#guess what i'm finally covering in 'the life and death of danny phantom'

[liketolaugh-writes]

hey can we talk about how fucking insane it is that the whole 'evil future self' debacle got pinned on danny cheating on a test

can we talk about how danny came away from that genuinely believing that it was cheating on a test that had made him evil, as if it were any more than just. the reason they were all at the nasty burger that day

can we talk about how sam and tucker also seemed to think that and how we, the viewers, also were apparently supposed to believe it

because uhhhh

the whole idea is. ridiculous. and someone needs to gently tell danny so pleaseandthankyou

[raaorqtpbpdy]

Haunting With Dinosaurs (1)

Danny is summoned by a powerful occult practitioner named Victor Veloci, who wants him to bring dinosaurs back to life. It sounds absurd, but Danny is bound to him and cannot refuse, even though he can't actually bring dinosaurs back to life. Instead, he merges the ghosts of five dinosaurs with the bodies of the five human sacrifices Veloci used to summon him, restoring them to life as dinosaur halfas. And that's only the beginning.

Written for @crossoverdanuary Week, Day 4: Any Fandom Dino Squad | Element

Read it on AO3 also, Watch Dino Squad on YouTube it sucks (affectionate)

Danny is slightly aged up to be 18 and a recent high school graduate, also this is a ghost king Danny AU, and obviously Phantom Planet didn't happen, but other than that, no major changes have been made to DP lore in this fic.

As for Dino Squad, I've made some pretty significant changes, but they pretty much boil down to: This is a supernatural AU, so it won't have canon-typical Dino Squad made-up science. All other changes are explained in the actual fic as they come up.

I'm lowkey assuming that the majority of people who read this will not have seen Dino Squad, so I've made sure to describe all the DS elements a little more thoroughly than the DP elements so those of you who haven't seen Dino Squad can understand what's going on.

"Italicized dialogue" indicates speech that can only be heard in the POV character's head. (Caruso in this chapter)

Chapter 1: So, You're Finally Awake

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[Warning for descriptions of several different types of ritualistic deaths with varying degrees of detail, some of them being more graphic than others]

Caruso woke up slowly. That was normal.

He liked to stretch out in the warm comfort of his lush bed, breathe in the flowery sent of his air freshener, and adjust to the sunlight streaming through his window before he got up, did his morning exercises and started his skincare routine. 

Unfortunately for him, he did not appear to be in his lush bed. The air, still and stale, carried the sharp metallic scent of blood, mixed with mold and must. Definitely not honey-suckle and jasmine. And the dim, yellowish light cast by the single caged bulb above him was hardly comparable to the morning sun.

For some reason, as he tested the ropes that tied him to a wooden chair, he was guessing his skincare routine would have to wait. 

Still, it was a bit of an improvement from how he expected he was going to wake up last night, which was: not at all. Suffering a death by a thousand cuts was not typically conducive to waking up in the morning without a scratch on you. Too bad he couldn't say the same thing for his clothes, which were completely shredded and covered in blood. 

This was a silk shirt, too. There wasn't even enough undamaged fabric left to make a pocket square out of. Maybe he could use it for silk fringe on something. If he could get the blood stains out, of course.

When he finally looked around properly, he saw that he was one of five people, sitting in a circle of chairs with their backs to each other. He had to crane his neck to see the other four, but still, he recognized them. They were the same four people he'd been tied up with last night. The four people he'd watched die before he himself was killed.

Caruso jumped as much as his bonds would allow and whipped his head around as he heard a scream to his left. The girl sitting there was shrieking at the top of her lungs. 

She had thick, red hair, with blunt-cut bangs. He remembered seeing her last night. Watching her get disemboweled, her entrails spilling out over a black pentagram. He wished he could forget. 

They went to the same school... she was in his AP bio class, he thought. What was her name?

"Fi... Fiona," he said, hoping that was right. "Are you hurt?"

