#Jazz “I know your secret old man Fenton

[and-so-he-rambled]

The thing I’m struggling with a lot writing Vlad is the balance of being soft with the kids while being a genuinely not great person.

He grows to love the kids dearly and will kill for them, but they are his exception to his dislike of people. This man does not like people and sees them as tools, and while the children thaw his heart, it’s a process. I work with kids so I make it too easy for him to adjust because I know what you’re supposed to do, but Vlad has zero fucking idea what he’s doing. My man is terrified of killing these little freaks.

And they really are little freaks. Normal children are weird, but children raised by the Fentons now freshly traumatized are a special kind of weird.

[r3ynah]

I Can be everything and anything, at once

A 27 years old Phantom was challenged to a bet, by his co-workers at the watchtower. Green lantern stated along with the the other heroes that If he could help every single one of them at least once in a month while not using any his powers and he also had to be physically and mentally there as he helps them. the cherry on top was that he needed to use his real identity instead of his ghost form in this mission.

If Phantom successfully conceals his civilian identity, while helping them, he gets to know everyone's deepest darkest secrets.

But if he loses, he must do everyone a favor and must keep it no matter how outrageous it is.

Ofcourse Phantom agreed, because he was no bitch, okay so maybe he is, he only accepts bets like this if he knows that'll he'll win. so yeah.

Besides, having no powers for this, is really a piece of cake, if you're a raging gender fluid that knows his way around makeup and can easily change the sound of his voice, to be honest the shapeshifting parts that he got from his powers are basically just add-ons.

Well what was he waiting for? afterall he needed all the blackmail he could get, not as Phantom but as Daniel James Fucking Fenton, this was an opportunity to go batshit crazy and he was absolutely stealing it.

The very first hero Danny approached to help was Wonder Woman, who thanked Danny who was now disguised as a woman wearing a long ass Red wig, and some clothes he "borrowed" from Jazz who just joked about Danny being her twin, and wished him luck.

"Thank you, young lady for your brave actions to help me." Wonder woman sincerely thanked the boy in disguise as she held both of Danny's hands as gratitude "may I ask the name of my savior? "

"My name's El, It's a pleasure to know you." Danny smiled a little wider.

The second was Flash, which Danny found completely amusing because of the way he helped the speedy hero, who tripped while patrolling around the city.

Danny who was now in a more gothic attire( thanks to Sam's help) caught the hero's wrist before he embarrassingly fell face first on the ground.

"You okay there sir?" Danny asked, as he kept a firm grip on the man's wrist to make sure he doesn't fall.

Meanwhile Flash who thought he was in those korea tv romance dramas only blue screened for a few seconds before finally get his shit together. "yeah- um- name's Flash, and you are?"

The hero tripped on his own words, making Danny amused as fuck. "James, it was nice to finally meet you"

Okay, about like three weeks in, and Danny managed to help almost everyone in the watchtower, and only a few more to go,( he didn't get why most of the heroes he helped either started to stutter or blue screen in their spot once they talk to him. like damn is this how all of you treat every civilian who interacts with you? that's just sad) but at this time, Dan and Elle found out, and were now demanding to join, with the excuse of basically being Danny but in alternate or clone form, which Danny had no choice but to give in, I mean he wasn't breaking any rules so technically this was alright.

Danny wanted to take a break so Dan took over this time.

currently Nightwing was observing the outside of the gala, Bruce was invited to, something about a bunch of drugs being hidden within the crowd, and was now being passed around.

He intently remained focused on his observation, while also keeping a conversation with Oracle and the others on the comms, he didn't realize that he was too far off the edge of the railing he was standing on, until he missed a step.

Nightwing would never admit that he let a quiet squeal to his siblings ever as he fell, he closed his eyes and braced for impact, he would never expect to fall into the arms of a man 3x bigger than him, he stared at the man, and the man stared at him. 'holy shit' Nightwing thought.

The man, chuckled making Nightwing internally scream. "When I wished for Desiree, to make someone from above to save me from this trash party, I didn't think it would be one of the birds of gotham, to come and fall for me let alone the handsome one."

Okay Nightwing was now full on red from blushing, he was put down gently by the man on the ground, before offering a handshake, once Nightwing accepted the handshake, Dan pulled the hand closer to his mouth then gave a quick peck on the back of the hand vigilante's hand. "My name's Dan Masters, it's a pleasure to meet you."

his siblings can eat dirt on how they were teasing Nightwing Right now, but this was fucking worth it.

And the last to have gotten help from Danny was John Constantine, Danny actually had a reason on why he saved John for last, and that's because John actually knows Danny's identity, so for this mission he asked the help of his daughter Elle.

Elle had helped John by fixing a ruined summoning circle, who also helped him negotiate with a demon, and somehow all day, Elle just stuck to Constatine's side, her explanation? 'He'll die without me' fair point John thought as he took the kid, to order ice cream and to hangout in the park.

"You know kid, you remind me of someone." Constantine stated while keeping his eyes on what's infront of him, which was just a bunch of trees.

Elle who sat next to him, still eating her Ice cream looked up at him and said. "Really?"

"Yeah like you two literally have the same aura and all just a little different, but I don't know who yet." He replied and ruffled the kid's hair. making the girl laugh.

"Hey John!" Danny greeted behind them, and then all the gears inside of Constantine's head began to work. he let out a groan as he realized the girl beside him was the clone of the man behind him, well he needed to kiss that secret of his goodbye. here on this spot right now or he'll die of embarrassment if he waited any longer.

"Danny, let's go on a date." Constantine stated, not facing the Man.

this comment made the Father and Daughter choke on literal air.

[theglamorousferal]

Things I want in one fic:

Redeemed Vlad, Good Fenton Parents, Fentons/Vlad polycule

Liminal Amity Park

Redeemed Dark Danny, weird cousin?

Ellie as part of the family, sorta step sibling?

Defect quartet

The Class as a team deferring to Team Phantom

Jazz is Big Sister

Amity Park knows the secret

The Class moving to Gotham for college

Vlad giving them enough money to purchase Drake Manor

Tim has closed off the tunnel between the Manor and the Batcave

Tim was the one to hand the keys over to Danny, whose name was on the deed, courtesy of his new step-dad

They end up keeping in touch and Tim is a frequent visitor at the manor and befriends the majority of the Class

They all still keep up with their training, Sam and Valerie put together an obstacle course with the help of the jocks and every Saturday is a free-for-all battle royale with ecto guns set to their lowest setting across all of the grounds.

The last one standing gets to pick what restaurant dinner is from that night and the movie for movie night.

Tim does find all of this rather unusual, but mostly he finds that they remind him of all his hero friends.

This, more than anything else they do, makes him very concerned.

Why do these random midwesterners train like heroes? Why do they have a camaraderie he’s only seen forged on the same battlefield? He’s noticed they mostly defer to a group of five individuals. The pair of siblings who now own the Manor and the partners of one of said siblings. More than that, they all defer to Danny, the one he gave the keys to.

Luckily for him, Two Face happened to attack the bank that Danny was at and Danny did something he’d only ever seen Bruce manage to do and talked the villain down from the attack.

When asked, Dent just said that he saw a kinship in the kid, said he’d understood duality in a way that resonated with him.

Later that night Red Robin reopened the tunnels and paid one Daniel Fenton a visit. Tim found him in his father’s old study, using a brand new telescope through the window. He knocked and waited before entering.

“Ah, I expected one of you to show up. It’s why I decided to stay up tonight actually. We have a lot to talk about if you’ll take a seat? I’ll get us some energy drinks. You’ll be able to confirm they’re sealed and not poisoned that way. What’s your favorite flavor? Between the fifteen of us we’ve got to have the right flavor.”

Red Robin stood there for a moment, processing before following the man to his pantry. Once there he opened a new package of his favorite energy drink and opened it himself; not once did Danny make a fuss about him opening a whole new package. He grabbed a second one to bring with him back to the office. Danny grabbed a couple himself.

Once back in the office, they sat in two chairs across from each other. Danny leaned on his elbows with his fingers steepled. “What I am about to tell you is an incredible risk to everyone in this house, and likely yourself included. I need you to promise me to listen to everything I tell you before you start asking questions. I will answer them to the best of my ability after I have gone over the basics. What I am about to tell you is going to sound unbelievable, but I’m banking on the fact that you have likely frequently experienced impossible things and therefore may take me seriously.” Danny stared at the mask. “Now, what do you know about ghosts?”

Tim’s hair trigger was of disbelief, but then he paused and considered. Clark’s an alien, Diana’s a god, Conner’s a clone, at least half the family has come back to life. Why couldn’t ghosts exist? “Not much besides fairy tales.” He braced himself for what was to come.

Danny narrowed his eyes appraisingly. “Hmm. Well. They are, in fact, real. I’ll show evidence in a little bit. A Ghost as we know them is generally formed when a person’s emotions during death produce enough ectoplasm to give their sentience form. They then become residents of a place known by two names; the Ghost Zone, or the Infinite Realms. The Ghost Zone is what it’s known as on Earth, and the residents of the place itself call it the Infinite Realms.” Danny pauses here for a moment and then claps his hands. “Now, all ghosts are members of the Infinite Realms, but not all beings of the Infinite Realms are ghosts. The Realms is a dimension mirroring our own that is entirely made of ectoplasm. It’s where the residue from the emotions of all beings in our universe go and then are given form. There are beings there that are basically gods and are aspects given form. I can go on and on about the Realms later. What’s important is that throughout history there have been unstable naturally occurring portals between the two dimensions, but around five years ago, a pair of scientists managed to open a stable portal to this dimension. A few months later, a former college friend of theirs made a second stable portal, but I’ll get to him in a minute. Once this portal was established, it made it so that ghosts could now freely come into our world. A young hero took up protecting the city, but his first few attempts had quite a bit of misunderstanding to them and so he was villainized for a while. This resulted in the government establishing an agency to combat these threats. All well and good, right?” He raised an eyebrow at Tim. “You would think so. However, the laws passed to make this agency had some clauses that are questionable. I’ll just hand you a copy of the documentation so that you can read it.”

He handed Tim a folder labeled “Anti-Ecto Acts”. He began to peruse them and came upon the clause that declared any being that can process or contains ectoplasm is considered non-sentient or sapient and called for the capture, eradication, or experimentation of all such “ecto-beings”. “This, can’t be right. This is a blatant contradiction to the Meta Protection Acts.”

Danny smirked a sad smile. “You’d think, right?” He gave him a moment to process that. “You can read up more on that later. I have other things to say.” Tim set aside the folder and took a deep chug of his energy drink.

“Alright, hit me.” he said as he leaned forward to put his elbows on his knees, giving Danny his full attention.

“Kay, so, you notice the ‘any being that can process ectoplasm’ bit? Yeah, well that can apply to some humans too. Humans that are considered death-touched or Liminal. People who have been surrounded by death, have died even if momentarily on the operating table, but especially people who have been exposed to high levels of ectoplasm. Here’s the thing about living in a town with a stable portal to effectively the afterlife: it kinda does some stuff to you.” He flashed his eyes a Lazerus green as he set his right palm on the desk. He’s quiet for a moment before he leaned back with a sigh, then closed his eyes so they returned to their normal blue. 

“Every individual in my hometown is ecto-contaminated.” He said quietly, like, Tim supposes, he was telling a secret. Tim guesses he was. “Every person there is death-touched. Every person there is Liminal. Every person pings as an ecto-entity to the GIW. We’re all at risk. I wouldn’t be surprised if most of the heroes would ping too. I need your help.” Danny turned begging eyes upon Red Robin. “I need your help, and you need this too because I noticed it when we first met, Tim, that you are too.”

Tim reeled, he stood and knocked his chair over. “Wh-what do you mean?” 

“How many times have you been near-death? How many times have you been around the dying? That sort of stuff leaves a mark on people. They begin to metabolize ectoplasm. I reckon that the majority of the Justice League apply. I’d argue that soldiers who have seen active combat would register on some sensors. According to those laws, you can be captured and experimented on. They’re luckily focusing on ghosts and have been ignoring people, but it’s only a matter of time. I need you to bring this to Batman, to the League. I need these Acts removed. They call for the eradication of my People” His eyes flashed a green again as the word resonated. “This calls for the eradication of an entire dimension, they’ve already tried it once, and if they had, it would have torn this universe apart. Luckily the nuke they had was a dud.” 

Tim swallowed at that. “Nuke? They tried to nuke an entire dimension?” Tim picked up the chair and sat heavily in it. “I’m going to guess that this somehow gets worse?”

Danny nodded solemnly. “You see, the Infinite Realms has a council and a king. A good majority of the council rightfully believes that these Acts are calling for the genocide of our people. The king has kept them at bay for now, but they’re calling for war.” 

Tim put his head in his hands and groaned. “And the king?” Danny looked at him, debating something for a moment. Then he stood and there was a flash of bright light. Stood in front of Red Robin could only be the King. Danny now had bright white hair and eyes that glowed with a familiar Lazarus green. He wore a cloak of stars and his crown looked like the Northern Lights. He wore armor that seemed to be a combination of the ancient Norse and Greeks. “I just want my people safe.”

[long-live-astronerd-ghost-king]

Dannymay 2023. Day 7. Weapon. DPXDC.

The Justice League is trying to figure out Danny’s identity, and he’s not happy about it.

~Words hurt more than weapons~

~~~

Wonder Woman: You’re bound by the Lasso of Truth. No more chance of hiding secrets, ghost.

Danny: Are you kidding me?

Batman: Who are you, Phantom?

Danny: "I am a 400-foot tall purple platypus bear with pink horns and silver wings."

Captain Marvel: Wow, you don’t see many Fire Nation princesses these days.

Danny: Hm, at least someone with good taste here.

Danny: Have you even read the Fenton articles? Batman? Anyone? No? Remember. Ghosts will always find a way to lie. Your ribbon has no power over me.

~~~

Danny: ..I have a few words for you too, Batsy. Martha says hi. And she wants you to know that " ..if I see a damn clown in the immediate vicinity of one of my grandchildren or if I find out that you or any of the family are on patrol with broken bones, I’ll spank you as soon as I meet you on the other side. Obey Alfred. With love, Mother."

Flash:..Batman, why are you so pale?

Batman: Someone sprayed the fear toxin. Check the ventilation.

Flash:..

~~~

Superman: Stop it! Listen..

Phantom: I liked you when I was a kid, you know? They say it’s better to never meet your idols. Now I see it's truth.

Superman: You shouldn't be doing this alone. We can help you.

Danny: What makes you think I need your help? Don’t be a hypocrite. Why don’t you take off your glasses at the Daily Planet office? And why do you think that you can tell me what to do with my secret identity?

Danny: Don’t worry, I’m dead but my family is fine. I’m not like you, Big Blue. I will not sacrifice the people I love for my murderous secret.

Superman: What are you talking about?

Phantom: Don’t play dumb. In the land of the dead, people like to talk about the past, you know. You told Jonathan he wasn’t your father, and then you didn’t even try to save him. It’s cruel. But you can be happy, Jonathan doesn’t blame you for his death. I do.

The temperature in the room dropped a few degrees.

Superman: I.. I listened to what he said. He was trying to protect me.

Danny: So, how does it feel? Letting him die in front of you, knowing you could have saved him? Do you blame youself?

Superman: How dare you.

Danny: Of course, you do. Because no matter how many lives Superman saves, the most important one to you..You’ll never got it back. Afraid of being a lab rat? Superman is not special. I am not special too. 

Danny: Don’t look down at me just because you have more experience behind you. Revealing my identity should be my choice, not yours.

~~~~

Danny: Stay out of my grave. *turns to Batman* You should stay away from your son’s grave too. Leave the past behind.

~Hairstyle. Sharp tongue. Physique. This Insolence.~

Batman: Jason?

Danny: Wrong ghost, old man.

Batman: ...You’re the one who said a ghost would always find a way to lie.

Danny: Pride and prejudice! *shit, I’m starting to swear like Mr.Lancer, It’s time to finish my english essay.*  I’m not your Robin. Sorry bout that.

~Jane Austen? No hint more obvious. Jay doesn’t want to deal with the League? Well, Bruce doesn’t mind playing along.~

Batman: I understand.

Danny: Thank Ancients! Anyway, I’m leaving. Don’t look for me.

~~~

Tucker: Wow, Danny, when we told you to take care about the League, we thought you’d do it, like, without turning all of them against you.

Danny: Not all of them. And I didn’t do anything wrong. We talked.

Jazz: Danny, believe me, sometimes a conversation with you can cause more damage to your enemies than your ectoblasts.

Sam: Not just to them. Sometimes I also feel like his ideas are melting my brain.

Danny: Hey! Actually, you should be on my side.

Sam: We should?

Danny: Never mind. But if JL set foot in Amity Park I will sic on Wonder Woman her grandfather.

Tucker: But her Grandfather is Kronos. He’s a creep, trying to eat all his kids. Where do you even know such a monster from?

Clockwork *puts a cup of tea on the table and coughs to attract attention*.

Tucker: Wait a minute...

Tucker: Oh mY GOd, Mr. CLocKWoRk I’m sO SorRy, please don’t kill me.

Sam: Now you’ve changed your mind about importance of a healthy vegan diet, Tucker?

Tucker: ..No, I’m not that desperate.

~~~

~At the same time,somewhere in Ghost Zone~

 Martha *teaches Jason to do a choke hold*.

~~~

~At the same time, in one of Amity Park’s alleys.~

Maddie and Jack *discuss ways to capture the Phantom*

Batman *appears behind them*:DoN’t toUcH my the сHiLd.

~~~

Jazz: Don't you think that mentioning Superman's father was too much?

Danny: Maybe.But..when I think about you, mom or dad in dander I can't imagine what would make me freeze and.. It just doesn't make sense, okey?

Jazz: You're still thinking about Dan, right?

Danny: Every.damn.time.

