#Danny’s eyes are the same color as the zone

[leafyeyes417]

Grumbling under his breath John turned the corner around a building on the campus. He was sure he was close, he could feel Something nearby but he still couldn’t confirm what, but it didn’t feel like a demon. Lifting his head from where he lit his cigarette he froze.

Ahead of him was clearly a human, overlayed by what he could only call a humanoid filled with the void of space filled with the universe and multiple things he couldn’t even name since there wasn’t a language he could use to describe it. And above its head floated a crown made of ice and aurora borealis. Then the head turned and eyes locked onto him.

Frozen in place he could barely think as his thoughts turned sluggish as what felt like the weight a planet held him down as psychedelic eyes weighed him and his presence. The feeling lasted what felt like forever and none at all. He staggered when the feeling disappeared and dropped his cigarette as he gasped as he remembered to breathe, choking on smoke he hadn’t exhaled.

He regained his bearings and realized the being was right in front of him. He sweated as he internally swore at coming to the very important realization that he was in no way shape or form able to take on this entity and he was not happy that he came upon it unprepared.

He stiffened as the being opened its(his?) mouth and was not prepared for what they said. “Sorry about the spookiness man. I can’t stop it unfortunately no matter how much control of my power I seem to get. You okay now?”

His mind blanked for a moment before he shakingly pulled out his pack of cigs and lighter as he tried to shove his mind into gear. “Not gonna lie but that was more than a bit’a spookiness.” He wheezed out, dying a bit inside at being unable to project the calm confidence that would hide his true feelings after recent experience.

“I don’t want ta step on any toes but I was tracking some kinda spirit or possibly demon and was not expecting it to be uh… someone of your power. Can I ask why exactly you are here in Gotham and if I can help with anything to help ya return to your realms faster? The Big Bat is not gonna be happy a being of your power is running around in his city and I don’t want ta cause an incident I gotta fix later.” John asked cautiously while trying to keep his breathing even and was honestly tempted to pray to different gods that this would be a simple fix and he wouldn’t have to even speak to the Bat.

Scratching his cheek he replied, “Ah… I’m here for college actually. I was basically kicked out of the other colleges for being too spooky despite good grades and not causing any trouble besides the aura. Gotham seems better, so maybe I can actually finish my degree here!” Being smiled at John can feel his hope die as he knew Batman would not be happy and he was not looking forward to that conversation. Why couldn’t things be easy?

Okay, you know how bird don't ACTUALLY look the way we think they do?

They are far more colorful? But only to the eyes of other birds?

And it has to do with how light reflects off them and how their eyes are shaped etc etc.?

Well..... humans can see the most shades of green, right? But! We sure as shit can't see UltaViolet and InfraRed? Or shades BEYOND those. Ectoplasmic colors. Magical ones. Third eye, need to see with your SOUL type ones.

Danny? Could very well still have lil baby "kitten's eyes who haven't open yet" syndrome.

He thinks the Zone is Green and his hair is white.

But it's not.

His hair is Starlight colored. Frost. His suit is specifically "the void between stars" colored. Which looks... different? Then black? No, no, guys. How can you guys not see it? It looks REALLY different! How did he not NOTICE before?! They're not ever CLOSE to the same shade! It's like calling salmon and hot pink the same. You know... if you were to compare an actual fish and some irradiated, violently glowing version of "hot pink".

......guys?

His gloves are.... guys, these ares stars. Pressed so close together there's no gap. His body is the night sky, all rearranged. He's wearing SPACE, guys.

*continues to stare at his gloves for the next five hours*

Now... why is this relevant? Because! Danny slowly, as all humans do, adjusts! It's like finally having glasses after years of blurry vision. He... forgets, what it was like, not NOT See Zone Colors. Not completely, mind you, but enough he has to be reminded.

And the Zone? A Realm of the Dead. Specifically, the great catch-all and highway of the Dead. They get EVERYBODY. Misfits and vagabonds. Those who don't quite fit. Funky lil dudes. And of course, assholes, but everybody has those! See, Zone colors?

Are DIFFERENT.

They're all of um!

It's like looking at the technicolor, stobe light, multi galaxies in one, Sun. Tingly(tm)!!! You get used to it. What helps? Is that as garish as the Zone is? The painting and grand tapestry of it all? Keeps changing. Like weather. If it's too much for you, you can stay inside your Lair until the current Color changes. Until the designs shift. Vibe changes.

There are even glasses for that! "Temperate" areas for people to set up, that get headaches or are just... kinda killjoys. Too each their own. Though the stormy areas? Those guys are freaks. Watch out for those guys. They're the kind who stare directly are stars until their eyes burn out.

Where was I? Oh yeah! Danny!

No longer a wee baby, smol baby, twig-o!

Sad. We miss it.

But he did get used to Seeing The Colors. Got a handle on his powers. And! Finally worked with his parents on how to safely turn the portal OFF. There was much booing. Cries of "kill joy" and "booo! You suck!". But? Like? Dude DID have the right to protect his home. Go to college. What can you do?

Problem with THAT is? Baby grew into his "built like a brick shit house of constantly running off to literally tackle the Supernatural excellence" Fenton genetics. He Tall. Muscles! And he PUMPING out "somethings fucked up with me" Vibes!

Add in his DEEPLY Sus off hand comments. Weird ability to tell when someone has or is about to die. Basic immunity to the cold. Fuckin EYE GLOW?

Ha ha... *Horror movie screams from his college dorm mates*

Clearly a demon!

He gets kicked out. Well... not kicked out. He's a model student and broken no rules. They'd never survive the lawsuit. But... he's? STRONGLY INCOURAGED to finish his education elsewhere. Repeatedly. By like... 15 colleges.

Sam is not just livid, she's actively foaming at the mouth.

Breathe, Sam! Remember what your doctor said! Your mortal body can't handle that kinda Vengance spiral! Think of your blood pressure! Breathe!!! (Were not for the laws of this land... and the weak, fleshy constraints of her mortal form!)

Thankfully? Tucker's been interning, remotely of course, with Wayne Industries. He asked his manager where he could find some of those scholarship forms. (Since Gotham University is just a touch out of Danny's price range.) Manager wanted to know why. And oh! Oh holy shit. Apparently? Danny is the hot new office gossip.

People in the main office are OUTRAGED. Danny's "too spooky"?! Too FUCKIN SPOOKY!? Are you KIDDING THEM? Even juicier, a Meta kid from some wacky ghost hunters turned scientists. From a line of Supernatural hunters. Wants to be a aeronautics engineer.

Ooooooh how SPOOKY! Better watch out! He'll design an ENGINE at yooooou!

Fuckin casuals. Non-Gothamites are WEAK. "Too scary" their collective asses. Yeah, maybe the kid SHOULD come too Gotham. He can be the weird kid. Mildly unsettling or something. His powers won't be SHIT in Gotham. Just remind him to buy a gas mask.

So! Danny gets his Scholarship! Merrily packs his bags for darker, Gothic hellscape hills. Unaware... that Constantine has been following reports of a "demon" that he's? 80% sure is a Banshee but MIGHT be a winter spirt with a shtick? For the past 13 colleges. He's getting closer. And this sucker is a strong one.

Not "this is going to cause me serious, life imperilling danger" strong. But more? "Man, that cat is HUUUUUGE". Could he still get mauled a lil? Yeah. Scratched to all hell and back? Probably! But DIE? Unlikely.

He just needs to know why the FUCK this spirit his hanging around colleges.

Which is made harder... by the fact that what HE sees? And what OTHER people see? When they look at this guy? Separate things. Yeah, he'd LOVE to give you guys a description! IF HE HAD ONE.

@the-witchhunter @hdgnj @hdgnj @spidori @babbling-babull @nerdpoe @lolottes

[goldengirlgalaxy]

The Bedazzler

After a very hazy night that... may or may not have been caused by something he found in the Ghost Zone, Danny ends up discovering in his haze he bought an absolutely outrageous amount of various craft supplies, especially shiny things like those little plastic rimstones.

Good news, everything was bought from a going out of business sale, so he didn't drain all of his funds. Bad news, everything was bought from a going out of business sale, which means he can't return them. And, frankly, he doesn't want to just throw away a bunch of stuff he paid for. But he still doesn't know what to do with it all.

At least until Clockwork decides to give Danny a small boon that lets him stop time. Then he gets some ideas.

It first starts off with Superman. He's doing his regular hero thing, when he suddenly feels his cape pulled to one side. He brushes it off as the wind, until people start pointing at his back. Clark nearly panics when he finds a bunch of green crystals on his cape, only to calm when he realizes they're plastic and attached with glue. That of course begs the question, who was able to glue gemstones to his back without him noticing?

Later that same day he's both amused and even more confused when Luthor appears again, only for a bunch of gem stickers to appear on top of his bald head, clearly arranged to spell out 'I Heart Superman' in icons.

Captain Marvel suddenly feels something appear on his head, only to discover it's some kind of cardboard crown. He's confused, but ultimately decides to wear it the rest of the day, thinking it might be from some meta fan of his.

Martian Manhunter finds a necklace appearing on him. When he pulls it off, he finds it's one of those Shrinky Dink plastics, designed to look like a medal that says '#1 Hero' on it, also with some extra plastic gems for extra bling. He wears it proudly for the rest of the day.

The Gotham Bats all get hit at the same time. Fake flowers, various colors of ribbons, Red Robin had a helium balloon attached to him for an hour, and of course plenty of shiny fake gems.

At first, everyone thought the funniest part of the mysterious crafts was Red Hood appearing with several rimstones attached to his hood where he mouth would be, several gold ones arranged in such a way that it looked like he was flashing a bunch of yellow teeth.

Then the Joker showed up. And was promptly doused in several pounds of glitter. Even better, it got into his eyes, effectively blinding him and giving the Bats a chance to capture him (after they were done laughing).

Of course, as more Leaguers get trolled, the more the stories start to paint a picture of someone running around pranking them. And many of them want to know just who this Bedazzler is.

Meanwhile, Danny is laughing his ass off and is planning on giving his friends a chance to have their own fun.

[radiance1]

There was a new cafe open in Gotham.

Such thing would usually not be a problem whatsoever, except for the fact that the family that ran said bakery just appeared out of nowhere one day. No one knew who they were, not where they came from.

The two parents- Mr. and Mrs. Fenton seemed to be the usual case of brilliant scientists about to snap and go crazy, and yes, everyone who visited said store waited with baited breath for said thing to happen.

Except, it never did.

They were just being your normal (as you can get in Gotham) run of the mill parents taking care of their two kids while simultaneously running a bakery.

Almost made them feel silly for waiting for the other shoe to drop, but in Gotham you could never be too sure.

Their oldest child, Jasmine Fenton passed college with flying colors, and seemed to be your normal run of the mil teenage girl busy with taking care of school and stuff.

Their youngest and last child- Danny Fenton- was a bit of an enigma, to be honest. He didn't seem to be going to school, instead staying and helping run his parents' bakery alongside- or alone when they were busy with something else- his parents. The room noticeably got colder whenever he was around, his touch colder than the normal human should be, his breath a tad too cold whenever he was speaking over someone's shoulder, and his teeth literal fangs.

They assume him to be a meta, and if he didn't already have parents would have assumed him to be Mr. Freeze's long-lost child or something.

Everyone was determined to treat them like a normal family, maybe a tad weird but honestly, it wouldn't be inaccurate to say there was something weird about everyone who lived in Gotham.

They were just a normal family, maybe have a past they're running from, who are the Gothamites to judge. At least, until they were attacked by one of Gotham's rouges.

The daughter was at school, well out of the fire zone.

Ms. Fenton calmly rang out a bell on the counter, while Mr. Fenton didn't even stop from where he was carrying multiple people's orders (with the help from small green beings the Fenton's call blob ghosts) and then out from the ceiling appeared what looked like extremely high-tech weapons and without a second's delay were they fired, the villain was not killed, but were knocked out cold.

Then their son appeared from the kitchen, dusting his hands off on his apron, calmly walked to the villain and proceeded to throw them out of the establishment as easy as breathing and walk back into the kitchen as if nothing had happened.

They knew there was another shoe just waiting to drop, and drop it did. They're just glad it wasn't the result of another villain added to the rogue's ranks.

And hey, they'll be turning a blind eye for as long as they could when said family makes some of the best pastries and meanest cups of coffee in Gotham.

(Two days after that was it made known that their daughter pulled out one of those same high-tech guns on the Red Hood.)

[wandixx]

Danny, the Young Justice member snippet nr 2

these snippets aren't connected in anyway but just some little scenes I came up with, everyone is welcome to build up on them if they want to

Trigger warning: death mentioned, self-harm mentioned, idk, Danny gets flashback to portal incident

unrelated snippet nr 1, unrelated snippet nr 3 (?)

Out, out, out.

He tripped over his own legs and almost fell and it didn’t matter because he needed to get out. 

Away, away, away. 

He wasn’t sure if he ran or flew or dragged himself on the rough floor but he had to get away. His back hit a wall and he couldn’t get past it, intangibility just out of his grasp.

He logically knew that Zeta Tube wasn't the same as the portal but it was similar. So deadly similar.

He wasn’t sure when his own, corps-like, trembling with rigor mortis cold hands started rubbing his arms. He also wasn’t sure whether it was to comfort himself in this lonely self-hug or to try to rub hard enough that the hazmat and skin underneath would be torn, allowing him to see his own, red blood running in his veins. It was still red, right? It was still red, right? Of course it was still running, why wouldn’t it?

His knees gave up. He fell to the ground with quiet reverbatting thump, his eyes fixated on danger at the other side of the large room. He had to get further away but he couldn’t.

Because he was dying again.

Eyes full of tears and terror were jumping around, unable to see the room around him. Why couldn’t he see anything? Why were there only splashes of various colors, all contrasting with a light gray background. Were these people? Colors were moving, that seemed likely. Ghosts?! He had to get ready if these were ghosts he needed to fight them. People could be in danger and he couldn’t even stand without support. He started it, he had to take care of it, no matter how he felt right now.

His normally overly, unnaturally sensitive ears were filled with constant electric buzz from still active Zeta Tubes.

He was quite sure someone was yelling something but no matter what, Danny couldn’t understand what was being said. He tried looking around again but his teary eyes still failed him. There were no red stains though. Not in the right shade at least. No one was bleeding. It was okay for now.

Was it really? He hadn’t bled when he was dying had his accident though. It was all inside him, the crushing hollowness inside him and infinite outside pressure making his body implode. Ectoplasm bubbling in his mouth, throat, stomach and fingers, silencing his scream of agony and destroying his muscles. His limbs were limp and tense, twitching like a broken light bulb, out of his control but not out of his senses. It was so cold that it bit his bones and so hot that his skin was melting. There were screams so loud that it could shatter glass, as if every inhabitant of the Ghost Zone wanted to be heard and absolute suffocating silence. He was alone like nobody ever was and stuck in a stifling crowd that could stomp him to death any second. It was all contrasting, impossible but happening, existing together. He lived died it.

It was impossible, just like him.

