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anthropwashere · 4 years

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deadfic: Get Out, Get Gone

Yet more deadfic for @goodintentionswipfest! And also another giftfic I never finished, because that’s just who I am as a person! \o/

@ghostfiish did this truly excellent art of Danny’s transformation rings as a galaxy way back when that I promptly lost my whole entire shit over, and also took it as an opportunity to get some kind of manic with the writing style. That, combined with my sort-of accidental, sort-of intentional smashing yet more rad headcanons into it until the whole thing collapsed under its own weight. Still, I remain very fond of this one and what I was trying to do back in 2014, so here we are. 8.7k’s nothing to sneeze at, at least.

Oh, and! While we're at it, have an old Danny playlist I never got around to sharing that fits the mood this fic is going for. Title comes from To Kill a King's "Bloody Shirt (Bastille Remix)," which is unfortunately not included on the Spotify playlist.

There’s a weight to you now that wasn’t there before. You’d think with your powers—

(and doesn’t it feel strange to call them that, when you shake and shiver at the sight of your bones under your meat, when you walk down the stairs and your feet don’t touch anything at all)

—you’d weigh less, be less. A thing of smoke, and ectoplasm, and all that awful electricity arcing through your nerves. But that's not what happened.

You remember that day with a surreal nightmare quality, memories fuzzing and skittering like white noise in your skull. Pain and green light and being so, so certain that had been it. Zap! That’s all she wrote. But it wasn't, and here you are, hovering three inches off the grass and praying no one will see, that no one will know.

You aren’t less for all that’s changed, for all that’s changed in you. Tucker and Sam haven’t said anything about it, and it’s clear they don’t have a clue. Your first—

(disastrous, embarrassing)

—fight against the Lunch Lady knocked you right out. They had to carry you all the way home from school after you failed to stop her. It’s a wonder nobody stopped them, dragging your sorry carcass across town. If either of them had noticed, if either of them could have noticed, they would have told you. Or worse, they wouldn’t have managed to get you home at all.

You noticed it when you changed. Not the first time, in the shadowed, silver throat of the Portal—

(electricity cooking you from the inside out, the Portal writhing, burning, tearing itself into existence, a physical hole ripped so cleanly between realities even your parents don’t understand it and they built the damn framework, boiling ectoplasm splashing on you, over you, inside you, changing you forever)

—but after. Changing back and forth without any control, cringing behind dumpsters and hedges, tossing desperate prayers skyward that nobody had seen the light, that nobody had seen you change from kid to freak. So much of you changes when this strange, alien light stretches across you, not just your clothes and eyes and hair, no, you’re different now down to your cells, down to the very structure of your DNA. You know, you’ve checked. So much of you is different, it’s a wonder you didn’t figure it out sooner.

When you change, you’re heavier. Heavier. Not like ten pounds or something any normal kid might stress over. You become the kind of heavy that leaves brushstroke smears in asphalt, reduces sturdy brick walls to dusty rubble, punches craters through solid ground. It hurts when you fall, god does it hurt. But your bones never shatter. Your guts never liquefy. Your brain never dribbles out your ears. How? How can you possibly survive the beatings every new ghost is so eager to give you?

Ah, but there's never any time to think about it though, not really. No time for anything but a raw, thready panic and clumsily scrawled homework copied five minutes before the bell. Your chance to tell your parents came and went, and now there’s always another ghost attacking the city.

Mom and Dad are so happy now. You’ve never seen them happier than this, with the stuff of your grade school nightmares on the rampage. It’s proof they aren’t crazy, proof they haven’t wasted their whole lives on a pipe dream, proof that everybody who ever called them quacks were wrong. Good for them, you guess. Meanwhile you’re picking yourself out of the wreckage of another storefront, glass needled all down your spine, and you can’t help but marvel at the damage your body has done. Can do. Will do.

Because you’re stronger, you’re getting stronger every day. The weight in you that your Sam and Tucker don’t—

(can’t)

—notice grows more noticeable, and after a few fights you're quicker, too. And perhaps you're changing still, perhaps the accident isn't done with you yet, because one day there’s sickly green light at your fingertips, and in no time at all you can manipulate the energy buzzing inside you—

(the electricity and hot ectoplasm from the accident screaming through you, out from your palms and striking down the things that used to scare you as a little kid, back when door knobs and faucets were out of reach of your tiny fingers and there was so much dark in your big big house, and now your hands trail light like after images from staring at the sun too long, now you can patch your hurts up by the light of your own blood, now you're learning that you don’t need to be afraid of what hides in the dark anymore)

—in ways you never thought possible. Sure, lots of what you do is learned the hard way, mid-battle against sizzling green things with teeth like hunting knives, running on instinct and adrenaline and terror all tangled up in your throat. Lots more is later, when it’s quiet and safe again, practicing things you’ve seen other ghosts do again and again and again until you can mimic it, improve it, make it yours.

But no ghost you fight has the same heaviness as you do. No improbable weight that defies the logical mass of their ectoplasm. If it’s big, it’s heavy. If it’s small, it’s light. Unexpected logic from creatures that defy logic in every other way.

There’s a lesson you learn the hard way, testing the strength of these invaders against your bruised and splitting knuckles. You learn caution. You learn restraint. If you punch them hard enough, some ghosts, the little formless ones your parents have captured once or twice now, burst like water balloons—a hard pop of searing green, an overwhelming smell-taste of citrus and hot pennies. Too much of your supernatural strength pressed into the soft hide of a monster and the end result is a glowing puddle where someone used to be.

You learn this lesson quickly. You learn that even when you’re fighting for your life, you’ve got to hold back. You defend, you protect. Death scares you too much to risk killing—

(is it killing when it’s already dead, where does a ghost go when it dies, is there something more to the Ghost Zone than what you’ve glimpsed with your own eyes or is that it, is that all, have you erased someone from reality forever, these are the questions that make your stomach hurt, that make it hard to breathe, that make it hard to fake a smile when Jazz asks if something’s wrong)

—something so much like yourself. Even if it’s got teeth like hunting knives.

You think you’re an anomaly, a freak, the only one stupid enough to walk into a Ghost Portal and zap yourself full of juice that by rights should have killed you—

(and a little part of you wonders if that isn’t just what happened, if you’re just a dead thing walking around in your body, wearing it like a meatsuit and waiting for the rot to show, but it’s been a month, it’s been months, and you eat more and you sleep less, not because you don’t need it but because there’s never any time, and you’ve grown another inch and there’s new definition to your muscles, and that all must mean you’ll be okay, that you are okay, it has to)

—until Wisconsin. Until Vlad.

He’s in the same boat as you, plus twenty years of experience and enough self-made loneliness to turn him bitter and crazy and dangerous. He wants Dad dead and Mom his, like she’s some kind of carnival prize he can win if he throws his weight around enough. Swing the mallet, hit the bell, and congratulations! The woman you haven't spoken to in twenty years who has made her own life without you is now yours to take home! Ugh.

But god, he can hit hard. Lightning, real lightning, nothing like the weak little zaps of electricity inside you, rattles at his fingertips like a living thing, furious burning strikes of pain, and he knocks you aside like he’s bored. You have a thousand questions, but he won't give you a single answer unless you concede defeat or whatever he wants, so it looks like you’ll just have to beat the answers out of him instead. Who cares if he’s got twenty years on you? He’s not out most nights pummeling wayward ghosts back into the Ghost Zone. He’s not out most days saving people from ghosts with bloodthirsty, power-hungry vendettas. What you lack for in time and experience you make up in rooftop fistfights and stolen first-aid kits.

Sure you managed to outwit him—

(barely, hardly at all, he just wanted to save face in front of Mom, if he hadn’t cared about that, if he’d just tried overshadowing Mom instead it all could have turned out so differently, and doesn’t that thought make it hard to sleep the first few nights back home)

—but you can’t stop thinking of what it had been like to fight him, of what it was like to see another person do all that you can and so much more. You remember every second of each fight, like it’s been burned across your eyelids. You replay it all every time you blink for days, for weeks. It’s easy as thought to recall the light arcing around his waist as he’d transformed. Just like yours, and yet nothing like yours. The color, sure, that had been the obvious difference. When you change it’s a white light, sharp and searing enough to leave stars in your eyes if you look at it. His transformation—

(black like cave darkness, black like a power outage, black like the vastness between stars, sucking in light like a hungry thing, like it’d swallow you whole if it had had the chance)

—had been like a punch to the gut even before he’d buried his fist in your gut. You’d known without words, known in some primitive bit of brain that still looked up at the night sky and thought magic before science, you had known. You and Vlad were made out of the same mess, but maybe, just maybe, those twenty years were stacked against him.