[agentianlegend]

20 Q's for Fic Writers

Thanks for the tag, @summerssixecho! I enjoyed revisiting my work a bit for this one :)

1. How many works do you have on Ao3? 

9 (17 over on FFn)

2. What's your total Ao3 word count?

243,275

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Primarily Danny Phantom (it’s what got me into writing fanfiction to begin with; in fact, even as an 11-year-old I was writing my own Danny Phantom episodes when it was first coming out), but I also write for DC (either DP crossover or standalone) and Miraculous Ladybug that one time. I have been t e m p t e d to write more ML as well as dabble in a few others, like maybe Ted Lasso or Scooby Doo (couldn’t be more random, I know), but that hasn’t come to be yet. Let's also not forget the DP x The Office au that @tytach and @arken-99 and I were messing around with a while back 😂 I'm still tempted to go somewhere with that. (Tytach did.)

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos? 

5) Intervention at 657 kudos - DP - Danny comes home after curfew one final time, and his dad is waiting for him. We give Jack Fenton credit in this house/fic.

4) Beast Within at 910 kudos - DP x DC/Young Justice - Garfield Logan has just lost his mom and is struggling to get his newly developed shapeshifting powers under control. The team calls in Danny for help.

3) Fire with Fire - 956 kudos - DP x MCU Spider-Man - After the Fentons temporarily relocate to Queens for a contract with Stark Technologies, Danny and Peter find themselves embroiled in a conspiracy bringing malicious wraiths to New York City.

2) A Vigilante, a Different Vigilante’s Sister and a Villain Walk Into a Bar - 1,811 kudos - DP x DC - Jazz Fenton and Jason Todd attempt to date amidst unpredictable rogues needing therapy and nosy family members needing gossip fodder. This getting 2nd place is a surprise since it's my newest fic...

1) Recognized - a whopping 3,561 kudos - DP x DC/YJ - After Danny accidentally gets zeta tube access using Robin’s credentials/DNA, the two boys try to find out what happened years ago while unraveling a web of past and present secrets.

5. Do you respond to comments?

Absolutely ALWAYS, and if it’s taking me a bit to reply, just know that I’m going through it irl and I’ll get to responding to everyone ASAP. I love hearing what you guys think of my work and what in particular you’re reacting to/enjoying, so whether it’s fanboying over scenes together or explaining details you might’ve missed or just don’t quite get, I always take the time to show my gratitude for you taking a moment to share your thoughts. :)

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Pretty much none of them, to be honest? I always like to try to end on a hopeful note, if not an outright happy one, because I need hope for my own struggles lol. The only candidate I can think of would be The Theorists, but even that’s not an angsty finish. My older oneshot Taking The World by Thunder might count since Lance Thunder doesn't get a happy ending, but it's pretty much a crack fic so I still wouldn't call it angst lol

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Gosh, this is also a hard one because most of them are sort of open-ended and hopeful. I would probably nominate Night One because I love Wally and Connor’s bonding. It gives me the warm fuzzies. I also think Intervention qualifies since it's a wholesome reveal to the Fenton parents instead of the typical catastrophe (I mean, look at the reveal in Recognized, y'all).

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Only every once in a while, and it’s not really hate but more…closed-minded rejection of the fic’s idea. Like on Recognized I’ll occasionally get something along the lines of “this whole thing is confusing and over-complicated” (literally the point) or “this wouldn’t happen” (you’re reading a fic that literally takes place in a world of ghosts and aliens and people with superpowers). Only a couple times someone’s said “this is stupid” and I’m like, if I don’t like someone’s fic, I just move on and let them be because it’s what they wanted to write. Have these people never heard “you do you”?

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

HA. I can barely even write flirting.

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

Often, usually for DP x DC. The craziest was probably The Theorists because it features almost entirely side characters and their “conspiracy theories” about the main cast. It also wove into the Recognized storyline in the end.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I’m aware of. Let me know if you find my work anywhere lol I only ever post on my main accounts: agentianlegend on tumblr and AO3 and hiimian over on FFn.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Nope but I’m open to it

14. What's your all-time favourite ship?

I’m not big on ships, to be honest. Though I enjoy Jason Todd x Jazz Fenton, and OH in the middle of writing this I remembered other fandoms exist lol. Marichat from ML because they’re both their most relaxed selves. Adrienette is a very close runner-up. 

15. What's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I’ve never published it or shared with anyone, but the first modern fic I wrote was a DP x Teen Titans crossover where Jack and Danny move to Jump City after tragedy takes Maddie and Jazz. Danny wants to lay low and not be a hero as he deals with the loss, but Slade has other ideas. I wrote quite a bit for it, but I don’t know if I’ll finish. It was heavily angsty when I was going through some stuff and needed catharsis. I still have it almost entirely outlined, so theoretically I could finish it. But, I don’t know. Inspired by Into the Dark by InkyIris btw (apparently a rewrite and cross-publishing is in progress on AO3!), one of the OG fics that got me involved back in the fandom.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Dialogue, characterization, and action scene choreography. Or so I’ve been told lol

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Writing out scenes when I don’t love the scene as it is. The efficiency side of my brain doesn’t want to waste the energy when I know I’m going to pretty much throw it out and rewrite entirely later on. Also, romance.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Danny Phantom, even before I started publishing. (See the aforementioned episodes I wrote when I was 11.)

20. Favourite fic you've written?

If not Recognized, I would probably say Night One. It’s a quiet fic, and I love those intimate moments when these larger-than-life characters have some hurt/comfort and bonding moments.

-

Well I already mentioned you guys earlier but I'm tagging @tytach and @arken-99 as well as @the-outcast-ed, @tourettesdog and @dp-marvel94!

[the-winds-of-kushala]

I had sudden IDEAS here, so more random little writing pieces for ya'll:

At first, Kon was wary of this weird kid that had walked into the Kent Farm doors covered in a shock blanket and clutching at Clark like the man was the only thing keeping him up. He and Superman may have mostly mad peaceful with the older Kryptonian's idiot phase of misplaced anger towards his clone, and after Dinah made them both sit down and talk, they came to an agreement to be better, but there was still a certain part of him that seemed to be on the waiting for the shoe to drop. Would this be it? Was he about to be replaced, like he'd heard Jason and Tim talk about their successors to the Robin mantle?

Except, instead of anything Superboy might've expected, Clark gently pulld the boy free from his side, held him by the shoulders as if he might shatter at any moment, and spoke a gentle "Danny, remember when you asked if I had more kids? Well, this is one of your new brothers. His name is Conner."

And suddenly things made a startling amount if sense. That was his father(?)'s voice for 'this is a traumatized child and I'm trying my best to be strong and kind when I really just want to tear their abusers to pieces'. So Conner did the first thing that came to mind. He grabbed "Danny", held him gently by the shoulders, and pulled him into a hug, as Clark turned around to go find Jon, Ma and Pa Kent, and possibly call Lois. "Welcome home, little brother" with emphasis on the "little" part. The boy was alarmingly scrawny and small, even for a 15 year old boy. He barely reached his chest, and yet the way he hugged him and sobbed what felt like an entire year of trauma and heartbreak threatened to leave his ribs aching for a while. Ok, possible meta, or Kryptonian. Noted.

Danny looked up at Conner, who held him so carefully, like Jazz used to do (like she would never do again, thanks to Vlad...), and broke to splinters, carefully held in the other boy's arms as he broke, fell to pieces, and slowly gathered his shards back up as best he could right now. His core felt sharp with grief and anger, but the Kents seemed to have an almost magical way of easing his sharp edges and helping him refocus his anger into other, more productive ways.

While Batman and the rest of the Justice league hunted down Vlad and the Fenton parents, Conner and Jon taught him how to fix pa Kent's tractor when it broke down. They taught his how to till and sow, and care for crops. And when he was ready for it, when they came to know his secrets, they offered to train him. To give him the support and help he had needed so desperately, in situations like the rise of Pariah Dark, or Dan's terrible implications.

Once more the Kent Farm shook with the laughter and the impacts of superpowered teenagers tossing each other around and flying each other into the ground and all over the sky. Kon and Jon both came to learn the various ways to goad him into play fight and sparring practice that helped all three of them bond, especially little Jon, who liked to bite him and then running away, which would have his Ghost instincts flare with bite-playful-chase brother-tickle fight, and he'd be off chasing him, until Kon tackled him to the floor, and it would devolve into a free-for-all that would end with Clark and, to everyone's surprise the first time, Jazz's ghost, coming in to break it up by grabbing the kids by the back of the neck like misbehaving kittens. Jazz liked to pretend she was the responsible older sibling, but one time Danny took a page out of Jon's book, bit Jazz and ran away with her on his tail, throwing ectoblasts and fire at him until Dad grabbed them both, gave them the biggest hug his full Kryptonian strength was capable of against mostly indestructible ghosts, and the whole Kent family devolved into happy tears, ending in a cuddle pile with Ma Kent's famous pie and a movie playing on TV.

One day, Clark and Lois sat Danny down on the kitchen with them, to tell him how they would support him no matter if he decided to join the Justice League or not, and, if he did, they would be proud to let him wear the Crest of the House of El, if he wanted to. A month after that, and Phantom showed up to deal with Klarion, wearing a brand new far more armored suit, proudly displaying the familiar Crest for the House of El, going on to establish himself as a reliable Young Justice and Justice League member, and certified heavy hitter, along with being incredibly skilled with his ice during rescue operations.

I have a crackish idea: Danny gets adopted by the Superfam, and they know about his powers and stuff, and eventually Danny decides to go under a new hero identity. He doesn't wear the Superman symbol, but he's not in his Phantom form either, preferring a costume similar in style to Kon (his old one, with the leather jacket) to make it harder to pick out who is who. But people still figure out that there's a new kid around, it's not hard to count them all after all. But he has- seemingly- all the right powers, and he looks an awful lot like his brothers... Who knew Superman had so many children?

And that's how Dannay gets mistaken as a (half) Kryptonian superhero.

(Also, Lex meets Danny out as a hero once and just stares at him for like half a second and is like: "You're not Kryptonian-"

And Danny replies: "NO ONE WILL EVER BELIEVE YOU."

And you know what... he's fucking right.)

Also one day Clark asks Danny if he wants to wear the symbol and panics when Danny cries because he's worried he's insulted the boy somehow, but really, he's just so happy to be part of the family. :')

[phantomrose96]

Old Wounds

Danny’s secret is not a secret anymore.

The lines between Fenton and Phantom have long since blurred. And it’s a common occurrence for news reporters to trip over their tongue when flagging him down, mid-transformation, for a post-fight interview. “Phanton.” “Fentom.” So often that, to most now, he is just Danny.

When Danny wants upgrades to his gear, he comes to his mother. When Danny learns a quirky new element of Ghost Zone lore, he brings it to his father. When the Amity Park Ghost Alarm is raised, he’s first on the scene with the Fenton RV right on his non-corporeal heels.

When he’s injured, Danny comes only to his friends and sister.

Jazz notices the pattern. How it is only her, or only Sam, or only Tucker who receives the late-night knock at the window glass, with her brother on the other side, corny sheepish smile on display and arm or leg or shoulder held up in explanation.

Jazz notices how hushed Danny remains, day or night, when he comes to her for first aid. How he speaks in that same hesitant muted tone as he did when all of this was still a secret. How he quiets himself in the way injured prey animals do.

Jazz doesn’t feel it’s her place to ask. Not yet, at least. Eventually. But not yet.

The window is open. Honeysuckle-sweet gusts of late-spring air swirl through Jazz’s room and tease away the sheen of sweat that has collected on her brow. She cannot wipe it away herself, not with both hands meticulously occupied in tweezering out the singed fabric from her brother’s arm.

Danny winces, and hisses, and Jazz frees another thread from its embedded hold in Danny’s burn wound.

“It’s kind of like… summer vacation when we were kids and we’d get splinters visiting Aunt Alicia’s lake house,” Jazz remarks with another careful tug. “…If we can call it a lake house.”

“Lake shed,” Danny replies, grinning through the sweat shining on his pale face. “And I think every part of that dock was an OSHA violation.” He laughs through another wince.

“Dad was the king of tweezers. I think he got out every splinter that dock ever gave me.” Jazz pauses. “I wonder why that was. Think it’s the needlepoint?”

“It’s definitely the needlepoint,” Danny agrees.

Jazz hesitates on the question lingering behind her tongue. Just a little too long. Just a little too obviously.

“What?” Danny asks.

Jazz’s hand falters. She puts the tweezers down. “Danny, I will always always be happy to help you like this. Same goes for Sam, same goes for Tucker, I know. I’m positive. But I wonder why… not Mom or Dad?” Jazz eyes the tweezers, glinting in the moonlight. “I’m just… I’m thinking how much cleaner this might be if you got Dad to do it. And Mom’s got like, wilderness survival level first aid expertise. I can’t help thinking I’m hurting you more by it being… me, you know?”

Danny looks at her, and looks past her a moment. His grin slips a fraction into discomfort as his eyes leave hers. “Maybe I just like the excuse to invade your room.”

“Danny…” Jazz waits until he looks at her again. “Are you afraid they’ll make you stop if they realize you’re getting injured?”

Danny lets out a puff of air from behind his lips. “No, never. I mean, maybe if I got really really injured they’d say something. But just getting a little roughed up? I think it’s about on par with a kid coming home from football practice with a few scrapes, at least, in their eyes. They get more banged up than me these days. I’m not worried.”

Jazz reaches for the bottle of disinfectant. She unscrews the cap to a biting alcohol smell. “…So will you tell me why?”

“Why what?”

“Why you won’t ever go to them with injuries? Ever?”

Cotton swab, pure silver under the moonlight. Jazz douses it gently, a muted glug-glug from the bottle.

“…I’m that obvious about it, huh?”

“You’re obvious about most things. This’ll be cold.” Jazz applies the swab to the open wound, and Danny hisses in turn.

“Yeah. Cold. And stingy. Cold and stingy.” After a few seconds, the tension eases out of Danny’s body. He droops a little, shoulders slumped, and Jazz pulls the cotton swab away.

“Are you ashamed of your injuries?”

“No.”

“Are you worried Mom and Dad’ll make them worse?”

“Nah. You said it yourself, those two are weird, unconventional medical experts.”

“Then why not?”

A beat of silence follows. A moment of trepidation. Awash in moonlight, Danny looks up at her, and the glow in his green eyes has a life of its own. “I don’t want them to see the injuries that have already healed.”

“Why would that be a problem?” Jazz looks again. Danny’s suit covers most everything, save now for the one sleeve that’s been rolled back. She sees what she already knew was there – what isn’t obvious to the eye not searching – threads of white ridges, puckers of skin, a faded rashy texture of what had once been an ectoblast burn. Old injuries. Long healed. Faded and fading further. “Those are all healed now. Just some scars, right…?”

Danny hesitates.

“I don’t want them to figure out how many of those scars they caused.”

A gust of wind steals the antiseptic smell from the room. Jazz sits with the silence. She thinks, and she processes.

“Oh…”

Danny straightens. “They kind of… live in this world where hunting ghosts is all fun and games, you know? Like it’s a sport, like they can just get into go-mode and jump into the fun. I don’t think they’ve figured out yet that they can—could—did …cause damage.”

Danny adjusts himself on Jazz’s bed, one leg pulled up, body angled to face her directly. He doesn’t let his eye contact wander now. “They both apologized. Definitely. Like that definitely happened, back at the start of this. But it was kind of like ‘We must’ve given you so much trouble Danny! How’d you come home every day and not bite our heads off over that?’ Like. Again. Like it’s a game. Like they’d been knocking my chess pieces over for a year and not—”

Danny falters. He raises his uninjured arm and tucks the hair away from his face. “And I don’t… want it to click for them. What I have right now with Mom and Dad is so nice… It’s so much better than I even imagined. I want it to stay like this. Forever, if possible.”

“Danny…”

“And even that actually—maybe I’m actually wrong about that. Completely wrong. About their reaction, I mean. It’s possible maybe they’d see everything and just go,” Danny deepens his voice, “‘Wow! We did a number on you, huh? Man Danny I don’t know how you didn’t just smack us over the breakfast table every morning.’ you know? Like that. Like this was all just always a game. And they—and I-- …I like how relaxed ghost hunting is with them. I actually like that it feels like a game. I don’t ever want to go back to feeling how scared and afraid and unsafe and hurt I was that first year. ...But I’m afraid of how it would feel to know that maybe they’d see that, look at it all, everything they did and the scars like the actual proof and it—if it wouldn't ever be real to them. If they'd never get that it was like that. If they still wouldn’t realize—you know? That they—if they—I don’t uh…” Danny drops his eyes, and he shrinks in on himself. “I don’t know how to explain it…”

“No I—Danny I know what you’re saying. Don’t worry. Danny, I—”

“Either answer. Any answer. I don’t want to know… I don’t actually want to know.” Danny angles himself away again, feet dropped over the side of Jazz’s bed, staring down at the hands in his lap. “If it would horrify them, then I’d be ruining all the good things I have with them right now. And if it wouldn’t horrify them—” Danny falls quiet. The breeze has stilled. The room is colder now. “…then I think I just don’t ever want to know.”

Jazz nods, and nods harder.

“I get it. I get it. That’s a good enough answer for me, Danny, I promise. I’m your first aid person, okay? I won’t ask again. Thanks for… thanks for telling me, Danny.”

"Can always trust you to bring up the difficult conversations huh? Of course that's always been your thing. Talking to you is--well I'd say it's like pulling teeth, but maybe it's more like pulling ecto-demolished hazmat suit fabric out of a burn wound."

Danny offers a sheepish grin - it's an olive branch, a request to lighten the mood. Jazz meets it with her own small grin that does not touch her eyes.

"Yeah yeah, I'm your older sister. It's my job to be a pain. Now sit still, I need to be more of a pain if we're gonna de-hazmat suit your injury."

She picks the tweezers back up. The silence rings with an echo in her head now. Jazz focuses her attention back on her task, and she finds something she was wrong about before:

There is nothing faded about the scars that web up and down her little brother’s arm. They are stark streaks of lightning, glowing silver under the moonlight. And Jazz wonders how many others—how many that flaked away and melded back with healthy skin—how many of those might still be living, lingering, a permanent part of her little brother, buried well beneath the surface…

[noctilucid]

DannyMay Day 5: Lies

Danny was a terrible liar.  He used to think he was at least average when it came to lying.  His success rate with his parents was about 50/50, which he assumed was decent.  It wasn't until just before his first high school dance that his delicate self-perception tumbled down around him like so many dominoes.  

Jazz had given him a smug look across the kitchen table.  "By the way, Danny?  Just so you know, I'm on to your little secret."

