#also danny waking up at 3am in cold sweat and remembering cw laughing his ass off: THIS MF KNEW ALL ALONG-

[reindeerswillsavethisworld]

Corpse au case fic where the trio decided to try cracking a murder mystery, except instead of angst it's a comedy of errors where they make everything worse.

Like. Danny comes out of a portal dead and translucent and glowing, and there's charred remains of a human body on the floor. So now all three of them are freaking out, and instead of asking for help, or finding an adult, or telling literally ANYONE, they decide to just. Get rid of the body. As one does.

So that's what they do: they break out Tucker's nice shovels (because god forbid Sam's family owned something as pheasant as a shovel, and Danny's too afraid of touching their family's Patented Fenton ShovelsTM for... reasons), they find a nice desolate clearing in the woods, and then they bury Danny's body like one would a very unfortunate hamster who met their demise too soon under very suspicious circumstances. They even stay at the new "grave" in silence for a minute or five in respect and DEFINITELY nothing else, you know. And so, they bury the body, and then they (try to) forget the experience as some horrific nightmare.

And then, a year later, there's an uproar: the Amity Park's police department found the child's remains in the woods! And you see, Amity Park is not THAT big of a town, and the police estimated that the body belonged to a 14-15 year old child, and, look, there's only so many schools in a small town, alright. Obviously, the rumours start very soon in Casper High: about how the kid could've gone to their school, about how they could've died, about whether or not anybody was missing them, about their identity, and some definitely-truthworthy-would-I-lie-to-you-bro-come-on sources insist that the kid was murdered around a year ago, around the time ghosts started showing up. And these rumours obviously reach the ears of Sam, Danny and Tucker.

Now, you would've thought that their first thought would be something like "oh no, they found Danny's body", or "oh no, they know", or even simply "we're sooo fucked". Except. You see, the night they buried the body? It was really cloudy. And dark. And, y'know, it's very easy to get lost in a forest. And they were too high-strung, you see, they completely forgot to leave some sort of a marker or anything. And also like, it was so long ago, you know? A lot have happened, they were sooo busy and the likes, you can't really blame them for forgetting some things.

And here's lies the problem: all three of them just fucking forgot that there was a body left to bury at all.

And then it gets out that the police can't even conduct any sort of DNA test because it became corrupted to the point of being absolutely unrecognisable due to exposure to a large amount of ecto-energy.

It's now looks like a bad set up for a joke: an identifiable body of a child, cause of death unknown; the probable involvement of ghosts or at the very least a very large quantity of ecto-energy; a probable murderer on the loose, which naturally breeds suspicion and speculation; a town full of all kinds of rumours; and a trio of absolute dumbasses, who after hearing that ghosts were involved immediately went to stick their noses where they don't belong.

Rejoice, Amity Park! Sam, Danny and Tucker are now on the case! Except they are all teenagers, and nobody in their right mind will allow teenagers to solve a murder case. Plus, them poking around would be highly suspicious, but Phantom, on the other hand?

(people seeing Phantom helping solve this case and coming to the conclusion that the ghosts were definitely involved was not on their bingo card, but oh well)

They don't go to the cops, obviously: Danny at least in part because he's worried they will call GIW on his ass or try to arrest him, and Sam and Tucker simply because fuck the cops (one because the police is involved in a militaristic, capitalistic corrupted system that breeds injustice and furthers the divide between average people and the wealthy, and the other because cops suck and will probably call GIW on his friend's ass). They also can't go to any other authorities: cops are out of the question, as is the mayor; laboratory personnel will most likely just throw them out; and there're no witnesses or known relatives, so they're stuck.

Therefore they decide that desperate times need desperate measures, and so they enlist all of their ghost allies on a quest, hoping to find the ghost of the kid. Considering the amount of ecto-energy they were subjected to, they MUST have formed a ghost, they only need to find them.

Except. The Ghost Zone is a big place, and they only have so many allies, even if some of them are a queen and a god. So Danny bites the bullet and does the most stupid (debatable) thing he has ever done: he goes to his enemies for help. They're surprisingly understanding and willing to help, even if some of their reasons are a little... strange (Skulker and Johnny entered some sort of competition on who finds the ghost first, Box Ghost starts to seek out coffins (??) and Youngblood is not above to start torturing people to finally have a friend that is not either an adult or a complete stick in the mud). And even then they still can't find the ghost.

In the end Danny goes to Clockwork in a desperate hope that he will be able to glimpse at least a little of what had transpired on the night of the murder, and to Danny's annoyance Clockwork laughs so hard he almost pops a ghost equivalent of a blood vessel.

A few weeks down the line Sam hesitantly brings up Danny's buried corpse ("MY WHAT" "Your corpse which we buried in the woods, Danny, don't you remember?" "Yeah, bro, I think you dissociated the whole time we were digging the hole and carrying your dead body" "WE DID WHAT-"), reasonably saying that, you know, they ALSO technically buried a body in the woods. On that Tucker just shrugs because obviously it was not Danny's body, the place of the burial was way off, he remembers that there was a really big stone to the left of the grave (he doesn't and there wasn't), so they are in the clear. During that exchange Danny's sitting on the floor and having a panic attack, because he really did dissociate the whole time and afterwards legitimately forgot that there was a body to bury at all.

After that conversation all three of them leave with a certainty that Danny's body is still there where they left it, whenever it was. And so the shenanigans continue.