Trouble is, the transformation is so quick you can’t make much out but the light/non-light of yours and his, and luckily—

(unluckily?)

—he’s all the way in Wisconsin so you don’t have many opportunities for a closer look at his. You ask Sam and Tucker to take pictures and videos, change back and forth so often you almost forget which side of you is which, but the quality is never good enough to see what you know is there—

(but can’t explain, not with words, even though you try for the benefit of your friends because they’re the ones there for you when everything else has gone topsy-turvy, but you’re just a kid who leaks green when dead people hit you too hard, just a kid with bad grades and a lot of questions to evade, and what you’re trying to pinpoint frame by frame is something so beyond your vocabulary you can only shrug, can only say you want to know more about your powers and hope this is one of those white lies nobody catches you in the act of)

—so you stop.

Do you give up? No, but there are more important things to focus on. It isn’t shelving your questions so much as putting them on the backburner. There are ghosts to deal with. Ghosts that want to hurt you, ghosts that want to hurt humans, more and more ghosts with strange and terrifying abilities pouring out from the Portal all the time. Closing the Portal doesn’t slow them any, which doesn’t make any sense to you. Then again, Dad was up to his elbows in most of the Portal’s guts and wiring, so applying logic to any inch of it is pretty pointless. You’ve learned not to ask too many questions about anything with a Fenton sticker slapped on it.

You’re busy now, busy all the time, bruised and burned and even stitched up all the time. Super strength is only so good when you’re fighting things with teeth like hunting knives. But it’s whatever, it’s no big deal, really. Because you’re keeping people safe. You’re learning more about the Ghost Zone and the things that inhabit it. You’re learning more about yourself; your powers, your weaknesses, how quick you can be with a snarky quip. Yeah, your parents are aiming guns and questions at you. Yeah, teachers with red pens and detention slips are hounding after you. And yeah, you’re fourteen years old bare-knuckle fighting monsters and no one ever says thanks because they think you’re just like every other ghost out there or maybe that you’re some human-loving freak—

(and when you think of your life like this, in lists of who wants answers and who wants to see you bleed, it sounds so bad, it sounds like you should be one inch away from a complete breakdown, but is it weird to say you’re happy, is it weird to say you couldn’t imagine your life any other way)

—yet you grin through a mouthful of red-and-green and keep going. Elated? Maybe, sometimes. Scared? Absolutely, sometimes. You’re just a kid with eyes that flare like headlights when somebody’s pissed you off.

It’s only right to be scared, sometimes.

Still, it’s the weight of you that keeps you grounded, keeps you human when you need to be. Sit in a chair, walk across a bridge, it all makes the same creak under you as it would for Sam and Tucker. But take one of Skulker’s shoulder rockets to the face, you leave a crater in Central Park so big they decide to just turn it into another duck pond. A permanent new addition to the park, and all your face gets is a nasty bruise Dash takes the credit for. You let him, because Lancer overhears. Dash is the one getting detention for once, and there’s a nasty satisfaction to be found there.

You and Jazz share a bathroom, and she’s got a scale she keeps in the towel cupboard. Curious, you take it out one day after school and try to weigh yourself. Last time you checked, you were somewhere near 120, puberty stretching you faster than your appetite can keep up. This time, the numbers whirl past 280 pounds before the scale makes a metallic groan and crumples like tissue paper under your sneakers. Sheer reflex launches you into the air, and you bounce off the ceiling with your knees hugged so tight to your chest you can hear tendons creak, your heart a thundering jackhammer in your chest. Thank god you’re home alone, because you hover there for who-knows how long, too scared the floor will crack under your illogical, impossible weight, too scared you’ll plummet straight down to the hard steel of the lab if you try to stand, too scared you might plummet even further.

When you finally do scrounge up the courage to touch down, an air bubble in the old linoleum crackles under your heel and you damn near jump out of your skin. After that, all you can do is laugh and laugh until your sides hurt. You throw Jazz’s scale out in a dumpster a block away and never tell her what happened to it.

What does this mean? Is the weight of you optional? If you think about it too hard, does it become real? What about when you’re fighting, causing all that property damage the city hates you for? You’re not thinking of the strangeness of your mass during a brawl, you’re thinking in terms of survivability. Punch this hard to win, get punched this hard to lose. What about when you’re thinking about it at school? Why don’t you break your desk, or the floor, or the stairs?

You don’t know. Your parents might be able to figure it out if you told them, but you don’t. Knowing about you, about what you really are—

(a freak, a monster, an accident, an anomaly bleeding out energy with every burst of green light you bury into the spiny hides of other monsters, who knows how long until your white rings burn black, if one day you’ll look in the mirror and be no different than Vlad, not because you didn’t try your hardest but because there was never any biological choice, what kind of choice can a species of two even make)

—would just scare them. It’s easier, keeping them in the dark, even if it means they’re trying to hunt you down and take you apart molecule by molecule any time you’ve got white hair.

But it’s not just flying and invisibility and energy you can summon with a thought—

(ray or bolt or fire, you don’t know what to call your power, you never really did pay attention when your parents got going even before you had to worry about all their blinking tech going nuts around you, but sometimes your green light is cool and wispy and other times it's hot and sizzling, sometimes you know which one will bloom between your fingers and sometimes it’s a surprise, sometimes it’s almost like your body knows what to do in a fight better than you, sometimes it’s easier to stop thinking and just let it happen, to just be the freak that you are, to burn white-hot and damn the consequences)

—you have to worry about. You’re stronger every day, stranger everyday too. You feel a little bit more at ease as a ghost as time goes on. It stops being a strain and starts being an ease, even a comfort, and some days you dread the thought of going to school because a ghost might not attack and you’ll be stuck as a human all day.

That kind of thinking should worry you, probably.

But so what? You could sneak into your parents’ lab in the middle of the night and try more tests, more experiments, but really, what would that do? You’re a freak, plain and simple. You and Vlad poked your noses in places you shouldn’t have and paid the price, and that’s that.

Eventually you get sick of worrying and just let it be. You’re a freak who can walk through walls, disappear, and fly. You’re the freak protecting a town full of people who pretty much hate you. Really, what can you do? The same old same old, that’s what. Try and get a little more sleep outside the classroom, maybe. As for the townsfolk? Well, you can’t always avoid the property damages, but you can at least save a few lives along the way.

People even start to say thank you, even if it’s from a distance, even if they think you're some crazed vigilante ghost, and doesn’t that make this whole superhero thing worth it?

But then of course something has to come along and ruin even that much, ruin this budding chance at gratitude, at finally feeling like a real life superhero. And it isn’t a ghost this time. It’s a human. You hadn't ever considered humans to be dangerous the way a ghost can be.

Freakshow happens, and all that hard work is undone in just a few short days. Days you can’t remember with any clarity, just blurs of color and noise, your hands full of stolen money and no matter how hard you tried you couldn’t let go, you couldn’t stop. Attacking the cops when they pursued, terrorizing any humans that got too close, puppeted by that grinning, painted maniac who treated you and the other ghosts like animals, like slaves—

(minions, he’d called you all, and he didn’t even bother to learn your name before he sunk his fingers into your brain, and you never did find out who any of those other ghosts were, what their names were or who they had been before that crystal ball had pulled them under, and they were gone before there was a chance to even ask)

—and tanked Invis-o-Bill’s reputation to a whole new low. Trashing nearly every car the Amity Park Police Department has and robbing the city blind at the behest of a psychotic ringmaster would have done that even if you’d been considered the hero you try so hard to be. Oh well. At least nobody was hurt in all that, unless you bothered counting Mr. Lancer getting left in the custodial closet for a weekend. You mostly don’t feel guilty about that. Mostly.

Sam says you ought to count yourself too, but you try not to think about any of what happened—

(all that time spent exhausted and hungry, he never let you rest, not once, because ghosts don’t need sleep, ghosts don’t get tired, ghosts don’t need friends, but it’s over, it’s all over now, you don’t have to hear yourself laugh as the little humans scream below, you’ll never have to watch Sam fall and wonder if your body will listen to you in time, you’re yourself again, you’re in control again, everything’s alright, you’re alright, you’re safe, you’re home, you’re yourself again)

—and try to pass yourself off as fine afterwards instead, just confused, just tired, just sorry for everything that’s happened.