Danny spat out the water he had been drinking.  "Wh— what secret?" he choked out between coughs.  

"The clumsiness, the nervousness— I can't believe I didn't figure it out before!"

"It's a lie, I'm not a ghost!" Danny nearly shouted as Jazz exclaimed, "You have a girlfriend!"  

They stared at each other.  

"I mean, she's not my girlfriend, she's just going to the dance with me," he amended, gesturing so forcefully that he sloshed his water.  Jazz watched him with furrowed eyebrows as he sweated bullets and kept his jaw wired shut, feeling the spilled drink trickle over his clenched fingers and patter to the kitchen floor.  

…His friends weren't much better.  He wasn't sure if this was comforting— at least they couldn't mock him over it— or disappointing.  In an unusual turn of events, Sam and Tucker actually had detention for a week straight while Danny was free to go, because the two of them had managed to royally piss off Mr. Lancer after Danny went ghost.  

"And where do you two think you're going?" Mr. Lancer demanded.  

Tucker and Sam froze.  Sam looked over her shoulder stiffly.  "We're cutting class to go… vandalize shit?"

"And there's nothing you can do about it, old man?" Tucker added, cringing into himself.  

"Old man?" Mr. Lancer said darkly as the two of them turned tail and ran.  

Honestly, Danny wasn't sure if they were better off in pairs or not when it came to lying.  Sometimes, it helped to pool their apparently solitary brain cells, while other times, more mouths just meant digging themselves into their own graves deeper.  

"Yo, Fenturd!  Why are you always carrying around that stupid thermos?"  Dash tossed a football between his hands with a little too much force.  It was like everything he did, he did to remind Fenton that it was only a matter of time until he next got punched.  

"Yeah, I've like, never seen him use it at lunch," Star said.  "Don't you always get cafeteria food anyways?"  

Danny panicked.  It didn't feel like panicking— after staring down Skulker's hunting knife while being held by the scruff like a kitten, fear now came in different identifiable flavors for him.  This?  This was the unique sort of social panic that made his brain freeze as he stuck both feet in his mouth.  "I, uh… It's… emergency soup?"

"…Emergency soup."  

Tucker swooped in.  "Yeah, you know the Fentons!  Always got to have some emergency soup on hand."  He chuckled.  "You know, in case a ghost ever gets, uh, hangry?"  

There was a moment of shared silence before Kwan asked, "Wait, does that actually work?"

Mikey shuffled past with his lunch tray.  "Is it regular soup, like for humans, or does it have to be ectoplasm-based?"  

"Uhhh…" Tucker buffered for a minute before Danny saw a quirk enter his forced smile.  As Tucker started to say something that would doubtless dig them deeper, he grabbed his friend by the crook of the arm and yanked him towards the door.  

"Sorry, make-up quiz!" he shouted, "Gotta go!"

Even Danny had to admit that when it came to lying, they were all disasters.  So when Sam proposed a solution, although he was uneasy with it, he couldn't decline in good conscience.  

*****

"Ok," Sam said, settling onto Danny's floor, the three of them forming a circle.  She unzipped the small pouch of her backpack, pulled out a rubber-banded stack of index cards, and dropped them on the rug in front of her, then found a small spiral notebook and dug around for a pen.  

"What is that?" Tucker asked, barely glancing up from his PDA screen.  The way he was tapping the buttons, it was safe to assume he was playing some old arcade game to occupy himself.  "There better not be a chem test.  That's not supposed to be until the 27th.  It's on the syllabus—"

"This isn't chem," Sam cut him off, finally producing a pen.  She uncapped it and scratched a few lines at the top of the page until it started producing ink.  She dropped the pen on top of the pad and started working the rubber band off of the notecards.  "We're playing a game."

"That game looks an awful lot like schoolwork," Tuck muttered.  

"Yeah, because our lies are fucking terrible and we need to work on it before one of us really screws things up.  We're going to study how to lie."  

"Um… no offense Sam, but that sounds like a disaster waiting to happen," Danny said, fiddling with the aglet of his shoelace.  "How do you even study lying?"  

"Easy.  You practice."  Sam slapped down the index cards and drew one from the top of the pile, holding it for them to see.  "Each of these cards has a situation and a complicating factor."  She flipped it around and read her own handwriting.  "This one says, you have to get out of gym class, but the jocks are teasing Danny."  She set the card face up next to the pile.  "So, whoever drew the card has to think of a lie to say to Dash and Kwan so Danny can escape to go ghost.  So, you play as yourself— if I draw, I walk over and start yelling about how they need to be better about recycling or something, but if Danny drew, he'd have to think of something to save himself, if we weren't there for some reason."

"And I can't just go invisible?"

"No, they're like, actively hazing you.  You've got to get their eyes off of you before you do anything.  Plus, we're in gym class, so you should probably at least get behind the bleachers or go to the locker room or something so someone else doesn't see you vanish."  She set the notepad and pen in Tucker's lap.  He rolled his eyes and pocketed his PDA.  "One of us will score your lie based on how many innocuous details it has and how likely it is to get us in trouble later."

"So, rambley is better?" Tucker asked, raising a critical eyebrow.  

"No, subtract a point for rambling.  Uh… So if I needed to get out of class for a whole period, and I pulled out a note saying I have a dentist appointment, and I forged a signature from my mom at the bottom, then that would get three points— one for the dentist appointment, because it's believable and would excuse me for the right amount of time, one for the note, and one for the signature, or something— but you'd also subtract a point because if it somehow made it back to my mom, she'd know I hadn't had a dentist appointment, so it could get me in trouble later.  Not super likely to happen, though."  

Tucker rolled the pen between his fingers as he thought about it.  "Seems kinda subjective."  

"I think we'll get the hang of it.  It's not really about winning the game, more about workshopping excuses."  She turned back to Danny.  "Then, the other person gets to ask two follow-up questions.  So if I said my thing about the dentist appointment, and Tucker was scoring me, you'd pretend to be the teacher, or another student, and you'd get two chances to heckle me.  I have to respond on the spot."  

"So…"  Danny brainstormed for a moment.  "Shouldn't you have told the office in the morning, and they'd call you over the PA system when it was time for you to leave?"  

"I forgot to give them the note this morning.  I was running late," Sam answered, maintaining a little too much eye contact.  

Danny smirked and switched to a nasally voice.  "But I saw you here before the bell!  You were lurking by the picnic table with Fenton!"  

"Was that supposed to be Mikey?" Tucker asked with a grin.  

"Uh.  Shit."  Sam picked at a chip in her black nail polish while she thought of a response.  "Ok, I lied.  I forgot to give them the note because I was hanging out with Danny and I lost track of time."  

"Ooooh," Tucker crooned.  Sam flicked him in the shoulder.  

"So, the follow-up questions were a draw," Sam said.  "They didn't sink my story, but they didn't really hold up either.  So I only get the two points from the first lie."

"So we're going to play the game until we find the perfect excuse for every situation."  Danny pinned the deck down with two fingers and bowed them up with his thumb, watching them flick by as they escaped in succession.  "How many of these are there?"

"No we're not learning scripts, we're learning to lie.  Plenty of these situations will come up multiple times, we can't say the same thing over and over again."  

"This sounds pretty morally dubious," Danny said with a weak laugh, rubbing the back of his neck.  "You don't think there are any ghosts that eat lies to become more powerful or anything, right?"

"Dude, what do you think this is, a Saturday morning cartoon?"

"Hey, I've got stupid-bad luck, ok?  That's just the sort of bullshit that would happen to me."  

"If a ghost like that exists," Sam said with a sigh, "then we're fucked no matter what.  Honestly, if anything like that did happen, it'd probably be a Desiree spell gone awry.  Let's prepare for what we can, and cross that bridge when we come to it.  IF we ever come to it."  

"I guess it can't hurt," Tucker said, writing each of their names on the notebook page.  "Some of us need more practice than others."  He shot Danny a taunting look.

"Oh, you're on."  Danny drew the next card and read it.  His face crumpled.  "Oh come on!"  

"What's it say?"

"Danny has to get out of class, but the teacher won't let him go to the bathroom again."  He threw the card down on the discard pile.  

"You do use that excuse a lot," Tucker said.  

"It's working for now, but eventually someone's going to call your bluff," Sam added with a nod.  

"What am I supposed to do, pee myself?"

"You could keep a water bottle in your desk," Tucker offered.  

"Something that doesn't sacrifice my dignity please?"

Tucker tapped the notepad with the pen tip.  "Clock's ticking man.  Spin me a lie!"

"Um."  Danny puffed air in his cheeks and covered his mouth.  "I'm feeling sick.  I need to go to the nurse."

"One point for plausibility," Tucker ruled, "and negative two points for that canned performance."

Danny dropped his hand and stuck out his tongue.  Tucker pointed his pen at Sam.  "Follow up questions!"

"Uh.  I don't think a teacher would ask questions, actually.  They'd either decide he was faking or let him go anyway just in case."  

"Sam, there are rules to this game you just made up!"

"Fine.  Uh… where does it hurt?"

"My stomach?"  Danny's expression was equal parts perplexed and puppy eyes. "…And my head?"

"Now, can you vomit on her boots on command?"

"Actually, that would be really handy," Sam said.  "Especially if you could spit up some ectoplasm or something, it could justify pretty much any ailment."  

Tucker raised his hand.  "Mr. Lancer, my bladder is haunted!" Sam snorted, clapped a hand over her mouth, and then broke into a full laugh in spite of herself.  

Danny buried his face in his hands as he turned red, although they could see him quivering as well.  "Fuck you both!"  

"We'll— we'll workshop it," Sam said with a shrug as she caught her breath.  "My turn."  She took the next card and looked it over silently.  She set it down with a little nod.  "Ok, it says Mr. Fallucia has noticed that Danny's homework is copied off of mine, and he's going to contact our parents."  

"Aw fuck," Danny moaned. "You're gonna give me anxiety with this."

"Pretty sure you've already got anxiety," Tucker mused.  

"I respond," Sam raised her voice a little until they quieted, "that we did our homework together, but Jack tried to show us an invention and it exploded, and Danny's homework got covered in ectoplasm, so he had to copy mine onto a fresh sheet.  But he did his own work the first time."  

Tucker pursed his lips before tallying.  "Damn, that's pretty good."

Sam shrugged.  "I wrote up all the cards, so I got a head start thinking about them."  She gestured to Danny.  "Question me."  

"Uh, ok.  Uh… why didn't your homework get covered in ectoplasm too?"

"Mine was in my math textbook, and I had it closed because we had just finished, so mine was protected."  

"Shouldn't your math textbook have ectoplasm stains on it then?"

Sam unzipped her bag and dragged out her textbook.  "I was able to wipe most of it off," she said, "but yeah, here."  She pointed to a telltale green stain that was actually from a ghost attack over lunch a month ago.  

"Five points for Sam," Tucker announced, and passed the note pad to Danny.  He drew a card.  

"Danny's supposed to be in detention, but Mr. Lancer catches him out by the picnic tables."  

"Did I just catch a ghost?"

"Probably."  Tucker searched the ceiling as he thought.  "I say… that Danny is outside because a ghost overshadowed him and used his frail, defenseless body as a disguise to have free reign over the school."

"…What?"  Sam cocked her head at him in disbelief as Danny scratched down two points.  Tucker stared her down in defiance.  

"You got a problem with it?"

"I just don't think anyone's going to buy it."

"This is Amity Park!  Overshadowing is perfectly plausible now."  

"Alright, well, what was the ghost doing in the school?"

Danny dropped the pad and started to count off possibilities on his fingers.  "Stealing lunchmeat, brainwashing teenagers, feeding off of our misery, enacting an anti-bullying campaign—"

"No—ssh!  Stop helping him."  

"Brainwashing teenagers with the power of pop music," Tucker said with a smirk.  

"Ember?" Sam deadpanned.  "Danny was overshadowed by Ember McClain?"  

"Yes."  Tucker threw up his arms in victory.  "That's two questions!  That's all you get!"  

"Four points for Tucker!" Danny said, beaming.  He passed the notepad back to Tucker.  

"Wait, shouldn't I score this time?" Sam asked.  

"Obviously, he thinks I'll score him better," Tucker answered.  "You'll be stingy with the points, since you've already seen all the cards and you think our lies suck."  

"I will not!"

Danny drew his next card.  "Sam or Tucker meet me in the boy's locker room to hand off a thermos, and someone discovers us.  It is not during gym class."

"And don't blame ghosts this time, ok?" Sam said.  "Tucker's already used overshadowing, so it's off the table now."  

"Uh…"  Danny started to rub the back of his neck again as he thought.  

"There goes his tell," Tucker mused.  Danny froze and forced his hands into his lap.  

"Uh…" he said again.  "Um."  He looked at them like a deer in headlights.  "I— fake-out make-out?"

"Hmm," Tucker said.  "I'll give you two points for plausibility, but I'm deducting one for originality."  

"But we haven't done it at school before!" Danny squeaked, blushing pink again.  

"Plus," Sam cut in, "PDA tends to make people uncomfortable, so they're more likely to leave quickly.  I think he should get a point for that."

"You're giving him extra points because you like kissing him," Tucker said.  "Two points off your score for bias."  He wrote a -2 under Sam's name.  

"I thought you were going to go easy on me," Danny whined as Sam's ears started to turn pink as well. "Tyranny!  Tucker's been point-keeper too many times, the power's gone to his head!"

Sam cleared her throat and maintained her composure in spite of her flushed face.  "I think you're scoring him down because you're jealous."  She cut her eyes at Tucker in challenge.  

"Excuse me?"

Sam leaned over and got up in Tucker's face.  "Do you want Danny to fake-out make-out with you?"

"No!" He angled back from her and redirected his gaze to one of the NASA posters plastering Danny's walls.  "I like girls, thank you."  

"One point off of Tucker's score for averting eye contact and fidgeting!" Sam crowed, trying to pull the notebook out of his hands.  Tucker planted a socked foot on her stomach and tried to push her away.  

"Wait, Tucker likes me?"  Sam won the tug of war, sending Tucker sprawling backwards.  

"Clueless," Sam sighed.  Tucker pulled his beret down to shield his face.  

*****

It had been a few months since that first round with the index cards, and Sam's lying game had come though in the clutch several times already.  They were calmer now, their fabrications more mundane.  Danny even managed to lie his way out of a detention today by straight up denying that he had been in the classroom Dash accused him of vandalizing.  (Does it count as lying if he really was innocent?)  At the start of the school year, he would have stammered his way through any confrontation with a teacher, but after all that practice, his composure had been enough to convince Ms. Teslaff.  In fact, after so much practice together, they were now pretty good at picking up on each other's lies— the way Sam suddenly relaxed a fraction as she assured them that her parents hadn't even noticed her coming in after curfew last Friday, and the knowing look Tucker has given him as he claimed to have four sources for his upcoming paper already.  Transparent, white lies were becoming a new dimension in their shared lexicon, a synonym for, yes, but I don't want to talk about it now.  

Danny drifted invisibly to his front door almost a half-hour after midnight, numb with tiredness except for the insistent fingers of hunger pawing through his stomach.  The kitchen light shone from the window.  He readied a lie for his parents, rehearsing it to himself as he shifted and touched down, then phased through the front door into the dark atrium.  I lost track of time at the library.  I'm supposed to have at least one book as a source for my paper on pre-colonial Middle America.  He scanned the living room on autopilot before flickering back to visibility.  

Well, here we go, he thought, and stepped into the kitchen.  

Maddie was leaned over a new invention, filling the room with the quiet clicking of a twisting socket wrench.  Danny paused on the linoleum and stared at her for a moment, but she didn't look up.  

He shrugged and walked to the cabinet, grabbing himself a sleeve of crackers, then got the peanut butter out of the fridge.  

Then Jack came up from the basement.  

"Oh hey Danno!  Getting a midnight snack?"  

Danny looked from him to Maddie, who finally glanced up and smiled at him, briefly, vacantly, before dipping back down to her work.  "Yeah," he answered finally.  "I was kinda hungry.  Guess I didn't eat enough for dinner."  

"Hey, it happens to the best of us son.  You're growing!"  Jack thumped him on the shoulder with a huge hand.  Danny nearly crushed the crackers in his clenched hand in response.  He made momentary eye contact with his dad, pulling a smile.  Jack beamed back at him.  He always did.  

Danny grabbed a knife, stacked everything on a plate, and took it all up to his room.  He should be relieved.  He didn't like lying to his parents.  But if they didn't even notice that he was gone…  He sighed and leaned on his bedroom door to shut it.  It's like I'm a ghost in my own home, he thought, lips quirking into a paper-thin smile before falling.  Like I'm not here at all.  

[five-rivers]

Home

The building that housed Fentonworks had never been normal, no matter what neighbors and real estate agents might profess.

Things had happened there. Deaths. Wild twists of fate and shocking coincidences. People who lived there heard noises, saw things, felt things. Experienced sicknesses with no cause. Were cured of sicknesses without cause. Survived things that should have killed them.

It was a thin spot between worlds. Reality was a rippling membrane, frayed enough for things to shine through.

The construction of the neighborhood itself had been… strange. It happened much faster than it should have, as if there was a whole extra shift of workers on the project.

The townhouse that would one day become Fentonworks had stood out even in that mystery. Extra rooms, a basement deep enough to cause a nasty fight with regulators, features not approved by the architect.

It was a wonder they hadn’t hit any of the water lines or the sewage systems. A wonder- and an impossibility. So, the matter was ignored and dropped.

Then the next owners expanded that impossible basement, building another, secret basement and putting things in the walls- They were criminals, of course. It was expected for them to do illegal things. (Although exactly what they had done was… oddly uncertain.)

(Drugs, perhaps.)

Then, the lunatics. Then, the tiny cult that collapsed in on itself. Then the empty years, dozens of transient ghosts trying and failing to pass through, and the ghost hunters. So many ghost hunters, none of them particularly successful.

Then, the Fentons.

Then, little Jazz.

Then, little Danny.

Danny with wide eyes that saw too much.

And all the horrors that the Fentons could dream up, from living hotdogs to weapons that burned like stars and doors to places that should not be visited.

And this was Danny Fenton’s home.

.

