#i just thought it would be neat to use Dani as connection between Amity and rwst of the world

[wandixx]

I did a thing? It's not big bit I hope you like it.

***

Conner was absolutely exhausted. He and a few other members of the Young Justice team were free when Unknown sent a distress signal, so it was out of the question that they went to help. Really, they just sped to the closest stash with weapons to handle Unknown’s opponents and get to the battlefield.

It quickly escalated into involving various adult members including some from JLD who nearly never answered their calls. All because villains collaborated. ‘Cause, of course, they did. Life couldn’t be nice just this once.

The whole fight was kind of a blur if he was being honest with himself. He of course remembered pain, chaos, frantic attempts to protect everyone, and anger that these so-called ghosts just wouldn’t stay down. He hadn’t completely blacked out. But he had trouble recalling what exactly had happened. Who exactly he fought, who exactly he saved, where he moved, why his knuckles bleed, and why his ribs ached. He wasn’t too concerned. He was made to be a weapon, it happened sometimes. He wasn’t made to remember things.

Anyway, he somehow ended up only a few steps from Unknown who sat on the ground, taking heavy, labored breaths. They were facing the other way, supporting their forehead on their bent knee, face obscured by angle, hood, and long hair. Their heart was beating faster than he ever heard it (it was almost speedster fast and normally it was too slow to be healthy!) while the ever-present buzz from their chest sped so much it sounded almost even. They seemed to tremble. It was concerning, to say the least, so Conner fought his own fatigue and kneeled next to them. He cautiously touched their shoulder but retreated when they winced.

“Do me not doing what you need me to do put anyone in danger?” they rasped anxiously between too-shallow breaths.

“No, I just-”

“Alright, then give me a moment” they wheezed. Conner felt a little out of his depths. He had yet to actually learn how to help people in shock or any other psychological responses to distress. Don’t get him wrong, he was learning, he just wasn’t any good at this. He wished that anyone else was there to console Unknown properly but they were all busy with banishing villains or cleaning up the debris.

“You’re hyperventilating,” he stated instead.

“No shit Sherlock”

“Do you want me to coach you through some breathing exercises so you don’t pass out?”

“Nah”

“Okay”

So he just sat next to Unknown, adult competent hero, listening as they tried to even out their gasps. He saw how their fingers pressed on the meat of their arm. Whatever they were doing seemed counterproductive but he knew better than to interfere. You can’t help a person who doesn’t want it. So, he just kept taking deep, calm breaths, hoping they would follow his lead.

It was weird to console the adult hero but he guessed it happened.

“Okay, maybe a little help?” they whispered, audibly panicking. It came out almost as a squeal. Conner nodded even though they couldn’t see it and got to work. It didn’t take them all that long to collect themselves but even after their breaths had calmed and their heart had slowed down, they didn’t move.

“Do you feel better now?” he asked cautiously.

“Yeah,” their voice still was barely louder than a whisper. Gods bless Conner’s super hearing or else they wouldn’t be able to have this conversation. “Thank you. And sorry, I’m usually better at handling this.”

“It’s okay”

It really was. It wasn’t the first nor probably the last time when hero got overwhelmed by a big fight. It was admirable that Unknown managed to wait with his panic until everything was wrapped up. Even if it was still weird to console an adult. Conner once again tried to put a hand on their shoulder. They didn’t show any indication of discomfort so he didn’t take it back.

Flash stopped in front of them, leaving a cloud of dust in his wake.

“You guys alright?” he asked fast like always. Unknown raised their head to look at the older hero and-

Their mask must have fallen off somewhen during the fight.

Oh.

“Yeah, I kinda freaked out for a moment but Superboy helped me get over it.”

Oh.

Unknown wasn’t an adult.

They (he? They kind of looked like boy) couldn’t be older than Conner himself. Maybe even younger than Robin.

They looked weirdly familiar for someone he never saw before.

When none of the heroes answered just staring at them with shock, they curled in themselves a little more and started mumbling.

“I know panic is unprofessional, I promise I’ll do better next time, I usually do, I just really don’t like dragging other people into my fights and kinda spiraled ‘cause of it I-“

“You’re a kid” Flash interrupted, almost choking on his words. Unknown froze, then slowly raised their dirty hand to touch their naked face.

