 Does your OC collect anything? Is there a reason? When did they start and is it beginning to turn into a little bit of a hoarding issue? What do they do with their collection?

Danny: unless sweaters count, he really doesn't. Or cookbooks? Both are rooted in the cabin trauma. He never feels warm after spending years malnourished and freezing, and wears sweaters even in summer. With cooking, Bram forced him to learn how to cook and he takes a lot of empowerment from purposefully being an excellent cook but never ever cooking the kind of food Bram liked ever again.

[wastefulreverie]

Phanniemay19 Day 6: Compromise

Word Count: 5029

Genre: Angst

Sequel to Witching Hour and Disappearance.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

The first thing that registered when she woke up is that her back hurt. Like, really hurt. She must've fallen asleep in a weird position. She wasn't exactly in her twenties anymore, per se, she should know better than to fall asleep half-sprawled over the armrest of the couch.

Then slowly, it clicked. She'd fallen asleep on the couch, sobbing into her own arm, far too emotionally spent to move into a more comfortable position. Because Danny had disappeared into thin air, running from her. Because she'd overstepped her boundaries. Because he was afraid of her. Because he was a ghost.

And it was all her fault.

When she had fallen asleep (coward) Jazz had declared she was going to look for him. Accused Maddie of not doing her job as the parent. The rage in Jazz's eyes had been restrained, hidden behind her mask of duty and rationality - making it much more lethal.

While it was tempting to stay crumpled on the couch forever, ignoring the horrifying scenario that had snaked its way into her family without Maddie ever suspecting anything, she had to get up. It was inevitable. She was never going to be ready for this confrontation (you're denying the truth) but she had to do it sometime. And the longer she waited, the further each of her family members drifted away.

The first thing she would do is check if Jazz had returned yet. She wasn't sure where Jazz had gone, but she had said if she wasn't back by morning to call Sam and Tucker… who probably also knew about this entire situation. That revelation in itself stung a bit too; Danny trusted his friends who he met in middle school with the secret of his hybrid nature more than his own mother.

Looking at the time, Maddie concluded that it was well past sunrise: 9:04 a.m. Normally Jack would already be in the lab, bumbling around with that large grin of his, but he was still bedridden with fever. She wished that she had him as support, but she couldn't drag him into this right now. She wouldn't even know what to say, and what worse news could you hear when you're sick besides the fact that your son isdead?

If Jazz was back, she'd probably be in her room by now. You need to go upstairs, stop distracting yourself.

Maddie forced herself to take the first few steps up the staircase, slowly ascending with anticipation. By the time she had reached the top of the stairs, she felt her stomach drop with a combo of relief and guilt. Her mind lagged a few seconds, failing to process the sight before her. Danny was leaning against the doorframe to the bathroom, arms crossed, clearly impatient. Physically, he showed no signs that anything had occurred the night before, but Maddie could read the discomfort in his body language. He was on edge, cautious.

He glared at the bathroom door. "Hurry up, Ja-"

Cutting off suddenly, Danny met Maddie's eyes on him, and suddenly the space between them was suffocating again; all the tension from last night was revived in a single glance.

"M - Mom," he uttered, eyes darting between hers and the door beside him.

Any preparation she should've had for this moment would have been useless. Maddie was dumbstruck, rendered unable to wrack her brain for any appropriate response. She just… allowed herself to slip into a blank slate, staring stupidly at her son. Her obviously terrified son. Those anxious blue eyes… so different from the petrifying green she had seen… yet still the same. He looks so scared of her and it's her fault for creating the circumstances that turned him into this hybrid thing and then she tried to blame him for being what she made him into - a freak, a ghost - and now he's scared more than anything she's going to experiment on him and it's even more messed up since a part of her still wants to experiment on him.

A third voice broke Maddie from her guilty stupor. "Mom? You're awake?" Jazz's voice was different than it had been last night. Today it was calm and scripted, unlike the defensive, accusatory voice from only hours before.

Maddie didn't expect her owned voice to sound so strained when she spoke, "Yeah. Woke up just now."

There was a clicking noise, something being shoved in a drawer, and the door to the bathroom opened. Jazz was donning a green sweater with navy sweats today, hair as silky as usual. Refined, business-like posture.

"Good," Jazz chirped. "I think we should all talk over breakfast this morning. I can make pancakes if you're not in the mood to, Mom," she offered,

Maddie and Danny's replies were instantaneous, uncannily in sync: "I'm not hungry."

Danny raised a brow at his mother's identical reply, but didn't say much. Jazz, not deterred, gave another artificial smile, "Alright, we can all talk in the living room, then."

There was a pause.

"What about Dad?" Danny asked. "Should we… clue him in…?"

Maddie was about to answer when Jazz beat her to it, "He's sick. I think we should hold out on telling him until he gets better. That way we can resolve the current situation first, too."

Maddie had a feeling she was the current situation.

"I still have to go to the bathroom," Danny added. "Since someone took so long."

"My hair takes a long time to shampoo," Jazz shrugged. "Not my fault you didn't want to use Mom and Dad's shower."

For a moment, Maddie thought there might've been a blush on his face, but it receded quickly. "Whatever," Danny scoffed, pushing his way past Jazz into the bathroom.

"Guess it's just me and you," Jazz turned to Maddie once the door was closed. Maddie nodded and they walked to the living room wordlessly.

Jazz sat on the couch while Maddie took a seat in the loveseat opposite of Jazz. There was still an awkward tension hanging over them, and Maddie had no intention of busting that bubble yet. So, instead she allowed Jazz to take the reins the conversation again. Her daughter seemed much more prepared for this anyway; Maddie had no idea how she was doing it.

"So," Jazz tested the waters, "I found Danny in the Ghost Zone last night. I brought him back in the Specter Speeder. We're both alright."

Out of everything, that was the last thing Maddie expected to hear from her daughter. They… both of her children had just simply gone into another dimension without so much as any precaution or regard to the consequences? So many things could have happened - ghosts could have killed both Danny and Jazz and Maddie would never know! The Ghost Zone is the enemy's home territory, humans aren't suited to survive in there!

"That was incredibly dangerous," Maddie lectured. "We don't know what's in there! What were you two thinking?"

"You and Dad don't, but Danny does," Jazz shrugged. "He goes in there all the time. Besides, I imagine that Danny wasn't thinking much when he went in there since he was in flight or fight mode still."

Right… The Ghost Zone was suited for humans… and Danny wasn't one anymore. She had pushed him into running away and that was the first place he fled to in order to feel safe. With each new realization, Maddie gathered a less coherent picture of how innately screwed up their family was.

"Oh, I suppose… that's…"

"We know how to stay safe, Mom," Jazz reassured. "I haven't been in the Ghost Zone many times, but I know not what to do, at least."

Not knowing how to respond, Maddie fell back into silence. Jazz didn't attempt to elicit more conversation from her mother, but Maddie could tell that the cogs in her head were turning, thinking of ways to get her to talk. It was approximately five more minutes (an eternity) before she heard the bathroom door open upstairs and the quiet cadence of footsteps down the stairs. Maddie numbly zoned out, avoiding acknowledging Danny's arrival. He entered the living room much more nervous than earlier and sat beside Jazz.

The silence dragged on for a few more seconds until Jazz coughed, evidently frustrated. "So… how do you feel about Danny being half-ghost, Mom?"

Danny glared at his sister, softly hissing, "A little blunt, don't you think?"

"No one else was saying it," Jazz pointed out. They both turned to Maddie, who was doing her best not to make eye contact.

Of course she'd been expecting something along the lines of that question, but she failed to find the appropriate words. How was she supposed to explain to her children how she felt about this awful, awful secret when she didn't even know herself?

Keeping her gaze trained steadily on the carpet fibers, Maddie pushed herself to speak, "I feel awful that my invention has caused you so much pain, ruined your life and now you have to deal with being this. Something… something unknown. And earlier when I couldn't even see that you were yourself, not overshadowed, that was honest to God terrifying. I don't want you to hurt, Danny." And I hate being the one that has hurt you.

"You don't really have to feel bad about that," Danny's voice wasn't as fearful, but it was still wary. "I don't dislike the way I am now."

She shook her head. He was only content with himself because he had accepted that there was no other way for him to be anymore. And in so, he wasn't acknowledging the severity of how tainted he was. "I know that it's hard to hear, but because you're a ghost the nature inside of you must be malicious, obsessive-"

"Inhuman? Freakish?" Danny suggested. Jazz shot him a look, taking his hand and squeezing it. Maddie couldn't bring herself to finish her thought.

Danny didn't look mad, but his voice was unsteady nonetheless. "I've been afraid of those things for a long time. Afraid of the day I'd see that in myself, too far gone to care, but I'm still me. Yeah sure, I might be a ghost, maybe a little obsessive at best, but I know that I'm a good person. Not all ghosts act like the inhuman beasts you perceive them to be, and no matter how much of a ghost I am, I'll always be myself first."

Maddie was desperate. Even if Danny was okay with being a ghost, wasn't being human still preferable? She had to get him to see that. "But don't you want to be normal, human, alive? Why are you content with the darkness inside of you?"

Without missing a beat, Jazz countered, "Isn't battling your own darkness the essence of being a human being?"

"Well, yes," Maddie conceded, "but isn't it still better to be human? To be like everyone else?"

"Besides a few powers, how is being a hybrid so different than being human?" Danny challenged.

"... I don't know. That's why I want to know - why I want to… to check-"

But of course, last time she tried to check Danny had ran off and disappeared. But he wasn't giving her much to go off of; how was she supposed to know what being a hybrid entailed when he didn't tell her much?

He sighed, "Mom-"

"I know you're not comfortable with that. I understand that… now," she bit her lip. "But - but you have to throw me a bone here. Give me a basis to understand what you are."

Danny finally let go of Jazz's hand and soothed the back of his neck. Maddie recognized that movement as one of his nervous ticks. "Well," he pondered, thinking hard, "my heartbeat is slow but it's still there. I have to breath, eat, sleep. My body temperature runs about 85F. Whenever I bleed in this form I bleed red with green mixed in. And I have basic ghost powers."

That was a lot to digest. He was still alive, still had a heartbeat and body temperature but they were abnormal. He still needed to intake energy, rest, and respire as well - which were foolhardy indications of being alive. From an outsider's perspective, it seemed that he was on the fine line between being both dead and alive; it was fascinating yet ultimately confusing. That, and there was still something he said that piqued her interest. Something off...

Addressing his slip up, Maddie asked, "... what do you mean 'in this form'?"

Danny froze like a deer caught in headlights and for a moment she doubted that he did need to breathe; it seemed like his breath completely stopped in his throat. "I-..."

Presumably understanding the reason for her brother's petrication, Jazz stepped in. "Danny is still a hybrid, and as a result of his dual DNA, he has a more ghostly form that slightly alters his external appearance. He doesn't transform much though," she added quickly.

Danny nodded numbly at her explanation and Jazz gulped.

"So you can look like a ghost too?" Maddie tried to imagine Danny appearing as a full-ghost and illustrated a mental image of how he appeared last night, just deader. Translucent skin, floating hair, blue lips… and those green eyes. The picture disturbed her and she shuddered, almost wanting to pound it out of her brain by smacking herself.

"Yeah," he answered. He didn't elaborate more.

That added another degree of how inherently inhuman Danny must be, to be able to willfully look dead - yet he was still content with that aspect of himself? She still couldn't comprehend how much internal turmoil he must've gone through to accept what she'd done to him.

"And you're still okay with… this?" She couldn't mask the disbelief in her tone.

"I still feel like myself, even though I'm not human I've accepted this part of me," he admitted. "It was hard at first but now I don't know how I'd live without being part ghost."

Live without being part ghost, how ironic.

"So... are you okay with this mom?" Jazz followed up. "Do you still want to remove Danny's ghost side?"

Feeling the pressure that this question posed, she ran a hand through her hair in a hopeless attempt to distract from the stress. "Personally, it'll take me some getting used to. I… I'm not sure if I'm okay with the idea that there's a part of you that's unpredictable, but... if you're okay with it, that's what matters. I still want… I still want to run some tests though, make sure that you're correct about what you've told me, that you're not at risk of dropping dead at any minute."

Danny cringed. "I still don't know if I can say yes to that."

"I mean…" Jazz said, "it's not like she's doing it out of morbid curiosity, Danny. I know your fears, your... past experiences… but Mom wants to help you, and since none of us are belittling you as a lab rat, I think it may be worth it to get a better idea of your biology."

He shook his head, "I - I can't. Tests are… experimentation… is something I can't do."

She was hoping he would understand her concern, but apparently this fear ran deeper than she initially perceived. (He hadbelieved he was in a nightmare last night, an intrusive thought nagged, a recurring nightmare where you experiment and torture him. How can you be so insensitive about his obvious phobia?)

"Danny," she did her best to tread carefully, to explain why these tests were crucial, "it's important to me to understand that you're okay. You trust me that I wouldn't hurt you, right?"

Danny paled, "I do, but… it's still something I can't do. I'm not comfortable with it. I know we established that I'm a ghost… but it doesn't feel nice to be treated like a specimen."

He really did have a disturbing idea of what 'tests' Maddie would be running. But supposing her past declarations of what she'd like to do with ghosts in the lab… that reaction wasn't unwarranted.

"It won't be like that, Danny," she reassured. "I'd never treat you like that. It'll be like a doctor's appointment."

"It's just hard…" he placed his head in his hands. "That's a big fear of mine and I've had bad experiences." Jazz stiffened next to him and Maddie sensed that there was more to that 'bad experience' than he was letting on. "But I… guess I can… agree to some tests, not all of them. And I can walk out whenever I want," Danny set his conditions.

"That's fine, I suppose," she nodded. She was genuinely surprised that he was agreeing. "But what experience are you talking about?" she questioned. "Has someone already tried to…?"

He spoke faster than he thought, "It was just another ghost," he decided. "All the other ghosts know about what I am and one of them just wanted to compare me to him. I got out of it mainly unscathed, but it wasn't fun, for sure."

His words took a moment to process. "The ghosts know that you're… a hybrid?" Parental concern gripped Maddie. She hadn't realized that Danny was involved with other ghosts enough for them to pick up on the fact that he was a half-ghost. She could picture that other ghosts would be jealous of his physiology: having access to ghost powers while still being alive. "Have any of them come after you because of that?"

There was recognition in his express. He didn't have to say anything for Maddie to know that the answer was yes. Other ghosts did come after him because he was a hybrid. It was explain some things, the occasional injuries he sported that he attested to 'clumsiness'. Horror dawned on Maddie and she realized that it was too late to wish that Danny wouldn't be hurt by this situation, he'd already been hurt in so many ways and she was just late to the party. No one had clued her in and she felt slightly betrayed.