The Manson estate was an odd case, even for Amity Park. Save for the basement, the entire building they lived in had been transplanted, brick and beam, from Germany.

Rich people were bizarre.

Even the Mansons couldn’t explain it. The man who had done it hadn’t been a Manson. The Mansons, who were relatively new money, all things considered, had purchased it from one of the man’s children. Anything to boost their prestige.

It was fancy, and it was old, a gothic and statuesque mansion worthy of its name. Still, it wasn’t quite fancy or old enough to merit the kind of expenditure moving it had to take.

Hence the rumors, squelched by the Mansons, that the place was haunted.

It wasn’t.

The rumors, however, were enough to get one Samantha Manson interested in the occult. Especially given how hard she saw her parents working to hide the rumors from her.

No. The mansion wasn’t haunted. For all it’s oddities and quirks – which only multiplied as the Mansons added more and more features to it – the building itself was mundane.

(The land it was built on might have been another story.)

And this was Sam Manson’s home.

.

The Foleys didn’t want to know what Tucker got up to in the attic, but liked to think that, with that one exception, their home was a nice one. It was on a nice street, in a nice neighborhood, just far enough away from Fentonworks to keep both sightings of the Ghost Assault Vehicle and resultant property damage and property taxes to a minimum. Within walking distance of the high school, a supermarket, and a park.

They kept the fridge and pantry stocked. Their food might not have always been healthy – red meat was an element of almost every meal – but it was always available and filling. They made an effort for the dietary restrictions of Tucker’s friends of course.

All the rooms were kept clean and neat. Even Tucker’s, by way of bribes. Everything was organized, everything had its place. Except, perhaps, for the stray shoe or piece of schoolwork.

But that attic.

It really hadn’t been anything, before Tucker asked if he could move his computer stuff up there. Just a storage space, one too difficult for either Angela or Maurice to climb up there often. They didn’t consider themselves old, but they couldn’t call themselves young either. Not with a son Tucker’s age.

Once Tucker had realized the attic was there, he had been fascinated. And, well, once he was old enough for them to not worry about him falling off the ladder, they let him go up.

Some days, it seemed, he didn’t come down.

Better than his faintly disturbing Ancient Egypt phase, where he kept bringing pictures of mummified corpses to the table. Or, worse, the werewolf phase.

And this was Tucker Foley’s home.

.

Amity Park had claimed the distinction of ‘most haunted town in America’ long before the Fentons opened their portal. In fact, that was the reason the Fentons had set up shop there, in the first place.

No haunted town was complete without at least one haunted house. Amity Park had several. Not to mention a haunted hospital, a selection of haunted schools, a haunted museum, a haunted pool, a haunted crosswalk, a haunted mall, a haunted football field… The list went on, essentially ad nauseum.

Of course, that list mostly consisted of places that became haunted after the Fentons built their portal. But even before then, some places offered their dubious charms to tourists.

Mostly gullible ones. More than half of the claims of hauntings before the portal opened were fraudulent in their entirety. These places quickly went broke and got abandoned when real ghosts started showing up.

One of these was the ominously named Raven House, which stood in the hills on the west edge of town.

The story the tourists of years gone by had been told was that a widower had lived out here, all by himself and that one day, he stopped coming to town, or paying his bills, or even getting his mail. When the mailbox at the end of the long driveway was full, the mailman decided to go check on the widower. What he found was a flock of ravens and a skeleton, entirely picked clean of flesh.

No such death had occurred there, nor in any part of Amity. No such person had ever lived in the house, either. The last owners, before the company that decided to market the house as haunted, were a couple with two children.

It wasn’t until months after the portal started up that it became haunted in truth.

.

“This place isn’t haunted,” said Danny, panning his flashlight over cobwebbed corners on the ceiling. “I don’t think it ever was.”

“That’s what, strike five?” asked Sam.

Danny shrugged. “Yeah, I think so.”

“Four, actually,” said Tucker. “We counted the hospital as inconclusive, since we don’t know if anyone was there before Spectra.”

Danny nodded. “It’s weird, though, isn’t it? That no one lives here, I mean. It looks like a perfectly nice house.”

“Décor’s a bit… eh. Trying to hard to be haunted,” said Tucker, poking a raven decal on the wallpaper.

“I like it,” said Sam. “Needs cleaning, though.”

“Hey,” said Tucker, “you’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking, are you? Because I’m pretty sure that’d be illegal.”

“It isn’t as if anyone else is using the place,” argued Sam. “It could be a great backup hideout, if we ever had to… you know.” She glanced at Danny. “Plus, we’d be doing them a favor, really, keeping things clean and lived in.”

“I think it’s an okay idea,” said Danny.

“Yeah, but you think lots of dumb things are good ideas. Like showing up at a party hosted by people who publicly humiliate you on a regular basis.”

Danny grumbled something about trauma responses that sounded like a direct quote from Jazz and something else about that incident being ages (aka weeks) ago. Then, he brightened.

“We could get one of the little ectoplasm generators to power everything,” he said. “Remember all that stuff we lifted from Skulker and Technus? We could actually use it. Study and test things without worrying about whether our parents will walk in. I mean, your attic is great, but still.”

“Plus, we can have actual lab safety protocols. No offense, Danny.”

“I am the one that half-died in a lab accident, so… None taken.”

Tucker rubbed his chin. “Alright. I suppose I can see the appeal… But if we have stuff that can trace back to us, we could get in serious trouble."

“We’ll be careful, then,” said Sam.

“Anything I take from Mom and Dad has plausible deniability. They’ll assume ghosts stole it.”

“We also need to clean if we’re being serious about this. And get a fridge. And figure out the pluming situation.”

“Fridge is on the list. We have to be careful about the outside, too. If this place is suddenly well maintained, people will notice.”

“Sure, but that isn’t something they’d call the cops over,” said Danny. “They’ll just assume new people are moving in. If anyone sees it at all. We’re pretty far away from anything. But pluming won’t be too hard. We just need to bring our own water. Like, toilets flush using physics. If you dump more water in, they’ll go, no electricity required.”

“How do you know that?”

“I can’t even tell you how many time Mom and Dad blew out all our breakers with stuff in the lab,” said Danny. “You pick up a few things.”

“Well,” said Tucker, swinging his flashlight over to examine a discolored spot on the ceiling. “Then… Home sweet home, I suppose.”

.

There was a house in the hills in the west hills of Amity Park.

And this was the home of two and a half humans and half a ghost.

[nocturna-starr]

The Picture

Prompter: @gottacatchghosts

Prompt: Danny/Jazz swap AU: Jazz is the half ghost and Danny is the older sibling. Go wild on your take of how this would all play out

Words: 1811

Notes: Related to THIS fic

“Hey Jazz, can you stand still for a minute? The lighting by you is perfect!”

“Daniel!”

A flash went off. Jazz blinked away the spots. Where had he come from? She would have sworn that it had only been her in the kitchen a few seconds ago. How had he come in so fast, or alternatively, how long had Daniel been watching her? Sometimes Jazz wondered who really was the ghost in their family, him or her?

“That was perfect!” Daniel cheered, “Now I’ll need a couple more photos and then you can go.”

“I thought you wanted to be a painter, Daniel?” Jazz frowned, “Since when did you care about photography?”

“Since I was the first one in all of Amity Park to catch a photo of the ghost girl in action! I discovered that I really do have a natural talent for it.” Daniel gloated as he changed the filters on his camera. Jazz smiled. It had been a long time since she had seen this side of her brother.

“Okaaayyy” She tried to sound like she was doing him a favour. If he knew that she was actually happy for him, then Daniel would never let it go.

“I knew you would agree!” Daniel grinned, “Now I have a bunch a filters that I need to try out! How busy is your day today?”

“Well I was planning to meet spike at the mall…”

“Perfect! I swear these photos are going to make you a star!” Daniel smirked, “Or at least get your name in the history books when these pictures come through.”

xXx

“I’m so sorry I’m late Spike! Daniel is on another stupid project kick.” Jazz huffed as she sat down in the mall’s cafeteria. Her friend looked up from the phone game he was playing. She wondered how long he had been waiting for her. Spike rarely ever tried out mobile games unless he was absolutely bored.

“And he says that he is nothing like his parents. Dude really is clueless to his own tendencies, isn’t he?” Spike laughed, “Maybe it’s a Fenton trait?”

“What do you mean by that?” Jazz asked.

“You still haven’t noticed my- You know what? I’ll let you figure it out.” Spike took a huge gulp from his soda.

“Come on Spike! That’s not fair!” Jazz whined. How could she even begin to guess something if she didn’t have a hint? She wasn’t a genius like her parents or her brother. She couldn’t help it she accidentally overlooked something that she didn’t even know was supposed to be there!

“Nothing is fair in love and war.”

“What do you mean by that?” Jazz wondered. Spike only smirked. He was about to explain (or maybe torment Jazz some more) when he was interrupted by one of Daniel’s friends.

“Hey Jazz! Have you seen Danny?” asked her brother’s not-so-secret admirer, Sam Manson. Jazz sighed. Judging by the new camera hanging from her neck, Sam seemed to be encouraging Daniel’s new endeavor. That meant he would be taking pictures for the next month or so. It was something that Jazz was not looking forward to.

“He’s in the house taking photos of plants. Or he decided he wanted to go on another jungle adventure and went into the ghost zone.” Jazz rolled her eyes. She muttered under her breath, “Then I’ll have to save him again this week…”

“Do you think he’s dumb enough to do that again?” Spike laughed, “Last time he got chased half-way across the zone by Klemper!”

“But he got some awesome pictures!” Sam grinned. She practically skipped away. Jazz giggled at her enthusiasm. She could see what Daniel liked about Sam. Maybe by this summer they would finally get together. Then they wouldn’t have another Ember situation.

“Your brother is going to get eaten by a ghost one day and all his friends are going to care about is that he got a good picture.” Spike snickered, “Man, I feel bad for him.”

Jazz joined into his laughter, “Yeah, but don’t feel too bad for him. You should have seen him when Tucker got attacked by Technus. He managed to get the two of them to stand still long enough for him to take a sketch.”

“And he didn’t snap a photo why?”

“As much as he hates to admit it, Daniel is just like our parents! He wanted to prove a point or something.”

Spike nodded in agreement, “Wanna get some ice cream?”

“You bet I do!”

xXx

The two best friends sauntered in the park, enjoying the beautiful weather and the lack of ghost attacks. It was peaceful times like these that Jazz liked the most. Times where she could just be a regular fifteen-year-old kid.

Of course, peace doesn’t last long in Amity Park.

“Wanna take a selfie?” Spike asked, “It’s been a while since our last!”

Jazz smiled, trying not to feel too guilty. Since becoming Jazz Phantom, she had veered away from cameras. In all of her research, she had discovered that photos tended to… change while in the presence of other ghosts. Yet the photos Daniel had taken of her, always seemed to end well. Maybe she was just being too paranoid?

“Say cheese!” Spike said, sounding way too bright to be considered a goth.

“Cheese!”

Spike took the picture, then went to see the results, “Uh… Jazz?”

He handed over the picture to her trembling. Nervous, Jazz took a look and paled.

Spike looked happier than he has in a long time. She on the other hand… If you showed the picture to anyone else, they would probably think that Spike had gotten a picture with Jazz Phantom herself! Jazz’s eyes were the bright red of her ghost form. Her hair was blue as the ocean. Her clothes looked faded, though if Jazz squinted, she could make out her logo.

All in all, this was a disaster.

“We have to get those photos from Daniel!” Jazz squeaked. She dived into a bush, transforming into her other half. Without a second thought she took to the skies, heading towards her home.

“Guess my plans have been cancelled,” Spike muttered, “Better tell mom not to cancel that trip to my therapist.”

xXx

“Daniel?” Jazz called while entering the house, “Are you here?”

Fentonworks was too quiet… Like her entire family was ready to attack her. She shivered, were they watching her? Jazz was afraid to even consider this. Maybe… maybe… Maybe her parents were out, and Daniel was with his friends?

“I’m up here,” Daniel called from up the stairs.

That didn’t feel like a trap at all.

With the very little courage she had left, Jazz carefully made her way up the stairs. Her yes darted around, waiting to catch the slightest movement. She prayed that her life was not about to fall apart. How could she have been so trusting? Daniel was her brother, but he had also been raised by ghost hunters. What if he warned her that she would have to leave? What if the government was here to take her away? These seconds could be the last of the life she had once known.

“Hey Jazz! The filters worked like a charm!” Daniel called from the top of the stairs.  The ghostly heroine nearly fell down the stairs in surprise.

“Danny?!”

“Oh sorry. Totally didn’t mean to scare you little sis! Sam, Tucker and I have finally come up with a filter that can properly take pictures of anyone. No more red eyes, or blurry pictures! And it’s not going to malfunction around you like all of our other inventions!” Daniel was talking at a mile a minute.

Jazz sighed in relief. He hadn’t mentioned how her picture had looked. Did it mean that her brother had discovered a way to properly photograph half ghosts? She would need to steal a dozen of these camera filters which, knowing her brother, he would have around.

Jazz practically skipped down the stairs, “I was just seeing where everyone was! I’m going to go find Spike again! Tell mom and dad that I’ll be home for dinner!”

“Okay? But don’t you want to hear more?” Daniel asked.

She answered his question by racing out of the door. It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate her brother’s efforts. But Daniel could be just like Jack Fenton when explaining how something worked. She supposed she could be the same way when talking about psychology.

xXx

Daniel shook his head and sighed as his sister slammed the door. While he could understand her concerns, it still hurt to be rejected that way. It wasn’t like he could tell her that he knew her secret. She would freak out and try to trick him into thinking he just saw things. Now wasn’t the time for him to get down. He had just invented something revolutionary!

“How did you know that adding ectoranium to the filter would work?” Tucker asked, turning on the hall light, “And why did you have to tell her in the dark?”

“Cause it’s more fun to tell her that way. Who’d think that the ghost girl was afraid of the dark?” Sam answered for him, as she exited his room.

“Honestly, I forgot to turn on the lights.”

His two best friends howled but Daniel frowned. How could he have been so stupid? He’d after to reassure Jazz that everything was okay in a subtle way. Afterall, Jazz had a nasty habit of jumping to conclusions.

“I’m curious too,” Sam began, after she had calmed down a little, “how did you come up with the idea?”

“Ectoranium is the opposite or ectoplasm. I figured that the ectoranium would cancel out the effects that Jazz’s powers had on the camera. Now she can have her picture taken at school or join in family photos without a need for an excuse.” Daniel replied.

“That was very sweet of you Danny.” Sam gushed.

Daniel didn’t reply. Instead he headed back into his room. He put his hand under the mattress and pulled out the photo album he had been working on for the past couple of months. Carefully he placed one of the photos he had taken that day into the album. He flipped the picture over and wrote a note just like he had done to the other pictures.

This is the first photo taken with the new lens. Use the lens to reveal the true door. If the event has not happened, ignore this.

“Dude, the cryptic messages are a little freaky.” Tucker said.

“Call them safeguards, for just in case.” Daniel closed the book and hid it under his mattress again. Once he was done hiding his gift, he turned to his friends and smirked.

“Anyone want to see if we can get a picture of that Box Ghost again?”

“We’re in!”

[sanchoyo]

danny phantom 14-20 thoughts!! I finished up s1 :D these last few eps were actually really really good!!!

-did. did tucker really just say esperanto was a dead language only spoken as a secret code between geeks. google says around 100,000 people actively speak it. oh my god...it being an auxiliary language doesn't mean its 'just for geeks to speak in code' ...it helps bridge gaps between people who don't have a language in common...

-danny really isn't pulling punches when it comes to fighting the ghost-cop possessed people huh. like he SLAMMED KWAN INTO THE CONCRETE SO HARD. HE THREW PAULINA INTO A BILLBOARD. will that...I mean it WOULD carry over to their bodies non-possessed, right? like if the ghost piloting their bodies gets hurt?? itd be so upsetting to be possessed, lose time, then wake up covered in bruises (and possibly, broken bones??) real horror movie stuff im sure wont be addressed in any way

-tuckers parents seem nice! I like them :)

-WULF IS CUTE AND I FEEL BAD. im so glad the gang realized he was only causing trouble bc of the shock collar walker put on him and helped. also, him wearing that big hoodie with the hood on, and thinking its subtle. we can tell youre still a giant wolfie :) THEN GETTING SUCKED INTO THE PORTAL AAAAH :( anxiously waiting to see Him Again....

-DANNY BLASTING HIS PARENTS THINKING THEY WERE OVERSHADOWED LMFAO GET THEIR ASSES. maddie marking how many ghosts she gets with lipstick tallies on the side of her portal gun? kindaaa iconic tho. (ALSO, SHE WAS LIKE, 2 FT AWAY FROM HIM RIGHT AFTER SHE TRIED TO SHOOT HIM. HOW DO YOU NOT RECONINZE YOUR OWN SON??? like sure, he might have diff hair/eye colors. but like, if one of my family members dyed their hair, and was wearing contacts, its not like id be like 'wHO IS THIS STRANGER!!!' ...he still has all his facial features!! same everything!!! I hate it here)

-paulina being #1 girl realizing danny's a friendly ghost immediately. smart queen. lancer and kwan ran away right after he made this sweet baby face at them:

which is hilarious.

-ok. im not saying his bullying is JUSTIFIED, but. dash looked so pleased with the (cute!) poster he just painted, and danny comes thru the wall and spills paint on his nice letterman jacket. his anger is justified maybe 65% of the time so far...(not the way he handles it, but STILL.) at least lancer is stepping in!! and them making a silly little bet was...cute?? until dash pulled out his GROSS UNDERWEAR AND SAID DANNY WOULD HAVE TO EAT THEM???? WHAT THE FUCK MAN. TUCKER WAS SO RIGHT ITS FUCKING WEIRD TO CARRY THOSE AROUND EWWW. THIS KID IS UNWELL. lancer was right, his animatronic setup was SUPER IMPRESSIVE?? hes actually pretty creative. danny meanwhile is stealing the fright knight's design...I hope dash is taking art classes or smth with his sports

-fright knight is the most bestest ghost so far i LOVE THAT DESIGN. I am biased towards knights, and characters with swords, but he fucks so severely. and should sue danny for copyright infringement for stealing his design for his haunted house. if some 14 yr old broke into MY house and stole MY sword, id also be pissed. his evil winged unicorn rules too with its FANGS. and he just CAN SHOVE THE PORTAL OPEN WITH HIS HANDS??? is he the strongest ghost weve seen so far? idk but hes my fav. SOUL SHREDDER IS SUCH A COOL SWORD NAME TOO. ANY NAMED SWORD ALSO FUCKS. 'flaming bedsheets of DEATH' funny king. ALSO he was polite to dash and tucker when just asking for directions and telling tucker 'oh maybe, just a suggestion, maybe be nicer to me and be more respectful :)' I LOOOVE HIM.