There were others, they could help while Danny got himself together.

They couldn’t help if it was a ghost. He had to calm down and get ready to fight.

He couldn’t.

It was all happening again.

He was dying again.

It hurt to even think about.

Would it at least kill him for good?

Air he hadn’t needed before, not since his first death he always needed, like all functioning, alive human beings, got stuck in his lungs. He was gasping for it, choking on it. There was something stuck in his throat. SOme part of his brain that wasn’t screaming in agony and panic and loneliness had considered tearing his neck open just to get whatever was stuck swallowing but it didn’t help. 

He rubbed his arms harder. His eyes were locked on a blurred, still active portal. One of the color blobs moved, growing larger but he couldn’t think about what it meant. His arms hurt. It was good. Pain was grounding. In a gray room with few portals. Not the basement. Ghosts still could be there but it wasn't a basement. He still needed to get ready to fight

If he could feel pain, it meant he was alive, right? Ghosts never showed that they felt pain right? His parents always said they couldn’t.

He knew it was a lie but he felt like it was his last hope.

He realized that growing group of colors actually looked like a person but he had no way to tell whether they were alive or not. His ghost sense was quiet but he didn’t trust himself to not miss it. His throat was still shut tightly. His body kept twitching like a glitching character. No matter what, he couldn’t fight right then. He had to get himself together.

He scratched his arms almost violently.

Warm, soft, gentle hands pried his palms away from his arms. It wasn't a ghost. Ghosts weren't this gentle, this calmingly warm. Someone, someone who was alive, was crouching in front of him, face at the same level as his, hiding portals from his sight. Danny nearly sunk into their gentle touch.

“-om." their voice also was so gentle, filled with concern but firm enough to get to him over the buzz of portals. He tried to concentrate on this voice. He didn't want to hear portals.

"-ntom." It sounded like they were calling someone. He had to focus more to understand. Gentle grip on his wrists got more firm. There he was. He wouldn't feel it if he was dying again.

"Phantom." They called quietly, like little windbells Sam gave him as a birthday present. It was his name, they were asking him something he couldn't understand, something he couldn't do.

"I'm sorry."

He wasn't sure if any sound came out of his mouth.

Grip on his hands loosened a little, not enough for him to do anything about it, but enough to return to the pure feeling of safety and reassurance it gave him before.

“It's okay Phantom." they murmured. Danny nearly cried at their kindness and calmness. Air slowly started to fill his lungs again. It truly was okay, he wasn't dying again."Can you focus on five things you can see for me?"

He could do it. It wasn't much to repay the gentle person kneeling in front of him.

He blinked tears away and started the list in his head.

Black Canary in front of him.

Superboy in the middle of the room. He looked like he didn't know what to do.

Kid Flash next to him, ready to come to where Danny was shaking on the floor.

Robin and Artemis both made sure that Kid stayed where he was.

Miss Martian for sure feeling his panic and having trouble coping with this. He should calm down as soon as he can, he didn't want to cause any of his teammates too much stress.

Danny nodded, looking once again at the only adult hero in the room.

Molecules in his body were rearranging again. It all hurt.

"Thank you Phantom. Can you focus on four things you can hear?"

Five racing heartbeats.

One heartbeat that sounded more like buzz because of its speed. KF's heart was always weird.

Tapping of someone's feet.

Zeta Tubes.

He had been in the portal again, it had turned on with him inside again. He was dying again.

Next cautious nod.

"Alright. Now three things you can touch." Black Canary still sounded so calm, so sure she had it all under control. So contrary to her panicked heart. Danny wanted to believe her voice.

Canary's hands still on his wrists. In fact she was touching him more than he was her, but it still counted. There was some physics rule about it.

Cold stone he was sitting on. Weird, he was sure this cave was heated.

Hard wall pressing on his spine.

"Excellent. Two things you can smell?"

Jazz had done same exercise with him before.

Cookies made by Megan before she went on a mission.

Ectoplasm. Somewhere there was ectoplasm that wasn't inside him. He couldn't smell his own ecto. But there was no ghost in the cave. His sense was silent. It was there somehow else. It was concerning but not enough to make him panic again. They could handle it.

His lungs were still aching but air started filling them nearly as much as it did normally. His limbs stopped shaking so much too. He knew he wasn't dying this time. He was calming down.

"You're doing great Phantom. Now think, what's one thing you can taste?"

Aftertaste of ectoplasm he spat between the rough fight and the moment when Kid Flash rushed him to the nearest Zeta Tube, talking about medical attention. Danny tried to tell him, he didn't need that but he was inside before his explanation left his mouth.

"Do you feel better now?"

"Yeah," It was all he was able to say at the moment. He truly felt better but that didn't mean good. It was only a little less bad than shitty, one step from fully dead.

I considered writing continuation with Danny explaining a bit what happened and how he even ended up in Zeta Tube but a) lost spark to rewrite it b) hated what already had But if you want, I can probably rub my remaining two braincels together and continue. Or someone else can. Do it if you want to. Do it. Do it

[long-live-astronerd-ghost-king]

DP x DC prompt. ~“Unstable connection”~ Dead on main.

Part 13. Hungry Ghost Festival 2

or Unplanned Criminal Lord’s Vacation with uncle John.

Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6. Part 7.

Part 8. Part 9. New: Part 9.1. Part 9.2. Part 9.3.

Part 10. Part 11. Part 12. Meme break №1. Part 13.

~~~~

Jason looked at the phone screen and didn’t believe Danny has really decided to entrust his safety in the haunted lair to one drunk and unrequited Phantom.

He had enough. Jason jumped up and grabbed his helmet off the table.

‘Where do you think you’re going? Patrol’s coming soon.’ Tim took his eyes off the documents.

‘None of your business.’ Red Hood quickly found keys to a jet and ran for an exit. ‘Cass, while I’m gone, you’re in charge of the alley.’

~~~~

Demons, spirits, and ghosts swung around as if in a dance. And Danny, whom Jason easily spotted entering The Gambler’s Den, did not seem foreign at this festival of death. The red light gently illuminated his pale skin, which almost fused with color of his white kimono. The flowing fabric made his silhouette as blurry and elusive as most visitors.

One second without looking at the boy, and he was in the opposite corner, where the crowd were much smaller. VIP zone? Otherworldly creatures, deserving special treatment, were rarely friendly to humans. And Jason was tense about it for a moment. But after noticing waving with enthusiasm teenager, a man in white clothes rushed to respond to the gesture and a ghost with an eye patch sitting in the chair nodded to him, ringing with silver earrings.

Jason let his guard down a bit.

Another man in the black robe was not distracted by Danny. He threw the bones and glanced at them in disappointment. Then ghoul banged the table with fist. He rose, grabbed from a nearby bowl a mantou and bit. The next second his face was distorted by awareness and disgust.

He abruptly removed the triangle-shaped headband from Danny’s head and spat out a bite into it. Then ghoul fell to a floor. Well, nice carpets have softened it.

Jason shook his head, trying not to laugh at the strange situation.

At the same time, Danny boldly stepped over the fallen player and sat in a chair in front of the ghost in black and red clothes. The man began to demonstrate a technique of throwing bones, with continuous ringing after moving of his hands. Danny seemed passionate about this.

Constantine, who did not come with the Red Hood voluntarily, decides for the first time in the evening to speak out.

‘That’s weird.’ Constantine said with an intonation that spoke of his distrust of the situation.

‘What is it now?’ Jason took his eyes off the object of interest.

Fenton must be watched for his safety. Why did the warlock distract him? Jason completely distrusted Danny’s promise not to use his body parts as a bet.

‘His clothes.’ Constantine looked at the boy with discomfort. ‘Boy, are you sure your lover is alive?’

‘Don’t be rude. He looks great,’ said Jason ‘Maybe Danny wanted to dress up in a traditional costume.  And it's not polite to ask people if they are alive. He’s always pale in all the photos. ’

 Jason didn’t think costume selection was such a big deal.

‘No.’ Warlock shook his head ‘Kimono is Japanese national costume, not Chinese at all. And it’s on the left side which means your boyf..’ 

Unfamiliar to Jason spirit came up and patted Danny on the shoulder. The spirit and the boy bowed to each other.

‘I see.’ The puzzled expression on the warlock’s face is gone. ‘Your lover has interesting friends, Hood.’

 ‘Who is this guy? Explanation. Now.’ Jason barked irritably. Why did he always have to pull every word out of John?

‘Nurarihyon. Don’t be so nervous, he’s not dangerous to people. I just realized your boy here after a walk with Hyakki Yakko. Which explains the clothes.’ Сonstantine exhaled cigarette smoke and continued. ‘Your love doesn’t waste any time. In one evening, he met three ghost kings.’

‘Hyakki Yakko?’ Jason asked a lot calmer.

‘The night parade of one hundred demons when all of the yōkai, oni, ghosts parade through the streets.’ John shrugged his shoulders and shook the ashes off the cigarette into the nearest ashtray. It was also red and black. Warlock winced. ‘But your boyfriend feels like a fish in the water. Whoever his protector is, he is respected enough here. Let the guy have a drink and have some fun, he’ll be fine.’

‘God. Danny’s like a sheep in wolf’s clothing’ Jason sighed anxiously. ‘His parents are ghost hunters but he’s here as a plus one for Phantom, a ghost from Amity Park.’

‘More like a wolf in sheep’s clothing.’ Constantine muttered to himself. But when he saw a silver butterfly nearby, he decided that revealing other people’s secrets was not his problem. ‘I know who the Phantom is. Everyone has heard about Pariah Dark.’

Jason has not heard about him, but decided to keep quiet so as not to make a fool of himself. He will ask Danny about it.

Constantine took a brandy from the bartender. Then he took a big sip and looked at Jason. ‘You know, I always thought Little Red Riding Hood was incredibly stupid to let a wolf eat herself.’

‘What’s this about, Constantine?’ Hood rolled his eyes under the helmet.

And immediately he was glad that John did not see it. In the end, he helped him a lot not to scare Danny. Without the old man’s comments, he could have easily carried the boy away from the local ghosts on his shoulder like a caveman.

Jay didn’t want to spoil a first impression of a face-to-face meeting because of a kidnapping. Although, looking at how comfortable Fenton was among the nonhuman creatures, Jason doubted that Danny would have been screaming and panicking. But he wouldn’t be happy about being distracted from the fun. Hood shook his head in disappointment.

‘Nothing important.’ John brushed the silver butterfly off his shoulder. ‘You know, I’m in debt to the owner, so..If you don’t need my favors anymore, I’m leaving.’

‘Wait. Help me find Phantom.’ Сrime lord stopped him. ‘I need to make sure he doesn’t leave Danny here alone.’

John turned and looked at him as if he were terminally ill. ‘Phantom is in this room now. Only an idiot would have missed him.’ John spoke slowly and clearly, raising one eyebrow. ‘A conference of four kings. No joke. Stop poking around and messing up international relations, kid.’

Jason looked around the room again. ‘I don’t see him.’

‘Because you’re an idiot, kid’ John patted Jay on the shoulder and left. ‘Good luck explaining to Batman why you stole his jet.’

‘Heck.’

[diabolichare]

Familar Stranger

DP x DC au with a dash of dimensional travel where Danny, due to his ghostly nature, looks slightly different depending on how others perceive him. 

Warning: OP has no knowledge of space other than Google and is also a non-native English speaker; proceed with caution.

Same startup kits: Danny becomes the successor to the Infinity Realm (he's a baby by both ghost and human standards, so there's a temporary council for now). Anyway, he still has some power over the ghosts, so he asks them to lessen the amount of fighting to focus on schoolwork and "princely education." 

Now here's where my brainrot begins.

The Lazarus Pits, necromantic rituals, or portals of any kind that have "death" or "soul" in them tend to be connected to the Ghost Zone. However, the zone has its own defensive mechanism, so unless someone *Fentons* actively makes a gateway or has "experienced" death, it's nearly impossible to come upon the zone. A certain furry bridage in Gotham has unknowingly ticked all the checkboxes.

During a misson, one of the bats got caught in a magic situation and transported to the Infinity Realms. They wandered around, dogding ghosts, slowly getting insane from all these damn corridors and living paintings, before they stumbled upon a seemingly random door (CW is involved; he's having a great time testing the poor bat).

Opening the door leads them to The Universe. They closed the door, then opened it again. Yep, that's an entire universe complete with its own planetary systems and, oh, so pretty stars growing and dying in a blink of an eye. Another check around shows them that this is the only door so far in the endlessly long hallway. They look down (if there's even a down, for there's only infinity) and take an experimental step. The Milky Way lit up under their feet, with stars gathering around to form a twisting path to nowhere. 

For the next couple of hours, days, or minutes, they made their way through the galaxies. Just when they were about to spiral into a midlife crisis, they heard... humming? 

Have they finally lose it? They asked themselves before noticing a glowing figure sitting on an asteroid nearby.

"Hello?"

The figure flinched, and life paused. The blackhole by their left stopped spinning, the stars weren't twinkling, and the figure turned their head. Now it's their blood that runs cold.

"You're not supposed to be here."

Lazarus-colored orbs stared back at them with a familiar face but an unfamiliar voice. Damian tilted his head, looking at them in confusion (there's something wrong, wrong, wrong-). They blinked because, what the hell, seeing something other than a scowl on the boy's face is WeirdTM. Suddenly, that's a teenaged Jason(?) staring at them, much closer than he was before.

At this point, they realized— eyes moving over the entire regalia and the glowing crown that just appeared—they're probably in deep sh*t.

[artemismoorea03]

Ok, but for your amusement, might I suggest:

Tucker decides Danny needs a break and a shot at a love life. Tucker blackmails Danny into ATTENDING (though he makes the mistake of not specifying for how long) and Danny runs into a bored Wayne kid. Neither want to be there. Both were blackmailed with the kindest intentions. Both decide to team up to make their well-meaning but obnoxious meddlers pay.

I MIGHT HAVE GONE A LITTLE CRAZY WITH A REPLY HOLY FUCK, I'M SO SORRY. WARNINGS FOR THE END: MENTIONS OF GUNS, THREATS OF VIOLENCE, VIOLENCE. Happy ending <3

"Danny, you need a break." Tucker said, and Danny sighed.

"This again? Guys, I'm fine."

"You're not fine, Danny." Sam insisted, standing next to Tucker. She had originally struck up this conversation when they were still in Amity Park. "You're going through a lot right now and you need a distraction that isn't work or ghost related. Gardening didn't work-" Because he froze every plant he touched, "Meditation didn't work-" because when he closed his eyes and tried to relax he would have flashbacks about the countless things he'd seen since the accident. "So the next step is dating."

Danny rolled his eyes. "Hard pass."

"Come on dude, Sam is right. If nothing else you can at least do some people watching and get to know the city better!"

Danny simply continued to scroll on Tiktok, wondering how hard it would be to do one of those dancing videos he saw everywhere. Then again he'd actually need to know how to dance for that to work. He was so busy looking at the video he didn't notice the glance his friends passed between each other before they sighed.

