#everyone is either crushing on or trying to adopt danny

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

Danny, on the run from the GIW decides to take shelter in Gotham because if the GIW have any sense they'd never set foot in there.

Even if Batman and the JL agree with thier opinion on ecto entities (as evidenced by their lack of speaking out against the anti-ecto acts) Batman was notoriously territorial and would have issue with a wildly incompetent government organization throwing missiles around his city all willy-nilly.

With that being said it was probably best for Danny to wear a disguise. Sure, they didn't know Fenton and Phantom were the same person yet but Danny Fenton suddenly turning up in Gotham after going missing in Amity is certainly going to raise some eyebrows regardless of the necklace he had that jammed his ecto-signature and made him untrackable.

Danny started off by going blond. Its something he's always wanted to do and now with ghostly shape-shifting powers he doesn't even have to worry about frying his hair or dying his eyebrows to match. After that all he needed to do was part his hair down the middle, add a lip ring or two and maybe a bit of make up.

Danny stared at himself in the mirror. He looked like a completely different person.

A completely different and very attractive person. He looked good. The newly blond man threw on a green jacket and went out to explore the town. He did not expect to literally bump into the Tim Drake. The Wayne adoptee just stood there mouth opening and closing comically. Did he offend him? Crap. He had promised Jazz he would stay off of the radar of the Waynes and the bats specifically and here he was angering one of them.

Danny decided to book it before it became a scene, ignoring the lovestruck Tim's crys for him to wait.

Back at his apartment Danny quickly changed his look to red hair tied back into a two inch low ponytail, green eyes and freckles that unbeknownst to anyone else was made up from the lesser known constellations.

The coffee at this Cafe smelled amazing! Too bad Danny wouldn't get to try it because the next this he knew freaking Red Hood was behind him asking to talk. Our favorite ghost boy wouldn't be embarrassed to admit he let out a small squeek before bolting out the door yelling, "I'm not even a criminal!"

It took Jason a few seconds to process that the guy he had tried to flirt with ran away in terror. Crap.

Day three and four were blissfully Wayne and bat free, though he did find out that Tim Drake and Red Hood were looking for his two false identities. Joy.

Day five he met the stabby Robin who very valiantly beat up two people who had been following him. Danny didn't even notice he was being followed and thanked the bird for saving him. Danny, who was shape-shifted into a very pretty girl at the moment, offered to buy him something to eat as a thank you. "Danielle" insisted and Robin allowed it. Danielle never noticed the slight pink on Damians cheeks as they went over to one of Damians favorite restaurants.

Day seven he had went out as blondie and got confronted by some girl named Barbara. She was nice and managed to convince him to come to a Cafe with her. He told her his name was David and he ran away from his parents with the help of one of his friends family members and that he was Jewish, which was true...except for the David part. He learned that if you wanna keep your story straight keeping to almost truths was your best bet. She in turn told him about Tim and how he's a friend of hers-uh oh- and that he's been looking all over for him.

Danny-David- tells her he's sorry but he didn't mean to offend Tim and doesn't want any trouble before laying down enough money to cover his half of the bill and the tip and booking it out of there

This repeats with most of the family trying to flirt with him or adopt him into the family when he's out as Danny.

Bruce Wayne approached Danny when he was waiting to board an elevator, "Hel-" was all the billionaire could get out before Danny cut him off "Hell no." And then he just got in the elevator and pressed the close doors button and was gone again.

[piedpiperart]

Dick had timed it perfectly. Both he and Danny would have an hour for lunch free at the same time, perfect opportunity to spend time with him. Or ask him out, Dick hoped.

Dick approached Danny as he left the mat, waving a bit to get his attention. Danny perked up at the sight of Dick, and he gave a smile back, adjusting his path to cross with Dicks.

“Hey, Dick, what’s up?” Danny asked, tilting his head a little to the side that reminded the vigilante of a puppy.

“Hey, I was wondering if you’d want to go out to lunch with me during break?” Dick asked, trying to play it off cool, ignoring his sweaty palms that weren’t entirely from the gym equipment.

Danny lit up with a grin,”Yeah sure, let me just get my stuff and-“

“DANNY!”

Both men turned to find six kids, all from Dannys class, crowded around the climbing rope. At the near top of the rope was a small kid, blonde hair and a bright blue leotard with black shorts, shaking.

Another kid with brown hair ran over to Danny, swiftly ignoring Dick, and grabbed his hand to start leading him away. “Danny, Celia is stuck and won’t come down, she needs you!”

“I told you guys to be careful, what were you doing climbing the top? Class ended a while ago,”Danny muttered, but allowed himself to be led away from Dick. He looked back and mouthed ‘later?’ with an apologetic look.

“I could help too?” Dick offered, but was taken aback at the glare the kid- who Dick thought was named Garret- sent him.

“Celia’s afraid of tall people, so only Danny can save her,” the kid sniffed pointedly, turning and dragging Danny closer to the mayhem.

Dick was a bit annoyed he wouldn’t be able to spend lunch with Danny, but he had to admit it was highly amusing to see Danny’s affronted look when the kid implied he was short. Dick covered his mouth to hide his laughter when he heard Danny tell the kid that he really wasn’t that short.

Well, Dick though, turning away from the chaos that was Danny’s class, maybe I can bring him something since he’ll be missing lunch.

Dick came back from lunch with a few pastries, hoping Danny might like some before both their respective classes started up in a few minutes.

Again, Dick waved to Danny, approaching him on the bleachers. “Oh hey, how was lunch?” Danny grinned. Dick offered up the bag of pastries and Danny’s face lit up.

“Stopped by the bakery on 7th, figured you might like some?” Dick asked, and Danny was already looking into the bag.

“Thanks, I haven’t been able to leave this place,”Danny muttered, but lit up at the logo on the bag,”Pipers pastries? I love that place,”Danny added, taking out a pastry,”They have the best cream cheese danishes.”

“Right? I think they’re new in town,”Dick said, but frowned when he spotted something out of the corner of his eye. We’re those kids fighting, he wondered.

A yell rang out and both Danny and Dick turned to the source. There was indeed two kids fighting, some from Dick’s class and some from Danny’s. Most notably was Celia and Garret, yelling at Yelena and Darcy from Dick’s class, who were blocking the door to the bleacher area.

Danny and Dick gave each-other a tired look, but got up to investigate anyways. Dick was a bit amused at the way Danny elegantly shoved the danish in his mouth before they got to the kids.

“What seems to be the problem here?” Dick asked, hands on his hips.

“I need Danny’s help!” Celia poured, face red.

“And I told her you two were busy!” Yelena argued back.

“You’ve been bothering Danny all day,”Darcy glared, and Celia pouted.

Danny laughed a little, trying to defuse the situation. Dick was a little miffed that Danny ended up going to help Celia anyways. It seemed his students were too from the way they sighed dramatically.

Dick was about to comfort them when Yelena turned to him with a serious face.”Don’t worry Dick, we’ll help you get a date with Danny. I promise we’ll try to keep Celia away.”

And before Dick could respond to that baffling statement, the two girls were gone. “What?” Dick whispered, questioning what was going on in his life that he’d stumbled across some weird gym class rivalry.

He didn’t fully notice before, but now that he thought about it, Celia and her class had interrupted just about every one of Dick’s attempts at talking to Danny. On the other hand, Yelena and her class had sometimes seemed to be around whenever he was able to actually talk to the guy.

What the heck is going on, Dick wondered.

Dick and Danny both teach gymnastics, and they meet at work

They hit of instantly and dick gets a big ole crush pretty much immediately and tries to woo Danny instantly

Dick's class tries so hard to help, full support, plans (that are terrible but what do you expect from a bunch of kids) all that

Dannys class on the other hand? Fully against it, one of the girls has a puppy crush on him (once again, kiddie "crush" but what can you do) and of course they are supporting her instead

Its a full war between the classes, dick is going insane because all his plans are falling through

It turns to the worse when damian and Tim find out, they both find Danny really nice to hang out with and Tim is all for them dating while damian thinks Danny should be part of the family (something about duke jokingly saying it's the greatest honour for friends to be worried about getting adopted and damian took that seriously)

So once again, war

Danny finds dick failing at flirting incredible cute btw, but he wants the chaos to go on a bit longer

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 257

Now Danny loves space. He loves everything about it, to the point his core quite literally is space. And he’s also a baby ghost, even if he could argue he’s not in human form. But see, being baby has an honestly great consequence once it’s noticed- despite the Observants’ best attempts at hiding it, the assholes. 

Of course he would be far more worried- and even a bit pissed- if his caretaker wasn’t who it was. Look, he’d never met Clockwork’s siblings before, but apparently everyone was really against Clockwork himself adopting. 

But Clockwork as his uncle is fine. Besides, his caretaker is Space! Space itself is holding him, cooing gentle words in the sounds of the very cosmos. And they’re huge, like parts of their body going through portals so they can fit outside Long-Now sized big- and apparently Clockwork can get just as big and they can get even bigger- 

Okay, he needs to take a breath- even if he doesn’t need to breathe- to stop his squealing because holy Realms this is so cool. 

Space is awesome! And he’s getting so much more rest than he did in Amity- and even if Space sort of shrugged at the idea of school at first, they did help him set up online schooling. So there’s that, and it’s just the start! 

He gets to learn so much about space and it’s honestly kind of… nice? To be taken care of? And he can do whatever he needs for his Core and Obsession with only a few interruptions to take care of his living needs. Erm, sort of living needs? 

But even that gets turned into a bit of play or even a lesson too! He’s honestly having such a good time right now! He’s learning so much about spaaace! And dimensions! And interdimensional portals and- oops! No one saw that. 

Ahem- But he’s learning so much about space and getting to explore other dimensions with Cosmos! And sure he no longer looks as human as he once did and all that, but he’s seen so many people who also don’t look human that does it really matter? 

Of course it doesn’t, and he matches his sort-of-dad! Even though the streaks of color in their hair are more of a brown-red like they’re literally bleeding out the cosmos around them instead of it fading to void and space like his own. But still! They match and it’s fun! 

And they’re going to go on another trip from the in-between to one of the dimension realities! He’s going to start a game of tag this time he thinks! But no cheating with portals or bending space! Tag! 

Look, the Justice League? Not paid enough for this. In fact, technically not paid at all due to being volunteers (not that it stopped them from finding money in their accounts) but still. 

There is some sort of figure… being… thing… zooming around the asteroid belt, about the size of Earth itself. Let them repeat themselves. A planet-sized creature (are those hands or paws? Tail or simply its body stretching? Hair or the Abyss-) is currently darting around the asteroid belt like a child running through grass. 

That is, without noticing or caring if something bug-sized might be crushed. And they are very much bug sized, as the governments are concerned about. Like really concerned about. Like talking about trying to nuke the entity if it wanders closer sort of concerned. 

Which they are all very concerned and very much like, against. Because it isn’t seeming to notice the asteroids it’s knocking into their area. It’s like… not a space whale or eel or anything like that but also is something like that. 

And they would also maybe like to see if they can attempt to talk it down first maybe and-

oh. 

Oh. 

That creature is the baby. And mama just arrived, stretching across the entire galaxy, from them to Pluto and beyond, like something took the cosmos and shaped it like clay into some sort of form. Like reality itself has wandered into their galaxy with what they are suddenly realizing must be a very young child. 

Shit, they really have to make sure no one tries to piss either of these things off-

[zorlok-if]

if the zorlok cast were bg3 characters, what would they be and what kind of decisions would they make?

I'm assuming you mean who they would be in BG3 and not what kind of characters they would play. Also, hmm, don't want to give away spoilers here, so if you look below the cut you can see what I think they'd be up to (just beware of spoilers).

Tommy: Human, Level 9 Warlock (Fiend + Chain) / Level 3 Bard (Valour)

Dev: Wood Elf, Level 11 Rogue (Thief) / Level 1 Warlock (Archfey)

EJ: Human, Level 12 Sorcerer (Wild Magic)

Adam/Eve: High Elf, Level 7 Cleric (War) / Level 5 Paladin (Vengeance)

Lucía: Half-Elf (Wood), Level 7 Ranger (Gloomstalker) / Level 5 Rogue (Assassin)

Ciel: Lightfoot Halfling, Level 6 Barbarian (Wildheart) / Level 6 Druid (Moon)

Danny: Drow (Seldarine), Level 9 Paladin (Oathbreaker) / Level 3 Warlock (Fiend + Blade)

The Celestial: Aasimar Forest Gnome, Level 10 Wizard (Transmutation) / Level 2 Cleric (Knowledge)

Rose: Human, Level 12 Bard (Lore)

[Beware of Spoilers Below!]

Tommy

Not romancing anyone (obviously, he's 15)

Best friends with Wyll, Karlach, and Gale. Shadowheart is too cool for him, he's way too intimidated by her. Lets Astarion do whatever the hell he wants. Lae'zel scares the shit out of him. Adopted by Halsin the moment he meets him.

Just wants to hang out with the cool tiefling kids

Very easily persuaded by Raphael. Wyll and Karlach are constantly trying to talk some sense into him.

Aylin is the coolest person he's ever met

Sobbing his way through the horrors of Faerûn—I can see him in a little crumple at Withers feet, blowing his nose on Withers' decaying robes as bone daddy breaks the fourth wall and stares into the camera miserably

Eventually hardens into a truly terrifying force to be reckoned with (Karlach is very proud)

Tommy has two hands, one for Scratch and one for the owlbear

Dev

Romancing non-Ascended Astarion and fucking Halsin occasionally, Lae'zel and Shadowheart are xyr besties (xe forces them to get along), Gale amuses the hell out of xem, Wyll and Dev are constantly trying to one up each other's stories

It's either Ethel or Volo, whoever xe comes across first, but that eye's out of xyr head comically fast

Just wants to talk shit with Withers all day, hates that he never has much to say to xem

Wants to kick the shit out of Rolan but keeps saving his life somehow

Always covered in blood. Like it doesn't make sense half the time. How did that much blood splatter on xem? Why is it still on xem?

EJ

Absolutely head over heels in love with Gale, friends with and trying to fix everyone, Astarion terrifies them but they won't give up on him, they know there's a good person hiding beneath that veneer

Panicked and accidentally yeeted a gnome

Tried a tadpole once, wasn't for them

Holding Gale's hand and squinting through every dark space

Sleeps cuddling the owlbear and is always covered in feathers

Adam/Eve

In a relationship with Lae'zel, didn't get along at first but Laez grew to respect A/E and A/E was charmed by Lae'zel's... strengths. Shadowheart is their sister, hates it when the girls are fighting. Friends with Gale and Karlach. Doesn't trust Wyll fully. Never let Astarion join them. Immediately enamored with Halsin but Lae'zel is... stronger.

Normally out of spell slots cause they're terrified of long resting

Loves potions and alchemy, will stop every 30 meters to pick yet another sprig of balsam

Doesn't make deals with villainous beings. Doesn't trust any voices in their head. Doesn't respect any gods they come across.

Loviatar loves them

Lucía

In a relationship with Karlach, best friends with her and Wyll, had a crush on Shadowheart before meeting Karlach, never liked/trusted Astarion and staked him the minute he tried to put his fangs on her throat, Jaheira is her idol, probably left Lae'zel to die (cause she didn't want to upset Shadowheart)

Speaks to every single animal, picks every single lock, looks in every single barrel, fails almost every charisma check

Scratch is always by her side

Will go to Hell for her besties 😉🥲

Ciel

Dating Shadowheart, really close with Astarion and Minthara... But, seriously, they have a big redemption arc. They grow and change alongside Shadowheart, both goth edgelords are completely changed by the end

Starts the game eating every tadpole (like the Guardian barely has to suggest the idea, it's already in their mouth) but goes one step too far and suddenly becomes terrified of what it means to be monstrous(/illithid)

Diplomacy? Ha. Sorry, that's not for them. They only like talking to animals and corpses.

Loves permanently seeing invisibility...

A loot goblin, their high strength score is great for fighting and jumping and shit, but mostly for the increased carrying capacity

Mol is their idol

Danny

I'm honestly not sure who they'd be in a relationship with, I think they'd be close with everyone but I don't think they'd be in a headspace for anything more than friendship over the course of the game, maybe after the fact they'd grow closer with Shadowheart but that would just be my headcanon, they wouldn't romance anyone (no matter how much Withers mocks them for it)

They are doing everything they think is right in the moment, though they'd regret rash actions later

They empathize greatly with the undead and hate people like Balthazar who twist them to their will

No one threatens a child in their presence. Well, no one who's still alive.

They cannot pretend to be under the Absolute's thumb, they are going in swinging every time, no chance for diplomacy or manipulation

They pick up a teddy bear early on and it never leaves their inventory

The Celestial

In a physical relationship with Halsin, slept with Astarion but now they're just very good friends, sees Karlach, Wyll, and Shadowheart as eir children, loves and is very intrigued by Lae'zel, doesn't like Gale at all (cannot and will not trust a wizard like him)

Always has the Disguise Self spell going, and it's always a different disguise

Eir traveler's chest is filled with the weirdest collection of random shit you've ever seen: noble portraits, rotten eggs, gold chalices, a couple goblin corpses, poutine, 30 mindflayer tadpoles, etc.

Chats with every corpse, even the ones ey killed

Lorroakan can (and does) eat shit

Despises everything about Orin, zero redeemable qualities—even her shapeshifting, eugh, it's so... crude, no grace or skill

The moment the Celestial learns Otto's Irresistible Dance is the last moment Faerûn knows peace

Rose

In a passionate romance with Wyll but he's very good friends with everyone (they are all his children)

Does everything within his power to avoid violence. Will charm, sing, and sneak his way across Faerûn

Adopts every child and animal he comes across

The hardest thing he has to do is tell people to stay in camp. Why can't everyone always be in his party? They all make him feel so bad...

Always taking long rests (doesn't want people being tired or hurt) and spends an hour cooking a delightful meal with Gale every night

[phantoms-lair]

BatFam Snippet: Vlad makes his move

"This suck." Tim groaned, flopping on the bed, then immediately regretting the action.

"Sprained ankles normally do," Danny said sympathetically. Maybe not so much for him now since he could heal really fast, but he'd gotten more than one pre-accident.

"Think of it as a sleepover. Young Danny shall be here should you require immediate assistance, and I of course will be one call should either of you require anything."

"We can handle it, Alfred." Tim smiled at him. "You'd better be on call for Bruce." Not that Bruce tended to need the help, but he knew Alfred worried over him the way Bruce worried over them.

"Bold of you to assume I can't do both." Alfred said with a small grin.

"Did he just meme?" Danny whispered to Tim.

"The world will never know." Tim whispered back.

~

It was half past two in the morning. Wayne Manor was dark, the sole awake inhabitant down in the Batcave providing intel to Batman.

Vlad didn't know that last part. All he knew was everyone appeared to be asleep. And that all he needed. He flew through the rooms until he found the one where both boys were sleeping. Perfect. His shield was a very useful power. He normally just used it to deflect attacks, but it had other applications as well. Pink spread from the door as he formed a shield around the room, trapping the boys inside.