-I noticed this in the Ember ep, but jazz has an electric guitar in her room!! talent musical queen!! its cool to see hobbies just in the bg.

-fright knight's murder castle reminds me of the booby trapped murder castle in zexal!! another supposedly 'for kids' show with murder/trap castles! we love that. if you are a dp fan reading this, give yugioh zexal a try. its also got 13-14 year old protags and involves (alien) ghosts. the cardgame is just a vessel for the plot, which is really good. (I just want more people to watch my fav yugioh, man)

-danny. with a SWORD.

-danny doesnt NEED TO WIN this contest, dash didnt STEAL HIS DESIGNS AND STEAL A SWORD. he also got excited to hear lancer got sent to a dimension with his worst fears too just so he could win the contest? DANNY WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!!! BRO MAYBE YOURE 14 AND HAVENT FULLY DEVOLPED YOUR WHOLE BRAIN YET, BUT...THATS FUCKED. this kid casually says the most deranged things, I do worry for my spooky son. once again, therapy needed. that judo toss was great tho. I wonder if he actually did pick up some martial arts stuff from his mom?

-danny can fly 112 mph!!! thats so fast! I love the lil montage of him and his friends testing his abilities and stuff, very cute and a good way to showcase what he can do by now and how much more proficient he's gotten from ep 1!!! I'm sure he's going to get more abilities :)

-im glad...maddie's at least TRYING this ep. I do feel for her because her husband is a man baby. but the fact it took 16 episodes to get a kinda semblance of any kind of real concern or attempts at bonding. hmm. jack's 'BACK OFF SHES A MINOR' @ the ghost trying to attack jazz. also was very funny. and him wanting to make an action figure of her? are the parents redeeming themselves to me? slightly. they gotta Work Harder

-THE GHOST. IS FLYING. THE PLANE.

-fenton machete. but she doesnt carry a PHONE??? ???

-I mean I expected vlad when you namedrop him earlier in the ep, and also the title card picture, and dalv corp being fucking vlad backwards. but seeing him just pull up on a golf cart made me bust out laughing. WITH the gift baskets prepared. why wouldnt you at least be suspicious. also, if he wants danny to be his lil sonboy, why is he so fucking malicious?? dude you are going about this in such a bad way. stop it. get some help.

-maddie not even hesitating to drag danny out. fucking good. danny is so right, go on the internet to date. get a cat. how do you spend...how many years?? has it been since college?? at least 20, right, since the parents/vlad are in their 40s? hung up on ONE girl. my god, man. incel drama queen. her kung fu IS impressive, but dude. 'we both know hes a creep' SO right. it sucks but they do need a phone and shit being in the middle of NOWHERE. also, just stealing his helicopter was great. <3

-'you must be exhausted carrying the weight of that mistake you made years ago' 'well we all make mistakes. maybe I'll make one now!' WHY DID THIS EXHCHANGE SEND ME. AND VLAD WITH THE BREATH SPRAY EWWW BITCH. 'OLD BAIT BREATH' SOO RIGHT. both danny and his mom playing him HAHAH hes so dumb. or rather, I think he thinks with his emotions too too much and is...actually pretty gullible? lmao he believed danny was ready to give in SO fast. (which is sad hes that hopeful, like you have SO MUCH MONEY YOU COULD EASILY GET ANOTHER GIRL WHO HAS A KID. AND WOULD WANT TO BE WITH YOU AND BE SUPPORTED. GET OVER THIS (1) WOMAN ALREADY IM GETTING SECONDHAND EMBARRASSMENT AAAAH)

-GHOST BEAR GHOST BEAR GHOST BEAR. it was also in the title card, but I still got very excited. we love bears here

-SAM'S BAT SWIMSUIT COVERUP!!! her outfits are simply iconic.

-'i'd tell you to go to the mens room, but I don't think you qualify' top paulina transphobic moments. :( and him wearing a tanktop to the swim park? hmmm! (actually I think she was overshadowed by then, so, KITTY top 10 transphobic moments??)

-kitty just piloting paulina around makes me feel SO bad tho, paulina's gonna wake up and be like 'wtf do you mean I was dating this rando' like youre leading danny on to make johnny jealous, and also just POSSESSING POOR PAULINA. dude take your relationship problems ELSEWHERE. last time we saw them, they seemed like such a cute couple!! wtf johnny!! I mean, she sucks for trying to make him jealous, he sucks for looking at other girls...maybe they need a break, but Not Like This. or, you know, just. better communication...

-and the A-listers having a full packet and a stamp system. who organizes this. kwan fucking owning being the new danny though, this is hysterical. THE TUCKER/KWAN FLOWER FIELD TWIRL. UNIRONICALLY ADORABLE. and him giving it his all for the poetry slam. bless his HEARTTTT.

-Star owns. actually, all of the extra characters are shining this ep and I love it.

-INVISO-BILL??? NOOOO THEY DID HIM SOO DIRTY. DANNY SWEETIE IM SO SORRY.

-johnny and danny bein friends and staging a fake fight (which danny takes too seriously, once again this child has aggression he NEEDS TO WORK OUT) I hope these three stay friends, I said it before but danny needs more friendly ghosts to hang with.

-at this point, Danny's ghost enemies are a lot like, I dunno, batman's rouge gallery is the first thing that comes to mind. they all have their own gimmick and unique designs, but most of them are easy to beat after learning the Moral Lesson. I still get excited when any of them show up again, though. 18 is another valerie episode!!!! :D skulker really said you two will get along if I have to handcuff you together <3 and the gym teacher really said, youre married now, have a flour baby! ngl, I'm not really watching this show for the shipping stuff (which I am very scared to look at the fandom for after I finish this watch through- I feel like there's probably discourse/arguing about ships...) but. I'm gonna put my opinion out there. valerie/danny > sam/danny. maybe I just really love the enemies to lovers trope. And the secret identity stuff adds Extra Flavor.

-SKULKER JUST HAVING THE BOX GHOST AND DANGLING HIM BY A STRING. HILARIOUS. and him watching them with binoculars and making his silly little commentary. AND MAKING THE SACK BABY CRY. LMAO. THIS DUDE IS A BABY KIDNAPPER. skulker is super fun

-danny, you just...collapsed the water tower. and then attacked the nasty burger machine...mascot thingy...out of anger..I KEEP SAYING HE'S GOT ANGER ISSUES BUT. HE REALLY NEEDS A LESSON IN MANAGING COLLATERAL DAMAGE!!! So does valerie!! They're both pretty focused on each other. I mean it's good of Danny to say he's trying to make sure PEOPLE don't get hurt, but... (I mean I guess it's not something 14 year olds WOULD worry about, but as an adult im like, who's going to fix that? how much money will that take??)

-TUCKER MAKING BANK. and sam and tucker being super emotionally attached to their flour baby and being pretty good parents. that's cute...also him just straight kissing her and being like. WAIT. O_O JDSKAFHD. his mom baking them into cookies was the funniest possible result. tbh I dont feel like this is on tucker, if anything the other kid's shouldve been more responsible! He was just taking an opportunity to get that $$ which I respect

-Danny being more understanding of Valerie's situation in the end (helping her at her job, too, and trying to keep that a secret for her!!!) And seeing them work together this ep, and also her letting phantom get her out of the ghost zone...was very sweet. LOVE that. more valerie eps pls

-me when I realize vlad's big stupid house exploded because of his own carelessness with changing the ghost portal ectofiltrator or whatever: *pointing and laughing*

-me when I realize it means he's gonna go make danny's life hell for it somehow: >:(

-SCOOBY PARODY!!! I feel like there's gotta be some scooby doo/danny phantom crossover stuff, right? also, 'guys in white' men in black wishes

-'oh, that's right! dad married the love of your life! you're bitter and alone!' DANNNNNYY GET HIS ASS ONCE AGAIN WE ARE POINTING AND LAUGHING AT VLAD

-'jack, you captured the ghost boy!!' UMM. he did nothing <3 'we have a weapon's vault??' YOU HAVE A WEAPONS VAULT??? and jack didnt put a handle on the inside. of fucking course he didnt! why would you leave that to your son!! or expect him to clean YOUR LAB when its where you work with probably dangerous chemicals and weapons and hes 14!! give him normal chores, like, I dunno, vacuuming, laundry, dishes...CMON. I hate it here. But I'm glad Jack is more chill about danny while he's a ghost, and willing to work with him for this ep. AND. I DID ENJOY JACK PUNCHING VLAD IN THE FACE. AND GENERALLY JUST OWNING HIM. the ghost punchy fists are actually amazing. like yeah, just punch a ghost in the face. that rules.

-ep 20 opens with the coolest fucking ghost lady design. her tattoos can come off and fight. MA'AM. I like ur nose ring and your cape maam hello 👉👈😳

-sam's grandma is hilarious and the most valid member of her family and I love her. thats my grandma now. and tucker covering for sam by dressing as her. thats true friendship <3 also skipping school to go to a goth circus. just bestie things! sam's parents are haters but for all the wrong reasons.

-'my family has controlled ghosts with this for generations!' WAIT. WAIT FREAKSHOW /ISNT/ A GHOST? I didn't expect that...he's just a fucked up guy controlling ghosts? anyway watching danny shoot at police cars and rob banks while mind controlled. its like, the most stereotypical 'bad' things lmao. (tbh an evil ghost circus troupe is a sick concept)

this gives off big deviantart emo edit vibes

(I'm going to assume evil circus reaper danny has a lot of fan content. people love an edgy au, except this one is canon (even tho its via mind control...having the protag go evil otherwise might be hard, I guess?) but au where he stays with the troupe...that has to exist, right?)

ANYWAY. excited to start s2!! lowkey surprised by how many notes some of these posts have gotten. I've gone back and tagged them all with 'dp thoughts' so they're easier to find on my blog! ^^ and I will probably possibly do (more) fanart on my art blog after I finish the watch of the whole show, so like. @sanchoyodraws follow my art blog :)

[shinygoldstar]

Snowflake Part 10 (DannyMay Free Day: Hope)

Part 1 | Part 9 | AO3 | Part 10

The storm turned into sleet. But they can't wait it out for it to subside. Not when they're running out of time. Tiny plinks from frozen ice glancing off the window panes can be heard in the silent household.

The Fenton trio sat around the kitchen table, subdued and deep in thought. Jazz wanted to help but there wasn't much she could do in this situation. She watched her parents in anticipation, fingers holding her mug tight. Jack, sitting on Jazz's right rapidly flipped through his old phone book for other contacts that might be able to help them. Their paranormal club wasn't the most popular one on campus but their uniqueness attracted like-minded people. There's got to be someone who could help them out. The sound of his sharp rapid page flipping filled the otherwise quiet kitchen.

Maddie sat quietly sipping the lukewarm tea, deep in thought. From what they know about Danny’s condition and prior experiences, the ectoplasm should’ve dissipated by now. While they had never conducted any ectoplasm-based experiments using live samples what they did know from their experiments was that ectoplasm in matter form is only stable at cold temperature or below and cannot last in room temperature for long. Their reanimated fridge food, an accidental discovery from the time when Jack spilled some samples on the food while haphazardly shoving their samples in the food fridge, was the proof that ectoplasm could bond with organic matter. However, several minutes after leaving the fridge, the reanimated food loses its animated quality and off-coloring, returning to its seemingly ordinary wiener state. Jack, never the best at following lab protocols nabbed one of the wieners and swallowed it before Maddie could stop him. They did several tests on Jack. Aside from minor traces of ectoplasm that disappeared after a week, Jack did not show any adverse reaction to consuming the contaminated food. They labeled the ecto-wieners as tentatively safe for consumption. Jack made a sport of hunting them down for fun, it seemed harmless enough that Maddie allowed this breach in lab conduct for once.

But based on their discovery of the ecto-wieners, any remaining ectoplasm in Danny should’ve been flushed out as his body temperature was too warm for ectoplasm to remain in stable form. They had given him ecto-inhibitor in hopes of reducing the symptoms by keeping the ectoplasmic traces in its inert form while his body flushes out the ectoplasm naturally but it had been several months since the accident and Danny’s symptoms had not abated. In fact, it appears that the symptoms might have worsened. The ecto-inhibitor is only safe in small doses, to up the dosage again is to enter an uncharted territory, one she wasn’t quite ready to try out yet.

The only other close enough case for them to cross compare Danny with was Vlad’s case. They didn’t have much information on Vlad’s case; most of the technical details were protected behind doctor-patient confidentiality. Back then they were just college students; they weren’t the leading experts on ectoplasm as they are now. All they knew of Vlad was that he was released from the hospital after a year and a half but by then all contact between them was lost. Vlad had disappeared off the grid for a decade and by the time he returned as a rich business man the Jack and her were too busy with their children to reconnect with an old friend they haven’t seen in years. While Vlad’s extended stay at the hospital implied that it is possible for ectoplasm to remain longer in humans, Vlad’s subsequent recovery also meant that the ectoplasmic residue could be removed. They had to recontact Vlad. But how to contact him-

“Ah-ha! I’ve found it!” Jack shouted in triumph, interrupting Maddie’s thoughts. “Dr. Flemming, the radiologist professor who came to our open house club meeting.”, Jack quickly read off the notes in his phone book, “He should be able to help us check what’s wrong with Danny.” He continued in a rush, eager with new hope.

Maddie picked up the phone to dial again, Jack stood behind her to hear the other side of the conversation.

“Hello? Is this Dr. Flemming? We- I- My name’s Maddie Fenton. My husband Jack Fenton and I-” Maddie shifted the phone receiver to a more comfortable position while explaining the situation to the professor. Jack anticipating a long call pulled over two chairs for both of them, grabbing a spare sheet of paper from the cabinet to take notes.

Seeing that her presence is not needed at the moment, Jazz left the room, walking down the stairs to the basement lab. The lab lights were dim; Jazz tried to walk over to Danny quietly but stumbled over a coil of wires, bumping her hips against the counter. Empty test tubes rattled against its rack.

Danny blearily opened his eyes looking out of the clear glass pane. “Jazz? Is that you?”

“Sorry I woke you up Danny.” Jazz carefully extracted her legs from the tangled wires on the floor. The lab is such a potential hazard sometimes. “How are you feeling?”

“Cold. But tolerable. Where’s mom and dad?” Danny shifted his blankets, rearranging them from where it fell when he slept.

“They’ve found an old acquaintance that might be able to help. Do you want water?” Jazz asked, walking up to the glass wall of the sauna room.

“Sure. Thanks Jazz!”

Jazz poured some hot water out of the thermos on the table next to the sauna room. Passing the mug over to Danny through the small slide door installed on the side of the sauna room Jazz spoke “Sam and Tucker brought over your homework. They really miss you.” Jazz thought back to the worried expressions Danny’s two friends shared when she told them Danny’s still sick, something bothered her about those expressions, “Danny- You know you can tell me anything right? If there’s something you don’t want to tell mom or dad- I can keep it a secret. But please if there's anything I can help-" Something about Danny's friends' expressions niggled at the back of her mind, pressing her with urgency to do something- but what it is continues to elude her.

[gladly-be-the-good]

"Hi I'm Boyd, a definitely real boy! Do you want to see the lab?" Danny raised an eyebrow as his eyes narrowed in suspicion.

"Suuure." Jazz smiled widely at the little boy bot and said, enthusiastically,

"We'd love to!" Boyd reached out for their hands. Jazz took his immediately while Danny shoved his hands in his pockets. Boyd didn't seem too discouraged, so Gyro wouldn't eject the moody teen from his lab, yet.

As soon as they were in another room Boyd started taking.

"This is where Dr. Gearlose first thought up the Gizmoduck armor! He made it as a tool to help around the lab, but then Dr- um, I mean, someone totally random that I definitely don't know and love, nailed it, wanted to help people all over duckburg, and beyond!"

"So he's a good person then? Not someone who would be upset with another superhero reaching out to him?" Jazz asked.

This little boy was clearly incapable of subterfuge, so his goodness was genuine. She could trust him as much as she could trust any other sweet ten year old.

"Oh yes! He loves when he gets to work with other heroes! He needs breaks sometimes and is happy for any help he can get."

"Is he someone that would approve of, I don't know, magic or ghosts or underaged superheroes?" Boyd smiled at her, taking her words at face value even as Danny, who had been listening carefully, shot them both incredulous looks.

"You've never met Mr. McDuck before have you? He employs Gizmoduck and he has a ghost butler! And a niece that used to be a spirit and is entirely magic. We even have an intern here who is.... I don't actually know, but he's really nice too! And as far as thinking kids can't be heroes, he wanted me to be one! And he works with Darkwing who has a sidekick that's twelve. Here at McDuck enterprises, we follow rule 53 in the Junior woodchuck guidebook! Greet the unknown with an open mind and an open heart."

"Wow. You people are basically perfect aren't you?" Danny asked sarcastically. He didn't like where Jazz was going with this and he really didn't need a little kid, who obviously couldn't lie to save his life, knowing a secret that would get Danny killed. Or, more killed, at least.

"Oh no, nothing is perfect. Even machines are flawed."

"So Boyd, tell me about Dr. Gearlose?" Jazz interrupted, a nervous lilt in her voice.

"Dr. Gearlose is amazing!" Boyd exclaimed, spinning in a circle with his arms above his head. Danny swore he saw a rainbow in the background. "It's a secret, so don't tell him please, but I like to call him Dr. Dad."

"He's your dad?"

"Well I don't exactly have a dad, but he was the one who created me so- I mean, in the way that all kids, are, created, dude?" Little bulb smacked his head, the sound of metal hitting glass was the only sound in the room as Jazz and Boyd both looked nervously at Danny, though Boyd was looking at Jazz too.

