#like Day 9 doing Spellslingers and stuff. But even that was a little while later. Hmm.

[timbrrwolfe]

This post made me realize that I don't actually remember how I learned magic. Like. I remember learning that it was a thing and somehow got in touch with someone who was taking the same class as me at a higher level in high school, and he gave me a taste to see if I wanted to get more into it. But at the time I didn't because I was too socially anxious (among other things) to be willing to hang out with him and his group after school. It wasn't until years later that I ended up digging into it more on my own. But I forget the actual mechanism for learning I used during that process. Whether it was through the rulebook or something else. It certainly wasn't by mingling with other people, since I didn't actually do that until I went to Arena, at which point I already understood the basics.

I think it's hilarious that hands down the worst way to learn magic is the actual rulebook. Please do not read that. It's just there for reference when something weird happens

[goliath-de-senfina-sango]

HAPPY NEW DECADE MY DUDES! IT IS WODENSDAY AND I BRING YOU GHOSTS!

Nerds chat, big sisters are consulted, ghosts are fought, magick is performed

“You know, Danny, one day you have to do something that isn’t mind-blowingly awesome,” Tucker said.  “One of these days it’ll happen. You’ll say something plain and boring, not ‘I’ve been to the moon’ or ‘I found the ghost that was haunting my locker and made fast friends with him’.”  Tucker didn’t really mean that of course, he wasn’t sure Danny was capable of doing something that wasn’t impressive. Then again that might’ve just been because Tucker thought everything Danny did was impressive.  They were flying over Amity Park on hoverboards controlled by their gloves, all because of Danny.

“Tucker, please,” Danny scoffed, “It’s not that what I say will be something dull and normal, it’ll just be what our new normal is pretty soon.”  Danny had his hood up, somehow, and didn’t both wearing his helmet. Unlike Tucker, he didn’t actually need it to keep safe in the air. He wove around Tucker in circles before diving for the park, a cheer on his lips.  Tuck dove after him, and soon enough a monochrome figure came into view, blurry at the edges but his face matched his yearbook photo easily enough. The two skidded to a stop and hopped off their boards - which took more effort than was convenient, he’d have to figure out a way to fix that - and Danny held up a hand for a high five.  Sidney flinched back a bit and Tuck cleared his throat.

“Danny, high fives were invented around the ’70s.  Sidney is from the 50s.” Tucker slapped Danny’s hand to demonstrate and grinned.  “It’s just a greeting, like a handshake but faster. Hi, I’m Tucker Foley.” He held out his hand and Sidney stared at him.  “I’m the furthest thing from a bully.”

“Tucker is the geekiest guy in the world.”  Tucker stepped on Danny’s foot for that, grinning at the yelp he received.  “That’s a compliment you dork!”

“Sidney Poindexter,” he finally shook Tucker’s hand, and smiled.

“So, Sidney, how’s it been, finally being back on Earth?”  Leave it to Danny to ask the awkward question.

Sidney just lit up like a christmas tree though and spread his arms out to gesture at the park.  “It’s been amazing! Everyone looks so different and all the cars are so much faster and sleeker than before - colorful too!  I’ve never seen so many different kinds of people just hanging out with each other! Though there’s a lot I don’t understand, and I guess that’s just how the future is supposed to feel but goly these rectangles people are tapping on seem to do a lot .”

“Yeah, different time periods make for pretty different experiences,” Danny mumbled, rubbing the back of his neck.  “Speaking of experiences, what’s it like on the other side?” On one hand Tucker wanted to smack Danny with his hat for that, but on the other he understood wanting to know.  They weren’t exactly about to go through the portal to find out and get lost.

“Oh.  Well uh, for a while I was just floating around in the green void, passing through doors and islands and buildings and even other ghosts.  According to some Will O Wisps I wasn’t really a ghost yet, just a soul that got stuck in the Infinite Realms.” Danny had pulled out his journal, looking at Sidney intently and Tucker knew the look on his face.  Danny was hyperfocused by now. “That’s what it’s called, by the way, the Infinite Realms. Cause it goes on forever n ever and apparently anybody from everywhere can end up there. It felt like I was in there for years before enough of the uh…”

“Ectoplasm?”  Danny held up a hand and with visible concentration silvery green light jumped between his fingers and wrapped around them like a blanket.