One of them, Tim Drake, the known one, shot awake. He grabbed a lamp off the nightstand and chucked it at Vlad, who just phased through it harmlessly.

"Existing heirs are a problem." Vlad said smoothly. "One I've found is best dealt with by using said heir as my vessel and taking the blame. the removal of my target and all other heirs.

"Try it," Tim snarled, grabbing a crutch like a weapon.

"Oh I will, but not on you. The emotionally volatile and antisocial new adoptee makes a better case for snapping and killing everyone. Besides," Vlad eyed the crutch and bandage around Tim's ankle. "Some might call into question the feasibility of someone who can barely stand going on a killing spree."

Vlad pulled the blanket off the remaining boy, expecting him to still be asleep. He didn't expect the glowing eyes glaring back at him. He barely had time to whisper "Daniel?" before his world lit up green.

"Cool," Tim said simply as he saw his foster brother's ghost form for the first time.

Danny was breathing heavily, for all he didn't need to. This was it. He had been found. No matter how this ended, he was going to have to face whatever waited for him in Amity Park.

"So this is where you've been. Daniel you know if you wanted to be adopted by a millionaire all you had to do was ask."

"Bite me." Danny snarled.

"Yeah, this explains so much of your issues." Tim added dryly.

Vlad ignored them. "This does put a wrinkle in my plan. I can't very well have my heir and future adopted son take the blame for this, but young Timothy is injured. Ah well, 'The Butler did it' may be a cliché, but in this case a useful one."

"You want to use Alfred to kill Bruce?" Tim felt a deep current of rage run through him. Villains he was used to, but the very thought of forcing Alfred to kill the man who was basically his son? This man, he was just sick.

"And of course I'll save the day rescuing Daniel and bringing him back to his Mother, making myself a hero in her eyes.

"Newsflash Vlad, she doesn't want me back," Danny said bitterly.

"Oh course she does. Once it's the three of us, as it was always meant to be-"

"It's going to be one of you if you put Danny and yourself in that sadistic wanna-be scientist's hands." Tim snarked.

Vlad had mostly ignored Tim, but that changed as he flew into a rage, his hands around Tim's neck. "Do not DARE speak of Madelyn that way in my presence!"

Tim had plenty to say about what he thought of a woman who'd prefer her son dead rather than having to admit she was wrong about being a bigot, but the hands crushing his throat prevented any of them from leaving his mouth.

"Leave him alone!" Danny leaped onto Vlad's back and slammed a ectoplasmic stinger into him. Danny hated using that power, hated the feeling of electricity under his skin and what it reminded him of. But it would flow against foreign ectoplasm and disrupt it, so it was his best chance. Vlad dropped Tim with a cry of alarm as the pink shield fell.

Alfred burst into the room with a shotgun in hand. He took barely a second to assess the situation, taking in the two ghosts fighting, as well as the hand shaped marks on Tim's throat, before he aimed the gun at Vlad. "Master Bruce should arrive in about four minutes time. But for now, Young Danny, please get Master Tim out of here."

Alfred could see Danny doing some quick calculations of his own before coming to a conclusion, likely that Masters would be far more interested in the two of them to care one wit about Alfred himself, before grabbing Tim and flying through the nearest wall.

Good lad. He hadn't wanted either boy to see this, and it was a small mercy Master Bruce would be arriving to late to.

"I'm quite afraid that your time terrorizing others is at an end." Alfred clicked the safety off.

Vlad laughed. "A gun. You bring a mere gun against a god?" He spread his arms, giving a clear shot.

Alfred knew Vlad was assured that he didn't know his true capabilities. A foolish thing after now knowing he'd been in contact with Danny. Perhaps he assumed Danny wouldn't say anything of their shared state out of fear, in which case he was wrong.

He knew Masters, or Plasmius as he currently styled himself, could turn intangible and the bullet would pass through him. He knew getting hit by a slug or cartridge would do little damage at all to a halfa's ghost form and could easily be healed in very little time. He knew all this, and still he fired.

The shotgun gave a single quick retort and Plasmius fell from the air, red mixing with green that oozed out of the gaping wound in his chest.

"How?' He asked in a strangled voice, not enough strength left to stand.

"To be honest, I'm not entirely sure." Alfred admitted. "There are many sources and stories, so I hedged my bets, as it were. Hollow point shells made of Nth metal, purified salt densely packed in the tip, and extract of Blood Blossoms mixed with holy water. In truth I couldn't tell you which component or combination there of is responsible. But it works, and that's enough for now." Alfred reloaded the shotgun, but there was no need.

Vlad 'Plasmius' Master would never threaten another life, another child, again.

[dreamwraith]

Teleport

Summary: Danny finally learned how to teleport, but where is the 'off' switch? Pairings: Hints of Sam crushing on Danny Warnings: Danny accidentally teleports into the girl’s locker room, but only for a few seconds; he’s as startled as they are. Danny and Tucker have a no-homo thing going on, they should probably just hug it out already.

On Ao3

-

"Hey! Sam! Sam, wait up!"

Sam glanced over her shoulder. When she saw Tucker chasing after her with an anxious look on his face, she stopped walking down the sidewalk. Tucker was able to reach her in no time, but he had to bend over and gulp in large breaths afterward.

"Something wrong, Tucker?" she asked after giving him a few seconds to catch his breath. "I thought I was meeting you and Danny at school today?"

"Well, yeah," Tucker panted, "that was the plan, but…Have you seen Danny?"

She raised an eyebrow. "No. Why? Did something happen? Is he in trouble?"

Tucker waved his hand, chuckling between gasps. "No…well, yes…well, kind of…"

"Tucker…"

"No, he isn't in any real danger. Yes, his secret may be in jeopardy."

Sam widened her eyes. "His secret might be in what? What happened exactly?"

Tucker stood up straight, using his beret to wipe his sweaty forehead. "Well, this morning, while Danny and I were walking to school, he had a breakthrough on teleporting. He practiced it a couple times by teleporting up and down the sidewalk when no one was around, getting farther and farther away. He was getting really good at it!"

"O-kay," Sam said slowly, "so somebody saw him doing this?"

"Um. No."

"What went wrong then?"

"Well, we were almost to school, so he changed back to Fenton. But a few seconds after he did, he disappeared and—"

POP!

"Tucker!" Danny jumped on Tucker. His best friend screamed and would have shot three feet in the air if Danny's Hug of Death was any less secure. "Finally! I've been trying to get back to you for who knows how long now! Oh, hey, Sam! Wait, where'd you come from?" He loosened his hold on the trembling Tucker and looked around. "This isn't where I left you, Tuck…"

"He came to find me after you apparently disappeared," Sam explained for their shell-shocked friend. "Danny, what's going on? Are—"

"I can't stop teleporting, Sam!" Danny all but shouted, unwrapping one arm from around Tucker so he could wave it around for emphasis. "One minute I'm walking peacefully down the sidewalk, the next I'm in my room! So far I've teleported to school three times, to the Ghost Zone twice, my room five times, yours once, Tucker's three, Vlad's house one time too many, and once I somehow ended up, like, fifty feet in the air! I can't control it!" He released Tucker, and latched onto Sam's shoulders, earning a surprised gasp from the Goth. "Make it stop, Sam! I can't take it anymore!"

"Danny, calm down!" She brushed Danny's hands off her shoulders, but he quickly grabbed her wrists. She scowled. "Danny, let go of me before I show a very incriminating photo of you and Tucker to Jazz."

Danny's hands flew away from Sam like she was an evil ghost in disguise. "I thought you burned that!" He hesitated before giving Tucker a one-armed hug again.

Sam smirked. "Why would I get rid of perfectly good blackmail material? Is there a reason you keep grabbing onto us, Danny?"

"Yeah, dude," Tucker said, finally regaining his wits enough to eye his strange friend. "It's getting awkward."

"I am being teleported all over the place without my consent," Danny reminded them, "can't I get a little sympathy from you guys?" They gave him bland, completely unsympathetic looks. "Alright, fine. By holding onto you stationary people, I'm hoping you will anchor me and stop me from teleporting."

"Wouldn't we just teleport with you though?" Sam asked.

Tucker's eyes grew large and he struggled against Danny's hold, but even in human form Danny was stronger than him.

"No," Danny grunted, "because it takes a lot of control to be able to teleport more than one person, and clearly I don't posses any control over this, whatsoever."

Tucker relaxed but his nose wrinkled. "It still feels awkward, Danny. Go hug, Sam."

"I'm not hugging you," Danny protested. "This is a manly arm grip!"

"It doesn't feel very manly."

"Doesn't look like it either," Sam said, smirking.

Danny huffed. "Fine." He dragged Tucker closer to Sam and then threw his other arm around her neck before she could protest. Sam gasped and struggled, upset—if her red face was anything to go by—but Danny started walking, and his friends were forced to follow. "Alright! Now this is teamwork!"

"More like kidnapping!" Sam shouted.

Tucker teased, "You know you like it, Sam."

"Oh, yeah, I just love to be held against my will."

"It's only until this stops," Danny tried to reason.

"Oh? And when will that be?"

"Uh…I don't know…"

She sighed, resigned. "This all started after you changed back into Danny Fenton, right?"

"Yeah…"

"Well, maybe you'll have more control of it if you're in your ghost form. Seems to me your ghost half would have more control over your powers than your human half would."

Danny hung his head, wishing he could face-palm without losing his anchors. "I should have thought of that…"

"That's what I'm here for. Now hurry up and change while the streets are empty."

Danny nodded, and in a flash of light, he became Amity Park's number one ghostly hero.

After a few seconds, Sam cleared her throat. "You'll have to let go of us to test this, Danny…"

Danny flinched. "B-but what if it doesn't work and I start teleporting like crazy again?"

"Then we'll just have to think of something else!" Sam hissed, "Now let go of us before somebody sees Danny Phantom hanging out with Danny Fenton's friends!"

Danny grimaced. He slowly, very slowly, released his best friends. They walked a few steps farther ahead before stopping and facing Danny again. He had his eyes pinched shut and his hands fisted at his sides.

"Did I teleport?" he asked, keeping his eyes sealed.

"No." Tucker chuckled. "But you look constipated. Loosen up, dude."

Danny cracked an eye open, but upon seeing the same setting as before, he grinned, and jumped in place. "Alright! Way to go, Sam!" He went to high five her, but seconds away from making contact, Danny became consumed by green mist. The mist disappeared along with Danny, followed by a popping sound.

Sam lowered her hand slowly, and exchanged glances with Tucker. "Uh, I guess it didn't work…"

Tucker sighed. "We might as well get to school, Sam. He's not going to show up here any time soon…"

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

POP!

"Paradise Lost!"

Danny's momentum carried him through the motion of the high-five, but because Sam's hand wasn't there to meet his, his swat carried into a somersault in midair. "Whoa!" He righted himself and jerked his head from side to side. The faces staring up at him were familiar, but the location wasn't since only teachers and their favorites were allowed inside the teacher's lounge.

Danny laughed nervously. "Um, uh, whoops?"

Mr. Lancer was the first to regain his composure. He stood up and fixed his tie in a nervous habit. "Mr. …Phantom, what is the meaning of this?" Sweat noticeably broke out over his forehead.

Danny flushed. "Um, I'm having a few technical issues with my powers…" He cleared his throat and floated with his back straight, adopting his 'hero' voice. "Sorry for the inconvenience, citizens. I'll just be going…"

But after a few seconds, Danny still floated in place above their table, staring fixedly into space. The teachers looked at each other in confusion. The Art teacher pulled out a sketch pad and started sketching the focused Ghost Boy in profile.

"…Any second now…"

If they had crickets in the staff lounge, they'd be chirping.

"…Any second…"

Mr. Felucca stepped forward, his index finger poised in question. "What power are you having difficulties with, Mr. Ghost Boy? As a scientist, perhaps I can be of assistance."

Danny grimaced. "Uh, actually—"

Ms. Tetslaff slammed a fist on the table, and the sudden violence made Danny start in surprise. "If it's power he's having trouble with, it's me he should be coming to for help! I'll whip him into shape!"

He winced, and drifted away from her. "Uh, it's not really a physical power—"

"I have studied many classical stories that teach great, historical lessons," Mr. Lancer said. "Perhaps one of those will be of some use to you, Mr. Phantom?"

"Thanks, but I don't—"

The Mythology teacher scoffed. "Your literature is of no use to a being of exponential power. My myths have way more value to him than your 'fiction'."

"I don't need—"

The Psychology teacher snapped her fingers. "It may be psychological! Please feel free to tell me all about your problems. I'm here to help!"

"I don't have a psychological issue! Why does everyone always think that?"

Ms. Loretta gazed at Danny's skinny body with a critical eye. "Perhaps it has something to do with malnourishment. Do ghosts have to eat? I can make you something, boy."

"…Uh…no…"

The Government teacher trembled in his seat, staring up at Danny in fear. "W-we should call somebody about this! Call the Fentons! Call the Guys in White! They'll know what to do!"

The Art teacher reached out and pinched a fold of Danny's jumpsuit. "Is this latex?"

"Hey!" Danny knocked his hand away and floated a few paces away from him. "No touching!"

"We should give him a physical!"

"He needs to learn a moral lesson!"

"What he needs is more meat on his bones!"

"Oh, how am I going to capture that glow…"

"Something must be wrong with the inner workings of his mind!"

"The FENTONS!"

"Perhaps it is his molecular structure that is causing the problem!"

"QUIET!" Danny shouted. The teachers instantly quieted. "There is nothing wrong with my body, my mind, or my morals, alright? I just developed a new power and I'm having some difficulty controlling it. That's all!"

The teachers backed away from the panting ghost boy.

Mr. Felucca was the first to gather his courage. He asked, "What kind of power?"

Danny relaxed. "Teleport—"

POP!

The teachers gasped, and stared at the spot where the Ghost Boy had once been.

"NOOO!" the Art teacher cried, and threw down his half-complete sketch. "I was so close!"

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

POP!

"—ation."

"Breach in Sector 8! We have a breach in Sector 8!"

Before Danny had a chance to gather his bearings, several ghost nets crashed into him and bound him to the floor. Where the net touched him, little bolts of electricity shot into his system like static jumping to a doorknob. Danny growled and struggled against the painful bindings, but the whirring of a ghost gun made him freeze. He looked up into the tinted sunglasses of a GiW operative.

"D-Don't move, Phantom!"

Danny's eyes half-lidded in boredom. "Oh great. The Mr. Clean Groupies…"

"Quiet, ghost," another agent ordered. "We have you surrounded."

Danny looked past the two standing over him. "Let me guess, the reinforcements are invisible?"

Danny wasn't able to see his eyes, but the second agent's brows furrowed, and his mouth turned down.. "I don't like your tone, boy."

Danny used his infamous cocky smirk. "Like I care? With only two agents, why should I worry? I could take you guys out easy."

The first agent, the one who had stuttered, gulped. Without warning, he shot at Danny.

Danny gasped, and dove to the side. He needn't have bothered, though. The shot was way off target. It crashed into the wall five feet behind Danny.

"Agent N!"

Danny eyed the scared agent warily. Like cornered wolves, frightened hunters packing heat were dangerous. "New agent?" he asked the other guy.

He grunted. "As green as they come. Listen, kid," he faced Agent N, "there is a rhythm to these things. We exchange witty banter, and then we start shootin' them."

Agent N nodded his head rapidly. "Y-yes, sir. Understood, sir! Should I tranquilize him, sir?"

"Wow, he is green."

The senior agent scowled. "Tranquilizers don't work on ghosts, recruit. Get your facts straight!"

Agent N stuttered apologies. Danny rolled his eyes and wished he would teleport out of there already.

"W-what do we do then, s-sir?"

The other agent grinned sadistically. "We shock him until he loses consciousness."

Danny flinched, but tried to hide it. "Gee, so humane. You must be very proud of your species."

"I am." The senior agent pulled a button switch out of his pocket, and poised his thumb above the large red button. Danny breathed in a deep breath, readying a Ghostly Wail. Passing out and transforming in front of them wasn't an option. "Or, I don't care about yours. Prepare yourself, ghost scum."

POP!

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

POP!

The first thing Danny noticed was the absence of annoying static shocks. The second thing he noticed was the absence of everything else. Including air. He was really glad he took a deep breath before, though the breath was almost stolen from him when he looked down at the Earth. Like, the Earth, the blue planet Earth.

I'm in space! he thought, grinning goofily. He gazed around himself in wonder. He had been to space before, but he'd been too busy fighting to really admire the scenery.

Stars in every direction, as far as the eye could see, he was on the sunny side of the Earth, but he could see the moon poking out from behind the rocky planet. A comet was off in the distance, its ice and dust particles trailing behind it as the solar wind tore at the ice rock. He closed his eyes, and lights danced behind his eyelids as the solar wind hit him.

Danny sagged, and his expression became dreamy. It's so beautiful…this just makes me want to be an astronaut even more! I wish I could stay—Air! He gripped his throat. Air! I need air!

POP!

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

POP!

"Chronicles of Narnia!"

Danny gasped in air, like he'd never tasted anything so sweet. Space was awesome, but it'd be a lot better with oxygen.

"Danny Phantom!"

Danny spun around, and found his first period class staring up at him the same way he had stared at Outer Space. A nervous smile worked its way onto his lips. "I'm just dropping by. I'll be gone in a second, so please, don't let me interrupt."

The class started whispering to each other in excitement, looking like they were seconds away from mobbing him. In the back row, he saw Sam scowl. She hated his 'hero' voice. Tucker waved discreetly to him, and Danny subtly nodded back. He was glad Valerie didn't have his first hour…

"Mr. Phantom!"

Danny looked over his shoulder at Mr. Lancer. "Uh, hello again…"

Lancer frowned. "I take it you haven't fixed your 'problem'?"

"…No."

"Then perhaps you would like to sit in for my lesson," he said, smirking like he had just won a contest. "Perhaps you will learn something."

The students screamed. No longer able to contain themselves, they jumped out of their seats and rushed for Danny. He floated out of their reach, feeling nervous and slightly nauseous. Tucker and Sam joined them in order to keep up appearances, and Danny was annoyed to see Tucker filming it all on his PDA. His classmates gathered below him, shouting for autographs.

Danny backed away, breathing fast. "Uh, I don't know if that's such a good idea! Besides, I probably won't be here for much longer, or at least I really hope not, so I—"

POP!

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

POP!

"…and that is why, I believe we can use the town's little ghost problem to our…" Vlad trailed off when it became apparent he didn't have his audience's full attention. "…advantage…"

Despite the meeting being comprised of mostly professional reporters and self-important civilians, they were whispering rudely amongst each other, laughing and pointing at something behind Vlad. He looked behind him, but all he saw was the red curtain. His eyes narrowed thoughtfully.

"…As I was saying," Vlad said, turning back to the microphone on the podium, "with an interest in ghosts growing worldwide, more and more people will be traveling to Amity Park in search of the fabled beings—one in particular, I might add. I say we encourage this by building tourist attractions that will bring in large crowds of people."

