#my phic phight phics

[five-rivers]

symbolic

[This fic is based on a prompt by @astatia-ghast! You can also read it here. Enjoy!]

.

“So, this is, like, a formality?  It’s just a ceremonial, symbolic thing?”

Clockwork sighed and Frostbite made a face.  Danny felt his shoulders twitch up defensively.  He liked both Frostbite and Clockwork, but together, they were a bit… much.  Plus, Danny didn’t like getting unexpected visitors at school, no matter how much he liked them.  He was supposed to be in Health right now.  And even if people didn’t look in the basement very often, the custodian had an office here.  

“No, Great One.  It is more than a formality, otherwise we would not be so… diligent… in asking you to do this.”

“I don’t really get why you’re asking me in the first place.  I’m not the only one who fought Pariah Dark that day.”

“You are the only one to fight him directly, one-on-one,” said Clockwork.  “You lead the army–”

“No, I didn’t,” said Danny.  

“You rallied them.  They supported you and acted to carry out your plan,” continued Clockwork, mercilessly.  “You know this.  Let us not waste time.”

“Okay.  But I don’t understand the point of crowning me - or anyone - as Ghost King if the Ghost Zone doesn’t need a Ghost King.  There hasn’t been one in hundreds of years.”

“Yes, there has,” said Clockwork.  “Pariah Dark was the King of Ghosts.  Until you defeated him.”

“But he was in the Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep.”

“And he was still king,” said Clockwork.  

“Great One,” said Frostbite.  “The position no longer has any official political power.  I do not think that there is anyone who would obey you simply on the strength of you being the King of Ghosts.  But it is of great spiritual importance.”

“So, it’s religious.  Ceremonial,” said Danny.  

“No.  Daniel,” said Clockwork, exasperated.  “Spiritual.  Ghosts are often called spirits.  The Infinite Realms, consisting mainly of ectoplasm, are shaped by the wills of their inhabitants, but such an arrangement is unstable, prone to falling apart under the influence of too many perspectives and intentions.  You would not be called upon to rule, but certain physical aspects of the Realms depend on the existence of a king for stability.  The King of All Ghosts, the King of the Dead, the Deathless, and the Neverborn.  One who has Dominion over the Earth, the Sea, the Sky.  Every place where the dead may be committed.  Every place where a spirit might dwell or come into being.”  He paused.  “In short, a reference point or template.”

“That sounds like a bad idea,” said Danny.  

“It is written into the oldest of the laws of the Realms,” said Frostbite, apologetically.  “But, in truth, you would not have to do very much.  It is simply important that such a king exists.”

Danny looked between Clockwork and Frostbite.  “I wouldn’t have to do anything,” he repeated.  “No laws, no tax stuff, no diplomacy, nothing?”

“I would encourage you on the subject of diplomacy,” said Frostbite.  “You would have a unique position from which to act as a peacemaker.  But it would not be your responsibility.”

“As you said,” added Clockwork, “the Realms adapted quite well to a king who was eternally asleep.”

“Okay,” said Danny.  “What happens if someone beats me?  It’s not like I’m invincible.  Is this the kind of thing that’s going to give someone, like, I don’t know, super murder powers?”

“No,” said Frostbite.  He sounded faintly appalled.  “Your powers should change very little, if at all.”

Danny licked his lips.  “This is really that important?  What would happen if I said no?  Because this honestly sounds like way too much responsibility for a random high schooler.”

“Yes,” said Clockwork.  “It would be too much responsibility for a random high schooler.  You are not a random high schooler.  You are a high schooler who spent the last two years defending an entire city and defeated Pariah Dark.  But if you want to see the consequences, I can show you.  Exactly.”

“You can?” asked Danny.  “Oh, right.  Time travel.”

“Indeed.”  Clockwork waved his staff, and a portal appeared in the air.  “After you.”

Danny gave Clockwork a suspicious look (he thought he deserved it, after how much fun he’d had repeatedly slamming Danny into a bell), but flew through the portal. On the other side, there was…

… Nothing.  

Absolutely nothing.  

Clockwork and Frostbite followed him through the portal.  Clockwork summoned a transparent blue shield around the three of them, which slowly filled with air.  Or at least some kind of gas.  Danny was in ghost form, so it didn’t really matter.

“So,” said Danny, casually.  “Where are we?  Heat death of the universe?”

“Yes,” said Clockwork.

“Wait, seriously?  I was joking.”

“I know,” said Clockwork.  “But this is indeed the heat death of the universe.”

“The heat death of the universe cannot possibly be my fault,” said Danny.  “It’s just, like, a thing.  A thing that happens.  Because of physics.”

“Yes.  The second law of thermodynamics.  Entropy in a closed system increases.  But your universe is not a closed system.”

“Because of the Ghost Zone.”

“Correct,” said Clockwork.  “Many laws of physics are reversed in the Ghost Zone.  Including that one.  Things can and do spontaneously become more complex.  Ghosts form out of raw ectoplasm.  Portals open to other times.  Space layers upon itself.  Entropy from this world flows into the Realms, and vice versa.  But the system is not stable.”

“A king is needed,” said Frostbite.

“But this isn’t going to happen for ages and ages, right?”

“No, this particular thing would not happen for quite some time,” said Clockwork, “but in the Realms, it is already beginning.”

Danny closed his eyes, feeling the massive emptiness around him.  “Okay,” he said.  “Fine.  I’ll do it.”

.

“Just like that?” asked Sam. 

“Just like that,” said Danny, taking a bite from his burger.  “They grabbed the crown for like a minute, said some words about what I was king over, bought me an ice cream - that was kind of weird - and then left.”

“With the crown?” asked Tucker.  He’d already eaten his burger and was leaning across the table.  

“Yeah, I mean, what would I do with it?”

“I don’t.  It’d be kind of cool.”

Danny thought about it for a minute.  “It was kind of cool,” he agreed.  “With all the fire and stuff.”

Sam sighed.  “I just hope that there’s not some weird side effect or fine print that’s going to jump out at you.  I mean, what’s ‘stabilizing’ all of this going to do to you?”

“They said that it shouldn’t do anything.”

“To your powers,” said Sam.  “That’s different.”

“I…”  Danny rewound the conversation in his mind.  “Heck, you’re right.”

“I’m always right.”

“But Frostbite would have said something,” said Danny.  “I mean, Clockwork might think it was funny, but he wouldn’t.”

“Would Clockwork think it was funny?” asked Tucker.

“Yeah.  He wouldn’t show it, but he’d think it.  He likes messing with people.”

“Fits in pretty well with you, then,” said Sam.  

“I don’t know,” said Danny.  “It’s pretty obvious that I like messing with people.”

Sam laughed, then started to clean up the burger wrappers.  “Well, if something weird does happen, you know where to find us.”

“And then you’ll say ‘I told you so?’” asked Danny, finishing off his burger and starting to help her.  

“You’d better believe it.”

.

Danny woke up in ghost form.  

This wasn’t unusual, exactly.  It had happened a lot in the first few weeks after his accident with the portal, when he didn’t have good control over his transformations.  On the other hand, it was always nerve wracking.  What if his parents came in?  What if he floated up through the ceiling, or walls?  What if he fell through the floor?  What if he triggered the house defenses?  

Somehow, none of that had ever happened.

Still, when Danny realized he was in ghost form, he woke up far more quickly than he did for anything but his ghost sense.  Which meant that he noticed that something was wrong almost instantly.  

It wasn’t a big thing.  Just a pull.  An itch.  But something in his brain, some instinct, tagged it as being very wrong.  

Something was wrong.  

But what?  

Still a little muzzy from sleep, Danny started taking account.  He had his arms and legs… good, okay…  Head…  Face in the right place…  He’d shrugged it off at the time, but those duplication errors had made him paranoid.  He was under a couple layers of thick blankets, which felt weird laying on his jumpsuit, as always…

He paused, then felt around his shoulders and neck a little more.  There was something– Had his jumpsuit slipped off?  Sometimes, it got beaten up and torn during a fight, but it never slipped when he was just hanging out or sleeping.  

But it must have tonight.  He could feel bare skin where he normally couldn’t.  That must be what he was registering as wrong.  The jumpsuit was itching where it was bunched up, and pulling at other parts where it was stretch.  Probably.  

Satisfied, he returned to human form and went back to sleep. 

.

Danny ran into the gap between the house and the shed to transform in private before flying to school.  It was easier and faster than taking the bus or walking, as long as he avoided the ghost hunters.  But before he took off, he paused. 

He'd almost forgotten waking up last night and feeling something off, but now…  His jumpsuit seemed loose, like it had been stretched out too far.  But he couldn't remember a fight like that.  Couldn't remember the suit ever not fixing itself automatically, for that matter. 

Underneath the suit, Danny's skin felt dry and itchy.  He took his gloves off and looked at the backs of his hands.  The skin was dry enough that it was segmenting into flaky, scale-like patches.  He frowned at them.  If this had been his human form, he would have blamed this on a new soap or shampoo, but his human hands had been fine.  Whatever was causing this, it was only affecting his ghost form. 

… It still might be because of soap, if his parents were mixing anti-ghost stuff in theirs. 

Danny hoped they weren’t.  It’d be a pain to deal with.  

He still had to get to school, though, and it seemed like this wasn’t going to kill him or melt him, whatever it was.  At least, it wasn’t going to do that soon.  So, he jumped into the air and started the trip to school.  

The loose suit flapped awkwardly in the wind and pulled weirdly at his shoulders.  And it was itchy.  

He didn’t like this development.  Granted, he rarely liked developments with his ghost form, but this one was particularly annoying.  

He landed behind the school, near the dumpsters.  Hardly any students came back here, especially this early, so it was a pretty safe place for him to transform.  He did a quick check for people, then flicked back to human form.  

He felt… normal.  Normal-adjacent, anyway, which was as close as he ever got.  Still, he was… concerned.  Which apparently showed on his face. 

“Did something happen?” asked Sam. 

“Do we get to say ‘I told you so’ yet?” asked Tucker. 

Sam elbowed him.  “We do that after we deal with the problem.”

“Not always.  Sometimes we say it while we're waiting to take action!”

“I don't think it has anything to do with the king stuff,” said Danny.  “I don’t see how it could.  It’s just weird.”

“So, what is it?” asked Sam.  “New powers?”

“Flaming crown hanging over your head?” 

Danny sent Tucker a glare.  “No,” he said.  “It’s something with my suit.  It’s… loose.”

“Loose?  That’s weird.  You’d think it’d get tight.  You have grown a little, after all.”

“Gee, thanks, Sam.  But, no, it’s loose and kind of itchy.  It’s never been itchy before.”

Sam and Tucker gave each other a look.  

“It’s loose, huh,” said Tucker.  “Like maybe it’s changing shape?  Into something more… kingly, perhaps?”

“Oh my gosh.  No.  It’s not that loose.”  The warning bell rang, and they all looked up.  “I’ll show you during lunch, okay?”

.

Lunch came quickly, and Danny, Sam, and Tucker just as quickly found an unused corner of the school to stake out and claim.  There was a small risk, back here, by the old soccer field, that a teacher might do a patrol to find smokers, but it was relatively small.

“Okay.  Here goes.”  Danny let his rings flick over, transforming him.  “What do you think?”  Then, he blinked and looked down at his hands.  “My gloves didn’t come back.  That’s weird.”  

“It does look looser,” said Tucker, starting to slowly walk around Danny.

“What’s that on your hands?” asked Sam. 

“I… don’t know,” said Danny.  Before, the backs of his hands had just been dry and slightly cracking, now, the skin was slightly raised in silvery flakes.  Almost like actual scales.  He swiped his fingers over them.  They didn’t feel like dry skin.  They felt smooth.  Like real scales.  

“Hey, I think there might be something stuck under your suit back here,” said Tucker.  

“Really?”

“Yeah.  You’ll have to take it off for me to see it, though.  The suit, I mean.”

Danny exchanged a glance with Sam, then reached up to his neck and unzipped the suit.  Instead of having to wriggle out of the sleeves as he usually did, the top half of the suit just sort of… fell off him.  

Behind him, Tucker sucked in a sharp breath.  “What?” asked Danny.  

“Uh,” said Tucker in a distinctly panicked tone.  

“What?” repeated Danny, turning to face him.  

“Oh,” said Sam.  “That’s not good?”

“What isn’t good?”

“Um,” said Sam.  “Uh.”

“Something’s growing there.”

“Where?” demanded Danny.  

“There’s, um, something growing on your back,” said Tucker.  He jogged around to look at Danny’s back again.  “It looks– Well, they look like wing–”

Danny jumped when Tucker touched– Something.  Not Danny’s back.

He sucked in a breath between his teeth.  “That’s bad,” he said, finally.  

“It– Yeah,” said Tucker.  

“And your skin…” said Sam.  

Danny looked down.  The scaly pattern on his skin continued up the backs of his arms and shoulders before disappearing beneath his tank top, except that past his elbows, the color slowly shifted from silver to charcoal.  

“Heck,” said Danny.  He twisted, trying to see the ‘wings’ on his back.  “What’s happening?  Is this– Did I pick up Dora’s amulet or something?”

“I don’t know,” said Sam.  “But I don’t think you’re turning into a dragon.”

“I’ve got scales.”

“But your wings are feathery.”

Danny twisted again.  He could almost see something in the corners of his eyes.  Maybe, if he warped his body he’d be able to see more, but that felt like a bad idea when he wasn’t aware of his current body plan.  

“Okay,” said Sam.  “We’re going to have to go to Frostbite about this.”

“Yeah,” said Danny.  He left off trying to see his ‘wings’ and bent slightly to tie his sleeves around his waist and rub his palms on his pants.  “Obviously.  But, uh.  I think after school.  This isn’t affecting my human half, and I really can’t miss geometry again.  I’ll die.”

Sam chewed her lower lip.  “This all happened since school started?”

Danny shook his head.  “No, I think it started last night.  I woke up because things felt weird, and then my hands felt all dry and flaky this morning.”

“That’s not too fast, then… I don’t like it,” said Sam.  “But you’re right that we can’t all skip again.  After school, we’ve got to go straight to the Ghost Zone.”

“Yeah,” agreed Danny.  “Yeah.  I think that’ll be fine.”

“I hope so,” said Tucker, “because this is kind of messed up.”

.

Sam pushed down on the accelerator, and the Spector Speeder floated smoothly through the portal.  

“Okay,” she said.  “Go ahead and change now.”

“You sure that’s a good idea?” asked Tucker.  “What happens if his face melted off during school?”

“My face didn’t melt off,” said Danny.  

“Do you know that?” asked Tucker.  

Danny looked at him flatly and went ghost.  

The top half of his jumpsuit was gone, and the bottom half had somehow fused with the tank top.  Sort of.  The sides of the top were open, and his boots were gone, too.  Which made it really easy to see what had happened to his hand and feet.  Their backs and tops were covered with shiny scales, and the skin between each digit was webbed.  His toes were longer than they were supposed to be, too, making his feet look like abbreviated swim fins.  Meanwhile, on his sides…  Were those gills?  They looked like gills.  

He felt something and looked over his shoulder��� shoulders?  Shoulders.  To glare at Tucker.  

“What can I say?” said Tucker, shrugging.  “They’re fluffy.”

Needless to say, the wings were much larger, now.  Big enough for Danny to see them.  

“There’s a bunch of fluff on your back, too,” said Tucker, helpfully.  

“Thanks,” said Danny.  “That’s great.”  He returned to human form.  “Let’s get there as fast as we can, okay?”

.

“Frostbite!” called Danny, transforming as he bounded out of the Speeder and into the snow.  Sam and Tucker followed him.  “Frostbite, look!”  He transformed, then spun.  “Do you see this?”

“Yes,” said Frostbite, “your wings and scales are coming in quite nicely, but if speed is distressing you, I could give you something to accelerate the process.”

“I– What?  Wait, why are you acting like this is something you expected?”

Frostbite frowned.  “Because it is, Great One.  You have dominion over Sky and Sea.  Your form is changing to represent that.”