“Oh, no, no, no-” their heartbeat piqued again, as they hastily ran their fingers across their cheeks and forehead and nose and everything else as if they could somehow find their full face mask if they tried hard enough. They were mumbling again.

Conner squeezed their shoulder in what he hoped was a grounding gesture. Where did he see this face?

“Hey, it’s alright kid. We all just assumed you were a little older, that’s it. Nothing bad happened.” Flash tried but his words went unheard. Superboy squeezed their arm again, hoping it would be at least just a little grounding.

Where has Conner seen this face?

“Please don’t give me back to them. I’ll be useful, I promise.” They hadn’t stopped speaking but these specific words struck something in young Kryptonian.

He heard similar words before.

He remembered the white-haired, flying girl who he found pickpocketing some unsuspecting tourists, who later ate burgers with him, sitting on top of one of Metropolis’ skyscrapers, talking in hushed tones about labs and guilt of being created as a weapon. Who did her best to reassure him and herself as well that they were more than they were made for. That they were full people. The girl who knew how it was to be an imperfect copy of someone else.

The girl who had a loving template, who couldn’t take her in because of his living situation but did his best to prepare her, before letting her travel for safety and self-discovery.

The girl loved her template enough to show her fellow clone, who she knew for less than three hours, a photo.

“Danny?” he asked, even though he knew.

The boy fell silent before he choked quick, unfinished:

“How-”

“You’re a little different from a guy Dani told me about”

Danny gasped quiet “oh” and looked at nothing in front of him with a sad, broken smile. The kind of smile people often wore when they thought about mysterious before when life was better and happiness easier. Conner wasn’t old enough to have his own before. For now his before was Cadmus lab and he would rather get beaten up into a pulp than return to this place. But Danny seemed to have before and before he was thinking about was different than his before meaning the completely civilian life that Dani told him about. He seemed to think about a time when he was a hero and had Dani and see it as before. Conner was kind of curious about what changed.

“I was a little different guy back then.”

Unknown, the Wandering Hero

So! We all know the typical Vivisection AU, right? Danny is revealed to his parents and they take it in all the wrong ways. They capture him, Vivisect him, and eventually he manages to escape with the help of his friends.

But what about his Rouges?

Sure, we all like to think of some of the more friendly ones like Ember, or Sydney, or Johnny 13 and Kitty, but he has WAY more Evil Rouges than good ones.

Without Danny there to reign them in, the Rouges spread out across the world to fulfill their obsessions, unhampered by the Heroes and Villains of the world that have no means to fight them.

And Danny? He feels responsible. He was the one to open the Gate, he was the Sacrifice, the one to let them through. And when the going got tough he just up and left? No, that won't do.

His Obsession is Protection for a reason, and nothing has changed. All he needs to do is expand his area of focus a little.

Danny, after healing up, starts wandering the world in search of the Ghosts who have escaped into the Mortal Realm. He battles all of his old foes, as well as many new ones who he hadn't met before.

His travels take him far and wide.

He defeats Skulker in Metropolis, as he is trying to hunt down the Super Family for their pelts. They are the last of their race after all, so he is inclined to try and hunt them. Honestly dealing with Skulker was easy, dealing with the Rich Asshole who was funding him was a nightmare.

He chases down Spectra in Gotham as she tries to feed on the misery of an entire City. (Thanks to @impyssadobsessions for the idea, this Prompt specifically). She is actually a very tough fight, especially powered by both the Misery of an Entire City as well as his Own Misery, but he manages.

He defeats Technus is Central City, as he tries to Raid Star Labs for their advanced Tech. It actually took a while to beat him after he amped himself with all that Power, and he did need help from the Local Hero to deal with him. He's just thankful Technus is one of the more "Harmless" ones.

After every Victory, he sends them back to the Realms using the Banishing Spell that Sam taught him a while back (the only bit of magic he ever really managed to master).

He knows they'll eventually find their way back out, but it's all he can do anymore. It's his eternal Punishment for unleashing them out into the World in the first place. He was the Catalyst for this Situation, now he was tasked with Fixing it, no matter how long it took.

...

The Justice League is caught in a tricky situation a the moment.

In the past few months, they have been encountering more and more of these Extra Dimensional Beings known as Realms Ghosts across the World.

