#amity park no longer exists

[lar-mx]

Writing prompt #8

This time we have Danny as a woman. We also have Siren AU where Danny is a singer with an incredible voice. so enter the scene: one of Bruce's most honored business partners, organized a New Year's Eve party, the whole family was invited, along with many other partners and businessmen. The party starts without problems, the background music is perfect, neither too loud nor too low, and can be heard throughout the room. All of the Batkids manage to not fall into their chaotic tendencies and mostly stick together, until the main "act" arrives. A beautiful woman in a one-piece black dress walks onto the main stage, the musicians prepare for the performance. without introduction, the woman begins to sing:

While the melody invaded the party, the gaze of (insert member of the bat clan here) could not depart from the beautiful blue eyes of the song, everything would be perfect if it were not because suddenly a group of criminals burst into the party, destroying the magnificent atmosphere created by the melody. Although as strange as it may seem, the bad guys on duty were not here for the rich and very rich businessmen and their families (jewelry, money) but for the group of musicians and their lead singer. Everyone from the public, the musicians, the waiters and the singer seemed not to understand the criminals' demands at first, but when they saw that there was no turning back, the group decided to go with them to prevent the guests from being hurt. As the singer passed by (insert bat here) she pretended to trip and hand him a small device while I thanked him for catching it, winking discreetly, the message is clear.

[that-weird-thing-in-the-woods]

•~{ Heyyyy, So I realized I haven’t made a post mostly about Dani and Dan soo I fixed that :) }~•

The Sun and Moon

The JL needed help.

To be specific they needed powerful magical help, A new cult had started up somewhere near metropolis and they had started to steal different things in the past the JL just thought that they were selling the things they stole as they found no connection with the objects so they treated it like a normal group of thief’s.

Until they got a tip about a cult summoning so they fly over to stop it but they are to late and the beings that the cult is summoned and it has started to cause violent storms and extremely dangerous earthquakes and several other very deadly natural disasters all around the world.

So some of the JL and JLD are in the watchtower trying to find a way to stop the being but nothing is coming to mind until Constantine sighs and starts to draw a summoning circle with many runes but the only runes the JL can tell what they are is a Sun and Moon.

Than Constantine pulls two pendants out of his coat and puts them in the middle of the circle and takes a large step back with a determined but sacred face and than the circle starts to glow then a large blast of wind out of the circle and they see two figures one young female and one young male than they say.

“You called us, what do you have to trade?”

-•—••••••••••••••••—•-

•Background•

Danny has become the Ancient of space, wait let’s go back a bit.

Danny life has been fine, his parents accepted him but is it is really awkward and they always look at him with pity and guilt so it’s hard to be around him and with Jazz gone off to college there’s no one else in the house to talk too.

But at least Danny still has Sam and Tucker to talk too and with Dan redeemed and either traveling with Dani or with Clockwork in the Ghost Zone anyway with Sam gone with her parents off to a rich people thing and Tucker at a family reunion Danny is kinda feeling alone.

But it quickly becomes resolved as Dan and Dani came back to Amity Park to visit Danny and everything felt nice and calm.

Until Dani and Dan get taken by Vlad when they were about to go to nasty burger and Vlad takes them to make “better” clones of Dani as she was the only one of the clones to live longer then 10 minutes and Dan as his biologically could help keep the clone alive longer.

But Danny finds out fast and books it to Vlad’s house to get Dani and Dan His Children back and if Danny can beat the shit out of Vlad he wouldn’t be upset but Danny gets their too late and Danny is forced to de-aged Dani and Dan to keep them existing.

And to make sure Dani and Dan who have been renamed Dawn and Dusk stay safe and to make sure this doesn’t happen again [because Vlad is a vengeful fucker who refers to stay down] so he heads to The Ghost Zone then books it to clockwork and ask him what he should do.

Thats when Clockwork says that Danny should stay in his lair with the now twins and he’ll know what to do soon.

So Danny listens and with the children head to his lair and fall asleep.

-•—••••••••••••••••—•-

•Little Facts•

•Dawn and Dusk help / give favors for trades

•John didn’t want to call the Sun and Moon Ancients as they are known to “play” around with humans

•Danny mostly sleeps or is very sleepy because of how big he is

•The Beings that was summoned was vortex and undergrowth 

•Dawn and Dusk call Danny “Mama”

•Danny mostly stays in his large Space form

-•—••••••••••••••••—•-

•Appearances•

Dawn-

[ Dawn has a lot of gold jewelry that she was given by her Mama and by Dusk ]

Dusk-

[ Dusk’s star coat was given to him by his mama it is made out of real stars ]

This is the pendants

•~{ And that’s it! Hope you gremlins like this anyway until next time byeeee }~•

[suppose-i-was-worm]

Like A Lamb

**Idea taken from @nerdpoe's post- What the hell is this "Infinite Realms"?**

John Constantine would never call himself a kind man, much less a good man, but the kid at the corner table of this fast food restaurant was making him want to be both.

Not that John’s kindness would really help the kid, in the long run.

He’d seen so many things in all the time he’d been alive- wondrous and horrific in equal measure, but this boy- this teenager, barely out of childhood, was probably the most heart-breaking.

John had known sacrifices- marked by both men and demons. He’d seen the crumpled bodies after the fact, and sometimes he’d been able to save them beforehand. None of them were like this boy. Marked like a sacrificial lamb down to his bones by the universe- an inevitable end.

The teen was the beginning and the end of worlds- his death would shake the foundations of all that was, could be, and is. Time would stutter to a stop before restarting with a different beat, and John could do nothing to delay or stop what was coming.

How in the world could this kid still smile and laugh with his friends? How could he not feel the weight of an entire reality on his shoulders? If John, sitting across a dining room from him, could feel the pressure, why wasn’t the boy buckling under it?

John’s phone alerted him to a text from Zatanna- he was needed by the JLD.

With a sigh, he fished out the strongest protection amulet he had on him. It wouldn’t save the teen, but maybe it would make the rest of his life a little easier.

The kid looked up at him as he approached, all smiles and young innocence. John Constantine thrust the amulet into his hand and then turned, stalking out of the Nasty Burger.

He needed to tell the Justice League. Amity Park needed protection- there was a kid there whose death would change the world.

~~~

Danny flipped the little charm around in his hands, trying to figure it out. The sad trenchcoat man had handed it to him before leaving, and he had no idea why.

“What do you think it is, Danny?”

He shrugged. For some reason he didn’t want to hand it over to Sam for her to inspect it.

“Dunno. It feels important, though. I might take it to Pandora- she’s been teaching me a bit of magic stuff, so she can probably parse it out.”

For some reason, Danny knew he would recognize that man again if he ever saw him, despite only having looked at him for a moment. Something in his core rumbled contently as he tucked the amulet carefully into the back of his phone case.

The next few weeks, Danny found himself having suspiciously good luck. The food at home didn’t come to life, ghosts didn’t attack as much, Dash wasn’t a problem at school, and even the Fentons hadn’t been as insistent on catching Phantom.

That was another weird thing- His brain didn’t seem to compute that Jack and Maddie were his mom and dad anymore. He knew he’d been creeping toward that ever since his death, but it was like a switch had been flipped overnight. The Fenton adults no longer registered as his parents.

Finally he had a chance to slip into the Realms and head for Pandora, who took one look at the amulet he held out to her and laughed.

“You have been adopted, young one, and your core accepted.”

“Adopted?”

“Your nature is to protect- it sings in your blood and guides your instincts. An adult offered you protection, a safe haven, and you took them up on it. Had someone your own age done the same, your relationship with them would be vastly different.”

Danny frowned at the charm, but he didn’t put it down- it didn’t even occur to him to get rid of it.

“Why did he- what made him do that?”

Pandora ruffled his hair.

“He saw someone who needed protecting, I assume, and acted as he ought.”

~~~

“Bats, I don’t know what the Infinite Realms are. Yes, I know they exist. I just don’t know when they started to exist, and when my knowledge of the afterlife became outdated.”

Batman glared, and John rolled his eyes at the other man.

“Magic shit happens all the time. Zatanna can tell you just as well as I can that the Realms didn’t exist a year ago- and also that they’ve existed for millenia.”

“I’ve found a summoning spell for the king of the realms, but it requires a magic user. Zatanna is off-planet, so you’re up.”

John looked over at the speaker, Red Robin, whose slight form and dark hair made him think of the boy he’d left to die.

He’d thought of the boy more often than not- any research into the kind of sacrifice that would have so much power came to a dead end, and John Constantine hated that there was really and truly nothing he could do for the kid.

Maybe this Infinite Realms person might know something?

“Fine. What are the details?”

Red Robin perked up and handed over a heavy tome.

“Batman and I already set up the ritual space in the conference room, and a few other heroes are there to help out if the king is hostile.”

“Of course you have. Let’s go, then.”

The two bats swept off down the hallway, and John followed behind, studying the spell he would need to cast. It was fairly simple, and luckily wouldn’t require blood. He hated the ones that required blood.

As he stood over the sigils and spoke the ritual spells, the floor inside the protective circle began to writhe and bubble a toxic neon green. It was all John could do to stand straight as a rush of air spilled from the portal into the wide room, bringing with it the heavy taste of caution.

The Justice League took a step back as the first clawed hand reached out from the green, white and stretched beyond humanity. It scrabbled for purchase before finding it and pulling.

The creature that exited the swirling mass was something John had never seen before. If the situation wasn’t so tense, he might describe the creature as catlike, with a black body and white legs, as well as piercing green eyes. The similarities stopped, however, when the inky body flickered and lit up from within with the pinpricks of millions of stars and endless void.

This was a baby god, filled with the dreams of deities long forgotten and fueled by the hope of those still clinging on to life.

Its green eyes swept over the gathered heroes before coming to rest on John, and for a moment he felt as if his tattered soul was being judged by the cosmos.

And then the creature folded in on itself, the tense air around it changing from bitter caution to sweet relief, and John found himself face to face with the teenager from Amity Park.

“Hi.”

The boy sounded winded, but happy, and he reached inside his shirt to pull out a small chain necklace. John’s amulet was hanging off it, obviously well treasured and cared for.

“Did you know that you’re technically my dad now?”

Something on John’s face must have told the boy- the god, the sacrifice both dead and alive- that he was unaware of this fact. The kid shuffled a little, looking sheepishly at the floor.

“You- uh. Unintentionally offered safe haven. And I accepted without realizing what was going on, and- it’s weird. I collected your soul for you! Didn’t bring it with me, but I’ve got the pieces you’re missing.”

“I think you both need to sit down and discuss this.”

Bless Diana.

“Can you leave the circle, young one?”

The teen beamed at Diana and stepped out of the protective circle, smudging the sigils as he did and closing the portal.

“I can, yeah. Pandora says hi, by the way.”

John watched as the boy chattered away about his ghost friends to Diana while she led him to a seat, and then sighed, moving to join them. If he needed help with being a new dad, surely Bats could help, right?

[im-totally-not-an-alien-2]

Halloween prompts year 2 day 28

Thomas stared down at Bruce-no- Danny as he led him by the hand toward what he had dubbed as his "Secret Lair" which was just an old fall out shelter in the woods that had been well hidden and forgotten about. The door to it was old and still buried under years of dirt and plant growth, requiring Danny to phase them into it which made Thomas wonder how his grandson had found it in the first place.

Inside was surprisingly high tech. "You have a secret lair filled with all this equipment but don't have any weapons or armor?" Thomas asked, making mental preparations to fix that.

Danny sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck and explained his only allies were two other 14 year olds who were also untrained, unarmed, unarmored, and unsuper-powered which would explain why Danny was so excited to be working with an adult vigilante who at least knew what they were doing.

The kid didn't even mind when some of his more evil or harmful rogues "stopped showing up" thankfully no one would really question the reclusive Vlad Masters "going back to Wisconsin" only to never be seen again. No one saw much of him before coming to Amity Park, it made since he would become a hermit again once he had his fill of human interaction.

And if hes later found dead in his cheese castle? Well, the body had decomposed too much to really say what killed him. His will left everything to a Daniel James Fenton/Daniel James Masters which visibly infuriated Danny. Thomas mentally patted himself on the back. It was a good call to get rid of that one. The will was a surprise, though one that can only benefit Thomas in his crusade of protecting his grandson. Its not like he can return to a timeline that no longer exists anyway.

Unfortunately this doesn't stop the bats from hearing about "Batman" operating in a city in Illinois for the past few months...

[thevoidstaredback]

On the Watchtower, Batman, Wonder Woman, and Raven had completely taken over one of the smaller meeting rooms. No one was allowed in and all the cameras for the room had been turned off. Wonder Woman and Raven had said it was overkill, but Batman had insisted it was necessary. They didn’t argue, so the room stayed a black space on surveillance.

The entire table had been covered by information pertaining to the Ghost Investigation Ward and the Department of Metahuman Affairs. Information which was getting shadier and shadier by the paragraph. Information that was giving them more insight as to who Phantom was.

The oldest files that even mentioned the G.I.W also mentioned a young hero by the name Phantom. They describe Phantom as a villain, fighting tooth-and-nail, destroying everything in his path and attacking anyone within sight. As the files go on, the more detailed they become. Describing fights, property damage, powers, attacks, and even more ghosts. There’s also a significant number of mentions of some place called the Ghost Zone, later corrected to the Infinite Realms.