Poor, sleep deprived Danny, who had grown up with awkward Tucker as a best friend, just blinked slowly and said,

"So, are we gonna learn about any of the science stuff here or just your family?"

"Oh! Yes! Those two things are definitely separate things! Over here we have, uh, no that's for Gizmoduck, but this upgrade is-! Oh, no, that's for me, me phone! Yup. Me phone. Ha ha hahahaha. I'm a definitely real boy!!" The kid started shaking and looked so stressed.

Jazz big sister mode: activated.

"Boyd, come here." He ran to her without hesitation. She hugged him and said, "I know you're a robot-"

"He's a what?!"

"And we don't care. Do we Danny?" Jazz emphasized her messing with a sharp glare. Danny raised his hands in submission.

"Nope. Totally cool with the robot boy. I'm just surprised."

"How? How are you surprised by this? When was the last time you got a good night's sleep?"

"Oh come on, Tucker pretended he was secretly a robot for nine months when we were kids."

"You, aren't scared?" Jazz cooed and held Boyd tighter.

"How could anyone be scared of someone so sweet?!"

"A lot of people used to think I was bad, a lot of people still do. Even Dr. Gearlose was worried I was going to hurt people, that that's all I could do." This was a story Danny knew all too well. He looked away and scuffed his shoe against the floor.

"So, what changed?"

"I don't know, actually. One second my programming is being overwritten to terrorise the world, the next I'm being held." Danny moved his hands out of his pockets so he could cross his arms tightly against his chest.

"And you've never worried about, I mean, the guy's a scientist, robotics especially, aren't you worried he'll open you up one day to, to see what's inside? Or break you down for spare parts?' Boyd rubbed his chin.

"I, never thought about that before. I don't think he would, because he loves me. But maybe..." Boyd's chin started to wobble. "What, what If I disappoint him? What if I hurt somebody on accident and I'm too dangerous to be online anymore!?" Little bulb burned a bright red and shook a first at Danny.

"Woah, sorry, just um, stop that? Please? I'm sure your dad loves you too much to ever turn you off okay?" Boyd wiped at his eyes, even though he couldn't cry, and said, desperation and fear in his voice,

"I'll go ask him!" He jumped out of Jazz's arms and ran to the conference room.

"Boyd!"

When they burst into the room, Scrooge McDuck was standing on the table waving his cane in the air.

"Now see here you huanter hunting hooligans-!"

"Dr. Gearlose!" Gyro, the only person in the room that had still been sitting, bolted to his feet and caught Boyd as he jumped into his arms. Gyro instinctively cradled the boy bot and glared at the other kids. Boyd was literally vibrating. Fenton, who was already standing, watched with worried eyes. This was going to end badly.

"You. What did you do to Boyd?" He growled. Little bulb hopped from the chair to the table to Boyd and pat his little brother's head.

"Our kids didn't do anything! We've raised them to be fine upstanding citizens!" Maddy insisted.

"That's right! They know how dangerous ghosts are, don't you kids?" Danny felt all the emotions, guilt, regret, bitterness, jealousy, fear, resentment, building inside of him. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair for him to be angry because Boyd had parents who loved him no matter what. It also wasn't fair that Danny didn't. He was so tired of always being scared to go home. Of having to run away from his parents as they shot to kill or capture. If they knew what he was, Danny didn't doubt for a moment that the only reason they'd want him alive would be to dissect him. The fact that Jazz had been asking questions about the heroes here proved that she knew the same thing.

"In my experience," Danny said, voice carefully controlled, "ghosts are very dangerous." His parents looked over at the table of angry strangers victoriously. It was the proudest they'd seemed of Danny in a long time. Seeing Boyd, burying his face in his Dr Dad's chest, he felt the words coming out, and with them all the pain and resentment he'd felt for so long, all before he could try to stop it. "But so are people. In my experience."

"Danny, what are you saying?"

"And you don't just throw away a person because they cause you trouble!" He continued. Looking Boyd directly in the eyes as the younger boy had turned his head. "You don't break them down into usable parts, or molecules. Because they feel things and want things and love things! They're just like anyone else!"

"Danny, what has gotten into you?!" Danny walked right up to Boyd and said softly,

"The only people who don't believe that, they," Danny swallowed past the lump in his throat and the realization that came with saying the truth out loud. "They don't really love you." Boyd sniffed and held out a fist. Danny smirked wryly and bumped it with his own.

"What are you talking about? Ghosts don't have feelings, you know this."

"Do we though? Do we even know why they haunt people? Even if they are just, just bad, we don't have to tear them apart." He implored. This was the first time he'd contradicted his parents. This was the closest he would ever get to asking if they could really love him, spooky bits and all.

They weren't even looking at him anymore, they were holding at each other.

"He gets this from you, you know." Jack said, arms crossed.

"What?!"

"Well we Fentons sure don't have that kind of open mindedness."

"I'll say! Who's idea is it out Fenton before everything we own?!" Jack, clearly offended, raised his voice.

"It's called branding! It was your idea to bring the kids with us anyway! It'll be good for them Jack, they'll experience different cultures. Look at what cultural diversity did! It poisoned our impressionable son's mind against ghost hunting!"

"Well excuse me for wanting our children to be educated!"

Danny sighed and his shoulders slumped. His courage died inside of him.

"I was only kidding. Haha. Let's go back to Amity and live in ignorance for the rest of our lives." Jack's face lit up.

"Atta boy!"

"Honestly Jack, he's clearly lying."

"Danny wouldn't do that, we raised him better than to lie, at least to his old man."

"Kids, RV, now. Jack, we'll be discussing this later." She turned back to the scientists and said, professionally, "Thank you for your time, sorry it was a waste for us both." Boyd waved hesitantly, still sniffing,

"Bye Jazz, by Danny." Danny offered a single wave of his hands before slumping it the door. Jazz waited a moment after her parents were gone too. She hurried and took the card she'd made for just this purpose and handed it quickly to Boyd.

"See you soon." She whispered. She was almost at the door when Jack poked his head back in.

"Come on Jazz, we don't need these ghost-lovers."

"Coming dad." Just like that the Fenton family was gone. Scrooge, still standing on top of the table, summed up the feelings of the group pretty well.

"What in dismal downs just happened here?!"

[ecto-american]

If Found Please Return to Danny Phantom

Phic Phight Oneshot for @imperfection-at-itsfinest: When Jack manages to get his hands on Danny Phantom's ghost hunting logbook, an investigation reveals some information about ghosts and the infamous specter himself that a scientific study would never cover.

Read on FFN and AO3

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It would be wrong of him to read it. 

Jack kept staring at the book in his hands. It resembled a diary, the front design being colorless but a pressed design. The moon with stars, with no words, and the diary itself felt unusually thin. There was no lock, as if it was almost inviting him to just read it. Jack had, in fact, already opened to the first page, and the first words greeted him. In a standard font read: If Found, Please Return to: and the name scrawled, in surprisingly tidy handwriting, was the name Danny Phantom.

What an absolute find. It was pure dumb luck. He had seen Phantom drop it, but Jack had went looking for it in hopes that the ghost teen had dropped one of the stolen Fenton gadgets. Only to recover...this book that he had taken home and into the privacy of his lab for study.

The idea of Phantom keeping a diary was kinda funny. He never struck Jack as the type to write down his deepest darkest secrets or teenage embarrassments in a book. That would imply that the ghost had some kind of emotions. They didn’t. They were blobs of ectoplasmic energy.

So it should be okay for him to read, right? Why was he so hesitant? Well...it was an invasion of privacy. But it was fine. Phantom dropped it in the park. Phantom was a menace to society. There was likely evidence in this journal that could explain all of the ghost boy’s terrible deeds, that could prove that he truly was evil. This diary could change everything.

...Jack had children though, and he knew both were avidly creative. Scrapbooking, drawing, painting, writing. They were stress outlets for his girls, and he wouldn’t ever dare dream of invading their privacy like that. So he couldn’t. He shouldn’t. Phantom deserved privacy, right?

“Jack? Are you coming to dinner?” Maddie’s voice snapped him from his thought process. She hadn’t made a noise as she came down the stairs. But Maddie was a much better stealth hunter than him.

“Yes, yes! Sorry, I was distracted,” Jack apologized. He set the book down on the table. Maddie rose an eyebrow at him.

“Did you get a new ectobiology book?” she asked. His eyes glanced to the book, and he shook his head no. Maddie came over to him, studying the book cover. Of course, it didn’t resemble any of the scientific texts that they owned. 

“I don’t know how to explain it…” Jack said slowly. He held it out to her. Maddie accepted it.

“This looks like it belongs to the kids,” she stated. She opened the first page, and Jack saw her eyes widen. Her breath hitched, and she looked up to him “Jack...where did you...get this?”

“He dropped it during a fight,” he replied. “I thought it was Fenton tech, but…”

Her eyes sparkled, and she shut the book. A wide grin had appeared, and she threw her arms around her husband.

“Oh Jack! This could teach us so much! If this really is a journal or some kind of diary, then he may have recorded motivations! Thoughts! We can really get into how Phantom thinks and a raw, honest, firsthand account from Phantom himself! This changes everything!”

She was right. She was absolutely right, and he hugged her back. They were scientists first and foremost, and this journal could fill in so many missing blanks about ghosts. It was a starting off point. Jack’s mind raced with all the things they could possibly learn. Just from a simple peek of the book. That was worth more than the invasion of privacy of a ghost that caused so much havoc, destruction and pain. 

“We should look at it right now!” he exclaimed. Maddie pulled away with a small frown.

“After dinner,” she reminded him. “I finally got everybody corralled upstairs for a family dinner. It’s nearly impossible to get either of the girls at the same time.”

“Oh, right!” Jack nearly slapped his forehead. Yes, they were scientists first and foremost, but before even that, they were Mom and Dad. “First thing after dinner.”

“First thing after dinner,” she agreed with a smile. 

Upstairs, he saw that Jazz was already serving herself. Chicken, mashed potatoes and peas. His youngest was pouring iced tea into glasses for everybody. 

“Hey Ghost-kateers!” Jack greeted cheerfully with a grin. Both kids groaned in embarrassment. Perfect. 

“Daaad!” his youngest complained, a whine hitching as she put the pitcher of ice tea back. “I told you, if I’m going to be some kind of ye olde soldier type, I wanna be a knight, like at the renaissance fair.” 

“Ah, but if you’re a ghost-kateer, you can get an anti-ghost musket!” Jack teased. As he walked past her to get his own food, he playfully ruffled her pixie-cut hair. She waved his hand away. 

“But as a ghost knight, I can get a cool sword!” she protested. Jack shook his head in fake disappointment. 

“Never bring to a ghost sword to a ghost musket fight, baby boo,” her dad replied.

“Can’t shoot what you can’t see!” she shot back with a grin. Jack had to hand it to her, and he just chuckled. 

“Can we please have a ghost free dinner?” Jazz scowled. 

“Yes, yes, let’s save ghosts for after dinner,” Maddie agreed. Jazz shot her a grateful look, and Jack focused on getting his serving of dinner from the stove. His youngest pushed her sleeves up, exhaling. Jack stole a look at her and frowned. She had some sweat collected on her forehead.

“Honey if you're hot, you can just take your sweatshirt off,” he told her. She shook her head no.

“No, I'm fine,” she insisted. Jack was skeptical.

“You sure?” he asked. 

“Mhm!” 

Jack shrugged a bit. She was always insisting on wearing a hoodie, no matter the weather. If she got hot enough, she’d take it off. No need to force it. He got his food and took his seat.

“How's school going?” Maddie questioned. Jazz lit up a bit, and her sister flinched. She raised a suspicious eyebrow at her youngest.

“I managed to get a B on my chemistry test,” the youngest spoke up with a forced smile.

“That’s excellent!” Maddie’s demeanor shifted as she smiled warmly. “Keep it up!” 

“Yeah!” The youngest seemed to visibly relax. “Sam’s been helping me study.”

“That’s good, I always studied better when V-man or your mom helped me,” Jack nodded at her as he cut up his chicken. 

“Oh it’s true, I used to help your father study for all of our shared classes,” Maddie confirmed. “Otherwise he’d get so distracted.”

“Yeah, Sam just explains it super well,” their daughter agreed. “Tucker’s been going over math with me a bit, which helps some.”

“Well if you need a tutor, just let us know, and we’ll help you arrange one,” Maddie smiled. “What about you, Jazz?”

“Pretty good,” she replied. “Mr. Lancer asked if I wanted to be his TA this summer, which I really do. It’ll look good on a college application, and I might even get paid!”

“Have you been narrowing down where you might wanna go?” Jack asked. Jazz eagerly nodded.

“Yeah! Oxford is my number one choice, but I also would love to go to Yale or Stanford. I’ve been talking with the college counselor about what else might look good on an application for them that I can do over the summer. I wrote them down in my planner notebook earlier-”

“Hey, that kinda reminds me,” her sister interrupted. “Have you guys seen one of my notebooks? I think I lost it,” she asked them. Jack stared at her. The reminder of the notebook he actually had found. Maddie seemed unbothered by the question. This wasn’t unusual, for the parents to have to play “where’s my stuff?” with the kids. 

“What notebook?” Jazz asked hesitantly. 

“My important one,” came the reply. Jazz frowned lightly. 

“Sorry, princess, haven’t seen any notebooks laying around,” Jack replied. He saw the briefest of a cringe cross his youngest’s features. “Did you leave it at school?” Her shoulders slumped.

“I don’t think so?” she said hesitantly. “I’ll have to check tomorrow. I was so sure I had it earlier…” Her voice trailed off before she forced a smile. “If you see it, let me know!” She picked up a forkful of chicken, only to freeze. The clattering made Jack glance up curiously as she was turning her attention to Maddie. “Can I be excused? I have some homework to get done.” 

Maddie let out a soft sigh. So much for family dinner.

“Of course, just make sure you come back down before you go to bed to get your chores done,” Maddie nodded at her. The young Fenton snapped to her feet with a thanks, fully abandoning her dinner as she went to the stairs. Jazz stared after her sister, craning her neck to track her movements before hurriedly shoveling more mashed potatoes in her mouth.

“Uh, I’m not that hungry, and I totally forgot to do this online assignment,” Jazz spoke, standing up, taking hers and her sister’s plate. She was already walking away before either parent could truly give permission. “I’ll put our plates up and clean up in a bit!”

“A-alright?” Jack hesitated, watching his other child put the plates on the counter before rushing up as well. Another child down. They seemed to grow up so fast. 

“Least they’re doing homework,” Maddie sighed lightly, shaking her head before taking a drink of her tea. “Oh well. Might as well take their lead and eat in the lab?” 

“Please,” Jack agreed. He stood up, taking his plate. “I’m dying to see what Phantom has to say.”

January 10

Skulker: 1; captured

Ectopuss: 1; captured

Box Ghost: 8; captured

Ember: Fought; got away

Fenton Thermos: half-full

Fenton Fisher: untangled

January 11

Vultures: 1; got away

Cujo: 1; played fetch and he went back to the GZ

Fenton Thermos: Full

Ghost Bazooka: overheated and doesn’t shoot anymore, take apart and fix it

January 12

Skulker: 2; got away

Box Ghost: 3; captured

Sidney: 2; got away

Fenton Fisher: tangled, untangle asap

January 13

Skulker: 1; captured

Box Ghost: 4; got away

Fenton Thermos: damaged, won’t suck up ghosts

I met a new ghost today named Desiree. She got away, but it allowed me to discover a new ghost power. Ghost ray.

Maddie furrowed her brow as she studied the words. She stood at the table, her dinner half-forgotten as she thought on the words.

“It sounds like a record,” Jack mused, and he ate another spoonful of peas. Maddie nodded in agreement.

“I think we found Phantom’s logbook,” she agreed. “I’m assuming these are the ghosts he’s fought. And he seems to be recording his powers too. This is huge, we can match up what we know about his powers and what he’s claiming.”

“And he’s recording the status of our equipment.” Jack frowned. “Why would he care?”

“Yeah, he made note that he was going to fix the Fenton Bazooka too,” Maddie pointed out. The scientist flipped through the pages, only to stop at a page, staring curiously. Maddie laid the journal on the table, pressing the spine so that the pages stayed open. She read the page aloud to Jack.

December 19

I hate my life. I hate this existence. I look in the mirror and wonder why it has to be this way. Why am I the one cursed to be this freak? Why is everything about me and my body wrong? For once, I wish something about me was normal, that somebody about me could be right. If Desiree wasn’t such an unreliable asshole with wishes, I’d give everything I have to wish that life could, for once, allow me to be a normal teenage boy. 

Jack listened to her in a stumped silence. This couldn’t have been a pre-death thought process of a moody teenager. It was written too recently, and the words hit a sorrowful chord to him. He didn’t intend to, but he quickly began to feel sorry for Phantom. He was very young. It couldn’t have been easy to lose everything at that age. His daughter was his age. Jack cleared his throat.

“It’s not just a log then?” Jack questioned. Maddie shook her head, flipping the pages back.

“No, I think it’s a mix. There’s still records of ghosts and FentonWorks equipment,” she replied. Using a leg, she pulled a wheeled chair to her to sit in. She leaned back, and she pulled the journal to her. After a moment of flipping through and scanning pages, she settled on a page about a third of the way through. “It seems like this is when he began to record things other than just ghosts.”

“What’s it say?” Jack wondered. Maddie read aloud the next few entries as Jack silently continued to eat. 

April 4

I only fought this shitty panther today, and he still got away. I’m such a fucking idiot. I can’t believe he got away. I was too slow. All I do is fuck up. There’s ghostly activity happening around the school, and I just can’t figure it out. I feel like I can’t stop them anymore. I don’t know what’s going on, why I suddenly suck so much. I honestly probably just always sucked, and now it’s starting to hit me. [scribbles] and [scribbles] were trying to make me feel better, but I fucked up. It was only one ghost today, and I couldn’t catch them. It destroyed an entire store, and it’s my fault.

April 8

No ghosts today, surprisingly. But [scribbles] has been acting weird lately. The other day she poked and prodded me at dinner. No clue what that’s about. She also tried to give me this speech that I can talk to her about anything, and that she’d love me no matter what. That makes me think she found my binder. I’m honestly kinda freaking out. I knew I shouldn’t have left it out like that. She’s such a nosy know it all.