"Not gonna push it," Jazz intervened, "buuut this would be a good time to segue into that other thing." She gave Danny a pointed look and he glared back.

A different sort of acknowledge became visible in Danny's expression. He leaned closer to Jazz, but Maddie could still hear what he was saying. "We just established peace and now you're trying to make Mom hate me again?" he hissed.

Jazz rolled her eyes, unimpressed. "All I'm saying is the longer you don't tell her, the worse the eventual explosion is going to be."

Maddie picked up on what this was fairly quickly: they had another secret.

"What are you talking about? There's more?"

"Well, you see, Mom," Danny started nervously. The tone of his voice was more on edge than it had been all morning, which worried her immensely. "Jazz mentioned that I have another form where I look more ghost-like?" Where was he going with this? "You kinda already know what I look like in that form."

She pieced what he was saying together,

"What are you saying? That you go around town as a ghost?" then a scarier realization hit her. "Have I… tried to hunt you before?"

"Uh, yeah. A lot," he fidgeted in his seat. "I'm sorta Phantom? And I try to protect the town?" he voice came out strained and squeaky, suggesting it was physically painful to say.

Honestly, with all of the new revelations she'd already had, she'd lost her ability to be shocked by the one she'd had last night. The fact that Danny was Phantom oddly didn't leave as much of a horrifying impact than the fact that he was a ghost. Even though she should be freaking out, she wasn't. Maybe she was still in denial? She'd been in denial all morning, maybe this was just an extension of that. But when she thought about it, it felt right. It pieced everything together and made sense that Danny was Phantom. Because why not? Why not another gigantic secret on top of the one she'd already learned?

All those times that she ranted about capturing Phantom and Danny would look so uncomfortable he'd leave the room, a pensive look masked with boredom. All those times she accused Phantom of kidnapping the mayor, property damage, theft, endangerment, and a specific time she swore to hunt Phantom for endangering Danny for 'stealing his face'... Danny had heard all of those threats. And he would quietly suggest otherwise, that Phantom was trying to do well and that maybe his crimes were just misunderstandings. And she'd chide him for supporting an evil ghost, that he didn't understand that Phantom's hero charade was only that: a charade.

Consequently, there were the times when Phantom felt far too much like a person that she retaliated by convincing herself he was a master manipulator. Floating smugly in city hall, shooting and her and Jack and then looking stricken with horror after realizing what he'd done. Looking small and terrified inside of that metal ghost's net, thrashing to escape his captor. (She'd been so jealous then, she'd wanted to be that captor.) A online video of Phantom with his fans, playfully cracking jokes like a teenager who had forgotten that he wasn't one of the living anymore.

Offering himself to Jack when a bounty was placed on his head, knowing that Jack was depressed because he couldn't adequately capture a ghost. Calls from Mr. Lancer that Danny had ran out in the middle of class, calls from Sam and Tucker frantically asking if Danny was home. Those nights that Danny wouldn't be in his room, but Phantom would be in the sky. And she'd always force herself to wait to hunt Phantom until Danny was home, but by that time Phantom would disappear.

Dark eyebrows, roughly the same height, messy hair that never seemed to stay down. Blue but green eyes, white but black hair. They really were… the same.

"Okay," she nodded. It all made sense, and it wasn't like she could argue.

Danny and Jazz shared a pointed look. Danny breathed out slowly, skepticism lingering in the atmosphere of the room.

"Okay? Just… 'okay'?"

Jazz couldn't keep herself from butting in, "Mom, you understood what he meant right? That he's Danny Phantom?"

Maddie was tempted to laugh, but restrained herself. That wouldn't look good on her part. "Yeah, at this point, what else can surprise me, though?"

She observed Danny, who was gaping like a fish. It was really odd, that she could see some of Phantom's features in him now. Like something had been peeled back and an entirely new personality traits were visible. It was half a minute later she realized she'd been staring for a while, and she averted her gaze. That action probably hadn't left the impression that she was accepting him. Because she was trying to.

"True, I guess?" his voice cracked. "So - uh, are you mad? I know it looks like I've done a lot of stuff…."

Now that he brought it up, she wasn't exactly angry, but mainly concerned. Danny always tried to tell her Phantom was doing good, but those attempts didn't erase his poor actions. "Well you sort of have done stuff," she crossed her arms. "You kidnapped the mayor. And stole all that jewelry and-"

"Danny doesn't have a good relationship with the press," Jazz interrupted. "Both of those incidents were framed." That wasn't much, but it explained some things.

Danny took his explanation from there, "After I got my powers ghosts started attacking. That was back when I was still learning to control myself… trying to figure out what to tell you…. After the first few ghosts, I just knew that I had to do it, since nobody else was. I think since my core was still developing, that's also when my obsession," he admitted bitterly, "became about protecting people. And so the ghosts figured out pretty quickly I was half human and most of them don't care, besides trying to throw me off of them so they can do what they want in the human world."

This entire other life Danny led really was on another plane than her own. He said he was okay with his life, but she couldn't still understand how he could be. She already knew it, but she felt like she needed to emphasize the fact that it was happening, "So you do fight ghosts."

He shifted awkwardly, "I mean… I know how to deal with them now."

He was constantly in danger, going from moment to the next waiting for his next fight, avoiding ghosts and also ghost hunters. Her…. She turned him into a hybrid and hunted him. What kind of mother was she? How could she be so ignorant? This was the true hazard of having her child being a ghost, dealing with her own guilt. This is why she had been in so much denial. She couldn't let this continue. Sure, she couldn't change that Danny was a ghost, probably forever - but she could stop his ghost hunting. Take that burden away from him. Pull him out of the fray, because what would she do when a ghost or another hunter finally succeeded in hurting him? Where could they go from there?

She voiced her concern. "I don't want you to anymore. Fight ghosts."

He responded without hesitation, "I can't do that either. Protecting this city isn't only my obsession, it's my duty. Who else would protect the town next time we're invaded? No offense Mom, but no one else can do what I do."

"But it's not safe for you," she argued. She knew that her protest was probably in vain, she was trying to negotiate Danny's obsession, something that ghost's responded poorly to.

"I know the risks, and I can sacrifice a little of my well being if it means everyone else is alive," he countered predictably.

"Not to mention," Jazz added "but being Phantom allows Danny to maintain his obsession healthily. I've read your notes about when ghosts are depraved from their obsession - would you want that to happen to Danny? In a way this is improving his health."

In her observation, ghosts depraved from their specific fixation rapidly grew ill, depressed, stressed, and violent. After a few days, some ghosts would dissolve completely without anything to pursue. The thought of that happening to Danny was worrisome… but that didn't excuse the fact that he was still getting physically hurt. There was also his lack of daily coordination and suffering grades that now had a attributable source.

"That aside," she leaned forward in her seat, "as your mother, I can't just allow you to run into danger every day."

His face darkened, "So you'd rather Amity Park be overrun by ghosts?"

"No! Of course not." This conversation was going nowhere. "But you come first."

Danny looked taken aback, as if he had forgotten that she's supposed to care for him, does care for him. Just when it felt like Danny was going to respond, Jazz took the floor.

"May I offer a compromise?" she suggested. "A way for Danny to fulfill his obsession, keep the town safe, and have less risk of hurting himself?"

Maddie was open for any scenario where Danny was less likely to get hurt at this point. "I'll hear it."

Danny on the other hand… "I don't think that's possible, Jazz. I haven't exactly had the best luck so far with doing that."

Jazz ignored his doubt and turned to Maddie instead. "You and Dad - once we tell Dad of course - can provide tech support for Danny, assist in ghost hunting, and give him a curfew so he doesn't wake up to fight the Box Ghost five times a night."

Danny deflated at the jab about the Box Ghost but didn't speak up.

"You think that'd help?" Maddie asked.

"Well," Jazz contemplated, taking a moment to poke Danny in the shoulder, "I know that Danny is usually safer when he has a team of people to back him up. He hates it though since he's always afraid we'll get hurt too."

If Maddie hadn't been paying apt attention, she would've missed the flash of green in Danny's eyes. "And you will, that's an awful idea! A curfew won't stop my ghost sense."

Jazz looked at him, not bothering to filter the exasperation in her tone, "Then Mom and Dad will make something to temporarily disable your ghost sense while you sleep."

Maddie backtracked for a moment A 'ghost sense', like another power of his? She'd dabbled in enough technology to disable specific ghost powers, so it probably wouldn't be difficult to calibrate it to Danny based off the results of the tests he agreed to do. Anything to help him get more sleep and avoid danger. "Yeah," she confirmed, "I can do that."

Danny still wasn't convinced, "What if there's a powerful ghost and I'm too asleep to stop it?"

It was noble that he cared so much about the welfare of the town, but at this point he was refusing to accept that they were willing to support him. "Then we'll calibrate our ghost sensors to alert the entire house if a ghost over a certain power level breaks through the portal," Maddie supplied.

"You guys could still get hurt though!" Danny still protested.

Maddie glared, "And if you continue the way you're going, so will you."

He fell silent, trying to find a logical argument to combat her words. Eventually, he sighed and gave in. "I guess we could give it a try. I don't like the idea of a curfew though, and if you don't show up in time to stop the threat, I won't hesitate to cut school to fight ghosts. Otherwise… I agree. Compromise?" he offered weakly.

Maddie smiled for the first time that day, feeling a vague sense of ease. She was still terrified about everything she'd learned, but at least Danny was open to try to be more cautious. "Compromise."

[foofightersfanfiction]

Chapter 108

Rachel's POV

Back in their hotel suite, Rachel flopped on the bed and Taylor slid up next to her.

'Dave and Jas will be OK, won't they?' she asked as she unbuttoned her jeans and kicked them off her legs. 'She was really pissed off at him.'

'Yeah, what was up with that?' Taylor said, his hands slowly making their way up her top—not easy, given how tight it was. 'Did she want to keep it to herself, or something?'

'Sort of. We did for a while,' she pointed out. 'Plus, she hasn't had a chance to let her family know. They're not going to be happy that they didn't hear it from her first.'

'I suppose.' Taylor just looked at her and smiled. 'Although if it were me and I were marrying Dave, I'd be telling everyone I fucking came across.'

'Course you would,' Rachel laughed. 'I wouldn't expect anything else. Although, I have to ask, is this something I'm going to have to worry about? Always wondering if you love Dave more than you love me?'

Taylor gave a loud burst of laughter. 'It's about the same.'

Rachel pretended to think about it for a minute. 'I think I'm able to live with that.' She yanked her top over her head and kissed Taylor firmly, pushed him onto his back and perched herself onto his lap. 'Well, this hardly seems fair.'

'What's not fair?'

'I'm sitting here in nothing but my underwear,' Rachel said, 'and you still have your clothes on.'

'Well,' said Taylor, yanking his sweaty ABBA shirt over his head and tossing it on the floor, 'I know exactly how we can remedy this situation.'

'Tay!' she squealed as he kissed her neck. 'You're all sweaty!'

'You think that'll stop me?' he growled and flipped her over.

 *****

Not for the first time did Rachel find herself unable to sleep. She knew she should really try, but sometimes she felt just wanting to soak up every part of Taylor's physical presence before the inevitable long stretch of time they'd be apart.

Plus, she was starting to feel quite restless. She decided she would go for a walk and bargained that it would only be within the confines of the hotel. As smart as she knew she was being alone at night, she didn't want to take any chances.

As she walked through the empty and dead-quiet corridor, she let her mind wonder to the last time she had visited New York. It had to be…when she and Jasmin visited Danny and Anouk. That had been a weird week, only made horrible by that demented man who'd spiked her drink and had followed her around all week. How could he have possibly thought himself in love with her? Male entitlement seemed to know extremely few, if any, bounds.

 Rami and Dave were down at the bar with Rami playing the piano. Rami was having a go at Bohemian Rhapsody, albeit softly, as if he didn't want to wake up the entire hotel. Neither of them heard Rachel step ever-so-softly into the room.

'That sounds great,' she said, which got his attention.

'I don't really get to play it much,' he admitted. 'Dave's usually in charge of the set list, and he always picks Under Pressure as the Queen song.'

'That's for Taylor, more than anyone else,' Dave chuckled.

'Well, you play better than me, anyway,' she said as she sat next to him. 'I can't play at all, much as I'd like to.'

'You never learnt?' Dave asked.

'Nah,' Rachel shook her head, running her fingers over the keys. 'My parents wouldn't have paid for me to learn that as well as guitar; it was one or the other.'

'I can give you a few lessons, if you want,' Rami offered.

'Really?' Rachel smiled widely, touched by his gesture. 'I wouldn't want to be taking advantage of you…'

'Oh fuck no.' Rami waved his hand flippantly. 'You're Taylor's girl; I'm happy to do it.'

Rachel wove her arms around Rami's neck and planted a kiss onto his cheek. 'You're now my favourite Foo.'

'Hey!' Dave protested.

Dave's POV

After an hour of assing around the piano, and having Rachel talk him out of stealing a bottle of Jack Daniel's from the bar, Dave escorted her back to her suite.

'I bet this exceeds the hostel you stayed at last time you were here,' he grinned goofily.

'Oh, definitely,' said Rachel. 'But then again, I'm no stranger to nice hotels. Dad always liked to take me there when I was little.'

Dave slowed his pace. This was the first Rachel had talked about her father in ages without hostility dripping from her every word.

'Do your parents know you're engaged yet?'

'I'm certain they do,' she replied. 'I know Janey told them months ago. What I'm surprised about is the fact they haven't said anything to me. They haven't called, emailed, written or bang my door down with a bottle of champagne and congratulating me for it. So I'm not sure what gives.'

'Well, I don't know your dad,' said Dave, 'but I can't believe he'd act this way around you. I'd never in a million years treat Harper and Violet like this.'

'Well, that's because you, Taylor and the other guys are the greatest dads I know,' said Rachel. 'There's no doubting your love for your kids.'

'Speaking of doubts, does…does Jasmin ever have doubts about our relationship?'

'A few,' Rachel admitted. 'Sometimes she feels as if she's not enough for you because you come home from tour and you leave on another one just as quickly.'

Dave furrowed his eyebrows, as if he didn't like what she was saying.

'Look,' she continued, 'I don't know how affectionate you two are when you're alone and I don't want to know. But I certainly don't doubt you are committed to her after today. Although it wouldn't hurt to let her know that more often.'

As she walked off, Dave was left confused.

'How could Jasmin think I'm not committed?' he said quietly. 'I asked her to marry me, for fuck's sake!'

[cowandcalf]

An Ode To My Inner Fangirl - an effort to explain

It happens again...

I'm never prepared when she closes in with this immense power.

