#if vlad had been a full ghost it would have been on instinct

[charlietheepicwriter7]

Jazz: And that's why we need your help in taking my brother's custody away from Vlad Masters. Two Face, former DA and NOT a family lawyer: Kid, I don't know how to tell you this... Jazz, deflating with a sad puppy look on her face: Two Face: Fuck it, where does the bastard live, kid? I'll get your brother back.

[too-much-tma-stuff]

This idea sort of burst out of me like Alien so it's unedited. There will probably be more.

In short, Cas picks up on the fact that Danny is pregnant at a Wayne Gala and have the right idea but the wrong context.

Masterpost

------

Danny was barely holding it together and really he had been for a long time. It had sort of been fun and games at first when he became a hero. Sure his accident had hurt like hell but he'd sort of repressed that and for real? Lunch Lady? Box Ghost? Even Skulker was sort of a joke and he hasn't actually felt threatened. Sneaking around behind his parents backs and sneaking out with his friends had been fun. It had all felt like a game at first, and then somewhere in there things had gotten very real.

He'd known he couldn't count on his family to protect him but they couldn't even see Vlad was a threat. And he felt like he had lost the last of his innocence when he saw the clone Vlad had made of him melt. He hasn't been in time, he had panicked and he had only managed to save a couple by taking them into his own body to shield their still forming cores. Ellie and... should Danny name the other one or would he name himself when he was ready?

He kept touching his stomach over where he could feel the little balls of his mirror children hovering just below his own core. He was so tired all the time as they relied on his energy, he was eating more then ever and he knew his family was worried. He didn't think he could hide this and he couldn't predict when they would emerge. What if they did in front of his parents? They definitely wouldn't react well. And Vlad kept trying to use this against Danny. Promising to look after him and the babies if he was really insisting on carrying them, as if Danny could rip those tiny 'lives' out of himself now.

And no matter how many times he tried to tell his parents that Vlad was bad news, that he creeped Danny out and made him feel unsafe they wouldn't listen! Dad didn't even hear him and mom made sympathetic noises and then told him to bear with it for Jack's sake because he didn't have many friends.

So of course when Vlad had asked if 'Daniel' could accompany him to a gala in Gotham his father had agreed! Even his mother had agreed when Vlad promised it would be educational and safe! And here Danny was, hanging on by a fucking thread in a suit that felt uncomfortably tight around his middle, having just escaped being paraded around as Vlad heir like a particularly expensive watch. He was behind the snack table having piled a plate as high as he could and scarfing it down before Vlad could find him again and scold him for being rude. He hadn't noticed yet that a family of dark haired socialites kept giving him worried looks. A young woman with dark eyes signing frantically to a man with blue eyes and a dimpled frown.

It was the man who slid up carefully next to Danny trying not to startle since he seemed to have genuine food aggression.

"Yeesh kid you seem like you're starving! All those fancy Hors d'oeuvres are fun but not very cooling and I feel like I'd be a poor host if I didn't offer you something more filling! If you'll come me to the kitchen I'm sure our family butler would be happy to whip something up for you?" The man said with an inviting some that did nothing to sooth the way Danny's hackles raised instinctively.

He was about to say no on reflex when he spotted Vlad heading towards them with an expression like a thunder cloud. Danny's back went ridged and the other man followed his gaze with a frown. "You know what ya that sounds great let's go now!" Danny said dropping his half full plate on a nearby tray and dragged the stranger away with him as Vlad shouted after him.

"Daniel come back this instant! Unhand mister Wayne! Daniel this is unacceptable!"

'Mr. Wayne' took over leading them and spirited Danny through a back door as a bubbly blonde intercepted Vlad and a small woman slid in behind them like a shadow.

"So, Danial I assume?" The man asked, amusement crinkling around his eyes as Danny grimaced.

"Mr. Wayne I assume?" Danny returned, unaware of the way one arm was protectively wrapped around his stomach, but the girl noticed. It was Dicks turn to grimace.

"Okay ya, I go by Dick. What about you?"

"Danny," he said not reacting to the name, he'd heard far stranger. "And what about you?" He asked Cas, startling Dick a little because she was doing her 'shadow thing' and not many people would have noticed her.

"That's Cas, she has a hard time talking sometimes," Dick explained as Cas materialized and gave Danny a reassuring smile and wave.

The teen harrumphed but he did follow them down to the kitchen where Alfred was drinking a cup of tea, staying well clear of the foolishness upstairs. "Ah, hello young masters," Alfred he said, glancing between the three with a raised brow. Though the two who knew him could see the way his expression softened when Danny shrunk in on himself. "What can I do for you?"

"Hey Alfred do we have any leftovers from dinner or something filling we can whip up fast? Danny here is too hungry for just the fancy font for upstairs." Dick asked cheerfully.

Alfred raised his eyebrows again and looked at Cas who was standing behind Danny. Glancing at Danny to make sure he wasn't looking she grimaced then touched her stomach and mimed holding an infant.

Alfred's expression turned stormy for just a moment then smoothed. "Of course we do, Why don't you make our guest comfortable and I'll see what I can do. Do you have any allergies young man?" Alfred asked and Danny shook his head mutely.

"You're the best Alfie!" Dick said, hovering a hand over Danny's shoulder rather then actually touching him as he leas him towards the comfortable breakfast nook.

The boy seemed tight lipped and gaunt, his eyes flicking around them as if he expected a threat to pop up at any time. Dick slipped into the booth across from him. Trying to think of the best way to ask this kid how... why, and who hurt him.

Cas has stayed in the kitchen, but not for long. She came to them with a tray of mugs moments later and slipped into the booth next to Danny. Gently she took his hands and pressed the warm mug unto them. He blinked and focused of it, as if on autopilot he lifted it to his lips, Cas keeping a hand on his elbow to steady him as he drank.

The warm comforting drink, and hand on his arm, presence by his side as Cas slid imperceptibly closet and closer till she was pressed against Danny's shoulder, felt like they were taking him apart from the inside. Thawing out the cold numbness he shielded himself behind. Half way through his tea he glanced up, at the worried blue eyes so like Jazz, so worried and warm.

He put down the mug suddenly as a sob shook his body. Cas wrapped her arms around him and pulled him close, cooing comforting wordless little sounds as she let him bury his face into her chest and just sob heaving, exhausting outbursts of repressed emotion.

"Are the babies okay?" She asked and he froze, his breath catching in his throat. She clicked her tongue and rocked him gently. "Okay, okay, not in trouble," she promised.

"They- I don't know, they were so weak, I’m trying, but I don't know if I can keep them alive." Danny sobbed lifting his hands to cover his face.

"The stress can't be helping," Dick pointed out, climbing across the table like it was nothing to sit next to them and rub Danny's back. Danny gave a little hiccupping hysterical laugh. "Do you have support, or like, do you know your options?" He asked awkwardly.

"I'm not getting rid of my babies! I don't care if the man who made them is an obsessive creep who drugged me! I love them they're MINE!" The feral protectiveness seemed to startle Dick even as Cas continued to make soothing sounds.

"Your choice, only yours," she promised. "Have help?"

Danny sniffled and shook his head. "Safe?" Another shake of the head.

"The man who... did this?" Dick asked as delicately as he could. Another hysterical laugh.

"I've tried! I've tried to tell my parents he's a creep, he's dangerous but they don't listen! My dad thinks he hung the fucking stars, mom says he's harmless. They don't believe me! I-I can't tell them about the babies. They'd make me get rid of them or worse! I can't." Danny sobbed and Cas soothed.

"Okay, okay, you don't have to." She promised. "You stay with us, you and babies safe, never have to see him again."

"Ya right. Wait, your serious? What" Danny asked, pulling back and looking at her with wide bloodshot eyes.

"She's very serious young master," Alfred said as he approached making Danny jump. there was a hard set to the old man's jaw and steal in his eyes that left no room for questions as he set a plate of eggs, sausage, and fruit in front of Danny. "Master Bruce has a foster license and is a mandatory reporter. I'm sure once he hears even a fraction of this he will insist you stay. I will prepare a room for you. Am I to assume the man who's shouting demanding your return upstairs is the source of this distress?"

Danny swallowed and nodded, Alfred nodded back and paused to rest a gloved hand gently on Danny's hair before walking away briskly.

"Eat," Cas said, nudging him gently to let go of her. "As much as you want. Still hungry? We raid Tim's secret cereal stash."

"Gasp! You know where it is? You've been holding out on me?!" Dick demanded with exaggerated betrayal and as the two started to banter Danny ate. He was glad of the distraction, of not having the attention on him as he devoured the healthy, and nutritious meal the butler had made for him. It had been a while since he'd had a good home cooked meal, it made his core feel warm and he could feel the two little echoes as his hummed.

The babies were happy too, he didn't believe these people could keep him safe from Vlad really, but this was nice. Maybe he would let them try, get a few more good meals, a respite, and maybe... maybe his parents would finally notice that something was wrong and actually stand up for him?

That was probably wishful thinking but he could hope right? there was no harm in that.

Part 2

[redflagshipwriter]

batmom cass: reveal

masterpost

Oh. Fuck. He was invisible. A flood of genuine fear washed through him. He was discovered again, he was away from any allies, he had to get away-

Danny went intangible out of sheer survival instinct and lurched downwards. Bruce made a punched-out sound and lunged to grab him. He actually got his hand around Danny’s wrist and clenched despite Danny being invisible to human eyes. It was no use. Danny slipped through his grip, the chair, and then the floor.

He caught himself there and paused, hovering in the flooring. He could see the weird joints underneath the kitchen, a dark crawl space with way more spiders than Alfred could possibly know about. One of them reared up and waved its front legs at him in what was either a threat or a greeting. Danny shuddered involuntarily and pulled back a little to give the arachnid personal space.

“Danny?” Cass’s voice was muffled but calm. “Sit in your chair, please.”

She made it sound so sensible.

He blinked rapidly. “Right. Right, okay.” He floated back up through the floor and avoided eye contact as he settled back into place and the visible spectrum. He stole a glance around the room. Cass and Damian looked unaffected. Bruce’s face said the same, but the pulse point was jumping rapidly in his throat. His hand was pressed firmly against his thigh as if to remind him that it was a physical thing that existed.

“This GIW is harmful to you?” Damian asked, sensible and unaffected. He pushed his empty yoghurt away a few inches on the tabletop. “I gather from the acronym that we are dealing with an organization rather than an individual.”

“....Yeah.” Danny gripped his knees under the table and clung to the hint of normalcy. If they were going to act like that hadn’t been weird, then maybe he was okay. “I think they’re government affiliated. They say they are. They, uh.” He cleared his throat. “They’re the Ghost Investigation Ward, but I call them the Guys in White.”

“And they are a problem because?” Damian asked crisply. Cass was watching with the full force of her formidable attention, but it wasn’t a heavy gaze. 

Danny forced himself to stop fidgeting. “Well, I might have died a little.” It came out as a question. “And they’re not sure it’s me- at least, they weren’t, but I guess that they are now.” Oof, that was hard to internalize. Of course they did. Now that they knew about Vlad, they had all the pieces to put it together. His parents had definitely put it together. The look on Mom’s face when she saw him hauling Vlad out of the lab…

He felt cold. Danny rubbed at his thighs as if that would help. 

There hadn’t been another choice. It ate at him a little bit that Danny had thrown his life away for someone he didn’t even like, but what else could he have done? Vlad was Vlad, yeah, but Danny couldn’t have left anyone there. 

Bruce had a look that Danny had never seen on him before. Intense. Focused. Dangerous. Danny instinctively pulled away from it, sitting all the way up in his chair. 

Bruce wiped it away, but the memory still sent Danny’s blood rushing. Ecto gathered in his mouth like saliva, his body readying to fight for his life. He swallowed it down with difficulty. 

“As you said,” Cass interjected. She scooted her chair a little closer to him and laid an arm along his shoulders. “Like Jason.” She rubbed at his upper arm. He leaned into her touch. 

“Like Jason,” Bruce echoed. His tone was hollow.

Danny ducked his head and missed the meaningful look that Cass shot her BatDad. 

“What are their capabilities?” Damian pushed. His dark eyes glittered when Danny looked back at him. “You clearly have invisibility and density shifting. Are they able to counter you?”

“Yeah, something like that.” Danny blinked rapidly to try to force himself to focus. This was… so weird. Someone had found out about him and he wasn’t fighting for his life. Even his friends had found out when he was actively under fire from a ghost. His nervous system didn’t know what to do with this. He cleared his throat. “They have a lot of tech, uh.” He flexed his hands. “From my parents.” He stared at the woodgrain on the table. It was probably real wood and not the heavy duty polymer that the Fenton table was made out of. “They’re not exactly competent, but there’s a lot of them, and they have had some success.”

His stomach lurched. He swallowed hard on bile. He didn’t think about what he’d found when he went after Vlad. He didn’t think about Vlad in his human form, strapped down and incisions pinned open, literal pins holding open his torso and skin layers on his arms. He didn’t think about the quietly despairing hums coming from rows of ghost cores on a shelf, neatly labeled with specimen numbers. 

“Let’s walk.” Cass hustled him up and muscled him down the hall without letting go of her comforting grip. Danny went along with it numbly. But she was kinda right. Moving shook him out of his head. The walls were changing around him, curtains and windows and framed portraits and some of Tim’s photography. They passed a room he had never seen before. Cass pushed the door open, let him look around, and then tugged him down the hall before he’d had time to do more than catalogue the novelty. 

She did that at the next door, too. Oh. An impromptu tour. The novelty of seeing new things started to drag him back to the real world, right now, which was not exactly a fight for his life.

At the third door, Danny managed, “Does anyone play that piano?”

Cass made a mysterious hum. It took her a while to unstick her tongue. “Damian can. Jason, if you ask with big eyes.” 

Danny nodded at this information. Damian did seem like the kind of person who would hone a few classic artistic skills. And Jason was manipulable, good information.

…Not that Danny would need much help there. He felt a little sheepish at how threatened he’d felt earlier when he remembered the sincerity and protectiveness he could sense from both Cass and Jason.  

“What should we do about GIW?” Cass broached the topic, as if she knew that he felt better. She probably did know. “Investigate cautiously? Destroy?” She held up two fingers to count off the ‘destroy the GIW’ options. “Horde of lawyers descend from Wayne Enterprises jet, or Justice League?”

Danny snorted. It turned into a laugh, hysterical and too long. He wiped tears away from his eyes. “Personally, I like the idea of blowing up their base,” he admitted. “But someone should rescue the test subjects first.”

“Oh?”

Cass was so weirdly easy to talk to. He leaned a little harder against her. She wasn’t a big woman, but there was something so solid about her anyway. It must be a Black Bat thing. “I left because I was getting someone out,” he admitted. “They were a lot more captives than I knew about.” He squeezed his free hand to ground himself. “I grabbed as many as I could and tossed them through the portal, but I don’t know if that was everyone or if just being home let them heal up.” 

Hell, maybe someone had come along and eaten all the helpless cores. Danny shied away from the horror of that thought. His intuition had identified the helpless ghost cores as viable ectoplasm, healing and delicious. They were scared at his approach because they sensed him, they knew they were helpless shells to crack open and lick out the sweet marrow–

Ah. Yup. He stopped in his tracks and heaved his snack onto the carpet.

[letoasai]

Vlad- Alternate Obsession

Simply if Vlad hadn't been so obsessed with Maddie. How priorities might have shifted.

~

Daniel was dead. Great god almighty… He was dead. Half dead. Whatever. That didn’t matter. The little details were just there to make a horrible situation more tolerable. For one brief moment, Vlad hoped he was wrong. Hoped that this was merely exposure to ectoplasm or a sign that Daniel would become liminal faster than previously predicted, but no. He was sure. Daniel was dead. 

He watched as Daniel’s ghost sense was triggered, the teen coughing a second later. He looked around warily, holding himself rigidly. He was alert, but inexperienced enough to not realize Vlad was right in front of him. 

“Daniel, my boy!” Vlad greeted, finally untangling himself from Jack and Maddie’s latest tirade on being validated in their research. “How is school?”

It wasn’t uncommon. 

He was Daniel’s godfather after all, and had done what he could to be present for both Daniel and Jasmine since they were born. The children were exempt from his contempt and his affection for them was genuine but he’d never feared for them until this moment. 

Vlad tried to block out as many memories from his college years as he could. After his accident and subsequent half death, he had raged for a while. He’d been in despair, learning to mourn himself while handling abilities foreign to him. He had to learn things from scratch opposed to normal ghosts who knew things instinctively. 

He’d only briefly lost track of Jack and Maddie after his hospital stay but the urge to look them up again had gnawed at him. He had notebook after notebook filled to the brim with his own research on ghosts and ectoplasm but he would have been remiss to shun their research just because he couldn’t stand the sight of them. It was Jack’s blunder that had changed him after all. 

The pair had gotten married, and had a baby girl, but Vlad found himself more interested in their labs than their domestic life. The fondness he’d felt for his best friend, and the passion he’d once directed at Maddie had died with him. 

Jasmine had been a bright spot, and a wonderful distraction in those early visits. A small child also kept the Fentons busy enough that he could slip into their labs undetected. Copying their work and altering their inventions to ignore his own ecto-signature was essential. As far as he could tell, they’d never suspected a thing. 

Daniel coming along had been a blessing, even if it had confused Vlad at the time. Jack and Maddie loved their children but they were always complaining about not having enough time for their research. It had always been to Vlad’s benefit but adding a second child into the mix would only draw out their parental duties. 

However it baffled it, it benefited him. He only had to offer his jovial congratulations and time went on. 

Vlad…was aware that he was not who he once was. He’d either lost something when he half died, or gained something. He wasn’t sure. He was no longer naive. He’d done things in the last twenty or so years. Not all of them he was incredibly proud of. He had amassed a fortune, but it had seemed the natural progression of things at the time. He’d been young, desperate and dead. He’d need money to further his research so money needed to be acquired. 

He’d had medical bills…. Then he had ambitions. 

He might have been something of a thief, a criminal, but he’d never hurt anyone…to his knowledge… 

It was easier on his conscience when it was only stealing from Jack and Maddie. That felt like recompense for what Jack had done to him. He’d had a working portal a full four years before the Fentons. 

He’d never said a word about it and delighted in the secret of it. His wealth of knowledge was greater than theirs. When the pair had recently called him, gushing about their achievement, he’d been skeptical, but he’d seen Amity Park’s newspaper articles on the ghost of a lunch lady at Casper High, and the poor picture quality of a white haired menace that chilled him. 

“Hey Uncle Vlad.” Daniel greeted him with a smile, but his eyes were wary and stressed. Dark circles were beginning to form. “School’s, uh, good? Same old bullies. I gotta read Pride and Prejudice. Aced my last math test though.” 