“Oh my gosh,” said Tucker.  “Dude.  Dude.  It’s the king thing.  This is happening because of the king thing.  Sam.  Sam, we totally told him so.”

“We did,” agreed Sam.  “But we should still try to fix the problem first.”

“No,” said Danny, forcefully.  He flew up to Frostbite’s eye level.  “It isn’t, is it?”

“It is, Great One.”

“Is it, you know, reversible?”

“No,” said Frostbite, confused.  “It is as permanent as your kingship.”

Danny covered his mouth to muffle a scream.  “And you didn’t think that maybe you should warn me that I was going to turn into the Starbucks logo?”

“You don’t actually look all that much like the Starbucks logo,” said Tucker.  “That has two tails and no wings.”

“I don’t care,” said Danny.  “Can you even use wings like this while you’re swimming?  Are these things even going to work with each other?  Who thought this was a good idea?”

“Great One,” said Frostbite, soothingly, “I apologize if I did not appropriately prepare you.  I had thought that you would understand that dominion over Earth, Sea, and Sky would require this.”

“Why?” asked Danny.  “It’s just– Okay, the scales and fins and stuff, that I sort of get.  I guess it’ll let me swim better.  But the wings?  I could already fly.  I could fly really well.”

“It is my understanding that it is largely symbolic.”“This is the part that’s symbolic?”

[phantomphangphucker]

Phic Phight - You Look Sort Of Like My Father

For: Chrysanthemum and Care

Danny’s never had good parents. They were objectively ‘good’ people, but maybe an objectively ‘bad’ man would make for a genuinely good parent.

You look sort of… like my father.

Little boy, little boy, let me come in.

Let the dark come in.

Dad is that you, are you back?

Danny’s always had a… rocky relationship with his parents, it’s not that they were actively mean to him or that he actively hated them. It’s more that they just… weren’t good, weren’t attentive.

Weren’t really meant to be parents.

They were meant to be scientists, to be researchers, to be explores even; meant to be ghost hunters.

Kids were just for ‘the Fenton legacy’ or because ’married couples were supposed to have kids’ or simply for them to have extra hands to help them or extra minds to listen to them…

Or maybe it was simply to have free experiments that couldn’t escape for eighteen years.

…

That last one felt a little too true these days. At least they didn’t know about him, about what he was. If they did…

It, it would be so so much worse. Surely.

How couldn’t it be? They’d have access to a ghost, a unique hybrid ghost at that, that was stuck under their roof for at least two more years… if he survived whatever they’d do for that long anyways.

He didn’t have his hopes up. Never did. Never had even.

At least when he was human, fully human, he didn’t have to wonder if they’d saw out his ribs just to see what colour they might be. Blood samples were just blood. The stool stuff was creepy but still, not really a part of him.

Plus they stopped doing that stuff a year after they started actively feed him and Jazz ecto as little kids, since it didn’t ’yield interesting results’.

If it had…

He’d have been screwed from the start of his half life. He absolutely would have had to flee on day one. God that would have been awful.

He’d have… survived of course, he was good at surviving, had to be, but surviving wasn’t good. Surviving, only just surviving, was worse than dying.

He’d do it for his friends and to protect the town of course but still, he’d be doing all of it, all of that, empty and numb and waiting for the fight that would finally brutally beat the fight out of every one of his limbs and eventually… his heart and core too.

But that’s not how things are, not how they were, small mercy he guesses.

Didn’t really make what he does have now much better though. And it’s not like he can even dream that things would be better if only he hadn’t died.

They would be, just…

They still wouldn’t be good. They wouldn’t be fine or even okay.

And giving kids at least a ‘fine’ childhood was kinda the point of being a parent, ‘good’ was the goal and ‘great’ was better, but ‘fine’ would do. ‘Okay’ was only really acceptable with parents who didn’t choose to become parents, which was firmly not his parents positions.

They chose this.

They shouldn’t have.

He wished they hadn’t.

…

Well, okay, that wasn’t strictly true. He… enjoyed being around, he did!

He liked helping people, and seeing movies, and getting into ghostly fist fights, and hanging out with his friends… Even taunting Dash mid bully session could be fun.

But his parents shouldn’t have had kids and Danny would be better off someone else’s kid. Jazz was treated better by them and even she knew that; and unlike him, she had told them as much.

Did they care?

No, not really. Just a ‘that’s nice, honey’, which was and is somehow worse than them being upset, or heck, even happy. They just… didn’t really care.

He’d always wanted to fly, but all they taught him was how to drown.

The only things from them he did really like was his own love of science, of exploring and discovering, of tinkering; but they only cared and nurtured those things in him as far as they benefited and leaning into their interests… not his. Sure he was interested in ghosts too, just not like them.

Never like them.

They’d want him to be. Push him to be. So he never made that little interest known.

That’s okay though.

Because he explored his interests on his own, which wasn’t how it should be.

But…

His parents also gave him what he is. He wouldn’t be a halfa if it was for them. And that was such a part of him he could hardly seem himself without it. Even if what gave him it is all the things wrong with his parents. All the reasons they should never have been parents.

Unsafe handling of samples and unlocked projects. No adult supervision and contaminated baby bottles from the day he was born.

His parents must have paid someone off to avoid him and jazz getting taken away by cps. That, or, Sam was right and the cps only ever really did anything when a kid died and actually left a corpse behind.

…

Sucks for him he guesses then. Or not. The adoption system sounded awful.

He just… didn’t know if that would be better or worse than what he’s got, hard to say. Which he knows is really really bad. At this point it didn’t matter anyways, he had two more years and it wouldn’t matter.

He could stay.

He could go.

He could stay sometimes and go other times.

It would be up to him. And well… he did not hate his parents. In some ways he wanted to stay, he just… knows he can’t. It’s not safe. It never will be safe. Human or halfa. It won’t be safe. It won’t be healthy. It won’t be happy.

He won’t be free.

He really wanted to be free.

Not free from them, not really. Just free to be, well, him. Free to go where he wanted. Free to talk as he wanted. Free to decorate as he wanted. Free to simply be without having to be so damn paranoid about them. About them hurting him, about them confining him, about them maybe simply just not caring.

If they ever found out and just said ‘that’s nice, sweetie’, he knows he wouldn’t be able to handle that.

What would he even be supposed to do with that?

Nothing. Because you can’t do anything when someone gives you nothing. And that was a nothing response.

He could power through torture, would suck but he could do it. It was something. Confinement he could find an escape or be rescued. Nothing would just…

…

Yeah. It would just, and that’s it. And being stuck in that kind of uncertainty would be the farthest from being free or safe or happy.

He can only starve for so long before he’ll die. He’s starving for freedom. For better. For more. For what only the darkness seems to whisper he can actually have.

It’s a bit weird.

Because he didn’t used to really think about this stuff, all of it, before. As a kid, an early teen, it just simply was. No need to think about it and no real reason to. Jazz did, because Jazz studied behaviours, because Jazz cared about and for him more than they ever did.

But at least he knows why he actually thinks about this stuff now. He had a reference point, and a bit more maturity of course; but it was mostly that reference point he mentioned. And ironically, the reference point that actually got him to really think about how bad his parents were at being parents was an outright mass murderer…

That was pretty messed up, in all honesty. Even to him.

When a literal war mongering genocidal mad man provides an actual example of what a good parent should be, because the biological parents were just that far gone.

Someone he knows is no good, is good to him.

But…

Pariah just… seemed to care, not just in general but about him specifically.

Somehow.

Danny had been pretty convinced that the whole ‘you nearly truly bested me, child, you shall be my heir’ situation was just that, claiming a strong heir.

Nothing more. Nothing less.

Just some other adult using what they wanted or needed of Danny and moving along.

Like mom and dad.

Like Vlad.

Like ClockWork.

Like Pamela and Jeremy Manson.

Like Alicia.

Like Pandora.

Like Angela and Maurice Foley.

Even like Lancer.

In fact… the only adult that Danny can think of that didn’t do that to him, was Sam’s nana Ida… his nana Ida… who of course died.

Figures right?

The one adult who treated him well dying?

Yeah…

‘That’s rough buddy’.

He was tired of rough. Honestly.

But then, now, there’s Pariah. Who… doesn’t do that to him.

Sure Pariah trains him. Hand to hand combat. Weapons. Political jargon. War strategies. Zone geography. Ghost typography and linguistics.

But…

He also listens to him. He doesn’t just throw things at him. Doesn’t just push his own wants, his own desires, his own ways, on him. On Danny. He didn’t do that to Danny as a whole, not just the ghost Phantom or the Human Fenton. Danny. He listened.

He gave back more than ‘that’s nice, sweetie’. Or ‘be back by super!’. Or ‘okay, have fun’.

Pariah gave responses. He gave actual feed back, and opinions, and his own specific thoughts.

And neither did he just say what he thought Danny wanted to hear or what he thought would get Danny to do or say or be the way he wanted. Even when Pariah knew it wasn’t what Danny wanted to hear.

When Pariah’s thoughts and opinions were cruel and twisted and dangerous.

Which was… good. It was really good.

As much as that had been difficult to admit, even to just himself.

Because someone who ended trillions in death and murdered thousands in life, shouldn’t be someone Danny’s ever thinking positively of… right?

Yet he was.

Because Pariah actually seemed to give a damn about Danny. Even if sometimes it was a bit twisted or dark. Even when he pushed for more than Danny was willing to give, he’d back off, drop it, immediately. Maybe explain himself a little, but that was all.

That alone was refreshing.

A ten foot civilization Ender trying to test out Danny’s level of willingness to commit murder, shouldn’t be ‘refreshing’… but it was.

Pariah was everything he didn’t have. Everything he’d never had.

And wasn’t that an awful thing?

What’s worse is it made Danny feel… off kilter. It just wasn’t what he was used to. His experience with so called ‘parental figures’ was lie, hide, and subdue everything.

Be enough for their wants and their needs but never too much. Never too you. If it was a situation where he didn’t have to then he wouldn’t, but with mom and dad he always had to. With anyone with actual claim to the term ‘parent’ with him, he had to.

Until Pariah.

Mom and dad left the door open, the latch ajar, for someone else to come in and scoop him up.

Pariah wanted of him of course. Wanted for him. But he also just wanted Danny seemingly. Wanted Danny as Danny. No lies. No hiding. No subduing his self.

Pariah didn’t like stars. Well he did, he just liked the stars because Danny liked the stars. Danny’s mom and dad couldn’t even understand the concept of liking something just because someone else, because their kid, did.

Pariah, he… felt more a parent each day and each night than Maddie or Jack did.

Every day he sent the FrightKnight as his guard, not because he wanted to ‘keep an eye’ on Danny, but because he wanted Danny safe. Because he did not view Danny as safe in his home environment… or a school… or at his friend’s homes.

Every night he decided to show up and glare menacingly at whatever ghost was bugging Danny, all so he could have some ‘father/son’ time.

Every day he just plain played with him, no ‘how to be a parent’ book needed.

Every night he’d sit on the observatory and let Danny explain the constellations at him even though he’d seen them all before.

Every day he eagerly teach Danny maths and social and even English, in place of living teachers who had long since given up on him.

Every night he simply let Danny sleep purely because he knows Danny needs to.

Then there was what he didn’t do.

He didn’t tell Danny half of what he was, was lesser than him. No, just that everyone was beneath them, because they were king and prince. No bigotry, no bias. It was simple status.

He didn’t gift him backhandedly or gift him only things that were useful to ‘the parent’ instead.

He didn’t disregard him and all that was his. Didn’t give him nothing answers.

Most of all, he didn’t experiment on him. Tests of skill or knowledge, sure, but not experiments, and the tests were with good reason.

Danny being weak, Danny being unskilled, Danny be unaware; would be dangerous. For him, for Pariah, for both of them. It wasn’t the same, it was always willing, eager even.

Pariah… was making Danny happy. Not like the contentment from when he was a young naive child. Actually happy.

That just… also hurt. Because it should be his mom and dad doing that. Having that effect. Not someone Danny met only because of an ill-thought fight and Vlad machinations.

But at some point Danny has to choose himself. His happiness. Choose a future with him happy in it.

Mom and dad.

Maddie and Jack.

Weren’t that future.

They never were. Never even could be. They didn’t have the capacity to be. Not for him, not for Jazz, not for anyone. That’s not Danny’s fault. That’s not Jazz’s fault. He can’t even blame Vlad. It was just them. Maddie and Jack. But that’s what made it hurt too.

Because they were happy the way they were. Hurting and failing those they chose to bring into the world by force. And happy people… can’t be changed. Shouldn’t be really.

It would be really selfish of Danny.

So he’ll let them have their peace. Without him.

It’s okay. It hurts, but it’s okay.

Danny had someone who did want him. Who did change for him. Pariah wanted Danny. And Danny likes being wanted, wants to be wanted.

Was that so wrong?

Was it okay for him to… actually pick Pariah? As a dad?

It… felt like it was but it also felt like it wasn’t.

…

Danny made his choice already. Made it a while ago. Long before he met Pariah. Long before he died. Long before he even understood that not choosing Maddie and Jack was even an option.

It just…

He just… needed to realize that. Mourn that. Hurt a little.

And he had. He really really had.

The realization will settle in. The mourning will peter down. The hurt will dull.

But at least that was an adjustment he wouldn’t have to bear alone.

Even if Pariah didn’t get Danny’s emotions, because they were too human or perhaps simply to foreign to Pariah himself, he would still make an effort to get them or hear them or soften them to something easier for Danny.

That’s so so much more than he’s ever had.

Still.

He has to stay. Stay here. In this house. For two more years, regardless of his falling off breaking non-attachment to its owners. He will be here, but he’ll be motionless. He won’t be himself.

He has nothing left to give.

They failed him, and Pariah came like holy water being poured on him. The devil always seemed so much kinder than god.

Will they even know? Will they be able to tell?

Like astronomy, they were whole worlds apart. Whole universes.

…

They already rarely see him. His room his only home here. The night. The sky. The stars. Even more so home.

Will they one day realize that he too -so much like Jazz but so much painfully later- had lost his will to believe in them? That he tried so hard but they never had anything. Had nothing for him.

Would he just be a memory?

Would they?

Once you reach the sky, you can’t look down at the sea.

A ghost gave him hope and an idea of what happiness was, what it could be.

He… he can almost laugh at how crazy that might drive them…

…

If they cared at all, or if they just dismissed him with their nothings.

Pariah would care. Pariah would laugh with him. And Danny’s heart and core would beat and pulse all the more with it.

Pariah could have him as son.

Pariah had him as son.

And Danny?

Danny, for once, for once in his life and death, had a dad.

As much as it hurt, he couldn’t bear the sound of loosing what he’s never before found.

And with that, the Infinite Realms had a king and prince too. And Danny could make Pariah love the place again. Want it to flourish again.

Because Danny wanted that.

Danny wanted it to thrive.

That place was the space he’d never get to see. The spaceship he can’t fly.

He can’t force a star that’s already died to align with living ones.

But he’ll reach out into the void with his small child ghost hands, and this time…

This time…

He won’t grab the wrong hand.

You look nothing like my mother

You look nothing like my father.

Dark thrashing, calling my name

Looming, threatening, and shaking the latch

You look nothing like my mother I know no mother.

You look exactly like my father.

End.

Prompts: Pariah Dark adopts Danny. He is a surprising dedicated to being a good parent. "This had all been for his own good, he knew that. Still, it was hard to remember that sometimes."

[fascinatedscrawls]

Whatcha Got There, Danny?

It was an average school day. Starting too early for any teen to truly enjoy, the majority of students made their way to first period with all due enthusiasm.

Surprisingly, Danny was one of them.

"You're on time?" Sam looked to the window and squinted at the sky as Danny took his seat, rolling his eyes. "I don't think the world is ending, it's a bit too sunny for that."

That got Danny to pause as he reached into his bag. "Actually, it's pretty likely the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs burned off whatever weather pattern-"

"Hey, Danny," Tucker cut in a little nervously. "Did you forget to give Dorathea something back?"

Pulling his hand all the way out of his bag, Danny met the eyes of the small, vaguely transparent dragon that was clinging to his thermos and smothered a sigh before turning back to his friend to give the wrong answer on purpose.