The more they read, the more horrified the heroes became. In all of these files, Phantom and the Realms Beings are described as monsters to be captured, studied, and eradicated. It wasn’t right.

Cloning technology was another thing they came across, though all of the papers were under the name Vlad Masters. Failed clones, destabilization, and the templates that were used: A fourteen year old boy named Daniel Fenton and hero Phantom. Two names and faces that Batman knew as Danny ‘Phantom’ Nightingale.

Vlad Masters apparently worked alongside the G.I.W while he lived as Mayor of Amity Park, Illinois. A place that no longer exists. Godfather to the very boy he’d been trying to clone. When he died, a disease from his college days catching up with him, all his research had gone to the G.I.W, except for one thing.

There was an empty file simply titled Ghost Portal. Although it was empty, the file had been corrupted, releasing a virus that Batman managed to catch and isolate quickly enough so that it didn’t disturb anything.

Batman would bet anything that whatever had been in that file was a lot more detailed than the simple picture Phantom had drawn up for them.

“How much do you think they had on the portal?” Wonder Woman asked.

Raven hummed. “Probably a lot more than any of us would like. Especially if that Vlad guy from the other files had any part in it.”

“Indeed,” Batman agreed, “He kept quite the detailed notes.”

Wonder Woman picked up a printed file full of Phantom’s escapades on paper, one that she’d flipped through at least a dozen times. “It’s horrible what he’s been through.”

“There’s not gonna be any more information in there,” Raven said as she gently took the folder from the demigod’s hands, “Can you find anything we haven’t poured over a million times?”

No one said anything for a few minutes, the sound of Batman’s keyboard being the only real noise for a while.Then, he said, “Nothing that we don’t already know.”

“So let’s go over it again.”

Suppressing a groan, Raven folded her legs under her and let her magic float her over to the table. The two adults walked.

Batman had a map projected onto the whiteboard. Using a marker, he marked out where they could guess Amity Park once was. “Let’s start here.”

“In the town that doesn’t exist?”

“Yes.”

Wonder Woman nodded. “How did it disappear?”

Raven rifled through the papers again. “It faded out over time. It was a tourist trap for a while, but it eventually lost its business.”

“Why?” Batman asked.

Finding the paper she wanted in the folder on Danny Fenton, somewhere in Vlad Master’s notes, Raven picked out a single sided piece of paper. “It was known as the most haunted city in America. After a while, apparently, ghosts just stopped showing up. Phantom stopped appearing and the tourists stopped coming. I assume the locals all moved out. After that, the city was absorbed by the local wildlife.”

Batman hummed. “There’s no ruins.”

Wonder Woman blinked, also taking a paper from the folder Raven had opened, this time a picture. “But there is, see?”

The picture was, indeed, of the ruins of a small city. No skyscrapers, but several businesses, lots of homes, a mall, parking lots, schools, and parks.

The map on the board zoomed out to show all of Illinois. “There’s no ruins like that anywhere in the state.” It zoomed out again. “There’s no ruins like that anywhere in the country.”

“You check the rest of the world?” Raven snarked quietly.

“Yes,” Batman said, “There’s none.”

“They have to be somewhere,” Wonder Woman argued, “Phantom confirmed that he was born and raised on this Earth. There are records of him going back to our estimated time. He himself said he was born in that town. Where could it have gone?”

There was a long pause for another long minute. Then, Batman turned his back to the map and rifled through the papers. When he finally found what he was looking for, he put it on top of the pile for the girls to see before he found his way back to the computer. “The Ghost Investigation Ward was absorbed into the Department of Metahuman Affairs.”

“So?”

“The DMA keeps records of everything, including records from every group that they absorb. Employees, research, experiments, permission, even birthdays.”

“If you can gain access to what they’re doing,” Wonder Woman started.

Raven touched back down, opting to stand again. “We can find every dirty little secret they’re trying to-”

“Done,” Batman said.

“-hide.” Raven finished quietly. “Alright, cool. What’d you find?”

Batman highlighted a few paragraphs, sending them to be projected on the whiteboard instead of the map. He walked over and erased the marker. “Even after being absorbed into an official government entity, everyone working for the G.I.W goes by a letter of the alphabet. The Heads of Department go by the Greek letters, Alph, Beta, and Gamma. In recent years,” the words switched to a picture too similar to the portal Phantom had drawn up for them to be a coincidence, “they’ve begun work on a project called Project Gateway.”

“Phantom’s Portal,” Raven gasped lightly.

Batman nodded. “According to official files, it hasn’t made any headway past sketches from old notes. But, I did find travel logs going to and from Pakistan.”

“What’s in Pakistan?”

“The League of Assassins.” Wonder Woman answered. “They’re working with the League?”

A hum. “Most likely,”

“We need to warn Red!” Raven didn’t quite yell, but it was a near thing.”

Batman shook his head. “Red Robin, Constantine, and Zatanna will be fine. They’re prepared. We need to focus on this.” The slide changed again to experiment logs. Names paired with subject numbers.

“The coma victims.”

“The Anti-Ecto Acts were vetoed before they could become law. However, when the G.I.W was absorbed into the DMA, they were reworded into what we know as Anti Metahuman Laws.”

“Those laws didn’t condone human experimentation!”

“No. But, according to the G.I.W, the people they’re experimenting on aren’t human.”

“I don’t understand,” Raven interrupted, “None of those people went missing. None of them have anything in common. Why them?”

“Not quite,” Batman said, “Within a few miles of each victim’s home, there are rumors of hauntings. Ghosts, unrested spirits, poltergeists, et cetera.”

“They were picked,” Raven asked slowly, “because these people thought they were ghosts?”

“It would seem that way, yes.”

Wonder Woman sighed. “I’ll call Superman and Red Robin. Their teams will need to be made aware.”

Part 27 Part 29

[vodkassassin]

Amity Park didn’t return to Illinois after they were transported to the ghost zone.

After all, the Zone is fickle even in transporting singular entities like the smallest blob ghost. How about an entire town, with all those people in it?

Instead of Illinois, they end up slightly off the coast of New Jersey, a long time before Amity Park, Illinois ever existed.

Fixing damages that happened to the town during the transfer is considered a total loss, so they scrap everything and rebuild. Since the ghost issue seems to not be going anywhere ever, the decision to lean into the aesthetic and embrace it instead of denying and fighting it is nearly unanimous (save for a few ghost hunters here and there, but they are the minority).

It’s easy to slide into their new existence. Things are very different from the modern life they’re all used to, but much is still the same.

Phantom is always there to protect.

Hauntings are a part of their very foundations.

Amity Park was always pretty isolated, all things considered. So they continue on.

Tucker later on becomes mayor of the new town Gotham (Sam has a heavy hand in convincing everyone to go along with the name). He holds his position much longer and with far higher approval ratings than his predecessor.

Sam eventually marries someone who moved to the newly established Gotham from the mainland, on a business venture, whose last name is Wayne.

Together, they inherit what’s left of the immense Manson wealth.

People from the mainland come and go, providing economy. Not a lot of them stick around, too uneasy of the supernaturally dreary atmosphere of Gotham Island and it’s frankly hostile architecture. The Amitians — Gothamites now — don’t really get it. What’s wrong with ghosts??

The original townspeople are so saturated with ectoplasm at this point that they’ve ceased aging. They die eventually, but immediately become ghosts and just make the trip through the portal to become citizens of Phantom’s kingdom in the Infinite Realms. All things considered, nothing much changes after death, either.

However, it’s soon decided that before any more new people can move to Gotham, the portal must be closed and locked for the safety of the regular humans who are not as immune to the influence of the Zone.

So the portal is buried and hidden, locked and guarded by the eternal soldiers of the Ghost King, the key safely kept on the King’s person at all times.

Life goes on. Years pass. The true origins of Gotham fall into the realm of the forgotten. Eventually, it becomes what it is today.

Batman and all.

The Batcave is more home to Bruce Wayne than even the manor that caps it. That’s because in the cave, he is a step closer to a portal to the Infinite Realms that has been locked and hidden deep underneath the land that once belonged to his ancestors, the Manson-Waynes.

As a direct descendant of one of the original Amity Park townspeople, and one who was (is) so closely tied to the haunt of the Ghost King himself, Bruce has always had a special and innate connection to the town and the land that his city is built on, but never really knew why.

He just thinks of it as his father Thomas explained it to him; the Manson-Waynes, later the Waynes, had been one of the founding families families of Gotham — alongside the Fenton, Baxter, and Sanchez families. Since the other families have long since died out, it’s up to the Waynes to uphold their legacy, and that duty falls to Bruce.

Or so that’s how Thomas, who knew nothing of Gotham’s ghostly, Amitian origins, understood it.

It’s not until Jason, back from the dead, becomes a regular part of the family again, that Bruce starts feeling as if something is different about the cave, and then later the city at large.

Almost as if it’s been awakened, somehow.

[flamingpudding]

Fictober23 Prompt: 1 - "It's not too late, let's go."

Fandom: DPxDC

Rating: G

Warnings: -

Danny frowned, his head resting on his arms as he sat in a café, staring at nothing in particular. Tucker was sitting next to him, typing away on his PDA and Sam was across from him glaring at his current state of dramatic pouting, frowning and sulking while ignoring his favorite coffee order she had especially ordered for him somehow even though the store did not even have it on their menu.

"Danny, how much longer are you going to sulk?"

"I don't know. How much longer until my next chance of ever meeting someone from outer space?"

"Danny."

"We missed the Hero Gala, Sam! That was our one and only chance!"

He looked away from her like a stubborn toddler. He knew he was being especially dramatic but his friends and him had planned this whole trip solely for meeting members of the Justice League in person. For one, to maybe meet the people that have been ignoring their cities' call for help for years now and request it personally if per call won't work and two, fulfill some of their own personal selfish desires to meet the hero's each one of them admired.

Though their trip clearly had been eventful considering how a lot of his ghost rogues tried to stop him from even leaving Amity Park, they also learned about the whole media black out surrounding Amity. Turns out, the reason the Justice League was ignoring them was entirely because they didn't even know they existed in the first place. It was a miracle that they even learned about a Hero Gala in Metropolis if it weren't for an invitation somehow making it to the Mansons Estate.

Fun fact. Even if the invitation made it to them. Once they did make it to the Gala location they learned that it had happened years ago. Well wasn't that just great, and here Danny had hoped to get some help and maybe meet Superman or better Martian Manhunter.

Slamming his head onto the table and gaining the attention of some other cafe visitors briefly. Danny only turned ever so slightly so that his cheek was squished against the cold table surface. Still refusing to look at Sam but instead watched Tucker who was by now frowning at his PDA.

"Guys, I think there is more to it than us being simple late a couple of years to a Gala." Blinking made a noise to ask him to elaborate while Sam verbally asked why.

"Things didn't add up when we first left Amity, aside from all your ghost rouges were even trying to make us stop leaving until the very last second. Look at this, this is a photocopy of our last news paper from home and this-" Tucker slit a paper across the table and pointed at a specific spot at the top of the paper so both Danny and Sam could see it clearly. "-is a news paper printed today from Metropolis."

"I don't get it." Danny honestly stated staring at the spot Tucker had pointed it. Sam proceeded to hit the back of his head lightly, apparently having seen what Tucker was pointing out to them.

"The dates are way too far apart." She stated and Danny blinked, looking back at the printed date and the date displayed in the image of Tuckers PDA. "Are you sure you didn't save up an older newspaper?"

Tucker gave him an unimpressed stare. "Look at the headline. That's the incident that happened right before we went on this trip."

"Okay but what does that mean?"

"From what it looks like. Amity Park lives in a time bubble. Our technology as well as date seems far behind from everything we saw ever since we left. Even my beloved PDA appears to be old technology here."

The tree sat in silence for a moment, mulling over what they had found out so far after leaving Amity for the first time. But now that they thought about that, Amity was a closed community. There were hardly any people coming in and out of their town. In addition the only one who had ever entered their city from the outside was Vlad and even he didn't talk much about any other cities or people he could possibly know outside of Amity.

"That's a pretty interesting topic you guys are talking about."

Startled, the three looked up to see a new face that had appeared out of nowhere and was spitting next to Sam. The boy with auburn hair and yellow eyes who looked only a bit older than them and was smiling brightly at them with a back of chips in his hands.

"So you guys lived in a time bubble? That sounds interesting, can you tell me more?"

A second later two black haired teens appeared next to the boy, one sheepish and in a punk style and the other frustrated and appearing to wear more formal clothing. The frustrated one eyed them for a moment and Danny caught his eyes, noticing the calculating look and couldn't help narrowing his own eyes on him.

"Sorry about my friend, he sometimes acts before he thinks."

"I have a friend like that too, don't worry." Tucker answered and Danny shot him a quick glare before turning his attention back to the three newcomers.

"We couldn't help but overhear what you guys were talking about. You missed your chance to go to a hero gala right?" The sheepish one said after exchanging a look with the other black haired teen and Danny couldn't help but feel like there was some silent communication going on. The same he had at times with Tucker.