For weeks after the police shoved Freakshow into the back of a car, your dreams are red. Not with blood, thank god for that. No, it’s like a filter. A stain. Strawberry candy red, saturated fire engine red, the color Sam said your eyes were when you were under his control. It doesn’t matter if you’re having nightmares—

(more common than you’d like, but you’ve never been one to shout after a bad dream and you don’t intend to start now)

—or regular old brain dump dreams. It doesn’t matter if you’re dreaming of broken bones and monsters or forgetting to study for a test; it’s all filtered through that darkroom shade of red.

What does it mean? You don’t know. You don’t bring it up to Sam or Tucker. They’d just worry, and they worry about you enough as it is. Besides, you’re fine. The Circus Gothica billboard is up for two weeks after Freakshow’s arrest, and it doesn’t do anything to you, not like before. You don’t lose time, you don’t say anything creepy. Your eyes stay blue or green, depending on whether or not there’s a ghost in need of wrangling nearby.

It’s just a weird, harmless after effect, that’s your best conclusion. Then you do your best to stop thinking about it. Who you were under Freakshow’s control wasn’t you. It wasn’t. You tell yourself that until you almost believe it. Eventually, you dreams return to their factory settings. Huzzah.

Meanwhile everywhere you go, people badmouth Invis-o-Bill like they’re getting paid to do it. They call him—

(you)

—thief and monster and dangerous, they call him—

(you)

—a menace and a bad influence on the children. A liar. Traitor. Conspiring with other ghosts to earn the trust of humans to terrorize Amity Park all the better. Kids at school spread awful stories about Invis-o-Bill, say he—

(you)

—was probably the ghost of a troubled teen who got in too deep with bad people and paid the price, and now he—

(you)

—spends his afterlife seeking revenge on humans and ghosts alike. They say a lot of bad things about you, for a while. You try not to pay much attention. You’re getting pretty good at that.

After Freakshow, there’s a lull. That doesn’t mean ghosts don’t stop attacking or causing havoc, it just means that, for a handful of weeks, it’s just the little ones. Hungry animals and disoriented blobs and the Box Ghost. Easy stuff. You actually have time to unwind, time to let the tension bleed from your bones, time to catch up on all your late homework and even squeak your grades up to passable. It’s nice. You’d almost call it relaxing.

Of course, the lulls never last. You know this, you’ve learned this, they made you understand this from your very first—

(disastrous, embarrassing)

—fight with the Lunch Lady. You have one fight with Sam the wrong ghost overhears, and everything that’s happened is wished away. You are wished away. For a couple of days, you never walked into your parents’ ghost portal. You were never torn apart and melted back together by heat and light and pain. You were never Phantom at all. Worse still, you have no memory of your erased past, not so much as the slightest disquiet to niggle in the back of your brain when Sam walks up to your locker and starts going on about imaginary monsters like they're real.

Sam Manson—

(a stranger, a total stranger, just a bottle-black pretty girl you stare at because you’re fourteen and desperate for a connection you’ve never had and don’t understand, she’s nobody else, she’s nothing else to you but a chance at your first kiss and later you will hate yourself for thinking of her like that, not as a girl because of course she is that, but as a prize you might earn, and who cared if she was crazy because she just might have kissed you for some unfathomable reason, and Sam is so much more than the sum of her body, Sam is worth so much more than that, Sam is worth so much)

—is the vehement Goth girl who's in half your classes and is [unfinished]

In those stumbling, halting days of dismissal followed by doubt followed by a desperate curiosity to believe that there might be more to life than growing up and settling for less, that movies haven’t lied and there really is something beyond the disappointment growing up has been for you so far. Sam’s purple mouth is a thin, grim line of—

(worry, guilt, fear, shame, envy, panic, uncertainty)

—complicated emotions you can’t parse as you zip up the jumpsuit your parents got you for your birthday. You’ve never worn it before, the fabric stiff and reluctant to bend at your joints. You don’t know how they’re comfortable wearing theirs all the time [unfinished]

Sometimes after a fight wears you out, leaves you bruised and smeared with shining green, you don’t fight the transformation. Not because you can’t, but because it feels good to have that fake pulse vanish, to hear real blood pounding in your ears. The weight of you shifts too, and even though you’re so much weaker when you’re human, it’s easier to sink your fingers into the dirt, to haul your meat out of the mess your ghost left behind, easier to duck out of sight before the news vans and curious bystanders get too close. Nobody ever sees you. Nobody ever puts your bruises and Band-Aids and the trashed Dunkin’ Donuts together. It helps that nobody’s ever heard of a half-ghost, that Vlad was cunning enough to hide his powers. Everybody’s heard of the Wisconsin Ghost, but Wisconsin is a big damn state and unlike you, Vlad and Plasmius hardly look like the same man.

Everybody at school just thinks you’re the football team’s personal punching bag, which is definitely true. Thing is, after spending a couple months fighting ghosts, a gut-punch from a junior is kind of a joke. You’re getting ganged up by a bunch of guys in letter jackets behind the auto shop and you have to mime pain to get them to leave you alone.

Is this real life? Yup, and it’s hilarious.

Time passes, as it does. You get stronger, faster, heavier. You hone your powers. You stop losing control, mostly. New ghosts terrorize the streets. Old ghosts do too, they’re just smarter about it. They all know who you are by now. Hell, a whole other plane of reality knows your name by this point, knows who Danny Fenton really is. Funny though, none of them ever spill the beans to any humans. What better way to take down the one person standing in their way of world domination or an army of hypnotized teens or whatever they’re trying to score than to oust his secret identity?

You don’t ask. Maybe they haven’t caught on that humans have no idea you’re trying to keep a secret. Maybe there’s some kind of code among ghosts; don’t spill a guy’s weakness, even if you hate his ectoplasm. Maybe especially if you hate his ectoplasm?

You’ve had a couple more run-ins with Vlad too. Each time he changes, transforms, you breath hitches, because you can almost see it. Whatever makes up the both of you, piecing the mystery together through the differences—

(light and dark and it’s cliché as anything, it’s so transparently Star Wars, but maybe there’s something to clichés, because you might be the one wearing mostly black but he’s the one with a sucking core, a void, something more horrific for its absence, like he used to be full of stark white light too but it’s all been burned up and whatever’s left is just playing through the motions, pretending at being something else, who knows what it means but you know that it scares the hell out of you)

—between you and him. He goes on and on about how you’re more like him every day, but he’s wrong. He’s so wrong. You’ll never be like him, and it isn’t just a matter of morals.

What you are, down to the complex disaster of your DNA, is different than what makes up Vlad, and you don’t need to slide a piece of him under a microscope to see that. You thought differently once, but now you know better. A glance is all you need. What you are and what he is, has become—

(powerful yes, but ugly and hating and cruel, the rings that flash at his waist are just shadows reflecting light, trying to hide a black mouth brimming with hungry teeth)

—well, you might as well be different species.

Vlad’s crazy and Vlad’s a jerk, but he is right about one thing. There’s so much about the Ghost Zone you don’t understand, and it’s this ignorance that just might get you—

(or somebody else, and isn’t that an old favorite in the nightmares)

—killed. You don’t know if it was fate or a simple coincidence that your parents were working on the Ecto-Skeleton when Pariah Dark woke up. You’re fourteen years old and you can shoot lasers out of your fingers; you don’t have the wherewithal for philosophical theology. You’re just glad they got it functioning in time to stop the King of All Ghosts from overrunning the city, even if the stupid thing nearly kills you.

You don’t fret much about the Ecto-Skeleton vanishing after you pass out. You do, however, remember Pariah’s nasty grin—

(having that much power, it’s a burden, isn’t it child)

—when you stumbled under the strain. You don’t know if he meant what the suit enabled you to do or if he meant the power in your own two hands. Either way, you remember those words, like they’re branded onto your brain, and you don’t have a choice but to hear it over and over every time you try to sleep. They rang in your head like bells in the days after you’d pushed him back into that sarcophagus, stuck in bed aching and weaker than you’ve ever felt in your life.