"You've given us no choice, Danny." Sam said, "Tucker."

Tucker held a phone out to Danny to make him see the screen as Danny's face burned red at the picture. It was a picture of him in his Phantom form after a fight with Skulker where a good chunk of his suit had been destroyed, showing off more than Danny was comfortable with.

"DUDE! I told you to delete that!" Danny said, jumping off the couch towards Tucker who was pulled out of the way by Sam who then armed herself with a frying pan. "Delete it, guys!"

"No way! And if you don't at least get out of this house and at least make a friend I'm going to make a Phantom Dating Profile using this picture!"

"You wouldn't dare." Danny glared.

"Try us." Sam said, "We'll even send it through the Ghost Zone now that the Phantom Phones are working we're bound to get some replies from interested ladies."

Danny faultered, then groaned. "Fine."

"Hell yeah, we even made it easy for you." Sam said, handing Danny a piece of laminated plastic. "One ticket to the Wayne Gala this weekend. Tucker got permission for two people to go with him. Which means the three of us are going to a party!"

"A party. A Wayne run party? You guys are just begging for trouble." Danny sighed, "Besides, I don't own a tux, remember?"

"Leave that to me."

Two days later the party arrived and the three of them walked up the drive towards the building where the event was being held.

Sam was wearing a beautiful A-Line dress that was jet black in color with a rose shaped black bracelet that was wrapped around her wrist over the back of her hand and connected to her middle finger.

Tucker was wearing a black suit with a white button up shirt with slight rose shaped patterns on it, a black tie and a thin gold chain connected to his left vest pocket. he looked very sofisticated.

Danny felt like a fool though. Silently wishing he had never let Sam pick out his clothes. He was wearing a white button up shirt with the sleeves rolled up, exposing the black compression sleeve on his left hand, a gray vest, black suit pants, black shoes and a black tie. He was wearing a silver watch on his right hand which served as a ghost portal maker in emergencies.

He also knew that the 'pocket watch' in Tucker's Pocket was the same kind of device, and the rose Sam was wearing would release harmless smoke out of it if they needed a distraction.

Danny still felt like this was a bad idea. No, actually, this was a terrible idea. Not only because he looked out of place compared to his friends but compared to the rest of the party he hardly seemed like he fit in. He was going to draw so much attention to himself.

They walked to the front doors, showing their invitations and id's to the guards before walking inside. It wasn't as loud as some other parties they'd seen since coming to Gotham but it also was more crowded. There were people everywhere in expensive outfits, talking about... something that sounded like rich person gossip, it was boring.

"Have fun you two, don't make fools out of yourselves." Sam said, waving as she walked over to mingle with a young woman with blonde hair and another girl with short black hair, both seemed to recognize her.

"Oh, hey those guys are from my team, I'll catch you later, Danny. I wanna talk shop." Tucker said, rushing off just as quickly as Sam did as Danny sighed.

'I wanna go home.' He thought as he began to wade through the sea of people, trying to find his way to a wall where he could make himself look as small as possible. Not that it would be hard, his body was so busy developing new powers all the time it had decided that he didn't need to grow anymore after he turned 16 and stuck him at a solid 5'6".

He finally found his way to a corner, letting out a sigh as he sat down on a chair and looked out at the party happening all around him. He started to subconsciously count the people in the room, even going so far as to closed his eyes and sensed the very souls in the room. 56 people in his room, 17 in the room Sam was in, 10 upstairs. Danny then opened his eyes and got a sense for the room in another way. 45 windows lined the entire South side of the building if he was going his math right, with two sets of double doors near the front of the building. The building was mostly open floorplan which helped keep an eye on everybody but in an emergency it would be a stampede.

A man walked over, crossing his arms as he leaned against the wall with a growl. He was wearing clothes similar to Danny's but with a red shirt, but what caught Danny's attention was how he felt. He was luminal but not like Sam who felt like a walk through the garden or Tucker who felt like gritty sand, no the feeling that came from this man was like fire. A burning pain that also felt like grease stuck to the back of Danny's throat.

He was luminal but the ectoplasm that made him luminal was so fucking tainted that it made Danny want to gag.

Seeming to notice Danny's glance the man looked back at him.

"What?" He growled.

"Nothing, just thought your hair was cool." Danny said, noting the white streak at the front of his bangs.

The man blinked, touching his hair. He was about Danny's age if he had to guess, maybe a bit older.

"Thanks. It's a birthmark." He grumbled, but Danny could tell that it was probably a sore subject. If death turned his hair white he could only assume it did the same to this guy too. "What's your name kid? Never seen you at one of these boring as parties."

"Danny. Danny Fenton. And I'm not a kid, I'm 19."

"Same age as me, neat. The name's Jason." Jason introduced, himself. "You work at Wayne Enterprises?"

"Kinda, I'm just the janitor, my friend was the one who was invited. I'm just one of his plus ones."

"Yikes, what'd you do to deserve a punishment like that?" Jason asked as Danny laughed.

"My friends decided that going to work then living as some kind of godless cryptid that sleeps the rest of the day 'isn't healthy' so they dragged me out here in hopes that I'll make friends. Though they may have heavily implied that they expected me to either find a date or hook up with somebody while I was here. When I said no, they blackmailed me here. I'm just hoping that if I stay small and don't complain then they'll just let me exist without getting in my face for a while. What about you, what are you in for?"

Jason hummed and nodded, "Similar story. My dad and siblings are all here and said that if I didn't at least make an appearance this time that they would hide some of my books. Among other things. Plus my older brother used the whole 'you never spend time with us' whimper while my two sisters gave me puppy dog eyes."

Danny and Jason sighed before Danny looked at him. "Wanna hang out so they think we're playing nice and leave us alone?"

"Sure." Jason chuckled, "So which ones are your friends?"

"That one there." Danny said pointing to Tucker, "Tucker Foley, he works as a Programmer at WE. Then over there is Sam Mason, she works as a Gardener."

Jason's eyes widened, "Doesn't your friend Sam work at the Wayne Manor?"

"Yeah? How do you know that?"

"My dad is Bruce Wayne." He said, his eyes going to Tucker before they landed back on Danny and he laughed. "Wait. You're that Janitor?"

Danny swallowed a lump in his throat. "I don't understand?"

"My dad came home one day and said that somebody told him that there was information happening at Wayne Enterprises that was above his paygrade an we've been teasing him about it for weeks. Now every time he asks anything we reply with 'that's above your paygrade, Bruce'."

Danny groaned, his cheeks burning red. "Oh my god, I can't believe this. I didn't even mean to say that, I just panicked when he suddenly showed up in storage for no reason and caught me... uh... testing stuff."

"Testing stuff?" Jason asked as Danny nodded.

"Y-yeah. See, I work as a janitor because I didn't graduate high school and unlike Tucker I can't just breeze through school and show off my hacking skills to get a job. So I've been using some of the tech that gets thrown away to make something that would help me temporarily lift some of the fragile heavy objects around the building and place them harmlessly down so I can clean under them. But then Bruce caught me, I panicked and that was my reply." Danny was quick to explain, which wasn't a lie he was working on something like that but it was for the Ghost Zone to help him move some heavy things around his Lair and hold down things that often floated off for no damn reason.

"You know, that does explain a couple of things. I can't imagine your boss seeing you mess with tech would be a fun thing to explain. But... if you're so smart why didn't you graduate?"

Danny shook his head, "I'm not smart, I mean not like Tucker or Sam or my family. My sister is in Metropolis studying Psychology and is already a good way through her degree because she graduated a year early. Tucker and Sam graduated and are both working on getting degrees in something but nah, school just wasn't something I could do. Sitting behind a desk learning from a book isn't my thing. I'm better at using my hands, figuring stuff out on the fly, and trial and error shit."

Jason thought about this for a moment before he smiled. "I don't blame you, school is bullshit. Just like stupid galas."

"Mhm..."

Jason suddenly smiled, "Dude, I have the best idea to get back at all of them."

Danny smiled back, "Oh, you have all of my attention."

That one choice was how Danny ended up leaning against a wall closer to the crowd while Jason loomed with one hand near his head, talking to him about absolutely nothing important just to play the position while Danny occasionally chuckled. To anybody outside of the conversation it was supposed to look like they were flirting, which in a way they were but they also weren't.

"Do you like raisins? How about a date?"

Danny chuckled, at the horrible pickup line. "Excuse me, sir, do you have the time? I would like to know the exact time when I got a crush on you."

Jason snorted, "Are you a magnet? Because you sure are attracting to me."

Noticing Tucker and Sam looking his way Danny reached up and gently touched Jason's black tie to sell it more, but he was careful not to touch Jason otherwise. "Let's flip a coin." He told the taller man, "Heads I'm yours, tails you're mine."

Jason's cheek got ever so slightly red as he cleared his throat. "Are you a parking ticket, because you've got fine written all over you." He said as Danny chuckled again, watching Sam and Tucker quickly walk away to give Danny privacy.

"If you were a vegetable you'd be a cute-cumber."

Jason relaxed again at the cheesy flirt as Danny touched the silk tie in his hands. Not because he was actively trying to flirt with Jason but because it felt really nice and expensive. Jason snapped him out of his thoughts with another flirt. "Do you believe in love at first sight, or shall I walk by again?"

Before Danny could think of another flirt another man walked over, this one about 24 or so in age. He had wavy black hair and blue eyes with tan skin.

"Little Wing! Who's your friend?"

"Ugh." Jason groaned, moving slightly as Danny let go of his tie. "Take a hint, Dickie-Bird." He groaned.

The new person simply ignored Jason though and held out his hand.

"Hi! I'm Dick, Jason's older brother."

Danny shook his hand, "Danny. Danny Fenton, it's nice to meet you."

"You too, Danny! You look a little young to be working at WE, are you here with somebody?"

"A bit of both, I'm a janitor at WE but I'm here with my friend Tucker."

"Really? That's awesome! How old are you, Danny?"

"I'm 19."

This seemed to relieve Dick in a way that confirmed any suspicion that Danny had about him checking to make sure Jason wasn't doing anything illegal though he found himself ever so slightly annoyed. Did he look that young? No, people were just blind.

"Neat! Well, I just wanted to make sure Little Wing here didn't ditch the party, so I'll let you guys go back to what you were doing. Have fun~" He said, then walked away as Danny chuckled and looked at Jason.

"'Little Wing'?"

"Dick gives everybody nicknames, it's stupid. Now, where were we?" He asked, suddenly slamming his hand back by Danny's head as his cheeks grew warm. "Oh, that's right, I was going to out cheese you with these stupid fuckin' flirts."

Danny snorted, "Do you play soccer? Because you look like a keeper."

"I'm studying to be a historian. I'm really interested in finding a date."

This continued for a long time until they ran out of flirts and by that point Bruce Wayne was about to do a speech. At least that was the plan until suddenly the doors slammed open as party was crashed by a large group of people all wearing matching masks. Masks that looked like Ghostface from Scream.

There were at least twenty of them, all heavily armed with guns that they fired into the air. Jason cursed and Danny quickly grabbed him by the arm.

"Don't." He said, looking for Sam and Tucker who were trapped on the other side of the room. They were separated, they were in a large room but with so many people they might have been trapped in a hallway. "Where's your family?"

Jason looked around, "I see my dad and youngest brother. My two sisters are with your friend Sam. I don't see the other three though."

Danny shook off the question of 'just many of you are there' and instead nodded. "Okay, my friends are together too. So we should stick together, everybody else is in groups. Rushing anywhere now might start a stampede."

Jason frowned then glared at the criminals who were pointing their guns at everybody.

"Okay~ I think it's time we get this party started. Now, let's make this easy. If you don't actively work at Wayne Enterprises or aren't related to Wayne Family via blood or adoption get on your stomachs on the ground, the rest of you stay on your feet."

"They're looking for somebody..." Jason mumbled as Danny nodded.

The majority of the crowd laid down while only about a third of the crowd remained standing allowing them to see each individual person.

"Very good!" The criminal in charge praised and looked around. "Now, anybody who makes the wrong move will get one of the people laying on the ground killed. I know a lot of you are stupid enough to try to play heroes so instead of you getting shot we'll shoot whoever is closest to us."

"Shit." Danny and Jason both said together before passing a glance at one another.

The one in charge looked around again until he looked at Danny and pointed at him. "You. Step up."

"No way." Jason said as the man pointed a gun at a young woman who sobbed in fear.

"No no, it's okay. I'm coming." Danny said, patting Jason's arm as he walked carefully through the crowd towards the gunmen.

"Nice to see you again, brat." Hissed the man as Danny raised a brow. Before he could question it though the man pointed to Bruce Wayne. "You. Step up."

"Father." The young kid standing next to Bruce Wayne said going to argue but Bruce just told him to stay put then walked towards them. Bruce kept his hands up, looking at Danny with a clear look of recognition.

"Why don't you let the kids go, there's not a lot of them but those who are here don't need to be involved in whatever demands you have." Bruce said.

"Hah, no way, Bruice-Boy." Hissed the man as two of his men grabbed Bruce by his wrists, yanking his arms behind his back and knocking him back down to his knees. "We came here today for you, but damn we're lucky that this one is here. See, if it weren't for the kid here-" The man grabbed Danny by the front of his suit, shoving the barrel against his chin. "We wouldn't need to do this. This is what happens when you meddle, brat."

Danny's heart sank before he glared. "It's you. You're that bastard who boke in a few weeks ago!"

"Yeah! And if you had just minded your damn business this wouldn't be happening now. If you had just let us do what we were going to do then it wouldn't be a problem."

"You were trying to burn down part of the building with people still inside, I wasn't going to let you."

"And how is that turning out for you now, brat? Hm?" He moved the gun from Danny's chin as shoved Danny back into the arms of two more men who grabbed Danny's arms and shoved them behind his back but let him stay on his feet. "Now, Mr. Wayne, let me explain. See, you and your company were trying to find a cure for something found in the water supply that was making some kids sick, but see were were making a lot of money selling the cure at the highest price. We were going to destroy your progress but unfortunately we were stopped by another kid who thought he was a hero. So, this is what we're going to do. You're good at fundraising so you're going to help us fundraise ransoms for each and every one of these people from their own pockets. The more a person pays the more limbs they get to keep. We'll start at 20,000 per limb." He pointed his gun at Jason. "We'll start with the young man closest to doing something stupid."

Danny growled, glancing at Sam and Tucker. Their eyes met and Danny flashed them green. Sam nodded then with a swift motion told her friends something before smashing her bracelet on the ground.

In an instant their area filled with smoke that rushed out covering the men with smoke and protecting the majority of the crowd laying on the ground in a layer of smoke while only those standing could be seen. Danny reacted as well, knowing that more people would be able to see him . Dropping his full weight down he yanked the two men holding him together as they smashed their heads together and let him go. Danny then elbowed the one to his right in the crotch before standing up, grabbing the barrel of his gun and yanking it upwards, squeezing the metal so the gun would be unusable before he pulled it from the mans hand. Flipping on the safety of the gun he spun it and smacked the man in the temple with the butt.