Vlad hummed and nodded. “That about sums up my memories of high school as well.” It pulled a smile from Daniel. 

“And a ghost sighting! To think we’d find one so close to home! We’re pulling out all our weapons out of their testing stages!” Jack’s voice boomed, overly excited at their find and completely missing the way his son shrank back. 

“A stake out might be in order.” Maddie said, a smile in her voice. Her excitement was more contained but was very real. “Who knows, we might be there to capture the next one.” 

Vlad made a show of rolling his eyes and focused on Daniel. “What is freshman math anyway these days?” 

“I’m taking geometry.” Daniel said, latching onto the topic. “I got the hang of it pretty quickly. So far at least.” 

“You always did have a head for numbers.” Vlad said conversationally. 

“Vladdy! Come take a look at the newest prototype!” Jack was beaming, far too excited over the notion of ending a creature that was already dead. Vlad didn’t care for the sparks of fear that settled in his throat. An ending after the end was final, and terrifying. 

“Jack.” Vlad laughed good-naturedly. “Surely there’s time for that later. I did just arrive. I’d love to speak with Daniel for a while. High school will pass by before you know it.” 

Maddie just sighed, perhaps nostalgic. “It sure does. It won’t be long before Jazz is graduating.” 

“And entering into the ghost hunting business!” Jack declared. 

“Oh, Jack.” Maddie just laughed. 

“Where is Jasmine?” Vlad asked, his need to check on her…sudden. 

Maddie looked thoroughly. “Oh, hm.. She’s…” 

“Tonight’s the night she tutors.” Daniel said, sounding exhausted. “She’ll probably eat dinner before coming home.” 

“Oh, that’s right.” Maddie smiled, but she was already distracted with the toaster she was dismantling. 

Vlad hummed, oddly relieved. As the children had gotten older, their well being came into question more and more. “Well… Jack, you and Maddie seem to have your hands full this evening. Why don’t i take Daniel to dinner? I’d love to hear about his freshman year anyway.” 

“Can we get Nasty Burger?” Daniel perked up. 

Vlad snorted. “Not my first pick, or my second, but why not?” He’d eaten more burgers than he could count in college.  

“Really!? Yes!” Daniel grinned, “I’ll grab my hoodie, be right back!” 

“Danny sure loves your visits.” Jack laughed loudly. 

Maddie just hummed, still focused on what she was doing. “Don’t spoil him.” She said vaguely. 

“You won’t have to worry about a thing.” Vlad said, already turning back to the door. "I'll take care of him." By the time he got there, Daniel was behind him, practically pushing him out the door. 

“Let’s go, let’s go.” 

~ 

Vlad felt himself relax once he had Daniel in his car. He would definitely need to sneak back into the Fenton’s lab and grab whatever new information was available. He would also need to add in Daniel’s ecto-signature to their equipment before something automatically shot at him. 

He needed to address this. He couldn’t let the Fenton’s mistake harm anyone else. He’d shut their research down if he had to. He'd shut his own down if he had to.

He cringed at the thought. 

“Daniel, wait.” Vlad said after he’d parked in the most secluded spot the parking lot to Nasty Burger provided. “Before we eat, i would like to talk to you?” 

“Yeah? Sure.” Daniel said. His tone was light and playful. Normal. The color however, drained from his face. “Do i even gotta bother to tell you to call me Danny again?” 

Vlad smiled faintly. “I quite like the name Daniel, you know? That’s not however, what i wanted to talk about. Let me be clear, this conversation does not leave this car. Not by you. Not by me.” 

“Oh, uh. Yeah? Yeah, of course.” Daniel said, turning sideways in his seat to face him. “What…are we talking about?” 

“Ghosts.” 

Daniel sighed. “C’mon Uncle Vlad. Don’t i get that enough from mom and dad?” 

Vlad shook his head and reached out to grab Daniel’s shoulder. “No, listen to me. It’s safe to talk to me, and i will not ask about… whatever accident you must have had-” Horror was all over Daniel’s face. Enough time hadn't passed for him to mask his reaction to his death. “But i understand, Daniel.” 

“I don’t know what you mean?” Daniel muttered and winced when it didn’t sound the least bit convincing. For just a split second, he turned invisible. He probably hadn’t even realized he’d done it. Most would assume their eyes were playing tricks on them. 

Vlad leaned forward and opened the glove compartment, pulling out the article of the ghost attack on Casper High. “You’re not in trouble. Not with me.” 

Daniel only glanced at it before looking away again. He’d seen it already no doubt. “It’s not what you think.” 

“I’m very sure it is.” Vlad said softly. “I know all too well what ectoplasm and trauma can do. I can sense death around you.” He paused before pushing forward. “In time, i’m certain you’ll be able to sense it on me too.” 

Daniel’s lips tightened, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew what he heard and was proceeding with caution. “What do you mean?” 

“We’ll get some dinner to go and we’ll head back to my house here in Amity.” Vlad said. “And i’ll show you my own ghost form.” 

“Yours…” Daniel sounded winded. “When did you…?” 

“Long before you were born.” 

“My parents…?” 

Vlad just tsked. “They were dear to me once, Daniel, but they are fools. No, they don’t know about me, and i will not tell them about you.” 

“Don’t.” Daniel said, somewhere between agreeing and begging Vlad to mean what he said. The tremor in his voice told Vlad all he needed to know. He was well aware of how his parents would react. He was afraid. 

“It will stay between us.” Vlad said calmly. “I won’t ask. It’s breaking all kinds of ghost etiquette to be so nosy but if you ever want to talk to me about what happened, you can. I can also help you adjust.” 

“Can you?” Daniel asked immediately, the closest he’d come to admitting Vlad was right. 

“I’ve never had to teach anyone to use ghost powers before, but yes, I think i can offer you some insight.” Vlad said. “Falling through floors?” 

“Yes.” Daniel said with feeling. “I keep dropping things. My clothes…” 

Vlad nodded along, all of it sounding familiar. “I know all about it. You just need to get used to it. Gain control over what you can do.”

Daniel swallowed, looking like he’d have a meltdown any second. “You promise?” 

“I do.” 

He inhaled slowly. “I…died.” 

“Yes,” Vlad said softly. “I’m so sorry…” 

“You’re…” He watched Daniel’s expression crumble. He didn’t have to ask why. How did you mourn your death when you were still half alive? It had taken Vlad years… “Sorry.” 

“So sorry, my boy.” Vlad said, sounding choked up. “It never should have happened. Not to someone else. Not to you.” 

Daniel bowed his head only seconds before he started to sob. It didn’t matter why. Was it stress? Was he starting the process of mourning? Was it the knowledge that he’d lost a piece of his family? It didn’t actually matter… 

Vlad leaned closer as far as he comfortably could in the car and pulled Daniel to cry against his shoulder. It was all the comfort he could really offer. He couldn’t make it better, he could only put a band-aid on it. He couldn’t change the Fenton’s minds. Not for Daniel and not for himself. They were always going to be in danger, but he could listen. He could be everything for Daniel he didn’t have. He could let the boy cry. He was only fourteen. 

God, at least Vlad had been in college. Daniel was a child… 

“Does your sister have any idea?” 

Daniel shook his head, hiccuping in an effort to catch his breath but he just cried still. 

“At least she’s still safe. You and i will work up a few safety protocols and… i’ll stay in Amity Park.” The castle in Wisconsin had really been the height of his arrogance. 

There was so much to teach the boy. Not just how to use his powers but ghost manners and taboos. He’d learned a lot himself in the last few years of having his portal up and running. Access to the Ghost Zone had made things a great deal easier on him. 

Daniel wrapped his arms around him, clinging in a way he hadn’t since he was a much younger child. He hadn’t had any time at all to come to terms with his own death, but this was a start. 

If Vlad needed to cook up a few excuses for getting him away from his parents, well… he’d been bored anyway.

Master List

~ It'll hit differently when Skulker shows up to hunt the halfa welp and is instead met with a fully grown, pissed off halfa in mama bear mode.

[vladdyissues]

I recently started thinking with some friends about Pompous Pep and the theme they have of son and father, which led me to think that maybe Vlad if he were to fall in love with Danny and he was just like Maddy and insisted on going out with Sam, Vlad would act THE SAME AS WITH MADDY, every desperate attempt for attention even manipulating him to end up with him alone (like he did with Maddy in "Maternal Instinct"), The only difference is that he wouldn't do it in the open way that he did with her that literally everyone knew about his crush except Jack...

With Danny he would surely be a damn cautious one, hugging Danny pretending that he still loves him as a son and in the privacy of his mansion / place where he is trying to keep him, would he try to... convince him to stay with him?, probably he wouldn't say from one moment to the next that he fell in love with him, I'm sure he would come up with a great plan where Danny had no choice but to stay and listen to Vlad's manipulations

I imagine: Maybe he subtly convinced Jack and Maddy that Danny needed a mental clearing from teenage fatigue and to make him more convincing, he would also invite Jazz to a "relaxation retreat", and probably on the way he would take Jazz away so he could be alone with Danny, Maybe to avoid attacks the place where they are is a closed place full of cameras, using manipulation of "If you do this everyone will see that you are a ghost Daniel... Don't think I'm not capable of uploading this to the internet and the news..."

Maybe he does that and even then he only tries to convince him to stay with him, I don't feel that he comes and says "I like you Daniel!" ... I highly doubt it, Vlad is a bastard ...

"You're trapped, Badger"

"We're both trapped... If you transform they will see you too"

"Whatever you say... But you're not leaving here"

"Now what the hell do you want!?"

"Listen to me...I just want-"

"I don't care if you want something!"

"DON'T INTERRUPT ME"

"..."

"I just want you to come with me Daniel, come on, we don't have to hate each other...I can give you everything that your parents couldn't give you even if they spent their whole lives hunting ghosts"

"No, fuck you"

I saw it so clearly:

The week-long "teen retreat" Vlad planned conveniently means dropping Jazz off at an American Psychological Association convention with ten thousand dollars in cash along the way, ensuring that he and Danny are alone the entire time. Danny is of course suspicious of how nice Vlad is being. He doesn't trust him at all, and when he continues to rebuff Vlad's increasingly "friendly" advances, Vlad has no choice but to give him the unpleasant news:

Jazz has been injected with nanobots that will kill her if Danny goes ghost. (They've been programmed to activate when triggered by an RFID signal on the same frequency as Danny's unique spectral signature.) Vlad is the only person who knows the code to deactivate the bots—which he will do once their little vacation is over.

See, I don't think Danny would respond to threats of being outed as a half-ghost. Video evidence could be written off as a hoax or a clever edit. Vlad would look like a half-baked conspiracy theorist. Nor do I think Danny would respond to threats made upon his person. But his family and friends... I believe Danny would endure some of the worst pain and torment to keep them safe.

So when his sister is threatened with death, Danny has no choice but to cooperate with Vlad.

Twist: After agreeing to Vlad's terms and basically signing over his entire life (and afterlife) to remain at Vlad's side in some kind of pseudo marriage contract, Danny plans to get out of his predicament by revealing evidence of Vlad's manipulation to the authorities and retrieve a sample of Jazz's blood to show the deactivated nanobots. Except—

The nanobots were never injected in the first place.

It was a ruse devised by Vlad that would give him exactly what he wants while also absolving him of any legal involvement. With no evidence of his extortion, he is essentially innocent. The lawsuit is over before it can begin.

And now Danny is truly fucked.

[torscrawls]

Fishing for the Truth

It's time to post for @ecto-implosion! I got the privilege to write a fic for the wonderful and talented kad! Check out their wonderful artwork!

Summary:

Two half ghosts, one ghost dog, and one ghost hunter go fishing together. What could possibly go wrong? Now if only Vlad hadn’t gotten it in his head to suddenly tell Jack the truth about being a halfa, and if the fish in the lake hadn’t turned out to be murderous ghosts, the trip might have been quite nice. But of course Danny couldn’t be that lucky.

Word count: 10,575

You can read it on ao3 here!

--

Danny almost went ghost by instinct when his bedroom door suddenly slammed open with enough force to bounce off the wall, nearly hitting the person bursting into his room in the face.

“Son!” Jack screamed as Danny hastily hid the ectogun he had been tinkering with under the new dog clothes Jazz had made for Cujo before turning around in his desk chair.

“Dad,” Danny answered warily and thanked his unlucky star that Jack was so unobservant.

“What do you say about a fishing trip with your old man?”

Danny blinked in surprise. That wasn’t what he had been expecting, but for once he was having a slow Saturday and it had been ages since he had actually spent some time with his dad one-on-one. “That… That actually sounds fun.”

“Great!” Jack said in a tone of voice somewhere between enthusiastic and foghorn. And then he just stood there.

“You mean… now?” Danny hazarded a guess.

“No time like the present!”

“Yeah, sure. Just give me a minute, alright?”

“Okay! I’ll go pack,” Jack said before turning on his heel and exciting the room as suddenly as he had arrived. Danny let out a long breath, got up, and closed the door after his dad. As soon as the door had clicked shut he became aware of a low scratching sound.

Danny frowned and opened the door again. The hallway was empty.

He slowly closed it again, and… There! There it was again!

“Hello?” he hesitantly called out. He really hoped it wasn’t a ghost looking to mess with him.

There was no answer, except an increasing intensity of the scratching.

Danny slowly turned in place until his eyes landed on his closed closet doors. There. The sound was no doubt coming from inside his closet. Great. Not creepy at all. Danny slowly inched closer, raising a hand and preparing an ectoblast. He really didn’t want to get into a fight right now, he just wanted to have a nice and calm—and above all else; ordinary—Saturday.

The door handle was cold in his hand when he carefully gripped it and then slowly eased it open and—

And was met by a face full of slobbering green ghost-dog.

“Cujo! I almost shot you!” Danny complained with a laugh as he hugged the—currently— small dog tightly.

The dog in his arms simply barked and wiggled with happiness, his tongue leaving long, dripping green streaks on Danny’s cheeks.

“Yeah, yeah, you know I can’t stay mad at you.”

Cujo squirmed out of his arms and jumped to the ground, immediately going for one of his toys, nabbing it from the ground and impatiently showing it to Danny.

“I’m sorry boy. I don’t have time to play right now. I’m gonna go on a trip with my dad.”

Cujo tilted his head cutely in obvious confusion.

Danny couldn’t keep himself from patting it. “Sorry. Not today.”

Cujo whined but then went to the door, looking over his shoulder at Danny, as if waiting for him to follow.

“You can’t come with me. Even dad would notice that you’re a ghost.”

The mere thought of Jack finding out about Cujo made his stomach clench. His parents had gotten better when it came to their prejudices against ghosts, but they still had some way to go.

Cujo wasn’t aware of any of Danny’s internal struggles and simply stepped impatiently in place and whined again, eyes locked on the closed door.

Danny cast about for something to distract the little guy before he got too impatient and decided to simply go through the door. It was a testament to how far he had come that he hadn’t already. Danny almost laughed. What did it say that he trusted his dead dog to behave better than he did his own parents?

His eyes landed on the new clothes that Jazz had made for Cujo. She had insisted that it was a practice run before making clothes for a friend’s dog, but Danny was fairly certain she had just wanted to dress the little guy in some cute clothes. He couldn’t blame her.

“Hey, boy! Let’s see if these fit.”

What followed was a very undignified attempt to get the clothes on him, which Cujo seemed to interpret as a wrestling match; refusing to sit still and turning intangible at every opportunity.

“Come on! Do you want to come with me or not?”

That managed to get him to calm down. Sometimes Danny was certain the dog understood everything he said and simply chose not to listen a majority of the time. The little bastard was lucky he was so cute.

When he finally managed to get them on they fit perfectly. Of course. He hadn’t expected anything less from Jazz.

He held the little dog up in front of him, looking at the cute little sweater and goggles that covered his red eyes.

“Wow, Cujo! You almost look like a real boy!”

Cujo gave a small yip, looking very pleased with himself.

“Danny!” Came a booming call from downstairs, “Let’s go! Are you ready?!”

Danny tilted his head as he considered the dog hanging happily from his hands. “Maybe dad won’t notice that you’re a ghost underneath the clothes?”

Cujo barked, wagging his wispy ghost tail. Well, there was nothing he could do about that detail, but hopefully his dad was as unobservant as always. He also knew, intimately, that if he left the dog home alone he would come home to carnage and chaos. And nobody wanted that, least of all Danny himself.

So he adjusted Cujo into a more secure hold and opened the door. “Coming dad!”

Danny took the stairs two at a time as he muttered to Cujo hanging happily in his arms. “You stay small, alright? I’ll get you a treat when we get back.”

When he entered the hallway, Jack was standing by the door with two big bags and with a bright orange button down thrown over his usual jumpsuit. It was the same garish orange as the fabric beneath it and Danny hoped he didn’t think that made him look casual. Danny was unsure what kind of style he was going for, and he definitely wasn’t about to ask. If there was one thing he had learnt over the years, it was to not get involved in the fashion disaster that was his parents’ wardrobes.

His dad’s eyes lit up when he saw Cujo in Danny’s arms. “Who’s this? I don’t remember us having a dog?”

“I’m gho—” Danny cut himself off, “dog-sitting for… a friend. His name is Cujo.”

“Oh? What a little cutie!” Jack beamed before pausing and frowning. “Why is he so green?”

Danny cast around for a somewhat believable explanation while cursing himself for somehow forgetting that despite the clothes, Cujo was still very much a shining green dog. “Uuuuh, he… was attacked by a ghost? He got covered in ectoplasm and it got stuck in his fur?”

Jack made a cooing sound and leaned over to pet Cujo on the head. “Aww, poor little guy!”

“Yeah. It’s very sad. Tragic.” He cleared his throat. “So, can I bring him with us?”

Jack didn’t even hesitate before saying, “Of course he can come! The more the merrier!”

“Great!” Danny smiled in relief. “Then let’s go!”

And in line with Fenton tradition, they didn’t waste any time before getting in the car and driving off. Cujo sat in the backseat and stuck his head out the window, his ears flapping adorably in the wind and his tongue lolling.

Everything had been going so well, so it wasn’t until they had taken several turns off the main road that Danny straightened up and actually paid attention to where they were going. Or, more accurately, to where they weren’t going.

“…Dad? This isn’t the way to the lake?”

There was nothing out this way, nothing but—

No, it couldn’t be.

Jack turned to face him with a broad and oblivious smile. “Well, we need to pick him up!”

“Pick who up?” Danny asked with growing trepidation, even if he had a sinking feeling that he already knew the answer.

Jack didn’t have time to answer before they came to a screeching halt in front of an elaborately fancy gate.

Just outside there was a man. A very familiar man.

“Why are we picking up Vlad?!”