"I don't think Dora likes my coffee, man."

"That is not what I meant and you know it. Is that her kid?"

Uncapping the mostly normal thermos and not even blinking as the little guy scrambled up his arm to sit on his shoulder (a little difficult as those tiny claws were sharp), Danny slurped a sip of his coffee just to be annoying only to choke on it a bit when Sam jostled his other arm trying to hurry along an answer. He managed to swallow the mouthful before coughing around his surrender.

"Alright, alright!" He coughed again. "It's not Dora's kid."

"Is it," Sam grimaced as she stopped mid-sentence, clearly unwilling to finish the thought of Aragon having a kid.

"It's mine." Danny assured her quickly, trying to keep his voice down so the other students in the room wouldn't start looking their way. Maybe too quickly as he heard it aloud and had to correct himself to his friends' shocked looks. "My dragon! Not my kid!"

The little guy sat up tall and proud, little wings flaring out as he gave what he probably thought was a mighty roar. Danny was too busy trying to not get smacked by the unfortunately tangible wing smacking his ear to snicker at the squeaking noise like his friends were.

"That's cool," Tucker managed to compose himself enough to look over his shoulder past some of their now curious classmates to check if Mr. Lancer was on his way. "But school doesn't seem like the best place to bring a dragon."

"It's better than leaving him at home."

"Your parents know about him?!" Sam leaned in to hiss, already looking ready to throw down if anyone hurt the foot long, ghostly lizard currently playing with his hair.

"He won't leave me alone," Danny explained, exhausted by having to go through this for Ancients who knew how many times since last night. At least he wasn't having to twist the story around like he had to do with his parents. "Did you know that all of Dora's Knights are dragon knights? Because I didn't."

He waited a moment as they both did their best to imagine the dragon turning into a similarly sized knight. Or, that's what Danny assumed they were doing as he tried to do the same when Dora first explained this, but it wasn't a transformation like she and her brother could do.

"So, it's protection?" Tucker asked, baffled.

"No, it's my dragon." Danny pointed to himself. "I'm the one who got knighted, remember?"

The dragons were companions.

"Honestly, not really. Too much stuff happens to you, dude."

"Fair." Danny didn't always believe he went through all of that either.

"How'd you get him past your parents? Do you need a place to stay?" Sam pressed, still focused on the biggest problem.

"I told them he's a blob ghost." He watched them both stare at him, then look to the little dragon that was determinedly reaching the peak of mount Danny via the footholds which usually found use as his nose and ear, then back. "I know, I'm not sure how I managed it either. Something clicked with them about 'post-human consciousness', ghostly shape shifting, and how I really liked dragons as a kid. After arguing about it for practically the whole night not going to question it. Hopefully, the little guy can learn to go invisible before they move on to experimentation instead of just observation."

"That almost explains how you can keep him at home, but what about-"

"Dragonriders of Pern, Mister Fenton!" Mr. Lancer sounded somewhere between aghast and resigned. "What is that?"

"It's my, er." Frowning, Danny put one hand up to keep the dragon from falling and reached down to pull out the form his parents filled out for him this morning to ensure the school wouldn't stop this 'experiment'. Holding it out, he read the reason off the page, "my emotional support ghost-dragon. I need him. For reasons. Sir."

Mr. Lancer's sigh was almost as long as Jazz's was when she heard.

Well, that was settled. Now he just had to figure out how to explain why the dragon was going to follow Phantom too.

Wes was going to have a field day.

--------------------------------------

Sooo I missed all of Phic Phight due to personal, real life reasons (most good, some not) but the ideas I started cooking up in that first week still need to be written down before they eat me from the inside lol Also, I guess this could count a little bit for Dannymay day 1, though I'm late for the dragon prompt there too haha

I maybe made the dragon a little younger and less capable of speaking than the prompt called for, but I like him anyway. Even if Danny refused to name him.

I hope you like this interpretation!

Uploaded to AO3

[torscrawls]

Questions for the Substitute Teacher

The new Substitute teacher is weird—like really weird—and Liam and his class are dead-set on figuring out what his deal is. Based on the excellent prompt by @shockingshinx12-shinx: Mr. Lancer works as a sub during his semi-retirement. He's long since moved out of Amity, but has some pretty wild stories to share, or some weird off-the-cuff comments and mannerisms that make no sense to the local culture of this new town. His new students have opinions on all this, and there's many rumors surrounding this strange substitute…

Words: 1,643

Can be read on AO3!

---

“Hey,” Liam said as he slumped into the seat next to Nathalie. “What do you think of our new History sub?”

Nathalie looked up from her phone and raised an eyebrow. “Mr. Lancer?”

“Yeah! Isn't he…” Liam trailed off as he searched for a word to describe their new eccentric teacher. He landed on a hesitant, “A bit weird?”

Nathalie shrugged. “I guess? We've only had him for one class.”

“But didn't you see when he gestured at nothing during reading time? He seemed to be having a whole conversation!”

Nathalie shook her head.

Liam groaned. “Well, I tell you! He’s weird. Maybe in this class you can see what I—”

Nathalie elbowed him in the side and Liam groaned as Nathalie hissed, “Shh! He’s coming!”

And true to her words, in walked Mr. Lancer himself. In all his bald, gray bearded, and beer-bellied glory. “Alright, class, settle down.”

Liam sat down at his desk, settling in and deciding to wait for Mr. Lancer to do something strange OR for Mr. Lancer to slip up.

He reached over and elbowed Nathalie and she rolled her eyes but put her phone down.

He didn’t have to wait for long.

A sudden bang and shout rang out in the classroom as someone tipped their chair over and fell to the floor. Almost at the same moment, Mr. Lancer jumped up and whipped out what looked like a very sci-fi looking gun. After a split second and a scan of the room, he relaxed and lowered the weapon back down, seemingly ignoring all the wide eyed stares locked on him. He gave a small chuckle. “Moby Dick! That scared me!”

“Is that a gun?!” Liam screeched and several of his classmates joined in the chorus of panic.

Mr. Lancer waved them all off, with the gun in hand no less. Students threw themselves to the side or to the floor to avoid being in front of it. “It's an ecto-gun, completely harmless to humans.”

Liam didn’t want to ask, but damn it all, he was too curious. “... So what does it harm?”

“Ghosts,” Mr. Lancer said immediately, without shame.

Liam leaned over towards Nathalie and whispered. “Is he joking?”

Nathalie looked a bit pale. “I don’t know. I’m still stuck on the fact that he has a gun.”

“I promise it’s not dangerous. Look!” And then Mr. Lancer pointed the gun at his own left hand and pulled the trigger.

The classroom that had managed to calm down slightly exploded back into chaos.

“Holy shit! You just shot yourself!”

“Call the nurse!

“No! Call an ambulance!”

Mr. Lancer, still with a very calm look on his face, just lifted his hand, now covered in green goo and said, “I’m fine. It’s just ectoplasm.”

Everyone stopped and stared at him.

Mr. Lancer looked at his own hand and then wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Oh, this is gonna be a pain to wipe off. Does someone have a napkin?”

Nathalie silently reached into her bag and pulled out a packet of napkins.

“Thank you,” Mr. Lancer said as he took the offered package. “I don’t need all of them, though.”

She shook her head, eyes on the green goop on his hand. “Keep them.”

Liam couldn’t keep silent any longer, almost vibrating out of his seat as he asked, “Did you say ectoplasm? Like the thing ghosts are made of?”

Mr. Lancer seemed delighted by his question. “So you know about that? I have to admit I’m not really sure what’s common knowledge. Yes. Like ghosts are made of.”

“No way that’s real ectoplasm.” Liam knew for a fact that scientists were still debating whether ectoplasm even existed or not. There was no way that their History substitute teacher just had it on him. Even more strange, why would a History teacher have it in a gun? “Why do you have a gun that shoots supposed ectoplasm?”

Mr. Lancer wiped off his hand as if it wasn’t covered in fluorescent goo, as if he’d done it a million times before, and ignored Liam to say, “Well then. No more delays. Open your books to page 116.”

Liam slumped back in his seat, knowing an evasive maneuver when he saw it. Heard it. Whatever.

The rest of the class crawled past; Liam doing his best to focus and failing miserably. Like usual. After he failed to answer a few of the questions and found himself staring emptily at his notebook for the majority of the class, Liam was ready to just go home.

And apparently, he hadn’t been so lucky that Mr. Lancer had missed his lapse in attention. As they reached the end of the class, the dreaded words were spoken; “Liam? Can you stay a bit after class?”

Liam tensed and Nathalie sent him a sympathetic look before the rest of the class all filed out.

Mr. Lancer cleared his throat and offered Liam a smile. “I can see that you're struggling a bit with the schoolwork. Are you having trouble at home? Out hunting ghosts?”

Liam blinked in surprise. That… was not what he had expected to hear. “No?”

Mr. Lancer nodded and then seemed to think for a moment before landing on, “Do you need any extra help?”

Well, if he was offering. It would be nice to have some extra time to hand in assignments. And he had promised himself to try and stand up for himself more, to be kinder to himself. Liam straightened his shoulders and said, “I wish that—” 

Mr. Lancer cut in with a panicked, “No wishes in my classroom!”

“What?” Liam blinked his eyes in confusion. “Why?”

“You never know if she's listening.”

Well. That’s not ominous at all. “Who?!”

“Oh right. No ghosts.” Mr. Lancer cleared his throat. “I just don’t… Like? Wishes?”

“Oh.” Liam didn’t know what to say to that. “Sorry?”

“That’s okay,” Mr. Lancer said easily. “Now. What were you saying?”

“Right… Eh. Maybe I can get some extension on the next deadline? I have ADHD and some extra time would be a huge help.”

Mr. Lancer didn’t even hesitate before nodding. “Yes, that’s no problem. Thank you for telling me.”

Huh. Mr. Lancer was actually really nice. Liam left the classroom feeling slightly shocked. He’d never had a teacher just agree to help him, no argument needed.

Nathalie was waiting for him outside the classroom. As soon as he got out she went over to him with a worried expression. “Are you okay? What did he want?

“To know if I hunt ghosts in my spare time.”

Liam had to admit, it was satisfying to see Nathalie blinked in obvious confusion. She slowly asked, as if afraid of the answer, “And why would he ask you that?”

Liam shrugged with a grin. “Apparently that’s a more likely cause for not paying attention than simply having ADHD.”

“Really?” Nathalie asked and Liam felt gratified by the small smile of incredulity growing on her face.

“Yeah. But he also gave me some extra time for the next deadline, no problem, so I think he’s actually nice?”

“So you don’t think he’s strange anymore?”

Liam gasped in fake outrage. “I’m insulted! Of course I will!”

“Good,” Nathalie said with a nod, “Look what I found.” And then she held her phone for him to see.

Liam grabbed it and frowned down at the screen and the web page of what looked like a small US town that was pulled up on it. Green lettering and pixelated pictures made it look old and tacky. “What is this?”

“I looked him up while you were in there talking,” Nathalie said, not able to disguise the pleased tone of her voice, “This is the town he’s from.”

Liam scrolled to the top of the page and read the town name. “Amity Park? Never heard of it.”

“Me neither. Look at their slogan.”

“America’s most haunted town. Really?!” Liam was delighted. Ecstatic. He looked up and met Nathalie’s equally sparkling eyes.

“You think he worked in the tourism industry? Still getting some money on the side to spread the rumor?”

“It must be a bit, right? Some weird humor from his home-town?”

“I think he's crazy,” Nathalie said dreamily. As if a crazy teacher would be the height of their school-year. It probably would.

“Let’s find out.”

—

Before the next class, the whole class was abuzz with tension and raised voices. Several students talked over each other as they waited for Mr. Lancer to show up.

“I think he's from area 51.”

“Yeah, I agree. He's clearly an alien trying to blend in and mixing up reality and fiction.”

“No, I think he worked there! He's been there for so long he doesn't know what normal life's like anymore.”

“No, no, I think he's a ghost. That's why he keeps bringing them up.”

“Ghosts aren't real!”

“Guys. He’s clearly just messing with us.”

“Who is messing with who?” A voice asked from the door and Liam turned with a big grin, expecting to find Mr. Lancer. But there was Mr. Johnson, their regular History teacher.

Liam cast about for the other man. “Where is Mr. Lancer?”

Mr. Johnson raised an eyebrow as he started setting up. “Probably at another school or at home. Why?”

Liam deflated. Right substitute teacher. “No reason.”

That’s what they got for getting excited. Liam sighed. School had never seemed so dull. He turned to Nathalie and moaned, “It’s like he was never here. Maybe he was a ghost after all,” he ended a bit dreamily.

Nathalie gave him a short glance from where she was staring at her phone. “Nah, I saw him outside Starbucks on the way to class, talking to a white haired guy about green dogs? So he seems to be alive and kicking.”

Liam slumped deeper in his chair. “Oh joy.”

[uniasus]

🎶writing writing writing 🎶 I'm actually really excited to take the train back home from my parents tonight because it'll be 5! whole! hours! to work on my next phic phight story. No title yet, but who knows? maybe I'll post the first chapter while I'm on the Amtrack tonight because I'm impatient to share this one.

----

“Nervous, baby bop?”

Danny sighs. “Ember, I get that you're older, but this is not my first show.”

She grins at him, flashing her aura in amusement. Danny restrains his core from answering in kind, instead shaking his head. “I'll be fine.”

Ember launches herself up to sit on one of the cable boxes. “You've never done a show like this before.”

“Yes, yes. Thank you for pulling me from the local scene into national spotlights.”

“You're welcome.”

Danny shakes his head, dodging out of a crew member. He's still not sure he appreciates this launch to stardom. He was fine sticking with the Minneapolis scene, staying close to home. But when Ember McLain comes knocking asking for a collab, you don't say no. Danny's still not sure how she found him, or why she wanted to work with him.

He can't complain too much - their first record netted him more money in the two months since its release than he sees in an average year. 

And now they're here at the Chicago United Center, getting watching the sound and tech crews put finals touches on the set. They'd do a quick sound check and practice, relax for a few hours, and then come back for show.

“Yo!”

They look over at Technus. Ember’s long term sound and lightning tech waves from the floor. “Light run in 10!”

Danny lifts his hand in a thumbs up. 

Technus is a genius with putting together lightshows, no doubt aided by his technopathy. Not that he knows Danny knows. Ember and her crew are very dedicated to appearing human, and Danny is more than willing to let them believe they've hidden the fact that they're ghosts.

Danny's hiding too.

[fangirlwriting-stories]

Easier When Unknown

Summary: Danny could have imagined his life would be interesting after everyone learned his secret, but he didn't think it would be this different.

Author's Note: A phic phight fanfiction! Here are the two prompts:

AU where no one knew Danny was Phantom until PP (or some alternate big reveal of the author's choice). Sam and Tucker are sure that a famous hero like Danny Phantom is too cool to be their friend again, especially since they haven't talked since before freshman year of high school. Danny just wants to be part of the trio again and has no idea how to ask.

Danny finds out that Sam's been being bullied at school and has been hiding it from him and Tucker out of embarrassment.

...

Danny’s life definitely didn’t get easier after his identity was revealed, but it didn’t get that much harder, which was good.  Right?

Or, well, that was a little bit of an oversimplification.  His life definitely got harder in a lot of ways.  People stared at  him wherever he went.  Suddenly all of the popular kids at school wanted to be best friends with him, like he couldn’t see through that change of pace from a mile away.  There were news stations constantly vying for the first interview with the half-ghost kid who defeated the Ghost King.

But his parents stopped hunting him.  And they were going to try to work things out.  And Jazz revealed that she’d actually known for a while now, and that made her more ready to adapt to everything, and she didn’t treat him like anything had changed.

And all of that kind of evened it out, at the end of the day.  Even if he wasn’t exactly sure he was ready to go from town’s enemy to world’s hero.