Justice League Dark has had some success in battling them, but even they are getting tired of having to deal with every single incident alone.

They did get approached by a Government Agency known as the Ghostly Investigation Ward that seemed to want to help, but it didn't take long to realize that their main Aim was to Genocide the entire Race. The JLA had quickly cut ties after realizing that, and took what little Tech and Information they had been able to gather.

Still, it wasn't easy to deal with these Entities.

Thankfully, they have had some outside help. An Unknown Being has been routinely showing up whenever a Realms Ghost appears and defeating them, before using a (as described by Constantine) "Rudimentary Banishing Spell held together by willpower and luck" to send them back to their home Dimension. There's honestly no way it should be functional, but he did make it work either way.

They don't know much about this Unknown, aside from the fact that he seems to be the only one able to consistently damage the Realms Ghosts. His Powerset leads them to belive he may be from the same Dimension, or at least drawing his power from the same Source, but as he actively avoids the League and takes every opportunity to not talk to them, they know they aren't getting any answers any time soon.

Over the past few months, they had affectionately started referring to him as Unknown, creative they know, because they could never get his Real Name. Sure, some of the Realms Ghosts seemed to recognize him, but they always called him stuff like "Whelp" and "Punk" and "Usurper", which were not very good names to use when referring to him. Although the last one was a bit concerning.

They had only managed to trade a few quick words with Unknown in the past few months, but it was enough to get the Gist of it. He was just doing his job, sending the Realms Ghosts back where they belonged. There was apparently a Tear in Reality letting them through, but he seemed hesitant to reveal what he knew about it.

After a few months of sparse interactions, they eventually managed to convince him to at least take an Emergency Communicator. Just in case. They even let him take it apart to look for any Tracking Devices, which earned them a small bit of trust. They took whatever wins they could.

Fortunately, it seemed he never did need it. In fact he was getting more and more efficient with every battle, defeating his foes in half the time it would have taken before.

Unfortunately, it didn't last forever. One day, the Communicator went off, a distorted voice quickly saying, "Need backup, some of them decide to Team Up" before cutting out.

They quickly rushed to his location, finding an active battlefield with no less that a dozen Ghosts battling Unknown. And he seemed to be on the ropes.

With their arrival, the combined force of the Justice League and Unknown eventually managed to defeat the Group of Ghosts. Justice League Dark volunteered to work on the Banishing Spells while the others cleaned up the damage from the Battle.

One of them approached Unknown to make sure he was ok, and froze.

During the battle, Unknown's Mask had been Torn off, and they could finally see the face of the Hero they had been working with for the past few months.

And he was a Child.

[ladylynse]

Once upon a time, I was going to write a Danny Phantom fic post-Connections and Confessions with Dani. This is the first chapter of that (there’s more if anyone’s interested), and it involved me essentially writing out Phantom Planet as canon, because why not.... (Brief bits of blood and torture ahead.)

Dani had never dealt with Clockwork before, but when he shows her the current path of the timeline, she has to change it--no matter the consequences.

Danielle bit her lip, hoping the pain would distract her from how tired she was getting as she strove to hold her intangibility. For all her travels, she’d never had to turn anything particularly big intangible. And this…. This was beyond big. Yes, it seemed like half the ghosts from the Ghost Zone were helping, but that didn’t make it any less complex. Every person. Every tree. Every building, every animal, every blade of grass. Ice and rock and water and burning magma. She had to force her intangibility outward, jumping through the very molecules in the air so that it spread to encompass the entire atmosphere to catch whatever wasn’t physically touching the ground at the moment, from birds to planes to insects— Everything.

But even though she felt like she was going to collapse, Dani continued to pour her strength and energy into creating and maintaining her intangibility.

And the asteroid got closer.

Danielle wondered, for a brief, panicking moment, what would happen if Danny was wrong. If ectoranium had anti-ghost elements, would intangibility even help, or did that make it phase-proof? Were they doing this for nothing? Had they just created a sense of false hope? Was she going to die in the next second anyway, despite everything?

Focus.

She knew how this played out, so why was she having doubts? They were going to succeed. The Earth was intangible, and the so-called Disasteriod would pass harmlessly through it.