Jack looked back at him with a confused expression. “What do you mean? This was his idea! Didn’t I tell you?”

“You must have skipped that part,” Danny bit out through gritted teeth. And here Danny had thought that his dad had wanted to spend some quality time with him. Just the two of them without any ghosts or drama, and especially without any meddling billionaires. Of course not.

“Well! No harm! That just makes this a fun surprise! You love your uncle Vlad!”

“Yeah. Amazing. Love that guy.”

Danny watched as Vlad brushed himself off after having jumped back to save his feet from Jack’s patented Fenton parking style, and then he smiled towards the driver’s seat. The expression froze as soon as his eyes landed on Danny and he did a double take, blinked, and then frowned.

Danny took a small measure of satisfaction from the dread he could see growing on the man’s face. It would feel even better if it wasn’t mirrored on his own.

At least that meant he hadn’t planned to torture Danny specifically. Though, it might mean that he had planned to get his dad alone, which wasn’t exactly reassuring.

Maybe it was lucky that his dad had been clueless enough to invite him since it meant that Danny could keep an eye on Vlad and make sure he didn’t try to kill his dad. Again.

Even if that meant he had to go fishing with Vlad of all people. It would be fine, he had survived worse things. At least, that was what Danny tried to tell himself as he sighed and mourned the loss of his calm Saturday, before getting out of the car together with his dad with the same enthusiasm as someone going to the gallows.

Vlad was dressed in his usual immaculate suit and polished shoes. Absolutely deranged for someone that was going fishing.

Danny made sure his feelings about the man in front of him were clear on his face before he nodded in greeting. “Fruitloop.”

“Daniel,” Vlad replied with an infuriatingly disdainful look on his face.

Jack looked between Danny and Jack and then nodded with an overly serious expression on his face. “Jack.”

Danny burst out laughing at the same time as Jack did, only spurred on by Vlad’s groan of dismay. He already looked as if he regretted the whole trip. Danny grinned. Good.

Vlad cleared his throat and asked, eyes narrowed and glaring in Danny’s direction, “So, what is young Daniel doing here?”

“He wanted to join us on the fishing trip!”

Vlad raised both eyebrows in a smooth and practiced motion. “Did he now?”

Daniel raised his own eyebrows in an exaggerated mimicry of Vlad’s expression. “He did now. If it makes you happier, I didn’t know you were about to curse us with your presence either.”

Jack laughed and thumped Vlad on the back hard enough to make him stumble. “It’s great seeing you two get along so well! It’s been ages since we last hung out, just the two of us! It’s like the good old days!”

Vlad coughed before righting himself and straightening out his immaculate suit as if it had gotten wrinkled by simply being touched by Jack. “Yes. And we’re not just the two of us right now either, are we?

“Of course not! Danny-boy is always welcome!” Jack added with a beaming smile, oblivious to the obvious hint and the bite in Vlad’s tone.

“That’s great,” Vlad muttered and he almost looked… Disappointed?

Danny crossed his arms as he thought. This whole thing was a bit too straight-forward in comparison to Vlad’s usual tactics. If Jack went missing under mysterious circumstances while one a fishing trip with him, then surely that would place him under some kind of scrutiny and they would be able to trace it back to him?

It was all way too simple.

Vlad hadn’t been as bad as of late, but that didn’t mean that Danny trusted him. And the increased silence almost made him even more worried. He had to have another, less obvious, plan and Danny would figure it out.

Jack smiled widely, ignorant of the tense atmosphere. “Just imagine, the three of us, all alone on a boat with no one else in sight. Just the silence of nature with no one to disturb us.”

“I can’t wait,” Vlad bit out through clenched teeth.

Danny agreed. “Oh joy.”

“Let’s just get in the car,�� Vlad said and made for the front seat. Danny smoothly stepped in his way to block him.

Danny made sure to pitch his voice low enough so that Jack wouldn’t hear him when he said, “If you think I’ll leave you in the front seat with my dad, you must be more delusional than I thought. You get to sit in the back with Cujo.”

Vlad looked affronted. “I won’t sit in the back with the dog!”

Danny turned to Jack and put on his most innocent face. “Daaad, I want to sit in the front with you! It’s been so long since we’ve been on a trip together!”

“Aw, Danny-boy, of course you can sit next to your old man! I’m sure Vladdie won’t mind sitting in the back since it’s such a short trip!”

Vlad sent Danny a nasty glare but somehow still managed to dredge up a tight smile, even if it came off more like a grimace than anything else. “Of course. No problem.”

Danny opened the back door and made a show of gesturing Vlad inside, who hesitated at the sight of Cujo with his hackles raised. Danny was so proud.

Danny smiled and made sure his fangs showed. “Be careful though, he’s known to bite.”

“Great.”

--

Danny turned up the music until it was impossible to hear Vlad from the backseat and thankfully he stopped trying to make conversation after the first ten minutes.

Somehow they managed to arrive at the lake without anyone ripping out anyone’s throats. Danny was honestly surprised.

They came to a stop in a deserted parking lot surrounded by trees. Danny could just about make out the glittering shine of what he assumed was the lake through the trees and, right by it, the outline of a dark cabin. He really hoped that was the boat rental Jack had been talking about during the drive, and not a murder cabin. When they got back Danny would have to have a talk with Sam about cutting back on the horror during their movie nights.

As they got out of the car, Jack brought out one of the stuffed bags he had packed and proudly pulled out three overalls, two green ones in different sizes—clearly intended for Jack and Danny—and one in a dark gray. “I got us matching clothes!”

“Oh, you didn’t have to—” Vlad began but cut himself off when Jack reached back into the bag. “And you even got hats. Of course.”

And he had; bucket hats, all in matching beige. Danny was delighted. They were going to look so ridiculous and Vlad would absolutely hate it.

On the other hand, he was fairly certain that Vlad would refuse to wear it. Which was why, when Vlad accepted the clothes from Jack, Danny was surprised to see that the man almost looked touched. He could almost swear he even saw Vlad smiling down at the hat in his hands before he put it on.

They all changed into the clothes and Jack looked them over with a huge smile. “What do you think, son? We match!”

“They’re great, dad. Thank you,” Danny said and found that he really meant it. His gratefulness sat like a warm weight in his chest as he fiddled with one of the buckles.

And then the sight of Vlad in an oversized overall with his fancy dress-shirt with rolled up sleeves and polished shoes made Danny snort. Vlad’s subsequent glare, combined with the fact that he didn’t take any of it off, made him laugh out loud.

Vlad sniffed. “If you are laughing at me because of my clothes, I just want to inform you that you look the same.”

Danny did a little twirl in his green overalls and bucket hat, “We can’t all wear it as well as I do.”

Jack sat down on his haunches and petted Cujo on the head with an uncharacteristically serious expression on his face. “I’m sorry, little guy. I would have brought a hat for you too if I had known you would come with us.”

Cujo yipped and pushed his head into Jack’s hand.

Danny felt an overwhelming wave of love for his dad. Then the moment was broken by Vlad’s irritating voice, “He sure is a strange dog, Daniel. What kind did you say he was again?”

“He’s just a normal dog,” Danny said as he crossed his arms.

Vlad raised one eyebrow. “He’s green.”

Jack looked up from the happy puppy. “The poor guy was in an accident.”

“Really now?”

Danny nodded. “Really. A ghost related accident, poor guy.”

It didn’t get him the reaction he had been aiming for and instead of annoyed, Vlad looked between Jack and Cujo with a thoughtful expression.

Jack straightened up and clapped his hands as he announced, “Well, I’ll go get the boat. You three wait here!”

And before either of them could complain or offer to come with him, he jogged away between the trees, leaving Danny and Vlad alone to eye each other warily and Cujo to whine at the loss of the attention.

After a few tense moments, Danny let out a deep sigh. “Alright, out with it. What are you really planning?”

Vlad tutted. “Don't involve yourself in this.” 

“I think I’ve earned involving myself after the first time you tried to kill me and my parents.” 

“Fine! Fine. I want to… I want to get them back, okay?” 

Danny frowned. “You can't get my mom, I've already told you that multiple—” 

“Not like that! Just. As friends. As partners. All three of us.” 

"Oh,” Danny wrinkled his nose. “Gross.” 

“Not like that,” Vlad repeated as he pinched the bridge of his nose. “I just want my friends back, okay?”

It seemed to pain him to admit it and Danny blinked in surprise at the admittance. “Are you saying you're lonely?”

Vlad was silent.

Danny held up a hand. “Wait. Wait, wait, wait. Let me get this straight. You turn evil, try to kill your only friends and then you complain because you feel a bit lonely?” 

“I didn't—” Vlad began and Danny opened his mouth to argue, but thankfully Vlad cut himself off as he seemed to realize the futility in arguing when they both knew the truth. Instead he said simply, “Yes.”

Danny dragged a hand down his face. “Ancients. I can't believe this.”

To Danny’s horror, Vlad actually looked hesitant as he said, “I—I had actually planned to…” Vlad trailed off.

Danny had a horrible realization of just where that sentence had been going. “You planned on telling him?”

Vlad looked away.

“You were! You have got to be kidding.”

“No. I am not jesting, Daniel,” Vlad said as he dragged all his formality around him like a protective cloak.

“You think that will go over well?” Danny asked incredulously.

“Well. He doesn’t seem to hold your little mongrel over there accountable for his accident,” Vlad said with a nod to Cujo.

“I can’t believe I have to say this, but you’re not a cute little dog, Vlad.”

“I am well aware.”

Danny sighed. “You’re still going to do it, aren’t you?”

“You can’t stop me,” Vlad said and he had never sounded more like a stubborn toddler. “I'm finally ready to be honest.”

“Good for you. I'm not.”

“I really don’t care,” Vlad sneered and Danny almost felt relieved at the familiar disdain in his voice.

He probably would have if he wasn’t suddenly and acutely aware of how uncomfortable this whole trip was going to be. “Ancients, I can’t believe I’m third-wheeling you and my dad while you come out to him!” Then he paused as a thought hit him. “Why only him, though? I thought it was my mom that you were obsessed with?”

This made Vlad look back at him with a scoff. “Have you met Maddie? She wouldn’t let me finish explaining before absolutely wrecking me.”

He ended the sentence with a dreamy expression and Danny wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Again. Gross. I don’t wanna know about your fantasies.”

But he couldn’t really deny that his dad was the easiest to influence out of his parents.

Danny stared up at the sky to gather strength for three blessed seconds before looking back at Vlad and asking, “So what was your plan here? Just to say ‘I’m Plasmius, sorry for trying to kill you but I’m not evil anymore, I promise. And oh, by the way, ghosts aren’t all bad. Trust me’?.”

“I don’t think I like your tone.”

“And I don’t like your face, but here we are. So come on, spill. What was the plan?”

“I know they’ve been getting… better about ghosts.”

Danny nodded. “Because of the hard work of me and my friends, and—you know—actually talking to them. Hard work that was not helped by you attacking them and the town repeatedly, I might add.”

“I haven’t attacked you and your friends, or anyone for that matter, in months,” Vlad hissed out.

Danny threw his hands up in the air. “Well, then! All is forgiven. You haven’t tried to kill anyone in months! How generous.”

Vlad combed a hand through his hair, looking agitated. “I’m actually trying here.”

“And I don’t believe you.”

“I just want to tell him the truth, alright?!”

And damn it all to the deepest parts of the Zone, but he actually sounded sincere. And just like that, Danny’s Saturday had morphed from nice to sit-com level mix-up and all the way to trip from hell.

Vlad couldn’t just tell his dad the truth. Not before Danny even had a chance to do it himself.

“Tell me what, V-man?”

The two of them froze like rabbits in headlights as Jack came back with a wide grin and a set of keys dangling from one hand.

Vlad opened his mouth and Danny gave Vlad a warning kick to the shin. “Nothing. Just that…” Vlad trailed off.

Danny jumped in with an overly cheerful, “That he has missed hanging out with you!”

“Aww! I missed spending time with you too! That’s why this trip is going to be such a blast! Here, I got you two fishing rods and some bait! The boat is down by the water and I even managed to get the motor to start!”

That was when Danny became aware of a continuous roaring sound in the background. He slowly asked, “…And you left it running?”

After a short sprint down to the water to make sure the boat was still there—thankfully it was, even though the cost for the gas would surely be astronomical—they turned the motor off and loaded all their supplies in.

Danny had finally started to relax, so of course that was when Jack decided to whip out a fishing rod that had a suspicious green shine to it. “Meet the new Fenton Fishing Rod™! It’s guaranteed to fish out any dastardly ghosts hiding in the depths!”

Danny took a small step away from the thing. “What does it do exactly?”

Jack beamed, oblivious to the tense atmosphere he had created and the stress of his companions. “It attracts ghosts and entices them to take the bait.”

“That’s… awesome,” Danny said as he exchanged a look with Vlad and hated the feeling of camaraderie that passed between them at their shared discomfort and exasperation in the face of the gadget.

“Right? I can’t wait to see what kind of ghastly catches we’ll get!”

“Weren’t we supposed to catch dinner?” Danny asked carefully, “I’m not really in the mood for the undead kind. Again.”

“Oh, that’s right! Not to worry though, it’s turned off right now and it also functions like a regular fishing rod, fully capable of catching non-dead fish!”

Danny eyed it warily. “That’s great dad, but maybe try not to lure any ghosts to us tonight, okay? We’re just here for regular fishing, remember?”

He had just wanted to spend some ghost-free time with his dad, not to sit in a boat with him and Vlad and use a fishing rod that attracted every ghost in the vicinity to their location. Thinking about it logically, he really should have known better.

Danny heaved a sigh of defeat. This would end in disaster.

Cujo jumped into the boat with enthusiasm.

Jack looked at Cujo with clear worry on his face. “Are you sure the little guy will be okay on the boat? Should I have gotten him a life jacket?”

“He’ll be fine. He floats. Besides, he can help with the catches, can’t you boy?” Danny held out the net for Cujo. Cujo barked back an affirmative, grabbing the net and sitting down in the back of the boat, tail hitting the side of the boat with a hollow thump thump as he impatiently waited for the rest of them to get in.

“Well then, the little guy has the right idea! Let’s go!” Jack said as he too jumped onboard, and then there wasn’t any more time for regrets as both Danny and Vlad had to throw themselves onto the boat to get on before Jack took off.

Half an hour later Danny found himself contemplating how far he would get if he jumped in the water and swam for shore before his dad would come and fish him out of the water.

The minutes crawled by agonizingly slowly as they sat in silence. Just the three of them and the quiet waters around them, the setting sun, the clear sky, the sound of birdsong, the gentle rustle of leaves in the trees.

It should have been exactly what he needed to wind down, but Danny found himself hating every second of it. He was acutely aware of Vlad sitting such a short distance away, surely about to try and—once again—destroy his whole life. The only saving grace was that Jack had situated himself in the middle, creating a small barrier between the two of them.

As if hearing Danny’s thoughts, Vlad broke the silence with a casual, “Actually, Jack, there was something I wanted to tell you.” 

“What is it Vladdie?”

Danny panicked. He couldn’t just say it!

Vlad took a deep breath, set his shoulders—oh shit, he was actually going to do it—and said, “I'm actually a gh—” 

“Ah!” Danny cut him off, “I think I got something on the hook!”

Jack leaned closer to him, excited about the possible catch. “You do?”

“Oh, no, must have been my imagination. My bad.”

“Of course. A simple mistake to make,” Vlad bit out, but thankfully stayed silent afterwards.

Or at least that’s what Danny had hoped, but not even a minute later, Vlad broke the silence as he turned to Jack, “So… Jack. Have you met Phantom lately?”

Danny narrowed his eyes. “What are you fishing for?”

Vlad smirked. “Dinner, dear Daniel.”

The asshole. Of course he would get Danny back.

Jack paused, uncharacteristically hesitant. “That ghost boy… I think we might have been a bit wrong about him.”

Danny watched with satisfaction as Vlad froze at his dad’s words. “…What?”

A few months ago, Danny would have reacted in the same way, but by now he was aware that his parents had been less prone to shooting first and asking questions later, and that—combined with the fact that they had actually proposed a truce a few months back—had made him realize that they were starting to change the way the saw ghosts. Finally.

It still warmed him to hear his dad say it.

Jack fiddled with the fishing rod in his hands as he spoke, “Well, me and Maddie have been rethinking some things lately and maybe… Maybe we’ve been a bit too zealous and strict with our judgments.”

 “…Strict?” Vlad asked faintly.

“Yes. We judged all the ghosts without even really knowing them. We should be using this opportunity to learn more about them, not just destroy them. Some of the ghosts in town haven’t attacked anyone in all the years they’ve been there and there really isn’t anything indicating that they’re planning to.”

“Right. You seem to have really thought this through,” Vlad said, seeming stunned.

Jack clapped Danny on the shoulder, almost tipping him overboard. “It’s mostly thanks to Danny and his friends. They managed to get us to see that we let our emotions cloud our judgment a tiny bit.”

“Quite a bit,” Danny corrected under his breath, but he was still very proud of how far both his parents had come. Only a few years ago he wouldn’t have thought this to ever be possible, that he could have a calm conversation about ghosts with his dad.

Vlad frowned and seemed to mull it over but before he had the time to work up to saying something in response—and probably try to reveal his secrets again and subsequently tear down all the work Danny had done over the last few years with keeping his own secret—there was a tug on Vlad’s fishing rod.

Jack immediately zeroed in on it. “I think you have something on the hook there, V-man!”

“So it seems.”

“Come on, let’s reel it in!”

Vlad got the fish up and Jack grabbed it from the line, unhooked it and snapped its neck before dumping it in the bucket at their feet. Cujo seemed very happy at the new addition to their boat, and wouldn’t stop trying to stick his nose into the bucket, no matter how many times Danny tried to push him away.

“Thanks for the help,” Vlad said and was that… fondness in Vlad’s voice?

This whole situation was starting to weird Danny out.

Vlad hadn’t tried to kill his dad even once during the whole trip. It was unnerving.

Maybe it was time to poke the hornets’ nest a bit.

Danny turned to smirk at Vlad as he innocently asked, “Since we’re on the subject of ghosts, Vladdie, what do you think about the ghost Plasmius?”

To his credit, Vlad simply blinked in surprise before turning to stare deadpan at Danny. “Are you baiting me?”

Danny was mortified to find himself almost laughing at that comment. He needed to get control of the conversation back, and fast. “I fucking hate you,” Danny muttered before turning to Jack and loudly asking, “Dad, what do you think about the ghost Plasmius?”

Jack hummed in thought, leaning forward to help in trying to keep Cujo out of the bucket.

Vlad leaned back behind Jack and, in a warning tone of voice, hissed out, “Daniel. What are you doing?” 