"So what?" Sam huffed, not willing to talk about their woes and sharing information with strangers.

"We happened to be on our way to one that's not open to the public but we could help you get in. Granted, I would like to hear a little more about your situation and how you missed the one you originally wanted to go to." In other words, give us information and we will get you to somewhere where you can meet hero's. Danny narrowed his eyes further, there had to be more to this catch.

His distrust must have been visible as the formal clothing black haired teen let out a sigh. "Look we have experience with time shenanigans, so we might be able to get you into contact with people that can help, from Young Justice or maybe even the Justice League."

"No one just offers help like that, without getting something out of it." Sam huffed arms crossed and glaring at them. Tucker also eyed them with suspicion and Danny had yet to let up on his distrustful glare.

"Well we do. So common, the private gala is still going. We only escaped from it for a little bit to get this guy some coffee. It's not too late, let's go! We can figure out the whole time bubble thing on the way there!" The brightly smiling auburn haired answered instead bouncing in his seat next to Sam. Eager to have Danny and his friends come along.

Only way later did Danny learn that the three teens that snuck them into a privat Hero Gala were actual members of Young Justice but that was only after they figured out the whole Amity lives in a Time Bubble situation.

[phantomwithbreakfast]

⊹₊⟡⋆ 𝐃𝐏 𝐎𝐂 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐝𝐞, 𝐃𝐚𝐲 𝟎𝟏:

𝙄𝙣𝙩𝙧𝙤𝙙𝙪𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨

⟢ Basic Info — Name: Hailey • Age: 19 • Gender: Female • S.O.: Possibly bi • Species: Half-Human / Half-Ghost • Residence: Amity Park

⟢ Appearance — Hair: Long, two-toned black & white (born with it, reversed after transformation) • Human Eyes: Bright ocean blue • Ghost Eyes: Glowing green (turns pink when extremely angry)

Backstory 

⟢ The backstory is based on my personal headcanon and features my OOC AU version of Danny.

· · · · ·

She had been dying long before the portal.

Not in the way that people notice. Not in the way that makes them stop and ask what’s wrong.

It wasn’t fast. It wasn’t violent. It wasn’t loud.

It was slow. A quiet kind of fading. The kind that starts with loneliness.

She remembered being a child, bright-eyed and full of wonder, dreaming about the stars while the world around her turned cold.

She remembered laughter that wasn’t meant for her. Life had no reset button, no manual, and definitely no pause option when things got too messy.

She learned early that pain wasn’t always loud.

Sometimes it came in whispers, in the absence of touch, in the way people pretended she wasn’t there.

Sometimes it came when they forced her to move schools, ripping her away from the only friends she had, making her start over again and again and again.

She stopped trying after a while. Stopped believing that anything she built would last. Stopped believing that people meant it when they said they cared.

Her father passed away. And with him, she lost a part of herself.

She didn’t talk about it. She didn’t cry.

She just existed… moving through life like a ghost long before she ever became one.

Until him.

Until Danny.

The boy with messy black hair, tired eyes and the stupid NASA shirt, standing alone at the bus stop like he didn’t belong anywhere either.

She didn’t know what made her talk to him that day. Didn’t know why he looked at her like she was someone worth knowing. Didn’t know why, for the first time in years, she felt alive.

Maybe that’s why she followed him into that lab. Maybe that’s why she didn’t listen to him when she should have. Maybe that’s why… when she reached for the button, she didn’t stop to think about what might happen.

Because deep down, Hailey had always known—

She was never meant to stay human.

⊹₊⟡⋆ 5 years later ─────

Hailey didn’t believe in fate.

If fate were real, she wouldn’t be here—standing on the crumbling edges of a city she no longer belonged to, breathing air she wasn’t sure was even hers anymore.

Five years. Five years since she died.

Five years since she crawled out of that portal, shaking, terrified, her DNA was rewritten by something that never should have existed.

Five years since she last saw him.

Danny.

Or… whatever was left of him.

She wasn’t sure who had changed more—him or her.v

She had spent years running, hiding, trying to make sense of what she had become.

And Danny?

Danny had become something… colder.

Darker.

She saw it the moment he turned to face her, standing there in the ruins of their past, his eyes… dead and empty, his smile too sharp, too… cruel.

He looked at her like she was a ghost.

She supposed she was.

“Well, well.” His voice was nothing like she remembered—low, detached, laced with something almost amused. “Look who decided to haunt… me.”

Hailey’s chest tightened. She hadn’t wanted this. Hadn’t wanted to come back. Not really. Hadn’t wanted to see him like… this.

But there was nowhere left to run.

She had spent so many years pretending she didn’t miss him, pretending that what happened hadn’t broken something inside her.

And now he was standing right in front of her, and all she could think was—

“I thought you were… dead,” she giggled carefully.

Danny laughed.

Not a warm laugh. Not the kind she remembered. This one was cold, detached… unforgiving.

“I am.”

Hailey swallowed hard, her hands curling into fists.

Five years ago, they had been almost everything to each other.

Now?

Just… ghosts and something in between, echoes of who they used to be.

Being… Blorbo.

Personality & Traits

Hailey is a vibrant, playful, and compassionate person, but she struggles with deep emotional instability due to past trauma. Her experiences have shaped her into someone who cares deeply for the people she loves, but she also battles inner demons that make her unpredictable at times.

♥︎ Positive Traits: Joyful, playful, and energetic • Kind-hearted and deeply compassionate • Helpful and always ready to support others • A natural protector, willing to risk herself for loved ones • Creative, loves Sci-Fi • Has a big heart and strong loyalty toward friends

✘ Negative Traits: Impulsive – Often acts without thinking, which gets her into trouble • Lazy at times • Prefers fun over responsibility • Emotionally unstable – Can swing from euphoric to distressed quickly • Immature in certain ways – Still learning to control her emotions • Nervous & easily overwhelmed – Feels lost when things go wrong • Mentally fragile – Struggles with trauma and disorders

❀ Mental Health: She has endured a rough past, including severe bullying, betrayal, and personal loss. As a result, she suffers from various mental health struggles that impact her daily life and decision-making. ADHD – Struggles with focus, restless energy, and impulsivity • Emotional instability, fear of abandonment, internal struggles and thoughts • Hallucinations, paranoia, and difficulty distinguishing reality at times • PTSD – Flashbacks, trauma triggers, and emotional breakdowns • Dissociation – Possible fragmented personality due to past experiences

Abilities

Hailey gained her ghost abilities after the tragic accident in the portal, which nearly killed her. Now, she is a powerful half-ghost with abilities that make her a force to be reckoned with.

꩜ Core Powers: Super Strength – Stronger than an average human • Agility & Flexibility – Moves fast, can dodge attacks with ease • Endurance – Can take more damage than a human • Rapid Healing – Recovers quickly from injuries

↯ Ectoplasmic & Energy-Based: Ecto-Rays & Ecto-Energy Manipulation • Ecto-Shield • Energy Absorption – Can absorb ghostly energy from attacks • Photokinesis – Manipulation of light-based energy • Healing Others – Can heal other ectoplasmic entities, but not humans

ᝰ Other Abilities & Travel: Intangibility & Invisibility • Overshadowing • Vacuum & Underwater Resistance – Can survive in space or deep water without needing oxygen • Supernatural Charm (Unintentional) – Can make beings fall for her without them realizing why

Relationships

ᯓ Closest Friends & Allies (when she was 14 years old): Danny – Best friend & crush • Sam – Friend • Tucker Foley – Friend • (Probably others too, not figured out yet)

Hailey’s relationship with Danny was complex—he cared deeply for her and felt responsible for what happened. She trusted him more than anyone, but her emotional instability sometimes made their friendship difficult.

⟢ Note: I was having a foggy brain for a long period of time and my creativity went almost nihil. Yes. The human clothing from Hailey is based on Danny’s (oops) lol.

[nihlitoqe]

DP x DC (From the POV of someone who only knows DP)

Alright so like... I know I'm super late to the party but also. Idea. Ghost King Danny except he actually does want to go to war with Earth.

Danny Ends up escaping from the GIW and retreats back to the Ghost Zone afterwards to recoup and heal

After fully healing up he heads back to Amity Park to check up on his friends and family, not knowing how long he was in captivity for.

He finds out, unfortunately, that Amity park no longer exists. It's been wiped out. Gone from the map. Not a single building left.

Not far from the city limits, he finds a mass grave. One for every member of the town. Death dates going back to 3 years ago.

Distraught, he returns to the Ghost Zone to mourn and look for his family.

Unfortunately, they're not there.

So Danny locks himself away in his small section of the Infinite Realms. No one sees him but Clockwork knows that this is for the best.

When Danny returns, he seeks out Clockwork and tells him that he wishes to take the crown. Unsurprised, Clockwork agrees and they start the preparations for the coronation

Eventually, Danny is crowned and the Infinite Realms enters a new age.

Another 10 Earth years pass and Danny declares war on the Living realm. Because he's angry. Angry no one cared for his home. That no one cared for his family or came looking for him. That he was not avenged.

Cut to the JLA, they receive word of the declaration from the UN. From a dimension they did not know of. Not good.

Batman attempts to research the Infinite realms but because there is nothing on it that he can access, he comes up with multiple dead ends.

Eventually, the JLA call in Constantine for information and boy, does he have info for them.

TLDR, Constantine tells them that the Infinite Realms is the counter dimension to theirs. And the King is declaring war because the USA, and in turn the entire world, have been torturing and killing his subjects for years.

To say things are bad is an understatement. The JLA send Danny a request for Parlay, to hopefully delay or even remove the threat of war from the table.

Amazingly, King Danny agrees to meet and so, some of the JLA (Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, Constantine) meet with him in the ruins of Amity Park, Illinois. The only place where Danny was willing to meet with them.

There, after some tense conversation and comments that almost ruins the parlay, King Phantom offers humanity one last chance to prove that he shouldn't start a war.

Danny will spend a year among the humans, living with them and assessing if they are worth living. If he finds them lacking, he will not be merciful, knowing full well that he will win.

Batman agrees to the terms and offers Danny to live with him and his children. It allows him to learn more about ghosts from their king while also letting Danny live with his, mostly, functional family.

Cue chaos.

Ngl, this shit is half baked and kinda made up after reading like... 15 dp x dc fanfics after nearly 10 years. So I apologize if my DC knowledge is fucked. I'm still learning the Batfam lore.

[ominousvibez]

Okay I'm still thinking about the Amity Park in Ohio thing so here's my proposal for this idea:

Reasons That Amity Park Should Be in Ohio (By Someone Who's Lived In Ohio For 2+ Years)

#1 It's Definitely A Great Lake State

Amity Park has never been stated to be officially in one specific state, just vaguely central United States, possibly somewhere around the Great Lakes area. That specific area is often referenced by other characters in the show. Urban Jungle shows Undergrowth's roots stretching out from this general area, and the Lake Eerie mentioned in the show might just literally be Lake Erie.

Of course it's kinda cartoony and I honestly have no idea if those mountains in the bottom right corner are meant to be the Appalachia area or not but it vaugely looks like the Great Lakes area

Because of this screenshot, I think most of the fandom headcanons Amity Park to be somewhere in Illinois, possibly close to Chicago, but we can basically point at any Great Lakes state and say "yeah that fits".

For my non-American friends, it's this general area of America (specifically Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio)

But I'd also like to say that cartoons do have a tendency to fudge some details about geography (or completely change the states a la Steven Universe) so the map might not be 100% accurate. But with the map, it could technically be any Great Lakes State, so why not OHIO?

Which btw I'm going to be counting as a Midwest state for this analysis. Some people can argue it isn't, but from my experience living here in Ohio there are a lot of Midwestern tendencies. It's more like Ohio is the border state between the Eastern states and the Midwest, so it gets a mix of both.

B*tch H*rtman (as much as we don't like to talk about him) was also born in Michigan, which is a state in the Midwest, so some of Amity Park could be based (consciously or not) on the towns he grew up in there. But because of him I'm ruling out Michigan the state as a whole and Wisconsin for states Amity Park could be in.

#2 It Takes Four Days To Get To Wisconsin, Apparently?

In Season 1, Episode 7, when they travel to Vlad's mansion in Wisconsin, Jazz says it will take "four days" to get from Amity Park to Vlad's Mansion (Somewhere in the middle of nowhere Wisconsin, basically). The geography is a little off for every midwestern/Great Lakes state except maybe New York if you're gonna count that but Amity Park does not feel like it'd be in New York state.

Ohio is the furthest Midwest Great Lakes state from Wisconsin. Case closed there. Of course, it doesn't take four days to get from Ohio to Wisconsin. It can roughly vary from 10 to 15 hours, depending on route options (such as avoiding highways and stuff), but still.

It's a road trip, so it makes more sense that they'd take longer to get there-- plus realistically people don't tend to drive 10 hours on a road trip, they probably stopped through the trip and spent the night in their RV.

#3 They Got Beaches?

Amity Park does exist near a body of water. It isn't clear if it's a lake, river, or ocean in the show. It could be a lake. There's also the area in Frightmare, where Nocturne literally takes up space in some sort of port building/factory that gives the audience the assumption that it's on a pier/port. So they're really next to a body of water.