Danny spun the gun, moving it to his left hand before disarming the man of his gun and kicking it into the smoke in the direction of the stairs in hopes of keeping it away from people. Snapping out of their dazes Bruce and Jason also seemed to react as Bruce slammed his head back, breaking the nose of one of the men before elbowing one in the center of the chest knocking the breath out of him while Jason grabbed the barrel of the gun the main guy was using and shoved it up, causing the gun to go up and break some of the ceiling plaster but preventing people from getting hit. Deciding to leave those men to those two Danny go to work again, but this time in a slightly different way.

He hated fighting humans.

They were too fleshy and not durable like ghosts so he chose not to fight and the smoke provided the perfect cover as he froze the feet of the enemies who were still posing threats while mysterious snake like shapes wriggled under the smoke and yanked the men under to where they would later be found wrapped up in plants or ice. One by one the men were taken down until there was a pained cry that made Danny turn when he heard Bruce shout.

"Jason!"

Danny turned, seeing Jason rubbing at his face. There as a cut above his brows from a knife. He had managed to get the gun from the man but he had pulled out a knife.

Protect.

Danny snarled, taking a step forward as the man went to stab Jason. Danny and Bruce moved at the same time with Bruce covering his son. But Danny made it to them before the man could make contact and he got in the way of the attack. Danny held the wrists of the man as he barred his teeth.

Danny shoved the mans hands upwards, knocking him back slightly before he spun and did a roundhouse kick. An attack that he might have put just a bit too much power into as the man was thrown a good ten feet backwards towards the stairs and the doors that he had broken down. Danny could hear the man wheezing and coughing, seeing him flailing desperately under the smoke but not getting up.

No sooner did Danny relax and turn back to the Bruce and Jason then did Batman (who seemed shorter today for some reason), Red Robin and Signal showed up with the police and a verity of confused looks.

"You sure you're okay?" Danny asked Jason who nodded, his forehead bandaged.

"Just a scratch, headwounds bleed a lot. I'm more confused what the hell just happened. Normally the bats react more quickly than that when they send in a smoke screen."

Danny chuckled, "You have a lot of experiences with the bats?"

"I'm a Wayne, it comes with the territory. Are your friends okay?" He asked as Danny looked towards Sam and Tucker who were mostly just waiting for Danny to finish but Tucker was also hacking on his phone to erase whatever data he could from the security cameras as he possibly could.

"They're fine. I'm going to get an earful for being reckless though."

"I don't think you were reckless. But... how did you learn to fight like that?"

"Uh... long story. Where we come from though the saying 'fight or die' was serious and there were daily reminders of it. But again... long story."

Jason nodded, looking drained. "Well... I know that this whole thing was just a way to get our groups off of our backs but how would you like to get dinner together some day? Just as friends, I mean I'm not against maybe trying some day but right now I kinda wanna get to know you. Besides, I'd like to thank you for protecting me and my dad."

Danny thought for a moment before he smiled. "Sure." He reached into his pocket and handed Jason his phone. Jason typed in his number then handed the phone back. "Get home safe, Jason."

"You too, Danny."

Danny started walking away when Bruce suddenly called out.

"Danny." Danny stopped and turned towards his boss, shrinking down slightly before Bruce smiled and put his hand on his shoulder. "Are you okay?"

"All good."

"Are you sure? You did really well out there but if you're hurt you should get looked out."

"I'm not hurt, Mr. Wayne, I promise. Just really tired."

"Alright, if you're sure." Bruce moved his hand and smiled, "Thanks for saving us, Danny."

"Any time, Mr. Wayne, but let's not make a habit out of it, okay? I moved to Gotham to get away from craziness like that." He said, waving his hand as he walked to his friends as he wrapped his arms over both of their shoulders and they made their way home.

"So, you guys have fun?" Sam asked as Danny looked at her.

"You know what... kinda, yeah. At least until the end."

"Did you get his number?" Wondered Tucker.

"Of course I did."

[hugsandchaos]

He’s In The Walls!

Summary: Uhh, I did the writing version of doodling last night and forgot to post it. Once again, the ranch hand tries to trick Danny into getting some sleep. Key word: tries.

Word count: 1,235

Twilight peered into the room and internally let out a mixture of a sigh and a groan. Just like he saw earlier, Danny was still awake, sitting by the fireplace, still reviewing and studying the same textbook over and over. His red notebook was left open and folded in half next to the small, but rather thick book with blue and black colors wide open. Danny called it “Algebra Two”, which was something he was supposed to start learning in over two months from the day he ended up tagging along with them.

He was determined to use any free time he had while on this adventure to get a head start, though, because according to him, math wasn’t his strong suit and Algebra is apparently part of math. It made sense, but at the same time, it frustrated Twilight a bit that it was his first thing to do when he had free time.

Unless it was nighttime. He’d instead be found outside stargazing. Except tonight.

Tonight, Danny had been reading and doing practice problems since before the sunset, right after he finished helping around with chores and dinner. It was as if he didn’t notice day had already passed by. Twilight wouldn’t be too surprised. The young teen could get pretty deep in the zone if he was left to it for long enough.

Danny reached for the mug placed on the carpet next to him and lifted it up to take a sip of the contents, but then he paused and looked inside.”Huh, must’ve drank faster than I thought.” He muttered to himself. Twilight’s mood was lifted and a smile briefly appeared on his face when he heard that. Before he could try to put his plan into motion, however, Danny stood up. He yawned and turned to go into the kitchen. There was the sound of water and movement before he came back to sit down next to the books again.

He lifted both arms up and groaned a little before letting his arms fall back down. Danny just sat there for another few seconds, eyes staring at the fire in a tired daze, then looked back at the books. Twilight decided now was the time to make his move.

The ranch hand wordlessly entered the room and began walking towards Danny. Surprisingly, he went unnoticed until he came close enough to kneel down and put the blanket around Danny’s shoulder.”Twilight? I appreciate it, but I’m not cold—“ Danny stopped his response when he noticed that the ranch hand had actually wrapped it around his shoulders. Twilight lightly pushed him down and reached one arm down so he could get his legs, too.

“Hey, what are you going?!” Danny asked, a little irritated. He moved his legs around and tried to worm out the arms that were now pinned against his sides, but he was tired after everything that transpired over the last few days.

It affected all of the members, really. Twilight had just gotten up for some water, but when he saw Danny, he went and got a spare blanket. Now he was going to use it to wrap around him and finally ensure he’d get his sleep.

Danny wriggled around in protest, but his movements didn’t have even half as much strength as usual. When Twilight successfully managed to wrap his entire body in the blanket, Danny had finally stopped fighting, but the glare he shot Twilight’s way had a small fire that wasn’t extinguished yet. The ranch hand wrapped his left arm around Danny and picked him up. As he left the room and took a turn to the right, the kid’s irritation grew with his stuff now left behind.

“Are you going to explain?” Danny asked.

“Kid, you’re falling asleep at the books and it’s midnight. You’re going to bed.” Twilight said. He turned his body and maneuvered through the doorway meant for one person, not one person plus another wrapped in a blanket.” ‘N don’t bother tryin’ to get free anymore. I know that your strength’s spent, ‘n that tea you were given actually helps with sleep, not stayin’ awake.” He added.

The hallway itself was luckily wide enough for three people, so the ranch hand was able to carry Danny without worrying about hitting him against the wall. The long window following down half of it allowed faint moonlight from the unseen moon to paint the hallway in a very dim, calming white light. It was a little quiet for a few more seconds, and Twilight had allowed himself to hope that the cozy cargo he was carrying had fallen asleep already.

“Smart move, cowboy.” Danny said. He said it in that kind of note where it’s half spite, half genuine respect. Twilight breathed out a very brief laugh from his nose as he crossed the hall towards the door on the other side, which had an unclaimed bed inside.“You know what the only problem is?” Danny asked.

Feeling a little smug about how things turned out, Twilight couldn’t help but think that whatever he was about to say or do wouldn’t be an actual problem. Sure, the kid was stronger than he looked, but any sudden bursts of fighting energy had likely already been spent. Still, he wanted to know what he was going to say for the sole purpose of seeing him when it didn’t work.”What’s that?” Twilight asked confidently. While he was focused on opening the door, he failed to notice the white light coming from Danny.

“I’m already gone.”

As soon as he started speaking, Twilight noticed the lack of weight where Danny once was. He could no longer feel the young teenager against his body and the blanket that he’d previously used to secure him fell from his arm and onto the floor. The ranch hand looked down bewildered to see nothing but empty space where Danny was supposed to be. Twilight’s eyes widened in shock as he looked around almost frantically, genuinely concerned about how the kid had disappeared and where to.

As he glanced around, his enhanced hearing picked up on a small laugh coming from the right. When he turned, he couldn’t see Danny, but something told Twilight that some kind of presence he didn’t notice before had just left the narrow room through the wall right in front of him.“He’s in the walls...” He muttered. He then picked up the blanket again and held either side in both hands. He readied himself and relied on the very odd sensation his wolf senses picked up as he ran back down the hall. He already knew that the books were probably already gone.”He’s in the goddessdamn walls!” Twilight repeated, but kept his voice down to a whisper.

When Time looked out his window to see Twilight running across the field and out of view of the window, his first thought was that something was incredibly wrong and sat up. Then, just as quickly, he saw the ranch hand return carrying a sleeping Danny into the house. He smiled a little and laid back down to go back to sleep.

The next day, he’d confirm with Twilight that Danny stayed up late studying again, and Malon would hear them and swear to have a word with him.

“Hylia help him.” Twilight joked.

“Oh, pup, Hylia would only be able to stall her for a few minutes.” Time said

[rosefinch07]

Pearls and Curious Spectres

Martha Wayne Haunts Her Pearl Collection

The first time Danny saw her was when he was dragged along to the Wayne Gala as Sam's plus one and as Daniel Masters in order to be a buffer.

When she showed herself fully, it was obvious she was a family member. Her and Damian shared the same cupid's bow, the same slender hands. He saw her in the way he stood, as if he was constantly on display.

He was talking to the Wayne his age, Damian, who he had met previously and the boy was beginning to take a liking to him, when a lady fizzled into view. Bits of her appeared at a time. A hand on Damian's shoulder, a caress of his hair that looked like wind to the unknowing eye, a high heeled foot.

She was beautiful, the type of woman that younger generations would look at photos of and envy. She stared him down like she could see every thought he ever bounced around in his head.

She wore a nice blue dress, the same color as her eyes, and the V-neckline was high and left only enough room for the pearl necklace to settle on her neck. The skirt was in a pencil style and had gathered bits at the sides and the hem landed around her calves. Her pearl necklace seemed more... incorporeal than the rest of her, as if the memory of it lingered more on her than in the world.

He glanced back over to Damian, who seemed to not feel her presence and was talking at length about the care of his cow to Sam who had stepped in when he was "Zoned Out" and had continued the conversation seamlessly. He scanned Damian's person, looking for something that he couldn't quite describe.

There, on his ears.

Pearl earrings, they dangled and were shaped like tear drops. Quite simple compared to Damian's broach with the Wayne family crest.

Heirlooms.

Man, he wouldn't want to be tied to an item, that sucked!

Danny projected "Sorry"; "Empathy"; "You're stuck!" over to her, careful of how his face looked.

She merely grinned at him and flickered out of view, appearing next to Tim Drake across the venue. She pointed at his pearl cufflinks with a silent giggle, winking.

She projected "Silly!"; "Not Stuck"; and the image of a high society lady in life laughing.

He sighed in relief.

Danny could focus on the rest of the evening then.

She was just along for the fun.

[a-m-w-worlds]

Danny Phantom Writing Prompt: Half-Nightmare AU

Most oneirologists scoffed at Jack and Maddie Fenton's outlandish beliefs on the nature of dreams and deemed their work nothing but parapsychology, after all, the dream world being a real place people could subconsciously travel to in their sleep? Ridiculous! And what about their belief that nightmares were actual monsters in this dream world that could in theory be captured, studied, and eventually eradicated? Pure science-fiction!

The Drs. Fenton knew the only way to prove their theories was to capture a nightmare, and the only way to do that was to create a portal to allow waking humans to enter the Nightmare Zone. The only thing they didn't account for was that the portal works both ways…

Danny Fenton wasn't interested in his parent's parapsychology bullcrap, the crystals littering the house that were supposed to "enhance astral projection", the dream diaries they nagged him and his sister to keep, not even the swirling purple portal in their basement. All he cared about was that their lab (if you could even call it that) was the best place in the house to take a quick cat nap. Dimly lit by flickering candles, heavily scented by fresh lavender, and filled with plenty of pillow-covered nooks to accommodate all sleeping positions, Danny fell asleep instantly. It was peaceful at first, until the nightmare came.

Every human is psychically linked to their own personal nightmare. This link is normally dormant while we're awake, only activating in our sleep. Active links magnetically draw our astral forms and nightmares together, allowing us to briefly glimpse into the dream world. But when you fall asleep in a room designed to enhance psychokinetic energy, next to a portal meant to allow for physical traversal between planes, something might just decide that link doesn't have to be one sided...

Danny awoke suddenly, terrified and frozen in place by a white-haired creature perching on his chest. Its skin was made of swirling shadow and its amethyst eyes glowed the same color as the portal. The link between Danny and his nightmare, supercharged by the environment and them both being in the same plane, was too strong to break when Danny woke. It glowed, crackling and pulsating between them, drawing them closer until the last things Danny saw were glowing eyes followed by shadow as the creature lunged. Its essence poured into Danny through his mouth, nose, ears, and eyes, seeping in through his very pores until the nightmare was completely gone from sight. Danny's eyes flashed purple for just a moment before they rolled back in his head and he passed out.

The next time he woke Danny found himself in a hospital. He had been in a coma for three days. The doctors, not finding anything wrong with him, let him go home that same day. Despite this, Danny felt like there was something seriously wrong, he didn't really understand what though until that night. In his pajamas and lamp lit bedroom with his family already in bed and sleeping is when it happened. Danny's hand happened to slip into the darkness outside of his table lamps radius, where it disappeared. Only its barely visible, smoky outline remained. Panicked, Danny jerked his hand back into the light where it became fully visible and tangible again. Danny slept with the light on that night, scared of what would happen if he didn't.

The next day at school, after whipping around a corner while being chased by the school bully Dash Baxter, Danny accidently found himself careening into a shadow-filled dead end. His entire body devolved into a hazy, wispy outline. When Dash turned the corner, he did a double take; Danny had simply vanished. Dash couldn't see Danny in the shadows at all, not even the glowing purple eyes staring directly at him. This was how Danny learned he could camouflage in shadows.

Several nights later, while practicing how to camouflage and un-camouflage at will he stuck an arm into one shadow and saw it appear out of another shadow across the room. He yanked it back in surprise before replicating the action with the same results. Tentatively he stepped into one shadow and stepped out of the other. This was how he learned he could shadow travel.