"I... I... no," she said. She was panting, frantically looking down at herself, shaking her head like she couldn't believe what she saw. "I was... I died. Her clothes looked undamaged, but the blood on the hem of her once-white T-shirt still looked damp.

"Yeah, I remember," Caruso said. It had been especially grizzly, but at least it had been fairly quick, comparatively. As the last to be sacrificed, Caruso had had the horror of watching the rest of them die before him. They weren't all lucky enough to bleed out in seconds. "I did too. Seems like we're fine now, though... somehow."

"How are you so calm?" Fiona demanded, sounding on the verge of hyperventilating.

"I don't know," he said. Caruso had never really been the type to freak out when something bad happened, but even for him, this seemed way too calm for what had happened.

"Death is inevitable," said a voice in his head. "It comes and it goes. It's gone now, so why bother about it?"

"Uh... what?" Caruso muttered.

"Caruso?" Fiona asked, and he turned back to her. "It's Caruso, right?"

He nodded.

"How are we alive?"

"I don't know," he answered. He nodded his head toward the three other people tied to chairs behind them. They hadn't woken up when Fiona screamed, but their injuries from last night were gone. "Are they alive?"

"I don't know," she said, craning her neck to look at them. "Are you also hearing a weird voice in your head?"

Caruso swallowed and bit his lip before answering. What he wouldn't do for some lip balm right about now. 

"Yeah."

A groan attracted their attention next. One of the others had woken up. This one Caruso recognized immediately. Max Maxwell, real name Rolf, poor guy. Varsity quarterback, big man on campus, and Caruso's sophomore crush—but he was totally over it now. 

Max had been stabbed last night, Caruso hadn't counted how many times. Not shallow cuts like Caruso, but deep enough that they could hear the bones crack. First his feet, then hands, then wrists and ankles, knees, elbows, hips, shoulders, abdomen, chest, and finally his eyes. He probably hadn't died until the killer reached his torso. 

It was no wonder he seemed so frantic and disoriented. That was a nasty way to go. To his credit though, he'd gritted his teeth though it and didn't give their murderer the satisfaction of hearing him scream.

"You linger too much. Focus on the present time. It is the only thing that matters."

"What... how... where?" Max said. Incoherent, but who could blame him.

"We're not dead," Caruso explained. "We're still in that freak's basement though, it looks like. He hasn't even cleaned up the blood."

"I'm not bleeding," Max said. "Nothing even hurts, how—what was that?!"

"Voice in your head?" Caruso guessed. "We've got 'em too."

"We don't know how we're alive and unharmed..." Fiona shuddered, "physically anyway—God knows I'm gonna have nightmares about last night for the rest of my life. I'd bet those voices are related, but mine just keeps talking about how much she craves fish."

"I think big guy's gonna wake up next," Caruso said, nodding toward him. It seemed like they were waking up in the opposite order that they'd died. He wasn't sure if that was significant or just the way the cookie crumbled. 

"Rodger," Max said. "He's the smartest kid in school, how'd he end up in this."

"Are you saying the rest of us are here because we're idiots?" Fiona shot back.

"No, it's just... I mean, if anyone could have avoided something like this, I would have bet on him," Max attempted to clarify. "I guess nobody could have."

Just as Caruso had guessed, Rodger woke up next and immediately started taking deep, gasping breaths. Nothing'll make a man savor oxygen like having his throat slit and drowning in his own blood, Caruso supposed.

"I'm alive," Rodger panted out. "This isn't a hospital. How am I alive? How am I talking already? Who said that?"

Almost the instant after the three of them had gotten Rodger up to speed on what they knew about the situation, their fifth and final companion woke up, screaming like he was still on fire. Neil Buzzmati, AKA Buzz. Him, Caruso recognized from school. He made himself pretty hard to miss. 

Whatever product he put in that hideous green mohawk of his seemed to have protected it from everything but the ashes. His clothes had been completely burned away, but whoever had tied him up had also had the decency to lay a blanket over him to protect his modesty.

"Stop screaming!" Caruso shouted. "You're fine!"