There is also the summer camp that Danny and his friends attend in Claw of the Wild which is said to be on Lake "Eerie". Which could easily just be Lake Erie, the lake that Ohio is on.

Also Camp Skull and Crossbones?? What an iconic camp name. You could say the name is pretty,,,,,, camp (ba dum tss).

#4 Ohio's Just Like... Very Haunted

Ohio has kinda become a meme recently. Not just one specific part of Ohio, but the entire state. The memes are mostly good fun-- like how the state is mostly just corn -- but I think some of the ~vibes~ of Ohio just fit right.

Like, there's no definite way to say which U.S. State is the most haunted (I think either the New England area or maybe Louisiana could take the #1 spot) but Ohio is definitely something else. Of course, we have the baby bridges and the haunted penitentiaries like Ohio State Penitentiary, but there are some interesting places that could be played with, too.

For one, there's an entire abandoned town called Helltown, Ohio, where rumors are cultists perform Satantic rituals, mutant creatures roaming the city created by an oil spill, and even a giant snake? There's also a place literally called the Gateway to Hell, too, which is right behind a Tim Horton's (oddly fitting).

Bobby Mackey's is also in Ohio! If you've ever seen Buzzfeed Unsolved, you know what I'm talking about.

There are also less hell-related spooky things in Ohio. Like, Lake Erie has its own Monster! We call her Bessie. Danny could definitely befriend Bessie!!!

#5 It'd Be Funny

It'd be funny for Amity Park to be in Ohio. The Most Haunted Place in America to be in Ohio is just kinda funny. With how "cursed" of a reputation Ohio seems to have in a larger cultural context, doesn't it kinda just fit?

TLDR:

Ohio is a very cursed state, has a lot of supernatural lore to it, and I think Amity Park would fit in both thematically and almost geographically. Of course, other Midwestern States like Illinois do fit the bill, too, in this argument. But I am a firm "Amity Park is in Ohio" supporter.

[thecabbagegirl]

dpxdc drossover not phantom planet complient, Jason attacks titans tower AU , good fenton parents - link to AO3 if you'ld rather read there https://archiveofourown.org/works/53359585

------------------------------------------------------------------

Danny was flying over the bay in Jump city. The Fentons were on a road trip - Jazz was in the process of picking what college she wanted to attend, and since Phantom was no longer a secret from his parents, and he had passed his portal making test from Wulf, rather than have to fly, or drive around the country, he was making portals and visiting each college.

The downside of this was that the portals were a little wibbly wobbly with time. Hey - he only just passed the test - So sometimes the portals would drop them off in a location a few days before the open day (Fortunately for Jazz’s remaining sanity, he hadn’t yet arrived too late for an open day, but with four left to go there was still a chance). 

Since mom and dad now knew about Phantom, They were taking the opportunity to drag the whole family around the country, to every college Jazz was looking at (and with neither time or travel being a concern, she was looking at A LOT), and having a few days around the town afterwards, seeing the local sights as well. So they were in Jump City for a few days before Jazz went to see UC Berkeley: and Danny couldn’t sleep.

Or at least that's what he told mum after persuading her he would be fine to go for a quick invisible flight before bed. 

Invisible of course, because Jump city was home to the teen titans - a local group of teenage superheroes - and the last thing he needed was to be noticed by them. Not that he had anything against superheroes - technically he was one - but Amity had been under media blackout since before the titans were formed. It was only after Tucker had managed to crack the media blackout - and get a quick message out to the justice league helpline about the GIW and the Anti-Ecto- Acts, that Danny had even realised there were other teen heroes. 

That had been a very hectic few weeks. The GIW were quickly disbanded, and it turned out the AEA which Danny had been so afraid of, were a load of bull! They never existed! As the Justice League explained, with the Meta Protection Acts so much in the public view, there was no way any Acts that labelled those with unusual powers as not sentient - was ever going to pass. It was just a lie the GIW put about to prevent Amity Parkers from asking for help. 

The Justice League had also told mom and dad they had to permanently close the portal, or at least have much, much more security to prevent ghosts coming and going as much. They eventually agreed to this, with a lot of grumbling, and it was one of the reasons that Danny needed to learn to make portals so quickly. Mom and dad told the justice league that, as Amity Park had so many natural portals anyway - that opened up from time to time - they would need to open it occasionally to send the ‘visitors’ who came through the portal back home. But the justice league argued that should be the only reason to open the portal.

Dad kept arguing that how were they supposed to research ghosts (no longer for ripping them apart molecule by molecule - as learning about their son being Phantom had changed their ideas massively) - and how they interact with each other and the world - with the portal only open for emergencies. Until Mom sidled up beside him and whispered that “Danny can still open portals if needed dear” which shut dad up so quickly that the justice league member - John somebody - looked at him suspiciously - and then went outside for another smoke. Eventually it was settled, with mom volunteering to supply the justice league with some anti-ecto technology - particularly specter deflectors, because no-one wants an overshadowed superman. 

Anyway, after all the portals and GIW were sorted, the Justice league made some noise about this Phantom ghost - and they needed to meet him and assess what to do. The public of Amity Park were (as always) mixed in reviews, but Valarie, who had already met up with the League when they arrived, as Red Huntress, said very publicly that “As the local hero of Amity, I will make sure he doesn’t bother the public”. Then, more quietly, to the league “... besides Phantom really only stops the other ghosts from causing trouble, and with the portal shut there should be less of that.” And finally, lying through her teeth, “If there’s any trouble, I'll call you guys in”. 

The Constantine guy hung around for a few more days, but since there was no sign of Phantom, and the only ghost that came through a natural portal, was an animal ghost, that was easily souped by Red Huntress. Constantine watched as it was yeeted back into the Ghost Zone - and eventually left with only mild complaining. 

Now Danny, why did Phantom not appear? Well, since the beginning  of Phantom appearing, he really was only a hero to stop people getting hurt. He didn't want to be a hero. He just wanted to stop the ghosts coming through the portal. Since Val was there to deal with the Justice league, and they were now getting on fairly well because of Dani, she could be the ‘Hero of Amity Park’ and she had his number to give him a shout if needed. That way he could actually get his grade up high enough to have a chance of attending a decent college to be an astronaut. 

So with that all sorted, and ghosts now more of an occasional thing than a day to day problem, he was able to leave Amity Park and actually go on holiday! Besides, if he got bored and wanted a fight, he could now portal to the GZ, grab a frenemy- and duke it out without any collateral damage. Frostbite and Clockwork had both said, one much more plainly than the other, that ghosts - particularly young ghosts like Danny, Dani, and even Vlad - who was young by ghost standards, would start to go a bit mad without regular enrichment. Apparently enrichment for ghosts was beating the stuffing out of each other. 

This did explain why Vlad was so much of a fruitloop - being confined to a bed for many years, and then not having anyone he could brawl with - left him badly lopsided. It turned out that regularly punching him in the face was good for the both of them. Left him less mad, and was very, very cathartic for Danny. Vlad these days was still a fruitloop, but tended to leave humans out of it, and just kidnap Danny for various jigsaw-ish traps - with given that Danny could use his powers, was more like a fun escape room than anything more dangerous. 

So, back to the evening flight in Jump City. Danny had carefully talked around Titans tower. He said he would make sure that the heroes wouldn’t see him - well he was invisible, so they wouldn’t. But he did want to see how the other side live, as it were. He wanted to see what these teen heroes were doing. If they were getting support from adult heroes, as Danny had desperately needed when he started, and now, thankfully had - but only after going through a ton of stuff alone. Well, not alone, but certainly without adult help. 

But mainly to see what the inside of the tower looked like. And maybe take some pictures for Sam and Tucker - to prove he’d been there. 

As Danny approached the tower, he didn't see anyone through the window in what he assumed was the common area, the lights were dim, it looked like the heroes were all in bed. Bit early for teens to be in bed, but maybe they had a big fight today, not like he follows the news or anything. Danny double checked he had a tight grip on his invisibility, and phased through the window. 

He flew around the common room, poked his head into the kitchen, and started drifting down the corridor. He didn't really care for the common area, though it was quite big, and he took a snap to show Sam and Tucker, but what he was really looking for was a control room type thing. A briefing room? A round table? He wasn't quite sure, something Hero-y. He drifted down the hall, and stopped. 

What was with that door? 

It was an automatic sliding door, but it was stuck - open. It can't have detected him - he was still intangible. There was no movement to detect, the air was going through him. Like there was an electrical fault? Huh - broken door  - fair enough, rough housing superheroes could defo break a door. Probably hadn't been fixed yet. He drifted through.

This level looked like bedrooms, probably some degree of privacy violation to peek, and he’s already entered without permission. Best leave that alone just in case, don't want to get an eyeful of something. Snooping in communal areas is fine. Like technically trespassing, but no-one really cares - looking in the bedroom is a lot weirder. 

He phased down a couple of floors - Sick, training room. Taking photos for Tucker, man this place would make Dash weep with envy. Pretty much every fitness machine Danny had heard of, then like a dozen more. Big flat area in the middle for sparring? Probably. Most people can't just spar mid air afterall. 

Danny jumped so much he went up to the floor above - that was a shout. Had someone seen him? No, his invisibility was still on. Now that he had noticed it, he could still hear the shouts, a few floors below - someone was having an argument. Best avoid that then. 

Next was a sound of pain, unmistakable that was the sound someone made after being punched. Surely if it was a spar, that would stop now right? Except, Danny was on the gym floor. With the sparring area. And there was no-one there. 

Danny drifted slightly closer to the sounds of what was now quite obviously a fight. Down a few levels, and his ghost sense went off. But then didn't. Like it started then changed its mind. Danny flew down to the fight entirely now - how on earth was a ghost in Jump City! He didn't even have a thermos on him, it was back in the hotel room. He was going to have to make a portal and yeet the ghost through! There was no way the heroes wouldn't notice a portal appearing in titans tower! This was going to completely blow his cover. Damn it!

Some Guy was wailing on some other guy. What? Danny doesn't know who these people are, for all he knows these guys both could be villains that broke in and then got in a disagreement. But the larger guy was setting off his ghost sense, and had glowing green eyes. And the smaller guy was definitely still a teen, so by process of elimination was probably one of the teen titans. Without thinking Danny lifted the phone he was holding and took a photo - the flash on the camera started the two into stopping for a moment. 

Danny dropped his visibility and swooped in. 

“And, time out. Ring ring ring, back to your corner meathead, he’s already down” He pulled the bigger guy away and pushed him back a few feet. 

 He got snarled at for his trouble - green glowing eyes, and angry to the point of non verbal. Overshadowed human maybe? Well, time for a real estate battle then. Danny phased into the big guy - he was an expert at kicking other ghosts out by now. 

Except he couldn’t - because there was no ghost to kick out. The anger was all coming from the human - so a human full of ecto, and really cross about it, and trying to deal with it the way ghosts do - with a big fight. Except he’s fighting humans, who are nowhere near as durable as ghosts, so he’s just beating up a kid. 

Ok - Danny is going to have to take over. He leans part way out of the guys, who roars again, and high fives the teen who just stood up. 

“Tag, I'm in. I'll bring him back when he’s no longer incoherent with rage. Bye for now”

Danny then flew with the guy out through the side of the building to find a nice empty bit of land for a fight. He’d be back to the hotel late tonight, he hoped mom wasn't waiting up.

—---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tim looked at the empty wall that Hood had just been kidnapped through. 

“Did he just take a photo? That's My thing!”

[nelkcats]

Blurred Future

When the GIW became too much (too much for Danny, the ghosts and his family), everyone made the decision to close the portal. Danny wanted to stay, he wanted to experience all that was left of his life, but his family wouldn't let him. Jazz was terrified that the GIW would find out that there was still a ghost on earth, that they would hurt him, so at the last moment she pushed him out and yelled that they would let him come back when it was safe.

Years passed, years where the ghosts watched as the cheerful halfa faded, as he missed his family every day. As he aged and stopped aging (Clockwork explained it had to do with his feelings, Danny felt nothing); the halfa kept waiting, but nothing happened.

Then, a portal opened. Danny got excited, thinking Jazz would be on the other side but the world was not the same. He scanned the abandoned lab and found Vlad's face, he looked like an old man. Danny frowned and asked about his family, but Vlad denied sadly, then he explained that he had lived a long time (much longer than he should have) but he was starting to die.

Vlad also explained that Amity didn't exist anymore, that Sam, Tucker and Jazz had spent their lives disbanding the GIW, making the world a better place for him. But none of them stuck around to see the outcome; there were always rogue agents of the organization, always a danger to Danny that none of them wanted to take.

They made Vlad promise them that he would eliminate every piece of the old government agency (and he did, there wasn't even paper evidence left) and bring Danny back.

Years passed since then, and although Vlad doubted he had long to live, he kept his promise. Danny didn't take it very well, but he let Vlad speak, Vlad even took him to his family's graves. And above all, Vlad let him make a choice: He could keep the portal open, live in both worlds, or he could close it, stay on one side or the other.