"What?" a familiar voice exclaimed. Vlad smirked, his suspicion confirmed. Danny Phantom flew in front of him, his arms thrown out. "You can't bring more people here! I knew you were a fruitloop, Vlad, but this is going a bit far!"

"Ah," Vlad said suavely, "Amity Park's famous Ghost Boy. So nice of you to join us."

"Cut the crap, Vlad…er, Mr. Mayor…" Danny blushed and glanced over his shoulder at the flashing cameras and excited audience.

Vlad chuckled. "If it puts you more at ease, you're welcome to use my first name. It's the least I can do for our star attraction."

Danny refocused his righteous gaze on Vlad, but he floated to the side of him so his back was no longer to the cameras. "You can't bring tourists here, Masters."

"Oh? And why not? It'd be very profitable for this town."

"You mean it'd be very profitable for you," Danny corrected. "And you can't bring them here because, in case you haven't noticed, this town isn't very safe. The people living here know to run when a ghost attacks, but tourists will get closer because that's what they came to see. People could get seriously hurt…"

"Do you doubt your ability to protect them, little hero?" Vlad questioned, smirking mockingly. "We can use the funds the tourists bring in to hire more competent ghost hunters, so I assure you there is no need for such fear."

Danny scowled at the 'competent' part. "You're making a mistake, Masters. You can hire a hundred ghost hunters, but they won't be enough to—"

POP!

Vlad raised an eyebrow. Interesting… He hadn't expected the boy to develop his teleportation powers so soon, but his apparent lack of control more than made up for his accelerated growth. He'd make the boy suffer a while longer before he approached him.

He turned back to his murmuring audience. "Any questions?"

The crowd shot to their feet.

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

Ms. Tetslaff blew her whistle. Her students looked at her with hope in their eyes and sweat covering every inch of their exhausted bodies. "That's enough for today," she said. "Shower up, you lazy maggots!" The students silently cheered and limped toward the locker rooms.

Tucker almost fell over in relief. He'd take helping Danny fight ghosts over gym any day. He was tempted to curl into a ball and fake dehydration, just so he could sit and relax for a few seconds. Sadly, it was not to be. Sam bounced to his side, and Tucker for the second time that day cursed the girl's athleticism.

She grabbed his arm, and forced him to stumble toward the locker rooms. He muttered complaints, but being the good friend she was, she ignored them.

"Any sign of Danny since this morning?" she asked him quietly.

"Once," Tucker replied. Even his voice sounded tired. "He made a brief appearance in third period chemistry class, and I mean brief. He was there for all but five seconds, but it was still enough to disrupt the whole class and get us out of homework." He grinned. "It was awesome! What about you?"

Sam shrugged. "He popped into second period Art Class. Everybody started sketching him, including Mr. Coal." She smirked. "Danny looked so embarrassed."

Tucker chuckled. "I bet. How long did he stay?"

"Five or ten minutes. There were a lot of disappointed groans after he disappeared, but Mr. Coal managed to finish. It looks really cool too…I also heard he made an appearance for History Class, and Government." She rolled her eyes. "The Government teacher tried to call the Guys in White, but he got taken captive by his class."

Tucker laughed. "Oh man! I wish I had seen that!"

"We can ask Danny all about it once we see him again," Sam pointed out. "If he stays long enough…"

Tucker chuckled.

They split into their gender specific locker rooms, waving goodbye. Still chuckling, Tucker grabbed his shower supplies and strolled into the shower area. Because of a recent ghost attack, tarps littered the area, for once creating some much needed privacy. Too bad Danny was missing it. Mr. Modesty would most definitely appreciate the seclusion.

Tucker stripped down, and was just about to turn on the water when…

POP!

"Tucker!"

Tucker jumped.

Danny nearly hugged him like he had that morning, but he stopped at the last second. He pulled slowly away, making a face. "Uh, you're my best friend and everything, Tuck," he said, "and I love you like a brother, but I am so not touching you when you're naked…"

Tucker hurriedly wrapped his lower half in his towel. "Well no asked you to!" He looked at his best friend, noticing the tousled white hair, the tear in his jumpsuit, and the way his eyes twitched and darted around the room. "Having a rough day, Danny?"

"Like you wouldn't believe!" Danny pulled on his own hair—explaining why it was so messy—and stared at Tucker with unnaturally large eyes. "I never know where I'm going, or when I'm going there! It's all completely random! And I've seen things, Tuck! I've seen things…"

Tucker held his fists against his naked chest, mocking a scared expression. "Were they dead people?" he whispered.

Danny blinked, scowled, and crossed his hands over his chest, sulking. "Oh yeah, ha ha. Laugh at the poor kid who just saw Ember and Skulker making out."

Tucker's jaw dropped and his face turned slightly green.

Danny smirked. "Yeah! Not so funny now, is it!"

POP!

Tucker stared at the empty space before him for a moment, wondering where his traveling friend would end up next.

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

POP!

It happened very fast.

Danny saw what every straight guy dreams about, committed it unintentionally to memory, and was then deafened by shrieks. He screamed too and quickly covered his eyes with his hands. He turned around and tried to fly out of the Girl's Locker Room, but he forgot to go intangible, and he crashed into the lockers. The girls started throwing towels, hairbrushes, and other items at him.

"Sorry! I'm sorry!" he shouted over their screams, cowering in a corner. "I have no control over where I'm going!"

POP!

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

POP!

Danny was never so glad to hear that sound. Still, he stayed in a fetal position, too afraid to see where he had teleported to. Maybe if I stay still, he thought desperately, I won't teleport!

"It's alright, Danny," a kind and familiar voice said. "You're safe here."

Danny opened his eyes slowly, and stared up at Clockwork. The Time Ghost in, the form of an old man, smiled kindly back down at him.

Danny grinned and jumped to his feet. "Clockwork! Man, am I glad to see you! Listen, you have to help me! I can't stop teleporting everywhere, and I'm seeing things I really don't want to be seeing, going places I shouldn't be going, and you probably already know about all of this, because you're the Master of Time and everything, but I have to tell you because—"

"Danny, you have something on—"

"—I'm freaking out here, because I can't stop teleporting—"

"Danny, your head—"

"—and I'm seeing things I should not be not be seeing, and it won't stop, Clockwork, make it stop!" Danny leaned his head against his Guardian/mentor's chest, whimpering pathetically. "Make it stop…"

Clockwork hesitated, unsure. He reached up a hand, and patted Danny awkwardly on the shoulder. "I…I'm sorry, Danny," he said, sounding sincerely apologetic. "It's not my place to help you."

Danny's shoulders slumped in defeat. He drew away from the timeless ghost and shook the hand off his shoulder. "Yeah…I should have figured that…Sorry for putting you on the spot, Clockwork."

Clockwork changed into a toddler. He sighed, and shook his head. "There is nothing to apologize for, Danny. You ask far less of me than most ghosts. However," his tone made Danny glance despondently up at him, "I can tell you it will end soon."

Danny straightened, and his eyes brightened with hope. "Really?"

The Time Master nodded sagely. "Indeed." He smirked, and it was very odd to see such a sarcastic look on a kid's face. "By the way, Danny. You have something on your head."

Danny frowned. He brought his hand to his head and pressed down, immediately feeling something lacy. He grabbed it and brought it down to eye level. It was a white bra. Danny let out a half-yelp and quickly tossed it away from him. He wiped his hand against his pants, making a face.

Clockwork chuckled, now a middle-aged man. "I thought you were over the 'cootie' stage by now, Danny."

Danny grimaced. "I'm fourteen, and I have an older sister. You do the math."

Clockwork nodded. "Fair enough. You have ten seconds before you teleport again."

Danny looked dismayed. "So soon? Can you tell me where I'm going?"

"Home, Danny. To Fenton Works." Danny smiled in relief. "But you won't get a warm welcome."

He frowned. "What do you mean by that?"

"Five…"

"Clockwork!"

"Four…"

"I can't believe you're counting down!"

"Three…"

"Whoever heard of Master of all Time counting down the time?"

"Two…"

"'Hey, I'm Clockwork! I'm counting down because I'm awesome like that—'"

"One."

POP!

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

POP!

"GHOST!"

"Ghost!"

"Warning! Warning! Ecto-entity in the lab."

Danny blinked. "Wow. What a welcome home…"

His mom grabbed an ecto gun off one of the lab tables and shot at Danny. He gasped and quickly dove beneath it, escaping the shot by a hair. Jack shot a net at Danny, but it missed him completely. Still in a ball, it ricocheted off the wall and expanded over Maddie, knocking her to the ground and sending her gun flying. Danny clamped his hands over his mouth, trying to smother his giggles.

"Jack!" Maddie shouted angrily, struggling inside the net.

"Sorry, sweet cheeks!" Jack dropped the net launcher and grabbed the weapon they'd been working on before Danny arrived. "I'll get you out of there as soon as I capture this ghost!"

"Jack! We haven't fixed the—"

"BONSAI!" Jack pulled the trigger. Ectoplasmic goop shot into his face.

"—trigger…"

Danny wasn't sure whether to be embarrassed by his father (again), or be grateful he messed up an attack (again). He just chuckled weakly, and rubbed the back of his neck.

POP!

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

POP!

As soon as the green mist cleared, Danny looked around his new surroundings. What he saw made him grimace, and not just because the green and gold color scheme was an eyesore.

"Ah, Daniel. I was wondering when you'd 'pop' in."

Vlad stepped out of a darkened hallway, haunting smirk in place. Danny spun around and crossed his arms over his chest, lifting an eyebrow. "Do you always have to make a creepy entrance, or is this another fruitloop thing?"

Vlad huffed, looking offended. "It's dramatic, Daniel, not creepy."

"Where'd you learn it from, Villainy for Dummies? Seems like overcompensation if you ask me."

Vlad's eyes flashed red, before he schooled his expression into one of mocking regret. "I was going to offer you my expertise on teleporting, but if you're going to be immature, I have more important things to do." He turned around, walking back into the dark hallway.

Danny gasped, and quickly flew in front of the man. "Whoa, hold on!" He held up his hands in front of Vlad, forcing him to stop. "You can stop this? You can make me stop teleporting?" Vlad nodded, and Danny smiled happily. "Great! I—Wait." The smile fell from his face, and he eyed the man suspiciously. "What's in it for you?"

Vlad's lips twisted into a smirk. "No longer naïve enough to expect anything for free. I'm proud of you, little badger. My price is the usual."

"Renounce my dad and become your evil apprentice?" Danny crossed his arms again. "Forget it, Vlad."

Vlad shrugged his shoulders. "Then enjoy the rest of your life filled with uncertainty." He walked around Danny, raising a hand in farewell. "Ta."

Danny winced. He chewed on his bottom lip, thinking. He hated teleporting. If he ever got out of the rut he had fallen into, he swore the power would definitely be crossed off his list…He groaned, and flew after Vlad. "Vlad wait!"

Vlad halted, his expression triumphant. "Yes?"

Danny refused to meet his eyes. "I…The reward isn't worth the price, Vlad, but…will you teach me to control this power for…Mom's cell number?"

Vlad's eyes sparkled in interest. "You'll give me her phone number?"

It was difficult, but Danny managed to keep from grinning triumphantly. "She'll probably never forgive me, but yes. I mean, it's not like you'll get anywhere with it…"

Vlad smiled cockily. "I assure you, Daniel, I can be quite charming. I'll be your legal father in no time." Danny gagged, and Vlad rolled his eyes. "I suppose we have a deal?" Vlad held out his hand.

Danny stared at it, making a show of hesitating. "Alright…" He reached out and grabbed the other hybrids hand. "Deal."

POP!

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

POP!

Danny blinked, and when his eyes opened, it wasn't Vlad's ugly décor that greeted his sight, but Amity's newspaper office. People occupied cubicles, writing down stories on computers and scribbling notes in their notebooks, but no sign of Vlad.

"No!" Danny screamed, frantically searching the office for his savior. He could have followed him in ghost form, right? The sound of typing and pencils scribbling on paper instantly ceased, but Danny didn't notice. "I was so close to ending this!" He ran a hand through his hair, pacing back and forth on the open air. "I finally outsmarted the creep, and I get whooshed off before I can even celebrate! Where's justice in that? Is this some great cosmic joke? Just—"

POP!

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

POP!

"GHOST!"

"Jack! Get this net off me!"

"—how many people are laughing at me? The Observants—"

POP!

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

POP!

"Danny Phantom!"

"—are probably having a grand ol' time laughing at me, the jerks. No doubt Vlad finds this whole thing amusing—"

POP!

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

POP!

"Breach in Sector 11! Again!"

"—because he's a total bastard like that. Clockwork, Master of all Annoyingness, acted—"

POP!

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

POP!

"BEWARE!"

"—all sincere, but I bet he's laughing on the inside!"

POP!

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

POP!

"Mr. Phantom! A few questions—"

"And don't even get me started on my friends—"

POP!

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

POP!

"—probably laughing about it at this very moment! Some friends!"

"Danny?"

Danny spun around. His friends stared up at him, along with the whole Casper High cafeteria. He was floating over the lunch line, and even the lunch ladies were gaping openly at him. Slop slipped off one of their spoons.

Danny laughed. "Great. Just great. Of course I'd wind up here, again."

"Danny," Sam hissed, "go invisible!"

Considering the students were starting to rush in his direction, that was sound advice. Danny turned invisible. His fans slowed, groaning in disappointment, but Danny felt no sympathy. He placed a hand on Sam's shoulder, and whispered, "I'll meet you guys at our table." She nodded and whispered the message to Tucker.

Danny sat in his designated seat and placed his head in his hands, just taking time to relax and not think about anything. A few minutes later, Tucker and Sam sat at the table on either side of him.

"Danny?" Sam asked quietly. "Are you still here?"

Danny nodded his head, but realized they couldn't see it. He sighed. "Yes."

Tucker stuffed some mystery meat into his mouth. "So how's your day been?" he asked cheerfully.

Danny groaned.

"Aw, it can't be that bad." He grinned, and nudged what he hopped was Danny's shoulder and not his head. "Sam says you teleported into the girl's locker room while they were changing…"

Sam stabbed her salad, growling low in her throat. She muttered what Danny assumed were threats against mankind.

"They nearly killed me, Tuck."

"Yeah, but you would have died a happy man!"

Danny's lips twitched. "True…"

Sam slammed her spork down, her face flaming. "We are never speaking of it again, and you—" she pointed a threatening finger at Danny's seat "—are going to forget what you saw. Got it?"

"…I don't think I can, Sam…"

Sam growled, and Tucker laughed. Danny smiled, though they couldn't see it, and snuck a fry from Tucker's tray. Being invisible had its perks.

"The school is in an uproar, Danny," Sam said after a minute of silence. "…More than usual. Valerie is going crazy trying to find you, Paulina constantly fixes her makeup, and the teachers seem to be competing against each other…"

Tucker nodded. "There's even a bet going around about where you'll pop in next!"

Danny raised an unseen eyebrow. "Do I want to know who started the bet, Tuck…?"

Tucker coughed into his fist. "Depends on what you plan to do to him—or her! For all we know, the evil, clever, and no doubt charming mastermind might have been a girl."

Danny rolled his eyes, and stole another fry from the 'clever mastermind'. "Uh-huh."

"Have you learned any control yet?" Sam asked.

Danny grumbled. "No. I convinced Vlad to help me, though."

"How'd you manage that?" Sam asked.

He smirked slyly. "By offering my mom's cell phone number."

Tucker frowned. "But your mom doesn't—" His eyes cleared in understanding. He smiled at Danny. "Niiice, dude."

"So, you know how to stop now?" Sam asked.

Danny sighed. "No. Before he had a chance to tell me, I teleported away."

"Well," Tucker said, "that explains the rant. That must have been really frustrating."

"I wasn't ranting!" Danny protested. "I was…expressing my anger to the universe."

"In other words, ranting," Sam concluded.

"…Alright fine, I ranted."

"Maybe there's a pattern to it," Sam suggested. "You've been here for a while. What are you doing differently now?"

Danny shrugged. "Talking to you guys, focusing on not teleporting so I have a chance to relax."

"Maybe that's the answer then. You just have to concentrate on your surroundings and on staying in one place."

He grimaced. "I don't know, Sam. What about when I—"

POP!

Sam groaned, and leaned back in her chair. "Great. Here we go again."

Tucker chuckled. "Look on the bright side, Sam. At least the bet—that I had no part in making—is still on. I'm going to be rich!" He went to grab a fry, but the bucket was empty. He frowned down at his tray. "Where'd my fries go?"

[al-n-cartoons]

Character Notes for "The Multiverse in a Blender"

Some of these characters are fairly similar in personality and how they speak, so I've been trying to figure out each way their personalities divulge. Please add onto this if you come up with anything (it would be helpful!).

Ben Tennyson: Easy go lucky, cheery, a person-pleaser, has a bit of a vanity streak, is sporty, is dorky, is very overworked, gets bored easily (I'm writing him as having ADHD and OCD), is a fantastic actor/schemer/opertunist. Puts his work above his health. Has an eidetic memory. Is an Aroflux omnisexual. His fashion tastes are a blend of punk and sporty, but the former isn't very socially acceptable in most settings so he tends to keep it to himself.

Rex Salazar: Is sporty, funny, and a bit temperamental. Has a definit rebellious streak and is impulsive, but has a rock-solid understanding of right and wrong. Basically, he'd be the one to punch someone in the face if he felt they deserved it. Is a heterosexual.

Bubbles: Overly excitable, naive, loves life and everything in it. Isn't very book smart, but is a force on the battle field (brute force, like Rex and Buttercup). Is a follower. Loves animals and violence (gets along well with Rex). She's a bit fascinated with the darker aspects of life, but is so cheery that most people view her aggression on the battle field as being ditzy. Is family and friend oriented. Is an aromantic asexual.

Buttercup: Has clearer morals than Bubbles and, although she is a definite punk, is overall less violent than Bubbles. Is competitive (hello, Ben and Rex) and wants to be sporty ("Ben, HOW DO YOU PLAY SOCCER!?). Is a bit rebellious and rude, but does wind up doing as Blossom instructs. Admires Ben's prowess in battle, and is learning from him how to tone down her destructiveness (which is a trait nearly all of her siblings naturally possess per the nature of their powers). Has never thought of her sexuality, and doesn't care to label herself. If she likes a guy, gal, etcetera, she likes 'em.

Blossom: the Sadsap charged with keeping her haywire siblings in check. Loves books, romance novels, and baking. Tries to be nice, but is also a realist (That painting is very colorful, Bubbles, but maybe we should keep the red inside of the people, okay?). Is very interested in healthy eating and loves trying to incorporate healthy stuff into her experimental baked goods (she doesn't use sugar or lipids very much, so her cooking tends to flop per taste and failure to hold in moisture). Is quizzical, sharp, and an opportunist. Isn't afraid to pummel someone if she felt there was need enough ("either you give me the code to disarm the bomb, or I turn your face into pulp.") She is a complete gay-panic.