The screams gave way to panicked pants, and half formed questions and expletives. "I was on fire!" Buzz finally shouted.

"Well... you're fine now," Caruso amended.

They all fell silent as heavy footsteps started coming down the stairs.

"Is that finally all of you?" came a deep voice with a transatlantic accent they would not soon forget. "I didn't want to gag you, but your screams are disturbing my customers. If you can't stay quiet—"

"Why should we?" Fiona demanded, cutting him off. "We should keep screaming as loud as we can until someone calls the cops! You literally killed us last night!"

"And I can do it again," the man threatened. "So I strongly suggest you keep it down. Or do I have to gag you after all?"

No one responded. They just glared at him as viciously as they could.

"He brought us here. We trusted him. He would kill us?"

Caruso tried not to visibly react to the voice in his head. Did that mean the voice truly was connected to what had happened last night? It made sense, but there hadn't been any proof until now.

Their captor sighed. "You were supposed to be possessed, but you still seem to be quite in control of yourselves. We'll have to have a word about that."

Up the stairs, they heard a distant bell ring, and their captor sighed again.

"But I suppose that will have to wait," he said reluctantly. "Please excuse me, and keep your voices down... or else."

With that he retreated back up the stairs.

"That was the asshole who set me on fire," Buzz hissed out in a hoarse whisper.

"We know, we were there," Rodger told him. "When he was done with you, he moved onto the rest of us."

"Although, we didn't all get burned to death," Caruso said. "He used different methods for each of us."

"Why?" Buzz asked.

"He didn't exactly stop to explain."

"My guess is he was summoning a demon," Fiona said. "I mean, pentagram, black candles, human sacrifices? Classic demon summoning ritual, right? At least, that's how it looks in movies. Not that I'm much of a horror buff, to be honest."

"You're close," said a disembodied voice.

At first, Caruso thought it was another voice coming from his head, but then he saw everyone else reacting to it, too, and realized that couldn't be the case.

"It was a summoning ritual, but not for a demon," the voice continued. "He was summoning me."

Instantaneously, a person appeared just on the other side of Fiona. 

It hurt his neck a little trying to get a good look, but Caruso guessed the stranger was seventeen or eighteen, about the same age as the rest of them, and not bad-looking. He was on the short side of average height, sharp jawline, square shoulders, with wispy white hair and eyes that glowed an unearthly green. He wore a black jumpsuit with a white belt, white gloves and boots, and a signet ring. A crown floated above his head, flickering with green flames.

"Hi, Danny Phantom, ghost king, at your service," he introduced. "I'm the one who brought you crazy kids back from the dead, and I'm the one whose gonna bust you out of here. Keep it hush-hush, though, yeah? If the boss man hears you, he'll come down and tell me to stop, and he has me bound to obey him. It's a whole thing."

He stepped over to Fiona, who was closest, and all he had to do was touch the ropes that tied her down to make them instantly fall to the floor, freeing her. He went to Max next, and did the same.

"If you're bound to obey him, why are you letting us go?" Max asked.

"I'm only bound to obey direct orders, and only ones I'm actually capable of carrying out," the ghost king explained. "Aside from that, I can do whatever I want. He never explicitly told me not to free you guys, so here I am."

He went to Buzz next. "Wow, you look a lot different with a face," he commented.

"That is an absolutely horrifying thing to tell someone, thanks," Buzz replied.

"Sorry." The king moved onto Rodger, and finally Caruso. Their eyes met for a moment, and Caruso could swear his cheeks looked greener from this angle. "You look different too," he said.

"Yeah, well, that happens when someone isn't covered in a thousand cuts and a corresponding swimming pool of blood," Caruso replied.

"Jesus Christ," Fiona said, barely managing not to raise her voice. "Is that what he did to you? How long did that take?"

"Hours," Caruso said with a shudder. 

Their captor had counted out every cut, and he'd made sure that Caruso didn't actually die, or even pass out, until the very last one. There was no reason to tell them that, though. They were traumatized enough from their own deaths. 