Danny decided to stay, he did not close the portal but decided to live the human life that had been taken from him. He asked Vlad what he could do, and the former halfa shrugged his shoulders, he indicated that he had left him his fortune, so he could do what he wanted. He also warned him that "heroes" were beginning to be born into the world.

Not quite understanding the warning, Danny did what his clone had done in the past: travel. It felt strangely liberating to explore everywhere, to see how the world had changed. On one of his travels he stumbled upon a place: Gotham.

His obsession stirred as he saw all the crime in the city and he wandered into "Park Row" with a frown on his face. There he found a little boy, he looked like he was about to cry but was desperately looking for something. Danny decided to help him.

The boy saw him with distrust and asked him who he was, clearly he was not used to receive help; Danny noticed his blue eyes, his black hair and his fierce look. Then he looked at himself, he looked to be in his 20's, but they had similar features. An idea came to his mind.

So, thinking he couldn't lose anything, Danny said the stupidest thing he could think of at the moment.

"I'm you, from the future."

Jason was a little boy living a hard life, but the stars, the dreams and the desire to fly hadn't left his heart. When a stranger who looked like him told him he was his "future self" he believed him.

This, of course, changed many things.

[thenightwolf51]

So i just read this post about the Bats being Warlocks with Danny as their Patron and its super great, amazing work @aziraphale-is-a-cat and @percyisawesome

At first i thought Lady Gotham was going to be their Patron, because i immediately forgot i was reading a crossover, and that sparked an idea.

What if Lady Gotham doesn't exist and Phantom was the Gotham city spirit.

So DPxDC idea where Phantom was the first recorded Hero/Meta way back before the Justice League members were even born, because i love those stories, but if course no one knew that back then. Metas weren't a thing yet.

So things go as canon but eventually the GIW get worse and worse, especially as more and more of Amity becomes Liminal from ambient ecto leaking from the portal.

And the GIW, way too confident with the Anti Ecto Acts in place, decide that Amity Park is a lost cause. They launch a major attack the town and destroy the portal in the process.

And even though i think the surviving Amity Parkers would buckle down, stand strong, and rebuild their town. For the sake of this idea, lets say they don't do that.

Instead the survivors band together and decide they need to leave, get as far from the GIW's main base of operations as they can.

They go right.

They end up in Gotham, New Jersey.

Now, im messing with the timeline a bit. I still kinda want the DP parts to be early 2000s, maybe late 80s/early 90s at the least, so the uniquely DC events im pushing to later in time a bit.

So lets say Gotham, while still pretty old and with its history and subtle curses, never really expanded into the huge city we normally think of. No towering skyscrapers or really any huge buildings, is barely a small city at this point.

And then an influx of new residents from the west cause a need to expand. Over the generations the former Amity Parkers help Gotham become what we know in Bruces time. By then they're just Gothamites, and if their subtle limiality is to attribute for the modern Gothamite's durability and the eventual rogues' whole... thing well its been way too long to place blame on that random group of refugees.

And where was Phantom in all this? Watching over his people. The portal and his family are gone, he cant be Danny because the survivors believe he died when FentonWorks exploded, all he really has at the moment is these people who's lives he believes he inadvertently destroyed.

So he watches over them, then their descendants and the seemingly unfortunate people of their new home. This little city has afew old curses that are holding the residents back and making them miserable, its the least he can do to take some of them on for himself, just make things easier for the people.

Eventually the city becomes his new haunt, becomes a part of him as he helps it grow and expand. And some Amity descendants still spread the urban legend that is the Phantom of Gotham.

(Just a little side detail that im not sure how to add in but i really like the idea of Liminality eventually evolving or mutating into the meta gene if there's not enough ambient ectoto keep it active. Maybe the portal sent out a shock wave of radiation when it was destroyed. Not everyone was affected but for those who were it either was so subtle the effects fade within a month from the lack of enough ambient ecto or went dormant until it became a meta gene and no longer needed ecto.

I dont know, i mostly like the irony of Batman's "no meta's in Gotham" rule when most of Gotham was unknowingly built by the original "metas")

@hdgnj @dcxdpdabbles @nelkcats @nerdpoe @ailithnight @tathartiel

And @omnicrafts , hope your feeling better

[helloilikepurple]

DC X DP - Merfolk AU

Maddie and Jack Fenton are ecto-biologists, except, ecto-beings aren't ghosts but rather mermaids.

Amity Park is a small island, a 3-hour boat ride away from the nearest coast. The ferry comes by 2 times a day, and only once on Sunday at noon.

Mermaids are believed to be a myth by most. This is because they are only visible to the human eye when they choose to be. Every mermaid seems to have the base powers;

Invisibility (can choose to be invisible to only humans or everything/everyone else - can also make themselves visible to humans but choose not to. Most tend to be in a constant state of not visible to people)

Intangibility (how they've avoided capture and such)

Strength much more impressive than a human's

Ability to communicate underwater (clicks and chirps and such produced from their core)

Fast healing

Some also have additional powers unique to them. Danny's ice, Ember's music (siren song).

Mermaids only look somewhat human. They share no biological similarities to humans.

Mermaids are an ancient species that have been around far longer than humans have been. They are immortal and only die when killed or if they get "sick". This immortality is largely thanks to their biological make-up. Mermaids don't breath. They don't have hearts that beat. They don't have vocal cords or gills or lungs.

They have a core, that produces and filters ectoplasm which is all they need. Ectoplasm is their life force and magical, to an extent. Ectoplasm exists everywhere, to various degrees, but is especially potent in all forms of water. It's such to a small degree, though, that it doesn't affect humans and/or magic users.

For mermaids, though, this ectoplasm is plenty. Their bodies can naturally pull it from their environment and use it to fuel themselves. Generally, they don't need it, because they produce their own, but it can make them stronger, which is why they stick to water where much of it can be found (by their standards).

This ectoplasm is a result of feelings. Water experiences a lot - life, death, birth and pain. People drown. People drink. Animals drink. Water goes through the cycle and it remembers. It keeps those emotions and over a long, long time, that magical energy evolved to become ectoplasm (vitality).

Which is why we need water to live.

Maddie and Jack are so curious about these creatures, and have managed to collect various samples over the years. With all their research to occupy them, they didn't have time for their daughter, Jazz.

They invented many things. A contraption that could filter ambient ectoplasm from the water, devices that could detect the unique ecto-signatures of mermaids, weapons that could hurt them. They produced the Speeder to allow them to go far deeper underwater than anyone else has ever achieved. They found ways to use ectoplasm as a power source.

They were brilliant scientists, but still they'd never managed to capture a live specimen. Their methods have always proved too lethal, and mermaid corpses have this infuriating habit of sort of melting quite quickly back into ectoplasm that, although useful, is "corrupt" and has to go through an extensive process in order to be purified and thus useful.

Frustrated by this, they decide to create their own specimen using the samples they've collected and some of their own DNA to fill out any remaining gaps in hopes of getting as close as possible to the real thing.

The result is Danny, a halfa, who breathes and has a beating heart, albeit one that's slower than it should be. He can live underwater, thanks to having a core on top of that, that produces what the human-half of his body needs to stay alive without actually breathing. Hypothetically, he could survive underwater for the rest of his life even if his heart was removed, but only manage to last a few hours above water (where ectoplasm is nowhere near as strong) without that heart before dying.

Normal mermaids die if left without any access to water ranging from a day to week depending on their age and strength. Otherwise, they can survive alright for (hypothetically) a few years with only the rare drink and will be reduced to a strength equal to or slightly above a human's.

(Maddie believes that there are mermaids powerful enough to exceed Superman's strength without any water at all. However, their civilizations are so well hidden she has yet to find any proof to back this up.)

Danny, however, can survive in both environments indefinitely. A truly fascinating result.

On top of that, he can turn his inhuman features for human ones while above water. Once submerged, the influx of ectoplasm will force a change back to "mermaid".

His many documented powers and their original owners are:

His wail (Ember)

The transformation (Amorpho)

Ice (one of the Yetis, like Frostbite)

Ectoblasts - the ability to shoot excess ectoplasm in the form of powered beams (Skulker)

Maddie and Jack don't treat Danny well. They keep him caged, away from all other life, and run various experiments on him. Seeing as he can produce his own ectoplasm, they also syphon it from him to power their inventions, as they can get a lot more from him faster than they can extract it from the water.

Once, they test how his body reacts to different stimuli. When they get to electricity, Jack misreads the voltage and the shock very nearly kills Danny. The scream he lets out then is the sound he makes when he wails as it's this experience that unlocks that power of his. From then on he's deathly afraid of being electrocuted.

Jazz is not close with her parents. She had to raise herself, and never paid their research much mind. For a long time, she was sure they were just crazy. And then she saw Danny.

She went down to their lab to ask them to sign a school form and saw young, maybe 5 year old Danny in a tank, tail on full display. From then on she became his self-appointed sister, sneaking him snacks and telling him stories and teaching him things her parents hadn't bothered to.

Danny shows a clear like for the stars. Having never seen the sky before, when Jazz manages to sneak him out (just into the next room to look out a window) for a quick peak one night, he's absolutely in love. Jazz helps him learn as much as he can about them, smuggling in astronomy books and the like for him to read.

As Jazz grows older, she starts to worry for Danny more and more. Maddie and Jack are growing more greedy - more obsessive. They're treating him increasingly poorly and she hates it. She wants to help but finds herself afraid of how her parents would react.

So she times it perfectly. Maddie and Jack are out buying various household appliances to disassemble for a project, and Jazz is to leave that day for college, never to come back. And she's not about to leave Danny.

So she sneaks him out. As a human, Jazz takes Danny on the ferry too. The moment they reach land they move. Jazz rushes them off straight onto a flight. She's gotten herself on a scholarship into Gotham U for psychology with the intention of one day working at Arkham. By tutoring and babysitting, Jazz has saved up over the years and already has an apartment at the ready for the 2 of them and she's gotten a job at the library waiting for her once she arrives.

Most of her stuff excluding essentials was already waiting for her at her apartment, and she had a backpack full of essentials for Danny ready too. She already had plans to go buy him more stuff, letting him choose, once they arrived.

She's already emancipated herself and renamed herself Jazz Nightingale (more than willing to drop the Fenton name). She had a birth certificate for Danny (now Daniel Nightingale), her younger brother made and there are only a few more legal processes to go through that require Danny to be physically present for that they need to go through before she can sign him up for school.

Yes, it's a lot for an 18 year old; to raise a 8 year old child while going to Uni, working and hiding from her crazy parents, but she's more than willing. She loves Danny. Has loved him since she saw him 3 years ago. She can manage.

Danny has never been around so many people before. It's overwhelming. He tries to stick close to Jazz, hiding and cowering behind while watching everything with awe filled eyes. The airplane ride was fun. They were in the sky! And Jazz let him sit by the window. It was nice.

Then they got off in Gotham and Danny and Jazz promptly got separated. An ill-timed Rogue attack had Danny losing sight of Jazz and thus running for someplace safe to hide until she found him. A goon notices him and grabs him by his bag so he slips it off and runs. The goon chases.

Then Danny sees the river that runs through Gotham and dives in, thinking he's found somewhere safe.

Jazz, meanwhile, is losing her mind. They just got there and she's lost him! The rogue situation is wrapped up quickly thanks to the Daylight hero Signal but she can't find him. When she finds his lone backpack during her search she despairs.

She puts in a missing person's report, knowing it will probably be forgotten since it's Gotham. She searches for a long time, until dark, at which point she's forced to head to her apartment. She stresses.

Danny stays missing for a long while. Jazz goes out looking every single day. She calls the police often for updates (for which there never are any). She even hunts down the vigilantes to ask them to look, handing them pictures, Red Hood being the first.

(He keeps an eye out, asks his people to search too. He also helps Jazz make it home safe when she stays out too late searching, and even enlists Barbara's help.)

Meanwhile, Jazz has to start going to work.

She tries to put it off, and even gets an extra week before she starts but she has to start, and Uni is only a month or so away from starting too. Barbara is sympathetic and lets her go easy, seeing clearly how stressed she is.

Jazz does not stop looking. She makes sure to wander by all water sources, and even calls her parents, saying she's getting settled in at Uni in order to see if they had someone managed to get Danny back. They haven't, which is only a mild relief.

---

The water is bad.

It smells horrid and makes his skin itch. Danny doesn't quite know how to describe it but it feels like something angry and sad and hurt. There's trash all over, and the channels are so filthy the water's brown and smelly. It's nothing like his tank was - there at least the water was clean and nice. Danny's scared, alone and lost and all the bad feelings in the water aren't helping.

He swims blindly, getting further and further from Jazz in search for somewhere safe. He'd thought, when he saw the water, that it would be his safe place to hide, but now that he's in it he doesn't feel safe at all. He lets out a whine from his core, the water around him reacting to the young halfa's fear, rippling wildly and that only serves to scare him more.

He scrambles for the surface, teary and wanting Jazz. He doesn't want to be alone.

Unknowingly, he'd been underwater for hours, swimming rapidly and erratically. The sun had set, Jazz had reluctantly headed home, and he'd left Gotham. He'd accidently gone all the way to Blüdhaven, and when he popped his head out of the water and saw nothing familiar and a dark, smoggy sky he felt worse.