Because that was another part of this: word of Amity Park, ghosts in general, and what he’d done had been spreading like wildfire since he’d put Pariah Dark back in his coffin.  Suddenly everyone was talking about him, and everyone knew him, and, as stated with the aforementioned journalists, everyone wanted to talk to him.  He woke up every day to see news trucks that were local and ones that were very much not right outside his house.  He’d flown intangibly to school every day for the past month.

Ancients, all this fame needed to die down soon.  He wasn’t sure how much more of it he could take.

He was often so caught up in everything changing all at once, however, that he didn’t have much of a chance to think about things he might want to happen.  Which was why he was a little caught off guard that morning.  He was running from the daily mob of screaming girls who wanted his autograph (which was never something he thought he’d get sick of), and after getting at least a little bit of a lead on them, he turned intangible and dove through the door to the janitor’s closet, then turned back to normal and rested his hands on his knees, panting slightly to catch his breath.

“Uh,” came a very familiar female voice, and Danny’s head shot up.  He found standing on the other side of the closet the one part of his life that hadn’t changed.

And for a long, long moment, he and Sam and Tucker just stared at each other.

Danny’s feelings about Sam and Tucker had never been more mixed.  They really were the one aspect of his life that stayed the same post identity-reveal-to-the-entire-world, and he couldn’t decide whether to thank them for the consistency or be pissed at them for the audacity.

Because he hadn’t talked to Sam and Tucker since the beginning of Freshman year.

And then his secret was revealed to the entire world.

And he still hadn’t talked to Sam and Tucker since the beginning of Freshman year.

“Uh,” Danny said finally, because they couldn’t just all keep staring at each other.  “Hi.”

“Hey,” Tucker said.  Sam nodded in acknowledgement.

Really, guys.  Work with him a little bit, please?

“Are you hiding from people too?” Danny asked, pushing himself up using his knees.

“Yeah,” Sam said.

“I didn’t think you’d be hiding from anyone anymore,” Tucker said, and Danny didn’t miss the tinge of bitterness in his voice.

“Um,” Danny said.  He didn’t seem to have any more words for Sam and Tucker than he had a year and a half ago.

“Danny!” came from outside the closet, and Danny whirled around instinctually.  “Get back here!  What makes you think you can run from me?”

“Hey you mind if I hang out here for a bit cool thanks,” Danny said, moving across the closet until he was right across from Sam and Tucker.  A second later, the door handle started jiggling, and Danny turned intangible, even though he could feel Sam and Tucker’s stares.

The door swung open and Paulina poked her head in.

“Oh, it’s just you two,” she said, disappointment obvious in her voice.  A second later, she perked up.  “Hey, you haven’t seen Danny, have you?”

“No,” Sam said, crossing her arms.  “Would you back off?  We’re trying to hide in a closet here.”

Paulina laughed.  “Sure, okay.  Have fun, losers.”  She slammed the door after herself.

Danny dropped the intangibility as soon as she was gone with a sigh of relief.  “Thanks,” he said to Sam and Tucker.

“Don’t mention it,” Sam grumbled, and leaned back against the shelf behind her.  “I’m surprised you didn’t want to see her, though.”

“Honestly, yeah,” Tucker agreed, giving him a weird look.  “Never thought I’d see the day you’d turn down Paulina.”

“It’s not that,” Danny said.  “I mean she… she’s not…”

The warning bell rang, and all three of them looked towards the door, where they could hear it outside.  For a second afterwards, none of them moved.

Sam did first, pushing herself off the shelf.  “Bye,” she said, starting towards the door.  Tucker followed her closely.

Danny tried not to make his deflation obvious.  “Yeah, okay,” he muttered.  He turned intangible again, and slipped through the floor, rather than try and go past them.

It was only when he actually made it to his homeroom that he realized he still had no idea why Sam and Tucker were in that closet.

…

“Hey, Fenturd— I mean Fenton!”

Danny heaved an internal sigh and looked up from his tray of food to find Dash and Kwan walking up to his table.

“Are these seats taken?” Dash asked with a grin, gesturing at the as-of-yet empty table around him.  He’d gotten to lunch early in order to try and hang on to one.

“Yeah,” Danny said to Dash, leaning over to rest his chin on his hand in what was intended to be a representation of how little he wanted them here.  “I’m holding it for all of the ghosts that are going to show up during lunch and blast you across the room.”

“Ha, you’re a riot Fenton!” Dash said, completely ignoring Danny’s tone and face and sliding into the seat next to him.  Danny cringed and didn’t bother to hide it, sliding as far away from Dash as he could.  Unfortunately, Dash just slid right down after him, which resulted in Danny nearly being pushed off the bench and Dash not noticing.

Kwan followed his lead and took the seat across from Danny, meaning Danny was forced to look in boredom to the side to avoid both of their gazes.  He waited a couple extra seconds, but eventually it became clear that neither of them were going to move.  So, Danny sighed, resigned himself to his life, and picked up one of his terrible school-lunch chicken nuggets.

“So, we were both thinking that maybe you could come watch one of our practices!” Dash called, slinging an arm around Danny’s shoulder.  “The football team’s, I mean.”

“Why would I do that?” Danny asked, making his shoulder go intangible just long enough for Dash’s arm to fall through.

“Well I mean, it would be neat to have you there,” Dash said, glancing across the table at Kwan.  “Right Kwan?”

“Totally,” Kwan agreed with a grin of his own.  “And I mean, you’re pretty good with athletic stuff.  You know, when you’re a cool ghost fighting superhero and not a weak dweeb.  Maybe you could come as Phantom, you know, show us some tricks!”

“Gee, that sounds great,” Danny deadpanned.  “So am I just supposed to ignore the insults in there, or…?”

“Hey,” came Paulina’s voice, and Danny turned around to see her walking up behind them all.  “Can’t you two leave him alone?  It’s clear he doesn’t want to be bothered by you.”

Danny blinked in surprise.  He really hadn’t expected Paulina to pick up on that.  Maybe she actually—

“He’d clearly rather be sitting with me!” Paulina said, reaching down and pulling Danny up by his arm.

“Okay, that’s it!”  Danny went intangible again and slipped out of Paulina’s grasp, then grabbed his lunch and walked out of the room, straight through the doors without bothering to open them.

He made his way out to the front steps of the school and sat down, and managed to get through at least a couple bites before he remembered the reason eating outside was also a bad idea.  The reminder came in the form of a reporter and a camera man leaping out from what he thought was a normal van sitting across the street.

“Mr Fenton!” called one of them as he ran up towards the steps.  “Or would you prefer Mr Phantom?”

“I’d prefer solitude,” Danny snapped, leaning back and away from them both.

“Oh absolutely!  Just a couple of quick questions first of course, you wouldn’t mind.”

The door slammed open behind them, and Danny prepared himself for Dash or Paulina again when, to his surprise, Mr Lancer stepped down the steps and stopped right in front of him.

“You’re on school property,” he said, crossing his arms.  “You have two minutes to get back in your van and drive away or I am calling the police.”

“Sir, can I ask, how long have you known that one of your students is dead?” the reporter asked, shoving a mic in Lancer’s face.

Lancer raised an eyebrow and pulled out his phone, then started dialing 911.  Thankfully, the reporters turned and ran back across the street before he could finish.

Lancer turned back around as soon as they were gone.  “Are you alright?” he asked, casting a concerned look down at Danny.

“Fine,” Danny muttered, picking up his tray and climbing to his feet.  “You know.  Great.”

Lancer looked at him for another second, then said, “Mr Fenton, come and eat your lunch in my classroom.”

“What?  Why?”

“You can sit out of view from my door,” Lancer said.  “It’ll give you a break from the crowds.”

Danny felt a knot in his chest loosen.  “Really?”

Lancer gave him a sympathetic frown.  “I can’t imagine it’s an easy thing to deal with all the time,” he said.  He opened the door again and gestured for Danny to go first, so he did.

And for the first time in a while, he ate his lunch in silence.

…

He wasn’t expecting to see Sam and Tucker again that day.  Most of the time his time at school was spent avoiding every single person he possibly could.  The morning incident in the janitor’s closet had been a once in a blue moon event.

But, as fate would have it, there was a ghost attack during the last period, and after going and taking care of it (just the Box Ghost showing up as an irritation), he landed behind the school to find Sam and Tucker leaning against the wall and talking.

And while he’d originally come back here to try and avoid all of the cheers he’d get going right back into class, he was sort of regretting that decision now.

Sam and Tucker were clearly deep in conversation, but they noticed when he landed right in front of them, and then they all got to do a lovely repeat of that morning’s staring at each other.

“Hiding again?” Tucker asked eventually.

Danny nodded.  “You too?”

Sam nodded.

Danny gave them a curious look.  “From what?”

“Danny!”

Danny groaned audibly this time, as Star ran around the side of the building and straight for him.

“That was so cool the way you just flew off like that!” she called.  “Not a second thought to how you might be putting yourself in danger!”

“Yeah, thanks,” Danny said, already starting to fly away.  “Make my excuses in class, will you?  Got to get this really dangerous ghost back to the portal right away and send him through to the ghost zone.  Great thanks bye!”

He flew off maybe a little bit too quickly for the given situation, but he couldn’t stand another second there, and school was basically over anyway.  He made it home pretty quickly, and thankfully wasn’t stopped by any news outlets on the way, though that was likely because he made the whole trip while intangible.

But while he made it inside without any fuss, as soon as he flew down to the lab he was greeted with his parents working on what looked like a weapon of some kind.

He winced.  He was never quite able to stop the touch of fear that came with his parents working on a ghost weapon.  After a second, though, he floated down to the ground anyway and changed back from his ghost form.

Both his parents startled and looked over at him.

“Danny,” his mom said.  “You’re back early.”

“Yeah uh, ghost fight in last period,” Danny muttered, heading over towards the portal and attaching the thermos to it.  “School was already basically over, so I just came home.”  He hit the button on the side of the portal and sent the Box Ghost flying into the portal, crying out dramatically all the way.

“Well that’s nice,” Mom said, the tension in her voice obvious.

“Yeah, uh, anyway I have homework,” Danny said, starting for the steps.  He had a feeling flying up through the ceiling wouldn’t be a great idea right now.

“Will we see you for dinner, Danno?” Dad asked.  “We were hoping to all eat together tonight.”

Danny tightened his grip on the railing of the stairs.  “Okay.”

He considered asking what they’d be having, but given the tension in the room he really didn’t think he could spend much more time in the lab.

So instead, he just said “See you later,” and headed upstairs.

It’s not that his parents had reacted badly to the Phantom news.  They’d done the important stuff, they’d given him a huge apology and stopped actively hunting him.  But none of them seemed to really know where they stood with each other anymore.  Danny didn’t logically think they were going to hurt him anymore, but it was difficult to get rid of that fear response that for the longest time, it made sense to have.

But at the same time, he could tell it made them feel guilty to see him be scared of them.  Jazz said it wasn’t his fault, and she was probably right.  But he still hated it.

He started first for his bedroom, and made it part of the way through the living room when the front door opened and Jazz sprinted in, slamming the door shut on nearly a dozen reporters.  Danny could still hear their voice through the door after it shut.  Some were asking how it felt to be the brother of a hero, some were asking how long she’d known and how she’d found out, and some were asking how it felt to know her brother was dead.

Jazz heaved out a breath, though all of the reporters were still easily heard through the windows.  Then she looked up and met eyes with Danny.

“Oh hey,” she said, clearly still exhausted.  “How was school?”

Danny didn’t respond, instead gazing out the gap in the curtains to the people shoving cameras in it.

“Sorry,” he said to Jazz.

“Oh, don’t you dare,” Jazz said.  “I know you hate them as much as I do.”

Danny sighed and looked down.  “Yeah.”

“Are you doing okay?” Jazz asked hesitantly.  “I’m sure it’s… a lot.”

Danny snorted.  “Understatement.”

Jazz smiled a little.  “Yeah.”

Danny turned to face her more directly, chewing on his lip.  He’d avoided the topic with her so far, mostly because too much was going on, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t been desperately curious.  “Can I…” he said hesitantly.  “Can I be like one of those awful reporters and ask you how you found out?”

Jazz rolled her eyes.  “Don’t be ridiculous.  You’re not a reporter, you’re my brother.  And I know if I tell you it’s not going to end up on the 5:00 news.”

She paused, and turned and glanced out the windows for a moment.  “You want to go upstairs, though?”

“Yes,” Danny said immediately.

So they both ended up in Jazz’s room, sitting next to each other on her bed, with the curtains drawn tight in case the helicopters came back.

“I found out during the Spectra thing,” Jazz started.  “I spotted you transforming.”

Danny nodded, thinking about that.  “Okay,” he said quietly.  “And… why didn’t you say anything?”

“I wanted to wait until you wanted to tell me,” Jazz said.  She sighed, and glanced towards the windows.  “I guess that didn’t really work out.”

“No,” Danny muttered.  “But… I appreciate the sentiment.”

Jazz turned to look at him, concerned.  “Are you doing okay?  I mean, obviously not, just… you know.”

“Oh no, I’m fine,” Danny said, rolling his eyes.  “I always hoped that everyone would learn my secret in the aftermath of an exhausting battle when I was definitely not prepared for them to learn, and then I’d be hounded by literally everyone who suddenly feels entitled to my attention and my time.  Dream come true, this is.”

“I’m really sorry it turned out this way,” Jazz said quietly.

Danny sighed.  “Me too.”

“Is there anything I could do to be helpful?” Jazz asked.

“Do you know if anyone’s figured out time travel yet?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Dammit.”

There was a moment of silence, and Jazz said, “I mean it.”

Danny shook his head.  “There’s nothing you could do that you aren’t already doing,” he said.  “You’re not looking at me different.  Like your entire worldview’s been flipped on its head.  Which, I mean I guess for a lot of people it has, but… still.  It’s nice that you’re not.”

Jazz was quiet for a moment, and then she reached over and wrapped her arms around his shoulders.  And despite how totally lame it was to hug his sister, Danny did the same back.

“Still, if you want me to stand in between you and anyone, just let me know,” Jazz said.

“I wouldn’t ask you do that,” Danny said, pulling back, though he was smiling a little.  “I can just fly away from the news vans, and go intangible to get away from the helicopters.  And Lancer already gave me permission to hide in his office during school hours if I ever need to.”

“Good,” Jazz said with a nod.  She paused for a second, and Danny got the feeling she was about to ask something delicate.  He was proven right when a second later she said, “And what about Sam and Tucker?”

“What about them?” Danny said, glaring away.  “We’ve said about ten words to each other since everything happened.  And about half of them are ‘um.’”

…Okay, so maybe he’s a little more bitter than he realized.  He sighed.

“I can’t expect everything to suddenly change,” he said, turning back to Jazz.  “Our falling out had nothing to do with Phantom.”

Or, it technically did.  Their falling out had been because he constantly ditched them and left mid-way through hangouts.  Because he was Phantom, and had to go fight whatever ghost had shown up.  But they didn’t know that at the time.  And it had been over a year since they’d talked.  They had probably moved on.

“You should still talk to them,” Jazz said.  “And I mean really talk to them.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t see much of an opportunity for that in between getting interrupted every ten seconds, either by classmates or reporters,” Danny said.  He paused, and turned to look at Jazz as a realization struck him.  “Hey, how are you doing with all that, by the way?  It doesn’t look like the reporters are leaving you alone.”

“They’re definitely not,” Jazz said.  “But I can handle myself.  Besides, they tend to leave me alone as soon as they see you.”

Danny smiled a bit.  “Glad I can take that off your shoulders for you.”

“Oh yeah, if anything you owe me,” Jazz said with a smile.  “After everything I did for you?”

“I think I’ve saved your life three times now.”

“Do my dishes for a month and we’re even.”

Danny snorted.  “Sure, you got it.”  He took a deep breath, feeling lighter than he had when he got home.

“Hey, thanks, Jazz,” he said, looking over at her.  “You’re surprisingly easy to talk to.”

“Anytime,” Jazz said, smiling warmly at him.  “I mean it.”

…

The next day didn’t start much better, with flying invisibly to school and hiding in various places until first period starts, but Danny found himself in a better mood despite it.  Talking with Jazz had helped, and knowing he’d have a quiet place to eat lunch helped too.