Correction: was passing harmlessly through it. Dani grunted at the extra strain it took, and she started to shake despite herself, though she didn’t break her hold. Usually, when she passed through something intangible, or vice versa, it was as easy as going through air. As if nothing was there. No resistance whatsoever. At best, if she was really, really tired, and whatever she was going through was really, really thick, then it was a bit more like swimming.

This felt like slogging through waist-deep mud.

It was nigh on impossible to keep going, and it was a test of wills to get through it.

A shout finally rang out, and Dani was able to relax, releasing her intangibility and sinking back down to the ground. She still had to stay out of sight, but so long as she melted into the crowd of ghosts, she was fairly certain Danny wouldn’t spot her. And even if he did spot her, there was a chance that he wouldn’t realize…everything. It was possible that there were too many ghosts around for him to make the connection.

When the rest of the ghosts went back through the portal to the Ghost Zone, though, she summoned up the last of her strength to turn invisible.

And that was how she watched as Danny’s parents confronted him about his secret and as he chose to reveal it to everyone who was there.

For the sake of Danny’s future, she made sure all the news cameras had been turned off. His secret would be hard enough to keep from the world at large with everyone here knowing it, even if they reached some agreement to keep his identity a secret.

Though the scene Danielle watched was a happy one, she couldn’t help but frown.

Danny’s parents had accepted him. Valerie had accepted him—Danielle could see her smiling and clapping along with everyone else—and it looked like Danny might have more than a friend in Sam after all. And, best of all, Vlad was out of the picture.

So why had Clockwork told her it would be better if things played out another way?

Danielle heard a small sob and turned to see herself, in human form, watching the very same scene unfold. Crying, but smiling. Because she was happy for Danny, but still unhappy that she was here, separate. Alone.

Danny had lost track of her, then, for all that she’d been close by him when they’d turned the world intangible. Danielle, for her part, had stayed well away from Danny—and well away from her other self, until now—while here. She hadn’t wanted to arouse suspicion, so she’d taken up a post on the other side of the great tower, near its base, while the other Dani had positioned herself just behind Danny.

But before Danny could spot the Danielle of this world, of this timeline, where she now stood, off on her own behind the rest of the crowd, there was a flash of light and she transformed into Dani Phantom and took off.

Off where, even Dani couldn’t say. But she was so tired now, and she felt she’d seen enough, so she pulled Clockwork’s Time Medallion from her neck and dropped it into the snow, closing her eyes as the world dissolved around her.

When she opened them again, she was not in Antarctica but rather back in Clockwork’s tower.

With the sound of ticking clocks filling her ears, Danielle admitted, “I don’t get it. What’s wrong with that future?” It was the only future she had ever expected: that Danny would eventually be discovered and accepted by his parents, that he would be happy, and she would continue doing…whatever it was she was doing. Living a nomadic life, on her own, making her own discoveries in her own time, and living her life to its fullest.

Besides, Danny’s idea of turning the entire Earth intangible had worked. If it hadn’t, Dani could see why Clockwork thought this was not the best future to be had. But as it was….

“Even that which looks promising can be disastrous.”

Dani cocked an eyebrow. “Disastrous enough for you to interfere?” She might not know Clockwork well—heck, she hadn’t met him personally until he’d found her a couple hours ago—but his reputation preceded him.

Instead of answering, Clockwork waved his staff, and the portal in front of Danielle, which had been frozen on the frigid scene of Antarctica that Dani had just left, changed.

She saw statues of Danny Phantom holding up the world on one hand, signifying how he had saved it, but before a smile could spread across her face, the scene focused on the statue erected in Amity Park.

And how it was toppled amid a seething crowd, their cries muted to Dani as she watched with a terrible pit in her stomach.

She saw the Guys in White—unmistakable, as always—dragging an older but still very recognizable Danny off in phase proof chains. He must have put up quite a fight, judging by how beaten up he looked, but she suspected they’d caught him by surprise and overwhelmed him. And, judging by the bloody shoulder wound that she could see with remarkable clarity, they’d gotten in a lucky shot. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be slumped between two of them, head lolling forward and the rest of him looking no better than a rag doll.

She saw Sam screaming and crying, trying to break out of Tucker’s hold to go after him, and she saw Tucker’s grim expression as he held on, stronger there than she had ever seen him before.