Bliss: The oldest and second to least emotionally mature sister of the bunch. She tries to lead, but doesn't really know what she's doing. Loves to fight and can access her powers easily, but can't keep them from blowing up on people. Is prone to emotional outbursts and, per the nature of her powers, this is to her detriment. Isn't sociable and hates crowded places. Loves her siblings to bits and loves to bring Bubbles pieces of her foes (rocks, scales, strips of metal that had impaled them) to commemorate her victories. Thinks Danny's the sweetest little thing ("You like space? We can go there, like, right this second. 1-2-3 *zooms away, leaving a confused Danny behind*"). Ace and aro.

Dexter: The adopted brother of Bliss, Buttercupe, Blossom, and Bubbles. Is short-tempered and tends to sulk. Is inventive and technical; a fantastic creator of weaponry and anything of the like. Has a one-sided crush on Ben, but denies so much as liking the guy. Loves coffee but doesn't like to eat much, going so far as creating nutrition pills so as to bypass the affair ("The activity which you are suggesting, Blossom, is a waste of time.") Is a homosexual.

Danny Phantom: Is snarky and has a sardonic personality. Is more serious than some of his cohorts (looking at you, Rex and Bubbles) but loves to wisecrack and is VERY sassy. Is also extremely platonic, loving and trusting his two best friends (Sam and Tucker) with his life. Has a dorky flair for astronomy, and can recognize essentially every constellation in the sky (as well as quite a few of their stories). Has a crush in a character from his hometown, Valerie. Would punch someone in the face as payback, then forgive them for whatever they'd done to upset him or someone else. Is a trans heterosexual (bicurious, perhaps biromantic, but is not bisexual). Has claustrophobia.

Zak Saturday: Exceedingly compassionate and family-oriented, as well as highly skilled in hand-to-hand combat and strategizing. Is very ingenious. Enjoys teasing and joking around, but will also nag someone if he thinks they're being idiotic (this makes it so that he and Rex are a bit at odds with one another). Is also great at finding common ground/compromising. Basically, he'd be the one fixing someone's broken nose and explaining to them where they went wrong, then give them a lollipop. Is dating Ben (they started at age 12) and gets along great with Blossom. Is pansexual.

Connie Maheswaran: Is both people smart and book smart, but lacks quite a bit of street knowledge. Is a considerable combatant, and has a quick wit, but would rather focus on the task at hand than joke around (she calls Danny and Ben out over this). Is kind and understanding, but not a pushover. Has a good head in her shoulders, and is good with details. After their universes fuse, she may take her various skills (hand-to-hand combat, acute intellect, interest in outer space) and apply them to the Plumbers as a long-term career.

Dipper Pines: Family-oriented, not very sociable with people of his age group. Is insecure around the others listed here (baring Mabel, for obvious reasons); sees himself as inferior since he's an intellectual and is incapable on the actual battle field (his words, not mine). Is incredibly smart, a technical thinker, and has a fantastic memory. Is a bi disaster half the time. LOVES to strategize and plot out the how and why for any problem. Loves gaming. Bites off more than he can chew. Keeps Mabel from hurting herself more often than either of them are willing to admit ("Mabel, that's a garbage disposal, not a slide. Mabe-MABEL!!!?") is a panromantic heterosexual. Has a long-distance relationship with Pacifica, but both of them are equally supportive so it's worked out thus far.

Mabel Pines: Family and friend oriented, is a bi disaster. Is an obscene romantic, which tends to leave her with her heart crushed, but she bounces back after a day or two. Is considerably strong, considering the fact that she's entirely human with no combat training, and is learning how to use hand-held weapons. Isn't very intuitive, but is very interpersonally smart. Is an animal lover, owning a pet pig and cat ("Dipper, look, my babies are cuddling!") (I didn't add the cat in, guys; episode one).

Steven Universe: Is the human teddy bear. He is a pacifist, meaning that he refuses to start fights or violence but isn't afraid to save someone from another or themselves. Tries to fix every problem but his own. Is a compulsive overexplainer and apologizer. His best friend is a lion, so people tend not to mess with him. Also, Lion likes to just lie atop Steven's van when they go places. He is compassionate, caring, loving, trusting, and has mommy issues (and also slight daddy issues, but barely). Trauma baby who only wants his girlfriend to succeed and for her to be happy (preferably with him nearby, but he tries to give her a respectful distance). He is a panromantic asexual.

Is that everyone? I think that's everyone.

Edit: I forgot Steven, guys. Had to edit him in.

[stereksecretsanta]

Merry Christmas, inatshej!

For @inatshej. I’ve never written a high school AU before, but I wanted to make Inatshej’s secret santa dreams come true. I hope I did your wishes justice <3

CW for homophobic bullying, but it's not the focus of the story. Also, there is brief mention of the death of Stiles' mother.

Read On AO3

*****

To Be Held By You

Derek knew there must be something wrong with him from a young age. He knew because how many times had his parents given their speech about the importance of raising the next generation for werewolf society? How many times had his uncle given the “werewolves will become endangered species if we don't procreate more” speech at a pack meeting? His purpose in life was to raise more cubs, and that required Derek to kiss a girl.  He tried touching himself to pictures of Taylor Swift, but at the moment of truth his mind wandered back to Taylor Lautner.

High school proved even more challenging. Derek tried to join in his teammates’ objectifying discussions about their substitute teacher, Ms. Argent, but he felt like an obvious impostor. After basketball practice Derek hung back to shoot extra baskets to avoid being in the locker room. Later, to his dismay, someone else drew his eye in chemistry class.  

“Mr. Stilinski. Glad you could finally join us,” Mr. Harris bit out as Stiles’ desk scraped against the floor.

Stiles looked lovely with flushed cheeks, Derek grudgingly admitted to himself.

“Sorry, I overslept. I had a busy night looking for that dead body in the woods.”

Mr. Harris gave a tight lipped smile while the rest of the class laughed at Stiles. Stiles either didn’t seem to care or didn’t realize the laughter was directed at him.

Jackson’s voice cut above the cruel raucous. “Stilinski here thinks he’s Scooby-Doo.” And then Jackson started barking obnoxiously.

Derek wanted to crawl under his desk. They sounded like a butchered version of a pack of angry basset hounds and it grated at his sensitive hearing. Not to mention poor Stiles. Derek watched to see his reaction, but Stiles just caught Derek’s stare and rolled his eyes. Derek’s face heated, and he glanced away.

***

Erica nudged Derek’s side. “Scott and Stiles are here.”

Derek glanced up from his plastic cup. The pounding beat of the bass almost drowned out her voice, and Derek had no way of hearing what Stiles was saying across the huge loft. His eyesight was certainly good enough to admire Stiles’ tight t-shirt though. “You know him?”

“Who, Stiles? Of course. I had a huge crush on him in middle school actually.”

Derek coughed on his next sip. “I thought he was a new kid.”

Erica waved her hand. “Nope. Actually, he’s the sheriff’s kid. Just took some time off last year because his mom was in the hospital.”

Derek braced himself. “Is she…?”

Erica nodded gravely. “She didn’t make it. But he seems like he’s back to his old self now. Want to see if they want some company?”

Derek tried in vain to grab her sleeve before she sauntered off. “No, Erica, wait-!” Derek waved away a girl’s paintbrush as he craned his neck to see what Erica’s was planning. Luckily, Derek could see through the throngs of people in the dim lights and glowing that Erica got sidetracked by running into Boyd. There was no distraction more helpful than the guy Erica was currently crushing on. However, unluckily, Stiles also got distracted. A pretty brunette with neon orange lips grabbed Stiles’ hand and dragged him to the dance floor. Derek strained to hear, but to no avail.

All the DJ’s songs blended into one another, so Derek couldn’t tell how much time passed. Eventually Erica sauntered over, happily under Boyd’s arm. In tow, was Stiles. It seemed they were all in the middle of a conversation.

Erica poked Stiles’ arm. “I thought you were into guys?”

Stiles took a gulp of his drink. “What do you mean?”

“You were making out with Caitlin. What about your crush on Danny sophomore year?”

Stiles scoffed. “Erica, I will have you know I am an equal opportunity lover.” At her smirk, he added, “I’m bisexual! Ever heard of it?”

Boyd gave Stiles a fist bump. “That’s cool, man.”

Stiles grinned and cupped his hands around his mouth to shout into the mess of writhing bodies. It was impossible he would be heard over the pounding music, but his new friends would hear. “I’M BISEXUAL AND I’M SINGLE!” His laugh warmed the already hot loft space. “Hey, I’m Stiles, by the way.” And then he winked at Derek.

Oh shit. Derek’s crush just got slightly more attainable. And that scared him.

***

On Monday at school Derek found Stiles waiting by his locker. “Hey dude, you’re looking pretty as ever.”

Derek gulped. “Um.”

Stiles stepped out of the way of Derek’s locker so he could put his backpack away. He licked his lips and his heart beat wildly. “So...Harris is making us pick lab partners today in chemistry. And I was thinking-”

Jackson’s bellow from the end of the hall cut in. “Yo Stilinski! Who let you into the party on Friday? Everyone knows you’re a narc!”

Stiles rolled his eyes. “You’re just jealous I wouldn’t dance with you, Whittmore.”

Jackson strode closer. “You hear that everybody? Stiles wanted me to dance with him.” He loomed over Stiles then and Stiles had to push his shoulders back against the lockers. “Too bad. I don’t dance with f*gs who run home and tell the Sheriff I host parties at my parent’s loft property.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Jackson sneered. “Don’t play innocent. My parents took my car keys and you’re going to pay for it. Just you wait.”

Stiles barked out a laugh. “You seriously think the Sheriff’s department gives a shit about you? Your parents probably found out because Matt tagged you on Facebook.”

That only seemed to enrage Jackson more. “You calling me stupid?” Jackson clenched his fist, but before he could move his arm, Derek wrenched Jackson’s arm back. The growing crowd backed up, expecting a brawl.

Derek usually tried to stay under the radar. If he got in any fights it could put their whole pack in jeopardy. The student body witnessing a 17 year old kid win a fight with ease and then walk away without a scratch always seemed too risky. But for Stiles, Derek acted without thinking.

Stiles’ eyes widened as Derek grabbed Jackson’s shoulder and shoved him to the other side of the locker bay. “Don’t touch him!” Derek’s barely contained strength hinted at a power Jackson could only dream of.

Jackson struggled against him, but couldn’t get loose. “Whoa, chill out, Hale,” Jackson sputtered. “It was just a joke.” Derek smelled the beginnings of fear now.

Derek leaned over Jackson to growl in his ear. “Leave Stiles alone or I won’t hold back next time.” He released Jackson, but not before flashing his eyes for good measure. Jackson’s veneer of superiority completely dropped away to reveal wide eyes. Satisfied, Derek dropped his arms and stepped back.

Jackson pushed his way through the onlookers. “Get out of my way, Greenberg.”

Derek shuddered. Shit. If his mom got wind of this…

“Dude! That was awesome!” They both glanced at the still gathered crowd. “Let’s get out of here.”

Derek followed Stiles down the hallway and around the corner into an empty classroom. “Isn’t this room usually locked during first period?”

Stiles grinned, eyes sparkling. “I have my ways.” Up close like this Derek could see they were about the same height.

The lights were off, but Derek’s eyesight picked up bean bags strewn in the corner.

“Don’t worry. I’ve memorized Ms. Blake’s schedule, because Scott and Allison sneak in here all the time to make out,” Stiles whispered into the dim light.

Derek took a shallow breath and scented the arousal permeating the bean bag chairs. He visibly blanched.

“Oh! Not that I brought you in here to make out!” Stiles reddened and took a step back from him. Derek missed the heat of his body. “I just wanted to get you away from the prying eyes before someone realized you were a werewolf.”

Derek’s stomach dropped. Had he let his family’s secret up after all? “What did you say?”

Stiles stopped short. “Was I not supposed to say anything?”

“How-, What-What do you know?”

“Relax, Derbear. I’m not a hunter or anything. My best friend’s a werewolf.” Stiles reached for his shoulder. He probably meant it to be a reassuring hold, but Derek couldn’t help but think this is the first time Stiles ever touched him. The heat and pressure of his hand left Derek reeling.

It took Derek a second to comprehend. “...Scott?”

“Yep,” Stiles said. Stiles gave his shoulder a final pat and took his hand off. “Bit by a rogue alpha a few months ago.

“Oh,” Derek managed. He supposed he remembered something familiar coming up in a recent pack meeting.

“We good?”

Derek let out a breath, and his lips turned up. “Yeah.”

“Cool.” Stiles grinned back. “So, what I was trying to say earlier. Do you want to be my lab partner in Harris’ class?”

“Sure, Stiles,” Derek said, still smiling.

The shrill bell interrupted the warm stillness. Derek listened at the door and nodded to Stiles. “The coast is clear.”

Stiles poked his head out, then strode back toward the lockers. The hallways were now deserted. “I guess Jackson didn’t send the dean over.”

Derek’s face darkened. “And he won’t if he knows what’s good for him.”

“Man, the toxic masculinity really does it for me apparently,” Stiles muttered. “Hey, do you think I’m attractive to straight guys?”

“Huh?”

“Never mind.”

***

After that Derek’s friends unanimously adopted Stiles into their group. It seemed Stiles’ best friend since childhood spent all his time with his new girlfriend anyway. Erica loved having someone to talk boys with and Boyd enjoyed practicing lacrosse with someone who hadn’t betrayed him for the basketball team. (Derek tried to get Boyd to understand that it was easier for him to hide his wolf strength in basketball than in lacrosse, but Boyd wouldn't listen.)

After Scott’s particularly sappy winter formal proposal to Allison during lunch Stiles rolled his eyes and turned to the rest of the group. “So who’s going to the dance?”

Boyd glimpsed up from his chips and shared a smile with Erica, like they were in on the same secret.

Stiles stole Erica’s apple while she was otherwise occupied making doe eyes at her new boyfriend. “I meant other than the obvious lovebirds,” he grumbled. He glanced at Derek and his cheeks flushed.

Malia cut in before Derek could flounder over his words. “Derek’s taking Kira for me as usual. My dad would literally flip a table if he knew Kira and I are actually a couple.”

Stiles’ gaze broke away from Derek to gape at Malia. “Oh shit, seriously? Well aren’t you a good cousin, Derek.” Stiles got that calculating look that promised gears were turning in his head. It was never a good sign when it was directed at Derek. With a perfect air of casual he added, “Then I should take you, Malia, to avoid further suspicion. Derek and I can be de facto dates once we get to the dance and let you and Kira do your thing.” He winked at Derek then, and it was Derek’s turn to feel his face heat.

***

Up until then Derek’s crushes were unattainable, like a famous person or the cute counselor at werewolf summer camp. Now his crush was his “de facto” date to the winter formal. Against his better judgment Derek couldn’t stop staring at Stiles. He watched Stiles’ nimble fingers put Malia’s corsage around her wrist, and he shivered imagining what Stiles’ touch would feel like on his own skin.

“Everything okay, Derek?”

Derek started and turned to his mother. “Of course.”

“Kira seems awfully quiet today.”

They turned to see Kira watching Stiles and Malia posing for pictures with an unreadable expression.

“Um, I think she’s feeling awkward being the only kitsune here.”

“Right,” Talia said. “You know, that Stiles sure is charming.”

“I guess,” Derek grumbled.

“We’d better finish up with pictures soon then.” She winked at Derek. Addressing everyone, she said, “Alright everyone. One more group picture.” She motioned to the boys to line up. “Girls, stand in front of the boys.”

The wolves had been devising ways to avoid the lens flare. This time everyone was directed to look at their dates. The girls angled to look up at the boys, but at that moment Malia leaned over to whisper something in Kira’s ear, and the two of them giggled at one another. The shutter also caught Derek turning to gaze at Stiles at the same time Stiles happened to eye him too.

***

Stiles nudged him as they stood in line to the gym. “You clean up good, dude.”

Derek glared at his shoes. “You too.” That was an understatement. Stiles looked stunning in his fit, dark black suit. Stiles usually wore baggy flannel or sweatshirts. This was a new side of him Derek could absolutely get used to. The fact that Stiles left the first couple buttons of his shirt open made Derek’s mouth water. He wanted to bite that hint of collarbone.

Even Lydia, Jackson’s ex, eyed Stiles appreciatively and sent a sly smile his way. Stiles beamed back at her for a moment.

Once inside Derek’s ears had to adjust to the DJ’s booming volume and the smell of cologne overpowering the faint smell of gym socks. Stiles needed no adjustment. He grabbed Malia’s and Kira’s hands and pointed to the dance floor where Scott and Allison already were. Derek watched with amusement as Stiles and his friends formed a circle, Stiles dancing frenetically.

Derek himself wasn’t much of a dancer, but he was content to watch Stiles bounce around. While Stiles finished up a fast rendition of Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree with Lydia the tune changed to a slow ballad.

Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas... the speakers crooned.

Derek expected Lydia to find Jackson for this one, but to Derek’s horror Stiles turned to Lydia and pulled her close.

Derek may have been enjoying the occasional brush of their hands during chemistry labs, and he still savored Stiles’ hand on his shoulder, but he never got to be held by him like that. The song never seemed to end. If Stiles hadn’t had a partner for this one then maybe he would have turned to his “de facto” date.

Derek knew he was scowling, but hoped Stiles wouldn’t be able to tell from his vantage hooked over Lydia’s shoulder. Finally, the song ended and Derek could breathe again.

After the song ended Stiles strode up with punch in one hand. “Why so sour, Sourwolf?”

Derek’s jaw tightened. Something dangerously close to the truth flew out of his mouth. “You and Lydia looked pretty cozy.”

Stiles rubbed his hand over his buzzed hair. “When we were dancing?”

“Nothing. It’s stupid,” Derek grumbled.

Stiles nudged him goodnaturedly. “Were you jealous?” Stiles teased.

Derek blushed. “Shut up.”

“You’re such a sweet talker. Of course I’ll dance with you.” Stiles took Derek’s hand and pulled him to the dance floor.

It wasn’t the slow song Derek dreamed of. However, even with a fast song he could be close to Stiles. Stiles’ scent wafted around him; a mix of the dry cleaning on his suit, his pine deodorant that made him smell like the woods, and that exquisite scent all his own. Every now and then Stiles would take Derek’s hands and pull him closer or shimmy against him.

Dancing with Stiles almost made Derek forget they were in the same room where he had to practice basketball every weeknight. He could tune out his classmates shamelessly grinding on each other with the warmth of Stiles’ body. The twinkling lights on the ceiling actually seemed to transform the space to a winter wonderland as the winter formal posters had promised.

Just when Derek thought he might be getting a hang of where he should put his arms while dancing Erica and Boyd bounded up to them and pulled them apart.

“Who’s coming to Jackson’s party with us?”

Stiles seemed to shake himself. “Right now?”

“Yes, now, silly! No one stays after the DJ starts playing remixes of Jingle Bells.”