Danny whispered back, “What are you doing?!”

Jack didn’t seem to hear the whispered argument taking place behind his back as he took his time to answer.

Vlad let out a frustrated huff. “I'm trying to tell him. I'm finally ready to be honest. 

“Good for you. I'm not.” It wouldn’t be a big leap for his parents to take if they found out and accepted Vlad as a ghost.

Vlad opened his mouth to respond, but before he could, Jack spoke up in front of them, prompting both of them to sit up straight. “I think that ghost was one of the bad ones even though he seems to have mellowed out a bit, which is fascinating because we didn’t used to believe that ghosts could change!”

“Neither did I,” Vlad said low enough that Danny doubted Jack could hear him. Annoyingly, he raised his voice again as he sucked in a deep breath and said, “Jack. What I’ve been trying to say is that I...”

Cujo chose that moment to turn intangible and simply stick his head though the bucket instead and Danny lunged for him before his dad could see. Which meant that he completely missed trying to interrupted Vlad as he continued,

“I’m a halfa. I’m half dead.”

Danny froze with one hand in the back of Cujo’s shirt and the other trying to pry the fish out of his mouth. Fuck.

Jack patted Vlad on the shoulder. “We’re all a little dead inside, it’s okay.”

“That’s not what I—”

“It doesn’t make me think any less of you.”

Danny burst out laughing and Vlad slumped where he sat, looking utterly defeated. “Lucky me.”

Danny almost felt pity for the man. He managed to get Cujo to let go of the fish, inspected what was left of it and deemed it a lost cause. He held it out for his dad. “Hey, do you want to give him the rest? I don’t think we should eat this.”

Jack lit up and immediately took it upon himself to try and get Cujo to sit and give paw, which Danny knew from experience the dog knew, but often simply refused to do. Danny, meanwhile, turned to Vlad and said, “Don’t waste your breath. He has a remarkable ability not to see what’s right in front of him. Especially if it’s something he doesn’t believe is possible.”

“What do you mean son? I can clearly see this little cutie-pie! Yes, you are. Come on, boy! Sit! No, don’t bark. Sit!”

Danny gave Vlad a meaningful glance. “See?” Then he turned to Jack. “Try ‘play dead’ instead, he’s really good at that one.”

Vlad heaved a deep sigh.

“You are such a good boy! Well, now we have to catch some more fish for dinner. We wouldn’t want you going hungry!” Danny didn’t even feel miffed that his dad seemed more concerned with feeding his dog than him. He understood.

Jack smiled down at Cujo who sat at his feet. “We’re going to have a fin-tastic dinner, just you wait!”

Vlad snorted.

Danny turned to stare at the man, shocked at the genuine sound of happiness, but Vlad wasn’t looking at him. He was making a casual comment to Jack, making him laugh in turn, and suddenly Danny could see them as they must have been in college. With dad and mom laughing and ribbing each other as they tried to one-up each other, and Vlad right alongside them, the voice of reason to his parents’ insanity.

His thoughts were interrupted by something tugging on his line and Danny turned his attention to reeling in the frankly massive bass he had managed to hook. “This one is huge! Help me reel it in!”

Cujo immediately latched onto the rod beneath Danny’s hands and started pulling. He didn’t really help much, but Danny appreciated the gesture.

“Awww, Danno, he seems to really like you! It’s going to be hard to give him back to your friend!”

“Yeah, haha,” Danny laughed awkwardly as he heaved the fish the last of the way into the boat. “When I give him back. Right.”

The massive bass flopped to the bottom of the boat and Danny had to grab for Cujo again to keep him from performing another impromptu dissection then and there.

“Wow! Great job son!” Jack praised as he grabbed the fish and promptly put it out of its misery. “That’s going to go great on the spit later!” He thumped Danny on the back, once again almost pitching him over the edge. “Soon you’re going to be stronger than your old man!”

“Thanks dad,” Danny said, trying to ignore the way his cheeks heated at the praise. Then the moment was ruined as he caught sight of Vlad staring at him with something akin to jealousy in his eyes. So Danny gave him a pointed look and added, “The fish won’t be the only thing getting grilled later.”

Vlad scoffed but didn’t have time to respond before Jack exclaimed, “Aw, you found the marshmallows? I wanted it to be a surprise!”

“What? No, I—” Danny cut himself off. “Wait, we have marshmallows?”

“For dessert!” Jack confirmed, then sheepishly added, “There might not be that many left though since I sneaked a couple while waiting for you in the hallway.”

“I’m sure we’ll be fine, dad.” He couldn’t help but add, with a glance at Vlad, “At least, if someone doesn’t mess things up.”

“Me? I’m obviously just here because of the good company and relaxation,” Vlad said in an obviously sarcastic deadpan. Despite this; Danny had never actually seen Vlad this relaxed before. No murder attempts. No villainous monologues. No deranged plans to ruin Danny’s whole life.

He didn’t know what to make of it.

Jack didn’t seem to have any such problems but the issue was that he had seemingly decided to land on gratitude since he said, “You’ve been so busy lately with all your new obligations. It’s nice that you take the time to be here.”

And Vlad looked genuinely touched. This was all so weird.

“I’m the one that should be grateful. And also ask for forgiveness.” Vlad took a deep breath. “What I'm trying to say is that I—” 

“Want to spend more time with you and mom! That’s so nice of you Vlad.” Danny cut in, a wide smile fixed on his face.

“Aw, Vladdie! I missed you too!”

“Yes. Right.” Vlad drummed his fingers on the handle of his fishing rod. “That’s great, but I really wanted to say was that I’m—”

“Hungry! He's so hungry, dad!” Danny cut him off again. “Better focus on the fishing so we get that dinner!” 

“Good to see you haven’t lost your appetite!” Jack laughed, “Do you remember those eating contests we used to have back in college? And that time you ate twenty—”

Vlad looked nauseous when he cut Jack off, “Yes. Yes, I remember. Danny’s right, let’s focus on fishing instead.”

“You’re right! Just you wait, I’m going to catch a massive fish so we can all eat our fill!”

“You really think you can beat that?” Danny asked with a nod at his earlier catch and a challenging grin.

Jack smiled wide, competition making his eyes sparkle. “I’ll show you what the Fenton Fishing Rod™ can do!”

Vlad sniffed, but wasn’t completely able to hide a small smile of his own. “It can’t beat proper technique.”

“Oh, it’s on!” Jack laughed and flicked a switch on his fishing rod. Danny’s smile faltered, he might have—just slightly—miscalculated with this challenge.

The effects were immediate.

As the fishing rod lit up in neon green, it was accompanied by a horrible screeching sound that seemed to reverberate in Danny’s skull. Danny instinctively tried to cover his ears and saw Vlad flinch violently, almost tipping himself over the side of the boat in the process.

“Turn it off!” Danny half-screamed to be heard over the noise.

Jack, apparently unable to hear the ruckus he was causing, said, “What’s wrong?”

From next to Danny he saw Cujo growl and start to grow in size, tearing his new clothes. The boat dipped at the added weight, tilting precariously as the side Cujo occupied almost took in water.

Danny let go of his left ear and gestured for Cujo to stand down. “Down boy!”

Vlad, thankfully, managed to get his hands on the fishing rod and switched it off.

Both Danny and Vlad slumped down in relief when the sound cut off. Cujo immediately started to shrink back to his regular size and Danny absentmindedly patted his head to calm him. He shook his head to try and get rid of the ringing sound still echoing in his skull. “I think that thing does the opposite of attracting ghosts.”

Jack wasn’t listening. He was staring at Cujo who was currently nuzzling up to Danny’s hand. “He’s a… ghost?”

Danny tensed up, cursing himself for not realizing sooner that of course Jack would have put two and two together after seeing Cujo’s little size-changing stunt. He immediately grabbed the pup off of the floor of the boat and cradled him protectively in his arms, eyeing his dad warily. Danny cursed the fact that the three of them were currently trapped on a small boat in the middle of a lake, with the only way out inevitably revealing his own ghostly status. Of course, he would do it without hesitation if it meant keeping Cujo safe, but he hoped it wouldn’t come to that. “Yes. He is.”

“But…” Jack frowned. “But he’s so cute?”

“Yes. And he’s a ghost. We’ve been over this, right? Not all ghosts are evil.”

Jack seemed to war with himself for a while before he bent forward, towards Cujo and Danny instinctively tensed; ready to snatch the puppy away. But his dad simply reached out a careful hand and waited. Cujo didn’t even hesitate before leaning forward and sniffing the hand. Then he started slobbering and licking all over it. Of course. Danny stared at his dad as he laughed at the currently small ghost and positively cooed, “Aren’t you a cutie.”

Cujo yipped and preened at the attention and Danny found himself smiling as he put the dog down on the floor. He immediately jumped towards Jack and before Danny could blink his dad had an armful of happy, wiggling ghost dog.

“What if he’s just biding his time before attacking you?” Danny asked pointedly, but he couldn’t keep a big smile from his face, “Look at him, he’s an evil mastermind. I think he’s planning to slobber all over your face again as soon as you let your guard down.”

Jack laughed, rubbing Cujo’s tummy, much to the dog’s delight. “Ooooh, so evil. Yes you are. Such an evil little ghost.”

Danny joined in the laughter, relief and delight at the sight in front of him making him feel almost light headed. He couldn’t believe his dad laughed. Actually laughed. About ghosts. Danny wouldn’t have been able to dampen the smile on his face even if he tried.

Vlad looked from Cujo, to Jack, and back. “You’re… okay with him?”

Danny couldn’t fault him for his obvious shock.

Jack tried to put the dog back down but Cujo was having none of it as he whined and just jumped back up into his arms and started licking his face instead. “I don’t really see any reason not to be.” Jack tried to speak between huffs of laughter as he did his best to ignore the dog currently doing his best to occupy his whole face. “As long as he’s such a good boy. Yeah, who’s a good boy? You are!”

Cujo barked in agreement, tail going a mile a minute.

Vlad stared at them with an incredulous expression. “You changed your mind. Because of a dog?”

“I know it’s not very scientific. But Vladdie, what we were doing before wasn’t any better! Just think about all the evidence—”

Vlad held up a hand to stop him. “I assure you, you don’t have to convince me. It’s just— A dog. That’s all it took for you to change your mind? Petting a dog?”

“Well, I’ve never really interacted with a ghost like this before! And who can say no to this little guy?”

He got another face-long lick for his efforts.

“You’re impossible,” Vlad said with a shake of his head, but Danny was fairly certain he didn’t imagine the fondness in his voice.

They were interrupted by Jack’s fishing rod almost getting dragged into the water from where it had laid forgotten and propped against the side of the boat. Jack managed to grab a hold of it at the last second and smiled down at Cujo. “Come on boy, I think we got something on the hook! Let’s reel another one in!”

“Wait,” Danny said as he wrinkled his nose, “Is it just me or does something smell fishy?”

Vlad heaved a sigh, “Daniel. I can assure you that I have no ulterior motives. I’ve already told you what I plan to—”

Danny cut him off and watched with a frown as his dad and Cujo wrestled with the fishing rod. “Not you. Something else. Something… rotten?”

Miraculously, Jack managed to get the fish out of the water without tipping himself or Cujo into the lake, but when they got it up into the boat the fish was half-rotted away with big vacant eyes and way too many teeth in its gaping mouth.

The three of them stared at their catch in silence, even joined by Cujo staring down at their disgusting catch without any of his usual antics.

Danny leaned away from it and asked, “…What kind of fish is that?”

“A dead one?” Vlad said with a tilt of his head and an almost hopeful tone of voice.

As if to prove him wrong it twitched, flopping almost aggressively on the bottom of the boat. The wet slapping noises, together with the stench made Danny wrinkle his nose in disgust. “It’s a... zombie fish?”

That got Jack’s attention and he immediately got to his feet, rocking the boat, and raising his fishing rod high in the air. “It has to be the work of some ghost! I knew the Fenton Fishing Rod™ worked!”

And before either Danny or Vlad could stop him, Jack turned the fishing rod back on.

The whole lake seemed to heave. The water churned as if whipped up by an unseen storm just under the surface and the rocking of the boat got even worse. Danny reached up and grabbed a hold of his dad before he could topple over the edge and used a hint of ghostly strength to force him to sit down. The screeching in his ears was overpowered by a gurgling sound emanating from all around them. The fish on the bottom of their boat kept on flopping, its eyes now a glowing red. “That can’t be good.”

A fish suddenly jumped out of the water, aiming straight for Jack’s head. Vlad caught it in his hand, looked down at the gaping mouth with razor-sharp teeth in clear disgust, and hurled it back into the lake.

Cujo whined and grew rapidly in size and Danny desperately tried to not get toppled over into the lake as the boat rocked.

“Maybe you should turn it off, dad?!” Danny shouted over the aggravating noise coming from the cursed fishing rod.

Jack turned to him with an offended expression. “I won’t get scared by a little fish! Don’t worry, son. I’ll protect you! Besides, maybe this ghost isn’t evil.”

Another fish jumped up, and Danny threw himself to the bottom of the boat to avoid getting a chunk bitten out of his face. “Oh, it’s definitely evil.”

Cujo growled at the fish and swiped at the next one that jumped up, hitting it out of the air.

“Good boy!” Danny called as he took shelter between Cujo’s large legs. The boat was tilting precariously and on the verge of taking in water. It wouldn’t hold out much longer.

And of course that was when something bumped up against the bottom of the boat. Hard.

Vlad gripped the railing on both sides as he stared down between his knees at the hull. “…What was that?” Then he winced and looked up, hands coming up to cover his ears as he said, “Jack, I really think you should—”

Jack wasn’t listening as he cast his line over the edge of the boat and into the water. “Don’t worry! I’ll take care of the ghost!”

“No! Just turn it—” Vlad tried to grab for the fishing rod, missed, lunged for it again, managed to snatch it out of Jack’s hand, overbalanced and then slowly tipped over the edge of the boat. Danny watched the whole thing unfold with the kind of delighted awe you got when knowing that you were watching a once in a lifetime event.

As an added bonus, the noise stopped when the fishing rod disappeared beneath the surface of the lake together with Vlad. Danny felt Cujo relax behind him and absentmindedly petted one of his front legs.

Almost immediately the rain of deadly fish stopped, the lake turning almost eerily still and silent. Except for the loud sputtering as Vlad breached the surface.

“Vladdie!” Jack called, “You okay down there? You should have told me if you wanted the Fenton Fishing Rod™ so badly!”

Vlad sputtered as he started clumsily swimming towards the boat, no doubt weighted down by the overall and his fancy dress shirt. The bucket hat bobbed on the surface next to his waving arms. “I don’t want your cursed fishing rod, you oaf! Help me up!”

Cujo let out a sudden growl and Danny turned to calm him, but instead caught sight of what he must have spotted. A teeming mass of something was moving towards their boat, and it was coming on fast. Was it the fishes? Why hadn’t they calmed down? Maybe the fishing rod was still emitting that horrible screeching sound beneath the surface.

Danny eyed the approaching mass and then Vlad’s clumsy attempt at making his way back to the side of the boat. Too slow. “Hey, dad? Maybe start the motor?”

Jack turned to him with a frown. “Shouldn’t we fish Vlad out first?”

“He’ll be fine. Look!” He gestured to the writhing mass that was now way too close for comfort. “Just go!”

“I can hear you!” Vlad shouted from down in the water where he was trying to grab a hold of the side of the boat.

Danny turned to face Vlad, patience long since run out. “Then get in, old man!”

Jack cranked the engine. It didn’t start. He did it again. Nothing. The sound of the motor stalling made dread pool in Danny’s stomach. This was just not panning out to be the relaxing evening he had envisioned with his dad.

Jack sat back on his heels. “I think we’re out of gas.”

“Of course we are,” Danny said with a groan. “And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why we don’t leave the engine running.”

The mass in the water started to breach the surface in a splashing, whirling mess of small bodies. It would soon be upon them.

Danny resigned himself to having to fight ghost fish with his dad and Vlad. Cujo let out a bark from behind him, reminding him that he at least had someone competent on his side. “I hope you brought some weapons.” He definitely didn’t want to have to reveal his ghostly ability to shoot ectoblasts because of some fish.

“Of course I did!” Jack sounded offended. “I don’t go anywhere without them!”

Jack produced two ectoguns from only the Ancients knew where and for once Danny was glad for his parents’ inability to go anywhere without weapons.

Danny grabbed one of the guns and before his dad could comment that Danny didn’t know how to handle it, he had checked the ammunition, loaded it, and taken aim at the closest part of the writhing, teeming, mass of bodies beneath the surface, now only a short distance away. “This has to be a new record; we didn’t even have time to catch dinner before it started fighting back!”

Jack barked out a laugh and thankfully didn’t question his apparent sudden gun proficiency, simply loaded his own weapon and took aim as well.

Danny fired off a couple of shots, but there were just so many and there didn’t seem to be an end to them. Maybe Vlad could get to the fishing rod and turn it off or destroy it?

“Vlad!” Danny called and Vlad paused in his effort to get back in the boat. “Get the fishi—”

And that was when something grabbed Vlad and dragged him beneath the surface. Well, there went that plan.

No matter. Vlad would be able to fend for himself. But then Danny saw Jack and his distressed expression at Vlad’s sudden disappearance and knew that his dad was too nice to just leave his friend to his apparent fate as fish food.

Danny heaved a sigh and said to Cujo, “Stay boy. Guard.”

Then he tossed the gun to his dad and called out, “I’ll get him! Stay with the boat!” before diving into the murky water.

--

Ten minutes later Danny found himself dragging Vlad out of the lake and onto the rocky shore, both of them dripping with a putrid mix of water and ghost fish intestines. Somewhere along the way Danny had picked up a fishing line and then promptly tangled himself up in it during the swim-slash-underwater-fight to get out of reach of the now definitely confirmed murderous fish.

He glanced over his shoulder as they stumbled out of the water and noted that the boat was still out on the lake. After everything that had happened he was almost surprised to see it floating, which most likely meant that Cujo and his dad were safe. Even so; he doubted that they would get their deposit back after all they had put the poor boat through.

Vlad groaned from his position slumped over Danny’s shoulder and Danny scoffed. “Don’t be so dramatic, they only took a couple of small bites out of you.”

Vlad glared at him but the effect was slightly diminished by the limp hair obscuring his eyes and making him look more like a drowned cat than an intimidating half-ghost. “So sorry if my almost death is inconveniencing you.”

“It is, thank you for noticing,” Danny snarked back, almost glad that they were back to ribbing each other after the day’s strangeness.

But then Vlad blinked and his glare changed into something too soft for Danny’s liking before he said, “You didn’t really have to come save me, you know?”