He still didn’t love being swarmed in the halls on his way to his first period after the warning bell rang, though.  Maybe he could use his well-established reputation for being late for everything and just hide until the halls were empty between classes.

…Or would that not work anymore because everyone knew the reason?

Well, he’d give it a shot anyway.

First period was uneventful, thankfully, aside from everyone spending the period staring at him while he was trying to focus, which was nothing new.  He could tell it was irritating both him and the teacher, however, because eventually he set his chalk down from writing math equations on the board.

“Anyone who doesn’t stop staring at Mr Fenton loses an entire letter grade on the next test,” he snapped.  “This is school, this is not your free time.  Mr Fenton, thank you for at least trying to pay attention.”

“Anytime,” Danny deadpanned, because he wasn’t about to turn down a compliment from a teacher, and he really was trying.

Apparently the threat of losing a letter grade was only enough to sway a couple students, though, likely the ones who hadn’t entirely given up on their grades like he had.

(Although maybe the administration would go easier on him now…?)

Either way, he managed to get at least some of the notes down by the end of the class, and going up to the teacher to ask if there was anything else he absolutely needed to have written down seemed to put him on his better side.  Being a teacher’s favorite was also something he wasn’t used to.

And as a second bonus, staying behind and finishing the notes resulted in a late pass, meaning he could wait until everyone had filed out of the hallway.

Or at least, he thought that’s what he was doing.

Instead, as he turned a corner towards his next period, he stumbled across Dash shoving someone inside a locker.  And instead of adding him to the bunch like he used to, when Dash spotting him he brightened.

“Fenton!  You want to help me stuff these losers in here?”

“Not really,” Danny said, starting over towards them to help out whoever he was bullying.  “You know, if you’re really trying to get on my good side, you might try—” he stopped as he reached the locker.

Well, apparently Dash really didn’t care about getting on his good side, because staring back out at him were Sam and Tucker.

“Uh, hey Danny,” Tucker said, waving at him from inside the locker.

Danny turned back to Dash, raising an eyebrow in what hopefully came across as “are you fucking kidding me.”

“Aw, come on, you’re not trying to say you still care about these losers,” Dash said, like the very idea was ridiculous.  “You can hang out with anyone you want now!  By the way, you’re still coming to football practice later, right?”

“Probably not,” Danny snapped.  He held a hand out to Tucker, who grabbed it.  Danny turned him intangible and pulled Tucker out until he could stand on the floor.

Tucker looked a little off balance after he let go, but Sam still grabbed his hand when he offered the same to her.

“Okay,” Tucker said as Danny set Sam down.  “A little warning next time maybe?”

“Sorry,” Danny said.  He glared back over at Dash.  “Beat it.”

“Aw come on Fenton, you know I didn’t mean anything by it, I just—”

“Beat it or I tell everyone about that time you wet your pants after I saved your life from the Box Ghost.”

Dash went pale, and then quickly left.

“Wait,” Sam said.  “Really?”

Danny snorted.  “Oh yeah,” he said, turning back to face them.  “I could tell you stories about what Dash is like when he’s in danger.”  He paused, looking at them both in concern.  “Are you guys okay?”

Sam glared away, crossing her arms.  “Fine,” she muttered, a note in her voice that Danny couldn’t read.

“Thanks for the help,” Tucker said.  And then they both turned around, clearly about to leave.

“Wait!” Danny yelled after them.  “I— please.”

They both turned hesitantly back around.

“We’re late for class,” Sam said.

“I’ll tell them you got caught up in a ghost attack,” Danny said.  “Just, please can we talk?  Just once, and then we can be done.  Okay?”

They both exchanged a glance, and seemed to say something to each other with their eyes that Danny couldn’t read anymore.

Finally, they turned back to face him, and they both nodded.

“Where?” Tucker asked.

Well, eventually the bell was going to ring, and then the hall would flood with people who wouldn’t leave them alone.  And if they went outside, they’d be met with a similar problem, just with the news crews instead of students.  And if they were going to pretend a ghost attack happened, they should probably go somewhere to make it at least a little more believable.

“How do you feel about the roof?” Danny asked.

“Uh,” Tucker said.  “Have you been there?”

Danny nodded.  “It’s… quiet.  Sometimes.”

They were both quiet for another moment, then Sam nodded.  “Okay.”

Danny started over to them, glanced at Tucker and said, “This is your warning,” and then grabbed them both by the arms, transformed, and flew them all up through the ceiling and onto the roof.

Tucker stumbled a little as Danny let go of him.  “Okay,” he said.  “Needed a different kind of warning there.”

Danny smiled a little bit.  “Be glad you’ve never fallen through the floor in your sleep.”

“That’s not really something I’ve ever thought would happen to me,” Tucker said.

“Tell me about it.”

There’s a couple seconds of silence, and Tucker and Sam exchanged another glance.

Finally, Sam turned back to him and crossed her arms.  “So,” she said.  “You’re Phantom.”

Danny sighed.  “Yeah.”

“Can I ask…” Tucker started.  “I mean what— like how did you become— it’s okay if you don’t want to tell me,” he added quickly, holding up his hands.  “You don’t have to.”

Danny looked at him for a second.  It was definitely the same question he was sick of getting from other classmates and the reporters.  But Tucker at least had given him an out.  And if this really was going to be the last time they talked, he wanted them to know everything.

“You remember the portal in my parent’s lab?” he asked.  “How I told you it just started working one day?”

Tucker nodded.

“That’s… not actually true.  I turned it on.  From… from inside.”

Tucker’s eyes widened.  “Dude.”

Danny gave a short laugh.  “Yeah.”

“What happened with the ghost fighting?” Sam asked.  “I mean did you get pulled into that, or…?”

“What?  No,” Danny said.  “I mean, kind of, sure, but someone had to do it.  I wasn’t going to let people get hurt.”

“But— you got hurt,” Sam said, gesturing at him.  “All the time.  We talked about it around you.  Back when— when we were still talking.”

Danny shrugged.  “I can take it.  Normal humans can’t.”

The phrasing seemed to throw them off, which was fair, but he didn’t take it back.  He wasn’t a normal human anymore.

“Still,” Sam said finally.  “You should have told us.  We could have helped you.”

Danny’s shoulders slumped.  “I know,” he muttered.  “I— I really didn’t want you to find out like this.”

“On the news?” Tucker asked.  “Along with everyone else?  Like we weren’t any different from them?”

Danny winced.  “Yeah.”

A pause.

“If I knew everyone was going to find out, I would have told you first,” he added.  “For what it’s worth.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Sam asked.

“It just… it felt so big,” Danny said, shaking his head.  “And I didn’t know how you’d react.  And… I’m sorry.”

Neither of them said anything for a minute.  Danny wasn’t sure what exactly they were waiting for, but eventually he had to help fill the silence.

“How long has Dash been bothering you?” he asked.

Both of them immediately looked away.

“Oh, come on.  You can’t make this conversation entirely about me.”

“We can’t?” Sam asked raising an eyebrow.

“No.  That’s not fair to me or you.”

Sam glared away again.

“Pretty much since everyone found out,” Tucker said a second later.  “I guess he figured he couldn’t mess with you anymore so he moved on to easier targets.”

Danny clenched his fists.  “Asshole.  I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” Tucker said.

“No, I just mean,” Danny gestured vaguely with his hands, not sure what he meant.  “God, I’m so sick of him.  Of all of them.”

Tucker gave him a look.  “You really don’t like all the praise?”

Danny shrugged.  “I dunno.  I guess it beats being hunted.”

Tucker and Sam were both silent for a minute.  Danny looked at them for a second and saw slight horror on their faces.

Oh.  Maybe they hadn’t quite realized that part yet.

“You could have told me about Dash, you know,” Danny said, trying to stop them from thinking too much about that.  “I would have helped.”

“We… kind of didn’t think you’d care,” Tucker said hesitantly.

Danny blinked.  “What?” he asked.

“I mean, you are kind of a big deal now,” Sam said, gesturing at him.

Danny crossed his arms.  “I’m sorry?  Did you miss the part where I didn’t want to be?”

“No, I just mean—” Sam started.

“Yeah, I should go hang out with Dash, huh?  Or start dating Paulina?  Wouldn’t that be just great?”

Sam blinked at him.  “Would it not?”

“Of course not,” Danny snapped.  “None of them actually give a shit about me.   They all just think it’ll get them something if they’re best friends with Phantom.  They still don’t like Danny.   I don’t want to be friends with people who only ever see one side of me.  That—” he looked away.  “That already didn’t work.”

“Oh,” Sam said quietly.  “Sorry.”

Danny sighed.  “It’s okay,” he muttered.

There was another long stretch of silence.

“That wasn’t the only reason, you know,” Sam said.

Danny looked up at her.  “What wasn’t?”

“That we didn’t tell you.  Or— I guess I can’t speak for Tucker.  But it was just kind of embarrassing.”

“Embarrassing?”

“I meant it when I said I noticed you were getting hurt all the time,” Sam said, looking down at the ground.  “You’re fighting actual ghosts, and I’m supposed to come up to you and say ‘hey Dash is being mean to me?’”

Danny stared at her.  “Sam,” he said.  “Don’t be ridiculous.  I would have put the ghosts on hold.”

“I don’t want to call you for backup every time I need help,” Sam snapped.  “You’re not like— my bodyguard.  Even if we had spoken in the last year.”

“Well, I appreciate the sentiment,” Danny said, because he did.  “But you— I hate it when you guys are hurt.”

“We hate it when you’re hurt too,” Tucker said, looking pointedly at him.  “It’s why we didn’t exactly love it when you pushed away while you were so obviously dealing with something.”

Danny winced.  “I’m sorry,” he said again.  “I should have told you.”

“Yeah, you should have,” Tucker said.  And then all of them stood there, none of them saying anything.

Tucker broke the silence again, this time with a sigh.  “But for what it’s worth?” he said.  “Thanks for saving everyone all the time.  And for recently, with that weird ghost king guy.”

Danny nodded.  “Anytime,” he said.  He didn’t have to tell them the part about how he thought he was going to die.  Again.

“And, you know, for what it’s worth?” he said instead.  “Thanks for trying.  While I was being an idiot.  Sorry I didn’t let you help me.”

“How about this,” Tucker said.  “We’ll be there to help you as Danny and Phantom if you kick Dash across the football field once or twice.”

Danny blinked, confused.  “Huh?”

“That sound good to you, Sam?” Tucker asked, glancing at her.

“Yeah, I wanna see that,” Sam said with a nod.  “And I’d like to learn how to kick some ghost butt.”  She smirked over at Danny.  “Maybe I’ll start with yours.”

“Wait, I thought,” Danny said, looking back and forth between them both.  “I thought we said we’d be done after this.”

“Are you kidding?  You think you’re getting rid of us again?” Sam asked.  “Now that we finally know what’s been going on with you?”

“Sorry, you’re stuck with us this time,” Tucker said, crossing his arms with a grin.  “Like we’re gonna let your total loser half go unacknowledged.  You can’t be Phantom all the time.  Sometimes you have to get teased for how much you like NASA.”

“Or get your butt kicked in Doomed,” Sam chimed in.  She raised an eyebrow.  “Sound good?”

Danny didn’t try to hide his smile at all, and instead he closed the space between the three of them and wrapped his arms around Sam and Tucker in a hug.

“That sounds great,” he said, meaning every word.

[sofoklesk]

The Amity of Amity Park Server

For your prompt @ave-aria I decided to rewrite the Boxed Up Fury in a chat-like format

Read also on AO3

--------------------------

CONNECTING…

CONNECTING…

CONNECTION ESTABLISHED

WELCOME TO THE AMITY OF AMITY PARK SERVER

RUN BY TF

--------------------------

@/Kwan-tum started a new thread in #comunity-events

Kwan-tum

Guys there are free sandwiches being handed out at the east park

DashingThruMyEnemies

What!? Omw save me some bro

BALANCEYOURLUNCH 🍖🥩🍪🍏🥬

But there were no scheduled food-involving events!!! 😮😮

I need to approve of the sandwich composition!! 🥪

Do NOT eat them before I can check if they are healthy for you!! 🙁

DashingThruMyEnemies

(user send a video)

(video ID: a young man in a white-red jacket munching on a sandwich with a pleased look on his face)

BALANCEYOURLUNCH 🍖🥩🍪🍏🥬

HOW DARE YOU NOT RESPECT MY DIETARY INSTRUCTIONS!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’M COMING TO GET YOU UNDISCIPLINED BRAT!!!!😡

pharaoh (¬ ₃ ͡¬)

did you have to, Dash.

did you really have to.

friendly-neighborhood-ghost-boi

You did this to yourself, I’m not dealing with it

DashingThruMyEnemies

WHAT!! No! please Phantom don’t leave me with her

She’ll eat me aliveisjfeusdhf

Kwan-tum

(user send a video)

(video ID: shaky footage shows the underside of a table, red tablecloth draping almost to the ground and hiding the person recording.

Screams can be heard in the background, accompanied by a voice shouting about healthy meals and respect.

Camera lowers below the tablecloth and we can see a figure in a white-red jacket sprinting away across the park, chased by a monstrous meaty creature.)

The thing is she approved the sandwiches first

And then started chasing Dash

You really won’t help him @/friendly-neighborhood-ghost-boi ?

friendly-neighborhood-ghost-boi

No.

GothRepublic

Honestly, he had it coming.

Also how did the lunch lady get access to the chat again @/pharaoh (¬ ₃ ͡¬) ?

pharaoh (¬ ₃ ͡¬)

ghhhhh on it…

TheRealWes

who was handing out the sandwiches again?

DashingThruMyEnemies

Who cares! Come help me!! Please!!!

friendly-neighborhood-ghost-boi

Still no.

--------------------------

@/Pauli-the-queen started a new thread in #comunity-events

Pauli-the-queen

Hi y’all! I’m at the mall right now and guess what 💅

I got these amazing shoes! 👠👠

(user sent a photo)

There is this lovely shoe salesman is giving out free samples!

Star 🌟

Really? For free?

Pauli-the-queen

I found it hard to believe too, but yes

MadelineFenton

Yes, I got a pair as well😊

They pinch a little bit but who am I to look a gift horse in the mouth?

ParadiseLost

Do they happen to have some for men as well?

Pauli-the-queen

Don’t know, maybe? I was mostly in the high heel section. 💅

MadelineFenton

They do Mr. Lancer, I got a pair for my husband as well.

Jazz-and-Swing

What about me and Danny? Did you get some for us too?

MadelineFenton

There was a ghost attack sweetie, I couldn’t stay for too long.

Jazz-and-Swing

Typical.

danny-boi

can you please not do this in a public server

Pamela-Manson

@/Pauli-the-queen sweetie do you know if they have some D’orsay flats?

Pauli-the-queen

Yes, they do

In black, red and blue 🩷

Pamela-Manson

Thank you ❤️

TheRealWes

why are there people randomly giving out free stuff today?

who was that salesman @/Pauli-the-queen ?

hello???

--------------------------

texting in #casper-high-chat

x_DALE_x

@/Kwan-tum @/DashingThruMyEnemies where the hell are you!?

I’m still waiting for your asses to show up for the practice.

Kwan-tum

We uh

Might come a little late

We are on the other side of the town right now

x_DALE_x

what?!?

DashingThruMyEnemies

Cut us some slack Dale

I almost got killed by a meaty ghost monster

Also consider my laps run

x_DALE_x

how long till you loosers get here??

Kwan-tum

We are in the east park right now

Hold on

Oh hell

x_DALE_x

what is it??

DashingThruMyEnemies

SHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHIT

AGAIN

(user sent a video)

(“Guyyyys! Report to ghost watch! We are too busy running away!”

Shaky footage is telling of chaos around the boys. The colors seem a bit off in the background, as it is customary for recorded footage taken during a ghost attack. For a while nothing much can be seen, as the poor quality video is shaking too much.

The duo reaches a tree and takes cover.

“Is that Boxy?” Kwan can be partially seen over Dash’s shoulder, confusion evident on his face.