She saw a weeping Jazz and clearly heart-broken Maddie held in Jack Fenton’s strong arms, the great mammoth of a man himself stilled only, no doubt, by the very real guns pointed at him and his family and the grim knowledge that they would be used without a second thought.

She saw a reckless Valerie springing to the defence of her friend, dodging the shots by the Guys in White as she dove and weaved to get closer to Danny—only to miscalculate, be hit, and crash to the ground, sled smoking and limbs splayed out at unnatural angles.

The scene finally changed, showing the inside of what must be one of the facilities of the Guys in White, and Danielle finally saw herself. Battered and bruised, body coated in a sick mixture of blood and ectoplasm, hanging limply by her wrists in a manner that more befitted a side of beef than a person. This Danielle looked haggard, lost and without purpose, weary beyond belief, all matted hair and tattered clothes. One eye was swollen shut, the other hidden behind straggly black locks. Her lip was split, and all visible skin, discoloured or not, was crisscrossed with angry welts, infected cuts, and telling scars.

This Danielle didn’t twitch as one of the Guys in White injected something into her neck, emptying the large syringe as neat as you please.

But she found her voice and opened her mouth in a scream, twisting and writhing in her chains, as her skin began to shift and melt, as her legs stretched out beneath her and the tips of her toes reached the base of the tub that they’d been high above before. It became blindingly bright, almost unbearable to watch, and as the light faded, Danielle saw that this Dani had been forced into ghost mode.

It was a defence mechanism, she realized. But though her ghost half could withstand more than her human body, the change did little more than speed the process as the other Danielle’s boots began to bubble and boil, sickly green ectoplasm bursting forth and trailing down what was left of her legs to be collected in the tub below.

Danielle thought she might be sick, and the scene changed again.

Danny, straining against the straps that held him to the table, as the Guys in White circled him. Danny, screaming as he was electrocuted. Danny, twitching uncontrollably as they injected something into him. Danny, still as Phantom and semi-conscious, as they cut away his suit and carved deeply into his flesh, reaching in with gloved hands to remove pieces of….

Gagging, Danielle tore her eyes away. When she thought she could speak, she said, in a hoarse whisper, “That can’t be what that leads to.”

“That is not all it leads to,” was all Clockwork said in reply, and Dani felt her stomach turn once more.

“I don’t want to know any more,” she said hollowly.

“What more you do need to know,” Clockwork said, his voice gentler than before, “is that this came about as a result of the Disasteroid incident and Plasmius’s ambition to turn the situation in his favour. The humans turned against their young hero when they realized he was not just a ghost but one which played at being a human as surely as the one they knew to be Vlad Plasmius had. They felt that they had been sorely tricked and that they were lucky to discover the ruse in time.”

“But Danny is human as much as Vlad and I,” Dani protested. “He wasn’t playing at being anything.”

“No,” agreed Clockwork, “but fear and hatred of the unknown, of what was not understood, allowed the events you saw to unfold. Had things been different, there would have been a different outcome.”

“But there still can be a different outcome, can’t there be? That hasn’t happened yet.”

Clockwork smiled at her. “Not in your relative timeline.”

“So I can stop it then, right? That’s why you wanted me here? That’s why you wanted to show me all of this?” She couldn’t let it happen. It was…. She couldn’t let it happen. “What do I have to do?”

Clockwork considered her for a moment, his ever-shifting form settling, at present, on that of an elderly man. “It may be possible to…nudge the future along a different path,” he conceded at length.

“What do I have to do?” Danielle repeated, her fatigue of earlier gone. “I have to be able to do something. You wouldn’t have shown me otherwise!”

There was a pause. “You are familiar with the various FentonWorks inventions, are you not?”

Dani shifted on her feet uncertainly. “Some of them,” she admitted, “but not most of them. I never stuck around Amity Park long enough to need to know them all.”

A slight smile. “But you are familiar with the Booo-merang.” It was not a question, but Dani nodded anyway, remembering how Sam and Tucker had used it to track Danny the first time she’d met him…and delivered him to Vlad.

Clockwork told her what must be done, though she wasn’t entirely convinced any of it would help. For a plan, it seemed entirely too dependent upon coincidences and assumptions to be feasible. But she knew enough of Clockwork to trust his judgement, if not to entirely trust his reasons. If he said this would lead to a different future, then she was willing to try it.

Anything to prevent…that from happening.