Danny tried to laugh it off, but it came out sounding strangled. “Well, someone had to drag your sorry ass out of that maw. I would never live it down if my nemesis met his end as fish food.”

“Still, I appreciate it. Especially since I know you don’t want to risk your dad seeing you as a ghost.”

“Well, I’m so sorry that just because you suddenly want to scream to the whole world about you being a ghost, I’m not ready to do the same. You should respect my ghostly privacy, thank you very much.”

Vlad let out a sigh and, to Danny’s horror, he said, “You’re right, I’ll try to find a better way of telling him.”

The surprise he felt at Vlad agreeing with anything he said was overshadowed by the sudden arrival of Cujo as he jumped up on Danny and almost tipped the both of them over. At least he was back to being small again. Small mercies. “Hi, boy! Weren’t you with—”

“A ghost? What do you mean by that?”

Danny whipped his head around and found his dad staring at him with wide eyes. “Oh shit. How did you—” Danny’s eyes jumped out to the lake, but the boat was still there. He shouldn’t have assumed that meant that his dad was as well.

Then he realized that he should have denied it.

“Son. You’re a…?”

Danny couldn’t believe that this was how his dad found out about him being a ghost; with a sopping wet Vlad hanging over his shoulders, guts in his hair, a fishing line stringing him up like a tied up ham, and with Cujo nipping at his heels.

Before he could come up with an answer that was even close to coherent, Cujo grabbed hold of a loose end of the fishing line and pulled, and before Danny could do more than utter a short yell of surprise, he found himself with a mouth-full of dirt after falling flat on his face.

He immediately decided that facing the ground was preferable to facing his dad right now and stayed right where he was as grumbled out, “Of course when you finally manage to out someone it’s me. I guess that’s what I get from trying to stop you the whole day.”

“Son—” His dad said at the same time as Vlad protested, “I didn’t mean to—”

Danny waved them both off, not bothering to pick himself up off the ground. He would just stay here, facedown in the dirt, thank you very much. “I know you didn’t mean to. Yes. Okay. We’re doing this, huh? I’m a ghost. Half-ghost. You got me.”

“Half…?” He heard his dad trail off, sounding very confused. At least he didn’t seem angry. He would take any silver lining he could get at this point.

Danny gave a half-hearted thumbs up from his prone position. “I’m not fully dead, don’t worry.”

There was silence for a short while and then his dad said, sounding exasperated, “Can you get up off the ground so we can talk?”

Danny shook his head, only succeeding in further shoving his head into the dirt. “No, I think I’m good right here, thanks.”

Then he felt a small tongue on his cheek and snorted. “That tickles!” And then he realized that Cujo was chewing on something wet and purple that smelled alarmingly of rotten fish. Danny sat up immediately and grabbed for the piece of fish-intestine that Cujo had nabbed off of Danny’s face. “No, bad boy! Don’t eat that!”

Cujo simply jumped out of the way, still happily chewing away and Danny groaned.

Then he looked up to find both Vlad and his dad staring at him; Vlad with an expression halfway between disappointment and exasperation and his dad with an uncharacteristically hesitant expression. Well, this was awkward. Before he could decide on what to say, Vlad held out a hand. “Come on, get up.”

Danny stared at the offered hand. “Wow. You really just needed to get outside for a while, huh? Like airing out dusty clothes. Aired the evil right out of you.” He grabbed the hand and let Vlad pull him to his feet. “Or wait. Did you hit your head when you fell in?”

Vlad rolled his eyes. “Very funny.”

“Thank you.” Danny grinned, trying to grab for any semblance of normalcy in this situation. He dusted himself off as well as he could, decided the effort wasn’t worth it and that there was no real reason to keep up appearances anymore, and simply turned intangible to get all the gross stuff off of him.

Jack kept on staring. Danny couldn’t take the tension anymore and promptly struck a pose, jazz hands and all, and said, “Ta daa!”

Vlad groaned and buried his face in one of his hands, but at least it succeeded in getting Jack to finally blink and take a breath.

“Well.” Jack paused, then sighed. “I think I need to have another talk with your mother when we get back.” He sent a pointed look at Danny. “With you this time.”

“Alright.” This wasn’t how he had envisioned this going down, but he could work with it.

Vlad looked between the two of them with a frown. “Oh, so now he listens.”

Danny couldn’t help it, he broke out into laughter. From the release of tension and from the absolutely petulant look on Vlad’s face.

Thankfully, Jack seemed to finally connect all the dots he had been handed over the course of the afternoon. “Wait. You’re also…?”

“Half ghost. Yes,” Vlad said and made as if to straighten out his suit, but since he was currently wearing an overall he simply ended up grabbing the straps and looking like the world’s most pompous hillbilly. The image was further perfected by a piece of ghostly entrails slowly sliding down Vlad’s shoulder before landing on the ground with a disgustingly wet sound. Cujo barked happily and immediately dove for it. Danny decided to pick his battles and let him have it.

Jack groaned. “How can you be half—” he shook his head. “You know what? Don’t answer that. We should all sit down and eat. This is too much to take in on an empty stomach.”

Danny had to agree and they had managed to get a single—hopefully normal—fish before all this mess had started. Who was he kidding? This trip had been a mess from the very start. Danny stared out at the boat still bobbing in the middle of the lake, all alone. “Yeah, that might prove to be a bit of an issue.”

Jack followed his gaze and then sadly said, “…We still have some marshmallows?”

Danny couldn’t help the snort that escaped him at Jack’s forlorn expression. His dad could teach Cujo a thing or two about puppy eyes. Its effects were only slightly diminished by the fact that he was sopping wet. “I can’t believe you guys swam ashore!”

“Well, we couldn’t just let those pesky ghosts get you both!”

“So you dove in to save us?” Danny felt oddly touched.

“Of course! Now, you apparently didn’t really need saving, but still!”

Danny smiled. “Just wait a second; I’ll go get the boat.” He turned to give his dad a warning look. “Please don’t shoot me.”

And then he transformed into Phantom. He didn’t give his dad enough time to gather himself or to stop gaping in horror at him before taking off.

--

Later when they were sitting around a green fire, grilling fish and marshmallows, Jack very un-casually said, “Sooo, you’re both ghosts, huh?”

“Yep,” Danny said, popping the p.

Vlad leaned back against a log and said, “Yeah.”

Danny couldn’t help giving Vlad a glare for the relief he could hear in his voice.

Jack looked down at Cujo. “Like this little guy.”

“Yes…?” Danny didn’t know where Jack was going with this.

“So… does that mean that he’s your dog? Can we keep him?”

Danny looked at his dad sitting on a log with a sleeping Cujo in his lap. He hadn’t stopped petting him ever since they sat down and Danny had caught him sneaking pieces of both fish and marshmallow to the dog several times. Danny smiled. “Yes, dad, we can keep him. The problem is trying to get him to leave you alone.”

Jack beamed. “Sounds perfect!”

Vlad gave a short laugh. “Can you believe it? You’re getting willingly haunted by a dog.”

“And the two of you!” Jack added happily.

That startled a laugh out of both Vlad and Danny. Vlad reached for another marshmallow as he said, “That’s fair.”

Danny stuffed his face with his own burnt marshmallow and said, “Nothing like a fight for your lives to bring people together, huh?”

“Or, half lives in your case!” Jack added with a laugh.

“Dad, oh my god!” Danny groaned into his hands, hiding his smile.

Jack chuckled. “What? Too soon?”

Vlad shook his head with a smile. “Not soon enough.”

[arbiterlexultionis]

Learning From The Past

This is kinda of an AU to my other post Here but long story short, Valerie wound up with an Obsession with Phantom due to all her ghost tech, and after finding out the full truth about Danny her Obsession shifted to be about Love for Danny rather than Hate for Phantom.

This post is for the better future happy version of that prompt.

In my initial idea, part of the reason Valerie’s positive emotions won over her desire for vengeance is because she already had protective instincts and more selfless ideals due to her career as a vigilante. How much of an effect would all that have on her Obsession and how that Obsession is fulfilled?

Vlad’s “Love” for Maddie was toxic and corrupt beyond all reasonable doubt, but one could easily say that was at least partially because Vlad might not of been a very good person to begin with and spent months stewing in his hate and jealousy while he slowly died in the hospital. Valerie, on the other hand, was continuously putting her life on the line, sacrificing her free time and freedom, grades, sleep and mental health to help people while expecting nothing in return. At first she was just out for vengeance but as time went on she grew to be a proper Hero. And the only reason she broke up with Danny in the first place was to protect him. So when her Obsession changes from Hate to Love all these positive emotions and protective instincts go into over drive.

So her Obsession for Danny is and Obsession, most definitely kind of (very) creepy in how deep it goes, but it’s also like? Weirdly?? Wholesome??? I’m just picturing Valerie being ultra supportive and caring for Danny.

Danny: sneezes once and groans about getting sick for the first time sense the accident. Valerie: come flying in at Mach 2.5 on her hover board carrying a mountain of blankets, tea, medicine and Disney movies “oh poor baby, no no, go back to bed now you need Rest!”

When Danny become ghost king and grows more powerful than every other being in the infinite realms all his rouges stop attacking, but not because he’s ghost king now. They all stop attacking because every time they try the see Valerie just creepily lurking in the shadows with a gun.

Danny who just saw his rouge go pale as a ghost and run away in terror: Man I’m so scary and cool.

Ember who looked over Danny’s shoulder to see Valerie decked out with every weapon known to man and several that arn’t, slowly dragging her thumb across her throat: Nope Nope Nope Nope! Frick frack paddy wack that bull crap!

Vlad’s walking up to Fenton Works planning to Fuck Around confident he doesn’t have to worry about Finding Out because “I’ve hAD thEse powERs fOr tWEnty yearS Daniel!” only to get a phase proof grappling hook rapped around his ankle and be dragged into a dark ally kicking and screaming.

If Danny accepts her feelings she just the most doting, overprotective girlfriend in the world, and if he doesn’t then shes the most doting, overprotective friend in the world that just so happens to be a girl, and gives legendary shovel talks to all potential suitors.

[theleslistuff]

Danny may 2024

Day 16 glowing veins/ Day 17 equilibrium/ Day 18 revenge

AGIT Dan managed to use Clockwork's powers but can't time travel, just travel between dimensions au, Sectarian leader Andy au.

Blood and ectoplasm

Dan just barely scaped from Vlad's and Danny's rage in this last fight, he was weak but not defeated as he concentrated all his and Clockwork's power to make a portal, it took him to a destroyed land, similar to his now not existing reality, Dan chuckled.

-You fail people more than I thought... -

Dan muttered as he walks around the wasteland totally out of curiosity, he knew his fusion with Clockwork was slowly killing him, but even so, he would rather die in his own terms as black veins seem to crawl on his face, he's happy to at least die alone and not surrounded by people who provide him painful memories, it's already painful enough he never managed to save them...

He closed his eyes waiting for destabilization to come.

-I'm sorry this happened to you... -

A voice he could not recognize said, but at the same time it sounds strangely familiar, he turned around to face the new menace. The stranger had a deer skull as a mask but his black messy hair could be seen on the top, through the skull's hollow eye sockets, the guy's green eyes could be seen, he dressed a blue cape and black clothes full of belts, but in his neck and chest were orbs of different colors, Dan didn't knew what those were, but Clockwork's knowledge said those were cores, it sent shivers down his spine for the first time in so many years.

-It's funny how brothers can share the taste for capes, doesn't it? -

The stranger told him as he gets closer, Dan stepped back out of instinct.

-What do you want? -

Dan spat, not wanting the entity to get closer, the stranger laughed.

-Just one tiny little bitty thing... Revenge and you can help with that, you know? -

Dan was about to fly away, but the entity suddenly appears in front of him and boops his nose..., the glowing black veins instantly disappeared and he was no longer feeling weak, totally stabilized and feeling powerful he smiles.

-You should have not done that... -

He smiles menacingly, prepares his first and tries to punch the entity with all his strength, but he's abruptly stopped with just one hand of the stranger.

-I'm a little disappointed little bro, I thought you were smarter than that... -

With just one little movement he ripped apart the ghost's arm making him scream in pain and kneel.

-What are you?!, no ghost can even touch me!, what the heck are you?! -

Dan demanded, the stranger removed his mask, revealing a similar face to the ghost but apparently human, the noticeable differences being the eye color; emerald green and a large scar crossing the guy's left blind eye.

-Many names have been given to me..., you know, like... Monster..., abomination, the lunatic guy from that decaying dimension, The sadistic king, master, god, but I like for versions of Danny to call me... Andy-

[picturejasper20]

Breakdown/analysis of the old Danny-Vlad body swap nickelodeon comic ¨Bring Back My Body to Me!¨

For those who don't know, Danny Phantom had some comics that got published in the early 2000's in the Nickelodeon magazine. One of them being a comic that involves Danny and Vlad switching bodies written by two writers of the show, Marty Isenberg and Sib Ventress + another writer.

You can find the full comic pages here in the DP Wikia: https://dannyphantom.fandom.com/wiki/Nickelodeon_Magazine

I'm writing this post to make some commentary of the comic since it haven't seen any post talking about it. It has some things i found funny and others interesting. The screencaps were taken from the DP Wikia.

Let's start:

Okay, so the first page introduces us to what Danny and Vlad are planning to do in the story. Danny is going to a dance and trying to ask Paulina while Vlad is stealing from the Fright Knight. For some reason Danny is still trying to get Paulina to pay him attention. I wonder when this comic was intended to take place since Danny's crush for Paulina was something from very early in the series and over time he got over it. Also why is Vlad in human form in the Ghost World? He later transforms but there isn't any reason for him to be as Masters in here.

Okay, but here is a thing that is inaccurate: Danny doesn't beat Vlad because he is more powerful than him, that rarely happens. Danny usually beats Vlad by either tricking him (Maternal Instincts) or with someone else helping him (Kindred Spirits). I think the only time he does this is in ¨Phantom Planet¨ by freezing Vlad, and that itself is for a minute.

Why Plasmius does have dark pupils in this comic. It's super cursed. It would have been less of a problem if they were something like white instead of black.

This is an interesting concept to me because i don't recall the series exploring the concept of what happens if a human-ghost hybrid uses powers or amulets that are intended for full ghosts use only. I feel like it is an idea i haven't seen much done in fanfics neither. It opens to the idea of the difference between full ghosts and halfas and how they react to the Ghost World.

I really like this narrator commentary about how ghosts are constanly showing up in Amity Park thanks to the Ghost Fenton Portal being open. The narration is funny in this comic.

I find it funny Danny using the mocking nickname ¨Plas¨ to refer to Plasmius in this panel. And Danny is so small. His head is the size Plasmius' hand. He is baby ghost size in comparison to others.

Okay, so when the two touch the spirit stealer at the same time their... spirits? get switched. This was a secondary effect that Vlad was warned about by the Fright Knight earlier. What i don't understand is what gets switched in here. Their consciousness/inner selfs? Their minds? It is interesting that these are represented in their ghosts forms and not in their human forms too.

From what i can guess is that the spirit stealer may have mixed their ghost halfs in some way since in the next panels their are both seen wearing each half of the amulet. Since it is intended to be a ¨glitch¨ that is how i think it works.

(Insert spiderman pointing meme here)

I kinda like this callback to ¨Splitting Images¨ episode. It is a nice detail that wasn't necessary for what it is a standalone comic but is still cool.

One thing i appreciate in this comic is how you can easily tell who is inside the body by the way they speak and their body language. You can see that Vlad is in Danny's body because of the detailed use of vocabulary that is so specific about Vlad. Or the way he refers to Dash after he pulls a prank on him. I also appreciate Sam pointing out why Vlad!Danny is wearing half of the amulet. It is weird that Vlad didn't pick up that he was wearing it until now. However, i think it does make sense in the context considering that he changed bodies with a 14 year old.

Okay, i don't know why there is suddenly a timer for this and how the Fright Knight knows about this, unless something like this happened before. I suppose is one of those ¨ghost amulet plot convinience logic¨ things. By the way, i do like Fright Knight's role in this comic. He is pretty cool in here.

It's weird that Vlad doesn't consider what Danny is telling him here. You would think that he would get suspicious after he saw how he only had half of the amulet and switched bodies with Danny but he doesn't question it too much. It does make sense to an extent though. Vlad probably believes that it just some trick to make him give his half of the amulet. He would be skeptical of what Danny is telling him.

They only had to put the pieces back together? That easy? Huh, well, okay then.

Go Fright Knight, kick his ass.

While Dash getting scared is fun, i'm not a fan how Danny usually gets in trouble or bad ending in some episodes just because. I kinda could make a a bit of exception in this one since Dash got thrown into baskball ring for something that it wasn't that serious. Still, it something that bothers me.

In all i do enjoy this comic. While it has plot holes from what you can expect from this plot, it has some funny interactions and interesting concepts like amulets having a different effect in halfas. Part of me wonders how interactions with other characters would play out in this scenario, like Vlad!Danny interacting with Jack or Danny!Vlad with Skulker. had the comic been longer.

[wine-and-fanficideas]

Unfortunately Your Reputation Precedes you

Part 2

Part 1

Dpxdc TW for fic topics include rape, child abuse, abuse, murder

Sam (15) - Danny (15) - Danielle (15) - Jazz (17)

*Story Starts Here*

Danny would be starting his sophomore year with Danielle. The Fenton Portal was destroyed in the explosion, and Vlad actually closed his portal when he wasnt actively using it. He wasnt sure what to expect of a year without ghost attacks, much less attending a private school.

Sam, at least, would be transfering with him. Tucker, unfortunately, couldn't afford the tuition.

Amity Park Private High School was vastly different than Casper High. Uniforms, for one, and a strict expectation of excellence, preparing the students for their future careers before they even picked their college or university.

Danny wasn't surprised by his class list. Bussiness, Management, Engineering, Economics, everything he'd need to be Heir to Vlad's corporate empire.

Dani's list wasnt much better. Dance, Gymnastics, Health & Beauty, it was like she was being prepped to be a trophy wife.

Danny glanced through the list and realized, that probably exactly what was happening.

"Tools," Sam said. "That's all we are to them,"

Sam's list was an odd blend of the 'twins' lists.

"I'm expected to both inherit the company and marry well," Sam waved her crumpled list. "So wifey classes and business classes."

"This is so messed up," Dani groaned.

Danny wanted to be angrier about this, summer had just started and they had two and a half months before school started again, but it was hard to feel anything for any notable length of time.

He couldn't remember the last conversation he had with his parents.

Had it been a fight? Did he tell them he loved them? Did he hug his Mom? Did his Dad squeeze his shoulder? When had it been, their last conversation? If he had known that was the last time he'd ever see them again-

"Which is why I'll have to wash the dye out,"

Danny blinked. "Die?"