The camera turns over the panicking crowd of park-goers and zooms in on a glitchy figure floating in the air monologuing about something.

Bats are flying everywhere, and a strange box the suspiciously discolored ghost is holding started spewing snakes and frogs.

“Why is he so red?” he continues off-screen, “And how did he get so many animals crammed inside of that thing?”

“That’s what you’re worried about!?” responds his friend, “We need to get out of here!”

The ghost in the video strikes a dramatic pose and yells loud enough for the camera to pick up, “I’m the sherif around here, and now it’s time to meet my deputy – of death!”

Suddenly, a massive ten-headed hydra/dragon comes out of the box he is holding and starts wreaking havoc at scale. Screams of terror can be heard from all directions as the video feed glitches and starts shaking again, cutting out soon after.)

x_DALE_x

SHIT

--------------------------

texting in #ghost-watch

x_DALE_x

(user forwarded a video)

GHOST DRAGON IN EAST PARK

Along a shit ton of ghost animals

And Boxy?

GothRepublic

Phantom and the Fentons are working on it

Anyone who can PLEASE VACATE THE AREA

Also @/x_DALE_x it’s a hydra, not a dragon.

Am I seriously the only person who knows something about mythology around here??

Pamela-Manson

Sammikins, I do not think such a distinction is important, they are all just mindless monsters!

And I hope you are keeping out of the fights, do NOT forget our deal sweetheart. ❤️

--------------------------

texting in #local-news

Studio4Offcial

@/lance-thunder-the-best-weatherman🌩️ have you seen what’s happening in #ghost-watch ? People are counting on us to report what’s happening.

lance-thunder-the-best-weatherman🌩️

I am a weatherman!!!

I will not report on ghost activity again!!!

Studio4Offcial

Get. Out. There.

Larry will await your arrival at the north gate with a camera ready. Remember that your paycheck is counting on you as well.

lance-thunder-the-best-weatherman🌩️

!!...!

Fine.

(user shared a livestream link)

(The livestream starts with an animated Studio 4 News logo that fades away to reveal a blonde man in a suit standing in the ghost infested East Park, with a giant green hydra chasing screaming people clearly visible in the background.

“Things are out of control in Amity Park!

Snakes, frogs, bats and one ten-headed monster are wreaking havoc and overseeing it all appears to be a ghost with inferiority complex who just wants attention!

Well, he certainly got mine! This is Lance Thunder repo-,” his voice was drowned out by an explosive ectoblast that missed his head literally by a hair.

He appeared too stunned to move for a second but once the fact that he nearly died again caught up to him he started to scream and ran off picture.

Whoever was holding the camera did their job, however, and turned to show the poor guy banging at the Studio 4 doors, begging to finally let him in.

The stream ended shortly after.)

BobTheCitizen

I LOVE YOU LANCE

Nicky-1stThunderfan

Great reporting as always!! ❤️

Thank u sm for keeping us informed!☺️😙

--------------------------

@/GregorHU started a new thread in #phanclub(run-by-Pauli)

GregorHU

Phanton just saved my life!

I thought I was done for when that dragon started breathing fire

But then he came! And froze its breath!

I managed to get away thanks to him, he shall forever be my hero

Pauli-the-queen

Finally you get it!

Phantom is amazing in everything he does, of course he is a hero!

Can you still see him?

GregorHU

Yes, he just made a protective dome of some sort

I think that is Foley and Manson under it

Pauli-the-queen

You mean SAM?!

Why does SHE get to be saved by the ghost boy and not me?😑😠

This is so unfair!!

Actually, @/Pamela-Manson isn’t that your daughter in danger? 😮😮😮

Pamela-Manson

Thank you for bringing this to my attention Pauli, she will be in a world of trouble when she gets home. 😤

Pauli-the-queen

Of course, I worry greatly about my friends 😢

GothRepublic

I WILL kill you, Paulina. Slowly. And painfully.

Pamela-Manson

SAM!

--------------------------

texting in #ghost-watch

TheRealWes

(user sent a video)

(High quality video, apparently taken with a telescopic lens and with minimal picture shake. The person recording is at an elevated position, presumably on a roof and we can see Danny Phantom floating through the air, leading a ghost four times his size towards the town centre.

It is not one of the regular specters, but rather a four-armed lady dressed in ancient Greek chiton and fully armed. Even through the lens she emanates power and authority.

When they reach the Box ghost in the center of all the chaos they seem to have a short conversation with him, but he must have said something to anger the lady because when she yelled him down the camera picked it up despite the great distance.

“Your box? YOUR BOX? THAT IS MY BOX!”

Though ghost fights are notoriously hard to capture on camera, the person recording obviously knew what they were doing, and delivered the short yet violent showdown in top sports programme quality.

“You command NOTHING, and you do NOT STEAL FROM ME!”

The Greek woman then took the box from the beaten-up Boxy and somehow sucked all the invading creatures (including the hydra) back inside.

She patted the ghost boy's head in a gesture of praise and proceeded to grab the box ghost by the ear.

Once she turned to leave the video cut to black.)

Star 🌟

Why do you have such good camera? Do you spy on people with it?

danny-boi

He does!

I caught him once looking into my windows with it! :/

I’ve been leaving my blinds closed ever since.

Star 🌟

That is so not cool Weston!

TheRealWes

W

WHAt

IS THis what

…

Just you wait Phantom.

Just.

You wait.

--------------------------

The next day

--------------------------

@/Ishiyama started a thread in #help-a-neighbor

Ishiyama

Can anyone with plumbing expertise please come to Casper High today or tomorrow? Some of the snakes from the invasion yesterday got stuck in the pipes.

BobTheCitizen

On it 👍

[sheepheadfred]

Spicy Apples

Prompt: So, apparently, apples are not supposed to have that effect on people. (by Admiral_Ginko (ao3)/ sofoklesk (tumblr)

Summary: Sam was just trying to talk about the heated flavor of apples, so why are her friends reacting so strangely when she says they have a bit of spice?

Ao3 link

It all starts like this, the trio having a picnic lunch at the park as Sam takes a bite of an apple.

"Don't you love that apples have that spicy after taste?"

The guys stare at her, dumbstruck. What is their deal? All she did was ask a question?

"Sam...", Danny attempted to break through the awkward air, "Are... Are you allergic to apples?"

She just rolled her eyes and said,"Stop being ridiculous. I grew this baby myself, they have always tasted like this. Even the store bought ones."

"OK. I'm not one to talk, with my all meat diet and all, but I'm pretty sure they taste sweet or even sour depending on the type. Has every apple tasted like that? Like, unless you put hot sauce on everything that doesn't sound like they should taste like that. Probably wouldn't be that bad, actually. Wait, have you?"

Alright, this is getting ridiculous!

He has no right to judge her when he doesn't even eat fruit!

"Danny, back me up! Apples are spicy and burn your throat a bit and you just need a lot to drink after to wash it down, right?!"

Danny has to back her up!

"Um," Danny's eyes dart back and forth between his friends now that he has been put on the spot, "Not sure about 'spicy' per say, but the ones at home have a more zesty, acidic taste to 'em..."

Wait a minute...

"Are you sure that's the apple and not the ecto-contamination?" Sam asked him in disbelief.

Tucker, looking so lost, piped up with this going nowhere.

Then he looked at her and sighed, "I think you might be allergic, actually."

His words carried his own disbelief, like he can't believe this is something he has to say.

She hated that it made sense.

...

...

...

Danny and Sam look into each other's eyes, communicating beyond words.

"One way to settle this." Danny started.

They NEED to know.

"Tucker, you need to eat the apple." Sam finished the statement.

Seeing both looking at him and realizing the hole he accidentally dug himself, the meat lover wailed in despair.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!" He screamed as he dramatically collapsed on the ground.

Their friends wail of despair echoed across town as he dramatically collapsed. Tucker is drowning..

They did it.

They broke him.

"Ok. That was a good April Fool's prank. We can free Tucker, now, before he starts crying." Danny whispered to Sam, who in turn gave him a puzzled look.

"I'm not fucking with him, at least fully. I do need to know if apples are supposed to be spicy and burn on the way down. And you can't help with that." She harshly whispered back, face getting a bit red in embarrassment.

"Damn, I was hoping one of us was lying. I'm starting to feel really bad for him." he said with a sigh.

"Don't, we need answers." Her deadpan response came quickly, "Unless you can think of another way."

And with the single braincell they all share, unfortunately for Tucker...

They really couldn't think of another way.

[dp-marvel94]

Two in One, One in Two

Summary:

The Dannys circled each other, curiously studying his new, double-bodied form. “We grew another us.”

A weighty pause fell at the words. They’d…. Literally grown until he'd split into two bodies. It had hurt. It had been terrifying, not being able to control it, not knowing what was happening. He hadn’t meant to do it. His core had acted without their input. They had morphed, stretched, and swelled, their form growing to became two.

And now.. they were. They were one being with two bodies. Two forms with one mind. Two in one and one in two.

Or: Danny discovers duplication completely by accident and takes it it almost unsettlingly well.

Word Count: 6,832

Also on AO3

For @everfascinated : Danny finally works out how to duplicate himself - not illusions, shadowy doubles, or strange halves - an actual Duplicate. It's great! Right up until he tries to reverse it. Which Danny is the "real" one again? And For Marcy's Phantom: When Danny really tries to eat a nasty burger and fries at the same time This story starts directly after my story "Mutant," which is a very body horror heavy one-shot about Danny accidentally, painfully finding out he can duplicate. Feel free to read this story without taking a look at the prequel first. Though, do the note the body horror tag. It's minor, especially compared to how hard I go in the prequel, but I still want readers to be prepared. I'm sorry this was so late! I'm so happy it's finally done! 😭 Enjoy this weird not so little story!

The screams lasted for a long minute, all the pain and terror of the previous moments released with the sound. The two bodies splayed on the floor. Hearts pounding, they flailed backward. One back impacted the door, the other the wall below the window. Fingers pointed, wide eyes fixed on their counterparts.

The single mind stalled and stopped. What just happened?! He’d just been sitting in his room, head aching, his core vibrating out of his chest. He transformed without meaning to. And…. a queasy feeling, sickeningly doubled. His… his hands, his chest, his head. Warped, pulled, stretched. It… it hurt so much. It-

Wait. The dual screams cut off with the realization. It didn’t hurt anymore.

Shakily, both bodies sat up. Wide, fearful eyes remained fixed on the likeness across the room. Each stood slowly, fingers still pointed.

“You’re… you’re me.” The words were doubled, said from both mouths with identical inflections. “No but… I’m me.”

Cautious steps forward, the two met in the middle. “Is this… is this real?” Hands reached, uncertainly grasping for the opposite body’s forearm. Right palm on left arm. Left palm on right arm. Arms crossed, both looking at their intersection. “That’s so weird.” The uneasy laugh echoed. “I can… can feel it.” A doubled blink. “Of course I can feel it, that’s my palm. But… that’s not my… that’s your arm?”

Each sensation was doubled, like touching one’s palm to one's own forearm. He… they could feel both sides.

For a long moment, sensation magnified. Touch, sight, sound, smell. Everything was greater, two almost identical experiences of reality layered on top of each other. Thoughts doubled. 

“We’re both me. We’re… we’re both Danny.” He… they were both still Danny.

The fear drained away, into something like awe. Both let go at the same time, arms dropping to their sides. “This is…” A disbelieving laugh in double. “I… We don’t even have the words. This is… incredible.” They circled each other, curiously studying his new, double-bodied form. “We grew another us.”

A weighty pause fell at the words. They’d…. Literally grown until he'd split into two bodies. It had hurt. It had been terrifying, not being able to control it, not knowing what was happening. He hadn’t meant to do it. His core had acted without their input. They had morphed, stretched, and swelled, their form growing to became two.

And now..  they were. They were one being with two bodies. Two forms with one mind. Two in one and one in two.

A corporate decision, the two moved to sit on their bed. Fingers interlocked, awed by the dual sensation. It should have been too much to process, their vision doubled through two pairs of eyes. It had been earlier, as they were becoming this new thing. When his two eyes had become four, their vision had blurred, unable to focus, to comprehend what they were seeing. But now… they felt their mind, their very consciousness growing to accommodate their new vision.

And not just their new vision. His sense of touch, smell, sound. Their sense of his bodies in space. Their ability to speak and move. Even their thoughts, their very sense of self. Their consciousness was growing, expanding to fit his… their new everything. 

Yes, their. That was the right pronoun. That word felt… big enough. The plurality of it sent an excited shudder through their forms. They… that fit their expanded mind and dual bodies perfectly.

“This is so cool!” They revelled in the excitement, grinning. “We’ll be able to do homework and play Doom at the same time! Or be in class and fight a ghost!” So many more things they could do with two sets of hands. 

They would need to figure out how to only move and speak with one body at a time though. Twin brows wrinkled thoughtfully. They would practice having the Danny on the left, closest to the window, stand and talk independently first.

“We’ll-” A false start, both spoke at the same time.

Brows pinched in concentration, they coaxed the body on the left to stand. The body turned back around and they looked up and down at themself.

“This we will…” The left Danny pointed uncertainly. “Walk over there?”

Shaky steps, the right body twitched to move as well. But quickly surety came. Increasingly steady feet walked to the door. This wasn’t so hard. Like moving one hand while keeping the other still. 

The standing body turned around, returning to the bed. They practiced with the other body, moving one at a time, then practicing speaking from one mouth or the other. All surprisingly easy. But both independently…

“No one else is home.” There was no need to speak aloud, not when it was just them, but it was still good practice. “I’ll…” Both noses wrinkled in disgust. I… the singular pronoun was wrong now, far too small. But if they spoke aloud, they needed some way to differentiate. “I’ll walk to the bathroom and work on picking things up.”

“And I’ll…” Another pair of nose wrinkles. “Stay here and make the bed.”

The two parted ways. Shakily and unsure at first. Two diverging sensory experiences, two different sets of movement instruction…. Doing two things at once was much harder than one at a time. But…

Once the door closed, separating lines of sight, they paused. Each wavered slightly, hands raising to steady against the wall. They… felt their mind growing again, new parts of it shifting into place. They were one that were two. Of course their two bodies could act separately. Their senses narrowed and sharpened into something almost independent.

The Danny that was in the hall breathed out, standing up straighter. In a blink, their other body’s experience had grown distant. Far away, as if seen through a long tunnel. But still close enough to reach if they desired.

The same was true of their other body. In the bedroom, that Danny lifted their gaze from the floor. They straightened, moving to smooth the sheets.

Both were capable of acting independently, almost individually. But still connected. Always connected. They were two that were one, after all.

They experimented for a long while yet, getting a feel of doing two things at once. Finally, both bodies returned to their room to relax.

They sat on the bed, just beginning to debate what to do next, when the door downstairs opened.

“Danny! Dude!” Tucker’s voice rose from up the stairs.

Boths’ eyes widened in excitement. With a flash of light, they transformed into human form, sharing a grin.

“Danny?” Sam called. “Are you here? We were supposed to meet at the Nasty Burger an hour ago.”

“In here.” Both Dannys called.

“That’s weird.” Sam muttered, just before the door opened.

“Sam! Tucker!” Both beamed, waving arms excitedly. “Look what we did!” 

The two friends stared, jaws dropped. 

More emphatic waving. “Look! There’s two of us.”

Tucker was the first to stir back to awareness. “Dude! You can clone yourself?!”

“Yep!” They popped the p. Then, attention turned to the still gab-smacked goth. “Sam?”

The girl blinked twice. “There’s… two of you.” Her eyes trailed their dual form, a blush growing on her cheeks. “This is awesome.”

Tucker’s grin turned shit-eating, jabbing an elbow into the girl. “I bet you think it is.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” The Dannys spoke with identical inflection, brows raised.

At the same time, Sam stomped on Tucker’s foot. “Ow!” The technogeek complained.

The goth’s nose wrinkled. “That speaking at exactly the same time thing is kinda creepy though.”

“Sorry.” They made a point of speaking out of only one mouth then, both blushing.

“Don’t listen to her. It’s awesome.” Tucker cut in. “How’d you manage to make another you?”