Derek’s scowl returned. He didn’t want the night to end yet.

Stiles shrugged. “I’m not keen on going to another Whittmore party.” Stiles eyed him, then said. “If everyone’s going to the loft party you and me can just hang out at my place and watch a movie or something.”

At that Derek had to duck his head to hide his grin. “Sure.”

***

Stiles’ home was small, but cozy. A warm lamp lit the couch in the living room, and the tree’s twinkling lights sent a sparkling glow across the rest of the room. The room was filled with Stiles scent mingled with the tree’s needles. Best of all, Derek couldn’t hear anyone else in the house.

Stiles gestured to the couch. “Make yourself at home. My dad’s working somet overtime tonight so we have the place to ourselves.”

Derek gulped. He sat on the couch and rubbed his hands over his thighs. Stiles’ long fingers undid the buttons on his suit jacket as he spoke, and Derek couldn’t turn away.

“Can I get you anything to drink?”

“Uh…” His mouth was suddenly quite dry.

“Dude. Earth to Derek.”

“Water’s fine,” he managed to croak out.

While Stiles tripped to the kitchen Derek glanced around the room and took in the family photo frames decorating the space, the homemade quilt that smelled faintly of perfume hanging over the back of the couch, and the impressive collection of DVDs.

“See anything you like?”

Derek jumped in an uncharacteristic startle. “What?!”

“Did you see a movie you want to watch?”

“Oh! I’m good with Marvel I guess.”

“Avengers it is,” Stiles said.

Derek couldn’t tell what time it was, but time seemed to stop in the Stilinski house. The old couch was worn and soft, with cushions deep enough to sink into. Stiles sat down close enough to bump their legs when either of them shifted. Stiles’ breathing echoed in Derek’s ears, and his heartbeat drowned out the battle sounds. Out of the corner of his eye Derek admired Stiles’ freckles on his neck and the enticing part of his lips. Stiles hypnotized him. That must be the only explanation for Derek letting his guard down.

“Chris Evans can get it,” Stiles said, practically drooling at the screen, oblivious to Derek’s admiration.

Derek harrumphed, arms crossed. “I like Tom Holland better.”

That got Stiles’ attention away from the screen. The devilish upturn of Stiles’ lips made Derek realize what just came out of his mouth.

“I mean…”

Stiles’ eyes traveled up and down Derek’s torso, his half smile never wavering. “I knew it. I knew you were into guys.”

“I don’t-, I mean...Fuck.” Derek hung his head. “Yeah.” For some reason Derek wanted to cry.

Stiles paused the movie and scooted closer to Derek on the couch. “Hey, man, I didn’t mean to freak you out. Despite my chatterbox reputation I can keep a secret.”

“No, that’s not it. I just...I’ve never said it out loud to anyone before.” He admitted it. He admitted he liked boys and the world was still spinning. Derek took a deep, shuddering breath. For years he feared his secret would disgust those he cared about, but instead the secret was out and the boy he liked was staring at his lips with a hungry gleam in his eyes. Suddenly it felt like he could do anything. “I’ve never kissed a guy before either.”

Stiles’ teeth grazed over his bottom lip. “Should I put my licorice down or am I reading this wrong?”

Derek huffed. “Put the licorice down, Stiles.”

The words were barely out of Derek’s mouth before Stiles plastered himself to Derek with a whimper. Derek arched against him. This was the most friction and heat he’d ever gotten from Stiles and he never wanted it to end. Derek’s lips were drawn to Stiles’ like the pull of the moon; it was impossible to fight. Every time Derek thought they should probably stop he leaned back in for just one more, and then another.

Stiles seemed equally transfixed. When Derek licked along the tendons on his neck Stiles uttered a series of desperate “Oh my god”s that left Derek gasping into a particularly sharp bite with his human teeth.

The unfamiliar crunch of tires drew Derek out of his haze. “Stiles, there’s someone in your driveway.”

Stiles pulled away. His chin was pink from Derek’s stubble and his lips plumped from their kissing in a way that made Derek want to dive back in. Gods that mouth. “...Shit my dad’s home. I didn’t know it got so late.”

They both sheepishly realized the movie ended ages ago.

“Do you want me to go?” Derek asked reluctantly.

“I want you to be my boyfriend,” Stiles sighed.

“Okay,” he said. And Derek sealed it with a brief peck before pulling back to give some semblance of composure for Stiles’ father, the sheriff, oh crap.

Stiles beamed at him from the other side of the couch. “Seriously?”

Derek nodded. He’d never been more sure of something before in his life.

***

Having a boyfriend was one thing. At school Derek could openly gaze at Stiles in class now and Stiles would blush and wink at him. But at home Derek hadn’t told his family just yet. When his mom came into his room the night before winter break he knew he wanted to start telling them the truth about him and Stiles.

“Knock knock. Derek, honey, do you want to bring Kira to Christmas Eve dinner?”

Derek gulped. “I’m not dating Kira.”

“You broke up?”

“Mom...Alpha. I have to tell you something.” Derek took a deep breath. “I don’t think I like girls at all actually. I like boys.” He couldn’t meet his mother’s eyes.

“That’s wonderful, honey. I’m so glad you finally told me.”

Derek raised his eyebrows. “You’re not mad?”

Her forehead creased. “You know I love you beyond the moon and back. Why would you think I’d be mad about your sexuality?”

“I’m not a good pack member if I don’t father children,” Derek said, studying the patterns in his floor.

Derek’s mother held him close and scented his neck. “Oh my darling Derek. You’ve been carrying so much in your heart.”

Derek’s breath hitched, but he tried to hold in his wet gasp.

She pulled back to sandwich his cheeks between her hands and meet his gaze. “There is no expectation of heterosexuality in our pack. Or in most packs. That is human nonsense, and I won’t stand for it.”

“Oh.”

“Yes, oh. Uncle Peter’s spent too much time in the Bible belt it seems. I should have removed his voice box years ago,” she grumbled. “Now, have you heard of the male penguin couples that raise abandoned eggs?” At Derek’s blank expression she continued. “Homosexual werewolves hold a great honor in our society. They fulfill the needs of adoption and foster parenting orphaned or abandoned cubs.”

“So I can still be a father someday?”

“Of course! I’m sure you and Stiles can find a way to raise children however you see fit.”

“Mom!”

“Really dear, you can’t expect a werewolf nose not to realize you were canoodling with him the night of the winter formal. You came back reeking of- Well let’s just say, a werewolf household doesn’t offer as much privacy as one would think.”

Derek groaned. “Well, I guess in that case no one will be surprised if I bring him as my boyfriend to Christmas Eve dinner.”

“He’s always welcome here.” She kissed his forehead and Derek felt tears prick at his eyes. He couldn’t wait to call Stiles to tell him the news.

[popculturebuffet]

Reviewcaps: X-Men Evolution: Strategy X

I take my first look at X-Men Evolution the second and less famous, but no less loved, cartoon about everyones faviorite mutant outcasts. In our first episode Scott blows up a gas station, Nightcrawler finds what it feels like to have a home, Toad tries to join the x-men and both of the latter two end up nearly dying because Chuck forgot to teleport proof the one room in the house with deadly lasers. All this and football under the cut. 

A few days ago I realized something weird: I hadn’t reviewed any superhero cartoons on here. What makes that weird to me, is that I realized when writing this that Superhero cartoons are what MADE me a superhero fan in the first place. I grew up as a little kid watching the spider-man and x-men animated series, and watched most marvel shows that came about as I grew, and became a lifelong fan of Green Lantern and the Flash thanks to Justice League , the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles thanks to the 2003 cartoon (another franchise I absolutley adore I haven’t covered on here for some reason) and the Teen Titans thanks to well.. Teen Titans, not to mention all the great original superhero shows at the time like the legendary Danny Phantom (even if butch heartman can take a short walk into a cave full of bears lately), My Life as a Teenage Robot, El Tigre.. the list of good shit goes on. So being on an X-Men kick again lately, I decided to revisit what turned out to be one of the first of this wave, and a show I’d had the opporoutnity to binge for a while , first on hulu and then on D+, and wanted to revisit to see how it holds up, while, if not as fast as I watch them, reviewing them here to combine my two intrests. And it probably wont’ be the last marvel animated series I binge or cover here, nor the last superhero show I cover so if you have any, Marvel, DC, from other companies or completely original, shoot me an ask or reply to this and i’ll see if I can get to it. For now we’re starting the evolution.  Evolution was the first X-Men cartoon, and somehow one of 5 overall not counting the hulk vs wolverine movie, pryde of the x-men pilot and various crossover apperances in other cartoons, to follow the 90′s one, which as you probably know was a huge hit that defined the x-men for a generation of young fans, was a huge sucess and launched the mostly great sorta shared cartoon universe with classics like Spider-Man the Animated Series (Which not concidentally is what made me a lifelong fan of the webslinger), The Incredible Hulk, and the second season of Iron Man and Fantastic Four.. and yes only the second as the first seasons were both by entirely diffrent creative teams and gave us things like this. 

Yes that is Johnny Storm doing an objetivley terrible hip hop song, no it dind’t cause that building to sink into the earth, and yes it is so bad it’s delcioius. Sadly the rest of hte series is more flat and boring than “bwahahahaha” but my point is made. The point is Evolution had a steep hill to climb, and with the previous cartoon compressing most of the decades long Chris Claremont era and some of what came after into 5 seasons of good if cheesy stuff, the creators clearly, if only because Ic an’t find a making of, decided to go in a diffrent route, making their own unique take on the characters and world of the x-men instead.  For starters rather than being vetrans with years of experince, either from being an x-man or just from general life experince like the comics were since the 70′s aside from the ocasinal exception like Kitty Pryde and Jubilee, they’d be teens, grappling with hormones alongside blue fur, head lasers and not being able to touch anyone. This wasn’t something x-men had shied away from, New Mutants and Generation X existed, but it was the first time in decades the X-Men themselves were kids. Sure Storm and Wolverine weren’t aged down, but there were just as many missions that were just these teenagers hoping to surivive the experince and keep mutants a secret till the world was ready.. and then dealing with the fallout when an unready and hateful world found out anyway. And I honeslty like the direction: The previous series had done the mostly straight adaptation bit, there wasn’t anywhere to go and aging scott and jean back to teens, and having nightcrawler and rouge get to be ones for the first time though, was an intresting idea, as was having Kitty Pryde be a teen alongside them instead of their plucky teenage member  Another intresting direction was, while Xavier’s still existed and was where the cast lived and learned to use their powers, the X-Men also went to regular high school. While it’d take till season 3 for them to actually have to deal with being out mutants in the setting, it was still an intresting tactic: The X-school in the comics, while no less studious is still an isoalted boarding school and when the New Mutants met some friends in town, most had only heard whispers about the old Xavier Mansion and were delighted to visit for a slumber party.. granted this being an x-men schindig our heroes ended up having to deal with an alien who eventually became one of their closest friends that night but still, for the x-men having the robot, or technoorganic in this case, NOT try to murder them on purpose and be a loveable 80′s sidekick instead is an easy night. While i’ts not done perfectly here from what I can remember, the main human characters we see are nightcrawlers love intrest amanda (who is thankfully NOT his adopted sister this time around thank christ), local stock blond football bully and flash thompson impersonator Duncan, and Scott’s nondiscript friend paul, who I can’t think of without thinking two things; one , what do you WANT paul: 

I mean a man so vauge just can’t be trusted. The second is that paul looks a lot like Doug Ramsey and i’m suprised they didn’t just.. make him Doug and have him go through a similar arc from the comics:A crush on kitty and the rest of the team finding out he’s a mutant and eventually bringing him into their world. For those unaware Doug Ramsey is a mutant with the ablility to translate any languge, including computer code from the get go and body laungage when he came back, an easy fix to him being the non-combatant of the group no one thought of, who died tragically in story sacrifcing himself to save his girlfriend’s life and out of story because the artist tricked the writer into killing him off. Thankfully he did come back about two decades later, took a level in badass thanks to a combination of the body language thing above meaning he could anticipate moves and dodge and computers having advanced to the point that part of his powers was now 80 times more useful, and has recently become a key part of the dawn of x relaunch. He’s also a faviorite of mine as you can probably tell and given how much the early 2000′s loved their computers, it’s weird to me they didn’t think of this and it’s even weirder he didn’t show up with the lions share of the other new mutants next season, along with Karma and Warlock which somehow has become a recurring theme thanks to the movie saving them for sequels that ended up not happening because fox stupidly put the movie in Limbo where it remains until maybe next month.  But yeah even if muted a bit the idea of the x-men going to a public school alongside their training is a decent one.. sure a hero going through high school is again a cliche, but it’s a thing the x-men hadn’t done in this way before or sense, and was intresting to see in action. Most high school scnees in x-comics are usually some poor mutant having their powers manifest and either hurting someone by accident, being treated like crap for it by their class or hunted down for accidently hurting someone before the x-men show up to kick their asses and welcome this youngster. Or getting rejected by family and friends then coming to the x-men.. there’s a lot of angst directions to go in. My point is we’d never seen the x-men try to blend in and have a more standard school experince, and combining that with them hiding their powers instead of being out in the open at first made for a unique dynamic for the x-men that makes well tread ground nice nad fresh even 20 years later. 

So that’s our basic setup going in: The X-men wake up, go to school, then save the world or train to save the world while harnesing wonderful and dangerous powers and protecting the helpless agaist less charitable mutants. The basic x-setup with a 2000′s era superhero high school show flavor. Good stuff. But we’ll see what it does with this premise, how good it holds up and what’s still delightfuly cheesy about it as I take a nice look at the first episode Strategy X

We open at night and

Yup Scott and Jean are at the football team where the aforementioned Duncan, guy voted most likely to peak in high school in last year’s yearbook poll, is playing some foot ball and trying to flit with Jean Grey whose the first X-Man we meet and is somehow receptive to this despite his radaiating douche and is lucky this Jean’ , unlike say the time transfered one from the comics who thought the best approach to helping Bobby Drake come out of the closet so he could help his older self do the same and be his best self, was to just blunty say he’s gay and refuse to let him explore thtt for himself or get someone more quliafied to help her. And yes that did indeed happen and yes the original x-men were brought into the present for a while and yes it was weird Moving on. Still i’m pretty sure duncan’s thoughts would read like  “Man she looks good.. I want to bang her so hard she uh.. wakes up sideways.. yeah that’s it. Your a legend duncan, a total legend. “.  As you can probably tell I don’t have fond memories of this character or this sorta but not really love triangle, and question why they couldn’t of just had spyke be the other man in the triangle if they wanted to do this. Granted Spyke himself is kinda annoying, but it still makes more sense to have him fill in for angel or wolverine in a jean-scott love triangle than this walking burnt end. The warren, scott one worked, as much as a 60′s love triangle could because warren was conventionally handsome and had angel wings while scott has to keep glasses on just to not murder anyone he looks at, so there’s a bit of contrast there, while with WOlverine it’s straight laced dependeble scott versus unhinged manly man Logan. You know before recently where they just decided to all bone in a pile and wolverine even goes on vacation with them. And that’s not a joke I made up, that’s actual canon. Both make logical sense while Jean would be intrested in both in the former case, as Scott was still a kind and dependable leader, and tempted in the latter case if never acting on it before recently and with her husband’s full consent and either watching from the closet or taking one up the ass for jean to watch. Duncan in contrast is just wholly unlikeable and it makes me question why use him as the third in this love triangle, ESPECIALLY since the show would later introduce another scott and jean based love triangle with Rogue wanting scott that’s way more intresting, and even people wanting those two to hook up don’t want Jean with Duncan! Instead of creating a vitable alternative to make a later love triangle more intresting or create some shipping wars or anything of value any hint jean may be intrested just wastes screentime and tests my patience and is thankfully breif here.  As for why Jean’s here sh’es taking pictures for the school paper since the Daily Bugle wasn’t intrested in photos that weren’t of spider-man and they already had a teen photographer for that. Porker or something. Anyways this episode ofa low rent friday night lights knockoff is interuptted when one of duncan’s buddies on the team spots local trouble maker and ,judging by context, bully punching bag Todd Tolansky, aka Toad which is a cruel nickname turned slightly lesss cruel code name here, pick pocketing the people in the stands, and sensing a flimsy context to punch a nerd, Duncan goes to tell the coah he’ll be busy for a moment totally not carving someone’s face in again. Coach says as long as he leaves him breathing, and through a straw still counts and since their so far ahead as long as he’s back for the celebratory rampage anything goes.  Also spotting Toad’s stan pines approved sticky fingers is Scott Summers, leader of x-men and all around cool guy. Scott here is a bit more emotive than he was int he comics at a time, a trait he’d have later on in the late 2000′s and even currently and a version I prefer to the “has something shoved so far up his ass you can see it when he opens his mouth” boring straightman of the 90′s cartoon. He’s a bit more impulsive, a bit more emotivie but still a good and well thought out leader and the tactical genius, at least as far as I can remember, that he’s known for being. IT’s a good portayal so far, it reminds me of 2k12 leonardo: he’s still growing into being a leader in some way but clearly has the talent and drive for it and a deep sense of heroism> That deep sense is shown here as Scott leaves to go confront toad.. and then confronts Duncan and buds when he finds them about to squish Toad. Unlike Duncan, whose “heroism” consits of a filmy excuse to beat a third hole into todd’s head, Scott wanted to stop Toad because it’s the right thing to do, and wants to stop Duncan because his actions are just as wrong: Sure Toad is stealing stuff, but it’s clear from the way he and his buddies grin widlly at seieng toad pick pocket that they just want an excuse to pummel the kid and not get in trouble for it. It’s confirmed when Scott makes a resonable offer: Since Toad still has the money and most of the lifted wallets, he can return what he stole, which Toad not wanting to die today agrees to, but Duncan refuses. Scott however gets the three thrown to the ground and while Toad escapes, with the two other idiots in persuit, an enraged duncan attacks. But since Scott Summers, even teen scott summers has batman level judo, it’s an even fight despite Duncan being bigger and more muscular.. until Jean runs in shouts scott no.. despite you know Duncan starting this and Scott merley defending himself, distracts Scott long enough for him to get shoved to the ground.. and loose his googles, sending an optic blast out before he can clamp his eyes shut, knocking duncan over and igniting a nearbye propane tank. Toasty! Also yikes.  Cue the opening theme and credits. While the opening Creidts are very 2000′s, they aren’t half bad but the main draw is the theme song which.. honestly I feel is great and very close to the 90′s x-men theme in quality, only not being AS good because that one’s one of the best theme songs period. but this one’s no slouch as it’s fun, energetic and will get stuck in your head. Good stuff.  After the theme we cut back to the credits where Scott is closing his eyes despeartly holding his powers in. It was a good opening and a great way to show off the premise of the show and just how dangerous mutant powers can be even accidnetally, with this followup showing it’s not inetentional. it was even shown before as while scott’s eyes flash, he notably never uses his powers in the fight and they only came about accidnetally. We also get some JeanScott ship tease as she finds his glasses ,and with Duncan having a concusion and not remembering anything, a bit that hasn’t aged well, things seem well.. except the cop seems to notice something supscious.. before help arrives in a rolls royce. Charles Xavier, voiced by the icomprable David Kaye who I feel is one of the best daviers and does a great job here and quickly makes the guy see nothing supscious, a classic use of his powers and an understdanable one: while yea going into someone’s mind isn’t a great tihng to do.. scott being possibly outed as a mutant this way would only land the poor boy in a jail cell, as it did for Bobby Drake in the comics when his own powers activated and hurt someone. We also meet storm who unlike the others isn’ aged downa nd is one of two senior staffers for the school, a touch I like as she was a great mentor figure to kitty pryde and the comics and the roll suits her, while evolution also tones down the ham 80 degrees so she’s even more like the comics; reserved but utterly confident and badass and a good #2 to xavier. Xavier also likely wiped Duncan’s memory of scott’s power triggering I figure.. I mean he could’ve got concussed but I wouldn’t be suprised if chuck manipualted that too. Jean comforts Duncan for.. again some reason. Like he was just in a fight with her best friend and she’s a telepath.. I get she’s being respectful but time and place. Scott is naturally Jelly, but Toad.. genuinely thanks Scott for the help while Scott brushes it off. It was the right thing to do and Toad is still a creep, but it’s still a nice gesture. Also toad eats a fly to show that yep he too is  a mutant.  Xavier and Storm go to the train station and pick up a mysterious teen clad all in robes. Ohohoo hominus.  Meanwhile somewhere in the westchester area, Wolverine comes in! Snkity sknikty snoik. He’s voiced by, and dresses exactly like, Scott McNeil, a vetran and awesome voice actor who I honestly think does a better job than his prdecessor. Not that 90′s wolverine is bad, it’s just McNeil has more of a range even while keeping the gutteral growl of hte former and can tur it off at times while his previous acto rwas pretty much on snarl mode constantly. He wasn’t bad, all the 90′s voice actors were at 100 most of the time and undersndably given the hamm nature of that cartoon, but its’ still a ncie change of pace and one we’d see again with steve blum in the next cartoon. More on that obviously when i inevitably cover Wolverine and the X-Men He picks up a paper about the explosion, and sensing he must go his people need him, cuts the top off the water he ordered, because you can’t get beer on a childrens cartoon, and thanks the clerk who wonders what the fuck just happened. And it’s a weird ass scene especially because in this series the x-men are trying to keep a lid on mutants and Logan’s just .. causally cutting off a water bottle because fuck it. It fits the character a LITTLE but it’s still just weird and out of place. Speaking of weird and out of place sabertooth is stalking logan on a mountaintop because.. 