Another couple nights later while practicing shadow traveling around the house, Danny sees something slither out of his parents dream lab in the basement. He recognizes it instantly as a nightmare. The nightmare doesn't pay him any attention, darting between the shadows and creeping upstairs. Danny follows quietly, at a safe distance and watches as the creature slips beneath his sister Jazz's bedroom door. Danny steps into a shadow and emerges from the darkness under his sister's bed. In horror he watches Jazz's nightmare perch on her chest before making the same move Danny's had over a week ago. Danny makes a wild grab at the creature, catching hold only to be absorbed into Jazz's mind alongside the nightmare. This is how Danny learned he could dream walk.

When Danny opens his eyes, he's standing inside Jazz's dream. It's pretty standard, just a classroom setting with only one desk where Jazz sits taking a test. She doesn't seem to see Danny. He walks around aimlessly, unsure of what to be doing, until the nightmare appears. The creature is far more substantial and menacing here. It takes the clock off the wall and places it on Jazz's desk where it transforms into an hourglass with sand trickling through it way too fast. Jazz's calm expression turns panicked as she rushes to fill in the test. With the flick of a wrist the nightmare manifests a dozen extra desks all occupied by students jeering and mocking Jazz. Danny realizes he has to do something but is unsure what. He confronts the nightmare, only to be pushed aside. The walls of the classroom begin closing in and Danny can feel his sister's anxiety morphing into genuine fear. She stands abruptly, hyperventilating as the jeering students are forced into her space. She pushes through them and races out the classroom door. Danny follows her into the hallway that's warped strangely in on itself. Ceilings were floors, floors were ceilings. "Jasmine…" The nightmare stands in the doorway. Jazz finally seems to see it and she and Danny start running, the nightmare launching itself after them, truly on the hunt now, growing larger and more frightening in pursuit. After seconds or an eternity it corners the siblings in a dead end and reaches its hand out for Jazz. She screams.

Danny and the nightmare are both forcefully ejected back into the physical world as Jazz, the real, physical Jazz, screams and bolts upright in bed. Before Danny can make a move, the once again smoky, insubstantial nightmare, who's eyes glow more brightly now, disappears into the darkness. Danny, camouflaged in the shadows, retreats as well when he hears his parents outside of Jazz's door.

The next day, after mulling over the night's events, Danny decides he needs to find a way to capture Jazz's nightmare if it comes back. He heads into his parent's lab (a place he's been avoiding), and tracks down one of the knick-knacks they believe can attract and trap "bad energy". That night Danny is prepared and waits for the nightmare to return, which it does. He follows it into Jazz's dream again and this time captures it easily. He manages to leave the dream under his own power this time and pats himself on the back for a job well done. This is how Danny Fenton learns he has the power to capture nightmares.

It's a good thing to, because with more and more nightmares finding their way into the physical world, the people of Amity Park were going to need a hero if they ever wanted a good night's sleep again.

I swear this was supposed to be a writing prompt, not a ficlet! I just had SO MANY IDEAS!

Everyone knows that the original show did not like to acknowledge the darker aspects and implications of ghosts (ya know, like them being dead) and even retconned them into being straight up interdimensional monsters later in the series. So, I found myself wondering, if they weren't going to use ghosts to their full potential, what could they have done instead? BOOM, Half-Nightmare AU!

Danny's powers in this are heavily inspired by Twyla Boogeyman from Monster High (one of my favorite characters!). Shadow travel and camouflage, being able to see nightmares and enter people's dreams, and eyes that glow in the dark, are all abilities that Twyla has demonstrated at one time or another. I also like imagining that this version of Danny often uses closets and underneath beds for shadow travel, just to play even more into the idea of a good boogeyman.

The choice to make the portal and Danny's alternate eye color purple instead of green was also very deliberate. Even before getting into Danny Phantom I heavily associated the color green with ghosts, so I just wanted to give this AU a little bit of color distinction. And I also felt that toxic, radioactive green was probably a little too harsh a color for the dream world.

I don't have any intention of actually doing anything with this AU, but I thought it was interesting enough to turn into a prompt and see if any artists or writers wanted to adopt my plot bunnies!

P.S. Oneirologists are neurologists who study dreams!

[five-rivers]

Death is a personal thing.  

To be sure, everyone dies eventually, and, in that, if nothing else, they are equal.  But no two people know death the same way.  No two people are touched by death the same way.  No two people see death in the same way.  No two people are taken by death in the same way.  

And no one may know another’s death.  Not beyond a glimpse through a window at night, not beyond a tale of a country undiscovered.  

That country of death was much the same. 

The Ghost Zone.  The Spirit World.  The Infinite Realms.  

Many names.  Many faces.  Many forms.  

It was personal.  

.

Vlad Masters knew what the Ghost Zone looked like.  He had worked with Jack and Maddie to extrapolate its composition and appearance long before they’d even gotten the proto-portal running from the tiny samples of ectoplasm they’d been able to synthesize.  

Once they had… Well.  Even the small uncertainty he’d had before was gone.  The Ghost Zone was green and pulsating pain, ooze and rot, twisted abominations and power.  

He could feel it inside him, even in the hospital, even dying from ecto-acne.  He knew.  He knew.  

And his knowledge was vindicated the first time he stepped through a portal.  

.

Danny grew up hearing stories about ghosts, even if he didn’t believe in them.  Stories about how evil they were, generally, but also about what the Ghost Zone was supposed to be like.  Vast voids.  Glowing ectoplasm.  Islands of stability.  

It shaped him.  But it wasn’t the only thing that did that.  

(He remembered, distantly, Grandpa Fenton saying that he was going on one, last, long journey…)

He stood in front of the empty porta, smiling.  “You’re right.  Who knows what kind of awesome, super-cool things exist on the other side of that portal?”

Danny didn’t know.  But he imagined.  He imagined a journey of a lifetime, of a death, of an eternity.  

The light that killed him and saved him was green, but it was followed by diamond-studded black.  

His first journey into the Ghost Zone showed him a world of wonder.  Eternal night stretched as far as the eye could see, strewn with luminescent islands - each a wandering star, populated by strange trees, strange fruits, strange beings, strange technology, all glowing in the dark.  

.

For Sam, the Ghost Zone was a vast wilderness full of extinct and endangered creatures.  All those things Sam cared so much about saving.  All the things humanity had failed to save.  All the things humanity had driven into the dark.  

Not only a wilderness - a hungry, grasping wilderness.  Beautiful, but deadly and eager to take.  

It was about her activism.  Her passions.  Her understanding of killing.  

(It was really about Danny.)

(About losing him.)

(About dooming him.)

(About killing him.)

(Making him a member of a not-quite-species with only three members.)

But she could find her place here, too.  She knew.  The jungles, the deserts, the mountains, the tundra.  The creeping vines, the snarling beasts, the towering trees.  There was a place here for her.

.

The Ghost Zone was dead, and to Tucker Foley dead meant two things.  Broken tech and hospitals.  

His version of the Ghost Zone had both.  Great landfills and huge, almost industrial buildings that seemed to ooze illness and injury in an apocalyptic landscape.  There was rust and gray in the sky, streaked with mossy, algae-like green.  Verdigris.  Even gold oxidized and crumbled.  

The thing was, junk could be repurposed.  Broken things could be fixed, or scavenged for parts.  Brought back to life, as it were.  

He just had to avoid the hospitals, and everything would be fine.  

.

First and foremost, Jazz’s view of the Ghost Zone and ghosts in general was colored by the general concept of ‘her brother, the superhero.’

This was the world beyond the portal for her.  One where death wasn't, and she still didn't have to see.

.

Valerie hated the Ghost World and everything in it.  It was a bottomless pit that did nothing but take and take and take.  

… It did seem a little different, though, after the first time she'd actually worked with Phantom.  There seemed to be other changes after her second suit.  The whole place just felt more inviting.  

But surely that was all in her head. 

.

And Jack and Maddie?  Well.  They already knew everything there was to know about ghosts… and they knew they weren’t ‘souls of the dead’ or any such nonsense.  They were simply monsters from another dimension!  One made of ectoplasm and energy!  A green world!  An exciting world!

A hostile world.  

One that would do anything it could to lie to them, to trick them, to kill them.  Just like the ghosts that inhabited it.  

That's why they needed the Specter Speeder and all their other protective gear.  

That's why they needed protective gear, unlike, say, Sam, who could walk through her wilderness unharmed, so long as she kept an eye out for prehistoric megafauna, or Tucker, who'd had to get his tetanus shot renewed after a nasty fall into a junk pile that first week.  The Ghost Zone would destroy them, just like they tried to destroy it.  

That was just what death was like, after all.  

[occasionally-good-ideas]

Void hopper

The Infinite Realms: the ‘void’ that separates dimensions, and the home of The Dead.

A boy sits alone in the void and writes about his travels

—————————————————————

It really is infinite!! time is non linear over all and all the realms/zones have their own ‘land’ formations and colors

so far I’ve seen:

—the classic green ‘ghost zone’ [that names a little bit inaccurate; there’s ghosts everywhere] green, a bit slimy, flouting islands, doors, ghosts with strong obsessions

—the ‘furthest ring’ that one’s mostly blank with… frogs?? And really BIG anncient entity’s [are they a specific type of ghost?] that blow bubbles into the void, ghosts that look eerily human sometimes make it out of the bubbles… don’t know what that’s about.

—the ‘Phantom zone’ (lmao) couldn’t get a real good look it’s gaurded really well, I saw clouds? Pilers and.. living? Villains?? Not dealing with that.

—one that’s all fire and rock, it’s inhabits are mostly skeletons and demons… I’m pretty sure it’s straight up Hell but I didn’t stick around to ask for a name.

——————————————————————

Danny closed his journal, he’s been wandering the Realms in both his forms for almost two years now, and it’s fun! Don’t get him wrong, it’s just- when there’s no ghosts around the silence gets… disturbing. So he goes about in human form! Thinks out loud and listens to his organs work. There pretty noisy when you’re not used to it.

Before he left His Realm, all those months ago, he packed a duffel bag with nonperishable food, under clothes [thin long sleeves, leggings, tang-tops and sweats] tools, weapons [blasters and knives mostly] and a blank book/writing stuff.

He’d put on a hazmat/jumpsuit like the one he died in, steal toed boots, and modified fenton phones he calls ‘coms’ and headed to the Ghost Zone. On his travels he picked up a black coat, utility belt and a cool viser that gets compacted into his coms

He hasn’t visually aged past 16, he’s got no idea if that’s cause he’s in the Zone or it’s All Him. still 5’3 and well- not ‘baby faced’ but not all that sharp.

Right now, he’s sitting on an empty island, watching the swirling purple, pink and orange sky as he picks at the dull red grass after finishing his latest little journal entry.

“Huh” the ‘clouds’ of this place shift abruptly as they hit a wall-like membrane on the far side of this… area/realm/zone “It kinda looks like a wall…” a cave? he looks more closely at the horizons around him “yeah there’s another one… walls…” walls between what?

He packs his book and writing stuff into its pocket of his bag, gets into a crouch at the edge of the island he was sitting at and kicks of, watching his black hair drift around his face as his momentum carries him towards one of the ‘walls’.

When he’s close enough he reaches out a hand, the wall is… soft? Like rubbery- not so much a WALL-wall but like a lining, kinda flesh-like and living “Woah…” awe and intrigue lace his voice as he presses and runs his hands over the barrier to feel it move. Some areas seem… thinner? Easier to move deffinetly, one part in particular feels about as thick as a half filled water balloon, so thin “what if iiiii”

he pushed into the thin spot, not expecting much when he felt it give, a deep hum filling the air around him the smell of rain filled his nose and static ozone filled his mouth as a force pulled him forward by the hand that used to be on the wall “Oh FU-“

He’d torn a hole through the barrier and was now /Free-falling/ on the Other Side.

Rain pelts his face as he falls, so that’s where that smell came from! He wills off gravity in order to slow his fall.

Now he’s falling at the same speed as the rain instead of faster, he opens his eyes to see- the rain drops. At this speed they look still, suspended in air refracting the dappled light of the sun through the clouds. Like silver stars on a backdrop of gray clouds and green- green?? What’s green?

He looks up- or, is it down… towards the ground. Which is still rapidly approaching! Turns out rain drops fall pretty fast. He quickly scans the forest for a good place to land… “that’ll do”

He lands in a bush that splinters under the force of his fall, some of the sturdier branch’s don’t snap and end up stabbing Danny through his right leg, the skin of his waist- no guts thank the ancients, and two places in his right arm. “FUCK WHY?! AUGHCK” he takes a deep breath in, holds it then lets it out “huuhhhh this looks so much better in cartoons- ooookay how do iiiiii-“ wait a minute.. he’s a ghost! He turns intangible, falls through the Death Bush and rolls on to his back in the clearing the bush was bordering.

“Well that… could’ve gone worse! At least the rain feels nice..” and the rain does feel nice, refreshing in a way that’s hard to come by in the realms, it drums gently on his face and suit as he calms down, rinsing the blood away from quickly healing wounds.

As he lies on the grass catching his breath, rain soothing his scratched skin, breathing in the smell of mud and wet leaves, blood long washed away, tasting fresh water as the rain seeps into his mouth.He feels Alive.

He lets gravity push him into the mud “hehe squish” he laughs at the sky, giddy and a bit out of it as the adrenaline settles.

“Ha! how far did I fall??” He sits up clicks the button on his com to activate his visor. The screen materializes in a wave of rectangular pixels from one com to the other. Looking up, now he can see the tear about ehhhh four story’s up? Pretty dang high to get Launched from.

“Huh I… tore a hole through a ‘wall’ in the zone… and ended up in the mortal world… was that the veil?? I thought that was a metaphor..” he mumbled that last part.

That hum when he broke through, it resonated in his core like intangibility cranked up to 10, a familiar frequency kind of like when wulf would open portals- “Ancients I made a portal!!! Wow that’s really obvious. How did I not get that until now?!?” If he could make a portal out. That means he can make one going in.

Reaching for that Hum, he feels himself shift through the planes of reality like turning a nob to find the right radio station. He focuses on his core, feeling himself pass all planes of human perception -he closes his eyes as the world around him becomes a flashing mess of unknown colors and seemingly meaningless shapes- Trying to get it to match the Hum from before- There!

Eyes still closed, Danny listens closely… that’s it! That bone deep Hum. When he opens his eyes the first thing he notes is that the world has reformed from that splotchy haze it was before, the second thing is The Veil, translucent Walls criss crossing over Everything like a spider web made three-dimensional. “Woah…”

He slowly reaches out a hand to touch one of the walls- part of The Veil man that’s so cool! It feels… less fleshy, more flexible, it has more give without breaking. “Cool!!” Now to make a portal back, he pushes on the veil like before and… it just stretches. Hm.