Sidney snapped his fingers.  “Yeah, ectoplasm! Enough of it bonded to me that I could touch things around me again, which was swell!  It was pretty scary too, though, cause anything can become a ghost…”

“Huh… like dragons, and jersey devils and chupacabras?”  Tucker snorted at Danny, rolling his eyes.

“What, have you met bigfoot?”

“No, but I did meet the Fiskerton Phantom, and a komodo dragon that can turn invisible.”

“Like I said, scary stuff.  But uh, ghosts can make these things, places, called Sanctuaries where they can be safe, which is what most of the islands and stuff in the Realms are.  And I managed to make one, and I was safe from most of the more dangerous ghosts out there! But… that safety didn’t really last.”

“Did you go through a portal and end up trapped in your mirror somehow?”  Sidney flickered like static and laughed, a hollow sound that made Tucker shiver and his skin crawl.

“Oh wouldn’t that’ve been better?  No, I messed up. I hadn’t listened to the ghost with the blue dress and blonde hair that told me how making a sanctuary works - or I guess I didn’t ask enough questions about it.”  Sidney’s eyes flickered red and Tucker felt a tug in his hand, looking down to see his helmet was glowing green. “It was based on my memories .  The most recent ones too, so I ended up in my own Casper High with a bunch of… I dunno, echoes or shadows of the bullies from my life and by the time I realized what had gone wrong I couldn’t get out.”  Sidney wrapped his arms around himself and Tucker was absolutely about to lose hold of his helmet.

“Sidney, would you like a hug?  Cause you sound like you need a hug.”  Danny spread his arms wide open for Sidney, and over the din of insults and jeers and horrible laughter that Tucker could hear from Poindexter, he could hear the ebb and crash of waves on a beach coming from Danny.  Sidney blinked, looking up at Danny with wide eyes and for a few moments he didn’t do anything. Then he nodded and was being pulled into the inescapable warmth of Danny’s hug.  

“Dang, that sounds like a job for Jazz.  She can use her super psychology powers to help you out.”  Tucker set down his helmet, which was no longer about to fly away, and pulled the Fenton Finder™ out of his jacket - which Tucker had figured out how to add a porta pocket to while he was building the tangibility modulator.  When he looked up, Sidney was far more solid looking and Danny was staring at him like he’d handed him the moon and said it was his. “What?”

“Tucker Foley, you absolute genius! ”  Danny’s arm swung out and Tucker was dragged into the hug.

“Okay, I absolutely am a genius, but what did I say?”

“Sidney, I have an older sister named Jazz - who you cannot tell about my ghost half by the way, that’s a big secret - and like, a hug is good for a lot of things but having someone to talk to is way better!”

Sidney squirmed in the embrace and phased out of it, leaving Tucker to his fate of being pressed against his best friend like a teddy bear.  “I uh. I dunno about that. Last time I had someone to talk to it was the guidance counselor and that uh.  Well let’s just say my death was more than just bullies being too rough.”

Oh, Tucker did not like that at all.  “I promise you, Jazz is 500 times better than that.  She’d never hurt anyone that needs her help like that.”

Sidney still looked sceptical but Danny let go of Tucker and lowered his voice to something soft and sure.  “Sidney, Jazz is my big sister. She’s literally always trying to make sure I’m feeling as good as is humanly possible in the face of all the weirdness our parents have put us through.  When I was 7 and she was 9 the christmas turkey came to life and she fought it off because I was too small to fight at all and then she taught me what she knew about martial arts. There’s not a thing in the world I wouldn’t trust Jazz with, and you should trust her too.  But, I can’t make you trust her and I still have to ask her if she’ll do it.”

Sidney took a breath, fully opaque for once, and gave Danny a shaky thumbs up.  “Sure.”