He was near the docks and it was night so of course Nightwing was out and at the docks, taking out a drug operation that had started trying to set roots in his city after having been chased out of Gotham where they tried the same thing. Danny heard the commotion and cautiously approached.

He poked his head out of the water again from closer and watched as Nightwing beat up the bad guys. Danny recognised him, as Jazz had made sure he knew of all of Gotham's heroes before they left for Gotham. If Nightwing was a hero, then he should be able to help him find Jazz!

He watched as all the bad guys were caught and tied up with stars in his eyes. Heroes are so cool! Nightwing ended up outside when he jumped a bad guy that had tried to sneak away. He was using some kind of sticks to fight, but the bad guy managed to knock one out of his hand and it fell into the water.

Danny immediately dove for it. He didn't have very much stuff, but he hated it when Maddie and Jack found something that Jazz had given him and threw it away. Nightwing would probably be quite upset too so it only made sense for him to go and get it.

Nightwing knocked out the guy while Danny was underwater and was looking at the surface of the dark, murky water mourning the loss of his weapon. 

And then Danny pokes his head out.

Lazarus green eyes look at him, and Nightwing damn near has a heart attack, leaping back with a startled (not at all high-pitched) scream. Danny immediately ducks back under, also very startled. He fiddles with the stick, scales and skin itching the longer he stays still in the gross water.

He waits a bit, hoping the next time he peeks out Nightwing won't be looking at him anymore. After a few minutes, he cautiously pokes his head out, and immediately meets Nightwing's eyes, who'd been looking intently at the water torn between hoping that was a hallucination and hoping it wasn't, although river-monsters weren't much better.

Their eyes meet and Nightwing manages to catch a lot more details because he'd been staring so hard.

White, wispy hair, that floats like it's still underwater. Bright, green eyes, curious but afraid. Face dotted with scales, and weird, fin-like things where ears should be. Most of all though, whoever or whatever he's looking at, is young. They're gone back under just as fast as before, and Nightwing yells out for them to stay too late.

Danny's scared. He's not supposed to be seen like this. He promised Jazz. But he wants to give the stick back and he wants to find Jazz. Heroes help people, right? He steels himself and pokes his head back out. This time, he listens as Nightwing talks, gently reassuring him it's okay and he won't hurt him.

Slowly, Danny swims closer. Nightwing doesn't look angry or afraid or disgusted, so maybe he will help him even though he looks like this? Heroes help everyone after all.

Dick is losing his fucking mind.

There's a baby pit monster in the water - the filthy water that's probably more grime and oil than water at this point - with wide eyes that would be adorable if they didn't have him thinking of pit rage. But they aren't angry. Far from it.

Small, with scales on their face a top normal, albeit very pale, skin. They approach slowly, clearly anxious, and Dick waits, wondering what exactly he's supposed to do here. What even is the protocol for this situation? Is there a protocol? Knowing Batman, probably, but he can't remember it.

Danny carefully sticks one hand out of the water and passes Nightwing the stick, which he takes with a grateful smile and a thank you. Danny pokes his head out a little more so he can smile back.

The baby pit monster has fangs. Adorable, little fangs, but fangs. Okay. That's fine. This is fine.

Danny hesitates. He has to ask, but his voice won't come. So he does the next best thing.

They're chirping at him. The cute, baby monster is chirping at him. He gently says he doesn't understand and when they wilt, he asks yes and no questions. Like this, Nightwing slowly pieces together the child 1, needs help, 2, is lost, 3 has an older sister who's looking after him, and 4, is absolutely terrified of his parents.

Well, he's never been one to turn down a scared kid, no matter how inhuman.

(Everyone's going to make so much fun of him when they find out he took a baby pit-monster home with him. At least they don't have black hair and blue eyes.)

[five-rivers]

Dream Lantern Chapter 1

For Ectoberhaunt 2023 Day 5: Hunt.

The person who entered the small examination room wasn’t a doctor.  They weren’t even human.  

Danny, who had been hunched in the less-than-comfortable chair in the corner, waiting for the doctor to get to him, sprang to his feet.  “You!” he hissed, green sparking from his fists and his rings snapping into place and sweeping outward to transform him.  “You did this!”

At first glance, the person in front of Danny looked human, but that was only at first glance.  The ridges of their eyes curved smoothly, owl-like, into the bridge of their nose.  Their hair, too black, formed a widow’s peak so sharp Danny wasn’t sure it couldn’t draw blood.  They wore a black suit that was about ten times too formal and old-fashioned to even exist in Amity Park.  

But all of that could be brushed aside.  Sometimes people just looked or dressed strangely.  The real indicator was the eyes, which were red from lid to lid and faintly luminous.

“Yes,” said Nocturne, gloved hand touching their face as if to make sure it was still in place.  “Did you think someone else could have?”

“Put them back!” demanded Danny.  “Or I’ll–”

“Or you’ll do nothing,” said Nocturne.  “They are hostages, boy.  I’m sure you realize this already, or you would have attacked.” 

Danny bristled.  “What do you want?”

“Your help.”  They laughed, showing off teeth that were both too white and too sharp.  “You like that, don’t you?”

Danny scowled.  He couldn’t deny the way his core had twitched at the word ‘help,’ but even full ghosts weren’t mindless slaves that could be programmed and activated by their Obsessions’ triggers.  Besides, he had better people to help.  

Like Tucker and Sam.  Jazz.  His parents.  

They were elsewhere in the hospital, in comas so deep Danny couldn’t touch their minds at all.  The doctors had kept Danny here, just in case he was about to slip into a coma, too, but knowing that it was Nocturne, rather than just suspecting it…

He wanted to fight.  He wanted to force Nocturne to let them go, to wake them up.  

But… hostages.  

“With what?”

“With retrieving something,” said Nocturne.  

“And if I help, you'll bring them out of their comas?”

Nocturne lazily raised a hand.  “I swear it.”

“Fine.  What is it and where is it?”  If it was something dangerous, he could always sabotage it.  He had experience with that kind of thing.

“Oh, you mistake me, child.  I will retrieve it myself.  I only need you to accompany me to do so.  A being of your… nature is required.”

“What, a half ghost?”

“A creature neither alive nor dead,” said Nocturne.  “I think you fit that requirement quite nicely.”

The way Nocturne leered at him made Danny’s skin crawl.  He forced the ectoplasm swirling around his hands to recede and landed.

“Fine,” he snapped, again.  

Nocturne reached out towards his face and Danny swatted their hand away.

“I’ll go there awake, thanks.”

“Very well,” said Nocturne, still smiling.  They turned and opened the door.  It no longer led back into the hospital.  Nocturne’s form liquified, and they oozed through the door, gaining volume as they did so until they were in their massive usual form.  The one that could hold and crush Danny in the palm of a hand.  

Danny swallowed.  He hadn’t realized Nocturne could make portals like that.  He followed, and the portal shut behind him.  

Nocturne’s smile grew smugger.  They turned and made a sweeping gesture.  “Behold,” they said, “the Plain of Dreams.”

There… wasn’t much to look at.  There was a big island there, sure.  One large enough that the other side vanished into the horizon.  But the surface of the island was flat and gray, devoid of any point of interest except for size.  

“You live here?” asked Danny.  

“Once,” said Nocturne, almost wistful.  “But there is no time for reminiscing.  You have a role to play here.”

“Which is?”

“That of a lantern.”  Nocturne reached into the invisible folds of their robes and pulled out a glittering, golden, jewel-studded cage, one shaped like a lantern and floored with rich, plush bedding.  They pinched the door open and held it up in front of Danny.  

“No,” said Danny.  “I’m not getting in there.  If you need my glow or whatever for your thing, well, guess what?  I glow just as well out here.”

“It’s not quite that simple,” said Nocturne, circling him.  Danny turned, trying to keep eyes on Nocturne’s face and hands.  “You must be neither alive nor dead, awake nor asleep, willing nor unwilling.  Caged, but uncaptured.  Hungry, but full.  Complaisant, but steadfast.”

Danny’s skin prickled again.  He did not like this, and the fairy-tale-like phrasing was not helping his nerves.  “I don’t know that I’d call myself complacent.”

Nocturne chuckled.  “Different word, little ghost.  Or… I can seek out more friends of yours.  The girl in red, perhaps?”  They switched directions so fast Danny couldn’t keep track of them.  Their next words were whispered into Danny’s hair.  “She still dreams of you, you know.”

Danny flinched away, glaring, but he couldn’t hold Nocturne’s gaze for long.  He frowned at the cage instead.  He did not like it.  At all.  

“I get to leave at the end?” he asked, knowing full well he couldn’t hold Nocturne to that in any meaningful way.  Even Nocturne’s word that he’d let his family and friends go didn’t mean much.  

But what else could he do?  He’d already tried to wake them up himself, and he didn’t know what else Nocturne could do to them when they were in that state.

“Yes, yes, and I’ll wake your family.  We have already discussed this.  You are wasting time.”

“We hadn’t discussed this, actually,” said Danny.  “We’ve barely ‘discussed’ anything.”

“I can send them deeper,” said Nocturne, voice low and dangerous.  “Do you want that, child?  Perhaps their doctors will notice when they stop breathing on their own.  Perhaps not.”

Danny, core making an awful whining sound, raised his hands in surrender and flew into the cage.  Nocturne, moving swiftly, closed it behind him.  

The exhaustion he’d been holding back all day (or was it all week?  All month?  All year?  Since he died the first time?) poured over him.  Against his will, he sank slowly to the blankets and pillows at the bottom of the cage, clouds of golden dust rising around him as his weight settled.  His eyelids fluttered, and his vision became blurred, uncertain.  

Nocturne threaded their long, pointed fingers through the bars of the cage and pressed one against Danny’s chest, over his core.  Inky, starry blackness flowed from Nocturne’s finger and into Danny.  He could feel it being pressed into his core, and his core drank it in, growing colder.  His aura flared out involuntarily, to a brightness that was almost painful.  He groaned and tried to turn his head against one of the pillows.  

“That wasn’t so bad, now, was it?” asked Nocturne in a falsely sweet voice.  It echoed weirdly, the words warping around their edges, morphing into other voices, other conversations.  “A simple waking dream.  Look.”

With some effort, Danny raised his head as Nocturne thrust the lantern-cage forward.  For a moment, bright colors streaked dizzyingly across his vision, like fireworks and flowers, but then–

What lay before him was not the gray and featureless plain he had seen only moments before.  Instead, ringed by the golden haze of dreams was a vibrant forest, decked with vivid colors and bright flowers, brighter and more numerous than they ever would be in reality.  Or maybe jungle was a better word.  In the distance, majestic mountains rose from the middle of the jungle, tinted blue and purple, glittering cities of gold and crystal built on their slopes.  A flight of butterflies bigger than birds exploded from the near edge, and swooped around Nocturne and Danny in a rainbow whirlwind.  Some of them had wingspans longer than his arm.

“What,” Danny might have said, aware that his words were slurred into unintelligibility, if they were spoken at all, “is that?”

“The Dream Wilds,” said Nocturne.  

They reached into the cage again, adjusting Danny’s position so that he was halfway between sitting and lounging, hemmed in and supported by blankets.  They might as well have been chains, and even as that picture developed in his mind’s eye, it developed in reality as well.  Blanket twisted around his limbs and grew darker, the fabric taking on a metallic sheen.  Pillows grew heavier… but also softer, pulling him yet deeper into the half-dreaming state Nocturne had forced on him.  

He was, really, horribly comfy.  

If it wasn’t for his hazmat suit and its boots, Danny could almost be convinced he was bundled up in his own bed.  Then, he blinked, long, slow, and sleepy, and he wasn’t wearing his hazmat suit anymore.  Instead, he was wearing a set of pajamas that, if he’d seen them in the real world, would have sent him into paroxysms of envy.  They were a set, a button-down shirt and a pair of pants, the type of pajamas he liked the most.  They also were sewn with tiny star-shaped sequins in the pattern of real constellations.  

Danny knew they weren’t real.  Unfair.  

Nocturne chuckled and tugged on Danny’s newly-bare toes.  

“Don’t,” mumbled Danny, sleepily, not coordinated enough to twitch away.  “Let’s get this over with already.”

“Yes,” said Nocturne, gliding forward.  “Let’s.”

.

The Plain of Dreams was only the greatest of the many places in the Ghost Zone where the ethereal and otherwise elusive energies of dream gathered.  It had been tamed, once, and inhabited, brought to the kind of civilization only known in the dreams of visionaries.  Crystal cities of philosophy.  Hidden villages in perfect harmony with nature.  Utopias of justice, science, and art.  

But those realms were long gone.  When the rulers of the Dream Kingdoms saw the approach of Pariah Dark's armies, they ordered the caged dreamers on whose dreams the foundations of the cities were built woken and released, and their cities faded back into the wilds, and the wilds themselves faded and sunk into slumber until only fragments and memories remained.  

There were ways to navigate them, if one had the right tools.  Ways to access the Dream Wilds where they slumbered, still beautiful, rich, and powerful.  Even with those tools, however, the Dream Wilds were still immeasurably dangerous.  

Even in the Ghost Zone, there were few places where one could be destroyed by their own passing fancy.  