Maybe it just takes more effort going this way, he pushes harder on the stretchy membrane, nope it just stretches! “Hm. Okay” Danny takes a few steps back, “how about, this-“ he runs headfirst into the wall, and promptly gets thrown back by said wall. “DANG IT man it was so easy to get through the first time what gives!?” He punches the wall, nothing. He kicks it, nope nothing. He starts clawing at the wall trying to dig through it but nothing is WORKING- he slammed both fists into the veil and they bounce back and hit him in the face. “AUGH”

ok this isn’t working. He takes a step back and takes a breath, he looks around at the shattered glass like walls around him, some are thick, others thin. They reach up into the sky and don’t seem to rely on anything physical to keep them in place… nothing physical. how about non-physical?

He gatherers plasma in the palm of his hand, when the Plasma Ball is about as big as a tennis ball he chucks it full force at the section of the veil he’s been abusing for the last ten minutes, the wall makes a sizzling sound as the plasma makes contact and then the plasma- gets absorbed?? Soaked up like coffee on paper, “well. It did something at least”

What about electricity? The black haired boy walks up to the flimsy, deceptively strong membrane, he squares his shoulders, places his left hand on the veil. he lets the energy build for a moment before sending it running. It shoots past his shoulder and races down his arm in arks of electric yellow/green till it shocks the barrier. The veil goes stiff like brittle rubber under his fingertips -now-

Hand still on the wall he curls his fingers and claws into the weakened veil. It crumbles under his hand, releasing the acidic smell of the pure ectoplasm of the realms, an opening. He quickly gets his other hand in the tear and struggles to pull it open, he can see reality fold and ripple as the hole in The Veil opens into a portal just large enough to fly through.

He takes a step back, eyes wide under his visor, he lets out a deep exhale that frosts the air around him “woah” breath heavy with adrenaline he looks at the portal, small oval shaped and swirling electric green and ice blue. He looks down at his hands electricity still sparking between them and his just-now-noticed claws. When did that happen? His usually blunt nails have grown to sharpened points, pressing against the tough rubber of his gloves but not breaking through.

A mischievous grin split his face revealing sharp fangs, “oh this is gonna be fun”

[underforeversgrace]

memory of what may have been and never will be

DannyMay2023 Day 25: Blame

title: memory of what may have been and never will be

words: 3962

Summary: Valerie Gray from ten years in the future falls through a natural portal, landing in the past. Unable to get home, she decides to do the best thing she can - kill Danny Phantom. (TUE Timeline Valerie)

Idea from this post by @danphanwritingprompts: Valerie travels to the past to prevent the future of The Ultimate Enemy by killing Danny Phantom.

Warnings: None!

Beta: probably-dead

Also on AO3

~~~~~~

Valerie groaned, holding one hand to her nauseous stomach and covering her eyes with the other, irritated by the brightness, as she lay on what felt like cracked concrete.

What the hell just happened? She wondered, pushing herself up, mentally taking catalog of any aches or injuries on her body, relieved when she found none, other than the headache and nausea. She settled into a sitting position, keeping her eyes firmly closed until the spinning in her mind settled and took several deep breaths to collect herself.

When she decided she was no longer at risk from hurling up her lunch, she opened her eyes.

Only to be greeted by a confusing sight, one she hadn’t seen in nearly a decade. She was in Amity Park, but… it looked like it did when she was in high school, before Phantom had shown his true colors. And his true strength. She called her hoverboard to her, raising up into the sky, trying to remember the past several minutes.

She’d been flying when her board had just… disappeared, short circuited or something, something it’d never done before. And she’d fallen.

She vaguely remembered a swirling green circle beneath her and the sensation of jumping into a pool in winter. A natural portal? Had she fallen through one? She’d read through the Fentons research so many times in the years since their deaths, she knew it had been a theory they never got around to testing - that the Ghost Zone didn’t follow the same linear timeline as Earth did.

Had she fallen through a natural time portal? When was she? 

She rose higher, scanning the area for notable features. She saw the Nasty Burger and breathed a sigh of relief. Phantom hadn’t gone on his killing spree until over a year after the restaurant explosion. Her eyes finally settled on a nearby billboard - Amity Park, Most Haunted Town in America! it proclaimed. They hadn’t had that title until after the ghosts had started coming, there to fight Phantom - though he was still known as Invisobill back in those days.

Okay, so she was somewhere in her freshman year of high school. That’s a fun thought. She wondered if it was before or after the Axiom incident - if her current self was the airhead or the hero.

Confident she now had a rough approximation of where - and when - she was, she frowned. Now what? Whatever portal she’d fallen through had disappeared. She had no idea how to go home.

She paused for a moment, returning her gaze to the billboard. Did she even want to go home? To the apocalypse happening beyond the shield?

Or she could stop it. She could stop the future ahead of her, of the world.

Phantom couldn’t destroy the world if she destroyed him. Sure, she’d tried to do that when she was still a new hunter, but she had nearly a decade of experience under her belt now. She was older, stronger, wiser.

The Phantom of this era had held back his attacks against her, she had learned that a long time ago, when he’d stopped doing so, when he’d started going for blood, for her life. All she had to do was find him and she could wipe away that future, wipe away all that pain and suffering. She’d probably wipe herself away, too - this version of herself, at least - but she didn’t mind that.

The new future she’d create would be better for her, even if this her faded into never-existence. She’d never stop fighting, whatever the future held, she knew that. But she could stop fighting the end of the world, come to them in the form of a ghost in a too-tight HAZMAT.

Phantom of this era had been good, though. She’d realized it the same time she realized how much he held back against her. This version of Phantom could be manipulated.

She’d always wondered what happened, to be honest. One day Phantom was playing up being a superhero and then he murdered the newly orphaned Danny Fenton in his new home in Wisconsin. He’d come here after and slaughtered some of her other classmates.

Valerie would never forget how Dash screamed up until Phantom had finally ripped his throat out. He’d grabbed Paulina and dropped her from even higher than the skyscrapers. Star he’d grabbed and phased into the ground, killing her the second he made her tangible again.

And Valerie had been stuck there, beaten within an inch of her life. Even now, she didn’t know why he’d spared her. Why he’d targeted the A-List that day.

He hadn’t targeted anyone specific after that, despite basically running kamikaze strikes nearly every day after, demolishing buildings and causing mass casualty and panic. She suspected the panic was his goal, up until they’d gotten the shield up and his reign of terror over Amity had ended. The rest of the world hadn’t been so lucky.

He could have killed all of them in a day, she’d realized. That first day was forever imprinted into her brain, the violence and fear. The knowledge that Phantom knew her secret identity.

But… where to start? She had never known how Phantom managed to disappear and reappear from her ghost tracking tech, that still was an unknown. Should she just fly around until something happened? Should she try to find herself from this time, if she was the Huntress yet?

A blip alerted on her tracking equipment, pulling her from her thoughts. She hesitated. She didn’t know which ghost this was - her equipment had never been that detailed, she just knew it was a ghost. Could she make the future worse if she did something wrong?

An old memory pushed itself to the forefront. Phantom, on the other side of the shield, head tilted to the side and a grin on his face that made her feel like prey.

No. She couldn’t make it worse. She could only make it better. It was Phantom’s fault her life was like this - from the ghost hunting to living within a domed city like a dystopian novel.

Decision made, she shot off, following the tracker on her arm.

She pushed the hoverboard faster when Phantom came into view, not far in front of her, and she saw where Phantom was most likely going. An apartment complex on the border between Elmerton and Amity Park - where the people with just barely enough to stay out of Elmerton lived - was engulfed in flames.

“Phantom! Huntress!” Someone called from the ground. Wow, it was weird being called Huntress again, everyone had called her Valerie since Phantom outed her all those years ago. Still, she angled her board down to the call, Phantom at her side.

It was… odd, seeing him like this. Young, a teenager probably no older than herself in this time. No malice or sadism danced in his eyes as he landed, feet on solid ground in front of the person who’d been calling them - a fireman, the fire trucks roaring behind him as it attempted to put out the inferno the complex was rapidly turning into. There was something distinctly different in that - Phantom actually touching down to the ground, not floating in place.

Phantom glanced at her cautiously, keeping his distance as they both stood in front of the man.

“Thank God you two are here,” he said. “We can’t reach the top four levels, only the bottom two, can you two sweep those floors and get out anyone who needs it?”

“On it.” Phantom said, eyeing the building then turning to Valerie, apparently not realizing the difference in her stature in the form fitting suit. “It looks like the fire is worse the lower down it is. Can you get the top two floors and I’ll get the two beneath?”

Valerie nodded, summoning her board back to her feet and speeding off, not wanting to talk in front of him but also unwilling to not answer the call for help. Phantom was right behind her, veering off and plunging through the walls on the third floor as she headed for the top and entered through a shattered window.

Immediately, she felt like the very air was burning her, smoke trying to choke her through her suit’s filter. She triggered the infrared on her suit, moving from room to room as quickly as she could.

Was this building always this big? She mumbled internally. She vaguely remembered an apartment complex near her burning down and needing to be rebuilt, so maybe this was that building?

Valerie had swept through half the top floor before she saw two figures in her infrared - human shaped and colder than the fire slowly surrounding them.

“Hello?” She yelled, running towards the figures - it looked like a parent and a child, based on their sizes.

“Help!” A woman’s voice shrieked.

“I’m coming!” She called back, blasting through the door in her way.

“Huntress!” The woman called in relief as soon as she saw Valerie, picking a child up - presumably her son - as Valerie got closer. As soon as Valerie was close enough, the woman hefted her son up higher, relief in her eyes.

“I can carry both of you, get on!” Valerie shouted, throwing her arm up protectively over her face when a sudden lick of fire lashed out towards her.

The woman didn’t protest, jumping on and sitting down, straddling the board in front of Valerie’s legs and clutching her son to her for dear life.

Valerie triggered a weapon at her shoulder and blasted clear through the wall, speeding away from the fire even as it tried to reach for her with the new oxygen source she’d fed it.

She slowed when it was safe to do so, to allow the other two to better keep their balance. She dropped them off by the fireman from earlier, several ambulances having arrived in the short time she was in the building. At least a dozen people were now out here, covered in soot, being checked over by the various EMTs. Had Phantom really already gotten that many people out?

Valerie was helping the woman and her son off the board when Phantom came flying out, two more people clutched to him. He dropped them off in front of the EMTs. “I’ve got the fifth floor, Red, the fire’s spreading! Stay out!” He shouted, almost immediately gone from sight again.

He… hadn’t looked good. Burns had dotted his jumpsuit, even oozing green in some places where she’d been able to see skin. Regardless, she listened to him, helping the firefighters when they handed her a hose and asked her to see if she could get some of the higher levels.

Several tense minutes passed as they fought to force the inferno into submission, Phantom appearing twice more with people in his arms.

“I’ve got everyone.” She heard him say to the firefighter. She dropped down beside him, handing the hose back to the firefighters as she did so, the fire contained even as the building continued to smoke.

Phantom really didn’t look good. His hair looked black with soot, every white part of his jumpsuit likewise changed.

Something looked… familiar. She couldn’t place it but it was like a forgotten memory, tugging at her heart. Also, had Phantom always breathed? She wondered, watching the rapid rise and fall of his chest as he coughed, doubling over where he stood. She just stood there, silently, trying to figure out her next move. This Phantom still had fans, people who liked him, who would hate the Red Huntress for killing him.

No, she couldn’t do it here, surrounded by all these people they’d just saved. Looking at his soot-blackened hair and watching him wheeze for air, though… suddenly her resolve started to slip. She hesitated. How could this be the same Phantom who’d set a building on fire, a daycare, and laughed at the screams?

He looked at her when he finally stopped coughing, curiosity on his face.

“You good, Phantom? Do you need to see the EMTs? Er, I mean…” The fireman started.

Phantom laughed, which quickly turned into another wheeze and a quick cough. “Forget I was a ghost again, Chief Hemlin?” He asked after.

The man, Hemlin apparently, smiled and shrugged. “Maybe? Anyway, thanks for your help. Again. Eventually I’m going to have to pay you or something!”

Phantom just rolled his eyes, Valerie watching the entire interaction in bafflement. She just… she couldn’t see the Phantom she knew in this Phantom.

“Thanks to you as well, Huntress.” Hemlin added, reaching out to her and shaking her hand. She just shrugged.

“Well, as fun as this has been, I probably should get out of here before Red decides to shoot me in the ass.” Phantom said, turning to her and smirking. “If she can catch up with me!” With that he was up and off, flying across the sky.

Valerie was after him in an instant, easily keeping pace with him. He turned slightly to glance at her, as though confirming she was behind him. He turned sharply and Valerie adjusted, unable to deny the thrill of chasing a ghost at high speeds again, especially as she began to catch up to him quite easily - had she gotten faster in the past eight years? - even when he dive bombed the ground.

Sh just barely managed to keep from slamming into the ground as he phased into it, but she couldn’t keep her balance, the board catching on the pavement and sending her rolling.

Ow. She grumbled mentally. Before she had the chance to do much, Phantom was in front of her, ectoblast growing in his hand and pointed towards her. Ah. This was a familiar look.

“You’re not Red. Who are you? Have you hurt her?” He asked, scowling.

That… was not a familiar statement. He sounded concerned for the Valerie he knew.

“I will ask you one more time. Did you hurt her?” He said, the ectoplasm crackling in his hand.

“How did you know?” She finally asked, still not removing her mask.

He tilted his head to the side. Again, so familiar a gesture, but so unfamiliar. He lacked the cruelty she knew, the uncontrolled sadism. He just looked confused. “You didn’t try to immediately kill me and/or didn’t blame me for setting the building on fire?” He answered.

Had she really been that gung ho to kill this kid back then? She held her hands up in surrender. “I can explain.”

“Is Valerie safe?”

“Yes.” She answered. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, he visibly relaxed, allowing the blast in his hand to dissipate. She was thoroughly and entirely confused. He knew her secret identity, knew her well enough to know she wasn’t herself, and had only been concerned with her safety. It just didn’t add up.

“Then who are you?”

Well, here goes nothing. Keeping one hand still, she slowly reached for her mask with the other, pulling it off. “Valerie Gray.”

“Huh?” He responded elegantly, the confusion nearly comical on his young face. “You… do look like her. Like you could be her older sister.”

Again holding both hands up, she slowly stood. Phantom eyed her cautiously, warily, but didn’t move to stop her. He looked almost afraid of her. Why? He could decimate her in seconds.

Oh. He was afraid of fighting her because he could kill her easily and he didn’t want to do that.

“I’m from 2014.” She answered honestly. “I feel through a natural portal. It’s what? ‘04, ‘05 now?”

“February 2005.” Phantom informed. “You’re… from the future? Do we finally call a truce or something? You’re not trying to kill me.”

“It’s a long story.” Valerie answered, starting to lower her hands. Phantom nodded, indicating she was fine. He trusted her in an instant. Why?

What the hell had happened to him?

“You’re still fighting ghosts.” Phantom said, gesturing to her red suit.

“It’s just what I do, you know what I mean. You hunt them too.”

Sadness creeped into Phantom’s green eyes. “Honestly? I… ten years and the fighting hasn’t stopped? I’d hoped they would eventually let me rest in peace. This isn’t what I want. I don’t want to fight forever.” He looked so old, so weary, in that moment, surprising Valerie. This past version of Phantom was so, so different and continued to shock her. She’d been planning to manipulate him, but… maybe the truth would suffice. This Phantom was good and pure - she routinely shot him and he refused to fight back in anything more than self defense. He wouldn’t want people to die.

“You’re the one causing the fights.” Valerie admitted.

“What? No. I hate fighting.”

“Phantom, you’ve killed people.”

“No. No, I wouldn’t!” Phantom insisted, eyes going wide in shock and fear and he backed away from her.

“I have proof.” She said, pressing at the communicator on her wrist. “Look.” She tapped at the screen on it a few times, bringing up archived footage her suit had recorded.

Phantom timidly walked over to her, glancing at her - wow he was short - then turning his attention to the screen. It had been recorded on the wrist cuff she wore, so the angle was weird.

“Okay, class,” Mr. Lancer’s replacement, Ms. Graham, said. “Today we’re starting on Of Mice and Men, so-“

She would never finish her sentence, the ceiling above her collapsing and burying her in rubble, a sickening crunch barely hidden by the sound of the concrete falling, a pool of red beginning to run from under the pile, the students screaming.

Phantom made a squeak of disgust beside her and she looked at him, his eyes wide and horrified at the scene.

“Am I late for class?” Phantom asked cruelly, dropping in from the hole he’d caused, grinning with too sharp teeth.

“Phantom!” A much younger Valerie shouted, shooting to her feet.

Valerie’s stomach turned and she looked away, unwilling to watch the nightmare she’d already lived through. She heard the screams from the recording, the sadism in Phantom’s laugh as he trapped them, as he easily took Valerie down and outed her as the Huntress before torturing Dash. She couldn’t help the shudder that went down her spine as a certain scene played.

“You always were my favorite,” Phantom cooed, pinning her by her neck with one hand while the other gently stroked her hair. “I’ll save you for last.”

“Stop. Please.” The current Phantom said, tears streaking down his face. Valerie conceded, she’d heard enough again. “What happened to me? To make me do that?”

“Honestly? I’ve been wondering that for years. No one knows. You murdered Danny Fenton in Wisconsin and then did this a month later, in April 2005.”

“I do that… in two months?” He practically whispered.

Valerie nodded. What the hell happened - uh, happens - to him in the next month?

“Wait. You said I killed Danny Fenton. I can’t have killed Danny Fenton.” Phantom said.

“He was the first person you killed, actually. Pretty violently, too. The funeral was closed casket, but I saw the damage before we buried him next to his sister.”

“Wait. Wait. No. Sister? Jazz is dead too? I would never hurt her!”

“No, you didn’t. The other three Fentons died in an accident - an explosion at the Nasty Burger.”

Phantom’s normally tan face seemed to pale, clear even under the soot still on him. “Tell me about that. Please.”

Valerie looked at him curiously. Why would he care about what happened to the Fentons? Still, she answered.

“The sauce at the Nasty Burger can explode if it gets too hot. Next month something happens and the sauce explodes, with six casualties. Only Danny survives and I don’t know how.”

“Six? Who else?” Panic was beginning to show in his tone, a ferocity and fear in his eyes she’d never seen before.

“The three Fentons, Sam Manson, Tucker Foley, and William Lancer.”

“Oh.” He said, tears sliding down his face as he crumpled, falling to his knees.

When he offered no further explanation, Valerie just continued with the story. “There wasn’t enough of any of them to really bury but they all got headstones. Danny went to live with a godfather in Wisconsin. You killed him within a month of the accident.” Valerie pushed down the anger that tried to raise in her. Despite the break up, she had really had feelings for the youngest Fenton and she’d blamed herself for his death for years, her failure to stop Phantom leading to Danny’s death.

Phantom just curled up into a ball and was slightly rocking back and forth, odd sniffles coming from him. It took Valerie a moment to realize that sound was him crying. She’d never heard the ghost cry before.

“Shoot me.” He finally said, his head tucked between his knees.

“What?” She asked. As hard as he’d fought her, this was all it took to make him give up.

“I’m sure the accident that kills them is my fault, too.” He said, self deprecation dripping from his tone like venom. “Shoot me.”

Valerie pulled a blaster from her belt, moving to stand behind him and pressing the barrel against the back of the ghost’s head, against white hair dyed black in spots from soot.

He didn’t fight back.

Something in the back of her mind kept whispering that this was wrong, that Phantom had always fought too hard to give up this easily.

“Why?” She asked, suddenly unsure if she could kill someone who was still innocent. She’d long since realized the dog that had destroyed her life wasn’t his and this version of Phantom was innocent. “Why do you become that?”

He was silent for several moments and she began to doubt he was going to answer before taking a deep breath. “I’m Danny Fenton’s ghost. He had a bad accident at the beginning of freshman year.”

“I remember. I also remember him surviving it.”

“He managed to come back, but he died long enough to create me. Danny Fenton is my humanity. Losing all of them… his humanity would’ve shattered. And mine along with it.”

“Does he know?”

“Yeah. How do you think I get all the Fenton tech?”

Again, hesitation stopped Valerie as she stared at the white hair, a soot-stained black beneath her gun. Suddenly she could see the resemblance and she recoiled, the weapon falling from her hand. “Danny?”

“His ghost.” Phantom corrected but something told Valerie he was lying, still keeping something secret. Regardless, she believed him, whatever other secrets he held. His mannerisms, his voice, the way he looked. Danny Phantom was Danny Fenton’s ghost.

…that sounds obvious, in hindsight.

“The Nasty Burger explosion causes this.” Valerie mumbled. “What if… we just save them?”

“Can we?” Phantom asked, his voice so small and young and so very clearly Danny beneath the echo that her heart ached. “Can we save them?”

“We can sure as hell try.”

He looked up at her, unshed tears in his eyes. “Okay.”