“Awesome as that is,” Tucker said, raising the Fenton Finder.  “I need to scan you so we can make sure that the security system doesn’t shoot you if something bad happens in the school.”

If there was any one chore that Jazz would happily dump on her little brother were he there for her to give it to him, it was moving boxes of scrapped experiments to the shed.  Danny very clearly needed the exercise and Jazz didn’t, and it was tedious. She was a good older sister, she deserved a bit of pettiness. Besides, it meant that she could only give Spike half of her attention as he complained about his little brother cryptid hunting.  “Tell Wes that even if he’s right, he shouldn’t endanger the cryptids by trying to show them off to humanity. If you appeal to his empathy he’ll probably either actually stop, or at least stop coming to you about it so that you don’t try and guilt him for what he’s doing.”

“Wouldn’t expect that kind of manipulation from you, Jazz.  Is that what you do to get your brat to be quiet for five seconds?”

“First of all, I’m studying psychology Spike.  I know how people work.” She set down a box of broken tools and failed devices that would only see the light of day as melted down and repurposed scrap in some other experiment.  “Secondly, how dare you insinuate I don’t find Danny’s info dumps about space interesting. It’s adorable and he’s very informative.”

“Uh, rude?  I’m not cute, in the slightest.”  Jazz turned to see Danny pouting in the doorway with his arms crossed over his chest.  “I’m a total badass.”

“Badasses can carry all this scrap from the lab to the shed, shorty.”

“Heck, aren’t you clever?  Like, the best at thinking up any response to anything.  You know, I uh. I have something you might not have the perfect answer for.”  Danny’s hands were stuffed in his pockets now and his shoulders were hunched. This was important.

“Spike, I’ll talk to you later.  Remember, morality!” Jazz hung up and ruffled Danny’s hair, grinning at the pout he gave her.  “So?”

“So,” he said back, rocking on his heels.  “You don’t like, agree with Mom and Dad about ghosts, right?”

“Well, it’s kind of hard to disagree they exist when I shot one off of you, little brother.  I’d be pretty bad at the scientific method if I ignored proof right in front of my eyes.”

Danny huffed a laugh and shook his head.  “No no, I mean like… what they think of ghosts.  You don’t think they’re all ‘evil’ for being ghosts, right?”

Jazz rolled her eyes.  “Danny there’s no such thing as evil.  I may have been… less than correct about ghosts existing but I do know that Mom and Dad know nothing about psychology.”  She watched some of the tension in Danny’s posture die down and poked his stomach.  “Why?”

“Right,” he said and took a breath.  “So, if I were to show you, hypothetically, someone in need of therapy who may or may not be a bit deceased-”

“Can someone only be a bit deceased but otherwise ok?”

“You’d be surprised,” he huffed.  “Enough that it’s obvious anyway? Would you, hypothetically, be able to help?”

Jazz rolled that over in her head a bit.  Danny had found a ghost that disproved their parents’ hypothesis - or prejudiced stereotype, a toss-up if any - and felt they needed psychiatric help but didn’t trust any Amity doctor not to call the Fentons or try to charge the dead a fee.  That or he was fucking with her, but Danny was bad at hiding his distress and the longer she stayed silent the more he fidgeted.

“So whose ghost are you asking me to help out?  I’m not Mom and Dad but I do have every right to worry about a stranger you’re inviting into your life.”  Danny sighed and relaxed more than he had in a while around her. Jazz couldn’t help but smile, even as she was crushed in a hug.  “Lungs.”

“You’ll be fine and his name is Sidney Poindexter.”  Danny squeezed her one more time before letting go.  “According to Tucker, he’s the guy who used to have my current locker.”

“You have a haunted locker at school… why am I not surprised?”  Jazz shook her head, covering her face with her hand. “Sidney Poindexter, that kid who reportedly suffered the most bullying in the history of the school and … ok, wow, he really would need therapy if he were to hypothetically come back to the land of the living.  I wonder where I might find him?” Danny didn’t need to hear any of the less pleasant details of that story unless Sidney chose to tell him.