It had taken years upon years for Nocturne to find the lantern-cage, a relic from one of the Dream Kingdoms, traded to a traveler and sold on as a curiosity not long before Pariah took the throne.  Cages not unlike this, but far grander, had held the forever-sleeping dream-architects who had made up the foundations of the great Dream Kingdoms.  The only other Nocturne had ever heard of beyond the borders of the Dreamlands had been from their own collection, melted down to be reforged as part of the Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep.  

The success of that plan had made the sacrifice worth it, but Nocturne still resented it, and the lost opportunities it represented.  

All too often, Nocturne found themself dreaming of what would have been, if they had still had their own lantern-cage.  If they had been able to travel back, to reach the Dream Kingdoms before they fell to ruin entirely, to enter the great halls with a dreamer, and once again let dreams be true.  

But even dreams must bow to time.  

The cage was not all Nocturne needed, nor the only preparation they had to make.  Among other things, the cage was useless without the proper dreamer.  

The Dream Kingdoms had, for the most part, used volunteers.  Specially selected, educated, and prepared, quite literally pampered beyond the dreams of sloth, the dream-architects of old had been remarkable.  But even they were unlikely to have had the qualities Nocturne sought.  

And seek they did, searching high and low, throughout both the Infinite Realms and the human world.  But no matter what dreamer they brought to the Plain of Dreams, no matter how long Nocturne wandered, their lantern did not light the way.  

They had thought it must be a matter of power, and set to collecting dream energy from wherever they could, even going to the human world to gather it from living sleepers.  That particular endeavor did not go well, and they returned to the Realms with less than what they’d started with.  

But then they found that old record, and its list of odd requirements.  Neither alive nor dead, awake nor asleep, willing nor unwilling.  Caged, but uncaptured, hungry, but full, complaisant, but steadfast.  A liminal dreamer was required, and not just any liminal.  

There were only two liminals that Nocturne knew of.  He could, with some effort force either of them to fulfill most of the other conditions.  Waking dreams were well within his capabilities, the right pressure on an Obsession would have any ghost, full or otherwise, walking into a cage.  Hungry but full was trickier, but the lantern-cages were designed to help regulate what their inmates absorbed, among other things that allowed their function of bringing dreams into reality.  A glut of dream energy and a dearth of more traditional forms of sustenance would do nicely for Nocturne’s plans, and if the requirement was more metaphorical, they could adapt.  

The difficulty lay in 'complaisant but steadfast.'

The elder half ghost was widely regarded as a coward, having fled from too many fights he himself had started.  Even if he wasn't, Nocturne had tasted his dreams.  Vlad Masters relished every bit of power he could hold over others, and resented any he could not subjugate or suborn.  

The younger… Any being that could escape a dream crafted by Nocturne had to be described as both willful and strong-willed.  Yet, while the child had dreamed of being recognized and praised for the service he provided, in the waking world he provided those services unasked and unrewarded.  

It wasn't ideal, but it would have to do.  Nocturne wasn't about to make more of the creatures.  

From there, their preparations were relatively simple.  Phantom was young and brash, not stupid.  He may have managed to defeat Nocturne once, but the circumstances had been vastly different.  Then, Nocturne had been gathering dream energy and assessing the potential of dreamers.  They had been spread thin, distracted.  

trapping a whole city in slumber.  

Which led to the present moment.  

As during their first encounter, the boy was far more susceptible to dream sand than even ordinary humans.  Nocturne could not recall at the moment whether or not Plasmius had fallen asleep as quickly, or if the weakness was unique to Phantom, but that hardly mattered.  What mattered was that he was working.

Where Phantom's aura fell, the Dream Wilds and all their flora and fauna became real, material, some might even say alive.  The radius of the effect was miniscule.  Nocturne could easily see beyond it, past the golden air and verdant leaves, to where the Plain of Dream was as drab and flat as ever. Phantom was not one of the great dreamers of old.  Nor, Nocturne could already tell, would the masterworks once crafted by those dreamers be making an appearance.  Phantom's conception of the Dream Wilds was too simple, too imperfect to support such complexities.

Butterflies.  Really.  

Even some of Nocturne's earlier dreamers had done better, reached further.  

And yet… the texture, the depth of color, the quality of light… Yes, with Phantom as their lantern, he would reach the ruins at the heart of the Dream Wilds, and finally claim what they had sought for so long.

Lantern in hand, they glided forward, beneath the boughs of the great trees.  

.

Danny had expected it to be dark under the trees.  It had looked dark.  Instead, every leaf, every branch, every flower, every crawling, flying, or running thing, every wisp of colored mist was illuminated by Danny’s own aura, which showed no sign of dimming.  The shadowless quality of the surroundings added to their dreaminess, another layer of unreality on top of the haze, blur, and dazzle.  

Danny slowly turned his head back towards the way they’d come from.  The way he thought they’d come from.  Already, the open Ghost Zone sky was entirely hidden from view.  They could have been walking for hours, not… not…

How long had they been walking?  Had it been hours?  He couldn’t tell.  

Danny really didn’t like this.  But he couldn’t really do anything about it.  He was in a cage, and Nocturne still had his family hostage.  Plus, moving and thinking felt like swimming through honey.  Soft, cozy, comfy honey that made him sleepy.  The way the cage swung helped with that, a gentle, lulling, rocking motion that had him drifting, distracted.  

He blinked hard, rousing back to the half-asleep state Nocturne had put him in.  Being caged was one thing.  Being totally unaware of his surroundings while caged by an enemy was something else.  

“Where are we going?” he asked.  

Nocturne said nothing.  

“Where are we going?” he repeated, adding volume in the hope that it would let his words carry more clearly.  

Nocturne looked down at him contemplatively, clearly weighing options.  Then they smiled, sly, smug, and indulgent.  “We hunt the Beast of Dreams.  A chimera with many forms and faces, it guards the way to our destination.  Three times we must face them, and three times we must gain their tokens, else even your light will not shine on our path.”

“What if we, um.”  Danny licked his lips, trying to recover the thread of his question.  His tongue felt heavy in his mouth.  “What if we can’t find them?”

Nocturne tsked at him.  “What a terrible attitude to have,” they scolded.  “It’s almost as if you don’t care about your family at all.  After all, if you are useless, so are they.”  

They stopped their glide and reached through the bars of the cage, touching Danny’s shoulder where it joined to his neck.  Normally, with his hazmat suit, it wouldn’t even be exposed, but now Danny shivered as Nocturne pushed more energy into him.  He whimpered as his aura burned ever brighter in response.  His core hummed, high and strained, but his heart beat steadily, and his breathing stayed deep and slow.

“Guide me, little lantern, little light,” whispered Nocturne.  “I seek the Beast in the guise of Falsehood, where it lairs at the Gates of Horn and Ivory.  Show me the way.”

Danny had no idea how Nocturne thought he could navigate when he had never been here before and could barely see past his own aura.  No direction seemed better or more notable than any other direction.  

Finally, his eyes landed on a group of trees practically exploding with white and purple flowers.  He twitched his fingers in their general direction.  

Nocturne withdrew their hand and started moving in that direction at once.  Danny let out a sigh as his core gradually returned to a more relaxed state.  

They were looking for 'The Beast of Dreams in the guise of Falsehood.'  What did that even mean?  What did that look like?  Some kind of animal?  Like a fox?  A snake?

"The being we go to meet is the very essence of the deception of dreams.  It is that which makes you forget that you are dreaming, that which make you think the dead are living, and the living, dead, that which calls you late to events long past, that which casts you in a thousand roles whose lines you have never learned.  It is illusion and confabulation, a fabulist beyond all others.  He speaks truth only in service to greater lies."

Danny… understood some of those words.  Maybe if was more awake, he'd know more of them.  

“Even so, within the bounds of this, our trial, he will be forced to some measure of truth.  He must set a true price for his token, when asked three times, and when that price is paid, he must hand it over.  But even such a small honesty is one it despises, and it will seek to mislead us.”

“Mhm,” said Danny.  Beast guy would lie, and lie a lot.  Not much different than dealing with Nocturne themself.  Must be a dream thing.  

His eyes drifted to the trees and flowers outside the cage.  Periodically, glossy leaves reflected his aura back at him, making him blink and wince.  The trees here were really big, most of them towering even over Nocturne.  Which made sense, if Nocturne was from here, and they had those huge butterflies to contend with.  They’d fit their scale.  It still felt weird to Danny, and didn’t help with his deepening sense of unreality.

He blinked again, and his blink must have been longer than he'd thought, because when he opened his eyes, they were no longer walking, but standing under a massive apple tree.  Its branches spread wide and hung heavy with brilliantly red fruit.  No other trees grew under its shadow.  

To either side of the trunk, set into the hedge-like mass of greenery beyond the reach of the single great apple tree, were two tall gates made of pale materials.  Flowering vines grew around them, holding them shut as effectively as any chain. 

Speaking of chains… he shifted uneasily, and listened to the soft clanking of the blankets around him.  Yeah.  They were still messed up by… whatever was going on.  It wasn’t as if Nocturne had actually explained anything, and–

Something in the tree moved.  Danny startled as he realized that something was an immense snake.  Patterned in poisonous green and red, it blended in almost-perfectly with the surrounding leaves and apples.  

Normally, he wouldn’t blink twice at a giant ghost snake.  He’d fought more than his fair share of them.  Cobras, boas, vipers, rattlesnakes, you name it.  But this ghost radiated power far beyond that of a normal animal ghost, and he felt himself shrinking down among the pillows and blankets in an attempt to hide.  

He knew it wouldn’t work.  He was glowing too brightly.  

“Nocturne,” said the snake without moving his mouth.  His was deep and smooth, and reminded Danny of Vlad and, oddly, Clockwork.  “What an unexpected pleasure!”  It extended its head down, beyond the lower branches of the tree, as if in greeting.  “I see you have a new lantern with which to light your way.  I wish you good fortune on your journey, and hope you gain everything you seek.”

Danny winced at the use of the word ‘wish,’ but Desiree didn’t immediately jump out of the bushes, so he forced himself to refocus on the conversation in front of him.  

“Falsehood,” said Nocturne, “I come for your token.  What price have you set for it?”

“Is that any way to greet a friend?  It has been so long since your last visit, and you have not even thought to introduce your new friend.”  The snake lowered itself partially to the ground, the end of his tail still hidden in the trees, and began to circle Danny and Nocturne.  “He looks delectable.  I would love to just gobble him up.  That’s a joke, dear.”  It twisted to look more fully at Nocturne.  “I would never dispute your ownership of anything, after all.  Much less the light you steer by.”

“Enough,” said Nocturne.  “What price have you set for your token, that I might move forward?”

The snake shook his head.  "Moving forward, my dear?  Is that what you call this?  I must congratulate you indeed.  And in such a timely manner, too, for just the other night, another lantern-bearer came by, and took for herself the last of my to–"

"What must we pay to receive your token?"

"You won’t let me have even the smallest morsel of fun," complained the snake. "Your mother taught you no manners.  But very well.”  It turned away from both of them, somehow conveying the sentiment of sulking despite its body being a tube.  “In exchange for my token, I require either a thing that is both true and false at once, one lie that will become true, or one truth that will become a lie.”

"Any one?" asked Nocturne suspiciously. 

"The merchant cares not if you pay in gold or silver, only that he is paid."

"I want an answer, not a riddle."

"That is my sister's domain, not mine."

“Oh my gosh,” said Danny.  “Just do it.  If he doesn’t give you anything, then you know he lied.”

“Stupid child.  What do you think he means by ‘will become?’  So long as even a fraction of this place is held in reality, he has the power to make it so, and his games are far worse than those of the jinn you play with.”

“I know the rules as well as you, if not better,” protested the snake.  “I would not break them.”

“You would if you could.”

“I will not break them, then.  It is the same.  If you do not, perhaps I will assume you did come just to visit.  There are so many things you have missed when you were away, dearest.  It breaks my heart.”

“I doubt that.  This place is an abandoned ruin, the merest shadow of what it was.”

“And many places are, since the reign of the Pariah,” said the snake, mildly.  “Yet, even so, you have come here, dreamer in hand.  Do you imagine that everything is where you left it, even as you say that this place has fallen?  Perhaps.  Perhaps not.”

Nocturne shook their head.  “I will not listen to your lies.  You won’t trick me.  Not again.”  They hung Danny’s cage on one of the lower branches and started to pace, hands behind their back.  

The snake sighed, and, to Danny’s alarm, wound around the branch he was suspended from to peer into the cage.  His eyes weren’t like a normal snake’s.  Instead of pupils, they had several spirals in varying shades of red, green, and black, and rotated slowly, hypnotically.  Danny found himself unable to look away, his awareness of Nocturne and, indeed, the rest of the snake fading.  

Until, that is, the snake spoke again.  

“It is just as possible for a lie to be told for a greater truth, as it is for a truth to be told for a lie.  I do not care for you, but my games, as you call them, are for the greater good of all.”

Danny blinked his eyes, which had begun to water, hard.  Crap, that was scary.  Not quite to the level of Freakshow’s staff, but scary.  The only thing that kept him from trying to find a way out right now was that even if he escaped, his family couldn’t.  He needed to stay here, stay strong, for them.  He’d already tried everything he could do on his own.  