Because it is a burden. Everybody hates and fears you, but at the same time they happily expect you to protect them from hordes of skeletal ghosts. Sometimes you panic, so aware of how young you are, of how little comic books and video games have prepared you for a life like this, hiding bruises and spinning bold-face lies to everybody from your parents to the U.S. government. Teenagers are supposed to rebel, sure, but if you ever come clean you’d be thrown in a cell and they’d never, ever let you go. Not just because you’re a criminal—

(and you are, thanks to Freakshow and thanks to dozens of ghosts, and you’ve left an imprint of your tiny, impossibly heavy body all over the city, and you’ve done your best to protect everybody but you leave rubble and shrapnel wherever you go, ambulance sirens wail through the streets every day, and everybody’s just as scared as you are, just as fascinated as you are, and yet so many students and teachers have left Casper High, so many faces you used to see everyday in the hallways have vanished, so many business and restaurants and homes sit empty, gathering dust and graffiti, and it’s your fault, if you hadn’t walked into the Ghost Portal none of this would be happening, none of this would ever have happened at all, and you’re too much of a coward to show your face, to tell anyone but your best friends what kind of a monster you really are)

—but because you can phase through solid objects, you’re considered a monster with less rights than a dog.

Sometimes you wish Sam wasn’t a budding ghost-rights activist. You’d probably have an easier time studying if she didn’t rattle off all these statistics and news articles, stories of government agents in white suits quarantining whole city blocks to purge the ghosts inhabiting them, of ghost attacks stopping all at once in little towns after strange men with guns and knives and felonies like grave robbing and murder slunk through in the night. Ghosts are dangerous, there’s no questioning that. But so are bears. So are people. Just because something is dangerous doesn’t mean it should be destroyed.

Maybe that’s why the ghosts have never spilled your secret. You’ve never tried to kill them. You just want them to leave Amity Park alone. Who knows for sure though? You don’t have the guts to risk asking any of them.

Still, this whole mess is worth it. It is. You can fly, for god’s sake. If you’re careful you could juggle minivans, mimic all your favorite action movies and outdo even the craziest Hollywood stunts. What kid hasn’t dreamed of doing any of that? But you’re not being selfish. You’re not. It’s like Dad says; you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. Progress is a disaster when you’re living it, when it isn’t past tense, when it isn’t all tidied up in a few short paragraphs in a high school history book. What’s happening now is worth it, for the future.

If you ever do tell Mom and Dad—

(you’re not afraid of what they’ll think, you’ve never worried about that, not really, they’re your parents before they’re scientists, and any experiment or test would be to ensure your safety and your health, because that’s what parents do, that’s what good people do, and they’re the best people you’ve ever known)

—you know they’d be able to break down your powers into reams of clinical data in no time. They’d figure out how you survived the accident, how your abilities generate and develop in power, maybe even pinpoint the how of your strange, mutable weight. They’d tell you what that light is, when you change, that light that reminds you so strongly of the stars. After all, just because they’re too oblivious to realize their son is the infamous Ghost Kid doesn’t mean they don’t know what they’re doing. They aren’t known as the leading scientists, engineers and weapon smiths in the paranatural fields for nothing. Mom’s practically got more letters after her name than there are in the alphabet, and while Dad may only have a fraction of that he thinks like nobody else out there. Most Fenton tech are his designs, wild and absurd and covered with stickers of his beaming face, and Mom’s the one who works out the bugs with fond exasperation.

Still, they have to get their knowledge from somewhere, and you’ve seen what they do down in the lab to the formless, red-eyed ghosts, the ones too weak to do much more than snarl wetly. Sometimes they snare something bigger and stronger, something fond of curling prickly tendrils around the nearest human and squeezing. More often than not it’s Dad that’s the unlucky one, always so eager to parse the secrets hidden in each fanged little beastie they’ve fished out of the Ghost Zone. He’s got nearly as many as bruises as you do, some weeks, but he’s never happier than when he’s holding a bag of frozen peas to his head.

After a good wrestle with something that wailed and whistled like a boiling kettle, Dad’ll limp up to the kitchen and settle heavily into a chair, grinning and running his mouth nonstop, talking about how much progress they’ve made today—

(wait ‘til the boys over at the GIW hear about that one, he’ll say with a bray of laughter, makes the piddly little Class Threes look darn near cuddly, didn’t it Mads, why Danny you should’ve seen the fangs on this fella, nearly bit through the exam table in one bite, y’oughta come down to the lab more often, Danny, seeing these spooks up close and personal’d be a great way to help you get over that silly fear of ‘em, and there you are, smiling meekly and holding up your hands and making up any excuse you can think of off the top of your head to keep you out of the lab when your parents have all their equipment up and humming, just in case, aw Dad I dunno, I’ve got this essay due, not today Dad I’ve got like six pages of algebra I haven’t even started yet, sorry Dad I’m sleeping over at Tucker’s tonight and his mom insisted I come early for dinner)

—and every time, Mom will smile indulgently, like she’s falling in love with Dad all over again. She’ll push him back into the seat and tell him to quit fidgeting so she can clean up the nasty cut behind his ear, and every time you smile behind your hand and think, how could Vlad ever hope to break your parents up? They only thing they might love more than each other would be you and Jazz and ghosts, and you’re all so much of their lives they can’t help but love you all completely. How they love each other and their kids and the ghosts they’ve studied all their lives, well, that’s like saying they love breathing. They love each other because without each other, they wouldn’t be themselves. It’s sappy as hell and like any kid you hate seeing your parents get all lovey-dovey, but you can’t help that secret smile as you walk out of the kitchen to give them a little privacy.

Seeing Mom and Dad so hard at work, so happy at work, is why you don’t tell them. They think you’re slacking off, they think you’re getting bullied, and they’re worried about you sure, but better they think their son’s lazy than a freak. If they knew what you did, what you could do, if they knew you were the one facing up against ghosts that made the ones they picked apart in their lab look like kittens, if they knew you’d heard all the awful things they want to do to Phantom once they finally nab him—

(you know they wouldn’t say it if they knew you and him were one and the same, you know you know you know, but sometimes you can’t help but be hurt anyway, to see all that fierce dedication focused on seeing whether or not Danny Phantom has bones, and if he does, how much pressure could they withstand before breaking)

—they wouldn’t know what to do or say or think. They’d be so eaten up with guilt, why hadn’t they known, why hadn’t they realized, what if they’d finally gotten a lucky shot in, what if one of all those cruel ghosts had gotten a luck shot in, what if what if what if—

(and you’ve pictured it a hundred times, it’s so easy to imagine the looks on their faces, the horror the shame the fear, and you know they’d love you all the same, you know this like you know the distance between the Sun and every planet, even little Pluto they just declared wasn’t a planet at all, but you’re young and selfish and definitely some kind of stupid because sometimes you can’t help but feel they’d shun you for the freak you are, turn you over to the GIW because they couldn’t bear to look on the thing their son’s become, and you know that couldn’t ever ever ever happen but still, it’s so easy to imagine)

—and you couldn’t do that to them. You won’t do that to them, no matter how many times Sam or Tucker try to convince you otherwise. How it is now, secrets and lies and detention slips and broken curfews, can’t last forever. You know that. But until then, it’ll have to do, and you’ll have to parse all your growing weirdness without all of Mom and Dad’s knowledge or experience, fingers crossed that their ticking and glowing machines won’t reveal your secret before you’re ready to do it yourself.

But you’re turning out stranger in ways you can’t even recognize, and for all that Sam and Tucker are by your side to help you as you change and burn brighter and hotter and faster and heavier, they don’t see it either. Jazz is the one who points it out, one day not long after the Spectra… thing, all out of the blue. She’s been noticing lots of things lately, and acting so strange, like she might have pieced it together. But she can’t have, of course not, you’re so careful, you are always so careful. Jazz is just clever, Jazz got all the brains and you got the leftovers. Everybody knows that. Even you know that.

She comes into the kitchen one morning with a curious little spin to her step, craning her head around and around like she’s running late for school and can’t find her keys, but it’s a Saturday. You’re there by the fridge, cobbling together something that might resemble an edible breakfast, moving slow because you’ve got a bruise all down your right side that makes it hurt to do more than breathe shallowly or raise your arm more than a couple inches. You sniff the milk and instantly regret this decision, and while you’re pouring the lumpy mess down the sink Jazz asks if the kitchen’s always been on the second floor.

You stare at her, too tired and baffled to give her the proper what the hell a question like that deserves, but she drags you over to the kitchen door and pushes it open, and since when has there been a door to the kitchen and oh my god the kitchen is on the second floor.

She gapes at you and you gape right back, and the rest of that morning is spent going over every inch of the house and seeing what else has changed compared to your shared memories.

