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five-rivers · 10 months ago

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Daedalus

@regular-dog Hello! I am your holiday truce gifter this year! I hope you enjoy this labyrinth-themed fic. Happy New Year!

Only three years in, and it was already impossible to tell how big Amity Park was. Normal methods of surveying didn’t work. Physical maps were either always right or always wrong, and sometimes both at once. Driving across the city at a constant speed didn’t help, either. The outgoing trip and the return trip never seemed to match, and there simply weren’t enough one-way streets in Amity Park for that to be the answer to the problem.

Asking the residents didn’t help, either. They couldn’t even agree on how big the city they lived in was. Some of them acted like Amity Park was the second coming of Chicago, others expressed confusion when Amity Park was referred to as anything but a small town.

(The census data was almost worse.)

But no matter what version of Amity a particular resident believed they lived in, there were always similarities. There was always Casper High, and its Ravens, and every student went there, and learned from Mr. Lancer, and heard the rumors about Sydney Poindexter. There was always the Nasty Burger, and Valerie Gray working one of the many distasteful jobs that the place had to offer. There was always Amity Park Park, confusingly named and full of even more confusing paths, whether it was a city park or a county park, or something else altogether.

There was always Fentonworks, rising tall and strange from a small, ordinary neighborhood.

There was a heaviness there, around that particular building. A weight that drew in other things, that twisted. It was the heart of a labyrinth of streets, of old roads and new, of forest paths and disused hiking trails. It was the heart of Amity Park.

And it should be said that, at the heart of any labyrinth, there was a monster.

And it should be said that, at the threshold of every labyrinth, there was a princess.

And it should be said that the one thing that every labyrinth waits for is a hero.

Samantha Manson wound golden string around her fingers, thinking. It glowed faintly in the dark of her room, like the thinnest, purest beam of sunlight cast through morning mist and a thick canopy of leaves overhead.

However, her eyes didn’t linger on it. Instead, she looked out the window over her– garden– conservatory– greenhouse– private park– the place where she went to grow plants, and be among them, that may or may not have changed in nature and size while she was looking. Which may or may not have had many natures and sizes.

She closed her eyes. Insight was useful, as vital as the blood in her veins and the lightning in her nerves, but it had its drawbacks.

When she opened them again, a hedge maze stood dark and tempting beneath the light of a moon that should not be full and should not be there and had never been that big, in any case. The lights of Amity- rising high with skyscrapers or low to the ground and scattered among farmhouses– laid beyond it.

In her hands, the string hummed, as if it had been held taught and plucked. A single, clear note filled the air.

“Do you think it will work?” she asked.

There shouldn’t have been anyone in her room, and there wasn’t. But her nearest neighbors could be five miles from the walls of her home or five feet, and she rarely spoke to them. The distance between friends was greater, but also infinitely less.

Tucker looked up from his computer, which sat at his desk, in his own room, in his own house, the light from the moon shining in from the window behind him. His glasses reflected the pale, bluish light of his computer screen. The wheels of his desk chair rolled across the carpet of his room - so different from hers - with a squeak.

“You’re not getting cold feet now,” he said. It wasn’t so much a question as an exclamation.

Sam sniffed. “Of course not. But I’m not the one taking the biggest risk, am I?”

There was a third room. This one dark and starry. The glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to every available surface were normal. The patterns they were in were not. Nor were the eyes that stared out from beneath star-spangled bedsheets. Nor was the moon, gleaming from windows stationed on either side of the bed.

“I’m not sure if it actually matters if it works,” said the owner of those eyes, blinking slowly. “I mean, if it works the way it’s supposed to work. We’ll just go back to plan A if it doesn’t.”

“No offense, Danny, but plan A sucked,” said Tucker.

“How am I not supposed to take offense to that?” whined Danny. “Plan A is fine. It’s a normal plan. I know my city.” The last was said with a casual but deep possessiveness.

“Plan A wasn’t even really a plan,” said Sam. “Your plan was to just fly in and find them, never mind all the other things that are happening.”

“That’s not so different from this plan,” protested Danny. “It’s basically the same. It’s just the how that’s different.”

“Pretty big how, though,” said Tucker. “And I thought you liked this plan.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” said Danny. “I’m just saying, I’m just saying that even if it doesn’t work, we won’t be any worse off than we were at the beginning, before, you know. The research.” He pointed vaguely in the direction of his window.

Somehow, Sam knew that he was, in fact, pointing at the stack of thick books sitting on her desk. Only, instead of pointing at them across the there-not-there division between their rooms, he was pointing in their true direction, across the streets and forests of Amity Park.

The covers of the books shouldn’t have been legible in the darkness. Sam could read them anyway. Greek mythology. Sympathetic magic. Recurrence. Narrative causality. Daedalus, Icarus, Theseus, Ariadne, Asterion.

Four days ago, New Athens High School had sent a bus bearing the fourteen members of their track team and their coach to a meet in Elmerton. On the way back, the driver had made a wrong turn, knifing straight through the heart of Amity. The bus, the driver, and the coach had come out the other side. No one knew what had happened to the track team.

Danny had spent three of those days looking for them. Amity Park had spent those same three days winding itself more tightly than the ball of string sitting on Sam’s desk. Whether it was downtown, or the forest, or the suburbs, the part of Amity New Athens’ bus had passed through was a maze.

A labyrinth.

They’d thrown themselves into research, then, begging for information from their allies. Or, rather, from Danny’s allies. Most of them, with the exception of Dora, were there for him more than for the rest of them. Pandora was the one who had finally noticed the connections, the links with old stories, the resonance.

There was a labyrinth. There were sacrifices. Other roles–

“Or, if you don’t want to leave it, you could send Tucker in,” said Danny, shrugging slightly. “If it doesn’t work with just me. You know.”

Sam’s fingers slipped.

Sam was the obvious choice for the role of princess. Danny was the obvious choice for the role of hero.

He should have been, anyway.

“Hence why I’m asking if you think it’ll work,” said Sam, sharply.

“I hope it’ll work.”

Sam huffed. “Not what I’m asking.”

“It won’t hurt to try.”

“It might,” said Sam. “The monster dies at the end of the story. The princess is abandoned. Even Theseus doesn’t have a happy ending.”

“And we aren’t those characters. It isn’t as if Tucker is going to cut my head off.” Again, Danny waved in Tucker’s true direction, rather than across the emptiness of his room. “We’re the ones making the decisions. We’re just using the stories for– For narrative clout. Or however you described it.”

“Danny…”

“It’ll be fine. I mean,” he looked up at her with those too-bright eyes, the rest of his face black with shadows, “if you’re having second thoughts, it’s fine. We can try something else.”

“I’m not having second thoughts.” Sam began to unwind the string from around her fingers, wrapping it around the rest of the ball. The maze outside her window had become a winding garden path, and the neighbors were once again nearby.

Tucker cleared his throat. “First thing in the morning, then? We ride at dawn and all that?”

“Before dawn would probably be better, honestly,” said Sam.

Danny sighed. “I’ll set my alarm clock.”

It might have been neater to enter the maze in Sam’s backyard, or to start from the spiraling center that was Fentonworks, but that wasn’t where the bus had disappeared. The bus had disappeared going through downtown Amity Park.

Well. Insofar as the bus had disappeared in any particular location. And insofar as Amity Park had a downtown.

The lack of permanence of place made discussing things like this somewhat difficult.

Still. At the moment, there was a downtown. A historical shopping district, as a matter of fact. As he walked down the sidewalk in the crisp, gray, predawn light, Danny could feel beneath his feet a hum. The shopping district here was the mainstreet of small town Amity, even as skyscrapers loomed overhead, and the layers felt real enough for Danny to reach out and rub them between his fingers.

(They weren’t really, but they felt like it.)

He stopped in front of an alley that smelled of cinnamon and sea salt. Here, the layers parted, and you could slip between them, into the interstices and forbidden places of Amity Park.

“Is this the place?” asked Tucker.

“Yeah,” said Danny. “I think so.” He motioned them to the mouth of the alley, where they’d be covered by shadows and next to unnoticeable by those who were firmly in any one version of Amity Park. “Sam?”

She teased out the end of the golden string and cast it towards Danny. As it flew through the air, it twisted and knotted itself before falling over Danny’s head. The loops shrunk around his neck, creating a narrow golden collar.

Danny raised his hand to touch it and made a face. “It’s tight,” he said.

“Sorry,” said Sam, glaring at the ball of string as if it had betrayed her. “I don’t–”

“It’s fine,” said Danny, waving it off. “Just unexpected.”

“Right,” said Tucker, stepping forward. “Your sword, Theseus.” He handed Danny a Fenton invention that had a passing resemblance to a lightsaber.

Danny rolled his eyes and took the small cylinder. “Thanks. But don’t call me that.”

“Hey, that’s the story we’re trying to tell.”

“We’ll give it a tug if we run out of string,” said Sam.

“Mm,” said Danny. “Well. Might have to give it more than one. Don’t let me drag you in.”

Sam snorted. “What, like you drag us into everything else?”

“Seriously. Just let me go if I start pulling too hard.”

“No way,” said Tucker. “We’ll just tie you onto some building or something.”

“I have been known to bring down buildings.”

“Well, don’t,” said Sam.

“Wow. No sympathy here, I see.”

“Nope,” said Sam and Tucker together.

“Now go save the tourists,” said Sam, pushing him forward.

“They’re not really tourists,” said Danny. But even so, he stepped across the line and into the gap.

Into the labyrinth.

The in-between spaces of Amity Park did not immediately look like they were the in-between spaces of Amity. Danny sometimes liked to imagine that they were what Amity Park used to look like, before it became a dozen different, mutually exclusive places. That had to be impossible, though. There was too much, too many different things, afterimages and fantasies and illusions.

People walked on the streets, and cars drove, but they were transparent, projections from the layers of Amity immediately bordering this space. Sometimes, they walked through each other, not noticing at all.

Danny still flinched when it looked like cars were about to run into one another, and let out a breath of relief when they instead seemed to phase through each other.

So he walked.

He walked, and as he walked, the road began to change. He began to change. Facades paled. Grecian columns reached up the sides of skyscrapers and ranch homes. Brick turned to marble. Danny’s t-shirt and jeans slowly, gently, became a chiton and chlamys, trimmed in red. The Fenton Saber became a sword of green-tinted bronze, strapped to a belt around his waist. His shoes became sandals, laced up to his knees.

It wasn’t the first time Danny had worn clothing like this. He did visit Pandora. But he’d never worn it in Amity Park. It was a little embarrassing. The ancient Greeks’ idea of underwear was… lacking, in Danny’s opinion. But it wasn’t as if anyone here could see him.

The act of walking here also felt strange, and Danny couldn’t understand why this was needed. Not really. Not the act, not the ritual. By virtue of his nature, he could duck in and out of anywhere in Amity whenever he wanted. Mostly. At least, he could find places to duck in and out whenever he wanted.

He should have been able to find the missing students without any problem.

But he hadn’t.

And he still wasn’t finding them. There was no pull. No indication of what direction he should go, what direction he could find them in.

Danny sighed, and the sky above boiled with stars.

He looked up, not having expected that, then shrugged and continued to walk. Things here were strange.

There were words on the walls, now, carved into the marble alongside window displays for cell phones and stationary. Ἀστερίων, Ἀριάδνη, Θησεύς. He traced Ἀριάδνη with his fingers. It sparked gold, the same color as the string around Danny’s neck.

And then the string flexed. Pulled. Spooled forward, winding into a ball in front of Danny. A short thread was thrown off of the rapidly spinning ball and settled on Danny’s head before solidifying into something heavy and cold.

(Elsewhere, the end of the string tears itself out of Sam’s hand, disappearing into the rift between.)

“Oh,” said Danny. He bit his lip and closed his eyes, and mentally apologized to his friends for worrying them. “Theseus was from Athens. Ariadne wasn’t just rich, she had authority over Crete. We had the roles wrong.”

(Not that Danny really wanted authority over Amity Park. That… just wasn’t his thing. He didn’t want to be in charge. He just wanted to protect.)

But this meant… He needed to find one of the New Athens kids and get them to be Theseus.

He didn’t want to do that. He was here to rescue them, not to force them to rescue themselves. And… iIf he could find one of them, couldn’t he find the others? Finding them was the problem he’d started with. If he could find them, he could bring them out.

He stumbled as the section of string wrapped around his throat tightened. That actually hurt!

Then it loosened and Danny took a deep breath.

Narrative weight, right. They were already trying this story. Changing it or aborting it halfway would have consequences. Ones that Danny didn’t want to deal with.

He swallowed. He couldn’t help but remember that in the story of Theseus and the Minotaur, many people, many Athenians, had died before Theseus had finally defeated the Minotaur. When it was Danny in the role of Theseus, that hadn’t been a concern. He was certain he could fight any monster, any ghost in the role of the Minotaur.

But some random kid from New Athens? One who had probably never seen a ghost, and who had been stuck here for days?

That… that he wasn’t at all confident about.

Sam had been right to be wary of the risks. It was different, when someone else was facing them.

He rolled the ball between his hands, feeling it over. Power thrummed between his fingers, brighter and sharper than before. A thin stripe of gold ran down the sidewalk, twisting over on itself and turning away from the main street.

Danny sighed, and started to follow.

Danica was starting to panic.

One moment, she’d been on the bus, falling asleep after a difficult meet despite how risky it was to fall asleep anywhere near Georgie and his so-called ‘artistic impulses.’ The next thing she knew, she was waking up on a sidewalk in some kind of nightmare city. A nightmare city full of things that looked almost like people but were transparent and walked right through her as if she weren’t there.

She didn’t know how long she’d been here, trying to figure out how she’d gotten here, where the bus was, where everything else was, but it felt like hours, at least. She was starting to get hungry.

She was starting to wonder if she’d gone crazy. Or if this was what it was like to be dead. And that was before the buildings started to melt into weird, semi-Greek-Revival messes.

It was weird here, and she hated it. She wanted to go home. She wanted her mom. She wanted to quit the track team and never have to deal with anything like this ever again.

“Hello?” called a soft voice.

She whipped around. Up until now, this place had been eerily quiet.

Standing just a few feet from her was a boy, one who could have stepped out of a history textbook. He was wearing something like a cape, and a Greek-style tunic, white trimmed in red. Tangled in his hair was a thin, golden circlet. But the strangest thing about him was the ball of glowing golden string in his hand. One end of it was wrapped around his neck.

“You–!” said Danica, suddenly more furious than frightened. “Did you bring me here? Why?”

The boy shook his head. “I didn’t bring you here. Actually, I’m hoping to help you get out. You and the rest of your teammates.”

“They– They’re here, too? And the coach–?”

“No, just your teammates,” said the boy. He made a face. “You guys kind of… Ran into a story.”

“A what?” demanded Danica, incredulous. She’d also, incidentally, started to back away from the boy.

“A story. Have you heard of Theseus and the Minotaur?”

“What if I don't want to do this?” asked the girl, after Danny had finished explaining. “What if I can’t do this?”

Danny stared at her, a bit baffled. The thing about being a ghost, even half a ghost, the thing about thinking like a ghost… Sometimes it was hard to wrap his head around other perspectives. Especially when his friends, the only people he really talked to, were just as eager to jump in and help as he was.

He hadn't wanted to make anyone risk themselves. He wanted to bring them to safety without that. He also hadn't expected that anyone would just… not want to help.

“Well, I suppose… I suppose you could follow me until I found one of your classmates who could?” he said. “Although… I’m not sure if we can do that with this story. It might be that I have to find someone alone and then they find everyone… In which case you’d just have to wait for them. Speaking of which, how long has this been for you? On the outside, it’s been a few days, but you look a little too good for that.”

“I– What? Days? I haven’t been here for days.”

“Not from your perspective, maybe. Time is weird. Even without all this…” He waved his hand, trying to indicate ghost weirdness in general. “... stuff, even with just the things we can look at scientifically, it’s still relative. Right now, you’re basically in a dimensional pocket. Pocket dimension? Whatever. The point is, is time running at different rates really that strange, comparatively? At least, it made it so that you didn’t starve before me and my friends were able to figure this out.” He raised the ball of golden string, ignoring how the movement pulled on his neck. “Right?”

The girl gave him a ‘why are you using science-fiction terms in what is clearly a fantasy scenario’ look. At least, that’s how Danny chose to interpret it.

He sighed. “What’s your name, anyway?”

“Danica,” she said, then looked angry at herself and shrugged. “Or Dani, I guess.”

“Huh, small world,” said Danny. “That’s my sister’s name, too.” Not to mention his. Maybe Theseus’s story wasn’t the only one being echoed, with a coincidence like that.

The girl continued to stare at him, this time with a ‘why the heck are you bringing that up while I’m having a crisis’ look. Probably. Danny tended to make a similar expression from time to time. Usually when the ghosts he fought started having lovers’ quarrels in the middle of a fight.

“So,” he said, awkwardly. “You can come with me, of course, just to… test out what will happen?”

“Oh!” said Danica, suddenly. “Just– Just give me that!” She held out her hands for the ball of string.

Danny beamed, and passed it to her. It glowed even brighter.

“Now what?” she asked, staring at it nervously.