For days now I've been nervous, agitated and on edge. The soft flutter when she strolls by is gentle, as soft as a breeze against my skin. She's never far away and she waits until I'm ready. I've been kneeling by the water of my inner sea, waiting for her. This morning she has come to get me, piercing through the surface of my inner sea of feelings, her eyes on me. I can hardly wait with my yearning constantly poking my inner world. She reaches out to me and I take her hand. She pulls me under and I'm floating, drowning at first until I remember how to breathe in this world. I'm neither afraid of the darkness nor of the unknown. My heart trusts her. She'll lead me to the right places. She'll take care of me because she knows that I want to be consumed – want to be swallowed whole.

We reach a depth where I've never been so far. The beauty takes my breath away. I have no orientation but the entity by my side caress my skin, makes sure I'll find my way through the maze of my soul. She takes my hand when we enter this new realm. My body reacts physically when I breach the soft membrane that separates my normal self from my inner alter ego, my fangirl. We merge, melt into one – so blissful.

It has happened already before, one single time. I've never thought I would ever feel that passionate again, so desperate, that I would ever feel this richness of feelings once more. But then, here I am. I want to be inhaled like smoke, like fog in the air. I want to hand over the control to my fangirl because she's the only one who understands what I need.

My precious boys you won't let me sleep you won't let my mind rest.

Steve McGarrett and Danny Williams won't let me calm down. There are no moments anymore without them wandering through my mind. The boys and their love for each other rule my thoughts, for months now. Alex and Scott slip out from their characters into their real self and I just can't breathe…

I dive without resistance into my inner circle of my soul. The boys and all the thoughts about them become a part of my atomic structure. I can't stop thinking about them.

It should be scaring but it isn't.

It has happened in 2005 for the first time. She's slept for years, not moving, not jerking, just being there, floating around in my subconscious. Silent, so still. Brokeback Mountain – Jack Twist and Ennis de Mal, gay cowboys. I needed to see that movie. I did, and I've got emotionally electrocuted.

My fangirl burst to life, in deep shock, clinging to the walls of my soul, spying through my eyes with my heart pounding in my throat. She bucked like mad and it took me a whole week to strangle her into submission, to tie her down, to gag her and to make her shut up. I turned my back on her, unable to stand this power of feelings. I drew my walls up and I cut every connection to this movie and to my fangirl. I couldn't stand the rawness, this fucking energy that she’s kicked to live in my core. I couldn't.

Nine long years passes by.

She waits. She lurks. Tied up, gagged and so there – during all those years, strong and vivid and always it the back of my head. I've felt her, felt her moves, felt the motion of the waves in my soul when she lazily kicks my blood. Her time would come.

A task has brought it up that I dared to re-watch Brokeback Mountain. I was a trembling mess. I was alone for fourteen days and I had the nights to myself. I could only stand single scenes. I've watched them on repeat… for two weeks. I watched specific scenes hundreds of times and then again. And I cried. I cried a river, I cried buckets – and it hurt. I couldn't breathe and I watched …

...and I unleashed her.

She has waited for that specific moment. I cut her free, unable to go through all this pain without her by my side and she roared to life! Unstoppable, powerful and awful in her ravaging beauty. She was spreading into the tiniest corner of my soul, like tentacles, she licked further until she has covered my inside like a blanket, filling me up, swallowing my thoughts, infiltrating, worming her way into each cell – changing me, altering my soul.

My fangirl took over.

I've handed her the reins. She has swallowed me whole. I've bathed in my fangirl's thoughts, in her feelings. I let Brokeback Mountain consume me. Everything was filled with Jack Twist and Ennis del Mar, with Brokeback Mountain. I've vanished into a realm I've never visited before. And I've discovered fanfiction and I've read thousands of stories about Jack and Ennis. My chest ached for months. I lived through the worst lovesickness I've ever experienced. I woke up in the middle of the night, worrying about Ennis and about Jack – I was unable to think about anything else.

Until after fourteen long, painful months my fangirl calmed down to find her peace with what happened to Jack and Ennis. I could hold her in my arms, feel her in my heart and there was no need to tie her down anymore. She was free. She breathed me in and I was happy to let her. She's part of my soul now and I'm her shell where she finds shelter.

Until now – when it has been that time again, where she has arisen from the depth of my soul again to meet me for Steve and Danny, for Alex and Scott.

The journey has begun – I'm ready.

I never will fully understand her incredible beauty and her power.

Here I stand with tears in my eyes.

And this pressure in my chest.

I'm ready for this intense trip.

Ready to be taken once more.

Ready to feel how she breathes the air from my lungs.

Ready to let her be part of my heartbeat.

To let her look through my eyes.

To let her to lead me to where I need to be. She stills this longing, this inner fire.

Be my inner light –

Feed my emotions and with an everlasting burning only you can produce.

My beautiful, faceless fangirl.

I'll never fully understand the power you hide and why you awake at certain times, taking me on a journey I never knew I would need.

But I do, every time. I do.

Let's ride. The boys are waiting.

[freshwater--mermaid]

Ersatz Ch 24: A Tourist in the Waking World

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The realisation that his secret was temporary.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What are you?" Danny humored him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tucker shivered, this time not from the cold.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Mr Masters?" Danny shouted out in shock.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then everything went black.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[navpike]

Things Unseen: Chapter 1

The McGarretts and the Kelly-Kalakauas have been working together as spirit-speakers and anchors for generations. When Steve returns to Oahu amidst his father’s death and a failed mission, the one thing he’s looking forward to is finally having the ease of working with an anchor as powerful as him. Danny Williams throws a wrench in his plan.

Because Danny, despite the supernatural beings all around them, does not believe in ghosts. And Steve is starting to fall in love with him anyway.

[on ao3]

When Steve is in high school, his father finally partners with his true anchor. Steve meets Chin Ho Kelly after his first football game of the season, when his father drags the rookie cop down towards the field with a proud look on his face.

“Steve, I’d like you to meet Chin Ho.” Steve thinks that Chin Ho looks a little uncomfortable. He sticks out his hand with a smile anyway.

Chin Ho takes it.

“Nice to meet you, Chin Ho. Steve McGarrett,” Steve introduces himself, as though Chin Ho doesn’t already know that.

Chin Ho smiles, and says, “Just call me Chin. We’re practically family now, brah.”

Steve’s eyes widen and he looks to his father for confirmation, and he gets a small nod in response.

Chin shakes his head when he sees Jack’s answer, and elaborates on his own. “Your father’s my training officer with HPD, but more than that, it looks like I’m his anchor. Looks like you won’t be having to put up with my Auntie Launa whenever your dad needs to go on a visit.”

Jack actually smiles at that.

The McGarrett family and the Kelly-Kalakaua family have been tied together for generations, dating back farther than Steve cares to look. The McGarretts are spirit-speakers, able to communicate with unseen entities and the spirits of the deceased, the most powerful of their kind in the past several hundred years. The Kelly-Kalakauas have always been their anchors, the only ones powerful enough to tie a McGarrett to the physical world when they go to visit one of the Unseen. Without an anchor, a spirit-speaker would become untethered, their own essence detached from their body and unable to find its way back. They would die and become one of the Unseen themselves. But with an anchor, they could move back and forth between the world of the Seen and the Unseen with ease, so long as they didn’t stray too far.

A spirit-speaker could work with any anchor safely, as Jack had been doing with Chin’s Auntie. But in order to use their power to its fullest, a speaker needs their true anchor, or they could easily get lost in the Unseen, even with an anchor’s best efforts.

Steve wonders which of the Kelly-Kalakaua clan he’ll end up pairing with, knows it's inevitable that he’ll end up with one of them as his guide. It’s beyond just a tradition. Their families are so deeply connected, it’d feel wrong to work with anyone else as his anchor, he’s sure of it.

Steve looks at Chin and his father, looks at the way they already seem so at ease with each other, and he wonders.

~*~

Steve’s mom dies, and everything changes so suddenly that it sends Steve reeling.

Mary gets sent to live with their Aunt Deb, who didn’t inherit the spirit-speaker gene, just like Mary didn’t. Steve gets shipped off to Annapolis with a recommendation from his dad’s buddy Joe White. Chin is there with their father to see them off at the airport, and as they part Steve thinks about how now, he’ll never know who his true anchor is, and he’s hit with an overwhelming sadness for a brief moment.

By the time he’s stepped off the plane, he’s got all of that feeling of hurt and sad and loneliness tucked away in a neat little box in the corner of his mind.

There are plenty of anchors in the world. If the Navy decides to make use of his abilities, they’ll find him an anchor and he’ll do what he needs to and it’ll be fine. He’ll just have to be careful.

He can do this.

~*~

Freddie Hart is the strongest anchor Steve’s met outside the Kelly-Kalakaua family. It takes work, but they both make it through Annapolis and through BUD/S and the second they graduate, Steve requests that Freddie be assigned to him as his anchor. Spirit-speakers never know when their abilities might come in handy, and wouldn’t it be safest to have Freddie always by his side, in case Steve needs to make a visit?

The higher ups grumble a little bit about mediums being weird, and their dislike of the Unseen, but they agree it’s safest for Steve to have Freddie on standby, and from then on, they’re joined at the hip.

Freddie is a good anchor for Steve when he needs to make a visit. Steve is a good anchor for Freddie when the distance between him and his fiance weighs on him and he needs someone to assure him that this is all worth it. Freddie isn’t Steve’s true anchor, but he’s more than good enough. Steve can’t tap into the fullest extent of his power with Freddie, it’d be too dangerous for them both, but he can access enough of it for he and Freddie to be near indispensable for many ops. This thing that they have is good, and it’s enough to quiet the ache that raged in Steve’s chest the entire time he was without an anchor.

And then one day, Steve’s on base with Freddie and Joe White, and he feels the telltale pressure behind his eyes, the buzzing in his throat that means there’s someone trying to talk to him. He smacks Freddie on the arm because his voice is currently failing him, and Freddie clasps Steve’s hand between his own, and Steve lets go of his control.

He floats for a minute, untethered and lost, before Freddie’s voice snaps him back to attention.

“Come on Steve. Someone’s waiting on you. Who is it?”

Steve gets his legs under him and looks around the empty, hazy void of the Unseen, to find whoever had wanted to talk. There’s a young man, dressed in rags, with a gunshot wound in his forehead. His eyes are glazed over, but he still stares directly at Steve, making truly unnerving eye contact.

He tells Freddie what he sees. His lips move, but he hears his voice in his head, not in his ears. He’s speaking to Freddie, not the spirit.

To the spirit, he says, “Why did you come to me?”

The spirit responds, and then dissipates and Steve snaps back into his body with a ragged gasp, and  an, “I know where Anton Hesse is.”

A few days later, he wishes he had ignored the spirit.

Because now Freddie is dead and so is his dad and Steve feels like a hole has been punched straight through him. Freddie was a part of him, even though he wasn’t Steve’s true anchor. He and Steve had bonded in a way he couldn’t describe, Freddie had been in his head, in his soul, had probably known Steve better than Steve knows himself, and now Steve is suddenly, horribly, painfully alone.

All he wants is to ask his dad how he handled losing his mom, because Steve is certain this is that bad, but he doesn’t even have his dad anymore. He returns to Hawaii and barely pauses to bury his father before he’s off after Victor Hesse.

Danny Williams is a setback, at first and then a tentative ally, but Steve needs more than that. He needs more than just a detective from Jersey with an attitude and fresh eyes. He needs someone who knows the island and who he can trust and he needs someone to help him use his fucking abilities because a spirit has been pulling at his mind since he touched down on the island.

He needs one of the Kelly-Kalakaua family.

It just so happens he now has the means to find one.

~*~

Chin Ho Kelly working as a rent a cop is not something Steve would have ever imagined, but here they are anyway. Danny eyes him up suspiciously with a raised eyebrow.

“This is the man who’s gonna help us crack this case? What are you, nuts?”

Steve shakes his head. “Chin was my father’s anchor. He’s a great cop and a good man.”

“If he’s such a great cop why is he working in this dump?” Danny asks and Steve scowls. “And what the hell are you talking about anchor?”

“My dad was a spirit-speaker, like me. Chin was his anchor. My family and Chin’s have been tied together like that for generations. If I hadn’t gone to Annapolis, I would’ve worked with people in his family until I clicked with one of them, and they would’ve been my anchor, instead of the man I worked with in the service.”

Danny scoffs, and turns to face Steve head on, stopping them in their tracks on their way to Chin’s new place of employment.

“You’re telling me, honestly telling me, that you are a medium, and that we’re here to pick up your guide?”

“That’s what they’d call us on the mainland, yeah. But Chin’s not my guide. He was my dad’s. Still, I can’t visit the Unseen world without an anchor to tether me here or I might as well be signing my own death warrant. So I need to borrow Chin until I can find Hesse.” What he doesn’t say is that he needs to borrow Chin so that he can get the spirit that’s following him to lay off. Danny doesn’t need to know that.

“You’re actually certifiable, you know that? You honestly expect me to believe that you talk to ghosts? What the hell is the matter with you? We’re actually trying to solve a case here. Your father’s murder to be specific, and you’re trying to play a practical joke on me?”

“No joking about it brah,” someone says, and Steve smiles when he looks up to see Chin approaching. “Steve McGarrett. It’s been a long time. I’m sorry about your father.”

Steve’s smile turns a little sad, but it doesn’t fade. There’s something very settling about being near Chin, even though Chin’s not his anchor. It settles the buzzing in his throat at least. That’s better than nothing.

“I didn’t see you at the funeral, man,” Steve says, and Chin’s expression falls.

“I wanted to come, but I’m not exactly a friend of HPD at the moment. I didn’t want to cause any trouble at your father’s service,” Chin explains.

Steve’s brow furrows. “What happened, man? All I ever heard from my dad was how you were the best cop he’d ever seen, and he wasn’t just saying that because you’re his anchor.”

“Few years after you left, Jack and I were out on a case. It was dark, and I was in the middle of anchoring your father, so I didn’t see the guy until it was too late. I got bit.”

“What species?” Danny asks.

“Werewolf,” Chin says, with a brief flash of his eyes. Danny raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t comment. “After I turned, people started saying things, about how I might have split allegiances cause I had a tie to a criminal pack. I didn’t, but rumors spread. And then two hundred thousand dollars went missing from the asset forfeiture locker and there was a rumor it was me and that was it. I was still on call whenever your father needed me, but other than that? I’m not really well-liked by the Honolulu Police Department.” There’s a bitter tone in Chin’s voice, but he doesn’t show it on his face.

“Did you--” Danny says.

“Don’t finish that sentence,” Steve cuts him off.