“Phantom must keep more records than just this,” Maddie lightly mused. “He has an entire binder full of information that somebody discovered.”

“Maybe on other ghosts?” Jack theorized. “He’s recording his fights, he must be also recording information about them.” Maddie’s eyes lit up.

“That makes so much sense,” she agreed. “He probably keeps so many kinds of things written down and logged. I wonder where he’s keeping it? Obviously paper, which is a bit odd. I figured a teenager would move to the digital age…” Maddie paused.

“Maybe he’s older than we think he is?” Jack suggested. “He could have died fifty years ago, and just be more comfortable with writing things down.”

“Oh, that’s true,” Maddie mused. She put down the notebook to take a long sip of her drink. Jack picked it up to observe the page she read.

“Phantom has neat handwriting,” he noted. “He’s not fighting ghosts when he writes these.” Jack’s eyes scanned the words. “...I wonder who he’s scribbled out.”

“Allies?” Maddie shrugged. “He probably went back and blacked out some of the names. Privacy. Especially if this isn’t the first time he’s lost this.”

It made the most logical sense. Jack skipped the purely log entries to one that had more written, and he read it aloud to his wife.

April 10

She was feeding on us. Spectra, the Casper High “psychologist” was feeding on emotions, like some kind of emotional vampire but she’s a ghost. It’s so scary. I saw her do it. She asked [scribbles] and [scribbles] about their lives. What made them unhappy, and why. And when they left, I saw her absorb? I guess how I’d describe it? She absorbed the energy into her skin and it just seemed to instantly revive her, and it made her happy. When she did it to me, I could just look in her eyes and know that she enjoyed every minute of my misery. I managed to stop her, with [scribbles] helping me. It was weird. She didn’t seem afraid of me. I don’t know why. 

Spectra: 2; captured

“Ghosts can feed off of energy!” Maddie exclaimed. “Human energy! We always suspected it, but this is confirming something!” Jack glanced up at her excitedly. It was the first real, true ghostly discovery that Phantom was revealing to them. 

April 13

All I do is fuck up lately. Because of me, this ghost dog just absolutely has been causing havoc on this girl’s life. She blames me. And I don’t blame her. I ruined her entire life. She lost her house because of me. I didn’t mean to. I tried to stop the dog, but he just won’t respond to anything I say. I can’t capture him. I’ve been trying. I’ve been just calling the dog Cujo. After the Stephen King book, because damn is this dog giving me one fucking nightmare of a time.

Cujo: 3, got away

April 16

[scribbles] kissed me. It was to force me to change back, and it worked, but she kissed me. It was great. She smelled like lavender. I don’t think my heart’s ever beaten so fast. Afterwards she clarified to me that it was just a fake-out make-out. It didn’t feel like it. I don’t want it to be. But she’s my best friend, and I can’t lose her. So I agreed, and when I came home I cried. My dad caught me, and I pretended it was just girl problems, even though that excuse made me feel even worse. He got me some ice cream, and we watched Star Trek together. It didn’t really help that much, if I’m being honest. 

Anyway, apparently Cujo’s trained. He knows his commands. [scribbles] thinks it’s because he was a guard dog when he was alive for Axion Labs. For a guard dog, he’s such a playful puppy though, he loves his squeaky toy. And [scribbles] became a hunter specifically to kick my ass. It’s my lucky month. But I deserve it. Will there ever be a day where I actually can do more good than bad?

Skulker: 1; captured

[Scribbles]: 1 Red Huntress

Cujo: 1, got away

“Phantom has a family?” Maddie wondered. She chewed on her food as she thought. Jack shrugged, an odd, unsettled feeling hitting him as he put the book down for a moment. He used his spoon to push around his peas.

“I mean, we all do,” Jack reminded her. “Just...I didn’t think Phantom still talked to his family. After his death. Or did such...non-ghost things with them.” Watching Star Trek with his dad? Jack did that with his own kids all the time. It was his and his youngest daughter’s favorite show to watch together. Jazz typically preferred documentary series, and Maddie was too bothered by scientific inaccuracies to really enjoy science fiction. So it was always “their thing” and knowing that Phantom did it too was...too human. 

“Yeah, I didn’t...really expect him to still be haunting them,” Maddie said. Jack could tell that this was disturbing her a little. 

“But ghosts can retain their memories from life it seems,” Jack spoke up. Maddie stared at him. “The dog remembers commands from his life as a guard dog. What extent, I’m not sure.” Maddie hummed curiously.

Jack picked the book up again, skipping through more boring logs to other words. 

April 29

Ember: 2; captured

Fenton Thermos: full, empty

The past few weeks have been terrible. I have definitely come to the conclusion that I really am developing a crush on [scribbles]. Or maybe I always had one, I dunno. Is this really just an effect from Ember’s supposed spell? Does ghostly mind control really last? I think I always knew that I liked her though. I mean, ever since I told her that [scribbles], she’s been so supportive. She even cut my hair for me, which really pissed my parents off, but they ended up admitting that I looked better with my hair short anyway. Almost like it’s meant to be, huh? Ha. [scribbles] is also one of the only two people who know my deeper secret. She’s been so supportive through that too. She calls me Danny, and every time she refers to me as that, it makes my heart go crazy.

But would she even like me? Would she even wanna be with somebody like me? I don’t think I’d be her type. Some other friends I met at this local support group have complained about the struggles of dating. The stories are depressing, and it makes me worried that while [scribbles] will always love and accept me as a friend, that she’d never be able to love me as a boyfriend. I hate my life.

“Aw, Phantom has a little girlfriend,” Jack half-joked, only for goosebumps to raise and an odd chill run down his spine. He looked to Maddie for her opinion, and her face was scrunched up.

“That’s a bit creepy,” she commented. “He’s pretending to be human.”

“I dunno, Mads,” Jack shrugged. He re-read the ghostly teen’s internal conflicts. “Why would he pretend to be human in a journal that nobody’s meant to read?”

“He has to be sharing it with his allies,” she argued. “Those people he’s been scribbling out. Phantom has to be pretending for them. To keep them around. He even mentioned ghostly mind control.” 

She pushed her mostly-finished plate from herself, motioning for Jack to hand over the journal. He complied, and Maddie flipped through it. She stopped, and she set the journal down on the table once more. Leaning over, she studied the spine. A finger ran along the inner spine, and she frowned.

“Pages are missing,” she noticed. Jack pushed his plate out of the way to lean over as well.

Indeed, the top of the diary revealed that it was meant to be a normal, full diary. Now that Maddie pointed it out, it looked like well over a fourth of the diary had missing pages. Jack squinted, pulling his hood over his eyes. He used his googles to better examine.

“They weren’t ripped out, like in a ghost fight,” Jack told her. He pointed to what remained of a page, a barely noticeable strip. “It was carefully cut out.” Maddie narrowed her eyes to get a better look.

“You’re right,” she mused. “Phantom did this purposefully. Probably to hide stuff from his allies.”

“But why hide some stuff and not others?” Jack wondered aloud. “Clearly this girlfriend figure is an ally, but he can’t be...sharing this with her, right?” Maddie pulled back from the notebook to lean in her chair with a heavy sigh.

“...I don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t think he would. But he’s also a ghost, they do weird things.” Jack didn’t know how to reply, and so he continued to read.

May 16

The past few days have been so full of drama. Walker ruined my life. He absolutely ruined it. He set out to make me the most hated person in Amity Park out of pure spite, and he succeeded. I’m public enemy number one. I can never win. For a while now, I had debated telling my parents, because I so desperately want their support, but they were part of the news coverage calling me a disgusting, evil ghost. I ended up crying yesterday. I don’t think they’ll ever truly love me if they knew. I also failed Wulf. Another failure on my plate. I’m just waiting for it to all crash down on me.

Walker: 1; sent to the GZ

Wulf: 1; sent to the GZ

Walker’s goons: at least 14, all captured

Fenton Thermos: overflowingly full

“Oh this is just becoming nonsense,” Maddie complained. “He’s lying. We were there, Jack! We saw him attack us.”

“I know, I know, he did, yeah, he did,” Jack tried to gather his thoughts. “But why would he lie in this? I don’t think anybody was meant to read this?” Jack flipped through the pages. The further he flipped through in, the more he could tell that some sections had more carefully cut out papers than others. Why was Phantom cutting out? What was he hiding? Why was he hiding it?

“He meant for somebody to read this,” Maddie lightly argued. 

“Yeah, it seems like it, but…,” Jack trailed off. He shook his head a bit, flipping back to where they had left off. “I dunno.”

“Hold on a second,” Maddie urged him, standing up. “Let me get something to write with, we should take some notes.”

“We can just use the scanner to make a copy of the journal afterwards, and we can further analyze it afterwards,” Jack suggested. Maddie thought on this, and she nodded, but she still reached for some scrap paper and a pen.

“Good idea, we should probably read through it fully first anyway,” she agreed. “But I still want to jot down some thoughts.”

“Of course, of course,” Jack replied. He knew that’s how she thought and processed information best, and it was always from her notes that he could visualize his own theories properly. He took a drink of tea before he continued reading the next true entry.

May 24

My entire relationship with my other crush (not [scribbles]) was a lie. She was being overshadowed by Kitty the entire time. This was my first real girlfriend, and it was all fake. I had assumed I was so lucky. I found a girl who knew and was okay with both of my biggest secrets. When I got home I ended up just going straight to my room. [scribbles] brought me dinner, but I didn’t feel like eating. Is this what life is going to be for me? I don’t want it to be like this. The only good thing is that [scribbles] doesn’t know either secret alongside our brief relationship.

Least Kitty and Johnny seem happy again. For now at least. I swear, they’re always breaking up and getting back together. 

Kitty: 1; sent back to the GZ

Johnny 13: 1; sent back to the GZ

Shadow: 1; sent back to the GZ

Jack could lightly hear Maddie taking notes on her scrap paper, the pen scratching at the surface. He didn’t comment on it, silently flipping to the next page, and he continued to read. 

August 19

I was forced to really face the reality of how much I fucked up [scribbles] life. I hate it. I’d do anything to take it back. It makes me wonder if I should just retire. Am I even really doing anything to help? Am I just a nuisance? Everybody thinks that. 

Rationally I know I can’t. I’m the only one who can properly deal with the ghosts, who has the power and abilities to fight back without getting killed. I have to do what I can, but I just wish I could do it without making so many mistakes. [scribbles] said that it’ll be okay, and that it gets better, but it sure doesn’t fucking feel like it.

Skulker: 3; finished

Red Huntress: 2; temporary truce?

“He’s so full of...emotion for a ghost,” Maddie finally spoke up. 

Jack glanced at the paper she had in front of her. There was some notes of what they had been learning so far, and there were emotions written in all caps with a line under, and a list of various emotions. Emotions Phantom seemed to be displaying. Guilty, despair, loneliness, self-hatred, self-doubt. Despite the few entries, it was already quite a list.

“It’s not just him either,” Maddie continued. Jack rose an eyebrow at her. She didn’t immediately reply, fingers on her lips as she stared down at the journal. “He’s giving emotions to other ghosts too.”

Jack stared down blankly at the journal in his hands. 

“Where?”

Maddie began to write, and as she wrote, it clicked. Spectra’s joy in hurting others. Kitty and Johnny’s relationship. Walker’s spite. Cujo being a playful puppy. According to Phantom, and against what they knew as scientists, ghosts were experiencing a wide variety of emotions and for different reasons. It was weird. 

Jack continued to read.

October 17

I don’t know what happened the past few days. It’s this weird blur. According to [scribbles] and [scribbles] I did a lot of bad things under Freakshow’s control. [scribbles] hugged me and told me that it was nothing that we couldn’t fix, but I doubt that. Why does this keep happening to me? I don’t want to hurt people. I want to be a good person, and I want to help Amity Park, but I don’t know what keeps happening. Everything’s a fog, and I’m exhausted. 

Freakshow: 1; arrested by APPD

Circus ghosts: freed from Freakshow’s control, went back to the GZ

Replace Fenton Anti-Creep Stick, print out another sticker to put on it

“Freakshow...that was the weird circus guy,” Jack interrupted himself. Maddie nodded.

“Yeah, and if Phantom’s right...he could control the ghosts,” she mused. “So there’s a way for humans to take control of ghosts...That’s something to look into. If we can control the ghosts into staying away, it’d be such a massive scientific breakthrough.”

“We should look into Freakshow more, and see if we can talk to him!” Jack agreed. “Maybe he’ll share something with us.” Maddie smiled softly.

“I doubt that,” she replied gently. “But there’s no harm in trying. What else does it say?”

November 8

I have to fight Pariah Dark. I’m terrified. I don’t think I’ll live through it. How can I live through fighting the actual ghost king? I may never see my family again, and I can’t even tell them what happened to me if I die. I’ve been debating telling [scribbles] that I like her, but I don’t think I could bring myself to do it. 

What happens if I die? I have no clue. I’m scared to find out. I can’t die now. I have to make it back. I’ll go missing, and I won’t even be declared dead as my parents’ son. Nobody will know who to really look for. I have to come back. Maybe if I succeed, and people like me again after this, I can tell my family everything.

November 10

I couldn’t tell them. My parents still despise part of me, despite what I’ve done. I know they love me, cause my mom’s already been fussing over me like crazy because of my injuries. [scribbles] said she cried when they couldn’t find me, and that my dad had gone out looking for me all over the city, even in the dangerous parts. They of course love me, but do they really love me unconditionally?

Jack felt his voice trailing off as he hit the end. He coughed lightly, and he took a long drink. Maddie stared off into nothing. The only thing he could think of was his own search for his baby girl. He wasn’t alone, bumping into several other parents desperately looking for their missing children, and several children who got separated from their parents. The entire day was somber and frightening, and Maddie had spent the entire day glued to the phone. In case she called them. 

It was all...too real, and Jack flipped past more logs. He couldn’t help but begin to take note of how every single day had a log of ghost fighting activities, even if Phantom didn’t write down his feelings every day. This was so much more than the ghost hunting duo ever expected, more attacks than they were recording.

His eyes rested only for a moment on December 19, and he decided to just skip it. They had already read it earlier. No need to refresh those memories. More logs, and more missing pages, and he came upon another one. 

March 26

I ripped out a lot of pages, more than I intended. I can’t risk anybody finding out what happened, but also other pages revealed too much, so I kept them tucked away where nobody could ever find them. I’d burn them, but I don’t want to lose the ghost hunting data. It’s okay now. I fixed the problem and assured that everything’s going to be fine. Possibly better. I made the right choice this time, and now I know that one day, I will grow a sick beard. 

I know somebody knows my secrets now. All of them. She had known for months but wanted me to tell her. She asked me if I had a name, and ever since I told her that it was Danny, she’s been calling me that whenever she can. It made me cry the first time. It’s so great to have her know everything now. She loves me no matter what. I couldn’t ask for a better person. Even though she found out because I’m an idiot. This entire thing also made me realize how important it is to keep those secrets, and how poorly I’ve been keeping them. 

I didn’t ever mean for this to turn into a diary. I wanted to keep track of ghost fights. But it honestly helps with both the dysphoria and the stresses of being a ghost. I just went back and scribbled out names. Just in case. In the future I need to be more vague. 

But this is also the end for one secret. If things go wrong then well. I don’t know. I’ll make it up as I go along. But I know that this is who I am, and that I’m hitting a point where I need help to just be me. 

Him: 1; captured for good

Skulker: 2; captured

Desiree: 1; captured

Ectopusses: 1; captured

Cujo: 1, sent back to the GZ

Fenton Thermos: full

Fenton Anti-Creep Stick: destroyed, get new bat and sticker to put on it

Also learned a new ghost power: Ghostly wail. A scream that can just absolutely fuck somebody’s day up. I have to use it sparingly though.

Jack closed the journal, and he set it flat on the table. His mind was blank, and he couldn’t read Maddie. She continued to stare at the closed book, hand in pen but almost unsure as to what to even jot down as a note. He leaned in his seat, finishing his drink. Maddie exhaled deeply, dropping her pen in favor of stretching.

Neither said a word. Jack knew that this journal was not any kind of trick. It was too raw and emotional to be anything more than the thoughts of a teenage ghost. He regretted reading it. It held some interesting information, and he was sure if he dug deeper, that he would find more. But as it stood, his own intense guilt was settling as he knew that he just took too personal a look into the private emotional afterlife of Phantom.

“This is a lot to take in,” Maddie finally spoke. Jack only nodded.

The basement door opened, and they heard dual pairs of footsteps hop downstairs. Jack instantly brightened, and he turned in his chair to smile as his kids soon came into view.

“Hey, is this a bad time?” Jazz asked. She glanced between them, and Jack immediately shook his head no. 

“No, no,” Maddie replied quickly. Jack saw her push the journal and her notes, along with her pen and a few spare lab tools, carelessly into a drawer to help assure the Fenton kids that they weren’t interrupting anything. “What’s up, sweetie?” 

“Well, I have something that I wanna talk about,” their youngest spoke slowly. Jack noticed that she had finally taken off her hoodie, and that while she wore her normal tomboy attire, that something was a bit off about her. He couldn’t place it. Jazz stood close to her, an arm full of books clutched to her chest, though he couldn’t make out any titles. “It’s something important, and I don’t really want to put it off any longer.”

“Is something wrong? Are you in trouble?” Jack asked. His daughter shook her head no. 

“Oh, no!” she said. “It’s just…” 

She took a deep breath, and soon, their son began to explain.

[echoghost1]

Dark Familiarity

Word Count: 2608

For: @gottacatchghosts

Summary: Danny has been hunting ghosts for a while now. He has been ever since they ruined his life and a mysterious package arrived with everything he needed to exact his revenge.

TW: Character Death!

You can read on AO3 or down below the cut.

Danny slowly slid the window open. He knew if he went too fast it would squeak. Just as he nearly had it wide enough for him to fit through, the door behind him opened.

“Danny?” his mom called out with a hint of warning in her voice.

He sighed and slid his backpack off of his shoulder. “Yeah?” he said with as much disinterest as he could muster. Which was a lot, surprisingly.

“What are you doing?”