Everything has, in some way or another. Doorknobs have shifted, cupboards have lowered, doors moved from one part of a room to another. Even chairs have changed their heights. There’s a whole new door neither of you can remember ever existing before connecting the upstairs bathroom directly to your room. Thinking back—

(staggering through your open window, mouth thick with the hot penny burn of ectoplasm and blood, your right hand pressed against the throb all down your side, and aren’t you grateful for your weight, your sturdiness, because before you finally peeled the faceguard off of Skulker’s exoskeleton and sucked that little jerk into a Thermos he got a good shot in with a rocket that hit you hard right in the ribs, and if you’d been normal there would have just been a dark wet hole where your torso used to be but lucky you, you’re every inch the creepy little freak Spectra called you, so you get to limp home and clean up as best you can on your own since it’s four in the morning and no way are you gonna wake Sam or Tucker up again, and you have to be quiet, you have to be so quiet, biting down pain, you can’t make a sound or Jazz might hear, grabbing the first-aid kid from your underwear drawer and slipping into the bathroom, and for once the hinges didn’t squeak, thank god, you think, thank god)

—you hadn’t even noticed last night or even this morning that a door had sprung up where there’d just been NASA and Nat Geo posters before. And your windows have moved, and your bed has moved, and you and Jazz just stare and stare. Why had neither of you noticed any of this until now? Why haven’t your parents? How long has this been going on?

What could cause something like this?

It takes half an hour to convince your mom that something’s off about the house, and even longer to get your dad to grasp what you both are trying to say. Their eyes just keep glazing over the differences, even something as huge as the kitchen being on the wrong floor. Once they finally do see though, it’s a whole other story. After the initial shock, they drop all their experiments and spend the next week measuring and scanning every inch of the house.

Their conclusion, a week and some change later? The Ghost Portal leaks.

Even with the huge steel door locked up tight, it seems there’s enough residual energy slipping through to warp, literally warp, the house. Somehow. The way your mom’s lips thin as she says all this means she’s not satisfied with this conclusion, but she puts on a wide smile when Jazz asks if you’re all in any danger. A smart question, one you think you might’ve asked yourself. Y’know, if you still needed to worry about something like exposure. Your dad just laughs big and loud and says not to worry about it, says if there were going to be any creepy side effects they would have manifested by now. Everything’s fine, they assure you both, but you look at the crease between your mom’s eyebrows and you wonder.

Later, when they’re out taking readings from the ectoplasm-damp wreck you and the Lunch Lady made of a McDonald’s and Jazz is studying at the library, you creep down to the lab and pull up all their documentation of the house. Most of it is dry as dirt; neatly typed spreadsheets and tidy, color-coded graphs (clearly your mom’s handiwork), but there’s also nearly a gigabyte’s worth of photos. Clicking through them, you can see Dad’s sloppy angles and the occasional square pinkie slipping into the frame. Most of the first hundred photos have been untouched, but the two hundreds have been filtered all to hell, like Mom and Dad went through the house a second time, trying to find something the human eye can’t see. Just shy of 300, the photos turn a dusty black and white, splattered in places with an all-too-familiar starkly glowing green.

No. Not splattered. A few spins of the scroll wheel zooms in on a crooked picture of the kitchen. There’s green all over everything; the fridge, the microwave, the drawers and cupboards, cluttered thickly at the kitchen table. These aren’t splatters. They’re handprints, slapped in layers and layers over themselves, like somebody dipped their hands in neon paint and went to town.

Every photo taken in that black and white filter shows the same thing. Handprints on doorknobs and railings, footprints on tile and carpet, green smeared and stamped everywhere, tracking the movements of something—

(somebody)

—for what must be as long as the Portal’s been active.

Why didn’t Mom and Dad say anything about this? Why haven’t you sensed it? There’s a ghost, an entity, some thing lurking around your house like it has every right to be there! Green gathered on the couch, on every table and sink, even the upstairs shower and your room and—

(the pictures of jazz’s room are nearly clean, the pictures of Mom and Dad’s room are spotless, but your room is practically bathed in green from floor to ceiling, your bed and desk nearly washed out by a poisonous haze, and no wonder Mom had looked so worried and no wonder Dad had laughed so loud, they know something’s wrong with you, they’ve always known you were messed up thanks to the accident but now here’s irrefutable proof, how can you lie your way out of photographic evidence, how can they look at you and not see you for the freak you are)

—oh.

You close the files, power down the computer, and walk quietly out of the lab. That’s… that’s all you can really do. Sooner or later your parents will knock gently on your door and ask you to come downstairs. Just a few tests, they’ll say. It’s for your own good, they’ll say. We’re worried about you, they’ll say.

But they’ll find out. They’ll find out what you are, and it’ll go one of two ways. They’ll either accept you as the freak you are, or hate you for the freak you are. Either way, there will be no more hiding. It’s… it’s almost a relief, to know the other shoe is finally going to drop.

Except it never does.

You wait, quietly, patiently, expectantly. They don’t treat you any different. They never say a word. When they call you down to the lab, it’s just to show off the latest in Fenton ghost hunting technology. Why? Why don’t they ask? Why don’t they administer tests, if not on you than on the house and the Portal? Why does nothing change?

They’re wrong on nearly every count, sure, but you’ve got hurts aplenty to hide. Sam and Tucker have seen the lightning splashed across your skin dozens of times by now, and when they hear the A-listers spreading this bad joke of a ghost story and see you laugh, they laugh too. There wasn’t much chance of hiding it for long from them, after all, when it’s so much easier to patch up the nastier cuts when you’re bleeding sluggish ectoplasm instead of blood pumped by a heart full of adrenaline.

The first time Sam had insisted on unzipping your suit to get a good look at the slash on one shoulder, Tucker cracking a half-hearted attempt at a dirty joke with hands shaking so bad the first aid kit rattled like a live thing, they’d both stopped cold. For ten long seconds, they just stared, pinning you down with matching expressions of horror. It was the longest ten seconds of your life. You’d been scared before, of being found out for the freak you are, of being overwhelmed by powerful ghosts, but this, you’re pretty sure, was the first time you were ever terrified.

But then Sam hugged you, and Tucker had smiled and squeezed your good shoulder, and that had been enough. There wasn’t anything to worry about after all.

They understand now why you gasp when your ghost sense goes off—

(shock like plunging feet first into a frozen lake, shock like drowning with a chest full of dead air, shock like electricity buzzing hot and cold and terrible through your nerves, leaving you breathless and tingling, your fists clenched so tight your knuckles burn white, teeth clenched and grinding as you dart for the nearest lonely corner to gather up your heaviness and summon the starlight in your heart)

—and they know why it took you so long to realize you don’t have a heartbeat when you’re a ghost. The first few times you changed, you’d felt it, felt it like a rush of blood flow to a sleeping limb, but it took weeks to put it together. To realize the stinging, cool pulse radiating from your hand to your chest wasn’t your heart but something else altogether. All that star-bright scar tissue pulses. Involuntary, but without any reaction to how much energy you exert. A constant, steady [unfinished]

Breathing is optional too, when you’re a ghost. You’d found that one out the hard way, choking on mud in that stupid duck pond and tangled in one of Skulker’s nets.

#danny phantom #my writing #deadfic #past me did present me dirty with all these FUCKING italics #you can take my 'danny's got serious anxiety' headcanon from my cold dead hands

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wastefulreverie · 5 years

Text

Plenty of Time

I’ve been dared to write by @the-nerdiest-nerd-in-the-galaxy so here you go Jules, I suck at refusing writing dares lol

Word Count: 3106

angst/horror warning

Mr. Lancer's English class. Tuesday, 10/12/--. 1:27 PM. Or, at least that's what the clock on the wall said, but nobody went by the classroom clock – it always ran seven minutes slow. No matter how many times they reset it, it always came back to those seven minutes. So, they just let it go – it wasn't like they needed the classroom clock. Mr. Lancer's class was still going to be severely tedious either way.

“-mind was crowded with memories; memories of the knowledge that had come to them when they closed in...” as Mr. Lancer read, only a handful of students followed him across the paper. A single student kicked his knee against the bottom of his desk and stood, unsettled. And he fled from the classroom, there was a spark of panic in his expression. Not many noticed, and none stopped him...

“...they had outwitted a living thing, imposed their will upon it, taken away its life like a long satisfying drink.”

…

Mr. Falluca's Chemistry class. Thursday, 10/21/--. 7:47 AM. It was a typical morning; jocks sliding into their seats moments after the tardy bell, nerds communing over homework, sneaky kids hiding their phones in their laps.... Although, there was something... off. Maybe it was that Manson pulled Foley aside and cried (cried, cried), awkward hands wrapping around each other as they comforted themselves. Maybe it was the screenshot that Roberts passed around, a text from his mom – who worked in the Emergency Room – that claimed that a critically injured teenager had been admitted.