“Anyway, enough about me. What’s got you sticking around Oahu? Last I heard you were still a SEAL,” Chin says, breezing by Danny’s almost question.

“The governor’s asked me to head up a task force to tackle the major crimes on the island. I took her up on the offer.”

“You took her up on it so you could steal my crime scene,” Danny mumbles, and Chin snorts at that.

“Not even back a week and you’re running around stealing whole crime scenes from people? You really do take after your old man. What’s the case?” Chin asks.

Danny raises his eyebrows, and looks at Steve. “Yeah, Steven, why don’t you tell him what scene you stole from me?”

Steve grimaces and Chin crosses his arms. “Absolutely not. No, Steve, I won’t anchor you so you can speak with your father. You know how dangerous that is. You can’t contact your own ancestors, you know the rules.”

“Oh, so there’s rules to this crazy show now, are there?”

“Of course there are rules. You believe in other supernaturals, why not this?” Chin counters.

“Because I can see that you are a werewolf. I can see a nymph using their abilities. I can see all of that. What I cannot see are ghosts. Because they do not exist, which is why I do not believe in them,” Danny says, gesturing emphatically as though that’ll prove his point.

“You know we call them the Unseen for a reason?”

“Whatever you call them, I think this is ridiculous, but whatever you’re going to do can we get it done, so that we can get back to solving this case?”

Steve holds out his hand to Chin. “I know you’re not my anchor, but there’s a spirit that’s been following me since I touched down on the island. I need to know who they are and what they want. I swear I won’t go looking for my father. I just can’t shake the feeling this is important. I need to know who this spirit is.”

Chin sighs, and purses his lips. “Fine. But remember, I spent over a decade in Jack McGarrett’s head. I know his presence. If I feel even a hint of him there, I’m pulling you out by force, got it?”

Steve nods, and Chin clasps Steve’s hand in his own, and Steve lets go.

He goes spiralling wildly, deeper into the Unseen than he’s ever gone that fast, until, very faintly he hears, “Come back,” and he comes careening to a halt.

Steve forces his incorporeal form to right itself, and puts his feet onto the Unseen’s approximation of the ground. It’s mostly just a hazy mess in the general direction of down, but his belief that it’s a solid floor makes it so.

“Steve, Steve, Steve,” he hears.

When he finally responds, “I’m here,” his lips move but the words only sound in his head.

“Good, good. You’re looking for a spirit, the one who’s been following you since you got to the island. Remember?” Chin says. Steve did not remember. Steve tells Chin so. “Well, you know it now, that’s enough. Find them. Find the spirit. Tell me what they look like.”

Steve glances around, wanders through the Unseen for what feels like unending ages. His watch says it’s been three minutes.

The hazy ground solidifies under his feet as he walks, but it goes cloudy again when he picks his feet up. Above him, it looks just the same, but it’s a pink tinted orangey color instead of the green tinted purple underfoot. The vague outlines of buildings surround him and he gets the feeling he’s walking down a street, but everything is too blurred for him to be absolutely certain.

He wanders further and the ringing picks up in his ears telling him he’s pushing himself too far for Chin to hold onto him so he turns and wanders back. Eventually, he senses that he’s in the same place he started. The foggy outlines here resemble trees more than buildings. He wanders a little closer to the barrier of the Seen, though he’s still nowhere close to it. His watch tells him it’s been six minutes since he delved into the Unseen. Finally, he feels a spark of something up his spine, and he turns around.

The spirit is a little girl, maybe fourteen or fifteen years old, dressed in ragged denim shorts and a tank top full of holes. When she speaks, it’s in Chinese.

Steve tells all of this to Chin, even as he shivers with the thought of what it might mean.

“Talk to her, Steve. Why’s she been following you? What does she need?”  Chin prompts, and Steve shakes his head. Right. He’s on a mission.

He talks to her.  She tells him about how scared she is and that she doesn’t know where she is. She tells him about her family paying to come to America, and how they paid everything they had, but the men who took them decided it wasn’t enough, so they took her too. She tells him that she died alone. Steve bristles, but does not show his discontempt on his face. He gives the girl a hug and assures her that she is alright, and that no one can harm her here. He tells her he will find her family, and that she’ll see them again someday, when they come to the Unseen. It’ll be a long time for them, but time is funny here. For her it will be the blink of an eye.

In the back of his mind, Steve thinks, human traffickers could get Hesse on and off the island, without anyone else noticing. Maybe this girl can help him as much as he can help her. She can help him find his father’s killer.

When Steve asks, she gives him a description of the man who brought her family here.

Steve smiles, and hugs her again, and tells her not to worry, she’s not alone here. If she only wanders enough, she’ll find other lost spirits like her to keep her company until her family joins her in the Unseen.

And then the girl disappears, and Steve reaches out to Chin, and he slams back into his body so roughly he stumbles and falls to his knees.

When Steve looks up, Chin is crouched next to him, Danny hovering over the two of them with an incredulous look.

“You okay, Steve? You were in there for a long time. I was almost going to pull you out by force.”

Danny scoffs. “A long time? The two of you just stared at each other for,” he glances at his watch, “eight minutes and then Commander Cargo Pants collapsed dramatically. There’s nothing worrying there, it’s just weird!”

Chin shakes his head. “Time works differently in the Unseen. It may have only been eight minutes here, but for Steve, it was what, an hour?”

Steve gasps for a few more breaths and then chances a glance up again. “Felt more like a day.”

“Steve!” Chin chastises and Steve  almost cows under it. “What, were you trying to drag us both into the Unseen for good?”

“It was the girl. She was so young, Chin. I hate it when they’re that young.”

“I know, I know. It’s always harder when they’re young, but I’m not your anchor, Steve. We’re not bound close enough for you to dive like that. Have you been making visits like that the whole time you’ve been away?”

Steve very determinedly avoids that question, because he has been, he was careless when he was working with Freddie and he knows it.

“Doesn’t matter. We’ve got a description of a major player in the human trafficking business on the island. Time to get back in the saddle Chin. We need a CI, someone with good connections.”

Chin hesitates for only half a second before he sighs, and holds out a hand to help Steve to his feet.

“I’ve got just the guy,” he says, and Danny, for the first time since Steve’s known him, actually smiles.

[ancmalychild]

About page for mobile users

Basic information

Species: Halfa (half-ghost, half-human)

Gender: Transgender man

Pronouns: He/him

Age: 18

Birthday: May 21

Zodiac sign: Gemini

Height: 5'8" (5'2" when he was 14)

Weight: 90lb (seems weightless to humans when in ghost form since, well, ghost)

Blood type: O- (due to being a halfa, his blood is imperfect and not suitable to help others)

Romantic orientation: Biromantic

Sexuality: Bisexual

Nicknames: Ghost Child, Ghost Boy, Ghost Kid, Invis-o-Bill, Halfa, Spook-Boy, Little Badger, Ghost Punk, Savior of the Ghost Zone, Great one, Ghost, Water Boy, Davy, Dan, Billy (by Amorpho), Sir Phantom (by Dora), Fenturd, Whelp, Dipstick, Babypop

Family: Jack Fenton (father), Maddie Fenton (mother), Jazz Fenton (sister), Dani Phantom (clone/‘cousin’), Alicia (aunt), Grandpa Fenton (grandfather)

Home location: Fenton Works, Amity Park, Minnesota, U.S.A

Headcanons || Icons || Timeline

Backstory (basic summary)

After Jazz, Maddie - upon being told she could not have another child due to her body “not allowing her to carry a second” - eventually gave birth to hers and Jack’s second child; Danny. Unfortunately, Danny was diagnosed to be highly contaminated with ectoplasm (Maddie was told she couldn’t have another child due to being around ectoplasm. Due to this, she spent time in the lab and around ectoplasm when she shouldn’t have due to her body actually allowing her to carry another) and was said to be dying. This knowledge soon got around around the town over the years however, to try and keep him safe and happy as well as being unable to break the news to him, nobody told Danny the truth.

Him dying did not change his family’s way of life. Instead, his parents became more focused on creating the Fenton Portal - a portal to the Ghost Zone - down in the basement. Unfortunately, they began to spend a bit too much time down in the lab as well as arguing over other things to fully focus on their children. At this point, Jazz began to take care of Danny as best as she could.

As the years went by, Danny gained two friends; Sam and Tucker. The three became known as outcasts; Tucker the geek, Sam the Goth, and Danny the freak. Due to this - and other reasons such as Danny’s condition, his grades, and his parents being seen as crazy people due to being ghost hunters - the three normally end up in a little bit of trouble that others who are in a higher position caused. Danny - due to his status - is normally the one who ends up in the most trouble out of the three.

The trouble he ended up in wasn’t just caused by people outside of his family. Due to their inventions and the way they raised their children and handled their jobs; his home life was - and still is - rather traumatic due to his parents. Inventions often cause issues such as the house being teleported into another dimension or food and objects coming to life thanks to ectoplasm and attacking those in the home. Along with this, the conversations he and Jazz often heard their parents have were ones that would feed lies into their heads. Though Jazz seemed to be able to brush them off as nothing but silly stories and facts, Danny couldn’t. Each one made him develop a fear of ghosts.

Seeing the inventions his parents made didn’t help him at all.

Everything was designed to help his parents capture and torture them. To learn how they function; to destroy them. Before the age of 14, if ghosts ever did appear, he felt oddly safe near the weapons.

Then the night of the accident changed his life after he became 14. Thanks to friends, he stepped into the portal and accidentally hit an on switch built inside of it. Before they all knew it; the portal - once thought to be broken and useless - came to life in order to steal half of his. On that day, Danny Fenton became a halfa; a half dead human who could switch between a ghost form and human form when he needed to.

As if him being half ghost in a family of ghost hunters wasn’t bad enough, the portal being active meant ghosts could invade his town. Though they were mostly weak ones at first, stronger ghosts started to try and use the Fenton Portal to reach Earth in order to get what they want. Due to it mostly meaning Earth being attacked; Danny - using his new ghost powers - and two best friends decided to fight against the ghosts in order to protect everyone.

Now Danny’s personal life had been mostly taken over by his life as Danny Phantom; Amity Park’s hero. Though he has to deal with the struggle of physical and mental issues as well as trying to have a good personal life as Danny Fenton while also being Danny Phantom, he had managed to gain help from other humans and ghosts. His sister - Jazz - discovered his secret and tries her best to provide as much help as possible for Team Phantom while Sam and Tucker try to take some of the responsibility of being a half dead hero from his shoulders.

Mental health, physical health, and M!As

Due to having a life that is not normal, Danny has gained many mental health disorders. He has also gained some from other factors such as genetics. For the full list and explanation, go here.

Danny has some injuries. Nothing major currently but they can be a bit worrying to see. To prevent people from worrying, Danny is trying his best to keep them hidden.

Past M!As

M!A: None

Appearance (human; left, ghost; right)

Human form: Danny has short sides, long top raven black/black-blue hair and ice blue eyes as well as freckles. He has fair skin as well as has slight muscle built up on his body thanks to fighting ghosts constantly. Along with the muscle, he has some wounds and very faint scars that are left over from the fights (and other things. Such as any wounds he may get accidentally from the lab, from a bully, or from any self harm). These wounds and scars are often covered up by makeup, medical supplies, and clothing. He also tends to use makeup to cover up eye bags sometimes however he is mostly seen with huge bags under his eyes from the lack of sleep.

As for his clothing, he normally wears a red and white ringer top which has a red oval on the front, blue jeans, and red Converse shoes. When it is winter, however, he’s often seen with a red and white coat.

Due to being a halfa, he appears to have some ghostly traits (e.g. hair flows even without a breeze, seems as if he’d float off, he has fangs, etc) while in his human form. At times, his eyes also glow neon green (mostly when he is angry) and a blue mist may leave his mouth despite it not being cold (this is due to the presence of a ghost being near him).

Ghost form: In ghost form, Danny has the same hairstyle however it is snow white. His eyes and freckles glow an eerie neon green (if using his ice powers, he’ll glow an ice blue instead) as well as, due to having ectoblood instead of normal blood, parts like the lips and tongue are green. He also - like in his human form - has fangs. His body seems have some changes (wider shoulders, narrower hips. Skin appears to be more tanned) yet he still seems as if he has some muscle.

Any wounds and/or scars can not been seen unless they are on his face or his clothing is damaged.

As for clothing; Danny wears a black jumpsuit with his logo in white on the front (a ‘P’ inside of a ‘D’). He also wears a white belt, white gloves, and white boots. He also often carries the Fenton Thermos with him which, in this form, can actually be seen on him.

Thanks to being a ghost, Danny is very ghostly. This means he’s slightly transparent to look at. He also casts a white glow while his hair seems to float like wind is blowing upon it 24/7.

Powers

Going ghost: Danny is capable of changing from human to ghost and vice-versa. He normally does this by shouting either "I’m going ghost!“ or “Going ghost!”. When in ghost form, he can be forced to change back human either by being hurt badly, almost dying, or the enemy using a power/device that forces him to change back into a human.

Invisibility: He is capable of turning invisible (when in either ghost or human form) as well as turning people and objects invisible if he is holding them. He is unseen by both ghosts and humans unless they have a infrared vision device. Though he can not be seen, he can still be touched, smelled, and heard. This also means he is tangible.

Intangible: When in either ghost or human form, he can turn intangible and cannot be touched. Along with this, he can go through anything including his own body. He can turn others the same way if he has to and he can turn body parts intangible. In the Ghost Zone, he is unable to do this when he is a ghost however, when he is a human, he (and others) can phase through the objects there. He also is unable to use it on anti-ghost weapons however, for other weapons, he can make them pass through his body. Unlike being invisible, he can be seen which is a problem when strong emotions cause this power to activate randomly when he is a human.

Flight: When he is a ghost, he can fly since gravity has no affect on him. When flying, his bottom half will sometimes become a ghost tail though this doesn’t happen every time he decides to fly. He also can fly rather fast and, over time, gets faster. When he first started, he could fly up to 112 mph. As he grew older, his speed increased.

Overshadowing: Danny can overshadow a human, animal, or object by phasing completely into the subject’s body. When he has done this, he gains control of them/it however they appear to be unchanged except the voice will sometimes alter to his own as well as their eyes will change to green. He can also still use his powers when doing this however, once he stops overshadowing, the host would have no memory of what happened when they were overshadowed. Danny is also capable of doing this to others like him (other half-ghost) or, at least, to any duplicates they produce. Unfortunately, this power does not work 24/7 if he is not concentrating fulling, anti-ghost weapons stop him, or the person’s willpower is strong enough to stop him.

Software fusion/data form: When overshadowing, he can enter data and take over things such as his avatar (if it is a video game). The avatar’s appearance will change to his and gain his powers. However, when he did this, he wore the Fenton helmet which could have helped him do this.