"Hair dye," Sam said. "My Dad's blond, and my mother a red head. You really think my hair is naturally black?"

"Your Grandmother could've had black hair,"

"Nope, blonde and ginger are recessive genes. Didn't you read any of the notes on genetics Tucker and I made you last year?"

"...there's a square and the letters match up and that's somehow dna math?"

Sam groaned, half choking on a laugh as she shook her head.

"I'm blonde, Danny. I've been dying my hair black and purple since middle school."

"Why can't you keep doing that?"

"Because AP Private has a strict dress code, including hair dye regulations."

"...is purple your actual eye color?"

" No Danny," Sam said. "Purple is not typically a natural eye color."

"...do you wear contacts?"

"Yep. Did you not know that? Tucker found out years ago."

"Didn't seem important? I don't know I never thought about it."

"Well, I'm blonde," Sam said. "And under my colored prescription contacts, my eyes are grey. I never liked the way I looked, which is why I did all the hair dying and contacts and piercings. I thought, if I was a blank canvas, how would I paint myself? And then I did,"

Days seemed to blend together that summer. It was so weird, living with Vlad. Danny had two cards, one debit and one credit. He knew Vlad was tracking his purchases, but he couldn't sleep in the lifeless room.

He redecorated it, from the ceiling full of stars to the the books on the shelves, he shopped until the cards were declined.

That was also the first time Vlad hit him.

It was different from their fights as Hero and Villain had been.

Before Danny could've fought back, or dodged, or even spat something snarky at the Fruitloop.

But Danny couldn't muster up the desire to dodge right now, much less anything else. Going intangible was more instinct than conscious thought, but Vlad was expecting that.

Danny lay in his room, his face stinging. This wasnt fair. This wasn't right. He rolled over and screamed into a pillow.

[kaidatheghostdragon]

One of the commenters had a link, here it is for easier access.

Imma dive into headcanon cuz there were a couple different people saying ellie's situation was interesting to consider.

My favorite headcanon for danny's halfa status is that he's a chimera. In other words, he has the full human genome in his human cells, and a full ghost genome in whatever passes as ghost cells and dna. The two bodies (human and ghost) are partly mixed, partly superimposed on each other, creating a very unique biological environment where the two are symbiotic with each other. Changing forms changes which one is dominant and corporeal.

Ultimately, his biology is genetic in nature, but not necessarily inheritable, depending on how you treat liminality. (And if liminals can develop into halfas without a traumatic death.)

Danny's human genome can be cloned to make a full human, which may or may not be somewhat liminal if the original cell line retained its liminality as it developed into a whole new body. (Im kinda sorta deliberately leaving the definition of liminality vague, but im also kinda sorta working on the definition of ectocontamination that's been adapted into a proper nutrient. They're still human cells, but they've taken on ectoplasm as a proper building block within their structure instead of just as an accumulated contaminant.)

Danny's ghost genome can be developed into a full ghost clone. (Another headcanon - ghosts exist on wavelengths, and duplicates stay on the same wavelength as the original to follow instructions. So, a perfect clone of a ghost will have the same wavelength as the original, and collapse into a duplicate that can be controlled and eventually absorbed by the original. The 'perfect clone', therefore, when he woke up, immediately synchronized to danny, who instinctively absorbed the duplicate on panicked thoughts of 'not another one!')

In order to make a half ghost clone of danny, his human body needs to be cloned, his ghost body needs to be cloned and changed enough to not be the same wavelength, and the two need to be put together in a partly merged, partly superimposed, and entirely symbiotic way.

Vlad may know some of this by studying his own biology, but a lot of this information has to be worked out by trial and error. The first step is to just do a proper clone procedure and see what happens.

There are three other clones to contend with: skeleton with a bed sheet, frankenstein, and sprite.

Clone tech exists in the dc world, as does clone growth acceleration. I propose that frankenstein clone was to result of working out how to use the growth accelerants on a human clone. He was highly liminal from conception, which probably affected how the growth accelerants worked on him, and may or may not have been put into a controlled portal accident afterwards to see how easily a halfa could be replicated.

Sprite ghost is a clone of danny's ghost form, to experiment on how much its wavelength needs to be changed in order to remain a separate identity. He's little more than a ghost core with an imprint of phantom's body programmed into it. (If vlad doesnt know about the wavelength thing, its still a test run to see what kind of stability issues he'll run into, and what methods of genetic manipulation would be the most helpful)

Bedsheet skeleton may have been the first experiment to properly merge the two halves. Any number of things could have gone wrong to end up with a skeleton with ghost powers, but essentially a human(ish) body was thrown into a controlled portal accident, and some way of merging that body to a ghost clone before it created its own ghost was developed.

Ellie was the first attempt to make a proper halfa. Chimeras are kinda-sorta a type of hybrid, so vlad may have deliberately invoked haldane's rule when creating ellie (the rule is that hybrids with homogeneous sex chromosomes - females in humans' case - are healthy and more stable/fertile than the heterogeneous sex). Ellie was more a proof of concept than a proper clone, where vlad did everything possible to ensure stability rather than exactness.

Her human body is a clone of danny with the y chromosome replaced with another x (dealer's choice where it came from, options include vlad himself [egotistical choice], maddie's non-matching chromosome [love interest choice], jack [denoting ellie as nothing more than a stepping-stone, or so if he gets caught, he can claim he rescued the fenton's disowned daughter], jasmine [to get an x from maddie that has gone through a degree of recombination], sam [mistaken/accidental?], duplicating the existing x [might be easiest, but might detract stability], or any number of others). Her ghost body is an altered clone of phantom. Both were placed in a controlled portal experiment to merge the two. (Vlad may have deemed the outright creation of a ghost in the portal as too uncontrolled and adding too much potential variation. It would have been the equivalent of trying to clone danny's human dna by stealing jack and maddie's dna to mix and hope for the best.)

Ellie's stability issues could then have more to do with the fact that a phantom imprint was forced onto her ghost form instead of allowing her to develop a novel ghost form. Any clone of danny made in this way would have the same problem.

As for perfect clone danny, there could be a few reasons why its a perfect clone instead of being altered slightly:

Vlad hasnt realized that the more exact clones are unstable because they keep collapsing into duplicates. He just thinks danny's genome is extremely fragile. (Maybe the pod its in is even repurposed tech he used to study his own duplicates.)

He knows about the duplicate thing, but he plans on offing danny before he wakes up the clone, so it'll be the 'main' phantom. (Depending on how esoteric you wanna make ghost clones, maybe the clone wakes up with danny's memories anyways because killing him just made him migrate to an extant duplicate's body, and clone danny just becomes exactly like regular danny who hates vlad.)

He doesnt know about the duplicate thing, but plans on offing danny anyway - once the clone is stable, which will never happen until danny is killed, so its a catch-22.

We only see perfect clone in ghost form, so it may not have been merged to a human body yet. Perhaps vlad was hoping that anchoring it to another human body would be enough to prevent it from collapsing into a duplicate.

The 'mid-morph dna' vlad needed could be a number of things and potentially only tangentially related to dna. Disclaimer that dna and cellular biology are a bit of black magic to me, so some of these ideas are very vague and possibly not very realistic or accurate.

The protein coding that allows human cells to metabolize ectoplasm (not sure why the clones wouldnt already have it.)

Mitochondrial DNA of some sort? (Again, not sure why vlad couldn't get this from wherever he initially got danny's dna from.)

The name is more of a conceptual shorthand for the ghost equivelant of some genetic component, which might or might not be 'DNA' in a very strict or a very loose sense.

Some sort of new form of dna created during the accident that merged the human and ghost genomes to create a third cell line that is rarer but necessary for long-term biological stability during transformation (ie the cells of this third line are smaller in number and only go corporeal when needed, much more difficult for vlad to acquire without putting danny in a very specific and controlled environment.)

Something entirely different, but vlad named it that so it would sound more significant and important to ellie.

Some of these possibilities bring up potential problems in Memory Blank (and the finale episode, but that's ignored already anyway), but most issues could be spackled over with: the wish was unwished so any changes were reverted, clockwork/timeline shenanigans, desiree's magic isnt strong enough to alter his biology and only placed a mental block on his powers, and finally, it did actully change things and he might not have been an ice core before slash insert quirky detail pre- vs post-episode here.

Okay, that's everything i can think of right now for this idea. TLDR i just really like chimera!danny, which poses a lot of interesting questions about ellie and the other clones, and even potential children.

Danny: i was born in a lab and died in a lab, but it's not how it sounds! (Maddie had an at-home birth, or danny came earlier than planned. Either way, he was born in the fentonworks basement. He, of course, died in the portal, in the very same lab.)

VS

Dani: i was born in a lab and died in a lab, and its exactly what it sounds like! (Born in vlad's lab as a human clone of danny, killed in the same lab to be turned into a halfa.)

Both loudly exclaimed in front of half of the justice (or other heroes of your choice).

[dannyphantom-justiceleauge]

This may be a minor gripe but something that has kind of bothered me about discussions and depictions of Dan is how often people seem to forget that Dan isn't just an older evil Danny, he's a combination of Danny and Vlad's ghost sides. Like people always talk about him like Danny threw away his humanity and turned evil but that's not even true. Sure, we can say that Dan is the result of Danny's action but that's a little unfair. (1/2)

(2/2) Him cheating on a test, coincidentally putting his loved one's in a position where they could be killed, is absolutely not his fault. Letting Vlad take away his ghost powers with a strange contraption might not have been the smartest move, but we are talking about a grieving CHILD here, of course he isn't going to make the best decisions. If anything Vlad's the one to blame here, and even then, it's not like he could predict what happened

---

you aren't wrong, my friend. it really isn't entirely danny's fault and the whole 'if you cheat on a test, you'll loose everything you love' moral is confused at best. i think as fandom we find it more interesting to look at danny's potential evil and moral struggle with himself. so simplifying it to be dan is a worse case scenario of danny makes the conflict less abstract.

particularly because when it comes to self blame danny isn't going to go easy on himself just because it was excusable mistakes.

i think another talking point should be how danny is the target of the time assassination more than vlad is, even though vlad is part of the evil whole. you could argue that danny is the catalyst of his friends death and vlad inventing the claw things. but vlad invented the claw things. maybe because his human side survived and acted relatively harmless from then on? or maybe it's because the observants based on the available evidence recognized danny as more of a threat. i think that fits actually, for all vlad tried to be an evil mastermind, his achievements outside of terrorizing a teenager and theft isn't particularly impressive. danny was the one who got shit done. all his fights he finished one way or another and i could see how that would bleed into dan defeating everyone.

the real question is how to we fix this. ideally we could shape this idea so it's less confused, though i do honestly find the dynamic of half danny, half vlad interesting. if for not other reason. than two half ghosts make a whole. actually that's something else to be said about dan. his self-loathing is what led him to killing his human half, another negative aspect coming from danny.

i wonder if we could frame it like fusion, from su. obviously dan isn't stable or healthy, or based on love. he's most comparable to malichite. but with less internal debate. dan took the best and worst of both of them. danny's determination, danny's fighting ability, danny's anger, danny's sarcasm, vlad's anger, vlads lack of morals, vlads schemes, vlad's control. heck, vlads desire to rule the world. i don't think we ever got that from danny.

maybe if vlad was more involved in the fight with dan it could have been used as an opportunity to compare and contrast their characters. to go we're not so different you and i. danny gets to recognize that he has that dark potential. vlad gets to be humbled by the fact that what he wants isn't good for anyone, especially himself. and to be fair, we do see some of that humbling with future vlad, but none of that character growth is given to present vlad, so, really it's just another vehicle for danny angst. it also depends on what you want to do with vlad though. he's a fascinating character and could be given redemption under the right circumstances or be a character who has the opportunity for redemption but chooses not to be redeemed every time.

that fits him and makes him both a more pathetic and despicable villain. it's hard to pity someone who ignores the opportunities to heal and grow.

as for danny, he becomes far more aware of the consequences his actions, especially his selfish and cruel ones can have. because that potential was always there. he has a history of abusing his powers. perhaps for this specific incident him abusing his powers can be something less understandable than almost cheating on a test that he couldn't study for through no fault of his own. (maybe i just have flexible morals?). maybe it could be something more character relevant, like he did something particularly vlad like, maybe he set up a prank at the nasty burger to get dash but it set off the explosion that killed his family. or maybe he did something particularly cruel and manipulative. there are better catalysts than a test. either way he recognized that he should never go that far again and strive to avoid being actively cruel.

he also has the opportunity to recognize that vlad does have a human half, even the one he's fighting everyday. he can face some conflict in it's not entirely clear what trait belongs to vlad and what trait belongs to him. he can empathize with vlad and he can recognize that situations aren't always in black in white. those who fly the highest, fall the hardest, after all.

it can be a growing experience. and while making it solely a danny goes bad and learns not to do evil kind of story. maybe we could cut vlad from the equation and just have danny face himself, full evil refection. i think exploring both vlad and danny through this fusion is far more interesting. especially because we can build on what's revealed about vlad in these episodes, in later ones. danny sees a future where vlad chills and that maybe his vlad could get their. later he see vlads past and what he lost to become who he is.

and then there's vlads turning point episodes. i don't know when motherly instinct took place but maddie fully recognizing he's a bastard and rejection him, was a turning point for his sanity, and danny helped it along. then we have danny rejecting him repeatedly, then we the clone episode, which we can all agree was a desperate move on his part, that danny once again thwarted. and we can all agree that this was the cannon turning point for his character where he stopped fighting for a family and started trying to be danny's villain. in that episode, i think danny could potentially pity vlad enough to try and reach out. he's not going to justify what vlad did and he's not going to apologize for stopping him. he went too far. he hurt danny and dani, he crossed a moral line that can't be justified even with his desperation. but if he changes...

he lost this time but if he changes, maybe they'll reach the point where they're ready to accept him.

i think the same thing could be said about his relationship with jack and maddie. if he changes, if he reaches out. if acts like less of a crazy fruitloop, his friends would be there for him. jack is still trying to be there for him, even if he's being oblivious about vlad's faults. vlads the one driving wedges into his relationships and pushing everyone away.

and that's so freaking human and understandable.it would be such a cool thing to explore with his character.

i could also see a potential arc where after valerie finds out vlad and masters are the same person she tries to get close to him, both to sus out how evil he is and to understand him as a halfa. afterall danny got her to acknowledge dani as human enough, the same would apply to vlad/plasmius, right? only he's a bad person and the more she uncovers about vlad masters the man, the more she realizes it's not the ghost half that's evil. but this is a double edged sword because, vlad is getting attached to her and encouraging her to be more evil. he's encouraging her to go darker and darker in her fight against ghosts and her fight specifically against phantom. to the point where she finally draws the line and says, i'm not doing that! boom exploring the moral ambiguity of her character and getting her to take a hard stance on her morals, because there's a line too far for her.

and boom a further breakdown of vlads character because he finally had someone outside the fentons to redeem him. she could have helped pull him out of the hole he'd been digging himself into. she wanted to help him. he got attached to her, but he and his bad decisions decided to dig himself deeper instead. so once again he's 'abandoned and betrayed'.

from that point, i think it'd be time for him to finally face jack head on. not through manipulative schemes. not through veiled threats and insults. but the full confrontation of 'i always hated you. you ruined my life. you're the reason i lost everything'. which is really just his own self loathing speaking. and jack... empathetic jack can see that vlad desperately wants help. and jack would offer it to him. jack would try to hug it out and apologize and give vlad the love and friendship vlad's been fighting to steal this whole time.

and vlad would reject it.

he'd probably lash out a jack and go into a full breakdown/world destroying attack. could finally put the stolen crown to use and try declaring himself king and embracing his megalomaniac thing and actually be a threat this time. and THAT would be our series finally. everyone teaming up to fight 'king vlad'. danny probably finding out that he's technically king because he beat pariah dark but the matter being a bit confused because he had help. val and danny trying to find the ring of rage or at least find someone who can make one. secrets are out. i imagine vlad, upon revealing himself to jack would out danny to make danny as sad and alone as him. except nope, his family still loves him and val has had the character development to come around to him. (she's still gonna punch danny for lying for so long.) the ghosts will come and help because no one wants another tyrannical kind and vlads obviously off his rocker.

ah, the could have beens

anyway, i didn't mean for this to become a full vlad character analysis and rewrite when we were supposed to be talking about dan, but hey, i'm a simple creature. i like good writing, and i have to rewrite things myself, so be it. - Hestia

[five-rivers]

Like Kind

Prompt by @dp-marvel94: As soon as Maddie saw Phantom, she KNEW. It had happened, the thing that she dreaded and feared but in the back her mind knew would happen. Her Danny, her baby wasn’t human anymore….but then again he never had been completely human.

 In retrospect, she should have seen this coming from miles away.  Perhaps she had seen it, and her surprise now was the result of having willfully turned away.  But now, it was being rubbed in her face, thrown up in front of her in gleaming neon letters, staring her in the eye.  

The last was literal.  

Phantom floated a few meters above the ground, eyes fixed on hers.  

Phantom, who was undeniably Danny.  Her son.  Her baby boy.

He vanished from sight, flying up through the ceiling.  Maddie waited ten minutes, frozen and holding her breath, before sitting down hard on the floor.  She had thought—She had hoped—

(A memory plagued her.  Out with Vlad and Jack after Vlad was discharged, Jazz with a sitter. Red eyes where there should be blue. Panicked apologies.  Blood on the sheets and an ache radiating through her whole body.)

She had hoped.  

Had hoped that a child born to someone who had been possessed would be entirely human.  

(But even as a young child, something had been… not right about Danny.  He’d stared at empty corners, spoken to thin air, had a bizarre fixation on clocks. There had been other signs.  She’d dismissed them all.  But then.  Phantom.)

(She couldn’t ignore this.)

She went through the rest of the day, even the kidnapping of the mayor and a fight with a whole horde of ghosts in a daze.  Danny was there.  Fighting.  Doing these… these things.  And now she knew.  

Did Jack realize?  Had Jack put two and two together to realize that the boy he’d raised, the boy he’d taken as his own son, was now… this?

Was now a ghost?

.

“He’s our responsibility,” said Maddie, hands clasped under her chin.  She couldn’t meet Jack’s eyes.  “He’s our responsibility, and he’s giving in to his—to his nature.  What he did last night…”

“Maddie,” said Jack, reaching across the table.  “Just.  Stop.  Maybe… maybe there’s another way we can do this. Up until now, he’s been fighting the other ghosts, hasn’t he?  Maybe we could encourage that part.  Guide him to something less, less malevolent.”

“That’s what we thought we were doing from the beginning,” said Maddie.  “It hasn’t worked, Jack.”