“Now, you need this,” Danny said, taking off the sword and holding it out to her, hilt first. “And then you search for your friends, and when you find them…” He pinched a length of the string between the finger and thumb of her free hand. “You follow this back out.”

Danica was much more reluctant to take the sword than the string. But that was fine. One of the two was for holding things together, the other was for taking things apart. Danny knew which was easier, and which he was more comfortable with.

“That's it. Remember, it's just the members of your track team, okay? The coach and the bus driver got out.”

“Okay,” said Danica. She took a deep, steadying breath. “Okay. I can do this.”

Danny nodded encouragingly. “Yes,” he said, “definitely.”

Danny stepped out of the in-between, back into the alley he'd left Sam and Tucker in. Except, it wasn't an alley anymore, but a thin dirt path between hedges.

He was immediately tackled.

“We thought we'd lost you!” said Sam. Then she pulled back and examined him closely before looking pointedly behind him. “Where're the track kids?”

Danny rubbed the back of his neck. “Well. In the story, Theseus is from Athens, remember?”

Sam groaned. “They're having to do it themselves?”

“Yeah. A girl named Danica. Dani. Believe it or not.”

“Wow,” said Tucker. “Really?”

“Really.”

Danny turned to look behind him, tracing the string where it twisted away from reality and into not-space.

Tucker sighed. “This is going to take a while, isn't it?”

It took Danica surprisingly little time to find her teammates. For all the time she’d spent wandering on her own, after she’d accepted the sword and the string, she’d located everyone in what felt like an hour. Some of them were even in groups!

The problem was, she found too many of them.

“Mm,” said Danny, still worried. “Probably. I hope she doesn’t have to fight anything.”

There had been fourteen of them. She knew there had been fourteen of them, because the coach and the driver had both done headcounts, because of the number of people they were allowed to field in each event at this particular meet, and because she remembered that someone had been sick. But there were, including her, fifteen kids now huddled in something that aesthetically hovered in-between the Parthenon and a shopping mall.

She couldn’t remember who had been sick. No one could. But everyone wanted to convince her that it wasn’t them.

Probably because she was the one with the sword.

“I think that if there was anything, it would have gone after Danny when he was searching earlier, right?” asked Sam.

“Maybe,” said Danny. “Unless it was scared of me. I am pretty powerful.”

“And if Danny’s Ariadne in this, he was Ariadne at the beginning,” pointed out Tucker. “The story was already going. Ariadne never fought the Minotaur.”

“Astarion,” said Danny.

“Huh?”

“That’s the Minotaur’s actual name,” said Sam. She frowned slightly. “He was Ariadne’s half-brother, you know.”

“Yeah,” said Danny, slowly. “He was, wasn’t he?”

“Listen,” said Danica, trying to mask the shake in her voice, “I’m sorry, but– But based on everything, you aren’t who you say you are.”

There was nothing she could do about how badly the sword was shaking.

“I am!” said the girl, who couldn’t be there, because Eliza had taken the one place in the 100 meter, and Jaylynn did the javelin, and Lachandra had done the high jump, and no one remembered her competing at all. “I really am, I promise!”

It was convincing, her act. But it had to be an act, it really did.

“Dani,” said Lachandra, “is it really that important? I mean, if we take her with us? We just want to get out.”

“But she could eat us,” said Kevin, who was a bit of a mythology buff on top of being a track nerd. “She could– If this is the Minotaur story– She’ll try to kill us and then–”

“I won’t!” shouted the girl. Her eyes– For a moment, they changed color. Red. Her teeth were sharp, too.

Danica gritted her teeth and swung the sword down.

Danny caught her wrist, panting. He’d followed the string back.

“Wait,” he said, breathless. “Wait.”

“Where–” said Danica, jerking back. “Why–?”

Danny turned towards the ‘Minotaur.’ “Hi,” he said, trying to be as nonthreatening as possible. “You’re one of Vlad’s aren’t you?”

Their face shimmered for a moment, and then– It was like looking into a mirror. This wasn’t Dani - his Dani, Danielle - but a boy with red eyes. He wore a chiton like Danny’s, but he looked starved, pale, terrified.

He nodded.

“There is,” said Danny, cautiously, “another story about escaping from the labyrinth. How would you like to be Daedalus?”

“What was that?” hissed Danica, as they walked away from… whatever that was. “Why are you here, now, leading us out, when you couldn’t before?”

“Story is different now,” said Danny, tightly. “And I was leading you out before. Just with the string.”

“What if you get lost?” asked Kevin.

Danny grinned at him. “I won’t. He isn’t trying to keep you in anymore.”

“Who isn’t?” asked Danica.

“Daedalus. Him. He just wanted out, I think. Sorry for– I’m sorry about all of this,” said Danny. “I didn’t want to get other people involved in Amity Park stuff, and I especially didn’t want to get you involved in family stuff, but…” He shrugged, then caught sight of an out. It looked, from this side, like a slightly darker than expected gap between stately white pillars. “Here we go! And I think this one is next to the police station, too, so just, you know. Check yourselves in.”

“Just like that?” asked Danica.

“Just like that,” said Danny. “I will need those back, though.” He nodded at the string and sword.

“Right,” said Danica. She shoved both at him. “I can’t believe– I would have kill that– Whatever– Whoever–” She stopped, looking very much like she wanted to cry.

“I’m sorry,” said Danny again, softly. “But it is over now.”

The New Athens kids walked into the gap and vanished.

The string dissolved into golden, glittering light and then settled in his hands as a pair of equally golden wings. Danny laughed.

“Okay,” he said. He turned, bouncing a little. “I get the picture. I think we can avoid the Icarus problem, being ghosts and all.”

#danny phantom #holiday truce #holiday truce 2023

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q-gorgeous · 6 months ago

Text

tech hunter, more like friend hunter amiright?

fanfiction

ao3

word count: 5930

Tucker's best friend has gone missing. At least Phantom's been defeated by the Tech Hunter and the ghosts have fled Amity Park. @lavendarlily

been sitting on this one all month

Tucker walked into the school feeling the best he had in a long time.

He wasn’t woken up last night by his equipment going off all night long. He’d gotten a full night’s sleep for what felt like the first time in forever. All thanks to his victory he’d had over Phantom.

He’d finally been able to corner Phantom the night before. He’d been distracted by a ghost he was talking to. Tucker walked up behind and landed the best hit he’d ever gotten on Phantom before. It punctured a hole straight through his back and chest and caused Phantom to stumble forward. The ghost he’d been talking to flew away before Tucker could even look at him.

Phantom turned around to look at him. His eyes widened ever so slightly.

“Checkmate, ghost.”

Tucker didn’t stay to see what happened. He knew he’d gotten him that time. He pulled his hoverboard out as Phantom fell to the ground and flew away. Phantom didn’t deserve anything more, the ghost scum that he was.

Heading down the hallway, Tucker saw Sam at her locker.

“Hey, Sam!” He shouted, speeding up in her direction.

When he called her name she looked up as if she had been spooked. Her eyes were wide as they scanned the hallway and finally landed on him. She tried smiling at him but Tucker could see that it was tight. That it was fake.

“Hi, Tucker.”

“Hey, are you okay?” He asked. “You look like you’ve a ghost. Or something equally terrifying.”

She pushed her locker closed. “I’m fine. I just didn’t get a lot of sleep last night.”

“Oh?” Tucker smirked at her. “Did you finally get some alone time with Danny?”

She shoved him. “Gross, Tucker. No. I just couldn’t sleep. I kept having nightmares.”

He frowned. “That sucks. What were they about?”

The look she gave him was haunting. What could she possibly have dreamt about that was having this kind of effect on her?

“I don’t want to talk about it. It doesn’t matter. It really wasn’t even that bad anyways.” Sam smiled another tight smile at him. “Let’s not be late to class.”

He followed behind her. “Have you seen Danny?”

She shook her head and kept her eyes ahead of her, not looking at him. “No. Not yet.”

Tucker pouted. “He didn’t tell me he was sick today. Unless he’s just sleeping in again. Have you figured out what’s been up with him lately? Why he’s always late and skipping class all the time?”

She shook her head again. “Not a clue.”

Tucker watched as she walked ahead of him into their class. That was weird. She wasn’t quite being standoffish but… She was definitely being avoidant. What was that about?

He followed in behind her and walked to his seat. The bell rang and Mr. Lancer started calling names.

“Dash Baxter?”

“Here.”

“Danny Fenton?”

Tucker took another look around the classroom. Danny wasn’t in here either. He hoped he wasn’t getting sick. But knowing Danny and his sudden change in attendance, he wasn’t very confident that he was sick anyways.

The day passed slowly. With Sam acting strange and Danny missing, there was nothing to keep him occupied.

He was starting to get worried though. Danny didn’t normally skip the whole day if he was going to be late or skip classes. Maybe he was just sick. He couldn’t shake the feeling that was starting to creep up on him though.

He was glad that the ghosts had disappeared with Phantom’s defeat. It meant that his attendance wasn’t so bad, even if it wasn’t nearly as bad as Danny’s. He wondered where all the ghosts were. It was odd that he hadn’t picked up a single ghost on his scanner yet today.

He walked into the lunch room and grabbed his food from the lunch line. When he was done, he looked around the cafeteria and saw Sam sitting at their normal table. With Jazz?

They looked to be talking in hushed whispers. He started walking towards them with his lunch tray in hand. Jazz looked up past Sam’s shoulder and whispered one more thing before she smiled at Tucker.

“Hi, Tucker.”

“Hey, Jazz. Is Danny home sick today?”

Jazz shot a look at Sam before her eyes darted back to Tucker. “I’m not sure. I actually haven’t seen him since school got out yesterday.”

Tucker frowned. “Oh. That’s weird.” He placed his tray on the table and sat down to Sam’s right. Her backpack was in her lap and she shuffled it to the left a little bit. “Has he ever done that before?”

Jazz shook her head. “No. I thought maybe he’d gone to one of your guy’s houses. I was expecting to see him at school today. I’m starting to get worried.”

“Yeah.” Tucker rested his chest in one of his hands and started picking at his food. “Me too.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sam didn’t know what to do.

She’d been walking around with the thermos containing Danny in it all day. She’d been taking her backpack with her everywhere. Even to the bathroom with her. She couldn’t just leave it somewhere. Not with him inside of it, at risk of bleeding to death if he got let out.

She especially couldn’t let Tucker see it. Couldn’t let him see the contents screen. Couldn’t even let him know she had it.

He knew she didn’t carry the Fenton’s ghost weapons with her. She didn’t endorse them. The ghosts were still beings. She didn’t think it was right to hurt them. It would be suspicious for him to find a partially full thermos in her bag.

She didn’t know what she was going to do, though. Who could she go to? Who could help her? She thought about talking to the Fenton’s. They were the leading ghost experts. Surely they would know what to do.

But she’s heard what they’ve said about Phantom. How they wanted to tear him apart molecule by molecule. Her only saving grace would be that Danny was in his human form when she sucked him up. Would that be enough to convince them that it truly was their son inside of the thermos? She wasn’t sure.

She sat in class, Tucker right behind her, gripping her backpack. She hadn’t been able to focus at all and this was only her first class of the day. She could only imagine how the rest of the day would go.

She lay her head down on her desk, still clutching her bag close to her.

Sam had been tailing Phantom for the last couple of minutes. She had a few questions about ghosts that she wanted to ask him and was hidden around the corner while he talked to another ghost. She was hoping she could wait until the other ghost left. She didn’t want to risk getting mauled.

But before her or the other ghost could do anything, the Tech Hunter flew down into the alleyway Phantom was in.

She’d never been this close to Tech Hunter before. She always wondered who it was under that mask.

She peeked around the corner just in time to see Tech Hunter’s weapon go off, shooting a hole into Phantom’s back all the way through his chest.

Phantom stumbled and slowly turned around, clutching the new hole in his chest with his hand.

“Checkmate ghost.”

Sam’s heart stopped.

No. No no no. It couldn’t be.

She didn’t want it to be true, but his voice was too recognizable. She’d heard it everyday since they met in elementary school. There was no denying this.

That was Tucker.

Tucker, a cold blooded hunter. A murderer if Phantom’s expression was anything to go by.

He jumped into the sky on his hoverboard and flew away. Phantom fell to the ground. She finally rounded the corner and walked up to him.

“Phantom!” She shouted and she ran over and knelt on the ground next to him.

His eyes opened slowly and he turned to look at her. “Sam…”

She stopped for a moment. “You know my name?”

He tried to sit up but she stopped him. “Don’t move. That’s a nasty injury.”

“Sam…” He struggled to lift his arm around to his other side and grabbed the Fenton thermos that he carried around with him. He placed it in her hand that she extended to him.

“Phantom?” She asked quietly.

“Put me in the thermos.”

“What? You want me to capture you?”

He took a deep breath. “I’ll… bleed out if I stay here like this. Put me in the thermos. It’ll act as a… stasis of sorts.”

“But-”

A bright ring appeared around Phantom’s waist. It was like nothing she’s ever seen before.

“Put.. me in… the thermos.”

The rings separated and Sam covered her mouth with her free hand.

“Get help.”

The rings disappeared and before her sat her best friend, bleeding out. She stumbled with the thermos in her hand and pressed hard on the button. It sucked him up into it and she pulled it against her chest.

Shaking, she leaned back against the wall. What was she supposed to do? What if the thermos didn’t actually keep him in a stasis? What if he just bled out inside the thermos instead? She didn’t know how to fix this.

How did she fix this?

“Sam.”

A hand grabbed her shoulder and she shot up in her seat. She whipped her head to the side and saw Tucker pulling his hand back.

“Are you okay?” He asked her, a concerned expression crossing his face.

She shook her head to try and clear and took a deep breath. “Yeah. I just- I must’ve fallen asleep. I had another nightmare.”

She stood up and he moved to let her by.

“Are you sure you don’t want to talk about it? Maybe it’ll help you make sense of why you’re having nightmares.”

Checkmate, ghost.

She shook her head again. She knew why she was having nightmares. “No, it’s fine. I’m okay. I’m sure they’ll stop happening soon.”

He stopped prodding at her after that and they made their way to their next class.

Sam felt like she couldn’t breathe and like she was suffocating all through class until their third hour came around. They separated and walked opposite directions down the hallway and she finally felt like she could relax. Like she wasn’t in danger.

She was still tired and was still nodding off in class but without Tucker sitting behind her she was able to focus on class a little more. She still held her backpack in her lap for safe keeping though.

She was on her way to lunch when she bumped into Jazz in the hallway.

“Hey, Sam, have you seen Danny?”

Sam’s heart jumped into her throat and she tried to swallow back the tremble in her voice. “Danny?”

“Yeah. He never came home last night. I’m worried. I was hoping you or Tucker had seen him today.”

Sam swallowed and swung her backpack around to her front. “I have to tell you something.”

Jazz frowned. “What’s wrong?”

“I can’t do this alone. Maybe you’ll have some ideas.”

Sam opened her backpack and pulled the thermos out a little. Jazz’s eyes opened wider.

“Yesterday- yesterday I saw something. Tech Hunter had ambushed Phantom and hurt him real bad. Phantom told me to pull him into the thermos but he transformed before I could do that.”

Jazz raised a hand to cover her mouth.

“When he transformed back, he turned into-”

“Danny.” Jazz whispered. Sam looked up at her, shocked.

“He told you?”

Jazz shook her head and met Sam’s eyes. “I found out during the whole Spectra thing. He doesn’t know I figured it out.”

Sam nodded. “But there’s something else.” She looked around them and pushed the thermos back into her backpack. “Tucker is Tech Hunter.”

Jazz pulled back, her eyes wide and a hand over her chest. “Are you sure? Tucker didn’t really seem like the type to-”

Sam nodded again more vigorously. “I’m sure. He had a helmet on but I’d recognize his voice anywhere. I’m sure it was him.”

Jazz started walking towards the cafeteria. Sam followed beside her. “What are we going to do? Did Danny say anything to you besides to get him into the thermos?”

“No.” Sam shook her head. “Just that it would put him into a stasis and to get help. There wasn’t time for him to say anything else. He was too badly hurt.”

They got to the cafeteria just as Jazz closed her eyes and took a deep breath. They paused outside the doors for a moment before Jazz pushed her way in.

“What do we do?”

They walked to the food line and grabbed trays and grabbed food to set on it. Jazz sighed. “I don’t know. We might have to do some research on some stuff before we decide. This is the most scared I’ve ever felt.”

“Me too.” Sam whispered.

Sam walked them to her usual table and Jazz followed suit and sat down across the table from her.

“What about your parents?” Sam asked, leaning across the table. “They might know how to help him.”

Jazz grimaced. “They might be too biased to see past the fact that he’s Phantom. They talk about what they’d do if they ever got him all the time and I don’t want any of it to become a reality. But worse comes to worse-”

Jazz paused as she looked over Sam’s shoulder. She leaned forward to whisper at her.

“We’ll do our own research first. Then we’ll try my parents. Tucker’s coming.”

Jazz looked back up and smiled at the boy who was walking up behind Sam. Sam tensed up and she was afraid to look behind her.

“Hi, Tucker.”

“Hey, Jazz. Is Danny home sick today?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It’d been a week. It’d been a week since Danny went missing.