Dream invasion: When overshadowing someone who is sleeping, he can see their dreams and interact with them.

Ghost Ray: An ectoplasmic green and white energy blast which can be shot out of his fingers or palm of his hands (he can also shoot it out of his butt) which can produce both thermal and explosive results on contact or even kinetic, often melting metal, or destroying other materials, and are usually launched as thrown projectiles or as a single blast or a streaming beam of energy. By waving his palm, multiple blasts can shoot out. Like a few others, this power is mostly affected by his emotions as fear was what caused it to first appear. Strong emotions such as anger can strengthen it as demonstrated when he shot a green ghost ray that became white growing in power due to his angst. Danny can single handed or two-handedly fire a powerful ghost ray that can tear apart any weak ghost molecule by molecule and destroy the area nearby as seen on multiple occasions.

Ecto-Energy Strike: Danny has the ability to enhance his physical attacks with his ecto-energy by channeling the ecto-energy through his fists in order to enhance the strength of his physical attacks.

Ecto-Energy Ball: Danny usually tends to concentrate and release his ecto-energy, shaped like a sphere of different sizes. He creates a small-sized to large-sized energy sphere, then he fires it at his opponents.

Ecto-Energy Waves: Danny uses this power protect himself from Nocturne’s attack.

Explosive Ecto-Energy Disk: Danny can put his Ghost rays’ energy into a concentrated ecto explosive disk. Danny first uses this power in the episode Reality Trip to draw a happy face in Freakshow’s hat. Later in the episode Boxed Up Fury, he fires these explosive disks when fighting the ten headed Hydra dragon. He seems to have learned it from watching Vlad performing it.

Explosive Ecto-Energy Rings: In the episode Claw of the Wild, Danny is seen shooting explosive energy rings.

Light Projection: He can project green light from his hands by using his ecto-energy.

Flashing Energy Ball: Danny is able to create an ecto-energy ball that explodes in front of his enemies, releasing white greenish light distracting and blinding everyone but him. This technique is defensive rather than offensive, and is mainly used as way to gain the upper hand, or in order to make hasty retreat.

Cutting with Ecto-Energy: Danny can concentrate his natural ecto-energy in his hands, which allows him to cut through objects as hard as steel, like he does when fighting Undergrowth and Nocturne.

Repulsion Field: Danny can expel a large amount of ecto-energy from all his body in order to repel his enemies, similar to his Aural projection, but with much more power. He always uses this power every time he is surrounded by too many enemies at once. This is one of the many powers that Danny has developed but Vlad hasn’t.

Ectoplasmic Energy Shield: Like his blasts, Danny’s shield is green. It ranges from a full dome, to a small square or circle. His shield can withstand blasts from powerful ghosts like Vlad, Dani, and Vortex. There are other variants of this ability:

Reflective Shield: Performing a gesture with his hands, Danny is able to create a planar shield with the ability to reflect any energy attack back to its user. He first used this ability in Teacher of the Year.

Duplication: After seeing Vlad do it, Danny spends much of the series trying to master Duplication, the power which allows one to duplicate themselves. Danny manages to properly use it in the episode Beauty Marked, when he is fighting the Executioner Ghost and he easily split himself in 2 (though just for a second) and later in the episode Torrent of Terror. Even then, he cannot properly hold it, showing he has yet to master this power (though he did pull it off with the Ecto-Skeleton).

Cryokinesis: Cryokinesis allows Danny to shoot beams of icy energy from his hands or eyes, radiate cold energy from his body, cold energy waves as well as generate and manipulate ice; he can also create hailstorms when shooting cold energy at the clouds. His ghost sense is a more subtle manifestation of this power. This ability also gives him an increased resistance to low and high temperatures. When he uses this ability, his eyes turn blue instead of being their usual green. There are other techniques of this power such as:

Explosive Snowball: Danny can merge his Cryokinesis with his ghost rays in an explosive snowball, filled with ecto-energy. He only used it against Undergrowth in Urban Jungle.

Freezing Snowball: Danny can generate a snowball that freezes everything it hits instantly.

Cold Energy Shield: Danny can create ghost shields made of cold energy to protect himself from fire attacks.

Freezing Touch: The power to freeze people by touch. He can do this from the inside out.

Cryokinetic Constructs: The power to create tools, objects and weapons, out of Ice.

Ghost Sense: Danny subconsciously uses his Cryokinesis to alert himself of the presence of nearby ghosts. It is shown to be a blue mist that comes out from his mouth and sometimes makes him shiver. This is literally the first power he used in the series.

Ghostly Wail: The ghostly wail is the unique ability to generate an extremely powerful wail from one’s vocal cords and mouth (like a sonic scream with a ghostly moaning at the same time). The sonic waves are made of pure ecto-energy that can cause great damage to ghosts, humans, and tangible matter. It is powerful enough to destroy the massive artificially generated Ghost Shield that protected the future Amity Park, and ghost proof restraints as seen in The Ultimate Enemy. It is also effective against multiple targets, or against a very powerful enemy, and almost nothing can withstand this attack. One side affect is that it drains Danny’s powers when he uses it, so he soon returns to human form after. Although, he seems to have become powerful enough to overcome this in Phantom Planet.

Superhuman Strength: When he’s a ghost, gravity doesn’t affect him so he can lift really heavy things. The exact amount Danny can lift (press) has never been stated, but an educated guess would be somewhere between 10 to 30 tons. However, his full strength often fluctuates. He has been shown to be strong enough to rip reinforced titanium without too much difficulty, as well as lifting and throwing a dragon ghost, and knock it to the ground with one punch. In Forever Phantom, Danny holds up a school bus full of kids with no strain, but in Frightmare he is seen struggling to lift a bunch of Sleepwalkers.

Superhuman Durability: While human, Danny can withstand many hits and blows that would cause injure to any normal teenager. In his ghost form, Danny’s body is incredibly resistant to damage, and he also has demonstrated a high threshold for pain. His ghost tissues and bones are considerably harder and more resistant to physical injury than those of an ordinary human. In the The Fright Before Christmas, he is barely phased by getting brutally attacked by a giant nutcracker. In The Ultimate Enemy, Danny is able to still stand up after taking many hits from Dark Danny and uses the Ghostly Wail to defend himself. However it is stated that Dark Danny didn’t use his full strength, otherwise he would have killed himself.

Superhuman Stamina: While human, Danny has the same stamina as an average 15 year old teenager. In his ghost form, Danny’s musculature produces almost no fatigue toxins during physical activity. He can physically exert himself at peak capacity for hours before fatigue begins to impair him. In the episode Reality Trip, Danny was able to continually keep the Emergency Ops Center invisible for the entire night. He can also perform physical activity for really long periods of time without getting tired till hours later. His virtually inexhaustible stamina enables him to exert himself at peak capacity for hours, and possibly days.

Superhuman Agility: In his ghost form, Danny’s agility, balance, and bodily coordination are enhanced to levels that are beyond the natural physical limits of even the finest human athlete, therefore he possess agility beyond that of a normal human being. He can effectively dodge attacks, swing from things easily, sprint, do back-flips and numerous other gymnastic, athletic and martial implements with little effort.

Superhuman Reflexes: While being ghost, he has drastically enhanced reaction speed, being able to dodge punches and other kind of attacks with ease. One of his best displays of reflexes and agility is when he dodges the pendulums traps inside Pariah Dark’s castle, in the episode Fright Night. In the episode Beauty Marked, he catches an arrow in midair, using his bare hands.

Superhuman Equilibrium: Probably due to his flight ability, Danny has the ability to achieve a state of perfect equilibrium in any position imaginable. He seemed able to adjust his position almost by instinct, which enables him to balance himself on a scythe, balanced on a rope at great high and perfectly walk on a wall like if its the floor.

Enhanced Speed: When ghost, he is capable of moving and running faster than in his human form, but he doesn’t reach superhuman levels since he is not a real speedster.

Regenerative Healing Factor: Danny is capable of healing at much greater speeds than that of an ordinary humans. He has proven capable of healing from slashes and puncture wounds within a matter of seconds, minutes or hours depending on how injured he is, and even his suit appears to regenerate sometimes. In his human form, his healing rate is also enhanced, even though it is weaker than in his ghost form. It is unknown if he can regenerate missing limbs.

Paranormal Immunity: As a half ghost, Danny is resistant or totally immune to several attacks or effects from ghost powers. Examples of this is when Ember’s music could not affect him until she got more powerful, and he was immune to Spectra’s ghost illness. He may also be immune to some earth diseases except for the common cold.

Ghost Stinger: An attack that utilizes ecto-energy in an electric form. In Public Enemies, Danny uses it to free Wulf from Bullet’s weapon and defeat one of his goons. Danny also does a very similar attack on Valerie in “Flirting With Disaster”, which could be the same ability, only on a weaker level. Dan and Vlad both use it to weaken Danny. The fact that he has only used it when his enemy uses an electric attack may imply that he actually redirects the electricity with his hands.

Teleportation: Danny has apparently teleported on a few occasions. During the final battle in “Reality Trip,” he briefly disappears from sight and reappears in another location a short distance away. Danny also does something very similar when fighting Tucker Phantom. This however could just be him turning invisible and moving, except that we tend to see him when he is invisible.

Spectral Body Manipulation: Danny has the ability to manipulate the shape of his body. The most common instance of this power is the tail that often replaces his legs when he’s flying or hovering. He has often elongated and twisted his midsection, as well as caused holes in every part of his body. This power also extends at some point in his human form as he had a cyclops eye when he changed back to human after a failed attempt of duplication The most common uses of this power is:

Ghost Tail: Danny’s lower body will revert into a typical ghost tail of intangible matter. He uses this ability most often to allow himself to move faster through the air. Danny has known how to do this since he first learned how to fly. It is a fact that he keeps his legs’ bones when he has his ghost tail.

Spectral Body Split: Danny can force his body to split in half along the midsection, the two halves remaining connected with a trail of spectral matter. He uses this ability mostly to dodge oncoming attacks. He first learns how to use this ability in the episode “Mystery Meat”, when he attempts to dodge an assault of possessed shish-kabobs. He can also separate his body in half without any connection but only for a few seconds, and it seems to be an unconscious act. The first time he split like that was in the episode Shades of Gray, when Sam throws a book at him, and later in the episode Pirate Radio when fighting Youngblood.

Spectral Body Stretch: Danny usually stretches his midsection to avoid energy blast from an enemy.

Spectral Body Ring: This ability is nearly the same as the Spectral Body Split, except that the trail of ghost matter that ties his body halves together forms a ring. Danny first displays use of this ability in Life Lessons, when he dodges a laser blast from Valerie. It is not known if he was able to perform it before or not.

Superhuman Flexibility: Due to his ability to manipulate his body he is able to bend and twist his far beyond the normal limits of human physiology.

Density Manipulation: In several instances, he has shifted the density of his body, once he turned his body into blue mist to escape from a dragon’s grasp, and later when his body was transformed into orange jelly by Freakshow, he gathers his body after being crashed by roller coaster cars and changes back to solid.

Telekinesis: Visible only in the form of green energy emanating from his hand and the subject of the telekinesis; his ability allows him to fully lift and manipulate objects in any way his mind can think of. Danny used this skill to hand the Box Ghost a rake while he was working for Pandora. This ability is also used by Dan Phantom.

Aural Projection: Danny calls for a massive amount of spectral energy, sending out a wave of white light that repels any nearby enemy ghosts, sending them flying away from him. He first used this ability in My Brother’s Keeper, forcing Spectra to release her grip on him. It takes the shape of his transformation rings, but does not transform him. This may be an outward manifestation of his feelings.

Power Augmentation: Danny has the ability to momentarily increase his physical strength by using his ecto-energy. When holding back the Fright Knight’s sword with his hands, Danny was able to garner enough strength in order to fling the Knight over his shoulder. When he does this, his aura started glowing brighter. He also used this power when he was trapped in an ectoplasmic goo web in the episode Doctor’s Disorders.

Wall-walking: Danny can stand upright, as well as walk along vertical surfaces such as walls, and upside-down on surfaces such as roofs, due to not being affected by gravity.

Back Slide: This allows Danny to zip along a surface in one direction without moving his legs. He saw a possessed Paulina perform this ability in Public Enemies; he first used this ability in Lucky in Love.

Vacuum Resistance: It was shown in Flirting With Disaster that Danny can be in outer space without using an astronaut suit and not be affected by stardust or cosmic radiation, though he still needs a helmet so he can breathe since he does not have the ability of self-sustenance.

Ghost Flame: Danny can create green fire balls made of ectoplasm.

Exorcism: Danny is able to separate Dash and Paulina from the ghost powers/form that possess them simply using his hand or a ghost ray, although he didn’t use it with Tucker due to his power; he can also do this by flying through a possessed person, as he did when he separated Vlad from his dad, and when Walker and the GZPD (Ghost Zone Police Departament) overshadowed Amity Park. The only character who shares this power is Wulf, who uses his claws to do so.

Underwater Breathing: Twice, Danny has been seen breathing and talking under water

Abilities

Indomitable Will: It should also be noted that Danny (as a human or as a ghost) has a very strong will as he is able to resist Freakshow’s control over him. Danny is always helping people and he is willing to die for the people he cares about. During his battle with Pariah Dark, Danny was determined to not let him take over the world and he holds his own while only powered up by 4% of power and he still was able to lock Pariah in the Sarcophagus (Vlad’s last moment arrival defeated Pariah). Danny’s determination allows him to fight on, even if the odds are on a stake and the chances of winning are almost none.

Experienced Combatant: Although Danny has no formal knowledge of hand-to-hand combat, his powers enable him to execute punches and kick with superhuman force at an opponent and his career as a superhero and ghost hunter has given him plenty of combat experience.

Fenton’s Weaponry Mastery: Danny often uses his parent’s weapons with great expertise and ease, even better than his own parents.

Swordsmanship: He demonstrates some ability with the sword in the episode when fighting Vlad.

Bilingual Skill: Danny learns to talk Esperanto with Tucker, in case he meets with Wulf again.

Quick Learning Ability: Over the series, Danny manages to emulate or quickly learn many of the powers his enemies use against him, some of them with incredible ease, sometimes even without training. One example is how Danny creates a ghost shield after seeing Vlad use one without training beforehand. Another example is that he learns how to use his ice powers in just one day, with the training of Frostbite. Other powers he learns with hard work, depending on how complex the ability is. One of the powers he struggles the most to learn is the duplication power, which he has tried hard to master ever since he saw Vlad using it. He could not only learn ghost powers by just simply watching, but also learn Sampson’s body language as well as the answers for the literature test with just one day of study, getting a “A-”

Experienced Pilot: Danny is an considerably skilled pilot, having a long experience with spaceships simulators as well as with his parent’s Specter Speeder. He is able to land a spaceship due to his “training” with the simulator.