“It just kinda happened.” Only the body speaking shrugged. “We were just sitting here. Our core started vibrating really fast and…” A nose wrinkled. “We started splitting and didn’t stop until there were two of us.”

“You’ve got to show us!” Tucker gushed, stars in his eyes.

The other body’s head shook. “You don’t wanna see. It was gross.”

They were okay now. More than okay, ecstatically excited about their new power, but getting here had been painful and scary. They would never want their friends to see that.

“So, which one of you is the real Danny?” Sam asked.

Boths’ brows wrinkled. They hadn’t considered that.

“Neither?” From one mouth.

“Both?” From the other.

“There isn’t one?” Said at the same time.

Both shrugged, only one speaking. “We’re both Danny.”

Sam blinked, unsatisfied with the answer. “But one of you’s got to be the duplicate. And the other’s the real one.”

“Yeah.” Tucker agreed. “That’s how it works in the comics.”

“We’re both Danny.” The other repeated. “There is no ‘real one.’”

That was the truth, as simple and complicated as it was. They were a plural, they not he. But they were both equally, completely Danny. Two parts of a greater whole.

Sam and Tucker traded a look. After a long, thoughtful pause, both shrugged, appearing to accept the answer.

The technogeek grinned again. “Dude, you can totally eat a Nasty Burger and fries at the same time.”

The Dannys chuckled. “Definitely.” One said, the other walking towards the door. “Let’s go.”

Sam gave the pair a blank look. “You can’t go to the Nasty Burger like this.” She motioned between the two.

The body nearer the door transformed into ghost form. “I can…” Nose wrinkled at the singular. “I can go get the food.”

“Yeah.” The other agreed. “We can wait here for you.” Another nose wrinkle. “Right, guys?”

Without any more argument, Sam and Tucker agreed. The Danny in Phantom form rose from the floor, phasing through the ceiling with a wave. And the Danny in Fenton form was left with their friends.

While the ghostly Danny flew away, the tunnel of their connection stretched. The wind against their skin, the comforting chill of their ghostly form, the miniscule form of their town below them. All grew farther away, dimming to a pin prick in the back of the human Danny’s part of their mind.

Tentatively, Tucker poked the human form. “You’re solid. Hum…” He hummed thoughtfully. “Sure you’re not the real Danny?”

They rolled their eyes. “Our other body is solid too.”

Sam and Tucker gave them an odd look at the wording but didn’t ask any more questions.

Soon enough, the ghostly-formed Danny returned. “Very Veggie combo for Sam.” They passed out a bag. “Mighty Meaty for Tucker. And Double bacon burger for us.” They sat down beside their counterpart and returned to human form in a flash of light.

The two Danny shared the meal. 

“Ha Ha.” Tucker giggled and pointed. “You’re doing it.”

Both bodies blinked, looking down at their respective food. A burger in one pair of hands, a handful of fries in the other. Both rolled their eyes, taking respective bites at the same time. “We’re very impressive.”

The technogeek laughed at the full-mouthed display. 

Sam covered her own mouth, trying to hide her amusement. “Ew. Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

The group finished their food and the afternoon ticked on. They journeyed down the stairs for some video games, grateful for both the Fenton parents’ absence at their ghost hunting conference and for the extra controller.

After several rounds of MarioCart, Tucker losing all of them, the boy complained. “Danny man, you can’t play as two different characters! You’ve gotta fuse back together.”

“No way.” One body’s head shook. “You’re just tired of us beating you.”

“It’s not fair.” The technogeek whined.

“Too bad.” The other Danny offered a mischievous grin. 

They were not fusing back together, not when there were friends to beat in video games.

After several long hours, the sky outside started to turn dark. Sam stood up with a groan. “My mom wanted me home for dinner.”

“Yeah. Mine too.” Tucker agreed, also standing. 

“Bye! We’ll see you later.” The Dannys offered a wave.

Sam paused in front of the door. She and Tucker traded a look. After a long moment, her gaze shifted, intent on the half-ghost pair. “Are you going to… unduplicate yourself anytime soon?”

Both blinked, the question giving them pause. Their heads tilted, answering before they really thought. “Why would we?”

Sam and Tucker traded another look. “Because Jazz might see and she’ll freak?” The other boy offered.

“Oh.” Their lips pursed, one speaking. “That’s a good point.” 

The half-ghost pair stood, the other talking with furrowed brow. “We don’t know how to do that though.”

“Do whatever you did to duplicate but in reverse?” Tucker shrugged, nose wrinkled in exaggerated question.

The Dannys traded a dubious look. “In… reverse?” Said one.

The other heaved a sigh. “We’ll give it a try, we guess?”

The pair stood, hip to hip. Their pelvis, that was the last place they’d been connected as one body, the last place to split. 

“Come on. Fuse back together.” The Danny on the left furrowed brow in effort.

They tried to will the flesh of their hips to combine, for their inner legs to meld into one limb. Ectoplasm swirled beneath their skin for a moment, a tingling from the top of their inner feet, up to their hips. Then….

“Nothing.” The Danny on the right said, the swirl of energy tethering out. “We could try palm to palm?”

The pair turned to face each other, fingers interlocked as they held hands. The form on the right pushed against the opposite’s palms, as if they could simply fall into their counterpart. But the hands did not give, solid and steady as ever. 

“Try from the other direction?” Now it was the one of the left’s turn to try, brow wrinkled in effort.

The left pushed against the palms, more and more strongly until the right’s elbows buckled. The arms bent, hands drawn closer to the chest. And the left fell forward.

Still, the two did not combine back into one.

“You should fusion dance.” Tucker offered, an amused twinkle in his eyes

“Like from that cartoon?” The left Danny asked their friend skeptically, helped back to their feet by their counterpart. 

The right offered another sigh. “Sure. Why not?” 

The pair of Dannys turned to face each other, internally debating. Dancing? The first image that came to mind was the tight, formal ballroom steps they’d seen on TV.

Awkwardly, they stepped closer, chest to chest. Where to put their hands though? Unsurely, one arm of each body wrapped loosely around their counterpart’s waist, the other raised in front and intertwined with their partner’s.

Now to actually dance. Nervously, their heads pointed down. They stepped forward, back, to the side, careful not to stumble over their own feet. What type of pattern did they do with their feet again? 

The movements were stiff, awkward. This definitely didn’t feel right. People normally did drips and twists too, right?

Arms lifting off their opposite’s hips, one stepped back. The other planted feet and raised their arm, the one with fingers still entwined, higher. The first twirled under the outstretched hand. 

In doing so, one pair of their eyes fell on Sam and Tucker. The goth’s cheeks were red with suppressed laughter while the technogeek was smirking, pda pointed in their direction.

The Dannys stopped dancing, turning to face their friends with twin blushes.

Tucker took pity. “I think you’re supposed to try with something that feels natural, you know?”

The half-ghost pair gave a sigh. “We could try with some music.” One suggested. “You know what we like.”

The other’s eyes narrowed. “And maybe don’t leave us dancing here by ourself like an idiot.” A brow raised almost pleadingly. “You two could join us.”

“Alright, alright.” Sam conceded at the same time Tucker gave a nod.

The technogeek fiddled with his phone for a moment, sound soon rising from its tinny speaker.

Ah. This was better. The song started with a bang, fast guitars and gritty vocals. Perfect for their kind of dancing. They were always more of a head-banger.

Head-bobs quickly turned to neck aching swings. They jumped up and down to the beat of the song, arms flailing excitedly. Sam and Tucker joined with their own movements, adding thrilled yells and shouts. Soon, four voices were singing along.

Quickly delight rose, adrenaline flowing through their veins. This was fun! Screaming the words while air guitaring. Shaking their fists at invisible drums. Hair flying with each bob of their heads. It was easy to get lost in the music, the Dannys quickly losing the sense of their bodies in space until…

“Ow!” Both Dannys complained, a hand raised to each forehead.

“Only you would manage to butt yourself in the head, Danny.” Sam shook her head, tone sympathetic even if amused.

The half-ghost pair straightened, rubbing the sore spots. At the same time, Tucker turned off the music.

“Anything else he could try?” The boy asked.

A thoughtful pause as the group considered the question.

“Oh.” Sam’s fingers snapped, eyes widening in realization. “Why don’t one of you overshadow the other?”

The Dannys looked at each other. A stomach churn of uneasiness rose at the suggestion, though they didn't know why. Still, they conceded.

The body on the right turned intangible. One step. They phased into their counterpart and-

Pain! It spiked through in their now singular head. They let out a pained cry. A pressure welled under their skin, a wave suddenly crashing down.  Like something much too… too big for their body to contain was pressing outward.

The singular body crumpled on the floor, chest heaving. A heart beat later and the intangible form rose out of it.

Two in form again, an enormous wave of relief washed through them. “Not… not doing that.” They panted as one.

“Oh my god!” Sam’s frantic voice said, kneeling beside the body on the floor. “Are you okay?”

“We’re fine.” The crumpled Danny shook their head.

“What just happened?” Tucker looked concernedly between the two bodies.

“It… it felt like before we split.” The standing Danny blinked, awed at the realization. 

“What do you mean?” Sam’s eyes widened worriedly. 

“Wait,” Tucker caught onto the implications first. “Are you saying duplicating hurt?”

“Yes.” The Danny on the floor said simply, arms wrapping around their chest. 

“Our head started hurting. Like the worst headache ever.” The other explained. “Our core too. It was vibrating. So much energy…” Their eyes grew distant, remembering. The energy had spread, filling their singular body. They’d transformed without meaning to and… “We started growing. More fingers until we had a whole new arm. Our vision kept getting wider. Our chest got broader, until we could see we’d grown another head ….. Every part hurt. Every single part. And it wouldn’t stop. We started splitting and…”

Sam and Tucker were both pale, eyes wide. 

“That’s… that’s horrifying.” The goth stammered.

The Danny on the floor didn’t acknowledge the statement, lost in the realization. “It was like… a pressure building inside of us until one body couldn’t fit it anymore. Like… there was too much of us. Like we had too much energy to stay as one.”

“So our core made us grow into two.” The other finished.

The other two teens stared, a mix of horror and disbelief. Finally noticing the looks, the two Dannys blushed, mouth snapping shut.

“Dude…” Tucker broke the silence. “That is crazy.”

“It’s what happened.” Floor Danny muttered, eyes averted. 

“No.” Sam shook her head. “We’re not doubting you. Just… how are you okay with this?”

Both Dannys looked at their friend, surprised by the question. Were they okay with this? It had hurt, happening out of their control. They really shouldn't be so quick to accept what happened. 

But…. the answer was yes. They were okay with this.

Their stomachs churned, uneasy with their own certainty. But instead of offering an explanation, they changed the subject. “Didn’t you guys need to get home?”

“Danny…” Sam started to complain.

“Look.” The standing Danny interrupted. “We’re…. I’m fine.” With effort, they switched to the singular, heart dropping at the relief on their friends’ faces. “We… I didn’t ask for this.” They motioned to their other body. “It just happened and we have to deal with it. There’s no point in being freaked out.” The words rang false, but this, putting on a brave face, seemed to ease the other teens’ fears. 

“Alright.” The goth conceded. “Still, what are you going to do about… that?” She motioned to the body still sitting on the floor. 

Floor Danny stood, nose wrinkled in disgust. “Maybe don’t call us… me a that.” At Sam’s chastised look, their expression softened. “We’re both equally Danny.”

“Like we said.” The other added. “There is no ‘real one’.” They added air quotes. “We’re both real.”

“Man, I get it.” Tucker soothed. “I mean…. I don’t actually get it but I’m trying.”

“Thanks.” Both Dannys said at the same time.

Sam looked between the two, still contemplative. “You’re both completely Danny. Like… same memories, thoughts, everything.”

“Yeah.” The Danny who had been on the floor said. “It’s like… we’re one person with two bodies, that’s all.” 

It was… more than that, in ways they were just beginning to understand. But the explanation seemed like enough for Sam and Tucker.

“Which is really freaking cool still.” The technogeek added, a hint of excitement returning. “Even if you can’t figure out how to unduplicate right now...”

The Dannys shrugged. “We’ll figure it out.” One said. “We’re…. My best guess is we just need to let this...” They motioned between their two bodies. “Run its course. It probably happened because… I had too much ecto-energy. My core needed to do something with all of that so… two Dannys.”

“But if you use that all up, you’ll be able to fuse back together.” Tucker nodded, understanding.

“We think so.” The other Danny agreed.

Sam also looked satisfied. “We should do some practice with your powers tomorrow. If you’re not back to normal by the morning.”

Back to normal…. Why did that thought sting?

Still, the Dannys conceded. “We’ll call you with an update in the morning.”

With that, Sam and Tucker left and the half-ghost pair were alone.

The Dannys made some mac and cheese for dinner. The task started out mundanely enough, even a tad sad as making dinner for one in a quiet house can be. 

But it didn’t stay quiet for long. With two mouths…. They could banter with each other. Quips and jokes flew in something that was part conversation and part soliloquy. And somehow, eating dinner alone was less lonely.

Jazz returned at about nine, after a long day of studying at the library. With invisibility, it was easy enough to hide the extra body from her. The Dannys definitely did not want her to see. She’d demand an explanation and then try to psychoanalyze why her little brother was surprisingly okay with suddenly almost being two people.

No thank you. The invisible Danny snickered, their counterpart trying to resist a nose wrinkle in agreement.

“I’m going to take a shower and go to bed.” Jazz said, after lightly poking about the afternoon with their friends.

“I think I’ll go up to the Opps center and stargaze for a bit.” The singular first person still rang uncomfortably false.

“Do you want me to join you?” Their sister asked, eyes softening.

“Nah. The only company I’m after right now is myself.” They fought not to smirk at the surprisingly literal statement.

Luckily, Jazz didn’t pick up on the oddity. Instead, a hint of worry wrinkled her brow. “Let me know if you want to talk about anything.”

“You know me too well.” They shook their head amusedly. Jazz had picked up on something after all; the star gazing on the roof was where they went when they wanted to be alone. Then, Danny’s face softened. “I’ll be fine. Just need to think about some things.”

Despite the lingering worry on her face, their sister didn’t press. Instead, she offered a good night which the visible Danny returned.

The invisible body only reappeared once they’d safely retreated to their room. The two gathered pillows and blankets before phasing up through the Opps center and landing on the roof. They made a comfortable pile.

But before they could even lie down, twin ghost senses puffed out of their mouths. They transformed, rising to float. Their eyes searched the horizon for signs of a fight, of a lingering ghost. They could normally pinpoint the location with their core, if the other ghost was close. But…

They paused, eyes widening. Their sense of the ectoplasm in the air stretched, passed the end of their street and the next, farther than ever before. There. The ghost was in the park and… it was big.

The two ghost boys speed off in that direction. In a matter of seconds…. A towering ghost, scaly and long clawed, stomped near the playground. Its massive head swung into the slide, knocking it down.

The Dannys’ eyes flashed, intent on the fight. As one, they sprung into action. Ectoblasts and shields. Spikes of ice and carefully placed intangibly. With two forms, they could distract the ghost and hit it while its head was turned, at the same time. They swirled and dodged through the air, planning without any discussion. 

And it was exhilarating. Adrenaline flowed through their veins, or whatever the ghostly equivalent was. Ectoplasm pulsed through their core, forms glowing bright. 

Blast after blast, hit after hit was landed. With another pair of eyes keeping watched, they avoided every swipe from their opponent. Their senses dialed up to eleven, aware of every twitch of the beast’s ghostly muscles, every rustle of grass under its stomping feet. 

Without those elevated senses, they might not have heard the civilian, huddled in the park bathroom with her silently terrified dog, until it was too late. The beast’s tail swung for the building, the woman quietly gasping at the approaching noise.

With one of their bodies, they phased through the wall and carried the woman away to safety. At the same time, the other furiously held the tail back.

Within a few heartbeats, the other Danny returned, slamming the beast’s head into the concrete.

In the ghost’s momentary haze, the Danny clutching the tail raised the thermos from their belt. With a press of the button, the creature was sucked into the device.