Or maybe it was Gray's quiet declaration “he's been found...” that drew everyone's attention. But it didn't draw their empathy; after all, who felt sorry for a runaway?

…

Main Hallway. Wednesday, 10/27/--. 7:12 AM. Not many people arrived early to school, except for the bus-riders. And traditionally, bus-riders tended to be underclassmen – so a reasonable portion of the Freshman class was already at school when a familiar boy slipped into the hallway, guided by a weary red-headed girl.

To no one's surprise, Danny looked like he wanted to run again, curling into his pink turtleneck. He was gaunt and irritated, pale as a sheet and distant – like not all of him had come back. He absently scratched at his wrists and locked eyes with Jazz, pleading to leave. She frowned and sighed, lecturing him about scratching his injuries. He scowled and crossed his arms, shoving his hands into his armpits so that he wouldn't be tempted to scratch.

It was almost pitiful. Almost.

“He's finally back!” Tucker clapped, teasing his friend. His announcement attracted a few stray stares, but he, Danny, and Jazz ignored them. Danny deadpanned at his friend's antics and swatted Tucker away.

“I don't think he wanted a formal welcome,” Jazz informed Tucker. Danny nodded in agreement, brushing off exactly how many people were staring at him.

“I bet his disappearance was linked to Phantom's,” a girl whispered into her friend's shoulder.

The other girl sniggered and replied, “As if.”

“So...” Tucker waved his hand in front of Danny, reeling him back into focus, “Do you want to go hide in the library and catch up on notes? I know I brought some to your house but I managed to find some more last night.”

Once again, Danny nodded. Jazz traded Danny into Tucker's care and watched them ramble toward the library. She only stayed behind for a moment, carefully watching Danny's steps. Right, left, right, pause... and left.

A tall boy in a green sweatshirt approached her. “He looks so defeated,” he assessed.

Jazz pursed her lips. “I know.”

...

Ms. Capra's Government class. Wednesday, 10/27/--. 9:03 AM. At Sam's insistence, Danny sat at the front of the classroom. It gave the rest of the class a good vantage of their peer, much to his obvious displeasure. He spent a considerable amount of time fidgeting with the sleeve of his sweater, clenching and unclenching his fists, and tapping his foot against the floor.

When Ms. Capra handed out worksheets, he just stared at the paper, losing himself in it. For a moment, it was like he wasn't even there. Like he was just an echo blurring at the edges and fading into nothing... and then Tucker coughed, and Danny snapped back, like a rubber band. He found his pencil and began to doodle stars at the top of his paper, disregarding the questions.

“He looks like a ghost,” Mikey pointed out. “Are we sure that he really ran away?”

“Fenton? Have you seen him, of course he did,” Nathan scoffed.

“I don't know...” a third boy butted in, “something's wrong with him. He looks even skinnier than before.”

“Well duh, he was out starving somewhere....”

“Why do you guys even care about that loser?” a nearby blonde girl snorted. “He's just asking for attention.”

“True,” they chorused.

And the bell rang, signifying their release. Danny wasted no time gathering his belongings and limping to his next class, leaning on his friends for support.

Asking for attention... asking for it....

...

Cafeteria. Wednesday, 10/27/--. 12:24 PM. Lunch was usually a time to mentally relax, to breathe. To shrug off the stress of class after class and to chat with friends. And for many, lunch was also the peak time to exchange gossip. And today's topic? Well... it wasn't that difficult to guess. Bashing on the traumatized runaway was always a welcome discussion.

“He's got to be hiding something,” Star determined, peeking behind her carton of milk to subtly stare at Danny. “Look at him! It looks like he's sitting on something sharp, he keeps squirming. Tell me that isn't suspicious.”

“Yeah,” Dash laughed, “I wouldn't be surprised if there was something stuck up his ass.”

Star gave him a nasty look and swiftly elbowed his rib. “You know that's not what I meant. It's like...” she raised a hand to her chin and thought. “I can't think of the word.”

“I don't know about you guys,” Kelsey – another A-Lister – interrupted, “But I can't believe that he's back again. He's so dramatic!” She crossed her arms. “Cry me a fucking river.”

“He was always an attention seeker,” Paulina agreed, “but I feel like Star's right. There's something more... nobody knows where he even was! Mama said that in the hospital he wouldn't tell his parents anything. She was his nurse, you know? And... I wonder: where was he? After all, he just left.”

“Does it matter?” Kelsey groaned.

“Not really,” Paulina shrugged. “I just want to know what fucked him up that badly. It's entertaining.”

“That's what he wants, though! He wants your attention! Insecure bastard.”

“I'm not so sure...” Star pondered. “It actually looks like he's avoiding people. Look now, Val's walking over to him....”

The A-List addressed their attention to Valerie. Nobody really saw her eat in the cafeteria anymore, as cliché as it was most people figured that she ate in the bathroom... or possibly the roof. Ever since she lost her money, Valerie was just weird like that. And now she was approaching the talk of the school with no qualms, confidently crossing the threshold of screaming adolescents with a determined demeanor.

She rolled up the sleeves of her sweater and stopped in front of Danny's table, standing behind Tucker. Sam was immersed in some kind of whisper-lecture and Danny looked like he was about to fall asleep. Valerie coughed, attracting the trio's attention. “Danny?” she asked.

Danny shot up as if someone had stuck him with a hot poker. He gaped at Valerie for a moment before shutting his mouth and turning to Sam instead. Sam looked between her former rival and Danny, squeezed Danny's hand, and exhaled, “What is it, Gray?”

Valerie drew her eyebrows together. “I was speaking to Danny,” she stressed.

“Okay. What is it?” Sam repeated. When Valerie continued to stare, Danny met her eyes and flinched under her scrutiny. After another moment or so, Valerie broke the tension and sat beside Tucker.

“I was just wondering where you've been,” she spoke carefully. “We're all worried,” she added.

“Sure,” Tucker rolled his eyes. “'Worried'. Like everyone isn't talking shit about him. We're not stupid, Val.”

Sam smacked him. “It's like there's something in your head telling you exactly what you shouldn't say and then you do it anyway,” she hissed.

Tucker shrugged. “You cracked it; I'm a simple machine.”

“I'm waiting for an answer,” Valerie interrupted, turning back to Danny.

“Why?” Sam asked. “So you can feed the rumor mill? Where he's been is Danny's business and we really can't afford any more attention.” Sam placed her hand on the table, “Get lost, Gray.”

Valerie ignored her, focusing on Danny. “Why won't you talk to me?”

She was met with another blank stare, misted eyes and clenched fists. When he still refused to respond, Valerie's patience was beyond thin. She huffed and stood up from the table. “Fine,” she spat, “be that way! I'm sorry you're asking for this attention.” And with that, she spun on her heels and exited the cafeteria, letting the door slam behind her.

Danny's hands shook, quivering like leaves fighting the fall breeze. He bit his lip and shoved his hands into his pockets, praying that no one saw. He knew that hope was in vain but deceived himself anyway.

What had he been asking for? Why did they keep saying that? That he had been asking for it? Asking for attention... asking, asking, asking....

…

Unknown location. Friday, 10/15/--. 9:51 PM. The lights swung, like stars moving across the horizon. If it wasn't for the bonds on his wrists, it would almost be peaceful – but since he had been captured three days ago, nothing had been peaceful. He fought and fought and fought... to no avail. Would he ever escape? Three days already felt like an eternity, he couldn't imagine even another week of this....

“Let me go,” he complained, for about the seventh time that hour. “I'm just a regular ghost, I don't know what you guys are looking for!”

“No... you're something special alright,” Agent G's smile curled. He tightened Danny's straps, likely just to assert dominance. Out of Agents F, L, and V Danny hated Agent G the most. Something in him was just... hungry – he wasn't afraid to break procedure to implement his twisted sense of authority.

“No, I'm not!” Danny protested, kicking against him. If they were going to slice him up, he at least was going to fight back.

“Oh, you're asking for it,” Agent G laughed. “Quiet, ghost! Or else!”

He was having fun with this... sick son of a bitch-

“You try being quiet while you're strapped to a table,” Danny hissed. “I said let me go!”

“I think not,” Agent G grabbed Danny's wrist and started twisting it. “One more little peep out of you and I'll silence you myself, don't test me.”

“Fuck. you,” Danny grit out. He didn't want to be gagged again, but he couldn't let this bastard get the last word-

“Oh ho ho,” Agent G snapped his wrist back, breaking it clean. For a moment all Danny could see was red, but he bit back a scream. “So that's your choice? Okay then, no more talking for you, little ghost.”