“That’s when we thought he was still human,” said Jack. “We can—We could invent something. To help him control his—”

“This isn’t a movie, Jack,” snapped Maddie.  “He isn’t a vampire we can feed animal blood or a werewolf we can lock up during the full moon.  He’s a ghost.  This isn’t going to get better.  It’s going to get worse.”

“We don’t know that,” protested Jack.  “We could at least try, couldn’t we?  Don’t we owe him that?”

“Jack…”

“He’s our boy, Maddie.  We can’t just give up on him.”

“It’s already getting worse.  You’ve seen his grades.”

“It might not be because of intellectual degeneration,” said Jack, urgently.  “If you suddenly found out about—” he waved his hand vaguely “—wouldn’t you have some trouble focusing on schoolwork?  I know I had enough trouble when I was in school…”

“This isn’t the same,” said Maddie.  

“I know, that’s my point.”

Maddie covered her face and sighed.  “Alright,” she said.  She couldn’t let herself hope again.  “We’ll… we’ll try it your way, first.  What do we tell Jazz?”

.

“You already know?” asked Maddie, aghast.  

“Yes, I saw him transform, once, but I thought it would be better to let him come to me, tell me on his own terms.”  Jazz licked her lips.  “Does this mean you’ll stop shooting at him?  Maybe be more supportive of what he’s trying to do?”

“Jazz, he kidnapped the mayor.”

“I’m not sure he did.  A lot of people were possessed this past week.  The mayor could have been one of them.”

Maddie closed her eyes and swallowed, suppressing the feelings that rose in her at Jazz’s casual pronouncement.  

“I mean, a lot of people at school were talking about how little they remember…  Mom, are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”  She collected herself.  “Ghosts,” she said, “aren’t human.  They don’t have a human psychology.”

“Danny’s still human.”

“Partially.  For now. We don’t want to lose him to this. Will you help us?”

Jazz looked away, frowning.  “Even if ghosts are different,” she stressed the word, “that doesn’t mean they’re evil.  The wolf ghost helped Danny, didn’t it?  And Danny’s doing good.  I don’t think you should try to ‘fix’ him.  It isn’t right.”

Jack jumped in.  “That’s not what we’re doing,” he said, reassuringly.  “We just want to make sure that he stays himself.  That this doesn’t affect him negatively.”

“But you don’t want me to tell him that’s what you’re doing.”

“Based on recent events,” said Maddie, “we’re concerned that he’ll react poorly and run.  We just don’t want that to happen.  We can’t help him if he runs from us.”

Jazz bit her lip.  “Okay,” she said, finally.  “But you can’t do anything to Danny that he doesn’t want.  No experiments.  No tearing him apart molecule by molecule.”

“That isn’t—”

“Don’t tell me it didn’t cross your mind,” said Jazz, harshly.  “You talked about it at the table at breakfast.  More than once.  I’m keeping an eye on everything you do.”

It was better than her running to the police or trying to free Danny right away because she couldn’t understand.  

“Alright,” said Maddie.  

.

It was a good thing Danny’s physiology hadn’t changed enough to give him a resistance to simple sedatives.  Watching him nod off in the middle of dinner was as cute as it was tragic.

Jazz was… unhappy.  Clearly.  But she didn’t say anything.  

.

Danny knew he was in lab as soon as he woke up.  The buzz of the overhead lights and the hum of the portal made his hair stand on end and his mouth go dry.  

This was bad.  This was a nightmare made real.  

He didn’t move.  Maybe, if they thought he was asleep, they’d hold off on the dissection.

Although… he didn’t seem to be on the examination table. That was a good sign, right?  IT had to be a good sign.  

“Danny.”

His breath caught in his throat and his fingers curled on the surface beneath him.  It wasn’t metal.  Something… not quite soft.  But not hard. Like… a thin air mattress.  

“Danny, we know you’re awake.”

He screwed his eyes shut even tighter.  

“Please don’t hurt me,” he said.  “I’m me.  I’m really me.  I promise.”

“We know,” said Jack.  

That made Danny open his eyes.  “You do?” he asked, hopeful despite the fact he was in a box with thick, plastic walls.  He pushed himself up on the bench.  “Then why—” He was almost hyperventilating.  

“Danny,” said Maddie, “Danny, calm down.  We’re just- We know you’re Phantom, and we’re here to help you.”

“We know how hard it must have been for you, fighting those ghostly urges,” said Jack.  “But we’ll find a way for you to beat ‘em back, son.”

“I don’t- I’m not—” He shook his head.  “If you’re talking about the robberies—”

“That’s exactly what we’re talking about,” said Maddie.  “But it’s okay.  We’re going to keep anything like that from ever happening again.”

Danny bit his lip and felt despair clutch at his heart again.  They weren’t going to listen to him.  But—Jazz. Jazz would notice he was missing. She didn’t even believe in ghosts, not really.  She’d save him.  Or Sam and Tucker would look for him.  

He just had to hold out.  Even if they thought he was… succumbing to his ‘ghostly instincts,’ they wouldn’t hurt him.

Right?

.

“It isn’t working,” said Maddie, head in her hands, surrounded by crumpled by pieces of paper.  “He’s getting worse.”

Jack had to admit that he was.  It was tragic to watch his son fall to what could only be described as a ghostly Obsession.  Just last night Danny had been reduced to clawing at the inside of the containment unit. Crying.  Screaming to be let out to fight ghosts and ‘protect the town.’  

He… didn’t know what to do about it.  Any of it.  

“Maybe…” said Maddie.  “You remember what he said about the portal.  What if he was right?  What if he really…”

What if he really died?

“What if he did?” asked Jack.  “What would it change?”

“He’s not really alive,” said Maddie.  “If he isn’t… maybe we should… let him go.”

“W-what? You mean give up on him?” demanded Jack.  “We can’t do that!”

“No!  Not give up.  Never give up.  But- but maybe it would be better for him if he, if he was among like kind.  If he was…  We don’t have to destroy ghosts after all.  We just have to… have to put them on the other side of the portal.  Close it.  Close it so no more ghosts can get through.”

“You can’t be saying what I think you’re saying,” said Jack.  

“Like kind,” said Maddie.  “You remember that one Grimm’s fairy tale.  The little boy who couldn’t move on.”

“That’s not Danny,” said Jack.  

“I know.  I know it isn’t.  But, still… We…  Please, Jack.  Just… Tell me, what can we do?”

.

Danny tumbled head over heels into the Ghost Zone. He stopped, turned around, sending a blast of ectoenergy from his foot to accelerate himself back towards the portal.

He was too late.  The portal doors slammed shut, then winked out of existence.  

They were gone.  Danny was stuck here.  In the Ghost Zone.  

Fine.  

You know what?  Fine.  

He was here.  He was stuck here, because he didn’t know where or how to find natural portals. He didn’t know what was happening back home in Amity, and he was half out of his mind with worry about it.  

Fine.  

They thought he was a ghost.  A terrible, evil ghost.  Something to be cast off and thrown away.  

Fine.  

He was a ghost.  And he’d be the best ghost.  Ever.

[chaos-is-my-lifeblood]

Cores are pocket dimensions:

Danny wasn’t able to see everything a ghost could, at first. He slipped into different dimensions all the time, accidentally messed with his connection to the material plane’s gravitational field, everything. When he was on ghost form, it was easier; his core instinctively knew how to interact with the different dimensions. But it was a long time before he actually understood it.

The Ghost Zone was more dimensionally complex than anything he’d ever seen before (except, perhaps, the Portal itself). It was off in a way he couldn’t explain. He called it creepy, even as his friends - who didn’t have to deal with a whole bandwidth worth of incomprehensible input - thought it was kinda cool. His first experience deliberately invoking that dimensionality was when he turned into a human in Walker’s prison, exploiting the unique only-three-dimensional properties of real world materials. It’s hard for ghosts to tune into that exact sliver of a dimension, with all the other possibilities open to them. 

As Danny got more used to his ghostliness, and explored the Ghost Zone more, he began understanding that second sight he gained from the Portal alongside his (relatively immature) core. There was a depth he’d been missing all his life, that he was only now beginning to comprehend. Through trial and error, he learned the nature of intangibility, invisibility, flight, and ectoplasm. More importantly, he learned how they related to each other. Human physics and math were important, yes, but ghostly science was a new and exciting field to explore. One which had a very tangible (intangible? Hah.) affect on his life.

Vlad knew everything already, of course. He’d been developing his sight for twenty years, and had eagerly sought out information on just what the nature of ghosts actually was. With much practice he learned how to manipulate his core, taking each action it instinctively knew and isolating it to perform a specific task. He wasn’t afraid of the occasional unethical test, either, once he had the resources to do so. 

Full ghosts learned to be afraid of the half-human ghosts. The hybrids formed ectoplasmic black holes with their half-deaths, but they had entire bodies to act as anchors in the physical realm. Anchors which allowed these inexperienced, fresh beings to wield cores that contained enough power to challenge the Ancients themselves, without ever bothering to limit their power output. 

And those black hole never ran dry, constantly feeding off the limitless stream of emotions that (half) humans produced. Even if Phantom were lethally wounded and drained of energy, Fenton would be capable of sustaining the core’s connection to reality. Because the two halves were fused more strongly than any other type of dimensional bond.

[popculturebuffet]

Road to Reign Storm: Danny Phantom Triple Feature!: Public Enemies, Maternal Instinct and Life Lessons

Hello all you happy people and welcome back to my look at the plot relevant Danny Phantom episodes leading up to my all time faviorite episode reign storm!  For those just joining us, i’m Jake, I do deep dives into animation and comics, I love Danny Phantom, Butch Hartman can suck a railroad spike, let’s begin. 

Now those of you who’ve seen my other reviews may be asking “Wait why is he doing three at once” and the answer is simple: Schedule Slippage. I intended to review Public enemies right before my vacation but ran out of time, so I figured “Hey I could just slip a full length review into my already crammed for july schedule right? Just get it done it’ll be easy”

Yeah in hindsight that was a stupid move, I should’ve made room for it and didn’t, so I ended up doubling it up with Maternal Instincts for last week... only for THAT review to get pushed back because my review of the Boys Arc, We Gotta Go Now, took a lot more time and a lot more out of me than I expected. 

So rather than have these episodes keep slipping, i’m doing ALL three of these in one big post today, and then should be back on track for million dollar ghost next week, concluding with Fright Knight and Reign Storm in october. 

So with all that settled join me under the cut as Danny faces a well cordinated campaign of terror that changes his world forever, a creepy asshole luring him and his mom to the woods so he can try and make out with her and a cliched “raise the x thing like it was a baby” assignment that turns most dangerous game shockingly fast. 

Public Enemies: Starting us off we have one of the biggest wham episodes in the entire series, a true classic, an episode that shifts things forever and has a tense supsensful plot.. and it’s an episode I’m pretty sure I didn’t see till AFTER reign storm. 

Yeah younger me missed the subtext the ghost weren’t a public thing. And honestly.. I can’t blame kid me in the slightest. Just up to this episode we had a giant meat monster attack Casper High multiple times, a dragon attack the school dance, a giant techno monster attack the city, a flying car plow thorugh the city, a giant cat heaaded ghost starting a cult, a football player turning into a ghost mid-game in front of a large crowd, and a ghost dog attack at a basketball game. And that’s just the stuff that CAN’T be easily handwaved away like Ember. or that people saw. 

But as an adult.. I can get why: as Public Enemies showed shouting “Ghost” even for the most rational and backed up person can get you fired. So given teachers are already unfairly scrutnizied in their personal lives, it makes sense none would want to report on these and just rationalize it. In general adults just tend to rationalize, and most adults present at these attacks probbaly just wanted to forget this and move on. And finally while the teens saw plenty, and probably took it better... telling their parents would be a waste of time as they woudln’t belivie them, and it’s no big deal anyway given Danny’s around ot protect them. The show actually uses this cleverly: the teens are the first to accept danny because to them, he’s been protecting them this whole time and they were busy being possed when the frame up for this episode happen.

So skipping back a bit: this episode is set off by Walker, who wants revenge for the events of his previous episode. While he’s recaptured his inmates, with the help of his new sidekick hutner played by Darran Norris of Ned’s Declassified and Fairly Oddparents Fame. Yes Hunter. He also has  weird pirate/90′s viglante mashup gimmick I don’t understand and never will. Point is Walker is still angry at Danny but is aware given Danny’s nature.. he has to be a bit more strategic.

And this ep REALLY let’s walker show off how dangerous he is. While he was already shown to be brutally strong last time and have his own private security army to abuse inmates with, here we see he’s a master planner on par with Vlad: his plan here is almost perfect and more importantly, WORKS perfectly. 

He uses Wulf to get to the human world, then unleashes his own private army on the town, giving Danny a threat he can’t POSSIBLY contain and the town proof ghosts are real. This makes Danny’s life harder in a clever way: curfews, his parents stepping up as they’ve gone from town crackpots to the only ones in town who have any idea what ot do here, and escorts all ensue because city hall has no better ideas because it’s city hall. And Walker could see this coming, and cleverly not only attacks the meeting on it but uses this to posses danny’s classmates. 

Soon over several more attacks, our hero is not only worn down.. but walker gets more and more pawns, the popular kids, lancer, and uses them to join the ghostketeers, Jack’s after school program to train more ghost fighters that naturally ghot an all ghost possesed attendance because Jack’s understanding of the young people begins and ends with Meatballs. 

The only thing he looses control of is the episode’s best introduction with Wulf, an Esperanto speaking wolf, which naturally both native american codes the character and gives a creepy extra lair to Walker enslaving the poor guy. Walker uses him to get to the human world and controls him with a collar.. but not only does Walker not NEED wolf by the time Wulf breaks free, but said collar nearly kills the poor guy befor etucker frees him. 

More importantly Danny dosen’t figure anything out until he happens to go back to school and luck into a meeting with walker.. and then get beaten down because walker and his minions simply deposses and gang up on him then chase after Danny in human form... yes in POSSESED HUMAN FORM WHERE THEY COULD’VE EASILY BEEN CAUGHT. 

This makes Danny paranoid and leaves him vunerable in time for the killing stroke: possesing the mayor and attacking at a public meeting. 

While Walker dosen’t screw up.. Danny does in what I admit is the only really “what the hell” bit of writing in an otherwise tight and suspenseful episode: the possession attack at least was done in the narrow hours of the morning and forced Danny to hold back. This.. this just makes no sense: So danny ATTACKS HIS MOM THINKING SHE’S POSSESED. Why? because she attacked him.. for being a ghost. Aka something she does on a regular basis. And acting completely like herself. 

After that though we not only get an excellent scene of Danny tearing through the guards with his mom’s blaster, that allows him to teleport them directly, but we get an utterly awesome finale for Walker. Walker brings them out to the crowd and cries for help, after having already declared Danny public enemy #1, destroying his reputation. As Walker puts it..

“Feared on Earth and wanted in the Ghost Zone, you've lost ghost kid! LOOOOOST!“

In one episode Walker has outed ghosts, given Danny no safe harbor and destroyed an easy chance of telling his parents who he is as they now think his ghostly alter ego is pure evil. Walker gets sent home by Wulf in sacrifice.. but he WON and our hero ends the episode determined to keep going, but still having taken his biggest lost since Vlad. 

Final Thoughts:

This episode is decent. it has good pacing, even with it’s big what the fuck moment, nice tension and shakes up the status quo in an intresting way: Jack and Maddie, while still considered weirods are no longer disbelivied outcasts, our hero now has Spider-Man’s bad rep to go with the other peter parker similarites and for the first time a villian wholly and truly won. It’s a fine episode i’m ashamed took me this long to get used to

It’s only real flaw is one with the series: Walker and Wulf both get set up here.. and then disappear until the penultimate episode of the show to be clumisly wrapped up in an episode I haven’t seen but will when I cover it at some point.  This episode gives Walker an EASY place as one of Danny’s arch enemies, incresing hias motive, giving him gile and minons and all sorts of unique stuff.. and he just vanishes after. Wulf could’ve been a cool ally, someone Danny makes a point of trying to free and who gives him an equal to help with his ghost hunting. Instead both are just sadly wasted and it’s a real damn shame. And i’ts not even on Butch Hartman. While his episode with them is apparently weak, he at least BROUGHT THEM BACK. Steve Marmell had a full second season to bring them in and do a sequel to this episode and never did. He did enough OTHER AWESOME STUFF to be forgiven but it’s the one major plotline he just kind of dropped and never really explored. 

Thankfully though while he dropped Walker and Wulf... he was FAR better at not forgetting other intresting arch enemies for Danny. Speaking of which.. it’s been a long time since we’ve seen Vlad hasn’t it? Let’s fix that. 

Maternal Instincts:  I remembered this one being one of my favorites. This is  a combination of Vlad being my favorite animated villain period, even back then, and the fact the Vlad episodes are just really good. Any time he showed up in the first two seasons the quality shot up to it’s peak. Bitter Reunions, this episode, Million Dollar Ghost, Shades of Gray, Reign Storm, The Ultimate Enemy, Secret Weapons, Masters of All Time, and Kindred Spirits. All all time classics. I can’t say  one is that disliked or forgotten by the fandom, and many of them are my  favorite episodes. So this one being this good isn’t a huge upset and on rewatch.. yeah still utterly fanatastic. 

The setup alone is pretty great: We get a Maddie focused episode as we learn she and Danny USED to be close, not only adding a new dimension to her worry about him in previous episodes, but giving a good reason for a “parent tries to reconnect with kid episode”. which can vary. Some are great, Loo Loo Land from Helluva Boss and the Goofy Movie being good examples, some are please make it stop. This is one of the great ones as you GET where she’s coming from, and her vehicle for it, a weekend at a confrence in florida for mothers and sons, is understandable, the DALV confrence. Okay Vlad I get this is a fake name but come on man your a billionare. Hire someone to think up a better name. The fact Danny DIDN’T spot how supscious this was is a miracle in teenage surlyness.

Danny’s reasons for being resentful are also well set up: he’s been training, getting better at all his powers as we see in the fun opening scene, working on targeting with a bunch of cutouts (one of which is jazz which he zaps after he’s done for funsies. I’d ask WHY Jack has a jaz cutout for his shooting gallery.. but the fact both is kids lived to puberty with his aim and impulsvienss is a small miracle, so fair enough. ), possesing tucker, going invisible, and flying at 120 miles per hour at top speed. All good stuff. He can’t duplicate though, and Vlad is clearly the reason why a nice way to both reminder viewers who saw vlad’s episode he’s still a threat and hint at him for new viewers. 

SHOCKINGLY The DALV confrence goes bad from the plane as they instead barely get out over the colorado rockies after their pilot, a ghost mailman who delivered the letter earlier, bails out... not helped by Maddie wearing the Fenton Specter Deflector, a personal force sheild that zaps ghosts so Danny can’t make her and the plane intangible. 