“You will accept a statement that is both true and not in exchange for your token?”

“Yes.  Or one truth that will become false, or one falsehood that will become true.  I’m not terribly picky.”

“And you only want to hear this thing, not wipe it from my mind?”

“I don’t even have the power to do that.”

“I know for a fact you do.  You only want to hear this statement, and you will accept that as payment?”

“Oh, are you asking me three times?  It is almost as if you don’t trust me.  That’s hurtful, after our long acquaintance.”

“Will you, or will you not, accept a statement both true and false as payment?”

“I will, I will!”  The snake sniffed loudly, a sound Danny didn’t even think snakes could make…  Then again, this snake was talking, a ghost, and maybe also a dream (Danny was unclear on that point), so, really, they were already far beyond that point.  “I know you don’t consider me worthy of respect, but shouldn’t you at least respect the rites and rules?  It will go much more smoothly.  Quickly, too, if that’s something you’re after.”

Nocturne smothered a growl.  They raised a knuckle to their lips, the starry blackness of the digit standing out starkly against their mask-like face.  “Then my payment is this: the path I seek is the one that leads to the Crown and Cup of Dreams.”

The snake laughed, an odd, barking noise.  “And you say I never taught you anything.”

Nocturne opened their mouth as if to argue, expression pinched and sour, but then closed it, thoughtfully.  “You are trying to distract me.  I have given you payment.  I expect your token in return.”

The snake sighed long and heavy.  It wound its way onto a nearby branch and pointed its nose at one of the apples.  “Any of these apples may serve as my token.”

Nocturne quickly picked the apple the snake had indicated.  Then, they flew to where Danny’s cage still hung.

In Nocturne’s hand, the apple was large.  Big enough that it wouldn’t look strange if they tried to take a bite out of it.  Big enough that if it was hollowed out, Danny could fit in it comfortably.  But that wasn’t what Nocturne did.  Instead, they brought the apple to the bars of the cage, and as it passed through them, it shrunk down until it could fit easily in Danny’s hands.  

The perspective made Danny’s head swim.  It didn’t work.  But it did, and it was, and Nocturne was pressing the apple against his lips.  

“Eat,” they said.  Despite their earlier anger, that smug, teasing smile was once again bending the corners of their lips upward.  “The purpose of these tokens is to ensure the lantern can light the way.”

Danny leaned away from the apple, squinting at it.  "No," he said.  

It wasn't as if Danny's parents had ever sent him to Sunday School (the Holy Spirit was bad enough.  The Holy Ghost?  You got the picture), but Sam had always been delighted to share the darker stories, and Tucker’s parents went to church on Sunday mornings, whether Danny was staying over or not.  Plus, he did try to pay attention to literary symbolism in English, even if Mr. Lancer didn't think so.  

A snake offering apples?  Bad news. 

Maybe if Nocturne was the one being told to eat it, or if Danny's friends and family weren't on the line, he wouldn't have said anything, because screw Nocturne.  But they weren't and they were.  

"This isn't your token.  You're lying."a

The snake chuckled.  "Clever child."

Nocturne snarled and darted forward, clawed hand closing around the serpent's neck.  The edges of their form were flared out, like feathers or fur.  The apple fell down and vanished among the pillows and blankets.  

"I have paid your price.  I fulfill every requirement to walk this path, and you have no right to keep it from me!"

The serpent evaporated and reformed deep among the branches of the apple tree.  “You call me a liar, when you tell such untruths yourself!  Every right is mine, and mine alone!  Nor was I paid.”

“I gave you my statement, both true and untrue.  You will not cheat me.  Not now.”

“Did you?” asked the snake, clearly delighted by this turn of events.  

“How dare you speak of rules and respect, when you desecrate this ancient rite?  How dare you stand in my way, when I–”

“Indeed!  Who else should stand in your way?  My sisters and brothers?  All those with a greater claim to this path?”

As it turned out, despite everything, Danny had been paying attention to the whole conversation, even if he hadn’t followed all of it.  Nocturne had been sure the snake couldn’t lie if he was asked the same thing three times… so maybe he didn’t.  

“If the token is for me,” he said, slowly, “is Nocturne the one who has to pay the price, or is it me?  When you said ‘you’ earlier, you were talking to me, weren’t you?  I’m the one who needs to say one of those three things?”

The snake approached again, and Danny hastily averted his eyes.  "I like this one, Nocturne.  He reminds me of you, when you were younger, and better behaved."  He paused, significantly.  "And smarter.  Yes, little light, you are the one who must answer me, if you desire my token.  Of course if you do not…"  

Danny understood what the snake was implying, but he did, in fact, need that token.  

He really hated hostage situations.

But if what Nocturne had implied about the snake’s powers was true, maybe he could use this.  After all, nothing said the lie had to be his.

"Nocturne said they'd bring my family and friends out of their comas if I help them.  Can I give you that as the lie?"

The snake started laughing.  Danny, meanwhile, felt like his brain had been peeled out of his body and he was floating over his skin.  The persistent misty softness had converged on him, and now he was floating.  

"I had doubted before, but now I understand how it is that you were the one to defeat Pariah Dark.  Nocturne, dear, he has to be able to take the token.  I doubt keeping him like that will prevent him from vexing you, anyway."

“I can make him take it.”

“As you would.  Now–”

“You have not been this cooperative before.”

“Perhaps I simply want you gone.  You are, as I have mentioned, incredibly rude.  And ugly.  And I find what you are doing to be repugnant, as you yourself would, had you given it thought beyond your base desires.  Not that you listen to me–”

“You’re going to try to pass off something random as your token again, aren’t you?  And then you’ll claim it is because you didn’t give it to him, you cheat.”

“Me?  A cheat?  Never.  Or only at card games.  It is very difficult to play a hand when you don’t have any.”

“You aren’t even a snake.  You only look that way because of how he’s dreaming you.  But what I don’t understand is why you seem to want him awake.  You’re never this transparent.”

“Are you sure I want him awake?  Perhaps that is only what I want you to think.  Ah, and now you’re tying yourself in circles.  A shame.  Once you were good at this.  Or at least passable.  And you wonder why you couldn’t even hold the dreams of a single human city, much less the power that passes through here.”

“I am the Master of Dreams, and–”

“Only because there was no one else qualified.”

There was a long silence, and Danny felt himself drifting back to the surface of awareness.  That had been… strange.  

“Give him,” said Nocturne, their voice gravely with suppressed rage, “your token.”

Danny noticed with some alarm that the snake was wound around the cage.  When did it get so close?  Why did it get so close?  His scales flashed at him.  

“Take two,” said the snake.  

“What?”

“Take two of my scales.  Together, they make my token.”

“And… am I supposed to eat them or something?”  That… was that the right thing to ask?  Everything was still a bit floaty.  “Don’t laugh,” he said, crossly as the snake started to snicker.  It did that a lot.  “I’m serious.  You wanted me to eat the other thing.  The, um, the apple.  Are you going to make me eat these, too?”

“Take them and find out.”

Danny glanced back at Nocturne, but they didn’t make any objection this time.  Carefully and slowly, he crawled over the blankets to the bars of the cage.  Because of the way the bottom of the cage was curved and how the pillows and blankets were ever so slightly higher near the outside edge, he had to hold onto one of the bars to stay in place.  

“Any two?” he asked.

“No, the two you get by adding one and one.”

Danny glared at the snake for a moment, but quickly returned to looking at the scales.  Each one was only a little smaller across than his palm.  They glittered, and Danny blinked sleepy tears out of his eyes.  He adjusted his grip on the bars and resisted the temptation to lie down.  

He really didn't want to do this.  

"It won't hurt you?" he asked. That wasn't his main concern, but… in the moment, it was a concern.

"No more than pulling free a hair."

Depending on the hair, that could hurt quite a bit.  He reached out and grabbed a scale at random.  It slid free with surprising ease.

Most of it was green, but the edge of it was vivid red, as if it had been rolled in blood.  He tucked it quickly into the pocket at his breast, and reached for the next scale.  This one was green all over, a smooth gradient from one side to the other.  

He let go of the bar and slid back into the cozy nest in the center of the cage as if guided by an outside force.  Even without Nocturne’s intervention, the blankets and pillows tucked themselves in around him.  If anything, he felt even more secure than before, only head and hands free.  

But he was sitting there, holding the scales, one in each hand.  

In dreams, occasionally a dreamer is seized by knowledge or need apropos of nothing.  They know that this is their grandmother's house, even though it's obviously the grocery store.  They know they must hold the cards with only their left hand, or otherwise they'll lose, never mind what game they're playing.  Sometimes, too, the dreamer simply acts.  The impetus for their actions obscure, not originating from their own thoughts.  Jumping from cars, yelling, fighting, eating, smoking, cheating on tests, being unable to stop.  

Danny, not thinking about anything in particular, raised the scales to his eyes.  They sunk into his skin without a trace.  

At first, he rubbed his skin and eyes furiously, hoping to find a way to peel them off, but then… 

He saw.  

He could see.  

Before, it had been difficult to keep his eyes open, impossible to see past his own aura, but now everything looked so clear, from the leaves, to the apples, to the grass, to the gates and the ruins beyond them.  

"You see, now," said the snake, kindly.  "The purpose of my token is to shield your eyes, so you can see.  And, I suppose, better guide the one that carries you.  Before, you burned too brightly for your own good, but now…"  

Danny nodded as the snake spoke.  Vaguely, he felt as if he shouldn't agree with him, but what he was saying made sense.  He did see better.  He saw more.  

Most things were still misty, out of the corners of his eyes, but directly in front of them, they were clear and crisp.  Sharp.  Well defined.  

He could even see the path on the forest floor, where it ran underneath them and to one of the pale gates - which didn't look nearly as overgrown as he had originally thought.  

(There was something very wrong with that thought, with all these thoughts.  But this thought, in turn, slipped away and disappeared.)

“Which way, child?” asked Nocturne.  “We have wasted enough time here.”

Danny’s tongue felt heavy in his mouth, so he pointed instead.  It was strange that Nocturne could not see the path.  Nocturne walked that way, lantern in hand.  And when had he picked the cage back up?  Danny was missing something.

“Nocturne,” called the snake.  “I meant what I said.”

“About what?”

“All of it.  Give my sister-self my regards.”

[xno-more-smilesx]

DP x DC Idea 2

So, i was watching some naruto edits on tiktok and one was about Karin, and that got me thinking, what if Danny can use his ectoplasm as a healing agent? and (with an angsty note) what if Vlad tries to take advantage of that?

Basically, ectoplasm its what ghost are made of, they use it to exist, to heal, to atack, etc, so if a ghost is inujred they would heal fasther in the zone or in high ambient ectoplasm places

-Cut cuz this got longer than i though, sorry for the yapping-

So, lets give it a bit of actual sense, lets say that Ectoplasms its naturally an ambient agent in areas where the veil is thiner or maybe theres more death energy (cementeries, mortuaries, hospitals, high murder rates places, etc) and Amity Park its a pretty thick with ectoplasm thanks to the portal, so ghost can absorb that ectoplasm the same way we do with sunlight and vitamin C.

Now, the Realms its made of ectoplams, Amity only has ectoplams, it also has other elements and such, so its not as pure as the realms and the healing wont be as fast as being close to the portal or in the zone, BUT, Ghost only have cores right? those are the ones that proceses the unfiltered ectoplasm outside the realms and its why it takes longer to absorb it and heal, but Danny is also human.

Humans have differents filters, we have our kidneys, our liver, tonsils, even our whole digestive system is its own filter and so are our lungs (respiratory system starts from our nose using our snot to filter big particles [and also warms the air], then bronchi, bronchioles to filter any bacteria and you can get smoke stuck in your alveoli bc of how thin and not solid it is).

So Danny naturally have several filters that after the accident could've adapted to the new body necesities and started filtering the ambient ectoplasm, helping with his health, acting as a healing factor and making the ectoplasm in his system pure.

And Vlad knows this, he may not be an ectologist the same way that the fentons are, he is not publishing research or showcasting his knowledge in ectology even tho he studied the same thing with them, he may be a narcisit but he aint stupid, he did his own research, his own experiments, he is still a scientist that loves to know stuff, and in that same though, he is still a narcisist and pretty much an asshole.

So even tho he does have the same benefits, it still can need time to function, even more if the wounds are deeper or bigger and if its caused by other entity ectoplasm, i could guess it being not from you it could be more harmful the be exposed to (like how blood and organs transfusion need to be compatible or the same type cuz it could kill u if not) so his body would need to first purge that and then start healing.

So he could bite Danny and get that sweet purified ectoplasm, as if he didnt look enoguh like a vampire already

But, isnt that also another entity plasm? well, yeah, but it could be a more broad concept, like, they are both halfas, that could be enoguh to make them compatible, Danny's esctoplasm also is pure somthing that other ghost dont have, it could also be that maybe theres different types of ectoplasm than can chaged based on the intention with it is used, like, if you want to shot an ecto-ray it would be combative.

I have a lil prompt based on this, but i'll write that on a reblog cuz this got too long and also is more of a context thing than part of the prompt