Agent G moved away for a moment, leaving Danny with an aching wrist. He ground his teeth together, trying to ignore the fire in his hand with little success. The swinging lights were making him dizzy now, so Danny shut his eyes. He must've drifted off for a moment despite the pain (three days of dehydration would do that) because when he awoke, Agent G was positioning a saw over his neck.

“-only need the body. We'll preserve the head for now, ghosts can reattach body parts like nothing so it's not permanent. But I just can't deal with that thing talking all the time – easy solution, right?”

Wh – at.

Was he.

Oh God.

No no no.

SHIT.

“Y – you can't-”

Holy shit they were going to decapitate him. They were going to. DECAPITATE. him. What the FUCK – no no no no no nO NO-

“Are you sure, sir?”

“Yeah, it's Friday night. I say fuck it! Slice it off.”

He couldn't let them do this, couldn't let them, couldn't-

Danny started thrashing, doing whatever he could to avoid the saw. Though, in his attempts, he banged his wrist against the table and was greeted with twice the pain. This time he couldn't help but cry out, and his hesitation was condemning. His lapse in movement gave Agent G enough time to reposition the saw over his neck and slide it down. The teeth of the saw tore into Danny's flesh (gushing, ripping, pressing, pulliNG!) and then everything went dark.

The world was murky, pulsing. And he was slipping, falling – nonexistent? Where was he, what and where was his physical presence? … did what he thought happened just happen? Was he – decapit-

Please, no.

Gloved hands pressed against somewhere. His entire body felt foreign like he was in two places at once. Was he still himself? Or was he two chunks of halfa – a brain and a body, separated? Cut off at the throat? The gloved hands replied and pulled his head from his stumped neck, cutting the skin that still attached his body and head.

“...and he's finally silenced!” Agent G announced. The other Agents cheered, applauding their success. “Now, who has the key to the freezer?”

He longed to scream, to protest. Though, all he could manage was a slight twitch of his foot (useless foot!). They carried him under their arm, like the world's grossest football, and placed him on a shelf facing the freezer door. Not long after the deadlock clicked, he felt their first incision. And he sobbed into the shelf, wishing he was anywhere else, as they tore him apart in the other room.

...

Casper High parking lot. Wednesday, 10/27/--. 3:02 PM. Jazz didn't expect to find Danny waiting at her car, but when she saw him across the parking lot she subconsciously rushed her walk. Once again, he was scratching at his wrists, struggling to ignore the itch of his injuries. She sent him a cold glare but he never received it – he was too busy staring at the asphalt. She groaned and damned the length of the parking lot, wishing that she had reserved a closer parking space.

Other students stood by their vehicles, laughing and pushing at each other without a care in the world. She passed a group of Sophomore girls leaning on a blue Toyota and happened to hear a snippet of conversation... “What's up with Fenton? He's been so quiet.”

A snarky laugh. “Freak. I heard a rumor that he's gone mute.”

“Dash said it was because he was sold into sex trafficking.”

“Ha! Dash is an idiot...”

Jazz could think of a plethora of words that she could respond to that with but decided they weren't worth her time. They were just... mean girls that didn't know what they were talking about. They didn't know anything about her brother and they were rude. That's all they were... they don't deserve her time....

And Danny was still scratching at his wrists. He needed to stop doing that.

“Hey!” she called out, confident that she was in earshot. “Stop it.”

Danny looked up, emulating a deer in headlights. He hid his wrists behind his back and blushed. He mouthed, 'Sorry', and slumped against her car.

Now five feet away, she rolled her eyes and closed the gap between them. Jazz ruffled his hair and opened the passenger seat for him, “In.” At her instruction, he shed his backpack and maneuvered himself into the car. She slipped into the driver’s seat and started the vehicle, smoothly pulling out of the parking lot.

As she drove, Jazz watched Danny out of the corner of her eye. He was tense, unsettled. She expected that – anyone in his position would be. After a minute or so, he started fidgeting with the A/C, even though it was well into October....

“You know if that sweater's too hot you can take it off,” she suggested. It was actually her sweater; between the two of them, she was the only one who owned turtlenecks. “You don't have to hide it from me.”

He shot her another look of irritation (he'd been doing that a lot lately) and groaned. He unbuckled his seat-belt and pulled the sweater over his head, balling it up in his lap. The look he gave her said, 'Are you impressed, now?' She brushed it off. Danny's scar didn't trouble her as much as it had a few days ago; at least now it was starting to heal.

Before it had been a deep brown curve across his neck – now, it had faded into a pink line that wrapped around his throat like a ribbon. Their parents had deduced that it would fully fade in a month, much to Danny's relief – but his voice would take longer to return (if at all). At the moment, Danny could make a few squealing noises, but that was it. At the worst, they were considering investing in one of those artificial larynx aids.

She sensed that Danny was still feeling bad about everything. The reveal with Mom and Dad, everyone's bullshit opinion of him at school, his time with the government.... There was so much Jazz wanted to talk with him about, but it was so difficult to have a therapy session with someone who couldn't respond. So, until he could talk back to her she would just have to give him pieces of encouragement, positive advice!

“I know everything seemed pretty miserable today,” she acknowledged. He didn't look up from his lap, but she continued. “All those people talking about you, saying all those stupid – very stupid – things... they'll move on. This is the worst it will get – from here, people will pay less and less attention to you. I guarantee.”

He nodded absently and slipped back into his own head. Well, Jazz tried. And for now, that's all anyone could do – offer to reach out and give it time. Because at this point, they needed lots of it. The peanut gallery could say their bit and talk shit about her brother, they didn't matter. Danny's progression, his physical and mental healing, was inevitable.

Because he had plenty of time.

#Danny Phantom #phicc #fanfiction #danny phantom oneshot #angst #horror #danny phantom angst #dissection fic #kinda?#jazz fenton #danny fenton #wrwritings #OP

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marywardvvell · 4 years

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Billed as a contemporary update of George Huang’s 1994 film that both celebrates and skewers the Hollywood studio system, the series is written and produced by Kathleen Robertson (Murder in the First), and directed by Tucker Gates (Homeland), with Chris Cowles also producing.

In the series adaptation, Lou (Shipka), a young female assistant, works for Joyce (Kruger), a sole female studio head, at a company filled with manipulators, schemers and intrigue, but little do they know Lou is poised to outwit them all.

#kiernan shipka #THIS SOUNDS SO COOL #caos cast #caos article #swimming with sharks

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ducktracy · 4 years

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149. the village smithy (1936)

release date: december 5th, 1936

series: looney tunes

director: tex avery

starring: earle hodgins (narrator), tex avery (blacksmith), joe dougherty (porky)

a few reviews ago, i said that porky in the north woods was the first cartoon to debut the “porky signature” opening. turns out i was wrong, it’s actually THIS one! (a small error, though, considering porky in the north woods is the cartoon right after this one. still, my mistake!) one of my favorite tex avery cartoons at warner bros, chock full of disney rebellion and fourth wall breaks. a witty retelling of the longsfellow poem that pins porky as a clumsy smithy, which results in trouble.

earle hodgins does a wonderful job as the narrator. we open to him literally setting up the scene—after he says “under the spreading chestnut tree”, a chestnut tree falls to the ground, the “standing” village smithy not behind, lazing on the grass and most certainly NOT standing. the narrator sighs. “i said STAND. stand up, you lug!” the smithy does so, his back to the audience. “hey, this way!” he whips around to ogle at the audience before swaying bashfully. while lauding the smithy’s physique, comedy’s greatest friend, juxtaposition, strikes hard. instead of seeing the smithy’s brawny arms, we’re met with twigs, hilariously accompanied by his overly large, sinewy hands. recognizing the folly, the smithy takes a moment to inflate his muscles by blowing into his respective thumbs.