XXXXXX

It was late when she sneaked into the Fentons’ lab. Dani was grateful that, for all that their Fenton Ghost Portal was tightly sealed, they had taken no real precautions against ghostly invasion. No active alarms, no shields…nothing.

Unusual, perhaps, if she didn’t know how likely Danny was to set half the things off.

But she wasn’t looking for everything that reacted to Danny; she was only looking for three specific inventions. The first, the Ghost Gabber, she found crammed in the bottom of a box shoved on the bottom of a shelving unit and filled with various odds and ends from pieces of wire to stray nuts and bolts tossed together in an old peanut butter jar.

The second, the Fenton Finder, was retrieved from the top of this same shelving unit, from within a small box (labelled ‘instruction manual’) inside another container that held something that looked, to her unschooled eye, suspiciously like a blow torch.

The third, the Booo-merang, she unearthed from the back of a cupboard, where it had been hidden in a tiny box behind a crate of test tubes.

These three inventions found their way into another box, a simple cardboard one without label or lid, which she placed strategically in the lab so that it would be seen the moment the Fentons came down to the basement again.

From the disarray of the rest of the lab, she rather doubted the box would seem suspicious. After all, as far as Mr. or Mrs. Fenton knew, these inventions had something in common: they all reacted to Danny. It would make sense for them to be placed together, being affected by a similar ‘glitch’, and Danielle was willing to bet Jack and Maddie would assume the other had put them together for that very reason.

“Place them in plain sight,” Clockwork had told her, referring to these three inventions, “and let everything play out from there as it would.”

He’d neglected to tell her exactly how everything would play out, but despite her questioning, she hadn’t gotten any answers, and she’d eventually conceded defeat and agreed to complete the task he’d set her.

It wasn’t hard, after all. Sure, it had taken her a while to find everything, but she’d finished well before the dawn, and no one, not even Danny, had become aware of her presence. She just didn’t understand how this would help. How it would change…everything.

She had a slightly better idea of why Clockwork had chosen to interfere. From what she’d gathered, he looked after Danny. She wasn’t sure why or even how he’d come to do that, especially since she’d never heard of him interfering with the time stream without leave of the Observants, but she didn’t need to know. It wasn’t important, not really. But if this somehow saved Danny from that future, she was willing to do it.

Nothing could be worse than that, right?

Danielle stood in the lab from a moment, taking in all the differences and similarities to Vlad’s lab, with which she was unfortunately intimately familiar. She knew all his labs like the back of her hand—or she had, until they’d been destroyed to the point that he would’ve had to rebuild at least part of them, and she had no desire to go back.

Ever.

Vlad might have created her, but if there was one thing that she had learned, it was that he was not her father, and he was nothing like a father should be to her.

But because of who she was, she would never have a father. The best she had was a false ‘third cousin once removed’ relationship with Danny, and perhaps a tentative friendship with his friends, the Red Huntress included. She’d never stayed in one place long enough to make her own friends. She’d never wanted to form a bond with anyone when she knew it would have to be torn away when she had to move on, and she always had to move on, because she was no one and she belonged nowhere. If she was discovered, she had to disappear and start over.

She’d lost track of how many times she’d done so already.

True, she could spend more of her time in the Ghost Zone. She had no need to hide herself there. But she felt out of place there because she wasn’t truly a ghost and she didn’t truly belong. It felt easier to hide in the Real World and…pretend.

Even if she couldn’t pretend forever.

Dani’s eyes roamed over the lab once more, and she reached out to adjust the Booo-merang so one wing stuck prominently above the top of the box.

She didn’t know if this would help.

She didn’t know if she’d get in trouble with the Observants if it did.

But she had to try, no matter the consequences. For Danny. Because he’d trusted her, had faith in her, and had saved her, more than once. If this changed the future, then she could begin to repay him, even if he would never know about it.

Satisfied with her work, Danielle turned intangible and flew out of the lab, out of the Fenton household, and out of Amity Park. She’d return sometime to see how things were going, to make sure she couldn’t see any stepping stones to that horrible future being laid down, but she felt certain that Clockwork would call on her again if this didn’t work, for whatever reason.

She wasn’t sure why he’d called on her and not Danny in the first place, if Danny was the one he meant to protect, but she was happy to help nonetheless.

Part II