Skilled Tactician: Danny is an excellent strategist, despite his relatively young age. In the episode Pirate Radio, he demonstrated the ability to formulate relatively complex plans of actions to infiltrate the inside of Youngblood’s pirate ship, with all his schoolmates, to save their parents from Ember and Youngblood. He is also very good at improvisation, as he often manages to think of a plan that fits with the changing needs of a situation.

Leadership Skills: Despite his unpopularity, Danny has demonstrated to have remarkable skills as a leader. He demonstrated to be a natural leader and can easily command respect and inspire others, like he did when he led his schoolmates to save their parents from Ember and Youngblood. Later, he convinced them to make a riot so they can get back Nasty Burger from Vlad.

Strong Speaker: He has proven to be very good at speaking in front of large audiences in order to get the respect and their attention to lead them, at least for short periods of time.

Weaknesses

Blood Blossoms: Blood Blossoms appear to be roses however the green is replaced with a dark purple. When a ghost approaches, a red mist will surround both the flower and the ghost. This will cause the ghost to topple to the ground in agony. Thanks to being half ghost; this flower causes him pain.

Anti-Ghost Weapons: Weapons designed to hurt ghosts.

Ghost DNA destabilises: Anything designed to make a ghost’s DNA unstable so they become a pool of ectoplasm.

Devices that stop his ghost powers: If Danny’s ghost powers are forced to not work, he’ll appear to be more human due to having no powers. Fortunately, his powers will awaken after some time.

Being separated from his ghost half: This can be seen as a weakness due to the effect it has on him. One half of him will be completely human as the other half will be completely ghost which means his human half is as weak as a human. Unfortunately, this may cause negative effects for everyone if Danny’s human half contains all of his humanity and if his ghost half happens to find a certain rich yet evil halfa…

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[balshumetsbaragouin]

Bittersweet Future: Chapter Fourteen

Summary:

The whole truth and nothing but the truth...

If It’s Answers You’re Seeking…

For a full five seconds, nothing could be heard except the steady drip drop of water from the cave ceiling to the floor. In the stunned silence, Danny had just enough time to regret having ever opened his mouth, before the eldest Masters sibling found her wits.

“You-you’re what?” Jasmine stammered out. Of all the things she’d expected to come out of his mouth, another apology, more lies, definitely more curse words, that statement hadn’t been anywhere on her radar.

“I, I um-”

“Oh, oh good God, he’s insane! Completely delusional, totally One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest gone. What institution did you escape from? Did you leave the rest of your common sense there too?” Daniel said before moving to stand next to his sister.

“I’m not crazy! I-what’s the point? I can’t tell you anyway.” Danny crossed his arms before leaning tiredly against one of the many stalagmites reaching towards the sky. Well, it’s not like I was going to avoid a smiting at this rate. Still, my dad is their mortal enemy and well…I doubt they’re going to be any more willing to let me stay if I explain how Jack Fenton is my father.

“Can’t tell us? Oh come on now, don’t leave us hanging! You just got to the good stuff. You’re from an alternate reality that got destroyed so that we can exist? Man that’s good, maybe I should write that down, I can use it in the fictionalization of my life for Hollywood or something.”

“Knock it off Daniel, this is serious, I mean this is the first remotely honest thing we’ve gotten out of him. So your last name is Fenton right?” Jasmine fixed her most neutral look onto her face. Calling Danny “skittish” was typically an understatement, and if her parents had taught her anything, it was feigning neutrality could fix all types of problems.

“Yeah it is.” Danny huffed and looked away from his sister’s penetrating gaze. He’d just admitted as much a minute ago, not like repeating it was going to get him into any more trouble. Although, he’d have to be sure not to let anything else out until he could think of a good reason for the outburst from earlier.

“Ok, so you are Danny Fenton. If you aren’t from ‘here’” the red head paused and actually unfolded her arms make the air quotes, “then where-when-are you from?”

“Well-”

“Why are you indulging his fantasies? He’s obviously some plant from the GSU. Sugar cookies, he’s done his job twice already. Once in Wisconsin, and just a few minutes ago at Camp, well what used to be Camp anyway. It doesn’t matter what false hypno-memories they’ve implanted in his brain, we need to tell Mom and-”

“Woah! Wait! You can’t just-I mean, I don’t have any false memories. These are all real, and I’m not a plant or spy or something. They were just trying to kill me; you can’t honestly believe I work for people who were trying to kill me?”

“The GSU hates all ghosts, and they still have captured ghosts on leashes doing their bidding. What are you some type of shape shifting ghost? Thought you could just slither in here and rat us out to your psychotic ‘Father’ and his little followers, and oh well if you died, no big deal! You’d love to die in service to your human overlords.” Daniel shot back.

“No. None of that is true. I’m not a ghost; I’m a halfa just like you or Vlad.” At their increasingly skeptical looks, he put his hands up. “I swear. I’m serious. I’m not lying.”

“Right, just like you weren’t lying about how you couldn’t remember what day it was, or that your mother was Harriet Chin.”

“I really did lose days, and ok, that part was a lie, but the rest of what I’ve told you wasn’t! Vlad really is an old family friend, that’s not a lie. He’s really is a family friend of my mother too, so-”

“So who’s your mother?” the elder girl asked.

“Um, she’s…” he trailed off grasping for a good lie. He’d already admitted Harriet wasn’t his mother, and with Vlad so universally hated, that left him with no real options. A little truth never killed anyone right? Well as far as I know. “Well, we have the same mom.”

The two Masters siblings shared a look before glancing behind them to the softly glowing section of the cave near the back. Their mother had been working diligently for at least an hour now, and they could still hear the soft whirl of the generator working to keep their father in ghost form, and possibly alive.

“You expect us to believe that we have the same mother? Are you seriously suggesting that we didn’t notice her-”

“Now, now Jasmine,” Daniel interrupted, “you’re forgetting he’s from alternate reality. So he totally could have been incubating in an alternate version of our mother who is apparently still on good terms with Jack Fenton or something. Is that about right?” When Danny didn’t answer, he rolled his eyes and squared off to face his doppelganger again. Taking a better look at the other boy, he could see parts of his face that eerily matched his own. If he didn’t know for sure there was no way they were related, he would think they were twins. As if I need anything else weird to happen in my life.

“Listen, I’m being as honest about this as I can. I don’t know how much I can tell you without causing more problems.”

“I don’t see how. If you really are from an alternate reality, then it’s an alternate version that no longer exists, and so, telling us about it isn’t going to affect this one in any way. That is, unless you are from the past or future of this universe instead of a different one entirely. In that case any information you tell us, especially about the future, could adversely affect the present to the point the entire timeline becomes unstable and shifts. But if that were the case, it’s likely you’d be unable to relay to us any information we wouldn’t be able to discern ourselves, thus avoid violating causality. Ergo, spill the beans.” Daniel said with a confident smile on his lips.

“I-you-what?” Danny scrunched his brows and blinked a few times before continuing, “is it physically impossible for you to use simple explanations or…? The point is, I can’t tell you anything, any details, about the alternate reality where I’m from. I shouldn’t have even told you I was from an alternate reality or something, but I just can’t stop running my big mouth.”

“Well get your mouth back into gear, because you aren’t staying in this cave with us until you explain who you are clearly for once. I don’t care if we have to march you back through the cave rubble and leave you outside with a ‘please pick up your trash GSU’ sign.” She walked over to one of the make-shift tables near the RV and picked up a weapon. It was one of the few that still held a charge, and she intended to use it if she had to.  

“Hold on, you can’t just start pointing guns at me and threatening to kick me out! I mean if you don’t trust me, Vlad does and-”

“And doing so could have gotten him killed! He’s bleeding with poisoned metal burrowing itself deeper into his body every second because either you can’t follow simple instructions, or you are delusional brainwashed spy risking my family’s safety every moment you continue to draw breath. Personally, I’m no longer in the mood to find out which,” Jasmine said while clicking the mini-bazooka up a few notches. “Your options are, come clean about whatever it is you think you know, or get a hole blasted in you, and your body dumped a few feet in front of the cave entrance.”

“Are you really going to threaten me with that when I’m the only one with working ghost powers around?” Danny could feel his eyes already beginning to burn green from frustration and anger. “I don’t want to hurt you, or Daniel, or anyone here, but if you make me fight, you’ll regret it. I’m on your side here, so put down that gun before I have to blow it up.” He raised a green ecto-energy covered hand towards the general direction of the eldest Masters sibling.

The air in the anterior chamber grew increasingly tense as Daniel moved besides his sister to grab another weapon and his otherworldly twin lifted another green swathed hand to match. A cold sweat trickled down the back of his neck. In any other situation, he’d be more than capable of handling a fight, but after the day he’d had a stiff breeze could knock him over. They had to be mindful of the GSU as well. Even though they had likely already headed back to their headquarters in DC with their remaining men, they had satellites everywhere watching for their spectral energy. Even under all these tons of rock, there was no guarantee that they couldn’t sense even the small amount of energy the other dark haired teen had summoned. Just the same, he wasn’t about to back down from a fight with a likely ghost plant.

“What the hell is going on out here?” Maddie growled as she walked from the entrance to the posterior chamber into the room proper. She frowned as none of the teens involved in a poorly thought out Mexican standoff answered her. “Jasmine, Daniel, where are the twins and Lizzie?”

“Inside the RV, playing some tedious board game or watching a video.” When her mother only frowned further she continued, “I don’t know what they’re doing in there. They aren’t messing around with any systems, and they aren’t fooling around out here.”

“Fine. What are you and your brother doing with those guns pointed at Danny?”

“Our favorite fudge-up was just explaining how he’s from an alternate reality, Jack Fenton is his father, and he’s not a brainwashed ghost spy. Personally I don’t believe any of it but-”

“It’s true.” Maddie stated matter-of-factly before taking two large steps and grabbing the weapons from her now stunned children’s hands. “What I mean is, he’s managed to convince your father and me that that is the truth. I believed him, for the most part, and was going to finish questioning him tomorrow morning. However, I think due to the circumstances it warrants a revisiting of the subject right now.” She set the guns back onto the table and turned to face Danny with her children to her right. “Now, let’s see, you never did answer how you knew my husband in your original timeline, so let’s start there.”

Even though Maddie had set down the guns the teenagers had picked up, he could see her tapping her foot and palming another smaller weapon on her hip. That’s not a rhetorical question is it? “Um, it’s kinda a long story?” He offered with a chuckle. When it failed to get even the smallest smirk onto anyone’s lips, his laughter faded into a cough. “Well, you know you, Jack, and Vlad all went to the University of Wisconsin together? Well, when you and Jack were first married you just uh, never got divorced or whatever. You had Jazz,” he resisted the urge to sigh when he saw his sister scrunch up her face at the nickname, “and me.” The boy out of time paused to look for something to lean against now that the adrenaline crash was leaving his muscles even more tired and sore than before the hectic drive up the mountain.

“Well?” The auburn hair scientist prompted and watched him slink over to sit on top of one of the flatter stalagmites.

“Well uh, I grew up in Amity Park, and on the 20th anniversary of your college graduation, you went to a college reunion hosted at Vlad’s house-er well closer to a mansion really-in Wisconsin. That’s the first time I met him. He was, well it doesn’t really matter.”

“I beg to differ. I’ll decide what is and isn’t important information. Vlad told me you came back into the past so that the two of you would no longer be enemies. Obviously your first impressions of him are important for me to understand what would possess you to try something so completely ill advised.” She softened her stance and leaned back against the table behind her to take some pressure off of her aching feet. She’d been up for what felt like years, and while she was sure Vlad would pull through with little problem-bless his determination-it’d probably be touch and go for the rest of the night.

“Well he hosted the reunion so he’d have a chance to kill my dad and convince you to marry him, so I’d say my first impression of him was shitty. That answer your question? Oh, and after he realized I had ghost powers, he decided to pull a Darth Vader and ask me to join the dark side. So yeah, we weren’t best buds where I’m from.”

Daniel let out a rude snort at the other boy’s story. “You expect us to actually believe our dad wants to kill yours in your ‘timeline’? For what? When he can’t even do that now?”

“Don’t interrupt him Daniel; I want to hear everything he has to say without your more colorful commentary. So, Vlad and you met at this reunion, and he tried to murder Jack Fenton. I assume he failed.”

“Yeah, I stopped him, with some quick thinking and some luck. After that we’ve been at each other’s throats ever since. I mean, he placed a bounty on my head-”

“I thought he wanted you to be his new Sith apprentice?”

“Wuh, oh he did.” Danny stopped before scrunching his face up in thought and continuing, “I think it was just to make my dad look bad. What with him trying and failing to capture the million dollar ghost with the entire ‘professional’ ghost community around also trying to catch me. I think it was also a distraction for something. I don’t know what, everything he does has at least three different reasons and a plan F.”

“The next most pressing question is of course where you got ghost powers.”

“In a lab accident.” Danny replied.

“A lab accident where? The more specific you are the better.”

“It was my parents-your lab. You have a lab right underneath our house in the basement. You were building a working model of a man-made ghost portal. It didn’t work when you first plugged it in, even though this was like the fifth time you’d brought Jazz and me down to watch it get turned on and probably the 50th time you’d tried to make it work. Anyway, you left all defeated and me and my friends-”

“You and your friends were downstairs in a dangerous lab unsupervised?”

“Uh, well…yes. You left to go upstairs. We weren’t really thinking about it working. I mean you didn’t have any weapons just lying around or anything, it was just the portal and one of the lame Fenton jumpsuits.”

“Jumpsuits? Like that tacky ensemble you have going on in your ghost form?” It was Jasmine’s turn to interrupt.

“Yes. Exactly like that.” Danny grumbled under his breath before continuing, “my friends convinced me to go take a look inside the portal, just to snap a picture.”

“Why would you-”

“We thought it would cool ok? It had nev- we didn’t think it would even work. No one did. No one had even really seen a ghost back in my timeline. I hadn’t, and despite what my parents said, I don’t think they had either. It was just a stupid joke, it wasn’t supposed to work. I-” Danny took a deep breath to stop his rambling before it got out of hand. It had been almost a year since the accident and it still both boggled and upset him. Even though he, and several of the people standing around, were living proof that half-ghosts were real, when he thought about the accident, it was still hard to wrap his mind around it. “I put on one of my parents dorky jumpsuits and stepped inside the portal. One of my friends was angling for a better shot and asked me to back up. I did and leaned my hand against the wall inside the portal. I turned it on. It gave me ghost powers. That’s the end of that story.”