But this episode is all about Maddie proving how badass she is so she gets them to safety by parachute. They soon find rather convient shelter.. in the form of Vlad’s mountain chalet. 

Vlad naturally pulls up and even has personalized gift baskets, barely hiding this is a setup. To his credit while creepy as hell, this was well planned. Easily the second most well planned rich stalking i’ve seen after that time a bearded creepy asshole abducted Mary Jane after her and Peter married before he gave their marriage to satan and then when she obvoiusly got free, tried to abudct her again to a shark island. Depsite a superhero stopping him last time. And the fact he’d be the most obvious suspect since peter KNOWS he’s the abductor this time. Okay maybe vlad is the better creepy asshole. 

But like any creepy asshole Vlad’s own worst enemy.. is himself. While chatting with Maddie he not only starts downtalking jack, blaming him for the possesion thing (and blasts danny a few times0 but then slips up and mentions one of his biggest reasons for resenting him is “stealing you”. We do get the funniest moment of the episode as a result though as maddie tries to get him to repeat it, which is not only a nice break in the “characer says something by accident and walks it back” trope, but is just great, as Maddie get sincreasingly fed up and Martin Mull’s dleviery of Vlad trying to play dumb is great

Vlad decides fuck it and outright tells Maddie to leave jack and live with her. Cut to Maddie leaving right away with her kid, Danny mocking him, and Vlad being VERY lucky she also didn’t kick him in the balls for it. As I said Vlad’s greatest weakness is himself. He’s so blinded by hate for Jack he can’t conceive anyone picking him WILLINGLY, convinced Jack tricked Maddie or if Vlad had been an option Maddie would’ve left Jack for Vlad eventually. He’s so consumed by his entitlement to Maddie he gave up happiness to stalk her, try and murder her husband and take what he feels entitled to. He’s so up his own ass.. he dosen’t REALLY know Maddie at all: He’s in love with a shadow, an image he brought up of her when the real thing is HAPPY with what she has and dosen’t want him and honestly probably never did. And it hurts to realize you’ve built up this elaborate fantasy for yourself and it’hurts to let go, i’ve been there. It sucks. Part of growing as a person is letting go.. but Vlad’s issue is he really CAN’T grow as a person. He’s never let go of Jack’s mistake and never WILL. Never will let go of maddie or what he COULD of had. Never let go of the past. And if you never let go of the past.. it will never let go of you. 

So Maddie tries to camp in the woods with Danny, who draws away from her because you know, forcefield, and tries to get some air.. only to get dragged off.. I don’t have a scren shot so her’es an artists interpretation

Naturally Vlad kidnapped him because he blames Danny for some reason and isn’t happy about the kid’s insolence. We also get to see Vlad’s inventive genius for the first time. Last time we saw him, the gadget that depowered Danny was all skulker> This time Vlad has whipped up a taser like device that shuts off Danny’s powers for three hours, which conviently for Vlad and for the narrative, is midnight. HIs minons for the episode are also animal ghosts he experimented on after hunting them. 

So we get a great line as Vlad gives Danny a head start before he runs from all creatures great and small “I”ll give you three minutes.. “ (Sicks them on danny as soon as the animals run) “Minutes seconds, guess i’m bad at math too” 

Thankfully for Danny the anmials soon get a hard lesson in why you shoudln’t fuck with Maddie Fenton’s kids, with Maddie easily taking down an ARMY of ghost animals. This is the first time since the last Vlad episode we’ve really seen Maddie in action and the first time she’s flown solo on screen.. and it is majestic. She easily beats them down and gets new respect from Danny in the process.

Things stilll aren’t GOOD though and Maddie comes to the hard conclusion. that they need to go BACK to vlad. She’s not any more happy about it than Danny.. but Vlad is the closest thing to civlization they have to rely on and he has to have a phone SOMEWHERE in his elaborate chalet sex trap. 

The tension is ratcheded up though as she puts the ecto belt shield thing on Danny... and they reach the cabin at 10 to midnight meaning Danny has ten minutes to not only find a way to get the thing off .. which he does about a minute after this dillema is brought up because we only have like 5 or 6 mintues of episode left and we gotta get to our climax.

Maddie reluctantly flirts their way and goes to find a phone.. or something to cave Vlad’s nuts in with, preferebly a meat hammer leaving Danny to stall. And it’s here once again Vlad’s own ego and lack of self reflectoin bite him on the ass. it takes Danny almost NO effort to convince vlad that coming back was Danny’s idea and that he wants Vlad to be new dad... then once again uses a hug as a weapon this time to slap the belt on Vlad. Once again Vlad looses the advnatage because while Vlad may be smarter, have more resources and more power than Danny.. but Danny’s simply better at noticing and exploting his foes flaws. Much like Spider-Man a lot of danny’s victories aren’t won with brute force but with strategy, planning and figuring out the flaw in his opponenet’s power set that he can exploit to shut them down. It’s things like this why I love superhero comics: a hero beating the villian not simply because their strong.. but because they outsmarted them. 

The show does avoid a common pitfall of super heroe stories in accidently making a villian far weaker in a later apperance: Vlad is weakened and thus Danny has a fair fight. .but Vlad is STILL able to resist something that clearly woudl’ve killed danny had it triggered on him and still fight decently against danny, the fight being very even and it being VERY clear that were Vlad at full strength there would be no fight. Danny still gets in a good hit but only because once again Vlad’s ego causes him to make an easy mistake and try duplicating.. which, much like Danny in the first scene only results in two heads and allows danny to use his newtop speed ot deck him

And even THEN Vlad , while exausted, isn’t down and once again only looses.. because of his hubris, deciding to call in the animals.. only for Danny to point out HE’S not the one who mounted them on walls or experimented on htem. And while vlad could fight them off normally... Danny uses the taser on him, meaning Vlad is powerless and gets his own headstart “Minutes seconds, you know how bad I am at math”. 

So with that Vlad’s conviently gone and Maddie coudln’t find a phone.. but realizes they can just steal vlad’s chopper and mother and son finally reconnect. 

Also there was a subplot the whole time about Jazz and Jack. I didn’t mention it because I didn’t have much to say but I do like it a lot as it’s Jack at his peak. He’s hilarous, showing of fhis custom made action figures (which if I could make my own action figures I would and you would too we all would) , giving out the iconic line of “she’s a minor” when he thinks a ghost at the door is Jazz’ date, and having prepared a suit for jazz... that’s him sized as he thought she’d share his end of the gene pool “The one with a love for choclate and fried cheese”. Can relate. It’s a great plot that both shows off Jack’s competence, as even without maddie and being assaulted by ghosts that of COURSE vlad sent to kill him while maddie was gone, he easily bests them, and shows Jazz ghost hunting. isn’t as stupid as she thought and she has more of it in her than she’d care to admit. 

Final Thoughts:

This ep held up incredibly well and is still one of my faviorites. It’s well paced, gives both maddie and jack time to shine, brings back the series best villian, and forces our hero to go without his powers for the whole run time, relying on the mom he undereistmated and the wits vlad undereistmaated to surivive. A true classic. 

Life Lessons:

ARE YOU READY FOR A STOCK PLOTTTTTTTTTTT?!?!?!?!?!

Well this one centers around a classic as Val returns.. and she and Danny are paired together for one of those��“Take care of this thing like it’ syour child” episodes, usually a sack of flower or an egg or a framed photo of micheal gross from family ties. You know the important things. Granted by the time I went to high school they’d upgraded to hi tech babies, but the flour sacks do have some of the same features of those babies.... how?

Point is you know the drill: either two characters are put on a project for ship tease purposes, or because they can’t stands each other. And since the ship tease for Val and Danny won’t happen till Reign Storm, that means we’re doing the latter: Danny is mad Val is her usualy standoffish self and dumpnig all the responsibility on him to seemingly go ghost hunting, Val is mad because it’s tuesday I guess. 

Sam and Tucker meanwhile are paired with each other for a comedy b-plot I don’t have the time or energy to cover in full but isn’t bad at all: Tucker gets really overly invested in his flour baby, Sam tries to fight the urge but ends up getting just as invested, after helping Danny Tucker starts his own babysitting service, and his mom ends up baking all the classes flour sacks EXCEPT Sam’s, since she took care of the sack herself and of course our leads for the episode since they have a whole other thing going. 

But while this plot does follow the familiar beats, our heroes misunderstand each other for reasons, they fight, they argue over custody, one finds out the other’s life is way harder than it seems, etc etc, it spices it up simply by virute of being a superhero plot. As such this is probably the only episode in all of media that mixes “life science keep this thing from being destroyed” plot with “egomaniacal hunter wants to most dangerous game our heroes plot. 

Yes folks Skulker is back!

He’s changed a bit, not in apperance or mo or anything, he’s still kraven the hunter if he were actually slimer in a ghost rider themed mech suit, but in voice actor.  Matthew St Patrick voiced Skulker in his previous apperances, 2 of which i’ve covered,. For whatever reason St. Patrick left the show, leaving it to voice acting legend Kevin Micheal Richardson. And honestly I prefer Richardson’s Skulker: While st. patrick’s more subdued performance wasn’t bad, Richardson’s slightly more hammy, while still calculated, performance fits the character better.  He’s not overly hammy, but he has just enough to give the character more energy and personality and take a good villian and make him a great villian. 

As for what he’s up to this time, again same as it ever was: Skulker want’s to hunt danny.. but upon seeing him and Val face off in the openiing can’t decidie which one to hunt so he decides to keep pitting them against each other.  He starts at Nasty Burger where as we’ll later learn, and is kinda telegraphed honestly< Val is working as the oft abused mascot and danny is trying to care for the baby, then when Danny drops off said baby, Skulker notices it’s important to both and frames Danny for taking it after stealing the thing himself. This also leads to the great exchange of Danny: What are you doing? Skulker: (Casually) Framing you (Tosses flower baby to him) 

Can you see why I prefer Richardson? This causes a fight that highlights something important: Danny TRIES to deseclate things with Valarie. He does genuinely try talking to her. It only doesn’t work because Val is too angry about her origin story to actually consider Danny didn’t ruin her life on accident, and the fact Danny was publicly framed by Walker makes it all too easy to just go with her kneejerk assumption he’s evil. It’s easier to paint Danny as some 2 dimensioanl cretien than face the truth that her life changed.. over an accident. Nothing more. 

She does at least stop for a second as he sets the flour baby down and Skulker gets tired of waiting and just decides to most dangerous game them both, taking them to happy funtime island in the ghost zone. It’s also the first time we see his domain, which is pretty damn cool. 

Naturally he chains our heroes together, with the chain depowering danny and val rendered weaponless, the two forced to rely on each other and work together and you get the gist. Val still has her glider since Skulker didn’t think to check her boots, and Danny is useful since he knows the ghost zone. I also like that Val, despite being used to ghosts.. still reasonably freaks out when ending up in the ghost zone.. which makes sense. it’s one thing to fight ghosts, their dead creature.. it’s another to wake up in another dimension that’s VERY otherworldly and unsettling. Weirdly though they never think to use the “humans are ghosts in the ghost zone thing” but they kinda soft retconned that out as it made things too easy despite the fact it would’ve been fun to play with. 

We also get a heart to heart as Danny finds out abotu the job and realizes he was a douche.. and really he was anyway because while her trying to kill him ins’t TECHNICALLY a job she’s not doing it 100% out of a grudge and as seen at the end of the episode does hunt ghosts who AREN’T danny. She’s doing the exact same job he is with the same stresses, on top of not having what seem to be fairly well off parents to pay for college. 

This gets the two to work together, and we get an awesome sequence of them taking out skulker, gettin gfree and working together. In the end Val let’s her shields down enough to trust danny and let him fly them home after Danny beats Skulker with is own trap, and Danny and Val have another heart to heart in his civilian form, with a really sweet ending of Danny taking over the costume to give her a day off... chasing the box ghost. Which let’s face it for a young viglante is a day off. 

Final Thoughts:

This is a solid ep that I honestly liked better on rewatch. While it does lay the “THERE MUST BE SOME MISUNDERSTANDINGGGGGG” bit of the genre on a tad thick and it’s fairly obvious to the audience valarie has a non-ghost hunting job. It’s a tad annoying..but when you think about it more it’s also brilliant, accidentally or not. Danny dosen’t think Val has an actual job.. because he’s never needed one. Oh sure ghost fighting is one, for both of them, as well as a calling and all that. But when you look at the Fenton Finances.. their not doing so bad. There’s never any episodes about them struggling for money, and clearly one of the Fenton parents had a rich parent or uncle who died, because they have a nearly bottomless rnd budget. Granted they also could’ve simply pulled a reed richards and made say an mp3 player so efficent it’d destroy the market so their paid NOT to release it that happens to be able to fight ghosts because of course it does, but my point is the Fentons are pretty well off.  Danny really only has to scramble for money to events because his parents don’t spoil him.. and because his dad sinks most of their money into neat gadgets, but given those gadgets tend to save Danny’s life, it’s a fair trade.

They simply aren’t as visably rich as some other character because his parents would rather use the wealth to try and help the world and continue their life’s work, so the money goes into that instead of butler’s and shit. The kids aren’t living ritzily but they aren’t starving or struggling or even have to buy the offbrand chips that make jack loagie. They have a pretty cushy uper middle class life. 

IN contrast Val had an even cushier life.. but lost it and is now scraping by, having to work two jobs to get to college and get her revenge, and one of those jobs is utterly humiliating. Surprisingly not the revenge one. Danny dosen’t get Val’s situation until it hits him like a brick when he sees the mascot outfit and realizes just how privileged he is in comparison. I didn’t expect a Danny Phantom episode to subtly tackle class disparity but it’s also tackled police brutality too, with Public enemies showing what happens when someone goes from enforcing the law to enforcing their will on someone because they have power. It’s a surprisingly woke show for a show whose creator banned gay fanfiction from his chat rooms. Yup butch did that. 

Next Time: Another favorite of mine! Vlad puts a price on Danny’s head but the wrong little shark baby ends up dead. I might have the wrong story. 

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[dannys-phantoms]

Gravity

DannyMay 2021 Day 8: Gravity

Read also on AO3

Danny starts finding it more difficult to stay on the ground.

Danny had taken to wearing lead in his shoes. Well, they weren’t lead, per se, but they were pretty damn close. The same website that Sam bought her platforms on had quite the men’s range, and this particular pair he’d found had extremely striking steel toe caps. They were thick and clunky, and even a month ago they’d have been too heavy for him to wear. Now, though, he was looking for something heavier.

It had started gradually. Little things, like having a little extra bounce in his step or being buffeted more than usual by the wind. He’d not noticed how much lighter he’d got until it became a problem. The first major sign was when he’d awoken to a sore head, having bumped it on the ceiling when he’d floated upwards during the night.

“Chains,” Jazz had said with a resolute nod. “You need chains.”

Soon enough, she’d tethered him to the bed with metal chains she’d found in the basement, which kept him in place just like a weighted blanket. It definitely did the trick for now, but would be hard to explain away if his parents were to ask. It took over an hour for the red marks to fade from his skin whenever he got up.

When Danny had started to drift out of his chair at school, Sam had yanked him back down onto the wood, and insisted on the shoes.

“People are going to see you,” she pointed out, and he had to admit that such thing was less than ideal.

And then there was gym class. The clod stompers weren’t exactly regulation, and Ms Tetslaff insisted he take them off.

“In my gym, it’s either you wear sneakers or you clean the bleachers!”

She soon changed her mind when he jumped to shoot a basket, and just kept soaring, up and up and up. Wes approached him later and suggested putting a few weights in his pockets – but only if Danny had a good belt. There was no need to repeat the ‘pants falling down' fiasco.

“I know you don’t want to hear this,” said Tucker hesitantly, “but this can’t just continue. It’s scaring us all, not just me. You’re going to end up disappearing on the horizon like a helium balloon.”

When it had become almost impossible to stay on the ground with heavy shoes, weights in his pockets, and chains around his neck, he had to admit he needed help. There were two options, and he was loathe to do either. Option A was telling his parents, something he’d never want to do in a million years, and option B was visiting Vlad, which might have gotten him killed.

He picked option B.

Sitting on (or rather, floating above) Vlad’s lab chair, he was poked and prodded for hours. He had both of his friends standing beside him, tapping their feet impatiently on the tiled floor.

“Yep, you’re still dead,” Vlad muttered, taking a reading from the thermometer under Danny’s tongue.

Sam scowled. “So what’s happening to him then?”

“I don’t know.”

“You just don’t know?”

“No,” he admitted with a sigh, and raked a hand through his hair. “This never happened to me. I certainly don’t know why it’s happening now.”

Danny rose higher.

“You should probably stay inside, little badger, lest you float yourself away.”

“But he can’t just stay inside forever,” Tucker pointed out.

Danny grimaced. “Might one of the ghosts know what’s going on?”

“God no,” said Vlad. “I’ll have a look in the library, but we’re the first of our kind. They don’t have anything on us.”

So Danny stayed inside. He pinned his blanket to the bedroom ceiling, and made sure all of the windows stayed shut. Jazz brought his homework up so that he didn’t fall too far behind. Jazz was confident that there must be an answer out there, somewhere.

He woke up in the middle of the night as a white mist rasped out of his throat. He looked around wildly, but he couldn’t see anything. Instinctively, he went ghost.

With nothing left to stop him, he phased through the ceiling and into the loft. It was full of old furniture and cardboard boxes holding childhood memories, but when he tried to grab something on the way past, his hands went right though. He couldn’t regain his tangibility.

He couldn’t actually feel the coldness of the air outside when he went through the roof tiles. But he could feel the wind. He was in his pyjamas, so he had nothing to weigh him down. He just kept going.

Wetness on his cheeks told him that he was crying, and as soon as the dam broke there was no stopping it. He screamed guttural, wordless screams, but there was nobody around to hear them.

The ground was so far away that it was barely there. It was dark on every side, and soon he wasn’t sure which way he was even falling. The air was too thin. Just because he didn’t have to breathe didn’t mean he didn’t want to. There was a weight on his chest preventing it from rising, and his lungs screamed just because he thought they should. It at least gave him something real to focus on.

There were stars all around him, blazing like beacons, but they didn’t give him the comfort they normally did. He wasn’t flying, he was falling, all of his limbs aching from the drag. He’d never reach the stars. There’s no way he could hold out long enough. Maybe he’d smash into the moon instead and give it a whole new crater.

He wondered how long it would take for his parents to notice. Would Jazz explain it to them, or pretend not to know? It didn’t really matter now, either way. At least nobody had to watch it happen.

He watched the sunrise and smiled sadly as the sky turned pink. It really was beautiful.