No one had seen him since he left school that day. Not a single person. How did no one see him at all? Where could he have gone?

Tucker had even done a few searches of his own. He’d flown around town on his board, looking for any sign of Danny. He was lucky that the ghosts were still gone, otherwise it would pull from him time searching.

And Sam was still acting weird. He could understand that she was upset about Danny missing but… It was different than that. Any time he saw the haunted look in her eyes he tried to comfort her about Danny. Tell her that they would find him. It took her a moment to process it, like she had to remember that he was in fact missing.

School was ending and Tucker had to struggle to find Sam outside in front of the school. He had to look for a few seconds before he saw her already all the way across the grass, walking down the road.

“Hey, Sam, wait up!” He waved his hand in the air.

She didn’t turn to face him and Tucker frowned. He jogged up to her and grabbed onto the handle on her backpack and pulled. He must have caught her off guard because her backpack started sliding off her shoulders and she whipped around, pulling it out of his hands and to her chest.

“Sam, are you okay?” He asked.

“I’m fine.” She said.

He frowned at her again. Then it dawned on him.

“Are you walking around with contraband in your backpack?” He smirked at her.

“What?”

He made grabby motions at her bag again. “What is it? Drugs? Weed?” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Condoms?”

Sam hugged her backpack close to her.

“Tucker, stop.”

“What?” He smiled at her. “What do you have in there?”

“Nothing.”

“Then why don’t you want me to look at it so badly?” He raised his eyebrows at her. “Is it a secret? What kind of secret?”

“There’s no secret, Tucker.”

He frowned. “Seriously?” He reached forward and grabbed the front of her backpack and pulled.

She held on tight and pulled back.

Something was seriously up. He pulled hard and the top of the backpack opened, sending a Fenton thermos rolling across the ground.

Before he could even think about anything beyond the lit up contents screen Sam was shoving him as hard as she could. It knocked him to the ground and she scooped up the thermos and backed away from him.

“What the hell, Sam?” He said as he rubbed his behind.

“Have you ever heard of respecting someone’s privacy?” She shot back at him as she held the thermos to her chest.

His mind slowed when he saw how she was holding it.

“Sam. Why do you have that?”

“Danny gave it to me.”

Tucker shook his head. “His parents offered you one and you refused. Why do you have it?”

“It’s none of your business Tucker.”

He stood back up and took a step toward her.

“Who’s inside the thermos, Sam?”

She took a step back. She looked like she was afraid of him.

He darted forward and tried grabbing the device from her hands. She stepped out of the way and kicked out her heavy combat boot, catching his feet and sending him towards the ground again.

He groaned and pushed himself back up. “Give me the thermos.”

“No.”

“What are you going to do with a ghost anyways?” He turned to face her. “Aren’t you against hurting the ghosts and holding them hostage? What if you let it out and it hurts you? A ghost doesn’t deserve the safety you’re giving it right now.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She leveled him with a cold, hate filled stare. Her expression took Tucker aback. He barked out a laugh.

“What ghost could possibly be in there that you feel this strongly about?” He took another step towards her, followed by her taking a step back. “Ember? An ecto-puss? That dog that ruined Valerie’s life? What ghost is worth this?”

“Why should I tell you?!” Sam shouted at him. “You’re a cold hearted murderer that’s okay with ending a sentient being’s life! How awful do you have to be to want to kill someone?”

Tucker leveled a look at her. How did she get a hold of him? “He’s already dead, Sam.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“You’re right. He doesn’t matter. Give me the thermos.”

“No.”

“Why are you so insistent on-” Tucker started but pulled back as Sam started screaming at him.

“You didn’t see what I saw!” Tears were streaming down her face now. “I saw you shoot him. One of my best friends became a murderer. And then I went to go help him. All he asked me to do was put him in the thermos. I didn’t understand and he transformed back before I understood.”

“He transformed back?” Tucker asked, confused. That wasn’t something he was aware Phantom could do. Did he have shapeshifting abilities?

“I don’t think Phantom is just a ghost.” Sam whispered.

“Ha. Yeah, what else would he be?”

“Our best friend.”

Tucker’s heart stuttered in his chest. “No. That can’t be possible.”

“It is.” She nodded her head frantically. “I saw it with my own eyes. He transformed from Phantom to Danny. It was some bright white ring that appeared around his waist. It’s not like anything I’ve seen another ghost do before. He went from bleeding ectoplasm to bleeding blood after he transformed.”

Tucker’s ears were ringing now. “How? How is he both alive and a ghost?”

“I don’t know.” He could hardly hear her whisper. “I don’t know what to do.”

“He’s just in there?” Tucker gestured at the thermos. “Dying?”

“He said he’d be in a stasis if he was in the thermos. That’s why he asked me to put him in there. He asked me to get help. But anyone that could possibly help wants to kill him.”

Tucker’s vision warped and spun. He staggered where he stood and he could feel bile rising up in his throat.

He tried to kill his best friend. He probably actually killed him. That was the nastiest injury he’s ever seen Phantom get. Phantom never had to go into stasis before. He could always regenerate and heal himself before.

Tucker leaned to the side and threw up.

He killed his best friend. His best friend was going to die and it was all his fault.

“What are we going to do Tucker?” Sam asked him. “You’ve got ghost stuff. Do you know someone who can help him?”

Vlad Masters flashed through his brain. He supplied Tucker with everything he needed to fight ghosts. And for some reason he didn’t understand until now, Danny absolutely despised him.

“I- No. I don’t have anything that can help him.” Tucker whispered. “I’ve killed him.”

He looked back at her and she was shaking her head as tears welled up in her eyes. “Don’t say that. We have to believe there’s something we can do. If there’s nothing-”

“He’ll be gone.”

They stood there in silence for a few moments.

“We need to go talk to Jazz.” She said quietly.

“Jazz?”

Sam nodded. “I already told her everything. If we have no one else that can help us, we need to figure out how to talk to their parents. They’re our last option.”

The pit in Tucker’s stomach grew even bigger. How could he admit to his best friend’s parents that he killed him?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tucker sat with Sam and Jazz in the Fenton’s living room. They were trying to figure out how to break the news to the Fenton’s about the situation with Danny.

“Do I just walk up to them like ‘hey, Mr. and Mrs. Fenton, second parents to me, I killed your son because he’s also that Phantom menace that we both hated?”

Sam shuffled in her spot. “We just need to start with he’s Phantom and injured in the thermos and that we need their help.”

“They don’t need to know it was you, Tucker.” Jazz said softly.

“Danny knew it was me. That whole time. He absolutely knew it was me.” Tucker shook his head. “Shouldn’t I owe it to his parents to tell them the whole truth? I deserve their anger.”

“You didn’t know it was him, though.” Sam said. “None of us did. None of us would have been able to tell. Who’s gonna think a dead kid is their living best friend?”

“I-”

“Hey, kids.” Maddie walked into the living. The three of them jumped at the sound. She smiled sadly. “Jumpy today, are we?”

Jazz nodded. “We’re just worried about Danny.”

Maddie’s smile fell. “Me too.”

Jazz looked up at her mom. “Actually, Mom, can you go get Dad? We have something we need to talk to you guys about?”

Maddie looked between the three of them concerned, but nodded and went to go get Jack.

“We haven’t figured out what we’re going to say to them yet though!” Tucker whispered. “What are we going to tell them?”

“Just let Sam and I handle it.” Jazz shushed him. “You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to, but we need to get it over with. The longer we stall the harder it’ll be.”

Maddie walked back into the living room with Jack trailing behind her. They sat on the couch that was facing them from the opposite side of the room.

Jazz took a deep breath. “We know where Danny’s been.”

“What?” Jack and Maddie exclaimed together.

“Why haven’t you told us? Where is he?” Maddie asked.

“He’s…” Jazz started but petered off.

Sam looked at her and picked up where she left off. “He’s Phantom. He’s somehow a ghost human hybrid. He was shot and he’s hurt really badly.”

Maddie pulled back. “What do you mean he’s Phantom?”

“I saw him transform with my very own eyes.” Sam pleaded. “You have to believe us. He’s hurt and we didn’t know who else we could turn to.”

“Where is he?” Jack asked quietly.

“He’s in here.” Sam pulled the thermos out of her backpack and held it up in her hands for them to see.

“He’s in the thermos?” Jack asked, shocked. “How is that possible?”

“You have Phantom in the thermos?” Maddie stood up.

“It’s Danny in the thermos. Phantom is Danny.”

“What do you mean that’s Danny? That can’t be Danny.” Maddie stepped forward and reached out a hand. “Give us the thermos.”

“You have to believe us.” Sam pleaded.

Tucker raised his arm in front of Sam to stop her. “Mr. and Mrs. Fenton, I didn’t believe Sam at first either. I thought it would be impossible for Danny to be Phantom. But the more I thought about it the more it made sense.”

He took a deep breath. “I’m Tech Hunter. I was the one that shot him.”

Maddie inhaled a sharp breath and pulled her hand back like she’d been burned.

“I hated him.” Tucker whispered. “I thought ghosts like him were the scum of the earth. But looking back… He never retaliated against me. He always played on the defense and I never thought anything of it. I thought he was a bad shot. He’d joke around with me like he’d known me all his life.”

He stared at the floor, wrapping his arms around himself. “I never thought the reason he’d do that was because he actually had known me all his life. I just thought he was manipulating me.” He choked out a laugh. “It’s like they say. Hindsight is twenty twenty.”

“If this is true and Danny really is.. In there.” Maddie gestured at the thermos with a shaking hand. “What are we supposed to do? We don’t have anything to help ghosts and an injury of that magnitude might not be able to be helped by us and our medical knowledge.”

“Maybe you could help us find someone in the ghost zone who would know more about how to help him.” Jazz said. “Even if we find someone we’ll need help getting there somehow.”

Jack and Maddie exchange a glance between them.

“He’s our son, Maddie.” He said quietly. “We have to try, even if he really is Phantom.”

She turned to look at the thermos in Sam’s hands.

“Okay. We’ll help. Where do we start?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I was able to hack into Danny’s computer.” Tucker said. “He has files with information about all the ghosts he knows. There are ghosts in the ghost zone in some place called the far frozen that have a lot of medical know-how. They’ve helped him before. Maybe they’d be willing to help him again.”

Maddie nodded. “That might be our best option. We could try to do all we can here, but if that injury is as big as the two of you described it, there might not be much we can actually do ourselves.”

Tucker printed out the map Danny had made of the ghost zone and handed it to Maddie.

“He’s got this all mapped out already?” Maddie stared at the map with wide eyes. “We haven’t even made a trip into the ghost zone a single time yet.”

“This must’ve been what he was doing some of the times I thought he was blowing us off.” Tucker sighed and took his glasses on and rubbed his eyes. “I don’t think he’ll ever forgive me.”

“We-” Maddie took a deep breath. “If Phantom is really Danny, we’ll both have a lot to make up for.”

Tucker looked up at her. “Are we horrible for not knowing he was Danny?”

Maddie shrugged. “It’s hard to say. I would like to think I’d recognize one of my kids anywhere… That I know them like the back of my hand, but…”

“We just couldn’t see it.”

Maddie nodded. “But getting to his yeti friends is something we can do to make it up to him. Let’s focus on that for now instead.”

Tucker turned off Danny’s computer and stood up. “I guess you’re right. What do we do now?”

He followed her out of Danny’s room and down the stairs. “We make sure the Specter Speeder is all good for ghost zone travel. Then we’ll prepare for the trip.”

“I think Danny’s notes said that the far frozen is cold. We should bring our coats and gloves with us.”

Maddie smiled. “That’s good to know. Thank you.”

They walked into the living room where Sam, Jazz, and Jack were sitting around the table. They were going over what looked like notes from the Fenton’s lab.

“What are you guys working on?” Maddie asked.

“We’re going over your guy’s formula for ecto-dejecto.” Jazz said as she turned over another paper. “That’s one that you guys just kinda scrapped and never fixed. We’re thinking it could help since it made all the ghosts you tested it on get stronger.”

“Once we find the right formula, we’re going to make a couple batches of it.” Jack said. “Aha! Here it is! Did you guys find anything on Danny’s computer?”

“We found some information on a medical center that’s located in the ghost zone somewhere.” Maddie said. “Danny has been mapping out the ghost zone too so we’ll be able to get there without much fuss.”

“That’s great!” Sam turned to face him. “Way to go, Tucker.”

“Thanks.” he shuffled on his feet.

“Jack and I are going to go downstairs and work on preparations with the ecto-dejecto and checking the Specter Speeder. You three gather together enough coats, hats, and gloves for everyone. After that you could start preparing some food for the trip.”

It took them a couple hours to get everything ready, but soon they had gathered enough clothing and food for everyone and made sure the Specter Speeder worked. Jack loaded a crate of ecto-dejecto in the speeder and turned around to face them.

“We’re ready to go! Let’s get Danny some help!”

They started the Specter Speeder and flew into the green swirl of the ghost portal.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Danny groaned. Everything hurt. Where was he? He could hear a faint beeping. Was he at the hospital? What happened? The last thing he remembered was-

His eyes shot open and he tried to sit up but his chest hurt too much.

He was in the hospital. What were the doctors told? Who found him? Did his parents know? Did the GIW? He had to-

“Whoa, hey. Don’t move.”

He turned his head and there standing to his left was Sam.

“Sam? You’re here? Where- My parents-”

She shushed him and gently laid a hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay. We’re in the Far Frozen. Tucker found the map on your computer.”

His heart fell and he swallowed. “Tucker?”

She nodded. “He��s been waiting outside. He didn’t want to be in here when you woke up in case you didn’t want to see him.”

He looked towards the door. “He’s here?”

“Yes. He’s here.”

How did Tucker find out about him? Why is he even here? Danny thought Tucker wouldn’t want anything to do with him if he ever found out who he was. But he was just waiting outside his room because he was afraid Danny didn’t want to see him?

“Is anyone else here?” He asked.

“Your parents are talking to Frostbite about all this medical equipment they have here. Jazz is off learning how yeti society works.”

Danny chuckled, but groaned as it rattled his chest. He laid a hand on top of it gently.

“How long have I been here?”

Sam’s expression turned sad. “It’s been a little over a month. You were in some pod that Frostbite has in a different room for awhile too. It was supposed to help your ectoplasm repair the hole in your chest. You still have a bit of healing left, but the worst of it is behind you.”

He let out a deep breath. “Thank you.”

“What?”

“You saved me. You got me the help I needed. I wouldn’t be here without you. Thank you, Sam.”

“Danny, I-”

She stopped at the sound of shuffling outside the door. They both looked towards the doorway and saw Tucker just as he ducked out of the way. Sam looked back at him.

“Do you want to see him?” She asked softly.

Danny kept looking at the door. Tucker wouldn’t be here if he was just trying to kill him. He was respecting his boundaries and keeping his distance until Danny asked for him. Would they be able to go back to how things were before? Should Danny want that?

He turned his head back to Sam and nodded.

“Okay. I’ll go get him.”

She stood up and walked across the room and through the door. A few moments passed before she walked back in, hand in hand with Tucker as he followed behind her.

She stopped beside Danny’s bed. Tucker still wasn’t looking at Danny.

“I can give you two some space to talk. Unless you want me to stay here, Danny.”

Danny looked at Tucker and the shame and guilt in his face. He turned back to Sam and shook his head. “I think we’ll be okay. You should probably let everyone else know that I’m awake.”

She nodded and turned to walk away, shooting one last glance at them before she left.

His gaze went back to Tucker. He was finally looking at him. Tears were swimming in his eyes and his lips were trembling.

“Tucker-“ Danny started but Tucker cut him off.

“No. Don’t forgive me.” Tucker took a shaky breath. “I don’t deserve it. I was so caught up in my hatred with ghosts that I couldn’t see what was right in front of me. I couldn’t tell I was fighting my best friend.”

Tucker pushed his hands up under glasses and covered his eyes. “You joked around with me. You never tried to hurt me. You were still acting like my best friend and I went and shot you.”

“Tucker-“ Danny closed his eyes. “No one knew. I didn’t tell anyone and no one could tell it was me.”

“Jazz knew.” Tucker said quietly.

Danny’s eyebrows shot up on his forehead. “She did? How?”

Tucker shrugged. “She said it had something to do with Ms. Spectra. She didn’t really elaborate much on it because we were focused on getting things figured out with you.

“Oh.” He looked down at his lap. “I still didn’t tell her though. I didn’t even know she knew.”

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” Tucker whispered. “You could’ve avoided so many things if we had just known.”

Danny fiddled with his fingers. “I was scared. I didn’t want you guys to think I was a freak or for my parents to think I was a monster. You had already become Tech Hunter by the time I was considering telling you and Sam but you hated me, so I couldn’t. I didn’t know if your hatred would overshadow our friendship.” Danny looked up at Tucker again. “But I can see it didn’t because you’re here now.”

A sob finally broke its way out of Tucker’s throat. He leaned his arms on the side of Danny’s bed and lay his head on top of them. His sobs wracked his body. Danny lifted an arm up and slowly brought it down on Tucker’s shoulder. His sobs wracked his body harder.

“It’s okay. I’m okay.” Danny took a deep breath. “We’re okay.”