Thank you wrestlecrap. He dosen’t show up again and is apparently introduced several episodes from now, and sports a design similar to the 2000 movie which isn’t a terrible look apart from the long lead singer from Creed haircut. The next morning at Xavier’s scott’s annoyed at jean taking her time in the bathroom because “women amirite?”.. yeah... 

On that gag. Before the two dart off for school Xavier calls them in to meet the new kid: Kurt Wagner, aka Nightcrawler, whose blue and fuzzy as ever, though without the fully yellow eyes he usually sports, though I figure it’s less because they wanted to make him more humanoid, though his Kelso from that 70′s show hair certainly helps with that too, and more because that way his human disguise he’ll get in a bit can just be an easily just recolor and redres his civlilan design. Though why he couldn’t just have the yellow eyes in elf form and give him regular ones in transducer form, epsecially since they had to make a whole new outfit and ears for his non elf form anyway is beyond me, but whatever. At least he’s a full part of the team here and oh so adorkable.  As you can probably wager by the fact there’s only 3 x-men and one asshole here, Evolution takes it’s time introducing everybody, the first few episodes using the debut queue style of storytelling and introducing the main cast about one or two per episode.. which I like a lot as it gives each of the x-men room to breathe and get a proper introduction, while usually doing the same for the latest addition to the brotherhood. IT’s a godo way to ease us into a decently sized main cast and let each get their own origin story of sorts. Good stuff. 

Jean and Scott are shocked by the poor boys three fingers, but Charles helps asuage kurt.. by pointing out scott’s fuckup then berating him. Both don’t come off great: Scot whines about having two cannonballs under his eyes, which while fair is something he knew going into a situation where they might get knocked off and didn’t prepare for, while Charles lambasts him for “not having more control”.. and his tone implies it’s more about his POWERS. If it was about self control fine, that’d be godo character stuff but if it’s of his powers..  Scott didn’t use his powers at all during the breif scuffle and was only let loose by pure shock, and something you easily covered for minus the explosion part. It could just be both having a point but I dunno. But with that Xavier does show kurt that even human passing mutants like Scott have huge struggles and he no longer is alone. Jean is curious what his power is and Kurt demonstrates his teleporting, impressing both and bonding the three a bit. Xavier sends them off to school, and they’ll talk more about kurt tonight.  At school Toad is getting dressed down by principle darkholme, aka mistque whose apparently also his boss.. yes while the founding x-men are two upstanding well trained, if one a bit hot headed youths, Mystque got.. a guy who pick pockets because as we later see the house she got for them looks like the ghosts of the frat who used to live there did a number on the place. Yeah easy to see why your guys later become the comic relief villians Raven. Anyways she plans to have Toad use his newfound leverage with scott to try and sneak in with the x-men before shapeshifting into a knockoff brood to scare him because she’s a dick. Also how the hell would she explain that if someone walked in and DIDN’T comically walk right back out and just explose her posing as a monster for the student body to see. Not a bad show of her powers but a really goofy and nonsenical one. Also yeah unlike the comics raven can change her shape further than just humanoid.

Back at the school Kurt is excited to see his spacious and luxrious room, his parents, whoever they were, having sent him here, and is even more excited when Xavier gives him a gift; an image inducer. This is something that actually comes from the comic: it’s a device disgused as a watch that holographically makes Kurt look like your standard human. Kurt in the comics of course used it to look like errol flynn.  Naturally Chris Claremont eventually realized the implications of a person of a minority who looks diffrent masquerading as someone else to blend in and Kurt later decided to go without it, as he shoudln’t have to hide himself. Evolution does use it better though: For starters when Kurt says he’s finally normal, Ororo assures him he always was, this is just to help a bit and the idea of him needing to blend in makes sense since the x-kids are going to public high school and mutantkind is more hidden to avoid prosecution. It’s sitll a BIT shaky, but it’s at least trying to avoid a lot of the pitfalls of the concept and modernizie it a bit and I can give them credit for that. 

Back at School scott’s preparing to lunch, telling paul to save him a seat. Good old Paul, when Toad comes up to him thanking him again and revealing his own mutant powers and stealing Scott’s glasses because that’s how you charm someone. Toad offers to hang but Scott wisely refuses and moves on though he does use the cafeteria pay phone to call Charles, who already found out about todd via Cerebro and despite Scott’s understandable reservations about letting a literally slimy pick pocket who talks like goddamn j-roc , know what i’m sayin, into the team, Charles in a very charles xavier move says they can’t turn their back on ANY mutant, even the assholes. Now read that in a patrick stewart voice. Your welcome. Scott wonders if he should ask Todd over to play fooseball and ask about joining his teen militia but Chalres said no need, he’ll take care of the audition himself. He then explains Cerebro to a curious kurt, global telepathic mutant tracker basically, and prepares for the audition. 

That night Toad goes to the mansion.. with a costume already. And rather than evaluate all the costumes up front i’m going to do so as they show up in series. As such.. toad’s is REALLY good, a nice armor look with a small part peaking up resembling a collar of some sort , a nice update of his silver age costume’s collar. It really feels frog like and really is neat. Storm, who is watering her garden a detail I like, heads out and rains on his parade. Her costume is fine, a standard storm outfit, nothing really outstanding but still not bad. Storm then sends lighting at him to see what happens when a Toad is struck by lighting.. probably the same as everything else before he runs inside and runs into kurt. 

Kurt then shows up, and while I’d forgottten this, he was already in costume from earlier having gotten his at the same time as the inducer. His costume.. is about the same as the comics except hte gloves and boots are yellow, i’m somehwat eh on it but I get doing so to have him fit with the black and yellow color scheme of most of the other x-men in some way. Though i’d love to see a black and yellow redesign of his classic oufit someday that’d look spiffy. But yeah it’s pretty good and one of the standouts of the evolution costumes. The two trade barbs thanks to toad being kind of a dick about nightcrawler and end up having a petty squabble and tussle for a bit around the mansion. Xavier still considers Toad x-men material while Storm considers not missing with lightning this time. In all seriousnes this is more good character stuff for Charles, as it shows that no matter how troublesome, he’ll welcome any mutant child in with open arms. Though I question why neither questions the fact that a mutant they just met somehow brought his own top of the line uniform, but I chalk it up to that probably not having been written into the episode and either being an error or execs wnating to show off his battle suit to have a proper superhero tussle to close out the episode.  However said tussle, which is really more a hilarious fight between an asshole and a dork, is interupted when Kurt accidnetly ports them into the danger room, an x-men staple.. no really “new mutant accidently enters or finds the danger room” is old hat at this point, most iconically with Kitty in the comics shortly after she joined. 

Naturally not wanting to have to clean up another set of teen corpses, he just got the Vulcan smell out of there, Xavier dispatches Cyclops and Jean to go deal with it.. since Jean dosen’t have a code name here since marvel forgets to try and get her a non phonenix one better than marvel girl and it annoys me. Anyways fashion show time again, and yes i’m aware these aren’t from strategy x, but I didn’t want to just use hte model sheet shots from the wiki so I combed for decent action shots. Scotty’s costume is decent, a bit bulky with the very 90′s shoulder pads and boots, but otherwise looks pretty good, a nice combination of his 90′s uniform and his second x-factor uniform. Even with the bulk it looks really good. On the oppsite end.. we have Jean, who easily has the worst outfit of the main x-men by a mile, with a weird lime green stripe for some reason. Maybe they were going for phonenix colors I dunno, but it just looks half assed in comparison to the rest of the gangs outfit. The gold rings and fingerless gloves are a nice touch, but this one’s still just bland in comparison. Like they couldn’t figure out how to update jeans 90′s outfit so they put her in a jassercise outfit instead. 

Scott and Jean arrive with Jean saving nightcrawler, Kurt asking if sh’es an angel, she asking if he’s a demon and me asking if I can get a trashcan to vomit in. It didn’t work for George Lucas a year before this why did you think it’d work here? Anyways Kurt realizes their not in xavier’s snuff dungeon, as far as he knows and it’s simply a trianing room and tries to disarm it, but it instead nearly blasts toad who nopes outta htere, scott too injured to follow. And while when watching the episode yesterday It hought it was a bit abrubt.. it really fits. Toad is a bit of a coward from memory, bosatful and cocky.. till reality reminds him he’s freaking toad as seen with the bullies earlier and mystique after that. So of course he’d run the minute things looked dicey and it looked like xavier reguarlly put his students through the hunger games to thint he herd. Xavier bemoans that Toad simply isn’t ready.. sure he’s a mutant and xavier likely senses mistque’s involement.. but he genuilly WANTED to help todd and give him a real home and support.. its just Toad/Todd dosen’t WANT it or to put in any real work to be better, and you have to WANT help to get it.  Kurt blames himself and ports out feeling he dosen’t deserve to be there and Scott goes after him while out front Toad runs into a returning Logan, whose ready to add another dead teen to the pile out back when Xavier insists he let him go... he’s not an actual threat, and as we find out later Xavier removed the schools location from his mind and probably gave it to toad in the first place, so while Logan says he’ll be back.. he has no way of coming back and there’s no sense roughing up a teenager, when that’d just draw more attention to them and give Toad an angle to work. That being said Charlie still gladly welcomes Logan back though both smell trouble on the horizon.. and also toad. He tends to leave a scent that one. 

We then get what I feel is the best scene in the episode: Cyclops finds Kurt in the room with the blackbird, which this show remembers is an actual type of plane and that the x-mens is simply a souped up version of , though I can’t tell you what version he’s saying it’s superior to because I don’t know planes THAT well. But Scott comforts Kurt, saying it’s OKAY to fuck up: the entire point of this place is so they can afford to make the mistakes they can’t make out there and learn and grow as people. Everyone screws up, as Scott himself did rushing in without a plan at the start, but the point is you learn from it and do better next time and Kurt decides to stay. Welcome to the X-Men Kurt, hope you surivive the experince. Also Scott decides to show him where they hide the sodas.. which either Chuck is a dick about their pop or that’s code for booze.. or possibly both. I could see Logan really liking root beer alongisde his nightly 6 pack. 

We close out with Mystque berating toad for running the hell away and for you know, getting mindwiped.. the latter is far from his fault, but the first part.. yeah Toad kinda sucks at this and Raven screams for him to get out, with her turning back into her natural form for the first time.. and then being confronted with HER boss with Magneto, from.. somewhere.. he appearas as a spooky projection but I don’t know if he’s using a device to amplfy himself or he just hides in the closet of her office all day for when he needs to consult her on their evil schemes. Probably the latter. Anyways Erik wisely consults her to be a bit easier..while toad is a bit of a dipweasel.. they can’t afford their ranks being thinned.. and really he’s not wrong. The x-men currently have them 6 to 3. Even if he’s the weakest of the three of them, they can’t afford to spare him. He then ominously says htis is only... THE BEGINING.

FINAL THOUGHTS:  Strategy X is a decent start for the series but not without it’s problems, with one or two questionsable moments like the whole angel and devil exhcange or the entire “Storm stalks toad as he goes to the mansion” scene as a way of testing him, which makes both her and charles come off bad and makes me wonder how the hell that was an actual test of anything. But it’s held up by good character: While Jeans kind of a bit of wallpaper here, the rest of the x-men and our three villians are all given great character moments that show them off to the audience well and really show the writers get the characters while taking their own spins on the younger ones: Nightcrawler, who could be a bit of a dork in the comics, see here his seduction tequnique. 

I mean damn if that shit isn’t still Sexy but still. They just ramped it up a bit since this version is younger and more naive, while Scott is likewise a bit more rambunctious and likely to question Xavier, while still being a good hearted guy who knows how to lead. It’s good stuff. While the quality isn’t PERFECT, it’s a good start and I look forward to watching more and EVENTUALLY reviewing more on here. If you liked this be sure to let me know and like I said above if there’s any other marvel show or any dc ones you want me to cover, and any specific episodes at that, lemme know. Comics too. And until we meet again, courage.  PS.. what the hell is up with the title of this episode? No really it has nothing to do with anything. Is it Mystuues’ inflitration plan? 

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Holiday gift to @differentjasper. Happy holidays and I hope you enjoy!

Read on Ao3 here : https://archiveofourown.org/works/22012411

Holiday Truce Gift- Wes Weston study

I will admit this was supposed to be a character study of Wes Weston but then I saw a prompt on Tumblr about the lack of logical scars. Of course, the canon show isn’t really logical but they should have at least put vague lines there to show scars. We know scars can be kept on ghosts due to Clockwork. Be warned times passes quickly as I wrestled with this idea. 

Looking at my bedroom wall I couldn’t help but think of how it has changed through the past school year. At the beginning of the year, there were pictures of a few famous basketball players.

Then came the emergence of the Phantom or the Ghost Boy as he was called in the beginning. The change of the wall came slowly and then all at once.

It started simple with one sketch of Phantom that I commissioned an artist on Tumblr that I followed and admired. Then a poster dedicated to a few sightings of Phantom around town. 

By November, the first basketball poster came off to make room for more images of Phantom. I convinced myself that after I minimalized when I had more time-probably over Winter break- it would go right back up. 

However, I knew even then, in my heart if secret hearts, that I was trying to fool myself. When I furled it back out in the middle of February for the annual garage sale my parents insisted on doing, I threw it semi-carefully into the box labelled ‘Garage sale’.

It mattered even less when I quit the basketball team.  It seemed shocking to my parents yet they understood my decisions eventually. A week after quitting I saw a black-haired male transform into Phantom. It took another week of school for me to learn his name. Well, what I mean is, is that I heard of him but I never connected the person to the name. 

The person that transformed into Phantom was Danny always picked on by Dash Fenton. Who wasn’t to be confused with his older sister who Dash had a crush on. The Friday two weeks after I figured out who Phantom was would be the most accurate spot place where my obsession began.

Looking at the wall now, there is only images of Phantom, the enemies he faces, and a few pictures of solely Sam, Tucker, and Danny. I couldn’t help but feel a surge of pride and accomplishment of the detailed work that I have done. 

Each enemy has at least one detailed notecard with details on visible powers, personal info, and where and when they have attacked. A few even had who they were before they were ghosts. Take the lunch lady ghost as an example. It was easy to figure out who she was. A dedicated lunch lady that made the lunches the exact same way as they are now 50 years after her death. Of course, I had backups of all this data written down multiple times in different books and google drive just for same keeping.

Sam, Tucker, and Danny’s notecards were different. They had what they helped Phantom and Fenton with. When those two were eventually transformed into ghosts another notecard was added for their ghost half.

For Sam, it was when she managed to transform into a plant ghost. Not overly surprising that her ghost self had powers over plants when Sam adores her greenhouse and the plants inside there.

Tuckers ghost self was unusual. He didn’t get ghost powers for all that he has a ‘girlfriend’ in his beloved PDA. He was some sort of Egyptian Emperor. Either way, neither of them had ghost powers anymore and that is what had mattered to everyone at school, their teachers, and parents. 

Knowing that Fenton was Phantom doesn’t seem to have any perks for me. Danny took every opportunity to show off how blind everyone in town was. For the annual Casper High Halloween party festival thing that went on Danny dressed up as Phantom. The only difference was that Danny kept his human half blue eyes. That shit. No one even suspected a single thing. Not even Paulina who was self-proclaimed in love with Phantom! Asshole Fenton. 

Almost a full year later since Phantom first starred on the news.

Ok so in actuality it was the first full week of summer vacation when everything shifted. I was no longer joked and teased. In as much secret as possible other students came to me to hear my ideas and possibilities of Phantom and about Phantom. Finally, people were listening! Yet, at what cost to Danny?

*Flashback*

I was both on my phone and watching the news displaying Phantom creating a small snow cloud over a portion of Amnity’s main and only park’s grass. Well, the small children seemed to adore having snow to help with the unusual heat of the afternoon. The news report changed to a ghost attacking another part of Amnity. Phantom quickly found out about the attack and first rushed over to the parents of the children then rushed to help the fleeing people there. I haven’t heard a name yet but I grabbed my supplies of notecards, pens, and switched to recording the audio of the news report to my phone. 

I knew that depending on what ghost powers this new ghost had it would take a few minutes or even days to defeat them. 

About 5 minutes later I watched as Danny was repeatedly beaten soundly and squarely. While the camera focused on the attacking ghost I took a few quick pictures to print out and size later. 

I was already taking notes on what powers the new ghost displayed. 