“No clue.  When I finish coming up with that hypothetical part of the situation I’ll tell you.”  Danny fired her a pair of finger guns and backed away slowly, somehow not tripping over his own feet like the last time she saw him do that.  “Later Spazz.”

“Remember not to smear your weird UV paint all over your jacket, Picasso.”

“THOSE WERE NOT SMEARS, IT WAS ART,” he said, and Jazz held onto the door while she laughed.

“I’m worried about Danny.”  Jazz had to wait until lunch and sped through eating just to find him, but she’d tracked down Vice-Principal Lancer and he agreed to walk and talk.  “He’s been through a lot lately, what with tests and bring hunted by a robot like an animal and social pressures and I know it’s getting to him.”

Lancer arched a brow and sighed at her as they turned a corner.  “Have you tried talking, Jazz? It’s the staple of human survival, communication, and all kinds of relationships.”

“I’d talk with him if I could, Mr.Lancer, but I’m his older sister and I’m afraid Danny’s reaching a point in his life where you keep things from your family while you try and figure it out on your own to be more independent.”  If Jazz noticed Lancer giving her a pointed look, he hadn’t verbally acknowledged her glasshouse so she could throw as many stones as she so pleased. They stopped and Lancer fished out a ring of keys. “He wouldn’t talk to me about this, probably wouldn’t even listen when I try and tell him to open up to someone.  Also, why are we heading into the guidance counselor’s office? Have you gotten a license in that as well?” It was a joke among the upperclassmen that Lancer was at least vaguely equipped to substitute teach literally every class in their underfunded school.

Lance snorted and flipped through keys.  “No, Jazz, we’ve actually finally managed to grab a guidance counselor.  You know I can’t do everything around here.”

“You most certainly seem to.”

“Be that as it may, Jazz, he may listen to me and I’ll try talking to him but have you considered this all is- Great Gatsby!”  Jazz turned away from Lancer to see what startled him and felt every muscle in her body lock up in shock.  The room was a mess, burn marks reminiscent of Dad’s latest weapon going off randomly at home littered the walls, the desk was flipped upside down and acrid smoke met her nostrils nearly choking her.  Or maybe she had simply stopped breathing when her eyes landed on the figure in the center of the room, green light radiating from their form in all directions casting eerie shadows everywhere and wide green lights bright as torches shone from underneath a cloud of white and above a mass of black and white material.  They pulled a black hood up over their curly white hair and a masculine voice hissed out a quiet, forceful and slightly reverberating, “ Shit. ”

Holding up his hands, the figure’s eyes dimmed slightly and Jazz could make out bright blue skin tinged with a bit of green.  “Now I know what this looks like, but I promise there’s a perfectly logical explanation.”

“You’re a ghost.”  Jazz wasn’t asking a question, her voice pitched up in a desire to be horribly wrong more than curiosity.

“Lab Safety is important.”  The green light flickered, a blue face made indistinct by the light show and the shadows of the hood visibly cringed and Lancer gasped in horror in front of her.  “I know that maks this illogical by default.”

“That depends,” Jazz said slowly while reaching into her pocket and fishing for a small tube of what would look like lipstick to anyone else, “on why you trashed the room.  This does look pretty-”

“Jasmine what are you doing!?”  Lancer hissed, and while Jazz was certain he meant the talking in general, the light in the boy’s eyes shifted toward her hand.  He sucked in a superfluous breath and vanished from sight while Jazz let off a litany of swears in her head.

“I was trying to get some information from him, Mr. Lancer.  He had an explanation apparently and I wanted to hear it.” Jazz dropped the lipstick tube back into her pocket and crossed her arms.  “Didn’t you just tell me that communication is important?”

“Important as it is, Jasmine,” Lancer said with what Jazz recognized as a lecturing tone and decided that she already didn’t like what he had to say. “That was a ghost and I do believe the experts - your parents - have advised us all to avoid grabbing the attention of a ghost unless we want to become one.”  Of all the times for anyone to actually acknowledge her parents’ work and knowledge and it was now?