#gorgi writes #danny phantom #tucker foley #danny fenton #sam manson #jazz fenton #jack fenton #maddie fenton #danny gets shot #phic phight 2024 #fanfiction #fanfic #fic #phic

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draws-danny · 9 months ago

Text

Walking begrudgingly down the hall towards his last class, Danny sat down in his assigned seat at the back. A plastic wrapper flew by him. Another hit him in the back of the head. “Not today Baxter.”, Danny said, in a tone Dash couldn’t quite place. He decided it was best he stopped.

Mr. Lancer taught class, as the clock slowly ticked on. Danny was the first one to sling himself out his seat once the bell rang. “Mr. Baxter, Mr. Fenton, I’ll need to see you two for a moment.

The weight of guilt and embarrassment washed over Dash. Visibly shaking, he took a seat beside Danny at the front the class. Mr. Lancaster lay papers before them. A big red F was printed on both.

“You two are better than this I know. You want to still be on the football team, yes?” , he said looking straight into Dash’s soul. He nodded hastily in agreement . Danny’s face deadpan, he looked straight ahead. “And you Mr. Fenton. You seemed like you knew what I was talking about earlier, and yet you barely managed to write your name down, let alone get the first answer. You’ll need a tutor. “ A scowl crossed Danny’s face as he looked down and face planted onto the desk, arms over his face.

“You did this to yourself, but you’ll be able to fix it with help from Mr. Baxter.” Both Dash and Danny shot each other a look. Mr. Lancer gave each of them another paper, and let them be on their way.

Danny slung his backpack around his shoulder and was steady pacing away when Dash came running up beside him. Looking at the floor he said, “ I guess we’ll have to work together on this, you’re smart right Fenton?” “Sure ”, Danny sighed.

Later that night Dash called some friends and Danny over to help him study. Quan was the first to show up. They high-fived each other . “What’s up bro?” “Got this paper I’m supposed to do with Fenturd, so I can continue to play football.”

Thinking about skipping out on studying, Danny balanced himself halfway out his window, changing his form. He sent Dash a text , and slipped off into the night.

Intangible, Danny looked into Dash’s living room window. It was so typical of him to have dumbbells and a weight set in the living room, right beside the pool table. Disgusted with what he was about to do, he rang the doorbell.

Dash answered, stunned to find Fenton at his doorway. Dash walked away, leaving the door ajar. “Yea, sure I’d love to come in”, Fenton said sarcastically as he came in and closed the door.

He followed Dash up a couple flights of stairs, and into his room. “ You think a guy could get something to drink?” Dash pointed towards a mini fridge in his room, and Danny grabbed one for Dash and himself.

“Thanks,”, Dash said as he handed it to him. His face, forcing a smile. Dash pulled out the notes from class after rummaging through a bunch next to his computer.

“So you know anything about this, dweeb. I mean Fenton.”, Dash said wearily. Danny looked at him, and a bit of anger must’ve been seeping through his skin, because the best thing he knew, Dash took a few steps back from him. Crunching his other fist up, Danny pulled his own notes out and the last thing he remembered was them beginning to study.

Danny blacked out. When he awoke, he was sprawled out on top of Dash. Dash’s face amuck with terror, red and black and blue on the side, where he has pummeled him.

He thought for a moment. He thought how this could’ve happened. He wasn’t as calm as possible, but he could manage his anger well he thought.

He carefully got up and took a few steps back. A red liquid dropped off his face and onto the floor just beneath him. He looked over at the mirror on Dash’s wall. A monster , covered in blood stared back at him. He didn’t know why, but he felt victorious, and couldn’t stop smiling.

#danny phantom #danny phantom fanart #danny fenton #myart #sketch #dp fanart #aboi #original story #story #storytelling #short story

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veryace-ficrecs · 1 year ago

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Danny phantom Fic Recs

This list will include all ratings and tags, so read at your own discretion! :)

Ecto Upgrade Start by GothMoth - Rated G

Danny’s growing up and his bodies doing the typical adultifying things, but also doing some… not so typical adutlifying things.

Deep Sea Diver by Marsalias - Rated G

Tumblr prompt by dannyphantom-rework: Ghost zone is like the ocean, in the sense that the deeper you go into it, the scarier and darker it becomes.

Electricity by DarkNymfa - Rated G

Tucker huffed, disgruntled. “Yeah, uh huh. I’ll believe that when you stop having live electricity running down your arms.” “Technically,” Danny said, lips twitching into a smirk, “it’s dead electricity.”

when the kingdom comes calling by blueh - Rated T

The Observant hardly looks rattled at the threat. If anything, the thing seems even more determined to get Danny to go through with this absolute bullshit plan to make him, someone who is half human, king of the ghosts. “Follow me to the Infinite Realms for your coronation. You are under obligation to meet the council at Pariah’s Keep where you shall receive the Crown of Fire and the Ring of Rage. It is what the council wishes.” “No,” Danny snaps. “I have an English test next period with Mr. Lancer.” “This is no time for your silly human games—" Danny slams the locker in its eye. also known as: the Ghost Zone population assumes that Phantom took the crown with dignity. What they don’t know is fifteen year old Danny Fenton just wants to graduate high school, is constantly ready to throw hands with an army of eyeballs, and absolutely will not be crowned the Ghost King without a fight.

Drizzling by TakingOverMidnight3482 - Rated G

There was a peace to the rain, Danny had found. A sense of quiet, where no one attacked. No one ventured out to cause trouble. Where the Earth, for one second, was being healed and healing those around it.

Shift by Alexa_Piper - Rated T

It turns out that the views of Agents O and K are not held by the rest of the Guys in White… which they discover when they bring in a fourteen-year-old half-ghost kid for "painful experiments".

Smells Like Team Spirit by UnluckyAlis - Rated G

Some mascots are great at pumping up a crowd. As Casper High's mascot, Danny has only one job: strike fear into the hearts of their opponents. This is the story of how Danny becomes the famed Mascot of Fear.

Of Tweets and Twats by DarkNymfa - Rated T

Too Fine @BurgersKing @nasafan your parents don’t have a website for Fentonworks? | 🌟✨⭐ @nasafan have you met my parents? | Too Fine @BurgersKing fair point I will cease speaking

Stargazer by Mysterious_Prophetess - Rated G

Inspired by this tumblr post by floralflowerpower where Danny is a NASA astronaut, and famous too, but in order to join NASA he had to change his name to distance himself from his....less well regarded Parents and Sister. Years later, when his real name Fenton is pulled from its grave, Danny refuses to disavow his parents' line of work.

Ancient Alexandria: Not-So-Ancient Apparently by piece_of_pierce - Rated T

Danny has a new homework assignment. Specifically, he's supposed to theorize about the ectobiology of ghosts then make a presentation about it. Who needs to theorize, though? He has access to all the research in the Zone! Now, where can he actually access that research?

Bet on it by thatgirl_youknowtheone - Rated T

Danny's parents find out about Wes' theories, as Maddie and Walter talk it out in the principal's office, Danny and Wes are stuck in the hallway listening. "Your son might think it's just some funny joke, but I will not have anyone accusing my son of being that lying, manipulative, piece of ectoplasmic scum!" Danny sank lower in his chair, face tightening with every word. "You know they wouldn't say that stuff if they knew the truth." said Wes.

Make the Call by Library_of_Cronos - Rated T

The five times CPS was almost called on the Fentons and the one time Jazz called them herself.

Poor Life Choice by princessFanona - Rated G

A situation where Danny dies (not the portal accident) in a public setting and everyone freaks the heck out, but then he gets up as if nothing happened. (PR339) Danny happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time...or maybe not. Depends on how you look at it.

Ringback by kelpeigh (chitaqua) - Not Rated

“I think we’re on hold.” a soft voice hedges. Four hoods twist as the group looks to their youngest member. She continues, “This is just a ringback tone. Don’t you have one, Steph— uh, Shadowlux?” “You’re right.” The cloaked man next to her answers. “We’re totally on hold.” - A summoning au where Danny can only be summoned as Phantom, and anyone who tries when he's human has to wait until he happens to go ghost again.

Is This Just A Thing that Girls Do? by newdog14 - Rated T

“Yeah, and about that,” The Ghost King said, pinching the bridge of nose in frustration. “You found an archaic book of magic with a summoning spell for the Ghost King, who you believed to be evil, and then you used said spell to bring me here and bind me to answer questions, and you did this so you could ask me about a middle schooler’s crush?” “We also want to know what the secret of life is,” Cori said, crossing her arms defensively. “42,” he answered without hesitation.

Growing Pains by ayjayar - Rated G

Jazz has had the world's nastiest case of pink eye. The doctor is starting to suspect it's not actually pink eye. When Danny notices her eyes glowing, the Fentons seek second opinions from unlikely sources.

after school summons by blueh - Rated T

"So this is the fabled Ghost King," the man says like he expected better. Danny feels he should almost be offended if it isn't for the tiny detail that these cultists—who summoned him by using salt and goat bones—assume he is the ghost king. "…Did you seriously confuse me with Pariah Dark?" The man pauses. "Pariah Dark?" "Yes! He's like fifteen feet tall, has a huge sword, is a pain in the ass, and has, like, an entire ghost army. I have, I dunno, pre-calc homework in my bag. We are not the same." Or: Danny accidentally gets summoned. He’s not happy about it.

The Tattooed Defeat by Sergeant_Tears - Rated T

Ghosts get tattoos whenever they defeat a new enemy. Danny surprisingly never got these. Until he did... but not as Phantom.

inviso-doodles by attu - Rated T

What are friends for if not making you internet famous?

Animals by Marsalias - Rated T

Most humans of Amity Park did not appreciate what Danny did for them. (The animals were another story.)

Side Effects by redrobin1989 - Rated T

Side effects of activating a ghost portal to another dimension while inside include: fatigue, nausea, vomiting, headache, tremors, hypothermia, loss of visibility and tangibility and ectoplasmic glowing. If left untreated, these symptoms may lead to death or permanent physiologic changes.

Proof of Identity by Clari_net23 - Rated G

Detective Harris just wants to find out who the ghost boy is.

"'Doctor, I'm a ghost. There's a reason I'm doing this in a morgue and not a regular clinic.'"

'Touche.'

Detective Harris felt the beginnings of a headache in her temple. All she wanted from this was his identity. She didn’t think it would be this much of a challenge when the chief brought up this assignment. "

#danny phantom fic recs #danny phantom #danny fenton #sam manson #tucker foley #veryace recs #ao3 fic recs #fanfic recs #ao3

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majorbaby · 1 year ago

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i think when considering Margaret and her much lauded 'character development' it's less about her developing from a bad person to a good person, but from a narrative device, as she was in MASH 1970, to a three-dimensional character. the former isn't inherently poor writing.

this happened deliberately as the show shifted from satirical plotlines that emphasized the moral bankruptcy of the systems that prop up the war machine to a show about how being in the war wore on the characters individually and changed them as people.

season 4 and onward focus more on individual character drama, highlighting the flaws and virtues of each character, their interiority, their changing relationships with one another and brings in their relationships with offscreen characters - most infamously, Peg and Erin Hunnicutt but also Dr. Pierce Senior, Radar's mother and uncle who eventually passes and Honoria Winchester. Even minor characters get at least one episode that focuses on some offscreen relationship, Mulcahy's sister Kathy and Klinger wife/ex-wife Laverne.

maybe with the (blessed) exception of Frank Burns, I think the function of all the characters changes from 1-3 to 4-11 as the show made this shift.

Trapper is a lancer. we get some glimpses into there being more to him, in Kim and Check-Up - but most of what we see is him performing a specific function, propping up Hawkeye, who in turn props up the messaging of the show. I would have loved to see Trapper's interiority explored more in the later years but I'm not mad about it missing in 1-3 - it's not about him getting "more", he got plenty in terms of what he was created to do. him having 'conflict' with Hawkeye isn't something that would've ever occurred to the writers at that time and you would never hear trapper say something like 'i can't divide myself emotionally' he doesn't have enough of an emotional self to divide.

when it comes to Hawkeye, in 1-3 i think the details of his life beyond what we see of him on screen are extraneous. hence the inconsistencies with his backstory, his sister, his mother, him being form vermont - this stuff just didn't matter back then. focusing on it now can be fun if you're trying to explore the character in fanwork, but the reason Hawkeye's sister (who i've affectioned named 'benjamina pierce') disappears is because they weren't really thinking too hard about her in the first place, you're not supposed to remember her and so the show assumes you won't.

Hawkeye writes home to his father but we don't learn a whole lot about Daniel Pierce at the time, he's only there for Hawkeye to narrate to, that doesn't mean Hawkeye doesn't love him, it's just that the writers don't intend for you to focus on their relationship until at least The Late Captain Pierce.

Other major developments wrt to Daniel happen much later on: he is retconned into being a doctor in the later years when the show wants to care about developing those details of Hawkeye's life and in season 10 we get Sons and Bowlers.

Hawkeye gets a little more character stuff than the rest of the cast because he's the protagonist but there's still a marked shift between 3 and 4, starting with his emotionally charged personal drama re: Trapper - before that, he does have moments where he emotes but it's always to fulfill the show's anti-establishment messaging: Yankee Doodle Doctor, Carry on Hawkeye and yes, even Dr. Pierce and Mr. Hyde. again, that doesn't mean we can't diagnose him with a laundry list of issues based on that episode when constructing headcanons but his mental state alone can't be divorced from the messaging at this point. "why does he do these things?" asks Henry at the end of Pierce/Hyde, and Trapper replies not that Hawkeye is damaged or hurting or broken (even though he may be all these things) but with the show's central thesis "he took this oath never to stand by and watch people die" - his breakdown directly ties back to the show's criticism of state violence. compare to Bless You Hawkeye, which might've taken place anywhere whenever Hawkeye smelled mouldy pond water.

so if even Hawkeye is more of a device than a character in the early years, what can we say for Margaret?

the Margaret character does her job. the hypocrisy of "fighting for peace" is paralleled perfectly in her relationship with Frank. these are two people who claim to be god-fearing, well-to-do, conservative Americans, but they engage in the same vices as Trapper and Hawkeye: drinking, promiscuity and scheming and worse, Frank and Margaret look down on others for it.

i get why people want something 'more' (really, something 'else) from Margaret and I'm glad we did eventually get that because it was sorely needed, but tbh i adore early Margaret and i think it's a little silly to call her a 'bad person' or 'underdeveloped' - she's just a villain clocking in.

similarly i don't think we're meant to reflect on Hawkeye/Trapper/Henry's philandering as assessments of their character so much as they are clear statements on traditionalism and sexual liberty. you can personally dislike whatever you want in a character but i think the context of the show airing in 1972 when attitudes towards sex, particularly female pleasure, were starting to finally loosen, is relevant.

some people want character drama from MASH and that's their preference, but character drama isn't inherently 'deeper' or 'more complex' than satire. on the contrary some of the writing is so technically strong in the early years, the jokes on-the-ball, the witty criticisms of American foreign policy and the traditional values that uphold it buried within objectively hilarious episodes like Tuttle (where they create 'the perfect American man' except that he's not real and make fools out of ranking officers while they're at it)... I'd argue that that's highly complex.

i don't see the point in getting hung up on the morals of a character who clearly intended to be a villain when judging whether or not they're a 'good' character or not. calling her 'flat' when they're all somewhat 'flat' because the show is not trying to get you overly invested in their personal lives seems unfair to me. same can be said for comparisons of Frank and Charles which are critical of Frank. or my most beloathed criticism: of Henry for being an 'incompetent CO' - that is a feature, not a bug.

criticisms of 'flat' characters in general are definitely valid, but imo only when those characters exist alongside nuanced characters who have rich interiority. since Margaret exists alongside Trapper and Frank, I don't think that critique is valid here. she actually gets a few solid moments where we get the sense that there may be more to her, in Aid Station and Carry On Hawkeye. compare that to episodes that frame her as being entirely sympathetic when she's been a terror to people she holds structural power over: The Nurses or the Birthday Girls - both good episodes in general, but it's another kind of flatness to present a character as being wholly sympathetic when they've turned around and done the very same thing that was done to them to others. just something to consider about how making Margaret 'more nuanced' actually glossed over some of her interesting complexities.

#sorry for the long Hawkeye tangent but i've been thinking about how even he is a narrative device early on #in contrast to how much i see his motivations/desires personalized in the early years #his pursuing sex for example is not meant to tell us that he's hypersexual (though again it's fine to read him that way)#it's meant to tell us he doesn't give a shit about getting married and having 2.5 kids #margaret meta #hawk meta #trapper meta #re: mash

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arisu-artnfics · 1 year ago

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“A trip to Paris” 2

Notes: Future art piece by: @k-beckerart on Tumblr. Preview art.

Chapter: 2/12 Previous Next (First). Versión en Español

Also on: A03 || FF || DeviantArt || Facebook.

Chapter 2: “Allies come in all forms”

It took a couple of days for the Fentons to calibrate the scanners as well as double and triple check that they were safe to use without hurting Danny. After that, Jack and Maddie worked diligently to create a stabilising agent to help Danielle. Danny couldn’t believe that they were finally going to have some closure with Dani and actually help her in the right way. Then, just as all their planning and preparations were coming together, it was time for Danny and Jazz to go back to school.