About an hour later I was highly concerned. Danny still was being beaten and unable to get many good hits to the new ghost. While I was watching my eye caught a small detail. Dany’s jumpsuit was coming off and apart slowly but surely. The next attack flung Phantom sailing backwards with his back to the camera above taping the report. 

It was only able to be seen due to the fact that functionally all of the tops of the jumpsuit was destroyed. There on his back were scars that looked all connected like lightening. From what I could see was that it was one scar that disappeared over his front. The scar was a bright red, there were thicker and thinner lines and all of the liner were jagged. 

The usual yapping by the reporter was cut off and there was silence. The eerie silence gave the report a feel for even more shock then what I thought possible. Once Danny crashed through a building-luckily turning intangible before impact so there wasn’t any more structural damage. The last things I heard and saw before the camera shut off was the attacking ghost clearly looking for Phantom and the reporter asking “What were those scars?”

The next time that the same report came back on it was showing how Phantom was now defeating the formerly attacking ghost. 

‘Damnit! I still don’t have a name!’ I thought furiousely.

At least the jumpsuit was repaired completely. Although it was clear to see that Danny was still in pain, but was giving his all. As usual, he was able to eventually able to defeat the ghost and it was quickly sucked into the thermos. Then, as usual, Dany turned invisible soon after making sure that there was no one stuck in any rubble. 

It wasn’t surprising to see another report of Phantom gracing the news. This time the topic was how and what those scars were and meant. It was made clear by the close-up -yet still a bit grainy- picture of the scars in the discovery of them.

There was a guest speaker who was a doctor -a forensic pathologist- speaking confidently on what those scars were and how they are gained a human body. 

With confidence, she declared when prompted “Scars like those will only ever appear on a human body due to electrocution. There is the argument that I know nothing on ghosts. This is true. I functionally know nothing on ghosts. What I do know is how human acquires scars. Specifically how those scars are kept on a dead body. With my 14 years of working solely on dead bodies and 3 years in the medical field I can guarantee with absolute certainty that those scars are both more numerous then what the camera picked up at that great distance and that they were caused by any kind of electrocution. Most commonly it’s by lightning yet, with circumstances being they are the only certainty is that they are electrocution scars.” 

Ms Doctor person continued describing attributes of scars. But I was still in a slight shock. 

I wasn’t taking any notes with only a single thought in my mind when did Danny get electrocuted. I didn’t tune back into normal time until commercials came on. I had more research to get to.

It took two weeks to track down Dany Fenton and research on scars. But I did. The only thing he confirmed was that he was electrocuted ad it was how he died. 

     In the months I was contacted quietly and secretly by classmates who asked to confirm. All of them were sombre and quite fearful. But hey I was being listened to. … Right? 

    By the time that school started Danny and Jazz were adopted by their godfather Mayor Masters due to their parents being negligent and more concerned with their in-home science lab both in the basement and above Fenton wors than the overall saftey of their children.

    In a semi-small town, any news is still news and reporters do need to find stories and get paid. 

    By November, Phantom seemed to have two mentors where he trained with his powers. The Guys In White warned the public to stay away at all costs because they were ghosts. Yet no one really listened.

[missjanjie]

Don’t Feed the Plant || Ch 1/4

Title: Don’t Feed the Plant Summary: A 'Little Shop of Horrors' based Phan AU. Phil is a poor orphan working in his adoptive aunt's run-down flower shop in London. After buying a suspiciously strange plant with a carnivorous appetite, Phil's life changes overnight, even bringing him closer to crush and coworker, a troubled and near destitute Dan Howell. Soon enough, though, Phil realizes that fame and romance comes with the ultimate price. Chapter: 1 - Total Eclipse of the Sun Word Count: ~1.3k Relationship: Dan Howell/Phil Lester, Implied Dan Howell/Male OMC Rating: T Chapter Warnings: Mentions of domestic abuse, some description of bleeding

Read on AO3

Phil’s hand haphazardly felt around until it shut off his alarm – seven a.m., just like every other morning. He looked out the window, a slight smile forming on his face. It was, perhaps, the first sunny day London had seen in months. He felt almost hopeful – maybe today would have more changes for the better.

With a content sigh, he stepped into the shower. The hot water had been shut off.

Maybe not, Phil thought to himself. He got out quickly and dried off, throwing his clothes and shoes on soon after. He went to his fridge and stared inside longingly, as if this would be the day it was full, that his options would be more than two-day-old takeout and an apple. He grabbed the latter with him as he headed out the door, taking advantage of the sunshine and walking to work.

There was an outdoor market Phil passed on his trek through Enfield – one of the few remaining from the area’s better days. Every now and then he would find a plant to bring into the shop, or one of the women running the food stands would take pity on the skinny boy in rumpled clothes and send him off with something to eat.

It was while Phil was poking around a plant stand when he noticed everyone turning and looking up.

“Mate take a look, it’s the total eclipse of the sun!”

Phil had recalled reading about that online, how it was the first one of its kind since the 1970s. He squinted as he looked up. Everything went dark for a moment, but as quickly as it started, it was over.

When he turned back to the booth, Phil’s eyes drifted to a plant on the counter. He swore it hadn’t been there before. He couldn’t quite describe it – perhaps it was some sort of cabbage or succulent.

“How much for this one here?”

The vendor furrowed his brows, almost as if he didn’t recognize it either.

“Uh…five pounds?”

“Sold!”

Phil held on to the plant as he darted towards the store, pleased with his new purchase.

“Aunt Donna look at this!” Phil set the plant on the counter with a bright grin.

Donna wasn’t his actual aunt – not biologically anyway – but she was a close friend of his parents and raised him since their passing when he was only twelve. Phil was forever grateful for that, even though it often seemed like she didn’t particularly like him most days. He could count on one hand the amount of times she hugged him, but she kept him from foster care and gave him a job after high school, so he really couldn’t ask for more.

“The fuck is that?” Donna peered over her reading glasses. “Some sort of GMO flytrap?”

“I’m not sure,” Phil rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. “But I’ve never seen anything like it, thought it could bring some attention in to the shop.”

She rolled her eyes and huffed, her hand hitting against the counter and making Phil jump slightly. “Bloody hell, Phil. How many times do I have to tell you to stop bringing random crap into the shop while we’re not turning profit? Just take that shit to your playroom and come back up to sweep.”

What Donna called the ‘playroom’ was actually the basement that Phil would stay in when he couldn’t make rent – there was a cot and a mini fridge, as well as a few plants scattered about. There was a table and a couple chairs propped up in the middle of the room, the new plant set as a centerpiece.

“I’ve got to google what the hell you are, huh?”

Phil snapped a picture on his phone, tucking it back into his pocket as he made his way back up the stairs, grabbing the broom that rest just outside the back room. He began tidying up the area, smiling to himself when he heard the back door open.

“Sorry I’m late!”

Dan clapped Phil on the shoulder as he walked past into the front, his heart skipping a beat at the contact. His crush wasn’t the subtlest around, but he knew better than to vocalize his feelings. When Dan returned, however, Phil’s face fell, as did the broom he was holding.

“Jesus, what happened to you?” Phil stepped closer to Dan, who ducked his head away.

“I walked into a door,” Dan mumbled, trying to angle his head away from him.

Phil finally managed to cup Dan’s chin and get a good look at his face. There was an attempt at covering the black eye with cover-up, but the area around his eye was discolored and swollen, he couldn’t have gotten it more than a couple days ago. Anger pooled in his stomach when he thought about how that must’ve happened. “It was that creep of a boyfriend of yours, wasn’t it?”

“I keep telling that boy he’s no good!” Donna shouted from the front room.

Dan sighed, crossing his arms and pacing a bit. “He’s a little rough around the edges, yeah,” he mumbled, looking away from Phil. “But he’s not all bad…besides, he’s got health insurance,” he said with an awkward laugh.

“Yeah, and he’s making sure you get full use of it,” Phil retorted. “You’re too good for a guy that beats on you, Dan.”

There was a beat of silence before Dan shook his head. “I’m really not.”

What Phil hated the most was that Dan truly believed that. While he didn’t talk about his past much, it was clear that he’d had a very rough life, and despite the warmth in his personality, he had been beaten and broken down by more than his boyfriend.

“Hey, you wanna see something cool?” Phil offered, hoping a change in subject would be the best course of action. “Look at this plant I got. I’ve never seen anything like it before,” he got his phone out of his pocket and showed Dan the picture.

“Is that a cabbage?” Dan asked, tilting his head.

“Maybe…I have no idea, honestly. I just think it’s neat.”

“What’re you going to call it?”

Phil tilted his head in thought, then grinned brightly. “Daniel Two!”

It was a little cheesy, but seeing Dan’s dimpled smile made it worth it as far as Phil was concerned. “After me?” he asked, hand over his heart.

“Yeah! It’s unique, special, and a little weird. Just like you!”

Dan chuckled softly, his expression warm and relaxed. “The world does not deserve you, Phil Lester.”

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

It had been a couple weeks since the eclipse, and Phil was frustrated. He had spent hours researching plants and different ways to care for them, but it all felt for naught. Daniel II sat on the windowsill of his flat, withering away.

“You’re killing me, Danny. And I’m killing you. We’ve gotta quit this toxic relationship,” he chuckled, walking over. He ran his thumb over the leaves and through the dirt, but as he moved his hand back, he nicked his finger on a jagged edge of the coffee tin that held the plant.

“Ow, fuck!” Phil retracted his hand, wincing at the blood that started to drip down his finger. It was at that moment when the plant seemed to perk up, its mouth opening like a fish waiting for flakes. He looked at it incredulously, realizing what was happening.

“There are no wikihow articles on bloodthirsty plants,” he murmured, looking at his bleeding finger and the eager plant. “Might as well,” he held his finger over and managed to milk a good few drops in.

Daniel II seemed to preen at the substance, it straightened up and no longer seemed on the brink of death.

“I can’t wait to bring you into the shop tomorrow,” Phil shook his head in disbelief before getting into bed.

[ryeimagines]

Crush - Steve McGarrett imagine

This is sort of a test run, I’m still writing primarily teen wolf stuff but I found this and I decided to give it a try. I hope you enjoy it, let me know what you think and maybe I’ll write some more stuff from other fandoms. 

You never intended to stay on the island for that long. Nor acidentally get adopted by the five-0 after helping them out on a particular haring case which nearly ended with a bullet to your head. But definitely, more surprisingly, you realised that the reckless leader had not only managed to get under your skin, but also into your heart. That was a particular moment, nearly working yourself up into a panic attack at the realisation. 

It wasn’t like you were oblivious to his appearance, you did have eyes. Even so, you were constantly reminded of it by most people you met during a job, witnesses who’d rather be interview by “hot stuff over there”, making all sorts of inappropriate comments and noises. You had to fight down the urge to smack a lot of people, practically reaching expert level at keeping your emotions in control. He wasn’t some piece of meat, he was a fucking person and it for sure pissed you off. It honestly wouldn’t surprise you if half of the island was already in love with the former navy seal. His previous employment had left him in pretty good shape, which he’s doing a good job keeping up as well as the tattoos which is a big bonus for a lot of people. 

The thing was though, you weren’t looking to get into a relationship with anyone right now. And even if you were, your boss would most definitely not be on top of the pool of potential dating options. Relationships between coworkers weren't exactly forbidden, but they were still looked harshly on which reasons made perfectly good sense to you. Actually, there were a lot of reasons why a relationship with the commander was a bad idea. 

The problem was, it only made you want it more. You wanted to get to know him. And the more things you learned, the harder it was to not feel it. He was ingrained into your memory, his face, his voice, his walk. The voice at the back of your mind reminding yourself that you could do this, keeping you calm in stressful situations. 

It was probably all just in your head, but there had been what felt like a moment after the realisation that you wouldn't be dying today and looking up to meet his blue gaze, something like relief flashed across his face before the stoic look was back. Somewhere along you remembered how he was sort of straddling you, chest pressed against yours and a hand firmly against the small of your back pinning you to the ground. On intstict, your eyes flickered down to his mouth before returning. The question died in your throat before you could even muster up the courage to ask it. Then the spell was broken by a frantic Danny, sounding far away and startled you both. You had forgotten about the earpiece.

You should have known Kono wouldn't be able to keep her mouth shut. In hindsight, you did know that it was a bad idea to let her fill you up with alchohol and have her wicked way with you. It was like a truth serum, and after a couple of beers and with a little prompting the secret crush was not so secret anymore. Naturally, even with a buzz going you had some kind of self preservation left, enough at least not to give her a name or anything to defining as a clue.

Five days later she showed up on your doorstep.

“It's Steve isn't it?” She greeted you, and you promtly pulled her inside and shut the door behind her.

“I think you have a concussion, I knew that hit to your head was worse than it looked.”

“Don't change the subject. Though I guess you already answered by the way you just deflected it away.”

“Okay, fine, I like him. Happy? You figured it out.” Sighing, you sank down on the couch, willing it to swallow you hole. You felt drained suddenly, keeping your gaze firmly down on the carpet.

“What are you going to do?”

“Nothing.”

“What? You can't just go around like nothings up. The guys are gonna figure it out eventually, they know somethings not right so they asked me to talk to you.”

“What can I possibly do? It's not gonna happen. I won't jeapordize the team because of some stupid crush. It means to much to me. Or his frenship. I wan't him to be happy, and that's all that matters.

“Your happiness matters to you know.” She mumbled softly, settling beside you on the sofa. You didn’t respond, opting to lay your head on her shoulder and leaning into her warmth and calm. You didn’t know what to do, but you couldn’t keep dancing around it either. One day he would put two and two together and figure it out, or possibly just confront you and force you to spill. 

As it turned out, it only took about a day. You were on a stake out, taking shifts and you and Steve ended up together, you had a feeling they had all colluded into making this happen. Being stuck together in a cramped space for hours were the last place you wanted to be, there was no escape. He had you, and he knew it. There was nothing to do really but talk, somewhere down the line you’d ended up on the conversation of dating, snorting at his question when he asked if you were seeing anyone, a puzzled look on his face at your reaction. You didn’t really want to get into that now, quickly turning it around to him. 

“How’s the wife? Or soon to be, are you gonna pop the question anytime soon?” You’d heard Danny talk about it a while back. 

“What?”

“Catherine. The woman who’s been sleeping in your bed for the past couple of months? Whatever it is you have.”

“It's over.” He stated promptly, effectively ending the subject. 

“Oh.” You didn’t know how to respond to that information, opting to stare out the window, praying for the mark to get there already so you could do something. Anything was better than this really.” 

“Look, I'm sorry if I did something to upset you or anything, but I need you to tell me what I did. Talk to me.”

“It's nothing.” He let out a sigh, you could practically see his jaw clenching.

“Okay, fine, it's not nothing. I'm dealing with it, okay? You haven't done anything. I'm just frustrated and there's nothing that will chance that.” 

“Okay, just, let me know if there is something I can do, alright? We're a team, and we've always got your back. Your not alone.” Fingers brushed against your bare skin, giving a gentle squeeze. You already missed it. It wasn't right, he was being so sweet and understanding and so good, it pissed you off and guilted you at the same time.

“I'm in love with someone, and it could never work.”

“Why not?”

“Besides the fact that it's completely one-sided? We literally can't without breaking protocol.”

“Oh.”

“If you really want it, you have to fight for it. So what if you break a few rules in the process?”

“Except I'm pretty sure that I made our entire thing up in my head.”

“What if you didn't?”

“Huh?”

“What if he maybe feels the same way too, but he's afraid that it could ruin things.” He was suddenly a lot closer, eyes full of intent. 

“Maybe I'm just waiting for him to make a move already.” You breathed, heart pounding in your ears. If there was one thing you could count on, was that he never backed down from a dare. Suddenly his lips were on yours in a brief but passionate kiss that left your lips tingling long after you pulled apart. Naturally, you were interrupted as always, this time by a chase as he took off running after one of the suspects while you stayed behind and dealt with the other one. Your life was never going to be perfect, especially not in this line of work. Chaos came with the territory, but it was perfect in it’s on way. And this time you didn’t have to suppress the urge to touch him and make sure that he was okay, making him go to the hospital and putting on quite the show in front of your colleagues and everyone else who happened to be there. 

[cescalr]

Teen Wolf Backstories Pt. #1

There's this thing.

You see, in Teen Wolf, the backstories for characters is something that's a little hard to come by. A little muddled, a little biased, or fully missing - backstories for characters, they're a limited resource. We know Derek's, as much as is necessary, we know some of Peter's, we know a fair bit about Deucalion, we know some of the Sheriff's - more now, thanks to season 6, so I suppose it was good for something - we know a bit about Claudia, we know a whole lot more about Garret Douglas than I care to know, we know a little about Stiles and Scott and Theo and Malia, but we don't really know a whole lot - and when it comes to Lydia and Jackson and Aiden and Ethan and Danny and Melissa and Agent McAsshole (whoops, sorry, Agent McCall) and Chris and Kate and everyone else, it's pretty much a blank slate.

Here's what we know for Scott (since as he's the main dude, he'll go first):

Scott lived with his Mum and Dad McAsshole when he was little, and moved to beacon hills during the fourth grade; so when he was about nine, with them.

Agent McAsshole left after a drunken bout of 'accidental' child abuse never to be seen again (well, unfortunately showing back up again unwanted during season three).

Melissa got a divorce (???) at some point, though she kept McAsshole's last name (????) for some reason (??????)

Scott was diagnosed with Asthma when exactly? Did he have an attack and that was how it was found out? What?? Tell meeee-

Scott was befriended by Theo who was asthmatic (? or manipulative and a liar, take your pick) and by association Stiles. 

Likely bullied a little by Jackass but probably being friends with the likes of Stiles and Theo, that would have ended very quickly if it did indeed happen in the first place (I feel like it probably did).

Stopped being friends with Theo probably at the start of fifth grade when Theo was nine/ten and killed his sister, basically forgot about him after that; they weren't really close, though he easily recognised him - which could either mean Scott has a really good memory or Theo looks really similar to how he used to look.

Didn't know Stiles when Stiles' mum had recently died, see Stiles' bit on having panic attacks when his mum died and having to say this implying that Scott hadn't known that - so they likely became friends after Stiles' panic attacks stopped for the most part, which means maybe Scott wasn't really friends with them until the end of fourth grade regardless so he didn't have much time to be friends with Theo anyway (????)

Scott didn't know Heather existed - Stiles explained why they were going to her party - so Stiles was his only friend after Theo left (and vice versa) 

Nothing interesting happened until sophomore year, when he got bitten, and voila, the start of the series.

Okay, so that was a little more cohesive than I thought, onto Stiles:

Born and raised in Beacon Hills

Claudia diagnosed around about when he was six, I think?