“Opening the window? Am I not allowed fresh air now?” he said with a scoff. Could she just hurry up with the lecture already? He was missing out on his patrols and if he waited too long that ghost girl would get all the good ones.

She crossed her arms and scowled right back at him, “Why do you need your backpack to open a window? And where’s the screen?”

“It fell out.” That was true enough. She didn’t need to know that it was because he had kicked it out about a month ago.

“And the backpack?”

“I just hadn’t taken it off yet. Anything else you want to interrogate me over?”

She sighed and all the previous agitation drained out of her, “Why are you so angry? You never used to be this angry.”

“Well, maybe it’s because my life sucks?! Did you ever think of that? Maybe moving to this terrible apartment complex at the beginning of the school year wasn’t such a great idea?”

“You know we couldn’t afford to stay in our old house after what happened.”

“Yeah, but you could have tried a little harder to find a place with a few less rats, don’t you think?”

“Daniel!”

“Or maybe this is just who I am now?” He snatched his bag off the ground and pushed the window the rest of the way up. He didn’t care if she saw anymore. He just had to get out and shoot something.

“What are you-? Get back in here this instant!” His mom yelled as he slipped out the window and stood on the fire escape.

“You don’t want me to be angry here, so I’m going out.”

“Danny please, just come back in. It’s not safe out here at night.”

He didn’t bother replying. The only words in his mind were cruel and he didn’t want to make this worse.

He took the fire escape stairs two at a time and jumped from the ladder to the dirty sidewalk below. He quickly walked a few blocks until he got to the corner store, then he slipped into the alley and put his hunter suit on.

The technology used to make the gear was so beyond what he even thought was possible. He still had yet to meet the person who had sent it to him, but it worked so well he hardly cared if he ever would.

There was a ping on his visor HUD and he couldn’t help the smirk that stretched across his features. That looked like a big one. Perfect.

===============================================

Due to him staying out much longer than necessary for ghost hunting patrols he accidentally slept through a test and got in trouble for fighting when he decided to stand up for himself for once.

Why he got in trouble for not wanting to be shoved inside his own locker for the hundredth time was beyond him.

“I can’t believe you kicked Dash in the balls.”

Oh yeah, that’s why he was in trouble.

He laughed, “Well if he hadn’t made it so easy I wouldn’t have been able to.”

“Okay, but when did you become such a badass?” Tucker asked as the two sat in the empty classroom and waited for their detention to start.

Danny just shrugged.

He hadn’t told his friends about the ghost hunting yet. He almost did, but when he heard Sam going off about ‘Ghost Rights’ he figured it would just be easier to keep it a secret.

“Well maybe tone it down next time? I thought the plan was to be geeks in school and then take over the world when we graduate college and all the dumb jocks have to work for us?”

“That may be your plan, but I don’t think I’m patient enough for that.”

Tucker rolled his eyes before quickly pocketing his phone as Mr. Lancer entered the room.

He takes his sweet time making it to his desk before looking over the files in front of him, “Tucker Foley. Repeated loitering by the girl’s locker rooms and having your phone in the classroom.” he sighed and looked at Tucker with a disapproving frown before looking at Danny’s report. “Daniel Fenton. Sleeping in class. Talking back to faculty. Fighting with other students? Mr. Fenton, I know you’re going through a rough patch right now.”

Whatever he was about to say Danny didn’t want to hear it. “Save it. If I wanted a pity party, I would have thrown one myself.”

Mr. Lancer slapped the papers back onto his desk. “I was hoping some positive reinforcement would do you some good but clearly that’s not what you want.”

“How is getting detention for standing up to bullying ‘positive reinforcement’?”

“Danny,” Tucker whispered through clenched teeth, “stop! You’re gonna make it worse.”

“What could possibly be worse?”

“Suspension! You’re suspended for the next two weeks! Hopefully, that will get your attitude back in check.”

“You can’t do that!”

“Actually, as Vice Principal, I very much can. Now, wait here while I call your parents.”

Danny clenched his fists and glared at the floor. This wasn’t fair. Nothing was fair and everything was stupid.

If he couldn’t go to school what the heck was he supposed to do all day? He certainly wasn’t going to sit around in the apartment.

===============================================

Oddly enough, news of his suspension gave his dad the idea to visit his old college friend. “Sure I haven’t seen the man in years, but I’m sure he’d love to have us. It is our 20-year reunion this year, maybe he’d like to catch up?”

“Are you going to call him first? Before you just show up?” Jazz asked looking up from her book. It was a valid question giving their dad’s tendency to just do things.

“No need! He sent this invitation just the other day. It got lost in the mail for a bit due to the move, but here it is!” he said pulling the invite out with a flourish. “Nothing like a good old road trip to put the mind at ease!”

“Wisconson? That’s at least a four-hour drive from here.”

“Yeah! It’s going to be great! Especially if we see any cool attractions on the way!” his dad continued oblivious to his daughter’s distress.

“You know, this might be a good thing for us.” his mom said as she looked over the flyer. “I’ll give him a call and see if he minds if we all come.”

“I can’t believe that you get in trouble and now I have to waste my weekend on some dumb family road trip.” Jazz grumbled mostly to herself before sticking her nose back in her book.

Danny just rolled his eyes and went to his room. Apparently, he had some packing to do.

===============================================

They ended up leaving much later than they had intended because his mom wasn’t able to get off of work any sooner than 6 ‘o clock. Because of their late departure, they had to sleep crammed into a sketchy motel. If they still had the RV they could have slept there, but that got sold with the house and all their inventions.

The sleepover did reveal some very interesting bit of news that their parents had decided to wait until the very last second to mention. Apparently, this mysterious old college friend was none other than Vlad Masters.

The name meant nothing to Danny until Jazz started going on about how he was some super successful billionaire or whatever.

That was not something he would have expected to hear.

It was made even weirder when they said he had a lab accident when they were in college that sounded an awful like it might have been his dad’s fault.

No wonder they got shut down.

Danny can’t help but wonder what his life would have been like if they had built the portal in the basement as they had wanted, instead of renting the lab space at Axion. He’d probably would have gotten hurt somehow. He’s honest with himself enough to admit that he’s clumsy and accident-prone.

Or at least he used to be.

Now he’s always ready.

===============================================

Meeting Vlad was, interesting, to say the least.

The man was both obsessed with the Green Bay Packers and also Danny’s mom.

Jazz said it was fine as long as mom said no, and she was usually right about things when it came to other people so he let it slide.

He was watching the reunion party get set up when Vlad came up beside him, “Can I have a word with you?” he asked in his smooth rich guy voice.

“Uh, sure?” Danny agreed and followed Vlad out of the room and down the hall.

They walked for a while in complete silence and just when Danny was about to say something they entered a laboratory.

“So, how is the equipment fairing? Everything working properly?” Vlad asked casually.

“Equipment?” Danny asked when the only equipment he owned was his secret ghost hunting gear.

Vlad turns to face him with a smirk Danny can’t quite place. “Yes, you’re ghost hunting equipment.”

“You know about that?”

“Who do you think gave it to you?”

Danny hesitated and realized maybe he should have looked into what Dlav Co. was after all.

“How many well-off individuals with a background in ghost studies do you think there are?” he chuckles, “Or did it not occur to you to know your benefactor?”

Danny frowned not at all liking how this guy was talking. “If you wanted me to know who you were, why didn’t you just say so when you sent it to me?”

“And risk anyone finding out I’ve given dangerous and experimental weapons to a fourteen-year-old? No thank you.”

“Then why give them to me at all?”

“Because you're the most capable ghost hunter I've ever seen!” he praised as he put a hand on Danny’s shoulder as he steered him further into the lab. “You’re a natural in the field. Quick battle reflexes and amazing adaptability. It’s like you were born for this.”

“You really think so?”

An adult saying nice things about Danny was so rare, but this was something else. Was this guy actually proud of him? What he’d give for his own parents to be even half this proud of him.

“Of course, dear boy.” He let go of Danny as they approached a large workbench, “I hope you don’t mind, but I took the liberty of gathering your equipment.”

Danny looked to where Vlad was gesturing and saw that that was his suit and all of his guns. Even the hoverboard was there too.

He hadn’t brought his ghost hunting gear with him. He distinctly remembers leaving that at home. In his room. Under his bed.

Should he be worried about that?

“I thought, after you’ve been working so hard lately, it could use some upgrades. Don’t you think?”

“Oh, okay. Cool.” Hard to say no when it was already here.

“Excellent.” He clapped his hands together once and spun on his heel, “Well I should be done with all of this in just a few days so I’ll just send them back once they are ready.”

Danny wasn’t super excited to be without his gear for so long, but this guy was being so generous. Danny just accepted the terms.

“Perfect. Now run along. I have a few things I need to attend to before all the other guests get here.”

===============================================

The reunion party was in full swing and Danny was starting to regret not just staying with Jazz in the movie room. Watching a bunch of grown-ups jump around to weird music because there was absolutely no one his age around to talk to was getting old.

He spotted Vlad from across the room as he walked with one of the waiters back into the kitchen.

Danny sighed and wondered if he would get in trouble if he just followed him in there too.

Just as he was setting his empty punch glass back on the table a scream broke out. He turned to the sound and instinctively reached for his gear.

Which he didn’t have.

He sighed and hoped that maybe it wasn’t ghost-related, they were so far from Amity that it couldn’t possibly be that, right?

He was wrong. Because of course, he was.

The ballroom was emptying out surprisingly fast and it didn’t take a lot to see why. Floating several feet in the air was his dad.

He was shouting nonsense about how he needed to pay for his sins as he flew about the room.

Danny bit his lip and looked around to see if there was anything in the room he could use to help.

He was about to grab one of the serving trays to use as a shield, Captain America style, but his mom gripped his arm and started to drag him out of the room with the rest of the crowd.

“Sweetie, we have to go! Where is your sister?”

“She’s in the theater,” he said pointing towards it as he tried to slip out of her grip.

“Good, let’s go!” before he could protest further she simply picked him up, slung him over her shoulder, and started running.

“Mom?! Put me down! We can’t just leave him!”

“I’m sorry sweetie, but it’s not safe. We need to leave.”

“But mom, it’s a ghost! We have to get it out of him!”

His mom slowed down in her retreat and held him in front of her, “And how do you suppose we do that? I don’t have any ghost hunting gear, do you?”

Danny bit back his retort. Of course, he couldn’t say that he did. He couldn’t say that it was in fact, here.

But that didn’t mean he couldn’t take a guess at where some could be.

“Maybe Vlad has some? He went to school for the same thing you did, right?” Danny said in a rush as he was finally able to wiggle out of her grip.

“Danny wait!”

It was too late, he was already off back to the lab to get the weapons his mom didn’t know he knew how to use.

He slid into the room and to his utter horror, all of his gear was completely dismantled. Exposed wires and opened components everywhere. When the heck did Vlad even have time to do all this while he was hosting a party?

Danny scrambled to find something, anything that was even remotely usable but the more he looked, the more everything just blurred together into a haze of black and red electronics.

There was another scream.

His mother.

He ditched the room and ran towards the sound hoping he wasn’t too late to help her.

It wasn’t his mom that needed help.

Outside of the ballroom was a large balcony that overlooked the front lawn. From there you could see the most stars Danny had ever seen outside of astral photography.

The stars weren’t what was holding his attention tonight.

Down below the balcony, on the hard unforgiving asphalt of the driveway was his dad.

He was too late.

His dad was dead.

===============================================

If you enjoyed this AU you can read more here

[illmamnim]

Re watching Danny Phantom - episode 1

Basically, I want to analyse the show with out just going from memory. So I'll watch episode by episode, pointing both things I love and hate, and occasionally, what I would do different.

Episode 2

This one will probably be the longest just because I am recalling stuff that happen later on and for the other episodes I’ll focus more on them.

So let's get to it

“Actually, dad, I wanna be an astronaut.”

Danny’s very first line, the dream he had since the very beginning. And it’s barely shown.

He does get exited about it when it shows up but it doesn’t look like he cares about it much outside of it. for a show with such themed characters it feels like Danny is far more built. 

now it could fit if all the other characters just as built, or at least the main ones, but every character seems to have an image they go by and Danny just stands out.

“Waste these looks and all this charisma hunting ghosts?! Criminal.”

Nothing to say here, I just love that line.

The whole fight behind Jack’s back

I want to make a whole post about Idiot Jack but for now I’ll just say this:  The Idiot tropes are so lovable because usually there's a kind, caring person at the end of them. Jack is shown very little to care about Danny or Jazz and will force them into ghost hunting shenanigans based on the plot’s needs.

Jazz seems to be the only one to notice  that their parents' obsession with ghosts is interfering with their everyday lives.

Other than that, It’s a good over all introduction to the Fenton family and their work.

Opening

👌👌👌

“You need guidance, and parents who can provide it.”

Jazz's notices that their parents' don’t pay attention to them- especially Danny. Earlier this scene, we see her read a book about adolescence and therapy and immediately she's the one to point out that her parents are ignoring Danny. They’re all together at breakfast and Jack and Maddie work right on the table.

Jazz is the one to notice how anxious Danny is most of the time and probably the only one to notice he's being bullied. (as he said- he's Dash's favorite)

Yes, Jazz thinks she's more grown up than she really is, which means that everyone in Danny’s life treats him like a child and her own obsession with being right can make her forget about the world.

But unlike many characters, she does get this development-  The Fenton Menace and  Secret Weapons are good examples of that.

“Why? Parents don’t listen. Even worse, they don’t understand. WHY CAN’T THEY ACCEPT ME FOR WHO I AM?!”

I’m going to use this to talk about lgbtq+ characters in the show. Or, more accurately the lack thereof.

I talked about it when I did some notes from memory, where I’ve mentioned that characters like Danny and Sam are so fitted to be apart of the lgbtq community that the fact that they’re not isn’t just disappointing but it feels like it’s missing.

Sam prides on being herself but she hides knowing she will always get backlash for things that don’t fit into some 1 dimensional character people expect her to be. And Danny is always afraid of being himself but when he is he feels the most free and happy.

Trans!Danny hcs didn’t just happen for no reason and if the show is ever to be rebooted I expect them to include it in, in any way.

“Your powers make you unique, and unique is good. That’s why I’m an ultra recyclo-vegetarian.”

Ok, big pet peeve of mine in the show.

They treat Sam as if she only does stuff to “be unique”. This could work perfectly if she had a development or reason- but later on all we seem to understand is that she’s just being “I’m not like other girls” and her being vegetarian or goth is nothing but her trying to either stand out or annoy her parents.

Does she actually want to do half the stuff she does? Her Sticking It To The Man attitude is admirable but whenever she talks about it it just kinda look like she would change herself to make sure she’s not ordinary.

Personally I do get it, cause it’s what I used to do, but the whole point of stating it is to show how she’s growing out of feeling like she can’t do stuff- Let her care for a stupid flour sack, let her show that she’s into ghosts and moreover I WANNA KNOW WHY

My headcanon is that that’s how she and Danny became friends in the first place and I would love to see how this gang got together.

“What if Jazz isn’t a ghost? What if we accidentally hurt her?”

Remind me why we don’t listen to Maddie more often?

Oh right, cause then they’d have to actually make the effort and have to think about how to make this show make sense.

“It’s garbage.”

Why does it look like the gang never seem to actually support one another? It doesn’t even look jokey or teasing, sometimes it just looks like they only hang out cause they have no other friends.

ghost sense

I always thought, and still think, that the blue line coming from the ghost sense is cold air turned warm and I made a post joking about Danny is always mouth breathing. And i got a comment that said “ It's probably more like a sudden cold feeling, so Danny gasps cause he's cold.“ I really liked it and I feel like they could’ve captured or explained it in the show better.

“Oh great, I’m still his favorite.”

They made that point a bunch in the show, that Dash is almost like Danny’s privet bully.

Why?

Dash bullies anyone, but Mikey and Danny seem to be a reoccurring deal (Mikey probably because he’s always doing their homework.) and they never explain it.

It just looks like main character syndrome.

“YOU CHANGED THE MENU?!”

I love how they portray more humanoid ghosts as more possible to act human and how much more scary it makes them when they suddenly break this humanity.

Lunch lady

She seems to be able to control much more than just food products (plates, books and papers, cutting the lights) and they never really explain how some ghosts can do this or that, and which powers are or aren’t universal.

(Non related but her face is adorable! Nice old evil grandma)

“repeated loitering by the girl’s locker-room.”

They really didn’t have to make Tucker a creep.

“[He threw] Four touchdown passes in the last game is thereby exempt from scorn.”

Uhh is this an american thing?? Are jocks really that much of a teacher’s pets that who ever played high school sports is able gets away with murder?

Danny’s powers’ look

They seem to always animate and portray the powers differently each time-

Sometimes when he’s intangible he’s blue, sometimes transparent, sometimes the lines change colors sometimes not.

Many animation errors seem to be about inconsistency.

“Guys, time to makeup. Now!”

He just transforms?? Right there?!

The Spike scene

Ok, we learn a lot here.

first of, why didn’t we see more of Spike in the show?! it could’ve been amazing to see Jazz with actual friends.

And if he isn’t her friend, Jazz gives advice to people? Why didn’t we see more on that? How both she and Danny want to help people and how this is her way of doing it cause she has no powers. How could’ve been her build up to becoming a hero alongside Danny!

And second, is when her parents attack her. This shows how little they listen to her, why she always feels like the only responsible person in the family and how she probably is.

I’ll probably get on that more in My Brother’s Keeper.

Danny fighting the little meat creatures is my favorite fight scene in the episode

“The Fenton Thermos! But how am I going to get it to work?“

How did he get it to work?? They never really explained it, he just kinda turned blue and it did.

side notes:

The Amount Of Sound Effects...

Personal preference but I don’t like how much they change the colors of the sky and background only when a ghost is near and then it turns back- It’s distracting.

I usually expect side jokes to not affect the plot but here they kinda mix it and I can’t know what’s a side joke and what is more meaningful 

Y’know... I never did notice how many jokes Danny makes. But now...

Danny looks so happy when ever he manages to do some ghost trick, it’s adorable

The Fentons have 5 brain cells and Jazz holds 3 of them. (Danny and Maddie split when they need it)

The camera angles are very fun and look like they could fit perfectly as a comic

The voice acting is super good