With the whole end-of-the-world thing, plus the investigation into Vlad, and the Fentons subsequent partnership with the FBI, suffice to say the kids had been allowed to take a couple of weeks off from school. This gave the young ghost hero and his family plenty of time to adjust to their new norm. Even though some people knew Danny's secret identity now, not everyone did and the family as well as the FBI preferred to keep it that way– both to give Danny some semblance of normalcy, and to prevent excitable members of the public from acting foolish.

The Casper High administration knew that because the family had been involved with the Disasteroid task force, the kids were approved for the time off ‘recommendation’ made by the government. The next Monday both kids would be returning to school. For Danny, that meant it was time to accept the fact that he was going to tell Mr. Lancer his secret.

Although the plan had been to keep Danny’s identity top secret, Maddie suggested that they at least tell Mr. Lancer. Not only was he the teacher that sent Danny to detention the most often, he was also the vice principal. As such, he had a big impact on Danny’s grades. Getting him on their side would surely be a big help.

Jazz wasn’t so sure about that, and Danny agreed. Lancer knowing wouldn't change the fact that he was still going to have to skip class to fight troublemaking ghosts all the time.

It was surprisingly Jack who reminded them that their parents were in fact ghost hunters. They could compare their information with Danny’s and update their techniques to hunt ghosts correctly, especially the ones that appeared during school hours. Maddie added that it was okay to ask for help and sharing some of the work would help Danny learn to manage his time better in a way that would aid him not only in school, but in life as well.

After a lot of back and forth, in the end even Jazz saw it as a good solution. When Danny told Sam and Tucker, at first they were sceptical of the plan, just like he had been, however, with a bit of explaining, they understood why it was a good idea. They knew their friend needed better time management skills after all.

Now, the night before the first day of school, the Fenton family was once again sitting at their kitchen table planning something. It always seemed like the best time for these conversations was over dinner.

“So, just to be clear,” Danny began his summary. “You guys are going to drive us to school in the morning so you can meet with Lancer after first period –which I do have with him. And if anybody asks why you’re hanging around the school, you’re going to say that you’re tracking ghostly activity, right?” “Yeah, that’s the plan, son. It’s that simple!” Jack replied confidently. “You know, you two still need to say that you and ‘Danny’ have finally decided to work together.” Jazz’s air quotes around her brother's name let their parents know she was specifically referring to Danny Phantom. “What are you talking about Jazz? I think just about the whole world knows that...” Danny trailed off when it hit him that she meant Phantom, not Fenton.

“Well, technically, they know that we as a family–and the rest of Amity Park, for that matter–worked with you, Little Brother. But Mom and Dad haven’t exactly said anything official about a permanent truce, or anything else really…” Jazz clarified. “I mean, the people that know, you know… they, well, they know that’s not entirely true, but it’s also not a lie… I mean, they are working with their son...”

“I see what you mean, darling, and you’re right…” Maddie rubbed her chin in thought. “We could mention it at the school before we meet with Mr. Lancer–if anyone asks, that is–that the Fentons are working permanently with the ghost boy. And once we explain your… situation to Mr. Lancer, well, he would understand why we were telling people now.”

They hadn’t thought about how it would look, working with Danny Phantom out of nowhere. They hadn’t thought they needed to make some sort of announcement, but they did. In order to keep people from wondering why, in order to keep Danny’s secret safe. “Your Mom is right! That would also help to keep your secret, well, secret… wait...” said Jack, getting confused with the whole conversation. Danny sighed, “I guess, you guys are right… but please… don’t overdo it… I can handle it, I have been handling all of it fine.” He was beginning to worry that if their parents allied themselves with him, they were going to be in danger, or something along those lines.

“Don’t worry Little Brother, I have anticipated the most likely questions that people might ask after they hear that our parents are working with Phantom and written them down on these cue cards,” at this she pulled a small stack of cards out of thin air and handed them to their parents, “as well as some pre-planned answers. Stick to these and you won’t overdo it.” “Oh, that’s great, Jazzy–pants!” said Jack, with a big smile. His children never ceased to amaze him with their ingenuity. He was so proud.

“We’ll read over these, don’t worry Jazz. And thank you,” Maddie added, smiling proudly as well. “Okay… I guess that’s it then,” said Danny feeling a bit defeated. There was nothing he could really do to dissuade his parents. “Yes, and now it’s getting late, so… kids, bedtime!” Maddie clapped her hands together with cheerful authority. The two teens nodded, said their respective ‘goodnights,’ and went upstairs.

Maddie could see that Danny was still nervous about tomorrow, and she didn’t blame him. Since finding out the truth and helping with the cure for Dani, they had gained a better understanding of how difficult things had been for their son. None of it was easy, but now they had a better idea of what it meant to be a halfa. Although Danny and his parents had learned a lot more about him and what he could do, they also knew that just like Vlad, Danny would continue to grow and develop more powers. Powers that they now knew they were going to be prepared and ready to help him with. After all, they had already managed to isolate Danny’s ghostly signature and alter their weapons so they wouldn't affect him, or Danielle for that matter. Now they only needed to wait for the weekend to finally find Dani.

While Maddie and Jack cleaned up from dinner, the kids met in Danny’s room. Jazz knew her little brother well enough to realise he wasn’t going to just tell someone that he was scared, even though he was. Not that Lancer wouldn’t believe it, but of how he would react. For that reason, for the day that awaits him tomorrow, and the fact that the family had agreed to postpone finding Danielle for the weekend, and knowing that Danny probably wouldn’t sleep well tonight, she went to her brother’s room. There Danny confirmed Jazz’s suspicions, she gently coaxed him into talking out his worries and she did her best to reassure him. Jazz promised that her cue cards would work and that he should give Mr. Lancer more credit. Even though he doesn’t always seem fair –showing favouritism to the football players or occasionally turning a blind eye to Dash’s bullying– she knew that he had helped Danny with his grades, and cared about him as his student; being a half ghost wouldn’t change that.

When Jack and Maddie finally went upstairs to get ready for bed, they overheard part of their children’s conversation. While Maddie was a bit upset with herself for not noticing just how nervous Danny was, she was grateful that Jazz had. Jack also noticed that some comfort was being passed around and he felt a surge of pride that his kids had become such kind and sensitive people.

When the next day arrived, the Fentons set their plan into motion. Jack and Maddie drove their kids to school, right on schedule, although their plans took a slight deviation after that. Rather than waiting in the parking lot with the excuse of ghost hunting, they ended up exchanging insurance information with some of the other parents. As usual, Jack’s driving was… enthusiastic. Sorting things out took them the whole first period, and by the time they got to Mr. Lancer’s office, Danny and Jazz were already there waiting for them.

“Good morning Mr. and Mrs. Fenton,” Mr. Lancer greeted them. “So glad you could join us.” “Morning!” Maddie and Jack replied at the same time, sharing a smile at the coincidence. “You two said that you needed to discuss something with me, but I’m still not entirely sure why these two,” at this Mr. Lancer gestured to where Jazz and Danny were sitting in front of his desk, “need to be here. All Jasmine would tell me is that it's a family matter, and Daniel here seems to be on the edge of a nervous breakdown.”

He looked back and forth between the kids and the parents appraisingly before closing the door to his office and offering them a seat. With the whole family finally seated in front of Mr. Lancer's desk, Maddie began the explanation, “Well, Jazz is right, this is a family affair. And it’s about Danny...” She checked on her son who seemed to be calming down now that his parents were here. “I see...” said Mr. Lancer, pausing at his desk. “Is this because the school year is about to finish and you’re worried about his grades?” He glanced suspiciously between Danny and his parents. It wouldn't be the first time he’d seen a family rally together to help save a struggling student from being held back a year.

“What? No!” Maddie spluttered. “Well, yes… we are worried about it, but that’s not why we’re here today.” It wasn’t hard to understand why he’d come to that conclusion. It was in part why they were having this conversation, after all. “Please, Mr. Lancer, wait until after my parents finish. Then you’ll understand what this is all about.” Jazz pleaded, hands clasped in front of her. “It’s all right, Jazz.” Danny murmured, giving her arm a calming squeeze before directing his gaze to his teacher “I kinda figured Lancer would bring that up… I mean… this whole year has been...” “Unprecedented, nightmarish, messy, crazy, ect., ect.?” Mr. Lancer supplied with a raised eyebrow, finally taking a seat at his desk. He seemed like he just caught up with the fact that he was still standing up unnecessarily.

“Yeah. All that. And ghostly…” Danny muttered the last part under his breath, avoiding eye contact with Lancer.

Maddie cleared her throat softly, “Mr. Lancer, if I may… please?” She had noticed that Danny was starting to feel bad and decided it was time to intervene. His grades were as important to him as fighting ghosts, even though it might not look like that from the outside. “Yes, of course, Mrs. Fenton. By all means, please tell me what this is all about.” Mr. Lancer had also noticed Danny’s change in attitude and decided to focus more on the parents, mainly on Maddie seeing as she was the one taking the lead. Jack sat next to her in silent support, but his worry for Danny was plain to see. “Well...” Maddie began, glancing back at Danny who nodded.

Mr. Lancer took notice of the exchange and was about to comment when Maddie finally spoke, interrupting his thoughts.

“Danny is ‘Danny Phantom.’” she said. “What?” Mr. Lancer spluttered, caught off guard. “What in the name of the Scarlet Pimpernel! That doesn’t make any sense… What’s really going on here? I would have believed something like this from young Daniel…” he stopped, noticing that Maddie seemed to sincerely believe what she was saying.

“Danny,” the boy murmured under his breath. He was a bit annoyed that Mr. Lancer still called him ‘Daniel,’ even in moments like this. Especially in moments like this. “It’s Danny.”

Mr. Lancer looked back and forth between Maddie and her son. He began to worry that something else might be happening, something that the family either doesn’t know about, or doesn’t know how to explain. Because although his student being a ghostly superhero would explain a lot, it was impossible. Wasn’t it?

“Just show him,” Jazz suggested in a loud whisper. She knew that Mr. Lancer would believe him if only he saw it for himself. Knowledge of halfas was global now, so it wouldn’t be hard to make the connection. If they just told him without showing him, he might just think Danny was faking it, using Vlad’s revelation as inspiration. Danny looked up at his parents who gave him an encouraging nod. “...Fine.” He sounded a bit annoyed to be put in this situation, but proceeded to stand up anyway.

“What are you doi–” Mr. Lancer began to ask. He was getting worried as to why it seemed like everyone knew something he didn’t, because show him what? “Going ghost,” Danny quietly said his catchphrase, transforming into Danny Phantom in a bright flash of light. Mr. Lancer blinked the spots from his eyes, using the silence that followed to process his thoughts. It would seem that their former Mayor wasn’t the only halfa in Amity Park. He had anticipated a few of the more creative kids would probably play pretend at being a ghost and a human at the same time, but never in his wildest dreams could he have anticipated one of his students actually being one.

A single, quiet, “Oh” was all the stunned teacher managed to say. “Are, are you okay, Mr. Lancer?” Danny prompted, changing back into Fenton and retaking his seat. Maybe that had been a bit too much for him after all.

“You know what Mr. Fenton, that makes a lot of sense...” Mr. Lancer finally said, looking across his desk at Danny. He gave the boy a small, sad, smile, because it did make a lot of sense. “Wait, what?” Danny said, confused. He hadn’t really been expecting that reaction, even though he had assumed that Vlad’s precedent might either help or hurt his situation.

“Well, it does… The skipping school every time there’s a ghost attack, the slacking on your homework, the sleeping in class… All starting around the same time as the ghosts showed up, it makes perfect sense. I’m assuming your whole family knows, and I hope that your parents didn’t know until recently...” Mr. Lancer gave Jack and Maddie a stern look. Just thinking about the hundreds, if not thousands, of times that he saw the Fentons hunting Phantom… it couldn’t be possible, right?

“Of course, we didn’t!” said Maddie quickly. Neither she or Jack wanted this to be like their interrogation with the FBI, they didn’t want to have to defend themselves again. They love their kids, and would do anything to protect them. If they had known it all from the beginning, maybe the thing they needed protection from wouldn’t have been them. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. The possibility of losing their kids to child services like the FBI threatened them with at the start had been a rude awakening. “We would never have knowingly hunted our son,” said Jack, the normally jovial man deathly serious. He felt the same as Maddie, remembering how bad the interview with the Feds was, especially at the beginning. “Oh, for the love of… you know what, never mind.” Mr. Lancer shook his head defeatedly. “I’m not going to think about it. I am assuming that isn’t all?”

“You’re right about that,” Maddie sighed, her face serious. “Do you remember when the FBI interviewed our family and practically everyone around us?” She knew she had to say something about it regardless, he would need to understand the conditions that he was bound by now.

Mr. Lancer nodded, allowing her to continue her explanation.

“Well, they know. About Danny... Mr. Lancer, this is highly classified information we’ve just shared with you.” Her eyes pierced his, impressing on him the gravity of the situation. “They said we should keep it secret, only those who already knew and no one else.” “Oh. I see…” Mr. Lancer’s voice was solemn with understanding. The situation was more serious than what he had originally thought. “So, your friends, Samantha and Tucker...” he raised a questioning brow at Danny. “They know. They’ve known since the beginning, actually.” Danny said with a small shrug. “Oh, and Valerie knows… Valerie Gray. She found out while we were working on the intangibility transfer device. Well, while her father was working on it, but you know...” he shrugged again.

“I see…” Mr. Lancer nodded. “I understand.” His hunch had been correct, Danny’s friends had been covering for him in class for a while now, and he finally knew why. The mention of Miss Gray was a bit of a surprise, but it made sense if something had happened to reveal Danny’s identity while she and her father had been working on the device. That also meant that the other people who already know are those who were involved with the task force in Antarctica.

“With all that being said, Mr. Lancer,” Maddie called his attention back to her, “while we’re here, we would like your help with Danny’s schedule. I’m sure you’ve noticed that his time management skills could use some improvement.”

“I can agree with that,” Mr. Lancer said, giving Danny a faux stern look.

At this, Jack chimed in, “Now that we know what’s going on, we can help fight the ghosts that appear during school hours. We’ll probably still need to pull him into the field some, though, especially while we’re still getting used to things.”

“Very well, the three of us can continue to discuss a plan, but,” Mr. Lancer glanced up at the clock on the wall, “I think it’s time for Jazz and Danny to go back to class.”

He began to pull some papers out of a drawer in his desk while the Fentons stood up from their chairs. “All right then, I guess we should get going…” Danny said, stretching his arms above his head. He was feeling very relieved that Mr. Lancer was taking it so well and seemed eager to help. He couldn’t stop his smile as he addressed his teacher, “Thank you, Mr. Lancer.” “Why, whatever for?” he asked with a smile. Mr. Lancer wasn’t exactly sure as to why Danny suddenly seemed more relaxed, but he couldn’t be more proud. He knew that a topic like this one must be hard for the whole family, especially Danny. “Never mind, just… Thank you.” he was still smiling as he slung his backpack over his shoulder.

“Of course,” said Mr. Lancer. He handed Danny and Jazz the papers he had just signed, “Oh, don’t forget these, your hall passes. Just give them to your teachers and your tardiness will be excused. And if there’s anything else I can do… just let me know.” “Oh, right… Um, thank you,” Danny stuttered out, caught off guard by the kind offer.

Maddie, Jack, and Jazz watched the scene unfold, the three unable to keep the grins off their faces, they knew that all Danny needed was a little understanding and guidance. The three of them exchanged a glance, silently agreeing to each help him in their own ways.

“Let’s go, Little Brother,” Jazz looped her arm through Danny’s and pulled him towards the door, making sure they both had their hall passes. “And thanks again, Mr. Lancer! For everything! Bye, Mom! Bye, Dad!”

“Bye, Sweety!” Maddie called back, “We’ll see you at home later!”

Jack waved, voice booming as he called out, “Bye, kiddos!”

After the kids had gone, the three adults returned to their seats, they had planning to do, after all. Once sitting, Mr. Lancer pulled out a notebook and together they started brainstorming different ways to help Danny, both with school matters as well as ghost fighting activities–because they all knew he wasn’t going to stop anytime soon. They began with an easy schedule that could help Danny better make use of his time. At one point, Lancer proposed to let some of the other teachers know about Danny’s secret, but the Fentons reminded him that the information was highly classified. It’s not the sort of thing you can just go around telling people. They had to fill out so much paperwork with the FBI in order to get approval to tell just him. That’s how Mr. Lancer knew that the issue was very serious. He asked how the FBI was keeping it a secret, but all the Fentons could say was that it was classified, and no, they didn’t know either.

They had been at it for quite a long time when they heard the unmistakable sounds of a fight in the hallway. Mr. Lancer rushed to the door, the Fentons hot on his heels, thankfully, because this wasn’t your average school fight, this was a ghost fight. The three adults arrived at the scene just in time to see none other than Danny Phantom flung into a row of lockers.

Jack and Maddie decided that it was about time they joined in the hunting, that was a big part of their plan, after all. They really needed to be more alert to ghost activity during school hours so Danny could concentrate more in class. Class that Danny certainly wasn’t present for right now, for obvious reasons.