Maddie tapped her chin with one finger as she took in Danny’s tale. It was, as far as she could tell, entirely the truth. There was still some details missing, like who his friends were and why, why, why no one came running when that portal activated and discovered his powers right then. Just the same, it would suffice for the moment.

“Next question, you told me before that the ghost hunting community in Amity Park was in shambles. In fact, you said they needed your help to catch ghosts, despite having professional ghost hunters around.” She paused to hop onto the table behind her, forgoing a better position for offense in favor of her comfort. If I stand up any longer, I don’t think I’ll ever feel my lower limbs again. “If you were fighting ghosts on the regular, how did your parents not notice?”

“Notice?” Danny squeaked, not liking where this line of questioning was going.

“Surly, someone must have figured out you were fighting. At the very least, you wouldn’t have been proficient in either martial arts or your ghost powers when you first started. If ghosts were enough of a problem that two professionals couldn’t stem the tide, then you’d have to have taken some injuries from fighting. How did you continue to go to school while ghost hunting? The physical changes resulting from a-an integration of ghost powers into a fully formed human body are incredibly noticeable. Didn’t their equipment ever pick you up?”

“Well, um, yes?” Danny offered sheepishly.

“Yes to what Danny?” Maddie clicked her tongue in distaste before shifting on the hard table beneath her.

“Yes their equipment picked me up, but they just thought the equipment wasn’t working. No one knew halfas existed so, they just assumed the readings were borked. As for the other questions, my friends helped me out with ghost hunting, but I wasn’t doing the best in school when I left. I was tired from the fights even though I’d gotten better and uh, well you know half ghosts heal fast so…” Danny trailed off and scuffed a foot against the side of the stalagmite.

“Alright, I suppose that’s good enough, although the last, and most important question is, how you got here. How did you time travel at all?”

Danny suppressed the urge the wince. That was the one question he really didn’t want to answer. “I thought I already answered that question?”

“Hardly. You told me you got the time traveling Medallion from a powerful ghost whose name you couldn’t tell me. While that basically answers the question in the general “how” the time traveling itself took place, that doesn’t explain why that ghost let you have the Medallion at all. You’ve said it was for unabashedly selfish purposes, don’t make that face it’s true, so I’m wondering what was in it for this ghost. If they were powerful enough to create this relic, then they likely have time traveling powers of their own, and would be well aware of the delicate the nature of time. My question is really how did you convince this ghost to allow you free reign of the time line? Certainly they would have foreseen that you’d cause trouble-”

“-Er well Cl-he said something about me being outside the time stream and the consequences being my own. He’s a friend of mine, and I’ve been responsible,” well sort of, “with the Medallion in the past, so he figured I could handle this.”

Maddie took a breath to start another round of questioning, when she heard a loud groan echo from the back of the cave. She glanced behind her and mouthed ‘stay put’ to the teens, before getting up.

The teenagers spent a few minutes staring at each other across the distance before Jasmine broke the silence.

“So you’re telling me not a single person outside of the friends who saw the accident, and my dad, figured out you have ghost powers? The other ghosts you fought-”

“-Knew I had ghost powers and was human at the same time.” Danny answered with a shrug.

“And they never said anything to any of the humans around you? On top of that, I mean it’s not like your ghost form looks different from your human half, no hybrid’s does. I’m just having a hard time wrapping my head around this.” Jasmine sighed as the vague picture of the other teen’s timeline struggled to coalesce in her mind. Nothing about the reality he inhabited sounded anything like her own. Why was it so different? Does that even matter at this point? It isn’t like Danny can get back to it. She thought, coming to the same conclusion her younger brother had only half an hour ago. It was like the more he cleared up, the more numerous the questions became. “Why couldn’t you tell us any of this before?”

Danny huffed and crossed his arms in front of him. “Would you have really believed me?” He watched as the Masters siblings’ faces scrunched up in thought. “You didn’t believe me when I told you a few minutes ago, why would you have believed me in Wisconsin or on the flight over in that beetle thing? I know you might not believe me, but I’m not stupid.”

“That remains debatable.” Daniel quirked his lips and sighed. “Well, if you fought ghosts all the time that explains why you could hold your own against the GSU earlier. Although, I’m still a little confused about how you’d get all of that fighting experience in the first place. I mean how many ghosts could possibly squeeze through temporary portals, even in someplace as active as Amity Park?”

Danny scuffed his feet awkwardly against the damp stone floor of the cave before answering, “well they didn’t just have temporary portals to work with. For a while, the Fenton portal-”

“Oh you’re joking-”

“-Stop interrupting sheesh! Anyway, the man-made portal didn’t have a good lock on it. And it’s not very hidden in the ghost zone either. So ghosts were uh, slipping through the portal in my parents’ basement and escaping.” Danny shrugged at the mildly amazed looks the other teens were giving him.

“So you’re telling me not only was the portal not locked up tight and hidden on the ghost side, but ghost were regularly slipping past your parents defenses and equipment to escape and wreck havoc?” Jasmine felt her face screwing up in disbelief the longer she thought about it. A man-made portal in the basement of two ghost hunters and ghosts just snuck through their house and out into the open. No way either of them were that incompetent.

“Hey, I know that sounds kind of…impossible, but it’s the truth! Ghosts just aren’t taken as seriously back in my timeline as they here. I mean, up until about a year ago, no one was even sure they existed. They haven’t had a lot of time to adjust.” Danny shrugged and shifted on the top of his stone seat. Admittedly, the absolute reach and power the GSU had in this future was something he’d never thought was possible. The Guys in White back home were a cursory curiosity, barely funded and poorly trained. His friends could out fight them on half a night’s sleep and no food. And those ridiculous all white suits! I’ve seen them put in more forms for dry cleaning than ghost catching. Just the same, the agency here was run by…his father. He’d been avoiding really thinking about it. The man he knew, and the unhinged ghost slaying commander he’d met an hour back was like night and day.

Jack Fenton couldn’t remember to solder half of his own circuits, let alone run an agency, yet here he was the most serious threat to ghost kind on the planet. Danny took a deep breath, preparing to finally ask the other teens about some of their history, when a crash came from the back of the cave.

A shrill voice echoed from the chamber where Vlad was recovering, “I can’t believe you hid the fact he had ghost powers from me! Did you not think it was important? Has the ability to reveal our location to the people trying to murder us suddenly become a non-issue!? You promised me he wasn’t a threat, and here we are, in a cave, with none of our equipment.”

“I instructed him specifically not to use his powers. It’s not like I didn’t know how dangerous this could be, give me some credit. And no I didn’t tell you, because that was his information to tell not mine.” Vlad, clearly awoken from his injury induced slumber, half stomped half limped into the antechamber of the cave. He made it to a cluster of stalagmites a few feet into the make-shift room before leaning against them. Despite the hand on his stomach, he had a ferocious glare on his face. He breathed heavily into the growing silence, breath ragged, before standing straighter and continuing, “I had no reason to assume he’d disobey. Genuinely, I’d never put this family in danger, you know that.” He hissed out the last few words through pain clinched teeth and slumped back against the tallest stalagmite.

“Just because I know you wouldn’t do it on purpose, doesn’t mean it was alright to lie to me,” Maddie held her hand up before he could get a word in, “lying by omission is still lying Vladimir. I understand that you wanted to-”

“-I’m sure you do.” The sarcastic bite in the interruption could have peeled paint. “You know exactly why he’d want to work up to telling you about his ghost powers. I mean, it’s not like everyone has threatened to throw him out if they got a hint of a reason he was dangerous.”

“You’re deflecting! The problem isn’t him it’s you.” Maddie hissed.

“I’m not going to betray his good faith and privacy by telling you something he should have the right to-”

“Oh my God, this isn’t about privacy it’s about safety. Our safety is more important than his bashful whatever the hell it is preventing him from actually communicating with-”

“It’s not shyness, it’s prudence! When he last spoke to you, you thought he was a ghost plant sent to kill us. He doesn’t have any more reason to trust us than we do him. You’re being unreasonable.”

“You’re unreasonable…”

The married couple continued to bicker back in forth, oblivious to the awkward teenage audience shuffling their feet not a meter away. Jasmine and Daniel locked eyes and silently came to a conclusion. They waved a hand to get Danny’s attention, and silently the trio slipped farther away into another part of the cave.

Danny winced as the sound of continued arguments echoed away into the dark. Still, wherever the other two teens were headed, it had to be better than listening to them fight about him.

Jasmine reached into her pocket palming the cool silver disk inside. This far away from the heaters and generators of the larger chamber, the air was cool and clammy, like walking through an especially thick fog. She didn’t particularly dislike the cold, but after the unnatural heat of the rest of the cave, the change left her fighting back shivers. The disk felt like one of those ice packs placed in lunch boxes. It was cool, but nothing like an actual ice cube. She sighed when the argument behind her finally faded away into the plaintive plinks creating the ambient cave noise. Her right hand still ached like she’d twisted it wrong and slammed it into a wall at the same time. In the increasing gloom, it was hard to get a good look at her younger brother, but she didn’t need ghost enhanced night vision to tell he was just as exhausted. The scrapping shuffle of his sneakers against the hard stone combined with his slumped shoulders said enough. “Ok, that’s far enough I think.” She pulled the disk out of her pocket and gave it a shake. Slowly, the chemicals inside reacted to one another, becoming luminescent as she agitated them. The disk was artificially cooled so the light would slowly fade over the course of an hour or two until it was re-shaken.

Danny stopped just inside the sudden pool of light. He leaned against a wall with his arms crossed, keeping as much distance between him and the hostile siblings as he could manage. The ghost powered teen thought they had calmed down, but he didn’t put it past them to pull a gun on him. Their default solution to problems seemed to be shooting it until it wasn’t one anymore. Considering what happened earlier today, it’s not such a bad solution in general. “So...” He trailed off into the cool tense space between the three of them. They must have brought me out here for something.

“So, I think we should trade stories, life stories I mean. Since you actually managed to be truthful for once, I realize you have no idea how serious-how different this world is from your own. I mean, giant battle aside, do you have any idea what the GSU are like?” Jasmine let the question hang in the air for a second longer before continuing. “I think, to really understand where we are coming from, we need to tell you about the history of the GSU and a little bit about ourselves.”

“Even though I don’t like you, if you’re going to stop being a walking liability, we need to get you up to speed. Naturally, I still think this is a waste of our time and we’d all be better off leaving you on some back road to fend for yourself,” Daniel paused and stared at a spot in between Jasmine and Danny. “However, that’s not going to actually happen, much to my deep displeasure, so we need to mitigate damages.” He shrugged and pressed himself back against the wall opposite Danny.

The eldest Masters’ sibling frowned over at her brother before addressing Danny. “The first thing you need to know is that Jack Fenton’s only life goal is the eradication of the ghost species. He’ll stop at absolutely nothing to get that goal accomplished. You saw the mansion in Wisconsin?”

“Yeah sure-oh that’s probably rhetorical isn’t it?” Danny stuttered when he saw the annoyed look on the red haired girl’s face. “My bad.”

“Anyway, that’s where we lived before we moved to Amity Park. When I was almost six, the GSU, or well they were called the ‘Guys in White’ then, attacked the mansion. We barely escaped with our lives. Our father used the last of his assets, before they were frozen and relinquished to the government as the holdings of a ‘non-entity’, to craft new identities for us. We disappeared into the United States background. This was a long time ago, I don’t really remember much about it other than the fight at the mansion, and always running.” Jasmine stopped to rub at her sore wrist before locking eyes with Danny, “eventually, we settled in Amity Park.”

“Can I at least ask why? I mean when I was there, it was ghost hunter central. Was it different then or…?” Danny left the explanation open ended and rolled his shoulders. He was feeling a couple of landings from earlier and he’d much rather be sleeping than exploring the wacky past of this reality from Hell.

“It was a pretty active base for ghost hunters back then too. Our parents’ reasoning was that it would be easier to blend in right under the enemies’ noses. They were right for the most part.” Jasmine stopped to give her brother a quick glance. His face was as impassive as it had been since the conversation started. She nodded over at him to pick up where she left off. Talking about their time in Amity Park always left him skittish.

“We dyed our hair, wore colored contacts, and got our first set of spectral bracelets.” Daniel stopped to hold up his wrist, jingling the techno-jewelry with relish before lowering his arm. “We lived in Amity Park for nearly six years. We…made friends, went to school, blended in. It was unsafe at times, but relatively normal.” Daniel sat up straighter before leaning away from the wall. “We lived in ghost hunters’ HQ during the entire War. I’m sure the Head Commander,” he paused to sneer, “threw fits about that when he realized how long we’d been there.”

“War?” This time Danny had no idea what they were talking about. How did an entire war happen without anybody talking about it?

The eldest Masters’ boy smiled; it didn’t reach his eyes. “When Jack Fenton couldn’t get to us anymore, he convinced the GSU, they were called that now after the attack in Wisconsin, to wage war against the entire Ghost Zone. It…went well for them. Between my sixth birthday and my ninth, they captured, executed, or otherwise destroyed every piece of ghost civilization in the Zone. The last ghosts alive are either hidden deep inside the Ghost Zone, or held in the many, many experimental labs of the GSU. Most ghosts are either used as slaves or tortured and experimented on. We’re some of the last free sentient ghost-like being around, hybrids or not.” He leaned back against the clammy wall, shoulders tensed, a frown slowly deepening on his face. “In any case,” he started before loosening up once more, “we were eventually discovered.” Daniel stared off into the darkness back towards the front of the cave. He crossed his arms, his hands clenched involuntarily at his sides.

“Jack Fenton somehow discovered our secret identities.” She started sparing another surreptitious glance in her sibling’s direction. “He captured my brother, and our parents, mostly our dad actually, had to fight the whole ghost hunter collective in Amity Park to get him back. We escaped, obviously, and we’ve been on the run ever since.” Jasmine paused and stared down at her hand, swirling the disk in it unnecessarily. “That was almost five years ago, or it will be in a couple weeks. It’s been difficult to put it mildly.” Jasmine pinned their living headache with a look before continuing, “apparently, what we needed was for things to be shaken up. The Universe must have thought we’d become complacent, what with no major incidents in the last two years.” She tossed the disk to Daniel, to give her aching arm and wrist a break.