"But I'm fine now, see? Too bad about my clothes, though."

"How do we get out of here?" Rodger asked. "There's only one exit, and it leads to where that psycho is."

"Exits?" the ghost king scoffed. "Where we're going, we don't need, exits."

"Did you just reference Back to the Future?" Rodger asked.

"Yup!" He grabbed Rodger by the shoulders and picked him up like he weighed nothing at all, then flew straight through the wall and out of the basement. He then returned four more times to collect the rest of them.

"Your majesty?" Fiona asked once they were safely standing in a back alley, where the greatest potential danger was tetanus and muggers, and not a monster trying to summon the ghost king.

"You guys can call me Danny," he said. "But go on."

"If you brought us back to life," she continued, "then can you tell us how you did it? Or why we all have these voices in our heads?"

"Voices in your heads?" the king, Danny, repeated. Based on his expression, that was not a good thing. "Hmm... that... was not intentional. But we should go somewhere else, somewhere more than half a block away from old Victor and his creepy magic shop. Luckily, I know just the place."

"Uh, any chance we can pick up some clothes first?" asked Buzz, who was still wearing only the blanket their captor had left him, wrapped tightly around his lanky body. 

It was only a few weeks away from winter, and his shoes were gone, too. He must have been freezing.

"Yeah," Caruso agreed. "And maybe a shower too?" He was basically decent, but he was pretty sure his clothes could completely fall apart on him any second, and he was still thoroughly covered in blood.

"I second the shower," said Max, who was similarly blood-soaked.

"Thirded," Fiona and Buzz piped up at the same time.

"Motion carried," Rodger tacked on.

"Motion passed," Danny agreed. "Seeing you all in the daylight... you obviously need a little TLC. You weren't taken from your homes, were you?"

"No, we got grabbed as we were leaving a house party, at least, I think we all did," Max said. "I didn't see Rodger there, though."

"I wasn't there, but I passed it when I was walking home from my DnD sesh, and got grabbed then," Rodger said.

"Great!" Danny said.

"That we got kidnapped by a witch?" Fiona asked.

"Well, no, but if he took you from someone else's house party, that means he doesn't know where you live, and that's good news," he said. "Let's see... can't exactly call you guys a cab when you look like that... hm... wait here a sec."

Danny vanished, and the five of them were left standing in the alley waiting for something to happen. A minute or so later, a while panel van stopped at the mouth of the alley, and the driver's side window opened.

"You kids need a lift?" Asked a bearded man in dark sunglasses. 

"Uh, no thanks, sir, we're waiting for a friend," Fiona said.

The man pulled down his sunglasses revealing glowing green eyes. 

"I'm just messing with you guys, it's me, Danny," he said, the man's deep gruff voice turning into Danny's own, much lighter one. "Hop in and I'll drive you guys home. You just need to give me directions."

"How are you doing this?" Rodger asked once they'd all piled into the back of the van.

"Overshadowing," Danny explained. "I just found a car that could carry all of you without drawing too much attention, no matter how much I wanted to take the one with flames painted on the side, and I took control of the driver. I'll top off the gas and take him back where I found him once we're done, and he won't remember a thing."

"That seems unethical," Buzz said.

"A) It's harmless, he'll be completely fine, and the only thing he'll lose is an hour, tops. And B) Would you rather walk home?"

"Fair enough," Buzz relented, adjusting his blanket over his lap.

Caruso got dropped off last, since his house was the farthest away. They'd all agreed to meet up at their school once they'd showered and changed, and Caruso lamented the fact that there was no way he'd have time to properly moisturize.

"I'll uh... see you later," Danny said as he dropped Caruso off behind his house so he could sneak in the back door and hopefully avoid his parents seeing him like this.

"Huh?" Caruso said.

The way Danny said it felt like he meant something more by it, but Caruso was too distracted by the thought of the shower in his tantalizingly near future to know or care what it was.

"Yeah, see ya," he said, and headed gratefully into his home.