While his parents had stayed to talk with Mr. Lancer, Danny had made his way to his next class. Everything was going well, that is until Danny’s ghost sense went off. He had run out of the classroom, calling a lame excuse to his teacher on the way.

Danny found the ghost in the computer lab, it was none other than Technus. Danny had lost count of which ‘version’ he was supposed to be at this point, and he didn’t really care. Danny only knew that he was up to no good.

Every time Danny fought Technus, he boasted that his plan was better than the last and that he wouldn’t be shouting it out, and each time he failed. This time wasn’t any different. They started in the computer lab, but Danny managed to lure the ghost outside, away from all the technology in the building, only denting a few lockers on the way. Once they were on the lawn, Danny was able to create a distraction and it was in that moment that his parents attacked Technus, weakening him enough that Danny could capture him in the Fenton Thermos.

While the Fentons joined the fight, ecto-guns blazing, it was time for Mr. Lancer to play his part. Danny had probably used an oldie, but a goodie: the Toilet Excuse to get out of class, but it wouldn’t be enough for how long this fight was going to take. He knew which teacher Danny had this period, so he just needed to find a place near that classroom to wait for him and walk him personally back to class. Perhaps he could say that he’d needed the boy’s help carrying some extra textbooks or something. Danny would likely need a place to transform back–something that it would take Mr. Lancer a bit of time to get used to–but he did manage to find a good spot for that.

Once their battle was over, Danny handed the thermos to his parents so they could put Technus back in the Ghost Zone. In turn, his parents gave Danny encouraging nods and proud smiles. It was nice to be appreciated, but Danny really needed to get back to class. He was surprised to find Mr. Lancer waiting for him just inside the school to walk Danny back to his class, fake thanking him for helping with something in his office. When they reached the classroom, Lancer mentioned to Danny’s teacher that he had found Danny just outside the bathroom, and remembered something that he needed help with and Danny was perfect for the job. That explanation to Danny’s teacher was enough to avoid detention again, but it gained him snickers from his classmates. While being the butt of a joke wasn’t ideal, it was a whole lot better than detention. This whole situation might just work out after all.

Danny took a seat at his desk and decided to concentrate as much as possible on today’s lesson. Sam and Valerie tried to ask what happened, but Danny only gave them a quick thumbs up and a smile to let them know it went well. He would give them a more detailed explanation after class or during their lunch break. It was times like these that they really missed Tucker, but they knew that with him being the mayor, private tutoring was the best option for him.

At least for the rest of the day Danny wouldn’t need to worry about getting detention or fighting ghosts. He knew that his parents were going to be patrolling around the school, Lancer had his back at school, and the ghost of the day-or at least for the time being- was trapped in the Fenton Thermos. He could just relax with his girlfriend and Valerie, and he would get to do a video call with Tucker during the lunch break.

Things were looking good, after all this time, even though it had been a lot of new things to get used to. Danny never thought –even when he had seen it before– that it would feel so good telling people his secret. Of course, he wasn’t just going to go around telling people left and right, it had to be to select people. Letting Mr. Lancer into the fold had been more strategy than anything else, but it was still nice to have him on the team.

The day ended without further incident. Team Phantom enjoyed talking with their mayor friend during lunch. They caught him up with the situation at the school and told him how Lancer had reacted to the news. Tucker, likewise, updated them with the news of his personal proposal.

Because the last mayor had been a crazy halfa, and his teenage ghost hunters were fired and dismissed, the whole town had been under siege by ghost attacks. Something needed to be done, and it was going to take a lot of work for the city to recover. Tucker, as the mayor selected after a major disaster like this, would have to step up to the plate. It would be a full time job, with no time to go to school. So, the rest of the politicians and personnel of the city council decided that the best course of action was that he should have private tutors, since he hadn't graduated from high school just yet. Tucker, since winning the election and realising, or rather learning, that he wouldn’t be able to go to Casper high any longer, began working on a proposal. It was as follows: he would serve as mayor until the next election, at which point he would leave his position until later in life, should he wish to run for re-election. With his parents' help, Tucker had proposed his return to Casper high in the next school year to the city council. They had approved it, but in the meantime, Tucker had to pass his classes and learn more about politics, especially those of Amity Park. He was allowed to communicate with his old friends only during breaks, however his private tutors made sure that his schedule was similar to what he was used to. Those tutors also knew about his friends and about Danny’s secret identity, but they wouldn't say a word, not only because they got a ‘friendly’ warning from the FBI, but because they had always considered him a hero, even before he had become recognized as both a local and global hero by everyone else.

Danny Fenton was happy with how everything seemed to be working out. His parents and Mr. Lancer had come up with a good plan to help him out during school hours. They helped him to create a better way to manage his time after school that not only would allow him to keep fighting ghosts when needed, but to also just be a teen. He would have time to take care of his responsibilities, homework and chores and the like, as well as to have fun with his friends. Danny never thought that all he needed was a little help with time management. His grades were already improving, and with the rest of the school year to go, he knew he would pass his classes.

Just like that, the time flew by and the week turned into the weekend. It was finally time to look for Danielle. To be continued :D :D

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aprocessionofthoughts · 1 year ago

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You Look Awful

whumptober2023 day 26- 'you look awful' fandom- Danny phantom TW- none summary- Valerie and Danny have a group project

ao3 whumptober23 masterlist part 3 of DA

Today was thankfully a good day, with minimal discomfort. And Danny took that as a sign that school would also go well. Of course he was wrong.

“And for your midterm, you will be working with a partner to create a presentation on an twentieth century author.” said Mr. Lancer.

Danny looked over at Tucker, Sam was in the Brit Lit class, but then Mr. Lancer continued.

“For this project I will be assigning partners so there are no,” he gave several people including Danny a pointed look, “shenanigans.”

Danny waited impatiently for his name to be called. Please not Dash. Please not Dash. Please not Dash. Please not Dash.

“And Mr. Fenton you will be partnered with Ms. Gray.”

Danny felt like slamming his head onto the table, but was just barely able to resist. He took it back. He’d rather be with Dash. Valerie was usually alright, but she still hated his ghostly guts and that sometimes made conversations uncomfortable. At least with the bully Danny wouldn’t have to deal with someone ranting about the ‘evil ghost boy’ and how his parents were right to try and destroy Phantom.

Valerie sat down in the desk beside him.

“So, what author do you want to do?”

Danny shrugged, then gave in and laid his head on his desk. “I don’t care. I’ll go with whatever you want.”

Val sighed.

“Can you at least help me look for one?”

Danny sighed but pulled out his computer and began looking up authors, beside him Valerie was looking the same.

Danny’s left hand twinged and he grimaced, rubbing at it with his right hand.

“You good?”

“Yeah, my hand just cramped.” Danny lied, not looking at her.

“Look, no offense, but you look awful.”

Danny rolled his eyes. “That is, like, the opposite of non offensive.”

Valerie huffed. “I just mean it looks like you haven’t slept in days. You stay up all night playing video games?”

“Something like that.” Danny said. “What about this author, he liked writing ghost stories.”

Valerie scowled, but allowed the topic change. “What’s the name?”

“Robert Aickman. It says on Wiki that he was part of something called the Ghost Club. that sounds right up your alley.”

“What?” Valerie said, suspicious.

“Because we live in Amity.” Danny deflected.

Valerie stared at him for a moment before sighing. “Fine. We can do that.”

“Cool. When do you want to meet?”

“I work today after school, but I can do tomorrow. Meet at the library?”

“Sure.”

#whumptober #no.26 #you look awful #danny phantom #Danny fenton #valerie gray #fanfic #whumptober 2023

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higgidigs · 9 months ago

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Happy VCE @46-reasonable-hamsters

Fic bellow and also on Ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/53797081 title: A Teacher's Unexpected Revelation Summary: Mr. Lancer knew that this time he was going to have to call home, Danny had been missing class too often for him to be able to just excuse. But maybe it turns out that there's a good reason for all of his absences.

I really hope you enjoy your @valentines-core-exchange gift

William Lancer stood in front of the mirror in the teacher’s room trying his best to look put together. The radio in the teacher’s lounge was broadcasting another story about a ghost fight across town, noticing that it sounded more violent than normal. Selfishly he was grateful that for once it had happened far from the school and that the students would be safe, and that they would actually get to have a normal class. He felt that they had far too many interruptions from the constant ghost fights, and all of his students were being negatively affected by it, and that a number of students behaviour had completely changed when the ghost attacks had become more frequent.

William walked into his classroom taking his seat at his desk pulling out his notes for today’s class, as student’s started to file into the room in the time between bells. Most of the class had arrived and were talking with their friends when the bell went off. “Alright everyone settle down.” William said looking across the room, marking off his attendance while the class found their seats. He marked down that Daniel Fenton was late once again. He left the spot next to his name, knowing that Daniel had a habit of running into class late. He knew that this time he would would have to call home this time after so many consecutive absences and tardies. He wasn’t looking forward to it, anytime the Fenton parents. He was sure that they did actually care about their kids, but their way of showing it had always seemed particularly dramatic, and prone to collateral damage.

William worked through his lecture trying to push the students into paying attention, pointedly calling on some of the students who appeared to be attempting to sleep through class. When the bell rang at the end of the class, that Mr. Fenton had still not arrived, and that his friends seemed to be whispering to each other also looking towards Mr. Fenton’s desk as they packed up their belongings before leaving the room. William sighed softly, if his friends didn’t know why he wasn’t around then it likely wasn’t going to be for any simple reason. The rest of his classes were uneventful, there was the normal teenage drama that came with working in a high school, but it was all familiar to him after years of teaching, instead of the unique brand of crazy that came with working in Amity.

At the end of the day after almost all of the students had left the school, his day was finally over, and he could finally go home and relax, as soon as he dropped off his attendance at the office. Walking past the janitor closet, William could hear someone on the other side. Knowing that at this time of day the janitors would have gone come, he assumed that he was about to be breaking up a make-out session as he opened the door. “The Count of Monte Cristo” William exclaimed, on the other side of the door was Daniel Fenton was leaning against the shelves, eyes glazed over a large scratch down his cheek, blood dripping down onto his shirt.

Danny suddenly sat up stiffly blinking before attempting to sound casual “Oh. Mr. Lancer, I wasn’t expecting to see you in here.” He said slowly stepping away from the wall the blood dripping down his face, but his shirt looked bloodier than would be explained by just that one injury.

William took a few steps closer “Are you okay what happened? How did you get in here?” he said concerned that Danny didn’t seem to be trying to do anything to hide the bleeding, as if he didn’t even realize just how much blood there was.

Danny shifted “Oh, it’s nothing, I just got hurt and was looking for a place to hide out, must have fallen asleep.” he said watching Mr. Lancer imploringly as if he was desperate to be believed.

“I should take you to the hospital.” Mr. Lancer said, “And we can call your parents to let them know that you’re alright, so they don’t worry.”

“No! Don’t” Danny interrupted eyes looking crazed taking a step back stumbling back into the wall knocking over a broom. He hissed softly and bit down on his lip trying to hide the pain. “I’m fine.”

“Mr. Fenton, don’t take me for an idiot I can tell that you’re not fine.” William said shaking his head pulling out his phone, a little bit worried about who could have done this to him. “I have to call your parents”

“Please don’t call anyone, I’m fine, nobody needs to know.” Danny said sounding desperate.

That response had alarm bells ringing in William’s head. He knew that he didn’t like having to deal with the Fentons. That they had a reputation for being eccentric, and overly enthusiastic about chasing after ghosts, but he had never thought that they might do anything to make either of children react like that. He knew that their actions had often embarrassed the two teens, but they had also seemed to deeply care about and want to protect them. But then again how people acted in public never guaranteed how they acted in private. The Fenton parents had built a strong reputation for themselves as eccentrics, who deeply cared for each other and their kids, but thinking about it how well did anyone in town actually know them. He couldn’t think of anyone in town who would actually describe themselves as friends with them, or who he would actually believe truly knew what went on in that house.

Danny had been coming to class with minor injuries often enough that William had stopped noting it. He had thought that it was just bad luck getting caught up in ghost attacks, combined with the fact that he had been a target of bullying. William knew that he could have done more to protect him. But the school had needed the football team and the associated funding that having a successful sports team gave them. He could even justify his choices to himself he had seen before when a teacher tried to step in and it would backfire, and the bullying would be intensified, often taken out of public view, at least in the open William thought he knew could keep an eye on how bad it was. But if this wasn’t the first time that Danny had been hurt like this, he wasn’t sure how much else he could have missed.

It had been a long time since William had had to face a possible abuse situation, and all he could think is how little the training he had gotten, had actually prepared him for this, being faced with the beaten and bloodied form of one of his students. He had gotten used to the injuries that had become common from the ghost attacks, but that was kids being hurt by what felt like a force of nature, this was a kid possibly being hurt by his parents.

“If you’re just going to stand there, I could probably use some help with this he said gesturing to his cut.” Danny said clearing his throat shifting his weight between his feet looking uncomfortable. “It’s just a bit hard to get a good view of it”

William swallowed thickly “That’s a bit beyond my normal first aid skills.” he said slowly putting his phone away, deciding that for now he would focus on immediately helping the boy in front of him, and start filing all the paperwork when he got home.

“It’s okay, I can walk you through it, I’ve done that before.” Danny said with a shrug.

William took a deep breath, hating the thought that Danny would have had to become proficient at walking someone through taking care of his injuries, wondering just how long had this been going on that he’d missed. “Alright” he said regretting not calling an ambulance.

“I have a full first aid kid in my locker.” Danny said.

“Why do you have a full first aid kit?” William asked a little bit surprised, having expected to have to go to the nurse’s office.

“For situations like this, it’s easier, and a lot fewer questions.” Danny said with a shrug.

William sighed softly thinking about what that implied about Danny’s expectations of what he would need to have access of while at school. He carefully helped him to Danny’s locker, watching as he opened it looking to take a look at what he was keeping in there. He saw what looked like a silver thermos, that had reminded him a little bit of one of the weapons he had seen Phantom use, as Danny pulled out what looked like a battered well used first aid kid, with worrying red and green stains on it.

William straightened up taking a deep breath, “Alright let me get a closer look.” he said gently reaching out noticing just how gruesome the wound was, noticing that it was deeper than it looked, trying to push aside his instinctual reaction as he gently tried to clean Danny’s wound with the antiseptic from the first aid kit. Danny stood there barely reacting, making William feel horrible, just how used to pain Danny had to be that he didn’t react to the pain. After wiping away the blood Lancer looked back into the first aid kit, trying to figure out what he would need to use to close the wound.

“I just need a band-aid” Danny said quickly. William looked a little bit skeptical, it differently looked worse than what a band-aid could deal with, but decided not to argue with it.

“And are there any others?” William asked giving Danny the chance to tell him for himself, when Danny looked like he was going to deny it, “I could see the way you’re holding yourself, don’t try to hide it.”

Danny flushed slightly moving to pull off his shirt, which Lancer noticed along with the bloodstains he had noticed it was also stained with green, just like the first aid kit had been, maybe the Fenton parents had dragged their son into being more involved with ghost hunting than he had realized. It would still be a situation that Danny should be removed and kept safe from but, it was better than the thought that it could be his parents hurting him directly. But those hopes were dashed when he saw Danny’s body. He was covered in scars, of varying ages, proving that this wasn’t just one bad injury that this had to be normal for him. But then he noticed the fresh slash along his side, remembering how negatively he had reacted the first time at the suggestion of the hospital William knew that he would have to be careful. “This looks like it would need stitches.” he said hoping that Danny would agree, and they could make sure that he was somewhere safe tonight.

“Yeah I know.” Danny said nonchalantly, as if getting injured bad enough to need stitches was to be expected.

“And you’re still comfortable with me doing them?” William asked carefully.

“Considering my choices right now seem to between that and the hospital, I’m going to pick you. Don’t need more people asking questions about this.” Danny grumbled.

William frowned slightly, he knew that he didn’t have a choice about not involving anyone when he knew that one of his students was being hurt, but at least for now he could help his student, make sure that he felt safe, and that he wasn’t going to get an infection. “Alright” he said as he started to clean the wound, noticing, that there was something off about it, beyond the fact that there shouldn’t be an injury like that on one of his student's. At first he wondered if he was wrong about just how fresh the wound was, maybe infection had already started to set in, but the longer that he looked at it he started realizing that the deepest part of the wounds, it looked like there was something neon holding parts of his flesh together. Then it all clicked together in William’s mind, this was something that he was familiar with, this was something that anyone in Amity would recognize, just not normally from inside someone.

William pulled his hands back trying to make sense of things, “What happened” he asked not sure how to ask how he had gotten ectoplasm so deep into his wound, without it filling the entire wound.

Danny frowned slightly “What do you mean, I just got hurt, if you’re not going to I can just stitch myself up.” he said.

“You have ectoplasm in your body.” William said pointedly he knew that ectoplasm didn’t belong in the human body.

That seemed to wake Danny up and he started slowly backing up looking like he was going to run “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” he said obviously lying.

William took a deep breath “I wasn’t done come back, and I’ll finish stitching you up.” that this wasn’t just him having been caught in the splash zone of a ghost fight. This was something more, giving a different colour to his refusal to visit a hospital or letting his parents know.