Stiles diagnosed with ADHD may be a little after or before that, or maybe when he's seven, or eight, maybe they catch it late or maybe they caught it early, at five, or four, but I doubt that - maybe they didn't catch it while Claudia was ill, maybe they only caught the anxiety, maybe they only caught that after his first panic attack, when was that - was that before Claudia died or after? - maybe Stiles only got diagnosed after his dad stopped being massively alcoholic/workaholic and actually paid attention to him and his school reports, maybe Stiles started his medication when he was ten, eleven, twelve - who knows??? The show doesn't say. Stiles still has to reassure Scott that he's taken his Adderall in season one, so maybe Stiles started taking it after he met Scott, or maybe he's just reassuring Scott because he's acting a little frantic and Scott doesn't really get it - who knows, again??? Who Knows????

Basically, you can do a shit tonne with that, that's all I'm saying. I've got it at him being diagnosed at the same time Claudia gets her false diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder from her pretty crappy local doctor, so a year or so before Claudia gets hit with the knowledge of Frontotemporal Dementia - though I've definitely got scenarios of a different nature in my head, I assure you. Most if not all of my fics follow my current set-up with the story I've already got on AO3 in the Backstory Collection, but some don't. The ones in my head don't, whoops.

Stiles is friends w/ Heather when young enough to take baths with her and have that not be Weird - so really, really young, then. Likely because Claudia and Heather's parent(s) were friends - mother or father? Dunno. Do they stop being close-but-close-enough-to-get-invited-to-parties-and-send-Christmas-cards before Stiles befriends Theo, or after? Was it a trio of Heather-Stiles-Theo, for a while, or was it Stiles-Heather Stiles-Theo and then just Stiles-Theo? Was Erica a friend of his when young, or did he not speak to her ever until season two?? Did Stiles ever meet Isaac or Boyd or whatever - did Stiles want to be Boyd's friend because they used to be, or was it just something he wanted at the time?

WHO KNOWS

anyway, so that's that for that part

Stiles gets a 'crush' on Lydia in the third grade - he's the one to call it an obsession, not me - perhaps its more a fixation on something that isn't complicated? A way to distract himself from his problems at home?

Claudia attacks Stiles on the roof. Has she done this before? Has she done the physical part multiple times, the verbal, or both? How often? Or was it just the once? And did she go to Eichen House, and if so, was it before or after this incident? Also likely her words - 'he's trying to kill me' - left a scar called that guilt complex he carries around and also the thing where he thinks he's evil in season five after he unlocks this horrible memory.

Claudia dies when Stiles is eight/nine - going into fourth grade, I think. 

Stiles starts having panic attacks, but as far as he knew they'd stopped by season two's time.

(oh, no they hadn't. My poor man.)

Stiles' dad starts heavily drinking and heavily working. Stiles starts having to look after the both of them - we see leftovers of this in the show; Stiles bringing his dad food and being really very insistent about what he eats, etc.

Stiles is friends with both Theo and Scott at this point, more the former than the latter, anyone else is gone.

Stiles stops being friends with Theo at the start of fifth grade, I guess, which is about the time Theo kills his sister - Stiles feels bitter and angry and alone, so alone, so he latches onto Scott and probably punches Jackson in the face a few times, and likely vows hatred of Theo for the rest of his life - but he could never think the worst of him, that's why he was so insistant that the Theo in season five wasn't Theo at all, but rather an imposter, a fake, because Stiles didn't want to think of his childhood friend that way - the kid who helped him through panic attacks, the guy that distracted him when his dad was drunk and rambling and useless, or at work for days on end - Stiles can't think of him negatively, because Stiles has always struggled with seeing the faults in those he cares about - struggled with admitting them to himself.

I guess sixth grade (???) and onwards is pretty boring? Fifth grade the Sheriff cleans up his act, or maybe it takes two years, and Stiles is eleven - who knows. But maybe, maybe, sixth grade and onwards until sophomore year things are quiet. Stiles drags Scott out to increasingly more illegal and dangerous activities because Scott made the mistake of whining about how boring their town is - and that's that. Stiles finds out about a body in the woods - and they go. And all hell breaks loose. 

There's a bit more confusion there, I guess. Theo next:

Born in Beacon, raised by the Doctors (oh, what wonderful parental figures they make, Christ)

?????

Apparently Asthmatic, but that's ??? up in the air. Perhaps he lied. Theo does that.

Disliked his sister.

Didn't really have a positive connection with anyone ?? except Stiles. 

Befriended Scott ??? who knows why. He didn't like the guy, after all, and he returned back to Beacon Hills to murder him dead, so perhaps he did it because Stiles liked Scott??? Who knows.

????

Killed his sister at the start of fifth grade ??? it was cold enough for her to have mostly died from Hypothermia, so ??? maybe more nearing December, but I don't know how cold it gets in fake California. Beacon County is where, exactly??

Tore his sister's heart out, got surgery, became the first successful chimera. 

Went away with the Dread doctors.

His family???? Died?? I guess??? Theo's parents never did anything about their dead kid and the one who disappeared????

????????????????????????????????????????

a whole load of 'what'

??????????????????????????????????

Returns to beacon hills after eight years (wow, talk about long-term planning) to get a pack with a bunch of strangers and Stiles that part is very important and also maybe murder Scott dead because ??? Jealousy ???? of what?? Power? Likely. Stiles? Probably. 

and canon from then on.

Well, that's a whole lot of ????????????? what, what happened, please tell us. 

Yikes. 

Anyway, Mals:

Born to Peter Hale and Corrine ???/The Desert Wolf

Talia removes Peter's memories of a kid and convinces the Desert Wolf to have her child, which in turn turns the Desert Wolf bitter about losing her powers to a homicidal extent

Malia is adopted by the Tates

Malia goes to a different school to Stiles and Theo (Lydia and Jackson and Scott, later on) because Beacon Hills is big enough for two?? Since Heather apparently is in a different school district as well

man beacon hills is not a small town

anyway, Malia has a pretty normal life until

Nine years old, full moon.

Birth Mother shoots at the car she and her sister and her mom are in, the car swerves and crashes, the panic causes Malia to shift, she claws and destroys her way out of the car, mauling and chewing and probably eating some of her family in the process.

Malia is stuck as a coyote.

Is in town in season three, canon from then on.

Well, that's depressing. Kira time!

a whole load of ?????????????????????

They arrive in Beacon Hills, canon from then on.

Wow, that's terrible. Yikes. 

Lydia:

Born and raised in beacon hills

raised in money - she's likely a spoiled kid.

part of the popular crowd from an early age, but not too early

started hiding her intelligence at some point??? when I don't know. Middle school would be too late because too many people would know she was intelligent. Everything seems to happen in fourth grade, lmao, so maybe then??

Parents fight from a young-ish age, probably. I mean, they split at some point during the show, so ????

?????????????

Starts dating Jackson for the Image it gives. 

??????????

Bad shit starts going down in her sophomore year.

That's very little information. I'm still more salty about how little we know of Kira, though, and at least we know this of Lydia.

Danny:

?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Canon.

post season three: ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

I'm bitter. 

Boyd:

?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

canon.

dies.

Forever bitter.

Erica:

maybe friends with Stiles/Heather/Theo, maybe not, maybe friends with Isaac/Boyd, likely not because they didn't want her to be happy, who knows-

?????????????????????????????

canon

dies.

still bitter.

Cora:

pretty decent childhood w/ the hales

FIRE BURNING IN FIRE

Saved by Peter

???????????????????????????

she isn't with Laura and Derek, so maybe she runs off into the woods?

regardless, apparently, she went to south America for some reason

???????????????????

caught by Alpha Pack

likely kills someone?????????

Maybe erica?????????

who knows??????????????????????????

???????

canon

post season four - ???????????????????

Yep, still salty.

Caitlin:

???????????????????

starts dating Emily (I'm pretty sure her name was Emily)

?????????????????????????

canon

post season 3a - ???????????????????????

????????????????????

Still bitter, still salty.

Welp. That's all for tonight. More later. Maybe. Probably not.

I've still got that goodbye teen wolf thing to do anyway. Oops. 

[nocturnrpg]

DANNY RYDER is a 21 year old resident of Penbrook. He was born on the 20th of August 1996. People say he looks similar to Robert Sheehan. Danny is TAKEN.

B I O G R A P H Y .

Danny is born to Lottie and Johnathon Ryder, with an older brother name Finley already there to greet his new younger (by ten years, actually) brother. Two years later, Danny was a given a chance to greet someone, and this was Carrie. It isn’t long before Carrie’s birth before the Ryder’s up and move from California, the place his Mother and Father and adopted as their own for the past eight years as their home, and moved back to their hometown in Cavan, Ireland. The move, in theory, made sense; the family didn’t end up building strong bonds to California at all in the long run. They knew a near empty handful of people and this, tied with Danny’s father’s inability to hold down a decent job, left them with precious little to stay for. For the first few months or so, the family stayed with Johnathon’s mother. This, in itself, was the illogical part of the move. It wasn’t as though Danny’s grandmother was a bad woman, it was just that she and her daughter-in-law were vastly different people. After a spat between the two (that very heavily featured Danny and his inability of keeping his crayons on paper and instead, opting to display his creativity elsewhere - living room walls, for example), they were tossed out to the street. Lottie decided to defend her son in spite of the threats of being kicked out and despite her husband’s very quiet pleas for her to just apologise, she did not.

A woman who was too proud to be bossed around by a woman half her size and twice her age, found herself and her family living out of a car for a week straight till they found a new place to rent. This cycle managed to continue, the renters and the landlords seemed to never run out of disagreements and almost all of them revolved around Danny and the mess he would unintentionally cause. Sometimes, however, they managed to hit the jackpot of landlords and found people who seemed not to care about the state of the house they were letting being trashed that little bit further by the Ryder’s – which inevitably happened in every place. But, of course, Johnathon’s inability to hold down a job always seemed to come back around to bite him and the rest of the families living situation when they got to these places. Soon enough they would have to move out to find somewhere cheaper (see: increasingly worse places to raise a family). The thing is, luckily for them, the Ryder’s, through all of this, could always be counted on as a happy family.

The next thing in the line for Danny: school. So, Danny’s grades may not have been the best throughout his school career, but he tried his best from start to finish; he’d worked his arse off for the C that his parents would plaster a fake smile on for to join him in celebration. Though never formally diagnosed with the latter, something that is simply down to his moving school’s so often along with his parents moving county, Danny suffers with severe dyslexia and ADHD. And as a result, he never enjoyed school: he didn’t like the way he was being forced to learn; he didn’t like the people there, and the feeling tended to be mutual. He was often subjected to a lot of bullying throughout his school years. He’d joke around too much, say the wrong thing, generally annoy people – whether it was intentional or not – he just found it hard to be liked. He’d try and try but to no avail: he figured making friends or generally getting along with anyone just didn’t seem like it was the thing he was supposed to do. It wasn’t till he was sixteen that an opportunity was offered to the family through Johnathon’s job at the time: moving back to California for work. Danny couldn’t have been happier; they were leaving the hellhole he had been calling home for the past nine years, the only con being his brother staying in Ireland to continue with further education.

The move was what Danny wanted to be a turning point for him though, of course, it wasn’t - the same lies that ‘new year, new me’ has to offer as every new year round. Danny went on as he did before in Ireland, quiet enough and hardworking, trying his best to just get school over and done with. Though bullying lessened, it didn’t considerably. There was already someone around ready to prod at him about something or another, but he decided he could handle it. It was never something he wanted to bother his mother and father with, it never seemed necessary. It wasn’t until he made friends with an older boy that he felt his luck beginning to change. Ethan, he introduced himself as to Danny. Ethan was nice to Danny, though they didn’t go to the same school, they found they were neighbours, this and the fact that Ethan was nice to him and didn’t seem to hate his guts the minute he said a word kept Danny on his toes, ready to spend near every spare minute with Ethan. Then, maybe it was because of the fact Ethan paid any attention to Danny at all, or just the fact that Ethan never once told Danny to leave him the hell alone as many before him have, but Danny formed a crush on him. One of those toe curling embarrassing ones, one where Danny could feel himself cringe into himself whenever he said anything to Ethan. Ethan either didn’t notice or was just too polite to point it out. It wasn’t until Danny, in a spur of the moment decision, kissed him that Ethan stopped talking to him. It was only for a week that Danny spiralled into a pit of self-hate and anxiety before Ethan talked with him again, opting to ignore the fact it happened at all. Danny, still in a state, went alone the same as Ethan. Best friends? Friends. They were friends… till the Ryder’s (surprise, surprise) moved once more.

So aged sixteen, Danny and the rest of his family (minus one brother, of course, who Danny barely sees or talks to anymore, for the record) moved, and kept moving. Gutted from the loss of his only actual friend in the whole wild world, he threw himself into his schoolwork again. A few school moves later, though, he decides to try and at least put himself out there with people. Which he does, and succeeds for the most part. He ends up (somewhat popular), the kind of popular that a kid who people think are kind of funny and will talk to in class if the situation happened to arise, but won’t say a word to outside of the school grounds. A popular that Danny settles with. He even dates a girl; which no one saw coming – another thing not expected, by Danny at least, was one girl called Lauren cheating on him essentially the entire time they were together. But Danny being Danny suppresses the heartache that came along with it, and just goes along with school and puts twice as much effort in as everyone else into his schoolwork. And, in the end of it all, comes out with decent grades that he celebrates in private. School ends and it’s another stress out of his life.

This was the point in Danny’s life where things seemed to slow down. Stuck in a constant state of just floating by in his life, he longed for a change and moved out from his parents home, who live just an hour out of Penbrook, where Danny now resides. Now, this wasn’t the most well thought out of decisions for Danny but he needed something more exciting. He didn’t have a plan, but he didn’t have much of anything. It wasn’t as though he couldn’t stand being with his family, it wasn’t the case at all – but they were, in some respects, a ball and chain. A constant reminder that by staying with them, there was no independence for him, there was nothing new and exciting for him to cling onto for his own mental state. So, he up and moved because, really, it seemed like his last hope.

It wasn’t too long after moving that he found a little life for himself, he managed to get a job that he didn’t care for but got him through the day’s he had nothing planned for and got him money for the days he did. He was happy enough, still floating but, at the very least, it was somewhere new. Danny, now, works as a retail assistant and works equally as hard to manage his brain and the trauma that he considers him being himself and therefore never getting to leave his own company.

S E C R E T S .

Because Danny never got the help he needed with his dyslexia, he convinced himself it was something to be ashamed of. Though he can read, it’s a great struggle and takes more effort than he cares to admit. He makes a point of avoiding it altogether if possible, and especially when it comes to reading out in front of people.

He has the deepest self hate issues you’ve ever seen. He sees himself as a deeply flawed person, not because of the way he looks or because of the things he has done ever, but just because of who he is. He deems himself as universally disliked and near enough impossible to be liked. Unless he’s told flat out that someone is his friend (and then periodically reminds him of that fact) he’s convinced they’re talking out of pity. He is working to try and get over it, but this idea has been drilled into him since he started school, facing rejection after rejection. His loud persona and sarcastic nature is his deflection method. He’ll deny anything said about it, but he still feels like the kid that was bullied his whole school career and the one that people only talked to because no one else was there.

Danny struggles massively with insomnia and night terrors. Despite one of his favourite genres being horror, his nightmares are very little to do with the supernatural horror. All seem to be revolving around his insecurities and then involving the people he cares about turning on him because of them. He often manages to get what happened in dreams mixed up with reality because of how little he sleeps – the guy’s exhausted, but he’s also astonishingly embarrassed over them.

Since he’s spent his entire life repressing emotions, Danny often struggles to keep his actions in check when he gets upset. He doesn’t have anger issues like his family once thought and got him checked for – but he does have inexplicably loud and uncontainable emotional outbursts about the smallest things every so often. All of his emotions come out at once and he finds it very difficult to think about what he’s saying in those times, though he’s also very stubborn and does his best avoiding apologising after.

C O N N E C T I O N S .

Best friends with Ben.

Dating Shane.

Used to date Faith.

[midnightknightgalactica]

This is so funny to me. Go check out the original poster.

Danny, on the run from the GIW decides to take shelter in Gotham because if the GIW have any sense they'd never set foot in there.

Even if Batman and the JL agree with thier opinion on ecto entities (as evidenced by their lack of speaking out against the anti-ecto acts) Batman was notoriously territorial and would have issue with a wildly incompetent government organization throwing missiles around his city all willy-nilly.

With that being said it was probably best for Danny to wear a disguise. Sure, they didn't know Fenton and Phantom were the same person yet but Danny Fenton suddenly turning up in Gotham after going missing in Amity is certainly going to raise some eyebrows regardless of the necklace he had that jammed his ecto-signature and made him untrackable.

Danny started off by going blond. Its something he's always wanted to do and now with ghostly shape-shifting powers he doesn't even have to worry about frying his hair or dying his eyebrows to match. After that all he needed to do was part his hair down the middle, add a lip ring or two and maybe a bit of make up.

Danny stared at himself in the mirror. He looked like a completely different person.

A completely different and very attractive person. He looked good. The newly blond man threw on a green jacket and went out to explore the town. He did not expect to literally bump into the Tim Drake. The Wayne adoptee just stood there mouth opening and closing comically. Did he offend him? Crap. He had promised Jazz he would stay off of the radar of the Waynes and the bats specifically and here he was angering one of them.

Danny decided to book it before it became a scene, ignoring the lovestruck Tim's crys for him to wait.

Back at his apartment Danny quickly changed his look to red hair tied back into a two inch low ponytail, green eyes and freckles that unbeknownst to anyone else was made up from the lesser known constellations.

The coffee at this Cafe smelled amazing! Too bad Danny wouldn't get to try it because the next this he knew freaking Red Hood was behind him asking to talk. Our favorite ghost boy wouldn't be embarrassed to admit he let out a small squeek before bolting out the door yelling, "I'm not even a criminal!"

It took Jason a few seconds to process that the guy he had tried to flirt with ran away in terror. Crap.

Day three and four were blissfully Wayne and bat free, though he did find out that Tim Drake and Red Hood were looking for his two false identities. Joy.

Day five he met the stabby Robin who very valiantly beat up two people who had been following him. Danny didn't even notice he was being followed and thanked the bird for saving him. Danny, who was shape-shifted into a very pretty girl at the moment, offered to buy him something to eat as a thank you. "Danielle" insisted and Robin allowed it. Danielle never noticed the slight pink on Damians cheeks as they went over to one of Damians favorite restaurants.

Day seven he had went out as blondie and got confronted by some girl named Barbara. She was nice and managed to convince him to come to a Cafe with her. He told her his name was David and he ran away from his parents with the help of one of his friends family members and that he was Jewish, which was true...except for the David part. He learned that if you wanna keep your story straight keeping to almost truths was your best bet. She in turn told him about Tim and how he's a friend of hers-uh oh- and that he's been looking all over for him.

Danny-David- tells her he's sorry but he didn't mean to offend Tim and doesn't want any trouble before laying down enough money to cover his half of the bill and the tip and booking it out of there

This repeats with most of the family trying to flirt with him or adopt him into the family when he's out as Danny.

Bruce Wayne approached Danny when he was waiting to board an elevator, "Hel-" was all the billionaire could get out before Danny cut him off "Hell no." And then he just got in the elevator and pressed the close doors button and was gone again.