“Living on the run, it’s required us to be both paranoid and resourceful, something I imagine you’re familiar with considering you interesting life choices these last few months.” He stopped and swirled the disk another few times, thinking his words through. It had been a long day and without any adrenaline left, things were getting fuzzy at the edges. “So, you’ll understand where I’m coming from when I say this: your presence here is like a bucket of flies in the middle of an excrement sandwich. Sure, the sandwich on its own was terrible, but the flies improved nothing with their presence.” The ghost powered teen added with a glare. “Unfortunately, I don’t get a vote on whether you stay, and my father can be unhelpfully stubborn about helping other people. Chances are, you’re stuck here for an indeterminable duration, but at least after that last battle you have some idea of how dangerous the GSU are.” He snorted and tossed the light back to his sister, “or well one could only hope, I have my doubts about your cognitive abilities. I mean you did just walk up to ghost hunter HQ in Amity Park. But I’m sure something will eventually penetrate the thick veil of ignorance you’re carting around inside your skull.”

“I’m sure he gets it.” She stopped to switch the light into the hand that didn’t feel like it was going to fall off. “I’m almost as sure about that as I am about the fact you’re going to mention how much you hate him being here every time you get a chance.”

“Oh no, not every time, that would be redundant.” He passed a sardonic smile in his sister’s direction. “Just every time I can mention it in a new context.” The dark haired teen stood straighter and stretched, the crackling pops of his spine echoing in the absurdly quiet space in the small antechamber. “Do you think they’ve stopped arguing by now?”

Jasmine pursed her lips in thought before replying, “Maybe? If not, we can just sneak into the RV or the Hover. In any case, I don’t want to stand here in the damp and cold anymore.” With that, she pushed away from the hard rocky wall and started off down the path back to the main part of the cave.

Danny carefully slunk behind her. They hadn’t exactly been super forthcoming, but they’d given him a lot more information than he had volunteered on his own. Information that wasn’t strictly necessary to wrapping his head around the situation and reality he found himself in. To be frank, he wanted to ask more about their time in Amity Park. They’d lived there for a good while, made friends they’d claimed. It was entirely selfish, but maybe they knew something about Sam and Tucker? As if they remembered the names of people they’d left behind years ago in a panic. Oh yeah, they would definitely care about some random kids they probably never met in a town filled with people trying to kill them. Get real Fenton. He scuffed his feet as he listened to the subdued plinks and plunks of water dripping from the ceiling.

Even if Vlad and his mom had come to an agreement about him or just set aside their argument to figure out what to do next, he had no interest in walking back into the larger chamber. The churning feeling of guilt and hot burn of shame was eating at his mind. I really should have said something…or at least not used my powers like I had been asked. The damage had already been done, but that didn’t make him feel any better. In fact, it made him feel worse. Sure, they had already been planning to move, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out that they’d left some nice equipment and maybe even important sentimental things back in the disaster zone that was the valley below. Danny was well aware kicking himself in the teeth about this wasn’t helping anyone, but stuck shuffling between the two exhausted Masters’ siblings; he was having a hard time doing anything else. If he had never blundered into their lives, they’d probably be perfectly fine right now. If I had never blundered into their lives, they wouldn’t exist either. The thought brought up another flare of frustration.

Clockwork clearly stated his intentions not to interfere unless he completely destroyed Reality or Time something, but in his opinion, this spiraling dystopia with the entire Ghost Zone dead definitely counted as a serious fuck up worth intervention. Just as the three of them rounded the last corner to make it back to the main part of the cave, Danny felt a wave of nausea with cold tingles down his back. What if Clockwork was one of the many ghosts killed during that War thing they were talking about before? He hadn’t considered the idea before now. Clockwork was the most powerful ghost he knew, or at least of the ghosts he interacted with even occasionally. But it was possible the reason he hadn’t come and done anything about this increasing clusterfuck of a universe was because he couldn’t. He could be already… The thought was too sickening to contemplate. He had no idea how to work the Medallion currently phased near his core. Even if they got him back into the Ghost Zone and he went into the Realm Beyond Time, if Clockwork wasn’t there, he had no way to get back into his own timeline, or to go back and attempt to fix what he’d broken so badly. Danny skidded to a stop right at the entrance to the antechamber with the RV before the other ghost powered teen shoved him from behind.

“Come on, there’s no use putting this off. It’s not like delaying the inevitable is going to save you from being tossed out on your butt.”

“Our parents aren’t going to toss him-”

“Shush, let me dream.” Daniel closed his eyes while a serene smile took over his expression.

“You are a terrible person. You know if you throw me out of here, the GSU will literally kill me.”

“And you have to know that I don’t give one solitary fudge covered strawberry about that fact.”

“Oh yeah, keep working for the psychopath of the year award Daniel, I’m sure the GSU needs competition.” Jasmine frowned over her shoulder at her younger brother. “You don’t have to like him, God knows I don’t, but could you stop wishing for his demise…at least out loud?” She watched as his amused smirk dropped back into a flat expression.

“Don’t have enough room left to care about people who nearly get my family killed. Sorry, oh saintly sister of mine.”

“Empathy is important.”

“You’d think after Austin, you’d learn to be more selective with your charitable views of other people.” He scowled and pressed a hand into the other boy’s back. “Come on, move it already.” He’d have simply gone around, if he wasn’t determined to keep him in his sight at all times. Finally, the other teen scuffled the rest of the way into the main chamber. A quick glance about the space revealed neither of his parents. There was also a lack of yelling or accusations. At least it’s quiet.

Jasmine sighed as she set the still glowing disk down on one of the tables. “I’m heading back to the RV to sit down on something that isn’t stone. You two can stay here and continue to stare each other down, or you can join me. Personally, my feet feel like lead weights, but if you two want to tough it out for some reason, be my guest.” With that, she started towards the vehicle at a slow pace. Moving at anything above ‘granny shuffle’ was impossible, everything felt like it’d been through a meat grinder, or pounded and tenderized. She glanced over her shoulder to make sure the two boys were following here, before walking the rest of the way to the RV door. She could hear muted conversation from inside. Nothing that sounded like yelling, but it was still impassioned discussion. I guess they moved the conversation to somewhere with soft cushions. A great idea in her opinion. She opened the door and stomped up the steps, fatigue instead of emotion leaving her footfalls heavy.

“I completely understand your position here hun…but can you at least see…why undermining his trust on this issue…so soon after he arrived…would have only made things worse?” Vlad had to stop every couple of words to take another shallow breath.

“I can, I just still think it’s stupid.” Maddie griped from her seat across from Vlad in the middle section of the RV. They’d moved into the space at her insistence, worried that he’d make his injuries worse by stubbornly standing and stomping around in frustration while talking to her. She turned slightly to watch the three teens clomp up the stairs back into the vehicle. They could table this discussion for later, there were more pressing issues. “Glad to see you’re all still alive, I was worried you’d drug Danny away to try and leave him outside the cave.”

“I’ve suggested it twice, but everyone seems to think it’s a bad idea.”

“Because it’s immoral, jerkface.” Jasmine rolled her eyes at her brother this time. He was mostly saying it to complain at this point.

Daniel smiled as he settled onto one of the soft cushioned seats, “a difference in perspective then.”

“Should I sleep with one eye open or something? Should I sleep at all? You seriously need to re-examine your decision making processes man. If you were in my position-”

“-I wouldn’t be anywhere near as stupid or useless or a danger to others.” The other dark haired teen said with a shrug. “Truly, the ‘attempted murder by stupidity’ level of social interaction is not a high bar to exceed here.”

“Enough,” Vlad started when he saw Danny open his mouth to reply. He took a shallow breath from where he was half-reclined on one of the long form seats. Breathing hurt. Sitting up hurt. Consciousness was a battle that he was currently losing, and he didn’t want to listen to more pointless bickering. “Save the snarky remarks for a day when we aren’t…about to pass out from…blood loss and exhaustion.” He said been pained gasps. “I’m sure there will be plenty of time for you all to glare at each other later.” He winced at the stretching burn he felt from having taken a breath deep enough to say that all at once.

“Your father is right. What we need to do now is decide where we are going next. We may be able to salvage some equipment that wasn’t stolen or destroyed from the valley below over the next two days, but after that, we have to leave the caves, and we need a destination.” She stopped and sighed, placing another pillow behind her aching back. “Usually, Vlad and I would just pick a place, but I think Jasmine and Daniel are old enough to have some good tactical input on where we should go next.” She frowned when she heard her younger children moving around farther back in the RV. No point in keeping them out of the conversation. “And you all can stop pretending to be asleep or ignoring us now.” She called towards the final third of the RV.

The twins and Lizzie quickly bounded out of the back section of the RV, excited to be included in a conversation on where they should set up Camp next for once.

“So mom, can we go to The Falls next?” Nate asked while bouncing into a seat.

“Nu-uh Nate, we were just there like two month ago that’s too soon.” He snickered when his brother stuck out his tongue at him.

“I think it’s a good place to hide, and it’s close to here, but hard to find.”

“Well I think that that’s stupid because it’s too close to where we are now and also because we’d have to fly half of the stuff out to it and that’d be a bad idea cause they are surveying the area with like satellites or whatever.” His twin opened his mouth to respond, when his baby sister spoke up.

“Can’t we just stay in the caves? They can’t get to us because of the cave-in and um, two days isn’t a long time to get all our stuff. I don’t want to move again so fast.”

“This is all great, but you all don’t get a vote. You get to listen and not talk, which is exactly what the child of Magnus the Red gets to do.”

“That’s not even a fair analogy Daniel, you can do better.” Vlad suppressed the urge to chuckle. “Oh don’t explain it.” He stopped to sit up a little straighter, “I mean, that only makes sense if Danny were you…and then you were actually a traitor…and I was actually an immortal god human thing or something…Should have called him a daemon of Tzeentch.”

“The Head Commander is Magnus.”

“That doesn’t-oh, ok but this is…off track. We’re supposed to be talking about…new Camp locations.” He’d finally worked himself back into an upright sitting position. His middle still hurt like someone had poured coals covered in lighter fluid on it, but he could tell it was healing. Slowly. Far too slowly for his tastes, but to be expected after how much ghost energy he’d expended.

“My suggestion is for Forge Rocks. I know it’s the farthest location in our rotation, but it’s the most fortified, and it has the most provisions. It also has the distinction of being far away from civilization, which will give this enough time to blow over without us being spotted. Otherwise, my second suggestion is Dawn’s Bridge.”

“Are any of these places actually named that, or is it all code names for the spy bugs living in the walls of the cave rocks?” Danny frowned when no one seemed inclined to actually talk about real places or areas of the United States. He had to bite back a growl when his alternate reality twin rolled his eyes at him.

“No, those aren’t the ‘real names’, they are just designations that make it easier to remember. Which one would you remember ‘Brownsville’ or ‘Flight’s Fall?” He felt a bubble of warm satisfaction when the other teen agreed with a shrug. “Back on topic, those are my top two choices, Jasmine, any other suggestions?”

“Well, I agree with Forge Rocks, but not Dawn’s Bridge. I know Dawn is closer, but there was just a ghost incident with one of the GSU handlers losing control there a week back. That has nothing to do with us, but everyone in the area will be on edge, and paranoid people like to call the cops for little or no reason at all. We don’t need that kind of exposure.”

“It is harder to escape from Dawn than Forge, especially since they started check points recently.” Daniel shrugged when his parents looked in his direction. “Ok, not recently, heard about it the last time I was in town, so maybe four months ago. Long enough that they’ve become routine and they’ll be harder to bypass in a rush.”

“Forge Rocks is a good location, but we planned on mentioning that it’s going to be on the inactive cache list, and off rotation. Let me explain,” Maddie held up her hand, “they just added a new ghost hunter HQ during the last expansion of the network there. It used to make up one of the areas that was part of the ‘Great Holes’ in their network in the mountain west, but that changed about six months back. We’ll be able to strip it during a supply run, but that’s about it.” She rubbed her temple at the headache forming behind her eyes. “And, Flight’s Fall was going to be the next stop, that was the plan, but obviously that’s not going to work.”

“Obviously?” Danny chanced asking.

“Yeah genius, we’d need a bunch of supplies left in the valley. Fake IDs, different hair, clothing, you name it. Doesn’t one of our personas have a fake rebellious tattoo or something for the area?” Daniel shrugged before staring out the RV window facing towards the path out of the cave. “We can’t just show up there without it, and we can’t make new personas without more supplies either. So, we’re stuck looking at somewhere without a whole lot of civilization, that doesn’t ask questions, and won’t think it’s weird when a whole family in an RV shows up on a family vacation using only cash in the middle of the school year. So, Heber City, Utah, or Forge Rocks…before the ghost hunters decided to set up shop.”

“Ok, well, what about some place from the older rotations? We haven’t been there for a while, so maybe one of the remote locations farther north? Ice Canyon, or Snow Peaks? Or mayb-”

“-The Meadow.” Vlad locked eyes with his wife sitting across the RV. “It’s well ahead of schedule…but we need the break. We’d have time to actually replenish our equipment supplies and make safe raids of caches without having to worry about the lack of shields. Naturally, shields are the first priority, if we can’t salvage something from the valley but, until then, it’s our best option. And unlike any of the northern options from the last rotation, we don’t have try and run the border without ID.”

“We’d have to cross the mountains west, and the last time we were there, we were worried that the fluctuations weren’t strong enough-”

“I know Maddie, but it’s nearing summer, and the last readings we got from the probes showed everything was setting up for a solid summer pattern. Do you disagree?” He leaned forward some to stretch his back, his insides felt let a balancing act between the bruises on his spine and the healing cuts in his middle.

“No. It’s just a little more chance than I like.”

“Fortune favors the bold.”

“And the people who are actually clear about their plans.” Danny grumbled, more than tired of being out of the loop.

“The Meadow is a naturally occurring nullification zone in the western edge of the Rockies near the state line of Washington and Oregon. It was the first place we set up a temporary base, and over the years, it’s become our most fortified campsite.”

If it does what the shields do, why not create a permanent base there and just dig in? Vlad explained to him why they hadn’t without being asked. The nullification strength changed seasonally and even in some place well fortified, it’s not like they could fight off a coordinated siege from a well funded government agency he’d said. It was still some place they’d never been spotted though, and with summer approaching the strength of the nullification field, he had no idea how it worked, would be at its strongest, more powerful than even their man-made shields. Unfortunately, that pattern diminished and reversed towards the winter time, so even if they wanted to just dig in, it would be obvious where they were when the winter high of ambient spectral energy didn’t show up.

Danny settled deeper into his seat as everyone around him agreed that was the best spot for a new Camp site, and swallowed his ambivalence and helplessness. He had more questions than ever, but whether Clockwork was alive and he could ever get out of this spiraling hell hole of a universe would have to wait until he could even get into the Zone. Never mind how…He heard Jazz mention distractedly that it would take until the end of summer to replace the equipment. And at least that long before they’d be in a position to get me into the Ghost Zone if not longer. Danny thought morose. It was going to be a long summer.

…then you better ask the right questions.