“You’re not going to tell them?” Danny asked voice small.

“Teachers are not required to share information about their student’s identities with their parents.” William said, knowing that normally meant not sharing if a student was dating somebody of the same gender, or if they had been going by a different name at school and not something like this, not that he was even really sure what this was at this point.

Danny’s eyes shone with relief “Thank you” he breathed out as if he couldn’t believe that something like that could be possible.

William carefully went back to cleaning Danny’s wound watching as Danny seemed to relax even more as he did. He paused once the wound was clean staring at the first aid kid, pausing looking over it.

“You going to get to the stitches?” Danny asked sounding more confident than he normally did when talking with adults, making him wonder just how much how Danny acted at school was an act to hide whatever secret that he thought William had discovered. “I can do it at this point if you’re not comfortable it’s not that hard to reach.”

“Moby Dick, Mr. Fenton, that’s not what I meant.” William said thinking there was something familiar about the way that Danny was acting.

Danny shrugged “It’s fine.” he said pulling out some of the Fenton Fishing Line threading it through a needle.

William frowned “You should be using actual sutures, not fishing wire.” he said looking appalled “Is this how you normally deal with your injuries?” he asked wondering if that was why some of the scars looked so bad.

“Yeah well if I don’t use something like this then they’ll end up just falling out when I phase through something, never got the hang of having them go intangible at the right moment.” Danny said with a shrug.

William just looked at him for a moment trying to figure out what Danny could have meant by that, before Danny broke out laughing. “Man, you know I never thought about what it would be like to actually talk to an adult about this kind of thing, and not need to worry about them deciding to try to tear me apart ‘molecule by molecule’ “ he said in a voice mocking what his parents often shouted after Phantom, “or if you’re going to try to find some other weird experiments to try to do on me. It actually feels really nice.”

“Yes well I always say if student's have something they need to talk to me about they can.” William said automatically before his brain finally caught up with what exactly Danny had said “You’re actually Phantom.” he said the realization crashing over him in waves, that’s where he recognized the way Danny was speaking from, it was the way Phantom talked when he bantered with the ghosts.

Danny frowned looking at him a sudden wave of horror crossing over his face, “You didn’t realize?” he said “But the stuff you said about keeping my identity a secret, what other identity were you talking about?” he asked.

William stared at him swallowing back an actual curse word, “Fu.. Fahrenheit 451, I don’t think I understood exactingly, how accurate the concept of it being a separate identity was.” This was horrifying, he had known that Phantom had looked like a teenager, one the age of his students, but he had assumed that was just an appearance, not a reality. This meant that Phantom actually was a teenager, that the ghost hero who got into the violent fights to take out the ghosts that attacked the town, the ghosts that were too strong for even the professional ghost hunters to get rid of was actually a teenager. Then he realized what that actually meant about Danny, it meant that Daniel Fenton was a ghost. Ghosts weren’t alive, one of his students had died and he didn’t even realize.

He thought back to when the ghosts had first shown up, it had been early in the school year, and it seemed like Phantom had been there from the beginning. How long had Danny been Phantom, did William ever actually teach Danny while he was alive, or had he already been dead when he first sat down in his classroom.

Danny flinched back looking panicked.

“I still won’t tell anyone.” William said gently, this time meaning it, who could he tell, this was no longer something that he could report through the normal channels. No matter how much he wished that reporting this like a normal case of abuse would still help Danny, he knew that all it would be doing would be tossing him from the frying pan into to the fire. The situation he was in fighting ghosts was bad, but letting the government discover the truth about Phantom, would just leave Danny in more danger, and he wasn’t sure how the Fenton parents finding out would go. He had been so sure that they loved their kids, but even before knowing the truth he had been concerned that their hatred of ghosts, would overshadow their love of their kids, and he didn’t think that he was ready to be the one to put that to the test, without guaranteeing that Danny had a legal safe place to go if it went poorly.

Danny looked thankful “Thanks”

William nodded “I should probably update today’s attendance for you to being an excused absence” he said with a sigh.

Danny frowned slightly “Wait you’d do something like that?”

“Now I know where you are, and you, have had enough absences that it now means if they’re not otherwise explained we have to contact your parents. “William explained. “I’d imagine that right now you’d wish to avoid that.”

Danny looked up at him surprised “You’d do something like that for me?” he asked.

“Now this isn’t a pass on you being allowed to just skip class when you want. But for today, I’m not going to call your parents. But we will need to have a discussion about how to handling this in the long term.” William said, knowing that he couldn’t just continue letting one of his student's continually skip class and risk his life, but at the same time he knew how the town likely did need Phantom, or somebody to do more to take care of the ghosts. “Who else knows?”

Danny shifted slightly “My friends, and Jazz” he said trailing off for a moment as if debating saying something more “And the ghosts” he said rubbing the back of his neck.

William nodded stiffly, “So no other adults?” he asked, thinking about the responsibility of harbouring this secret, and the challenges and dangers that would lay ahead. “Alright, then we’ll manage this here for now but we need to address the long term issues, you can’t keep getting injured like this without proper medical attention.”

“you know why I can’t, you manged to figure it out, and you’re an English teacher, an actual doctor would figure it out way faster.” Danny pointed out.

William cringed slightly “Yes but you can’t continue to just ignore your injuries. Or your schoolwork, as much as you have been.” he said firmly. “We’ll figure this out, but we need to find a way to handle both parts of your identity, you’re still Daniel Fenton, and you can’t just ignore that to be Phantom.”

Danny shifted “I’m not trying to, just people need Phantom, they don’t need Fenton.” he said softly.

“That’s not true, both sides of you are important.” William said knowing that this was likely going to be a discussion that they would have to have many times before Danny would actually believe him. That his role had expanded beyond being responsible for Daniel’s academic success, but now he was also responsible for his secret and well-being. The scars that crisscrossed his body spoke to a story of battles fought and the challenges of leading a double life. He was determined that he would be there for both sides of Danny, the struggling student and the maligned hero.

#Valentine's Core Exchange 2024 #danny phantom #my fic

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madametamma · 2 years ago

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Sam is her middle name. She HATES her first name and will throw hands with anyone who uses it. Her parents laugh off the idea of letting her legally change it.

She could go by a nickname but a nickname is going to prompt questions of “What’s your real name?” and she knows that there will be some people and some settings where they will just refuse to call her by a nickname. Mr, Lancer for example would never refer to one of his students so informally.

But a middle name is still a legal name and no one would suspect that it’s not her first.

#I was thinking of something like:#Tiffany Samantha Manson #Angelica Samantha Manson #Cornelia Samantha Manson #Petunia Samantha Manson #Please share your ideas #Also the nicknames she tried to make work for a period of time:#Stormbringer #Darkness #Raven #Chaos #DP #danny phantom theory #Sam Manson #Danny phantom

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rhynerd · 1 year ago

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Ahoy-hoy (this was the techiest greeting I could think of at this hour)! It has become time for Rhynerd to once again share a part of their project where they take lancer memes from @vexwerewolf and gives them a voice. Specifically his own, but in the style of LoadingReadyRun's ever-baffling Spokesman character. If this is your first time coming across one of these, I hope this paragraph has brought you up to speed. If you are somebody who has been with me for multiple of these things, I hope I'm not sounding like an episode of Mr. Keen: Tracer of Lost Persons with how many times I toss in recaps.

But I am digressing, which is bad. Let us get to the mech and the meme picture. Today we shall be hurled into the Duat with what should be Vex's latest (mech-focused) meme, the Goblin:

Admittedly one should take pride in their work, but I must admit that this one I have some thoughts on changing. Namely, I wonder if I picked the best spot in the file to take on the paragraph between the goblin's legs. If you have a thought on a better time, or other ways I could make this better, then my metaphorical ears are open. Just note that I probably won't be able to act on any of that feedback until later as I'm presently in a different city with a different mic and a different AC (that is effectively dead at time of writing). That aside, I hope you enjoy this work.

#vex's mechs and memes #vexwerewolf #loadingreadyrun #lrr #voice acting #my voice #dave's spokesman #audio #mecha #memes #lancer rpg #lancer ttrpg #hack the planet #thanatologisticans is a hard word to say #mass effect

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potato-art-anon · 4 months ago

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Unfortunately, the time for phasing out of existence had passed, and with it, all hope Danny had of getting out of this without at least detention. He and Tucker sat down at a couple of desks in Lancer’s otherwise empty classroom, Dash leaning against the wall, Po stood at the doorway with the other blonde in front of ver.

"Okay," she said as Mr. Lancer was rifling through filing cabinets. "So what is happening here?"

"Just one minute more Miss Smythe," Mr. Lancer cleared his throat, slapping a couple of folders down on his desk, and looked at Tucker. Raising his eyebrows as he spoke again, "Mr. Foley, chronically tardy, talking in class, loitering outside the girls' bathroom."

Danny also looked at Tucker, raising an eyebrow as Tuck smiled slyly, but snapped back to attention when Lancer looked at him.

"And Mr. Fenton, two hundred seventy-six accounts of dropped beakers in the last couple years, along with a recently passed ban from holding any fragile school property, but no major issues." Danny shrunk back into his seat as he felt the three teens near the door stare at him.

He heard Po whisper, "A full-out ban doesn't count as a major issue?"

If possible he shrunk down even more, shoulders sloped. Mr. Lancer crossed his arms. "So tell me, gentlemen, what was it that prompted you to conspire to destroy the cafeteria, AND SABOTAGE OUR BELOVED SCHOOL NEWSPAPER??"

"Dash started the food fight," Danny didn't feel bad in the slightest for lying since Dash was smiling at him so smugly. "And we didn't do anything to the newspaper!"

The blonde looked them up and down critically, "I don't think that these two could cause that big of a thud, they're too thin!"

"Practically sticks." Po nodded, giving a half shrug. "Especially Danny."

Danny wasn't sure if he was offended by being called out like that, or maybe a little excited that one of the popular kids knew his name and wasn't using it to outright curse him. Actually, he wasn't sure that Dash knew his first name so maybe that didn't count.

Mr. Lancer frowned at Danny and Tucker but seemed to be considering the Smythes’ input. So, like the fool he is, Danny pushed his nonexistent luck. "Dash-"

"Threw three touchdowns at our last game and is thereby exempt from scorn," Lancer frowned heavily. "But since you two have no other explanations I must insist that you stay here as I sort out your punishments." He looked at Dash, "guard the door."

Dash's smug smirk hadn't wavered a millimeter this whole time, he nodded and then turned back to staring, gloating, at Danny.

"Miss Smythe, Mx Smythe, if you wouldn't mind accompanying me? As they did also ruin your work it's fair you get input on the punishments."

As the Smythes left the room murmuring their agreement, Danny thought he heard Po hum in disappointment. Which was worse than Dash's gloating. Cause like, at least Dash's smug face was something he was used to. Dash continues to smirk, for some reason going outside the room to guard the door from the outside.

Tucker turned to Danny, eyes wide. "We've got to go save Sam," he winced, "for some reason, I feel like I got her kidnapped!"

Danny sighed. "Maybe because you told the ghost she was the one to change the menu?"

"I think it's just survivor's guilt," Tucker said, standing up with a shrug. When suddenly he sniffed the air. "Hold on, that steak is still in the building!" He sniffed again, frowning. "Two hundred yards, tops."

“How easily do you think you could track it down?”

Tucker tapped his nose. “This baby has never steered me wrong!”

Danny paused just before transforming again. “That,” he blinked, “isn’t an answer.” With a deadpan look, Tucker crossed his arms as Danny ‘went ghost’. “Easily. Whoa!” Tucker jerks as Danny grabs his arm, the both of them turning intangible and sliding through the floor. “Alright, time to start the search!” “What am I a bloodhound?” Tucker’s annoyance was short-lived as he and Danny touched down in a strange sublevel. “Closer.” He sniffed a few more times, looking around. “And a lot of it.”

“Sounds like the right way.” Danny frowned, continuing the search.

“Sweet mother of mutton!” Tucker might’ve started crying as they entered the food basement, Danny shivered in the cold. “I dreamed of it,” Tucker had pressed himself in a strange hug against the stacks of boxes labeled as different kinds of meat. “But… I never thought I’d live to see it!”

“You dreamed of a chilled underground meat warehouse, actually, never mind.” Danny glanced around. “Are you sure this is the place? I mean, there’s a lot of meat here.”

No reply.

“Tuck?” Danny glanced back at his friend as there was a small crash. He sighed. “How is it that I have the ghost powers and you're the weird kid?”

Tucker had pushed a stack of boxes over, crashing them into a set of shelves. Standing up he froze, “-uh,” he pointed at an approaching figure. Danny jumped a little as Po came fully into view. “What are you doing down here?”

“Oh, I’m just,” ve leaned against a stack of boxes which fell over and tried to remain casually leaning on nothing. "Taking a walk, in the dark storage room, like ya do. But, uh, what are you two doing here? Did Mr. Lancer change his mind about your punishment?"

"I-yES!" Danny shouted. "YES! That's it! We need.... to..."

"What? We aren't-" Tucker said, frowning as he looked at Danny, but correctly changed course when Danny elbowed him. "Right. We're doing... meat inventory."

“Yeah,” Danny smiled, edging away slowly, “and we should get going now.”

"Or we could not." Tucker did some strange smirk and finger guns at Po, who frowned briefly. Danny mentally sighed, facepalming, so much for survivor's guilt.

“That is an option, yes,” Po said, putting ver right hand on ver hip. Danny almost was sure that ve was going to leave any second, but suddenly ver expression changed, smiling brightly. “That I wholeheartedly support! We could talk, you know I feel like we don't talk anymore!"

"But we didn't talk that much-" Danny started.

"Which should change!"

Danny sighed because obviously Tucker was being rapidly swayed by Po’s argument.

"Talking sounds good and all, but what about some other time? When we don't… have all this… inventory to do?" Danny said awkwardly, because like, in the school ecosystem, he is being paid attention to by a big fish in a small pond. And he didn’t really like that he was tempted to take advantage of the situation to raise his social standing. Sam is probably fine anyway.

Who is he kidding, Sam probably is still provoking the ghost with zero sense of self-preservation.

Po spread ver arms. "I got it! How about we take inventory together? It'll get done faster and we can talk while we walk!"

"It would seem like a good plan,” Danny said, nodding before raising a hand. “But maybe if we split up then it'll get done even faster?"

"Listen, guys," Po said, sighing as ve crossed ver arms. "I know you're not here to do meat inventory."

"Wh-what do you mean?"

"If you really don't want to help clean up the newsroom that much Nood and I can have a talk with Mr. Lancer about it, you don't need to flee four floors below the school to live among the meat." Po rolled ver eyes. "Plus I'm pretty sure that the menu change won't last another day. The janitor would riot."

"Oh, OH!" Danny tried not to grin. "Really? You would?”

Po crossed ver arms, scoffing as ve said. “Duh, we’ve known you for like, fifteen years Danny. Even if we don’t get along, and you’re kind of a loser, and your pants fall down way too often to where it’s frankly concerning, and your dad did lock us in a cage in freshman year because he thought there was a ‘ghost’ at the school because something blew up in his basement, and-”

“Okay, I get it!” Danny held up his hands, kinda confused. “Thanks? I guess?”

“No more dirt!” Tucker cheered. He seemed to have sort of gotten stuck on that bit, which Danny couldn’t blame him for.

“So, you guys gonna… go now?”

“Uhm,” Danny looked around wildly, eyes locking on Tucker as he came up with an excuse for them to stay a little longer. “I think Tucker still needs some time here.”

“Oh.”

“Uh, alone.”

Danny ignored Tucker’s indignant shout as Po’s eyes widened. “Oh, ew, uhm. Bye, then. See you tomorrow in class.” Tucker watched as ve hurriedly walked away.

“Danny!” Tucker groaned. “Now all my hopes of getting an introduction to the cheer team are dashed!”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t think they were that likely to begin with. Besides, isn’t the weird underground meat storage what you’ve dreamed of?” Danny said, raising an eyebrow. “And in case you forgot, we still need to find Sam.”

“I guess.” Tucker sighed, and they rounded the corner where Po had come from. “Oh hey!”

In a clearing from shelves, the Lunch Lady was removing an assortment of meat from Sam. Who seemed more angry than frightened. “I went through a lot of work to get my petitions and proposed menus accepted and this is the thanks I get? I’ve been working on this for two years !”

“My dear child...meat is good for kids! It helps them grow and makes them smile!” The Lunch Lady tutted, but Danny wasn’t sure what to do as she seemed to have calmed down, treating Sam like a toddler throwing a tantrum. And she was taking the meat off.

“We don't need meat. That's a fact!” Sam shouted.

“SILENCE!!” The Lunch Lady dropped the steak she’d just lifted. “You need discipline! Manners! Respect! Do you know where that comes from? MEAT!!” She took a deep breath, closing her eyes. “Chicken, or fish?”

“GET ME OUT OF HERE!”

Okay, she stopped taking the meat off. “I'll take care of the ghost,” Danny said. “You just find a way to get Sam out of that pile of meat!”

“Way ahead of ya!”

Danny did a double take as Tucker procured a knife and fork. “Have, have you been carrying those around this whole time?”