“With all due respect, Vice Principal Lancer, I think that of all things to listen to my parents about for once, their biased prejudice against all things ghost is hardly the one to believe.  If everyone that died was malicious then the second they got a way into the living world we’d be overrun and there wouldn’t be a living world anymore.”  Gesturing to herself and a staring Lancer she drawled, “I’d say we’re proof that my parents are wrong.”

While Lancer tried visibly to come up with an intelligent response to that, Jazz flicked on the lights and gave the room a closer look than she had before.  Walking around she noticed the tiniest drops of ectoplasm lingering near where the burn marks were, and just under the desk. Pulling out a vial or three and some cotton swabs, Jazz put away a few samples to check over later.  Even if she didn’t want to so much as acknowledge that her parents were right about ghosts existing, or fight them, she wasn’t going to bury her head in the sand and ignore all the evidence that said she needed to either get someone else to do something or do it herself.  What’s one more thing to steal my sleep away?

She turned to a puzzled Lancer and cleared her throat.  “It looks to me like a fight was happening here. A teenaged boy venting his anger over being d-” Breathe and don’t think about it.  “In his particular situation would go somewhere he probably won’t get caught, not a school with a security system made specifically to shoot until he’s a bubbling pile of green sludge upon activation.  I wish I knew what he was fighting and why but unfortunately he saw me reaching for a weapon and bolted.”

“Reaching for a weapon, Jazz?”  Heaving a sigh she met the arched brow on Lancer’s face with a very practiced look she gave teachers that tried to paint her as being wrong about something.

“Principal Ishiyama said that we can use them in emergency situations and while I hardly share my parents’ opinion that all ghosts are malevolent mindless creatures, a teenager made of thoughts and emotions that just finished fighting isn’t someone I want to talk to without an option to defend myself.  I’m safe around other human beings because I practice several martial arts, not because everyone is harmless.”

“That’s rather… pragmatic of you, Jazz.”  Lancer let out a breath and the tension left his shoulders.  He clasped a hand on her shoulder and Jazz was lead out of the destroyed room.  “I personally feel that you need to speak with someone about all of this as much as Daniel does.  After all, it is happening to you too.”

“I appreciate your worry, Mr. Lancer, but it’s not necessary.”  Jazz smiled at the man. “As much as I’m sure this guidance counselor will be great for the other students, I have someone I can talk to already.”

“That’s good, Jazz.  Still, if you need any help I’m certain that Ms. Spectra will be happy to give it to you.”

"She saw me.  She saw me in a busted up room with my hands glowing, and I shit you not, she reached for a weapon."  Danny paced in Tucker's room with his hood down and hands wildly gesticulating. “Now she and Mr. Lancer probably think I’m some destructive monster.  There’s no way I could’ve made a worse impression.”

“Well,” Sidney said from his spot reclined in the air and watching Tucker play God of War, “when I first met you I thought you were bullying someone.”

“Plus,” Tucker chirped as he attempted, fruitlessly, to fight a Valkyrie, “you could’ve accidentally shot them.  Much worse impression.” Kratos died on screen and Tucker growled to himself, lifting his controller to toss it and dropping it with a grimace instead.  “That thing really fucked up my arm, huh?”

Danny sucked in a breath and held up a hand, pulling out bands of silver and green light from his center, gathering it above his palm as best as he could.  It flickered and slipped out of his grasp every few seconds, like trying to hold water in a barely cupped hand. “I could try healing you?”

“Danny,” Sam drawled while putting down her book, “are you sure you know how to do that?  It looks like your ectoplasm is glitching through you instead of listening to you.” Danny observed his arm, focusing on the first plane of existence as hard as he could, and huffed a sigh in agreement that it did look like a patch of glitchy green and white around his hand.  “Hold out your hand, and Tucker hold out your arm for me.” The boys obliged and Sam held out a hand of her own, eyes closed, and pinched the ectoplasm haphazardly flowing around Danny’s hand. Danny’s eyes widened as she pulled the silvery light out of him and into her own aura, a few words being muttered in Hebrew as it flowed through her body to the other hand, and into Tucker’s arm.  When the light faded, Danny felt tired and hungry, while Tucker looked far more relaxed than he had in a while. “Viola.” 