~~~~~~

A month later, after laying low and spending a lot of time in Phantom’s lair in the Ghost Zone, after preventing the Nasty Burger from exploding, she felt her body beginning to waver.

“Valerie!” Phantom called, panicked, grabbing at her hand, only for it to dissolve into nothingness. “What’s happening?”

“We did it. That future doesn’t exist anymore. And neither do I.” She smiled, a sense of peace settling within her. She’d stopped the end of the world, she’d saved people, and she’d saved Phantom’s humanity. “Goodbye.”

And then she felt her body collapse in on itself and she was no more than dust, a memory of what may have been and never will be.

[aikoiya]

Jazz as Altair (The Bluebird of Gotham)

This is based on @tireduniversityscam's Halfa Jazz with Parent Syndrome au, a.k.a. BrucexJazz & @lordgrimoire's Bluebird vigilante Jazz.

I'm thinking that Jazz's vigilante name could be either Altair after the bluebird star (as homage to her brother, the astronerd) or just simply The Bluebird. As bluebirds represent hope, love, renewal, optimism, joy, as well as symbolizing the essence of life & beauty. Not to mention Immortality.

Also, seeing a bluebird after a death represents that the soul of your lost loved one has reached the afterlife. So, seeing her tends to give comfort to those who've lost loved ones.

I see her looking like this:

But maybe with her hair more resembling mist instead of water should her main element be wind instead of water to go with the bluebird aesthetic. Same color, but mist.

Here's a close up of her hat:

I see her using a Fenton Whiplash (just an anti-ecto whip) or just being able to form her ectoplasm into a whip. Either/or.

Also, this mask:

This is her with the mask:

If not a trenchcoat, then a blue cape that fans out to look like bird wings when she's flying. Like the Roc's Cape from LoZ: Minish Cap.

I always hc'd that she'd have psychic empathy, minor clairvoyance, minor mindreading, & telekinesis as a halfa cus it seems the sort of thing she'd have. She comes across as very psychic oriented.

Plus, Spectral Acknowledgement, which is a fun power:

Again, her primary core element could be either water or wind.

I see her having a ghost sense, it being a family thing. However, hers would be different based on her element. If water, it works like sonar & is more close range than Danny's & when it goes off, her eyes get watery, a single stream of tears falling from her eyes. I don't know how it'd manifest with wind, though.

I see Jazz taking the role of a medium as a vigilante. Helping Shades to move on. The Shades I think of is inspired by the ghosts from the Blackwell games & when doing medium things, Jazz tends to do similar things as in the game. Helping the Shades to get to a point where they can move on, which can result in them becoming ecto-ghosts later. However, helping Shades to fulfill whatever is keeping them on earth makes it less likely for them to become ecto-ghosts & more likely to move onto whatever is next. If she just fights them & sucks them up into a thermos, they're more likely to turn into ecto-ghosts & possibly come back. The reason being that emotional attachments, unfinished business, & so on, causes strong, often distressed emotions, which attracts ectoplasm & causes it to stick to a soul. The more ectoplasm sticks to a soul, eventually it'll form a core which is how ecto-ghosts come into being. At least, when spirits of the dead are involved.

For more on the formation of ghosts, go here:

Seriously, the Blackwell series is great & you should definitely go play it or watch someone else play it.

Anyway, Jazz does regular vigilante stuff too, but I feel like this would give her a bit of mystique as a hero. It also meshes well with her therapist focus.

I see her originally patrolling from just before midnight to just after dawn, but after Duke joins, she extended her schedule to midday in case he needs help. She works between midnight & dawn because that's the timeframe where ghosts, spirits, shades, & other such spectral entities are the strongest & cause the most disturbances with 3:00 am being when it peaks.

As for Jason as the Cardinal, I think this would look good for his mask:

Also, one of these hooded jackets:

They're freaking badass!

No helmet & give him a red bird symbol on his chest.

Everything else could match with the second jacket's outfit though.

This is also a really cool design for halfa Jason:

I love the design for his hair, especially the little shadowy flame for that little tuft.

I just really like the idea of Jason with shadow powers, like from @dxrksong.

One of his powers is being able to control his shadow. However, he doesn't have full-on umbramancy. Rather, like I said, he can only control his shadow. At the same time, he can cover himself in it for added protection & it gives him an aura like black flames licking over his skin. He can also make shadowy claws out of them for added melee. It's metal af, okay?

His shadow is controlled entirely by his wants, so it can do a lot of things similar to what Dr. Facilier could in Princess & the Frog.

While he can't control the shadows of others, if he makes his shadow touch other shadows, like if his shadow strangled another person's shadow, it'd result in the owner of said shadow choking for real.

At the same time, saving one's self from said shadow is as simple as shining a bright light all around themselves so that the shadow can't come near.

If they're in an alley at night with no lights, then the shadow can navigate the walls & surfaces unseen as it blends in perfectly.

Can also merge with his shadow & travel through shadows or jump from shadowy spot to shadowy spot.

Also, All-Blades are necessary. I dunno how, but they are.

[picturejasper20]

So, Vlad Corrupted AU

Words: Around 1940 words

Summary: One day Danny finds Vlad in his mansion a strange state. Vlad's ghost form is drastically different and he doesn't seem remember who he is. Because of this, Danny tries helping Vlad to go back to normal by bringing his memories back. As some time passes, Danny begins to reflect on his relationship with the older halfa and the reasons of why he is helping him, not being sure of why.

-Note that this isn't meant to be a full story. It is more like a ¨pilot¨, if you could say, of the overall idea i have for this AU. I may write a whole story based on it in the future.

Flying as fast as he could, he dodged some floating islands that were on his way, trying to not crash into them from the speed he was going. He already had a lost quite a lot of time having to fight a ghost on his way back home and having released them in the Ghost Zone afterwards. When he had been trying to pack up the things he needed, Jack came, telling him about the new idea for an invention he had come up with. He pretended to listen until he said that it was getting late as he had to meet with Tucker.

That was a lie.

Or a semi-lie, because Danny was indeed going to visit someone, but he wasn’t fully sure if he would call him a ¨friend¨ yet. The nature from their relationship had been pretty weird since this whole thing started.

The teen was carrying a backpack and a bag that had different stuff in them. It was mostly food, some old photos and blankets. It was important for where he needed to go, which had become a routine for him around the last month.

Not arriving on time wasn’t exactly a problem. However, he didn’t want to make the other wait too long neither. He didn’t want him to become worried and go to look for him, specially not in the state he was currently in.

Finally, at the distance, Danny saw the island he was flying forwards to. It was around half of the size of Skulker’s island, with some trees spread around and what would be a hill in the center of it all. It was in a desolated part of the Ghost Zone where the biggest threat one could stumble into was a group of wandering blobs.

Danny flew down to the island to the direction of the hill. He landed and started walking for a few minutes until he came close to a opening cave that was at the base of the hill. He looked around and yelled.

¨Hey, I’m here! I’m sorry that I got a bit late, some stuff happened.¨ He moved closer to the cave, waiting for some movement or response back. ¨Are you here?¨

Some shrieks sounds came from the cave, answering back. Two red pupiless eyes appeared inside the opening, observing at Danny with attention.

¨You can come out. It is just me, it is safe.¨ The teen made a gesture to the being that was hiding to approach him. The entity blinked a few times and then slowly flew to where Danny was, making more shrieks sounds.

The being himself was Vlad Plasmius, also known as Vlad Masters. Except his appearance had some clear differences to the ones he usually had. He was in his ghost form but most of his body looked like a shadow. His red eyes and teeth were the main things that weren’t shadow like. His form was quite taller than his usual ghost form and his hands had sharp point to them, as they were claws. Some parts of his suit and cape were torned but was hard to pick up because of them being the same color.

Vlad flew around Danny while making some chirp and bat sounds. Together they sounded that like actual words, as he was telling something to the teen. He was curious about what it was inside the backpack and the bag, watching them in detail.

The young halfa had found out that the sounds Vlad was actually making was an ancient language called Ghost Speak. When he first heard of this, he started doing more research on it, trying to see if he learn how to speak it to understand Plasmius better but, so far, he had only picked up a few words. For Danny’s luck, the man was still able to understand human language, or english in this case.

¨Yeah, yeah, i know you want to see what i brought this time. Just give me a minute¨ Danny left the backpack and bag on the ground. He opened the backpack, moving things around. He took out a green bowl, showing it to Vlad. ¨These are the leftovers from the stew i had last night. I hope you don’t mind them being cold¨

The older halfa ghost grabbed the bowl and the spoon that was passed to him, chirpping as he did so. He went and sit on a rock, eating the leftovers from the bowl with much pleasure. In meantime Danny continued pulling out things such as blankets, bottles full of water, biscuits and cheese. While searching on his backpack, he touched something thin. He took it out and saw it was a photo of a landscape.

He looked at Vlad, who had finished eating and was now floating around. With a smile, he enthusiastically flew and moved the photo to the other’s eye level for the other to see.

¨Hey, does this look familiar to you?¨ The photo was a field landscape from Wisconsin, with different trees on the side of the road and in between the fields. There were hills in the background. The entire scenario had different shades of green under a clear blue clean sky.

Vlad narrowed his eyes at the sight of image. He grabbed it with a claw, pulling it closer. After what it must have been minutes, his eyes opened wide and faced Danny, chirpping as he pointed at the photo.