“and now, the blacksmith shop.” the smithy throws up his dukes and boxes at an unseen foe as the shack falls into place right behind him. contented with his new shop, the smithy goes inside to investigate, while the local schoolchildren come to observe the smithy at work. “they love to see the flaming forge and hear the bellows roar.” a wonderful closeup as the bellows lets out a ferocious lion’s roar, the narrator remarking “boy, what a roar!”

one of my favorite gags in the entire cartoon is when the children are observing the smithy. the narrator suddenly grows hotheaded, shooing them out. “alright kids, get out of the scene now! you bother me.” even better is the reaction from the kids, all grumbling and trudging away, one even kicking a van across the screen in defiance. hodgins’ voice combined with tex’s timing make for a wonderful end product of comedy.

with the smithy now alone, he pumps the bellows up and down and up and down and up and down up and down up and down up and down—the narrator repeats “up and down” at a furious pace, the smithy struggling to keep up, pumping frantically with his giant tongue hanging out of his mouth in exhaustion. another wonderful gag that is succinctly timed. even better is the dialogue spawned from the gag: fed up with his mistreatment, the smithy tosses away the bellows and directly addresses the narrator. “listen, chief! take it easy. we got plenty of time, this cartoon ain't half over yet!” tex avery provides the voice of the smithy (though i’ve also heard theories that this is tedd pierce, which i wouldn’t totally rule out either. i’m pretty sure it’s tex, though.) i believe this is virgil ross animation.

so, with that reassurance that we have plenty of time, the narrator introduces our hero, porky pig. great juxtaposition with the triumphant fanfare and then the pan over to reveal tiny, portly porky shaking his fists in the glory. the narrator takes a moment to recollect himself. “let’s see, we have the blacksmith—“ the smithy sticks his tongue out at the narrator “—the blacksmith shop... now, boys, we need a horse.”

bob clampett animates the scene of the smithy and porky looking for the horse, porky hilariously lifting up a magazine and a barrel on the ground, as if a giant horse would be hiding under such menial and small objects. the fated horseshoe clops grow louder, and a camel struts into view. “oh, my mistake. this little fellow belongs in our foreign feature picture.” a cane drags the camel offscreen, and the void is soon replaced by a white horse, thrown onto the scene.

the smithy pulls the horse out of his reins and leads him to a barrel, where the horse sits down like a human. measuring the horse’s hoof, the smithy declares “size 6 and 7/8ths!”, a number that would be frequented in quite a few cartoons, particularly porky’s preview, another avery cartoon, where porky himself labels the number as “(FUNNY)”. porky dutifully salutes and scours the shop for a suitable horseshoe, stacked in shoeboxes in neat rows of shelves. another director attempting to pull off such a literal gag may have gotten a few polite chuckles, but tex ensures that it’s funny. it’s not that wild of a gag if you think about it, but tex approaches it like it is. his love of jokes and gags really breathe life into his cartoons.

absentmindedly, porky reaches into a box of rubber horseshoes instead of iron horseshoes (cleverly named bad-year, a take on the goodyear tires.) for reasons unknown, rubber horseshoes were all the rage in the 30s, presumably because they were much quieter than iron and much more comfortable for the horse. unfortunately, being rubber, they aren’t so easy to smelt. lots of bounce-back. porky finds this out fairly quickly as he goes to hammer the horseshoe, then getting whacked in the eye by the hammer and glaring at the horseshoe suspiciously. very funny animation by bob clampett. porky tries again, getting hit once more. instead, he ducks out of the way, so the hammer can’t hit him. of course it does, konking him on the head. ah, but wait! the perfect solution! porky places a nearby kettle on his head like a helmet, and braces for impact as he pounds on the horseshoe. nothing. now complacent, porky takes off his “helmet”, and the hammer wastes no time whacking him in the face, completely unprompted. porky’s befuddled stare is lovely after the fact.

horseshoe in hand, porky goes to hammer the horseshoe to the horse’s hoof, but accidentally nails it to the smithy’s outstretched foot instead. porky gives him the okay (another high pitched “okey dokey”—i knew it was reused again!), but quickly comes to realize his mistake. animation is quite literally bouncy, rubbery, and amusing as the smithy walks through his shop, practically skipping as the rubber propels him into the air with each step. his footsteps grow higher in height, to the point where the smithy bangs his head against the ceiling. aggravated, he pries off the horseshoe, throwing it out of the shop in frustration. it bounces against a tree, and, being rubber, knocks right back into the smithy like a boomerang. this time, the smithy tosses the shoe out and slams the door shut, thinking he’s outwitted the horseshoe. not the case—the horseshoe flies in from behind courtesy of an open window and hits the smithy, a gag that would be reused in porky’s badtime story and later tick tock tuckered.

instead of letting his temper get to him, the smithy gingerly places the horseshoe on the ground with the utmost patience and grace. of course, the horseshoe comes back with a vengeance, slingshotting into the face of the smithy from just the slightest contact with the floor. a lovely gag with perfect timing. now visibly furious, the smithy places the horseshoe in a clamp, locking it so as to keep it still. locked in place, the horseshoe causes the entire shop to tremble vigorously as it tries to break out of its vice. the smithy puts the shoe out of its misery by shooting it with a gun, the shoe flopping down motionless. in all, a great sequence that really takes advantage of rubbery animation. not unlike porky’s dog drinking rubberizing solution and literally turning into a rubber hose character in porky’s tire trouble.

a befuddled porky wanders into the scene, bringing the smithy his trusty steed. the smithy orders porky to get him a (proper) horseshoe. the smithy literally smacks the horse into its reins, pushing its entire body through the exposed hole, while porky prepares the horseshoe, smelting it.

in many of my tex reviews, i often laud him about his use of timing and speed. a few times i’ve mentioned how the timing has thrown an entire cartoon out of proportion. this is always the scene i have in mind. porky grabs the smoldering hot horseshoe, running across the shop with the searing death trap unsecured in a clamp. porky trips, and the horseshoe is sent flying into the air, landing right on the horse’s butt and essentially branding it. the horse justifiably leaps up in agony, and with the cart attached, barrels into the smithy. thus, the smithy is sent toppling into the wagon, pulled uncontrollably by a burning horse.

just a great number of gags, one after the other. the chase leads out of the shop and right through a general store, reducing it to nothing but wood planks and half a foundation. past the traffic guard they zoom, spinning the guard around like a top in the process. whirling past a bank destroys the façade, and the interior is exposed as we spot a robber trying to hammer his way into the safe. a ditch digger ducks just in time for the horse and the smithy to race by, the digger popping his head up from the hole and ogling at the audience nonplussed.

a sign reads HERE THEY COME!, and certainly they do come, spinning the sign in the process so that the other side reads THERE THEY GO! the horse manages to flip the cart and itself over a chasm, maintaining no breaks in the chase. just a great setup as the sequence freezes for a moment, the smithy addressing the audience, “whew! what a buggy ride!”

the chase is lead to a fence, the pulled string slingshotting them BACKWARDS. as expected (yet still exhilaratingly so), the entire chase scene plays out backwards—a classic tex averyism. this entire chase scene is highly reminiscent of a chase scene in tex’s first droopy cartoon, dumb-hounded, though to a higher degree. same exhilarating chase, same exhilaration reversed. here, the damage is essentially reversed—the sign is flipped back to HERE THEY COME!, the ditch digger almost gets his head cut off once more (though this time he asks “say, am i missing something?”), the bank façade is restored and the robber concealed, the traffic guard is put out of his interminable top spin, a newly constructed general store with workers putting on the finishing touches is moved out of the way just in time for the horse and the smithy to not so safely return to the shop.

winded, the smithy wipes the sweat off his forehead. “say, listen,” he addresses porky, “tell me how all this happened.” porky re-enacts the scene. “well, i just had a hot horseshoe like this—“ he holds up another scalding hot horseshoe, “—and i was running like this, and uh...” as he runs with the horseshoe, he trips over once more, and the horseshoe is sent flying into the horse’s rear a second time. we iris out as the entire chase scene starts from the beginning, the smithy sent toppling into the cart and barreling into the general store.

so much to address! but, in all: this is one of my favorite tex cartoons at his tenure at warner bros. earle hodgins does a fantastic job as the narrator, tex as the smithy. the cartoon is so anti disney, so sardonic, so wild and out there, so unconventional. it’s still hilarious (and then some) 83+ years later, and still innovative and new. the fourth wall breaks are strong and feel natural, not at all forced or obligatory. the animation is fun and amusing, especially in conjunction with the increasingly frustrated narrator. and that chase scene is just impeccable. truly a scene that just goes off the rails. remember, all of that destruction and havoc occurred because porky TRIPPED and a horseshoe burnt the horse. 10 seconds in and the chase wasn’t even about the burn anymore, it was just a chase for the hell of it. and it totally works. i definitely encourage you to see the scene, if not this entire cartoon in general. i can’t implore you enough to watch it. i truly think this is one of the best cartoons we’ve seen in this journey. see for yourself and allow the cartoon to succeed in where my words have failed.

link!

#lt #the village smithy #reviews #looney tunes #long post #avery

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