Tucker looked from his arm to Sam and back several times, flexing and stretching the appendage.  “Sam, I cannot emphasize this enough, holy shit. ”  Sam grinned smugly at them while Danny, Tucker, and Sidney all stared at her in awe.  “How did you do that?”

“I put forth some effort and actually looked into this ghost stuff from an angle that wasn’t the Fentons’ research.  That lead to magick, which leads us to this.” Sam held up her book Magick: the Life Blood of the Earth.  “I had a feeling that using Danny’s ectoplasm might warrant immediate effects, especially since he was focusing on trying to heal Tucker.”

“Right,” Danny drawled.  “Next time ask me first? I feel hungry enough to eat a whole pig right now.”

“Mom ha-

“But with like, vegetables and stuff because I value my health.”  Tucker stuck out his tongue and Danny laughed.

“Tucker, do you have a flashlight?”  Everyone turned to look at Sidney and Tucker shrugged, pulling a miniature flashlight out of his pocket and handing it over.  Sidney turned it on and pointed it at Danny’s face. “I’ve got an idea.”

“Care to share that idea with the class, Sidney?”  Tucker picked up his controller and chuckled as he started up the fight anew.  “Is Danny supposed to photosynthesize?”

“Basically, yes!”  Danny blinked a few times and tilted his head.  “Ghosts are all made of ectoplasm, which drains pretty much anything of energy around it like a plant taking in sunlight, but some ghosts use particular forms of energy to sustain themselves, and when you were trying to heal Tucker everything got all dark, so I thought you might run better on light than just on the heat in the room.  Better for your body if your ghost half isn’t sucking all the life-sustaining heat from it, right?” Everyone stared at Sidney for a long beat, trying to process what he’d said. Danny held out his hand and pinched the beams of light coming toward him. After a moment of consideration, he imagined himself drinking the light and the flashlight immediately went dark as it flowed into his hand.  “See?”

“Sidney, you’re a genius!”  Danny pulled Sidney into a hug and beamed.  Then he started pulling on the strands of light racing through the air that he was sure no one else could see, absorbing what he was certain were the higher frequency gamma and uv lights around him.  In moments the room looked the way it had before he’d gained his new Sight and for a moment Danny felt like he was going to vibrate out of his skin. When he looked around the room however, he couldn’t help the pang of sadness that came with the lack of all those beautiful colors that only he (and Sidney he supposed) had been able to see.  “I think I’ll save doing that for when I’m desperate, but that’s awesome to know!”

“So not only are you ghosts, but you’re also plants.”  Tucker snorted. “No wonder Sam likes you so much.” Sam bopped him on the head with her book as he picked up his controller and he made an offending noise, which everyone ignored.

“Speaking of ghosts, I think I’ve just figured out a way for you to kill two birds with one stone, Danny!  If we go on patrol with the Fenton Finder™ to find the blob ghost that tried to kill us and catch it before it hurts anyone, we can capture an aggressive ghost and show the public - and your family - that ghosts aren’t all evil.”

Danny frowned, watching Tucker get his butt handed to him by Kara on screen for the 28th time, and considered that.  The shapeshifter was definitely going to hurt someone if they didn’t do anything about it and Danny knew his folks would jump on any amount proof that ghosts were all evil, likely to claim that this second malevolent spirit was a clear pattern of spiritual behavior.  They didn’t need more help sowing anti-ghost sentiments among whoever thought they weren’t entirely crazy, and he didn’t need more harassment from the asshats who thought they were and that he probably was by extension. Ugh. “Tuck, where are you on figuring out who the guy is?”

“Did you seriously think I could find out who this sentient blob of green slime with fangs and glowing red eyes that apparently shapeshifts is supposed to be?  With what, ghoulgle?” Sidney chuckled and Sam laughed, shaking her head. “I’m a genius, obviously, but I’m not a wizard, Danny.” Danny’s shoulders slumped and he sighed.  “Unless..”