¨You know it?¨ He saw Vlad nod his head in response. ¨So you do remember!¨ His expression turned happier, his eyes filled with hope.

That’s another aspect that Danny had learned when he first had found Vlad in this state: The man wasn’t fully able to remember who he was, with only having some vague fuzzy memories in between. He didn’t have an idea of who he was or what had changed his form like that. He even had tried attacking Danny when the teen had spotted him at his mansion on Wisconsin until he was reminded of who Daniel was.

When Danny tried asking Clockwork, he was explained that Vlad was ¨corrupted¨. It could happen for multiple reasons, one of the most common ones having correlation with a ghost’s emotional drive- what motivates them, their main desire- however there could be other reasons for it to happen.

There wasn’t an specific cure for corruption, as it was unique the way it manifested itself on each ghost. In spite of returning from corruption it was pretty rare to happen, Clockwork suggested that the ghost being reminded of who they used to be could be a good way to start, such as showing them things they could be familiar with.

So, for the past month, Danny has been checking up on Vlad and trying to find anything he could about his personal life. The places he has lived in, his family, books he has read…it had been a rather slow process but it seemed to be working so far.

Now he was currently sitting under a tree, resting with his hands behind his head. Vlad was next to him. His eyes were closed and his breathing was slow, probably being half-asleep. After Danny had told him about his day and the ghost fight he had, the two had fallen into silence, staying like that for a while.

Danny moved his gaze from the green swirls in the sky to the halfa who was beside him. In spite of not remembering well who Danny was, for some reason he seemed have to certain fondness of the teen. He was one of the few ghosts or people that Vlad didn’t jump to attack at plain sight. The young halfa wasn’t sure himself why this happened, why of all the people Vlad would see his own archnemesis as an ally. On the other hand, it was a good thing, as he didn’t want know what would had happened if it hadn’t been the case.

Speaking about that, Danny still wasn’t sure why he was helping Vlad. At first it had been a feeling of pity, because waking up one day having not knowing who you are and having transformed into something else must be really confusing for anyone. But after that it had changed into something different… a sentiment he couldn’t himself explain. Perhaps curiosity to learn more about Vlad… or being the only other halfa he knew oustide of Dani… whatever it was it was unclear for him.

The situation of their current dynamic was hard to define as well. Since Vlad didn’t remember who Danny was, that meant that he didn’t fight nor try to manipulate him. There wasn’t any worry of Vlad coming up with a plan to attack Jack or drag the Fentons into his fruitloop plans. In his corruption state, the older halfa didn’t have much idea of his battle history against Danny and he treated the teen more as a friend.

It had been certainly been… weird, to put it lightly, being able to interact with Plasmius without being blasted through a wall or zapped into unconsciousness. It almost felt nice being able to hang out like this with the millionaire… if it weren’t for the fact that it wasn’t something that the adult ghost had chosen to do, as it was more result of his mind being confused.

Sam and Tucker had suggested Danny to not worry about Vlad considering the bad things he had done, that no one owned him anything. Tucker had even brought up that it could be a good idea to leave him in the state he was in, since Danny wouldn’t have to worry about him bothering him again, and, to Danny and Tucker’s surprise, Sam had agreed with Tucker in his idea.

Part of him wouldn’t deny that his friends had a point. It has been rather quiet ever since Vlad had transformed… however, another part of him felt it wasn’t right to leave him like this. It felt somewhat cruel, even with being a fruitloop archnemesis.

He let out a sigh and moved his hand to the adult halfa’s shoulder, shaking him a bit. ¨Hey¨ The other opened his eyes at the movement, making an annoyed tired growl. ¨It’s getting quite late for me. I think i should get going¨ He stood up from the tree, followed up by his counterpart. As he walked to pick up his backpack and bag, he heard a low cry from behind. He turned around to see Vlad with a sad look on his face, with his ears dragged down. The expression made him look like a kicked puppy.

Feeling guilt in his stomach, he dragged a hand down on his face and went back to grabbing his things. ¨Look, i know you want me to stay a bit longer but i have to go. Remember i told you that i have my home back on Amity Park. My parents are going to get mad if i’m late for dinner¨

He looked at the older halfa again, who was still down with a disappointed expression. He approached him wearing a kind smile. ¨Don’t worry. I’ll be back in two days. Okay?¨

He waited until he saw the other changing his mood, who returned a sad smile and chirped, nodding at Danny.

With a wave, Danny turned to the sky and took off, leaving the island. He looked back at it a few times. Once it was a mere spot in the distance, he faced ahead, accelerating his own speed, hoping that he would reach home in time to avoid getting into trouble.

[q-gorgeous]

Are You Still In There

fanfiction

ao3

word count: 2231

Danny is a half-ghost/half-human who’s been living in the Ghost Zone ever since he can remember. One day, while flying around the zone, he finds two humans! He's never seen real humans before! How did they get here? And who are they? @duchi-nesten

heres another

Danny flew through the ghost zone. He loved it here. There was always something interesting happening, something new to look at. 

It was also really nice today. The ghost zone sometimes had some really strange weather that would appear sporadically, but no random storms or quakes had happened today. It was very peaceful. Or at least as peaceful as the ghost zone could get. 

He heard something strange. It sounded like something propelling itself forward through the ghost zone. It was similar to Skulker’s jets in his suit. What could it be?

When he looked down he saw something flying through the zone below him. It didn’t look like anything he’s ever seen. He looked closer and saw two humans sitting in the seats in front of the large window. 

Humans! He’s never seen any real humans before. The other ghosts only ever told him stories. And very few at that. This was his chance to talk to some real humans!

He flew down toward them and was rehearsing what he was going to say. Were humans normally freaked out by ghosts? Could he just go up to them and say hi? Clearly if they were here he probably couldn’t freak them out too much. Not when they were also flying around in the ghost zone.

As he flew towards the ship, he watched as the girl that was inside it looked up at him. Her eyes widened and she shook her friend's shoulder, pointing up at where he was flying to them. She pressed a button and then he could hear her voice coming out of some speakers.

“Danny? Danny is that you?” The girl called. Her hands were pressed against the glass of their weird spaceship looking thing as she stared straight at him. 

“How do you know my name?” He cocked his head at her. 

“Tucker! I think that’s him!” She said excitedly, ignoring him.

“But he looks so different. His skin is a different color and his ears are pointed now. Sam, what if he’s…”

She bit her lip and looked away from the boy. Tucker. 

“Maybe… Maybe he’s not. Maybe we just have to get him back to the human realm.”

“How do you guys know me?” He flew up to their ship and stared at them through the window. 

They exchanged a concerned glance between the two of them and he was confused. 

“Do you not remember us, Danny?” Sam whispered.

“Nope. I’ve been here for as long as I can remember.” He frowned. “Am I supposed to remember you?”

“We are your best friends.” Sam pleaded. “We’ve spent so long looking for you. It had been so long, we were almost ready to give up. We thought maybe you died… We didn’t know what would happen if you died again, where you would go. We thought you might have just disappeared.”

Danny furrowed his brows. “How could I have died again if I was already dead when I knew the two of you? That doesn’t make sense.”

“You’re telling me.” Tucker said quietly. 

“Can you come back home with us, Danny?” Sam said. Her hands were still pressed against the glass. 

Danny smiled. “I don’t know if you’re telling the truth, but I’d be up for going to the human realm! I’ve never been there before. It could be fun.”

He flew through the door into the ship after Sam opened it for him. Once she had the door shut again, she scooped him up in a big hug.

“I’m so glad we found you.” She whispered. 

“So assuming you guys are telling the truth, what happened?” Danny asked. He awkwardly patted Sam’s back. 

“You were fighting some new ghost we’d never seen before.” Sam pulled back to look at him. “He must’ve been on the same level as Pariah Dark because your parents were evacuating people out of the city. We were leaving when a big explosion happened and then the fight was over. You defeated the ghost, but then you were nowhere to be found.”

“When you went missing after defeating that ghost, your parents thought Phantom had something to do with it since he went missing at the same time, obviously. We had to tell them everything. We needed their help to be able to find you since we didn’t know what happened to you.” Tucker said quietly. 

“Everyone’s been so worried but we finally found you. We’re going to fix this. Everything’s going to be okay now.” 

Danny looked at Sam and Tucker as they spoke. He didn’t remember anything about his human life. But these two people made him wish he did. Maybe he wasn’t dead after all. Maybe he had a chance to get his memories back.

-----

Danny jumped out of their ship and landed on the tiled floor of a cold basement. The swirling portal was behind them and he was still surprised about how he had never found it before. It wasn’t that far away from where he normally resided in the zone, how had he never seen it before?

He looked around at the basement. Supposedly this was his parents lab. This didn’t seem any more familiar to him than his two best friends that brought him here. 

“So what do my parents do again?” Danny asked. “I don’t think most normal people have labs in their basements.”

“Oh, uh, they’re ghost hunters.” Tucker smiled sheepishly.

“They’re not gonna kill me deader, are they?” Danny asked. Who knew if his parents even believed their story that he was one in the same as their son. 

“They shouldn’t. They better not.” Sam frowned as she started heading up the stairs on the other side of the room. “We explained everything to them and they seemed really remorseful about everything that’s happened. They shouldn’t change their minds now.”

“Come on, Danny. Let’s go upstairs.” Tucker smiled at him. “We can let everyone know the good news.”

They headed up the stairs together. Danny felt nervous for some reason. If everything they were saying was true, how would his parents really feel about him now? Being a ghost was all he’d ever known, were they going to try and take that away from him?

His hands felt jittery as he passed through the doorway leading into what looked like the kitchen. He could see three people sitting at the table in the center of the rooms and his anxious thoughts were dashed away when the smallest of the three stood up and ran towards him.

“Danny!” She threw her arms around his neck. “Danny, is that really you? What happened? Where have you been all this time?”

“Jazz, Danny doesn’t remember anything.” Tucker said softly. 

He felt as Jazz slowly pulled back from him. She studied his face, looking for any ounce of recognition in his eyes. She must not have found what she was looking for because tears welled up in her eyes and she pulled away. Seeing her cry hurt.

She took a deep breath. “Sorry, that must have been weird or overwhelming. I’m Jazz, your sister.”

Danny studied her face but then his gaze drifted behind her to where the two older people were still sitting at the table. They stared at him with wide eyes. 

“Are those our parents?”

Jazz nodded. “Yes.”

He watched as the woman, his mom, stood up from her chair. She walked towards him slowly. 

“Danny?”

She studied his face and tears filled her eyes. His dad walked up behind her, studying his face in the same way,

“How did we never see it before?” She whispered. “You look nearly identical to your human half.”

A sob pushed its way out of her throat. “I’m sorry for everything, Danny. I’m so sorry. Maybe if we had known, you wouldn’t have disappeared. We could’ve stayed to help.”

He didn’t remember anything she was talking about, so he couldn’t offer her any help. All he could do was watch. 

“Mom, do you know how to fix this?” Jazz asked.

His mom took a deep breath and steadied herself. “We’ll have to figure out what happened first. We need to do a bit of research before we can start making theories and plans on how to move forward.” She smiled at Danny.

“Glad to have you back.” His dad said. 

“Glad to be here.” Danny smiled at the strangers surrounding him. He couldn’t remember them yet, but they felt like home. 

-----

Danny floated above his bed in his room drinking from a slurpy Sam and Tucker had dropped off for him after school. He couldn’t resume his normal human activities yet since he still couldn’t remember anything, not even how to change back to his human form, but they were always offering to bring him things they said he liked before or stories to tell him. 

“Danny!” His mom called from downstairs.

He set the slurpy down on his bedside table and floated downstairs through the floor into the living room. His mom stood facing the stairs, expecting him to be walking down them.

“Hey, what’s up?” He said behind her. 

She jumped a little bit and turned around to face him.

“Oh, Danny!” Her hand was to her chest. “You startled me.”

“Sorry.” He said sheepishly. 

She waved it off and smiled at him. “Your dad and I have made progress.”

“Progress?” He asked. 

“We’ve been observing you since you came back home.” She started. “We think spending so much time in the ghost zone forced your ghost form to adapt. Without knowing you were also supposed to be human, it could be possible that your body let itself change to better suit your environment.”

She gestured at his face. “Your ghost form is already starting to go back to how it initially was before you came back.”

“It is?” Danny asked, shocked. He hadn’t noticed anything about his appearance changing.

His mom nodded. “Your ears are no longer so long and pointed and your skin is closer to a more human tone.”

“Huh.” How did he not notice that?

“We’ve also started developing a new invention that will let us see inside your core.”

Danny raised a hand up to his chest. “That won’t hurt, will it?”

She shook her head. “Not a bit. All it’ll do is scan your core. This way we can see exactly what’s happening inside it. We’re going to see if the part of your core that triggered your transformation is still there.”

“And if it’s not?” Danny asked.

She paused for a moment. “If it’s not still there then it’s likely you died in that last battle.”

Danny swallowed hard. “That’s some high stakes for a simple scan.”

She nodded. “We’ve got to keep hope though. You’ve proven that you’re extremely lucky, in one way or another. I’m sure we’ll be able to find it. If we do, we at least know where to start.”

He nodded back at her. “Are you working on it right now?”

“Yes, it’ll be our priority until it’s finished.”

“Can I come see it?”

She smiled. “Of course.”

-----

Danny sat in the living room with Sam and Tucker. It was Friday, the start of the weekend, so they came over right after school to hang out the whole weekend. His parents said that they were close to finishing their new invention that would be able to scan his core and they wanted to be here when it was done so they could all find out what it said together. 

For now, Sam and Tucker were regaling him with all sorts of stories about their classmates.

“Wait, wait.” Danny shook his hands in front of him. “You’re telling me the guy used to beat me up all the time? Why’s he so sad I’ve been missing then?”

Sam shrugged. “Tucker thinks that he lost his favorite punching bag. I think he’s got some deeply repressed feelings for you.”

Tucker rolled his eyes. “There’s never been any sort of evidence pointing towards Dash being interested in guys. What are you even basing your theory off of?”

“Maybe it’s a gut feeling.” 

“The Fenton’s would be offended by you making theories without anything to support them.”

“Yeah, well, they used to-”

Sam was interrupted when Jazz slammed the basement door open in the kitchen. She ran through the door into the living room, out of breath. She looked at the three of them and smiled. 

“Mom and dad finally finished the invention! We’re going to get to see if your human form is still in there somewhere.” Jazz said excitedly. 

Danny, Sam, and Tucker exchanged glances with one another. Sam and Tucker smiled at him but he could tell they were nervous. 

They stood up and Tucker extended a hand to him. Danny let him pull him up off the couch. Jazz ran back to the basement door. 

They followed after Jazz and walked down the stairs. When Danny passed the threshold of the lab, he could see the invention his parents had been working on ever since he came back sitting in the middle of the lab. He walked toward it.

Sam and Tucker walked with him, one on either side of him. He looked at them nervously.

“Are you ready to see if you’re still in there somewhere?” Sam asked with a small smile on her face. 

Danny nodded. “Definitely.”