“Just since lunch, I was planning on breaking into the teacher’s lounge to investigate.”

“Ah, well, I’m going ghost!” Danny closed his eyes. Opening them to fly forward, giving the Lunch Lady a hard shove.

“I’ll have you free in no time Sam!” Tucker said cheerfully.

“Ugh,” Sam groaned as he just started eating. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Get, uh,” Danny landed in front of the Lunch Lady, who glared up at him. “Get out of here!”

“You barely made me budge!” She shouted. Danny took that personally. Rushing toward her to attack, she caught his fist before it made contact. “See this??” He blinked, now hanging in the air from where she held his arm. “This is why you need meat! You’re just skin and bones!” Danny felt attacked in more than one way as she threw him through the air, for one she just threw him against the wall, and for another, he knew that he wasn’t eating well and didn’t need the reminder. Nor did he need the Lunch Lady to just scoff and fly away.

Sam shouted again. “Danny? I’d rather not wait ten years for Tucker to finish!”

“Yeah, okay.” Danny frowned, looking up where the Lunch Lady had just… ascended? “Be right there.” With that said Danny winced, getting up and floating to the meat pile. “Hold still.” Quickly going intangible, he grabbed Sam and Tucker, flying up until they were outside. Letting go with a gasp, he fell to his knees and (de)transformed. Flopping back onto his back he groaned.

“Gee, Danny. Fighting meat monsters, flying through walls…” Sam frowned. “You must be exhausted.”

“What?” Danny forced a laugh, attempting to stand. “No of course not! What, would, give… you… that…”

When Danny woke up he was in bed, Sam and Tucker anxiously looking at him from either side of his bedroom, and they rushed over to the bed. “Ah! Aah! Wha? What's going on?”

Tucker sat down, brow furrowed. “You passed out! We took you home, you’ve been asleep for four days!”

Panic flooded Danny who rapidly sat up, how did his parents respond? What happened while he was out? Wh-oh. He noticed Tucker laughing. “Nah, it’s only been a couple of hours. And your parents seemed to be more worried about Jazz than you.”

Danny laid back, sighing. “Dad thinks she’s a ghost again.”

“Yep.”

“Knock it off, Tucker.” Sam put her hands on her hips. “This is the second time today your carelessness almost got him killed.”

“ Me? I almost got him killed? The only reason this happened is because you had to be ‘unique’. You had to take the meat away!” Tucker said, standing upright from where he was leaning on the bed. “And I’m gonna make sure we get it back!” With that, he stalked out of the room.

Sam’s expression darkened, and she shouted after him. “You want to change the menu back?? YOU’RE JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE! INCAPABLE OF CHANGING FOR THE BETTER!” She ran out the door after him, well probably to home. But she did leave after him. Danny sighed.

He looked at the door that had been slammed closed after her. “Oh well. I'm sure everything will be back to normal by tomorrow.”

“Or maybe it’s so much worse.” The next day Danny stood outside of the school, giant set-ups for both ‘teams’ on either side.

“Who,” The blonde girl, Nood, was wheezing with laughter. She, Po, and their friend the foreign exchange student were similarly caught between the two groups. “Hah! Who did this -hah!-overnight!”

Tucker’s voice blared out from speakers set on a stage, the cheer team was dressed in hot dog outfits behind him, dancing. “What do we want?”

“Meat!”

“When do we want it?”

“Now!”

Various students and a few adults that Danny didn’t recognize were in the meat crowd, chanting in response to Tucker’s lead. Vaguely Danny wondered how he managed to get so many people to follow him, then he remembered the universal outrage in the cafeteria yesterday. On the side of the schoolyard, Sam stood on a school bus surrounded by hippies and a few goths who looked mostly annoyed. They weren’t holding signs like the others but seemed to just not want to stand with the popular kids. Sam and her cohorts were chanting into megaphones.

“Veggies now! Veggies forever! Veggies now! Veggies forever!”

“What on earth?” Po was staring at the groups.

The foreign exchange student frowned, raising his eyebrows. “This is dumb.”

Danny didn’t have time to try and respond before Tucker and Sam were marching toward him. He shook his head at them as they glared at each other. “You guys put together two protests in one night?”

“Meat-eaters, Danny. Always ready to fight.” Tucker smiled smugly at Sam, still somehow glaring at the same time. “And our high-protein diets give us the energy we need to do it quickly.”

“-I already talked with the principal and teachers, and we agreed that it was wiser to go back to the old menu.”

Danny heaved another sigh as Po and company continued their discussion in the background, further proving this whole fight was pointless. “Guys-”

“Ultra recyclo-vegetarians are always ready to protest,” Sam growled.

“Guys.”

“And because we don't have to waste time cooking our food,” she said, with a sudden grin, “we can move even faster.”

“GUYS!” Danny threw his hands in the air, and Sam and Tucker turned to him abruptly. “Don’t you think this is a little extreme?”

“No choice-”

“- what in the sweet fresh world of madness YOU PEOPLE DON'T EVEN GO TO THIS SCHOOL?!” Tucker was cut off by Po’s shouting. “GET OUT OF HERE!” Sam looked very deflated as the majority of her rally disbanded. Danny shivered as a cold wind blew through, and his ghost sense went off.

“Okay guys,” The meat from the meat rally had swirled into the air, a giant Lunchmeat Lady standing. Danny gulped. “It’s time to make up.”

“IT’S LUNCHTIME!” She cackled.

Tucker fell to his knees as the meat rally also disbanded, with much screaming. “Meat! Why have you betrayed me?!”

“Now!”

Tucker stood, begrudgingly ‘hugging’ Sam to hide Danny as he transformed. He flew up towards the ghost, who was less ghost and more haunted meat at this point, squaring his shoulders. And getting smacked into the air. “AAAAAAHH-” Danny paused, “Wait.” He blinked. Struggling for a second. Before stilling “Oh wow, flying really helps with your momentum in the air. And I can see my house from here.”

He sped back down to the Lunch Lady, landing a solid kick in her… face? “Sorry, you seem like you need some tenderizing!”

His epic quips were cut short by a few screams, a food truck from the meat rally had launched into the air and was rocketing back down toward a group of students who were trying to scatter out of the way. Danny was really over all this, the menu was changed back anyway! He rushed over to turn the truck intangible, but unfortunately for the truck, he let go of it as it was partially in the ground. Danny winced as the concrete suddenly cracked. “Listen, Lady,” He dodged a volley of meat. “The menu-” he put his arms in front of his face. “-is fixed!” Flying into a direct impact with the meat monster resulting in meat flying everywhere.

Danny groans, slowly sitting up from where he had landed in a huge crater. The Lunch Lady peered over the side of the crater. “Oh, dear! What a mess! Are you okay?”

“Ugh,” Danny rubbed his left arm. “Yeah, I think so.”

“I’m sorry dearie, did I hear you right?” She sniffed suddenly in a way that reminded him of Tucker and beamed. “Oh, it is true! The menu is back to normal! Thank you, dear.” She hauled him out of the crater, pinching his cheek. And she flew away, through where Jack and Maddie were talking with Jazz a little ways away. They seemed to have completely missed the whole fight for some reason. Suddenly the Lunch Lady flew back. “Try not to let the menu get changed again!” And she sunk into the ground.

“Uh.”

“Danny!” Sam and Tucker rushed over to him. “Are you okay?”

“What happened?” Sam looked around. “Where's the ghost?”

“I guess all she wanted was the menu changed back.”

“G h o s t—s t r a i g h t—a h e a d.” The Fenton Finder’s electric voice rang out as Jack and Maddie came jogging over.

“Danny! Where’s the ghost??” Maddie was looking around frantically.

“Y o u—w o u l d—h a v e—t o—b e—s o m e—s o r t—o f—m o r o n—t o—n o t—n o t i c e—t h e—g h o s t—d i r e c t l y—a h e a d.”

Jack looked up from the Fenton Finder towards him.

“Ah, sorry Dad.” Danny smiled weakly. “You just missed her.”

“We got a runner!” Jack and Maddie took off again. Jazz had been standing behind them, arms crossed.

“Great.” She rolled her eyes, walking away. “Back to square one.”

“So, you're not gonna tell 'em?” Tucker said once the trio were ‘alone’ in the courtyard.

Danny shook his head, briefly glancing at where the Lunch Lady disappeared. “Nah. I think I might've finally figured out something, about the ghosts, and my powers. They make me-”

“In a world of trouble.”

Danny sighed, deflating as Mr. Lancer came over, scowling down at them.

Right.

Just his luck.

for https://archiveofourown.org/works/40659168

bc the old image link broke and I need to fix it. Who knew. Anyway.

#potatopostsart #digital art #danny phantom #sick dab

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q-gorgeous · 6 months ago

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Tucker Foley’s terrible, awful, very bad day

fanfiction

ao3

word count: 1736

Tucker Foley’s terrible, awful, very bad day

ihbwudhbiwhn

Tucker Foley’s terrible, awful, very bad day.

This day could’ve been salvageable if it wasn’t for the blade he’d just taken through his chest.

~~~

It started like any normal bad day would start. By waking up late.

He looked at his phone and it was already five minutes past when his first hour started. He shot up out of bed and started stumbling around, trying to get dressed and make sure he had everything he needed for the day.

Stupid Technus for starting a fight with him at midnight. Stupid Technus for asking him a question that led to a discussion. Stupid Tucker for losing track of time.

He transformed and flew through his ceiling. He normally didn’t like to fly to school but his mom wouldn’t let him hear the end of it if she found out he missed all of first period.

And then he remembered he forgot to grab something to eat.

He got to class and they were watching a movie. He missed a movie! But it made it impossible not to notice him as he walked in. The light from the hallway shone into the classroom and everyone’s heads turned to stare at him.

“Nice of you to join us, Mr. Foley.” Lancer drawled out. “I’ll see you in detention this afternoon.”

Tucker groaned and made his way back to his seat next to Sam and Danny.

“Dude, where have you been?” Sam leaned forward in her seat as she whispered behind him as he sat down.

Tucker yawned. “I overslept. I hope Lancer doesn’t call my mom.”

“You’ve gotta figure your stuff out, man.” Danny whispered as he leaned across the aisle. “You miss class all the time now.”

Tucker rolled his eyes and slumped down in his seat. “Things happen. I don’t have anything I need to figure out.”

Danny shrugged. “If you say so.”

~~~

The next bad thing that happened today was that Sam tried to introduce another new menu in the cafeteria. Today was the first day. Tofu. Which would’ve been fine, but the lunch ladies did not know how to cook tofu. It tasted like all they did to it was heat it up and then serve it just like that. Needless to say, he didn’t eat lunch that day. He sure was hungry though.

“It’s wet, Sam.” Tucker frowned at her.

“It’s tofu.” Sam said as she put another piece in her mouth.

“Yeah, but can’t you at least grill it?” Danny poked the tofu on his tray and it jiggled. “Or even season it?”

“At least it’s not garbage this time.” Tucker leaned his head into his hand and Sam rolled her eyes at them.

Later towards the end of their lunch, Tucker got into an argument with Danny about whether or not hurting ghosts was morally right. Danny thought it was because ghosts didn’t care if they hurt you. Tucker countered it with only some ghosts didn’t care. The ones that did care just didn’t seem to make their way out of the ghost zone very often.

“Ghosts don’t care about anything.” Danny complained, gesturing with his hand while he stabbed at his last piece of tofu. “All they do is come and terrorize us here in Amity Park.”

“But aren’t there probably like, millions of ghosts in the ghost zone? They can’t all be bad. That’d be like assuming all men are bad. Or all gay people. There’s bad people in every demographic but that doesn’t mean the whole demographic is bad.”

Sam stood up as the bell rang. “Tucker’s right. Obviously, a ghost needs to be dealt with if they’re causing problems but to hurt them intentionally just because they’re a ghost? That doesn’t sound right to me.”

They headed towards the garbage cans and threw their food away.

Danny stuffed his hands in his pockets and hunched up his shoulders. “Well, until I meet a ghost that doesn’t try to hurt or terrorize someone, I’m sticking with my guns on this.”

“Well, what about Ghouly?”

Tucker flinched when Sam said his name. They both knew how Danny felt about Tucker’s ghost half. He didn’t know why she kept trying to convince Danny of it when they both knew he wouldn’t change his mind.

Danny scoffed. “He’s the worst of the worst. He puts on a mask to convince and manipulate everyone. I’d probably trust him the least out of all of them.”

Tucker ignored the pitying look Sam shot him.

He’d let Sam in on his secret the first time Danny had gotten a good hit on him.

Tucker had been flying and chasing after another ghost when Danny had shot him in the shoulder from behind.

His shoulder popped out and burst with pain. He had thought “screw it” and turned invisible to try to lose Danny. He wouldn’t be able to capture that ghost like this anyways. Danny could take care of it.

But where would he go? Tucker didn’t know if he could set it on his own. And he couldn’t go to the doctor’s office like this. As he flew through the air he could already feel his transformation pulling. He wouldn’t last long enough to get it popped in and leave before he detransformed if he went to the hospital.

That left one option.

He made his way across town to Sam’s house. He flew through her wall into her room and she looked up at him with big eyes and dropped the spoon she’d been using to eat apple sauce.

“Ghouly?”

He collapsed onto her bed heavily, wincing as his back hit the wall and jostled his shoulder.

“I need your help.”

Sam sat up and nodded, her hands hovering in front of her.

“What do I have to do?”

He pointed at his shoulder. “We have to pop this back in.”

“You want me to set your dislocated shoulder?!”

Tucker nodded. “I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.”

Sam frowned at him. “Why did you come here?”

Tucker opened his mouth to respond but his transformation ring appeared around his waist. He pushed it back and it disappeared. Sam was staring at where it had been a moment ago.

“We have to do this before I transform. The muscles are looser when I’m a ghost. It’ll be harder to pop back in in my human form.”

“Your human form? What does-“

“Just hurry, please.”

She studied him for a moment before nodding. “Okay.”

“On the count of three?” Tucker looked up at her. She nodded.

“One-“ She popped his shoulder back in and he saw spots in his eyes.

“What happened to two and three?!”

She shrugged. “I’ve always heard that doctors do that so you’re not so tense when it gets set.”

He closed his eyes. “Fair enough.”

Then he could feel his transformation pulling on his core again. He didn’t try to stop it because he knew it would keep fighting him.

“Tucker?!”

~~~

The last thing that happened that day was that Skulker just had to come back and try to hunt Danny down again. Tucker didn’t understand what his fascination with Danny was. He was a human! Why was the ghost zone’s greatest hunter so fascinated with hunting a human?

Skulker was the only ghost that Danny actually helped Tucker fight instead of trying to use it to capture Tucker himself. He couldn’t get Tucker if he himself got captured and killed. So they worked as a team to get Skulker.

Fighting Skulker also meant that Tucker missed his detention for today, so his mom was definitely going to be getting a phone call.

“You take him from behind, I’ll get him from the front?” Danny called to him. Tucker nodded. He flew around out of view as Skulker flew up to Danny.

“What do you want this time, tin can?” Danny sneered at him. “Ready to lose another round?”

“I’m here to claim your pelt and hang it on my wall.” Danny wrinkled his nose at that.

“Why?”

“You’re the greatest human ghost hunter!” Skulker bellowed. “What would it say about me if I couldn’t catch you? You’re my ultimate prize.”

“Uh, what about the Fenton’s?” Danny asked him.

“Your buffoonish parental units do not even remotely compare.” And how did all the ghosts just know who Danny was straight out of the gate?

Tucker could tell that Danny was rolling his eyes under his mask. “If they’re really buffoons, how did they make the working portal that you all seem to love so much?”

“They-“ Skulker cut off as Tucker jumped at him. Sulker dodged and Tucker went flying past Danny. A maniacal smile spread over Skulker’s face and he pulled a blade out of his suit. He pulled his arm back and charged at Danny.

“No!”

Tucker threw himself in front of Skulker’s blade. He shoved Danny out of the way, sending him flying through the air. The blade pierced his chest and he could feel as it pushed its way through to the other side.

He could hear Danny shouting. Then Skulker pulled the blade out. Tucker fell to the ground and lay there. Fighting sounds came from the sky above him and then everything went quiet.

Then he was being rolled off of his side onto his back. His shoulders were being shaken and he opened his eyes a crack.

Danny was above him. He had a strained expression on his face. Tucker could tell he didn’t understand why he would’ve sacrificed himself for Danny like that. They weren’t supposed to be close like that. He wasn’t supposed to matter to Ghouly like that.

His transformation ring appeared around his waist and Tucker breathed out a laugh. He guessed Danny would be understanding a lot sooner that Tucker would’ve expected.

As the rings passed over his body he closed his eyes so he didn’t have to see the look of horror he thought would appear on Danny’s face.

He heard a shout. It was probably his name. He thought somebody grabbed his shoulders again but he could feel himself drifting away. He was pretty tired.

Then he felt his entire body shift and this time he definitely knew someone was holding him. He could tell he was safe. He could let himself drift off now.

He hoped this would be the end of his terrible, awful, very bad day. Hopefully tomorrow would be better.

#gorgi writes #danny phantom #tucker foley #danny fenton #sam manson #inverse trio #phic phight 2024 #fanfiction

9 notes · View notes