“Unless?”  Sidney and Danny echoed.  Tucker looked at Sam’s book and so did the other boys, the idea sparked in their minds.

“Danny and Sidney combined aren’t going to have enough power to help me see through space and time to find out who this shapeshifter was.  If we really wanna know, we’ll have to catch them and ask them through the thermos.”

“Alright, that’s fair.”  Tucker lost in the game once more and turned the HorrorStation off.  “Y’know what, sure. Let’s go hunt a ghost. I’m up for a fight we can actually win.  Sidney, you in?”

“I-uh I’ll leave the fighting to you guys.  I’m gonna give this youtube thing a try and see what I can learn.”  He smiled and waved them off, and the trio shrugged, heading down the trap door to Tucker’s room and waving his parents goodbye.

While Sam and Tucker took their hoverboards to the air, Danny found the nearest alleyway and made sure no one was there to see him.  He took in the sight of the vivid indigo surrounding him and reached inside for the ectoplasmic green and pearlescent white inside of him, watching it unfurl over his body in a flash and carve away at the ties between him and the Earth.  He lifted off the ground and shook himself, sure that he’d never get used to it, before flying up to where Tucker and Sam were waiting for him with the Fenton Finder™ already out and his ectosignature blocked from it.  At his insistence, they decided to search together in a group since splitting up was for the idiots getting picked off in a horror movie.  Danny let himself slip into the space between spaces, where the background light of the world was blue and violet refusing to blend properly into indigo but just as intense as the indigo had been, if not more.

After an hour of searching, Danny saw a green dot at the edge of his full-body vision and the radar picked up on an ectosignature.  They all dove toward the music store where people were beginning to run while screaming their heads off, and Danny dove through the illusion people called a wall foot first, slamming into the shapeshifter mid snarl.  “Whoa there, flubber!” Danny ducked a swipe of claws and smirked. “I know jello can dance if you play loud enough music in front of it, but I didn’t know you wanted to. Screaming isn’t music unless it’s a Metallica song, man.”

Tucker and Sam burst through the doors and Sam opened fire, striking the blob while charging it like the crazy person she was.  It lunged at her, knocking over a shelf on its way, and Sam barely avoided a bladed arm cutting her head off, though her leg was nicked and she fell to the ground with a litany of swears that Danny couldn't understand.  Tucker shot the arm as it retracted into the shapeshifter and Danny dove between the angry monster and his best friend just in time for a fist the size of both of them to knock them into another shelf full of CDs. “Damn, we just fixed my arm and now my back is fucked up, Tucker groaned as he and Danny stood.  Danny saw red.

Light and heat and power gathered above Danny’s palm like a raging river into a whirlpool, while Sam shouted insults at the shapeshifter.  “Did anyone order a snot rocket?” His blast connected, knocking Discount Venom back into the help desk. An arm whipped out and caught Danny by his leg, slamming him into the ground and dragging him toward the ghost, bumping his already pounding head against every surface it could on the way.

“Aren’t you just the cleverest little bloodthirsty mutant?”  Well, they finally heard it’s high masculine voice and Danny already hated the sound of it.  “I actually felt that, you little freak.”

“If you think I’m the freak here, then you haven’t looked in the mirror lately,” Danny spat.  “I know it’s hard, but you have to acknowledge that some people have actual bodies.”

“Such a sharp wit to go with those sharp teeth, too!  Oh, but don’t worry, ghost kid, being a ghost isn’t what makes you so violent, clearly.”  Danny heard the whine of an ecto pistol and sucked in a gasp as he was chucked into the air at the same time that a blast was fired.  PAIN .  “Just ask your little murderer!  That’s twice she killed you now, isn’t it?  You really should let the other kid get a shot if you can, would-be witch.”  The blob’s voice grew distant and muffled as pain filled everything inside of Danny, and while he didn’t remember returning to human form, he knew that it was blood on his back, not ectoplasm.  His vision went dark, indigo, then blues and purple, then everything was a beautiful and impossible Lilac, and he could see and hear the stars calling out to him. He reached out and accepted their pull away from the pain in his body.