A long pause to catch breaths. The Dannys looked at each other, a grin slowly growing on each face. 

They approached, meeting in the middle with a high five. “Good job us!”

Tired but exhilarated, the pair returned to Fentonworks. Giggling with after battle excitement, they flopped down onto the blanket pile and returned to human form.

“That was awesome! We can’t believe we took out that thing by ourself!”

One Danny grabbed the other’s shoulder, giddily shaking their counterpart. “We know! That was incredible!” 

“It was! It was!” The other agreed. “That was incredible, Danny.”

“Yeah, Danny. It…” They trailed off, eyes widening.

In a stomach swooping realization, the moment caught up with them. Their shared name, said by both mouths. Their hands on their own shoulders, their shoulders under their own hands. Looking into their own eyes. The… ease of it all.

“We… we like this, don’t we?” The question was shaky but the answer…. “We do.” The answer was the truth. “We like being like this.”

Twin hearts skipped a beat. Like Sam had said, they were okay with this. More than okay, they liked this. 

“It feels right, doesn’t it?” The other Danny answered. “It’s comfortable. Easy. Like… like we were always meant to grow into this.” 

“But… it shouldn’t feel like that!” Their counterpart’s voice trembled. “This should be terrifying. We should be scared out of our mind.” They paled. “It’s… weird, unsettling, inhuman.”

“But we aren’t human.” Their counterpart cut in, eyes intense.

And that was just it, wasn’t it? They weren’t human. Or rather… they weren’t only human.

Both human and ghost. Both living and dead. They were a contradiction, two opposed natures coexisting in one being. What was one more impossibility?

With the revelation came a breath of relief. They were allowed to have this, to be this. It didn’t matter if Sam and Tucker didn’t understand, if Jazz would freak out. They were two in one, one in two. They were allowed to be.

Tension they hadn’t even noticed rolled off their shoulders. Mind made up, each laid down hip to hip. Faces turned towards the sky.

Awed breath stirred in their lungs. Seen through four eyes, the expanse looked… deeper. The stars shone more vibrantly, more intensely, hung against the inky backdrop of space. And they could see more of it, more colors in the blackness. Blues and purples and other shades they’d never even dreamed of.

Their eyes roved the stars, picking out constellations. Names and stories, science facts and data rose to their mind, a vast web of everything they knew and loved of the heavens. They could trace the lines of Cassiopeia and Cephus at the same time. They could remember each story, replaying the myths like a dual screen showing two videos. But just one at a time was enough for now.

They thought and talked for a long while, sharing the stars and their love for them. Finally, long past midnight, the words trickled to a stop.

Hands found each other, fingers intertwining. They closed their eyes, savoring the feeling of two hearts beating. Of two pairs of lungs filling with breath. Of two heads softly pillowed against the blankets. 

The wind blew in two sets of ears. Insects chirped. The house below them buzzed with electricity. And everything was greater, more.

Not just their senses or perception, or the clarity of the experience. It was more than that, deeper. It spiraled down into the depth of their consciousness. More than sharper senses or more coordinated movement or the ability to rescue a trapped citizen and fight a ghost at the same time.

There was a reason they had used the word grow to describe what happened to them. Not split or divide or separate. This wasn’t divisive. It wasn’t one whole become two lesser parts. Cloned or duplicated did not fit either, both far too simple, too small. When they had become two, they hadn’t made a copy of themself. They had made more of themself.

That's what the pressure inside of them had been. Excess energy built up, their core pouring it into growing more of them.

One Danny cracked a smile, turning towards their counterpart. “Personal growth isn't normally so literal, huh?”

The other rolled their eyes. “More like the weirdest growth spurt ever.” 

“Yeah…” Their counterpart shrugged, nose wrinkled. “Growing a whole other body was not in any of the puberty talks.” 

“Well… if we include any of the birds and the bees talks…”

A grimaced side-eye. “Don’t make it weird, man.”

A shrug. “We already established we’re weird.”

For a long moment, both turned to stare at each other. Then, they traded giggles at the absurdity. Eyes pinched closed, just enjoying the moment.

The laughter slowly petered out, eyes opening again. 

Brows wrinkled into something serious. “Wish it hadn’t hurt so much though.”

Their counterpart gave a comforting squeeze of their hands. “Maybe that was just par for the course.” A shrug. “Growing just hurts sometimes. A normal growth spurt. Growing as a person after something hard. Just growing up.” 

“Yeah.” The other agreed. “And maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if we'd known what was happening when it started.” 

Maybe that was another reason for the pain: the lack of understanding, the lack of control. That made them afraid. And that fear… it led to resistance, even if unconsciously. They'd fought their powers’ efforts to change them into something greater than they had been before. 

“Maybe…” One mused, almost hopefully. “Maybe we wouldn't have resisted if we’d known.”

“We would have.” The other shook their head.

Change was scary, much less changing into something so drastically different from what they were before, something admittedly inhuman. Resistance was expected, natural.

“Yeah.” The counterpart conceded. “We would have.” A sigh. “What would singular Danny think of all this?”

“Probably be really freaked out.” The other rolled their eyes. “He’d definitely think we’re crazy.” Then, a worried brow wrinkle. “Guess we’ll find out, if we figure out how to get back to normal.”

Back to normal, like Sam and Tucker had said earlier…. Their heart throbbed painfully. “Do we really want to?”

Now, despite everything, they were glad to have grown into two. With it being so comfortable, easy, so natural, it felt like….they were meant to become this.

They blinked, surprised by the revelation. “Can we even go back?”

One being with two bodies. Two forms with one consciousness. Something so vastly different, so much bigger than they were before. Like an adult looking at the onesie they wore as a baby… how could they ever hope to fit back inside their old self?

And yet… both yawned, feeling energy waning. It had been a long day, sleep beginning to pull on their consciousness.

“We’ll figure it out.” Both bodies mouthed the words, a promise to sort it out in the morning. 

They would talk to Sam and Tucker, tell Jazz about all this. They’d figure out if they could fuse back into one Danny, if they even want to. And what to do if they couldn’t.

With a sleepy sigh, the two settled more comfortably onto their blankets. The star stretched above, a far better ceiling than that of their bedroom. Heart beats slowed, their mind beginning to drift, soft and hazy. 

Still hand in hand, the two Dannys fell asleep.

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

Danny awoke, still half-floating in dreams, to the feeling of pins and needles on his right arms.

Wait… his? Arms?

Blearily, the boy blinked open his eyes. His vision struggled to adjust, seeing double as he looked down at himself. Two arms on his right side, connected to each other at the shoulder.

Listlessly, Danny wiggled the fingers on that side. Both hands waved and…. 

Oh, that was real. He actually did have two right arms. 

A tingling feeling radiated up both. Passively, he watched as the flesh of both limbs warped and melded. A soft, malleable feeling like molding clay…. The arms joined together, forming one thickly swollen limb. 

The enlarged bicep throbbed slightly for a moment, before deflating slowly like a balloon releasing its air. His forearm did the same a second later. Finally, his blocky fingers dwindled, shrinking back into his normal slender digits.

For a long moment, Danny stared at the hand, understanding slowly dawning. “Well….” His brow wrinkled. “That answered that question.” It was like when he’d split into two, but in reverse. Each part of his dual bodies slowly melding back into one, piece by piece. “Guess we…. I could fuse back together.”

A wet, thickness suddenly clogged his throat at the words. A wave of sadness crashed over his body. Over his singular body. 

Danny felt… he felt smaller, all of a sudden. His eyes pinched closed, a shaky hand resting over his chest. A cold, empty feeling rested there, not something ghostly but…. lost, grieved. The loss rushed through him, tears misting. That strange emptiness… It was like… like a part of him had just shriveled and died, dwindling away into nothingness. A part of him he hadn’t even known until today.

A part of him he… they hadn’t even thought he would want.

The memory flashed behind his eyes, a stomach churning sense of vertigo. 

A sigh. “What would singular Danny think of all this?”

“Probably be really freaked out.” The other rolled their eyes. “He’d definitely think we’re crazy.” 

No, no, that was all wrong. They weren’t…. He wasn��t crazy. Freaked out, yes. The dual memories, two versions stacked on top of each other, made his head ache. But Danny remembered. He remembered both, being both Dannys. And he wanted that back. He wanted to be them again. But that was gone. That was gone and-

Another wave of dizziness cut off the thought. His stomach rose in his throat. At the same time, an icy revelation washed through him. 

A contradiction…. What would singular Danny think of all this? As if the two Dannys considered themself something altogether different from the singular version. As if this Danny, the one thinking this thought, was separate and distinct from his dual self.

But Danny remembered. He remembered. And the predictions were wrong, so wrong. The feeling of emptiness, the loss. Longing for something snatched out of his reach. The line of his consciousness had not broken.

And maybe… maybe that dual version of himself wasn’t gone. Maybe… he could will himself to become two again.

Danny opened his eyes, hands raised in front of his face. Shakily, he reached for his core. He envisioned. Ectoplasm swirling under his skin, the soft and malleable feeling of his flesh stretching.

An ache bloomed in his fingers. The boy’s breath caught. The sensation built, skin becoming tight. Like slipping into too small gloves. It crescendoed into…. the echo of another pair of hands inside of his. 

In his mind, something fluttered. Like wings spreading, feathers lifted to catch the air. Like petals unfolding, a flower opening to the sun. He unfurled, a canvas unrolled to display the lines and colors, the piece of art, inside.

Danny’s eyes widened. His fingers throbbed, physically. They pulsed, long and wide, short and narrow, then long and wide again. Each quivered, preparing to grow and divide in two. 

He… they were doing it. They would be able to become two again and-

A recoiling jolt, like a rubber band breaking, and Danny was panting. 

“What…” His chest heaved. “What was…”

In a blink, his hand returned to normal, his mind snapping back into shape. A flicker of disappointment twitched his lips. He’d been doing it, just beginning to duplicate. But that jolt… a tiredness settled into his bones. 

Maybe it was like he’d suspected. He needed a certain amount of energy to have two bodies. That ectoenergy dwindled as he slept, his body melding back into one. And now he was tapped out. But…

His mind fluttered, a tiny hint of an echo within as the revelation bloomed. He… he hadn’t shrunk. He hadn’t reduced into something lesser, a part of him shriveling into nothing. 

Instead… he’d compacted. Like a bird’s wings, folded up against the body to take up less space. A flower bud, petals closed into a denser space than when opened. A piece of artwork, its canvas rolled into a cylinder and shielding the image within. Danny had enfolded, compressed into something appearing smaller.

The boy let out a shaky breath, a wave of relief untensing his muscles. “I’m… I’m still here. All of me.”

His eyes drifted up, finally noticing the lightning sky. Almost morning. He pushed himself up with his elbows, his gaze setting on the horizon. 

His breath caught. Colors rippled.Yellow, oranges, pinks, and more shades he had never seen before. A brief echo of another pair of eyes flickered behind his.

Yes, all of him. The rest of him was still there. The newly discovered dual self still lingered, curled up inside of him. Not gone, not lost. Just…. Currently inaccessible. 

But not completely so…

His ears twitched, catching the sound of a shower running inside the house. A noise he would never have been able to hear from so far away yesterday. 

In the house, Jazz took an early morning shower. Beside him, his phone buzzed. Probably Sam, up with the sun to tender her greenhouse. She would want to know if he was back to normal.

The boy sighed. He would need to talk to Sam, Tucker, and Jazz sooner rather than later. And what a conversation that would be. Was he back to normal? In some ways, yes. But…. 

Danny stood, frowning down at his sleeping nest. Unlike last night, he’d need two trips to return everything.

He was back to normal but… there was no going back to what, to who he had been before. His core pulsed, a comforting reminder. As his powers grew stronger, as his ectoenergy replenished, Danny would be able to unfurl again. He would be able to stretch, to grow back into his new, larger self.

And Danny happily would.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A few weeks later, when a throbbing started in his head, a pressure building under his skin, Danny knew exactly what that sensation was. Softly grinning with nervous excitement, he let his sister and friends lead him home. And when they shyly asked if they could stay with him for the change, he gently agreed. With a breath, he gave in to the demand of his core. He let himself, themself grow.

[v-writes]

Unexpected Help

Phic Phight 2025

Prompt: Danielle needs a place to crash and recover from Vlad’s latest attempt to turn her into goop and finds refuge with someone (human or ghost!) completely unexpected

Prompt by: @spacemomnephmoreau

Word Count: 3517

Read on Ao3

"Shit, shit, shit."

Danielle was crashing.

Denial about the fact, white lies she could tell herself about flying low to make herself less of a target, using the cityscape as cover, squashed as she blinked, and upon opening her eyes no longer saw the horizon in the distance but the ground, raising up to meet her as she rapidly lost altitude.

And then abruptly Danielle had crashed.

Impact rough, her destabilizing form refusing her attempts to brace for the collision she leaves a burning gash in the city park. Ignoring the burn in her arms, in her everything, Danielle props herself on one elbow, her knees collapse under her when she tries to stand, but she forces herself to move, crawling away from the glaring target that is the crater she was in.

Flying was out of the picture apparently.

She needed to get to Danny, needed to find cover, starts for the nearby pavilion, she needs to - fuck she was tired.

Vlad may have misjudged her ability to control her destabilizing form, allowing her to slip her binding, but she had misjudged how useful that would be if she couldn't get to Danny.

She feels her ghost sense rise in her chest, swallowing around it she forces a burst of speed and shoves herself under a playground structure hoping the shift of the pebble ground will cover any ecto she is dripping, while the climbing gym hides her from the air.

"Tsk, tsk, tsk, Danielle if you're longing for some Father/Daughter bonding you could have just said so, no need to make things difficult."

Why couldn't Vlad just leave her alone?

She tracks Vlad's movements as best she can while staying hidden herself, studying the graffiti above her head and littering the underside of the climbing ramp in a desperate bid not to panic, to not make any noise, her eyes lock onto a familiar logo, flaming 'D' with a break in the bottom, creating a 'P' in the negative space.

She sees the reflection of the flash from a transformation, and the itch in her ghost sense allowing her some idea of where her creator was vanished.

Straining to hear anything from a man as silent as the dead Danielle does not startle when a new voice calls out, but it's a near thing.

"Mayor Masters! Hello! What are you doing out here?"

"I'm on an evening walk young man, what are you doing out this late?"

"Free throw practice, sir, basketball season is starting soon."

"Of course, go ravens, might I suggest you call your practice early? I think there is a ghost in this area?"

"Oh that crash mark? That's from a fight from yesterday, your clean up program assessed it earlier, there's no damage to any of the piping stuff underground so it's not going to be fixed until Monday."

"Are you sure? It looks rather recent."

"I don't know man, ectoplasm makes shit act weird, but it was here when I got here and I've been here most of the afternoon. I'm just glad the programs you put in place are helping amity so much in the wake of all these ghost attacks."

"I'm so glad to see our young people so well apprised of the civil service programs, I certainly hope that support translates to your vote in a few years."

"I mean, who is going to run against you and be worth voting for? Jack Fenton?" The eyeroll is almost audible from where Dani is hiding. "I'll leave the park if a ghost does show up, but avoiding ghosts is the entire reason I'm practicing here and not at the school with most of the team, I do not understand most of the teams obsession with Phantom, and with him hanging out above the school he is sure to attract ghost trouble eventually."

"Above the school you say? I'll go contact some people, we can have clean up crews ready for assessment and reconstruction should he turn violent, or if any fight should breakout if another trouble making ghost find him."

"Thank you for all your hard work, Mayor Masters."

She didn't recognize the voice, or know why he had redirected the fucking fruitloop, there's no way anybody practicing in the park wouldn't know her crash was recent, but he had sent Vlad straight to Danny. Danny could handle him, right? Vlad wasn't trying to kill him, and if Vlad made it clear what, who, he was looking then Danny would know to look for her, so now she just had to hold out for him to find her first. If she could just close her eyes for a moment, catch her breath before finding Danny herself, she could manage. Why didn't she bother to learn the layout of Amity Park better? It wasn't a problem from the air, the ghost eye view meant she could see all of the landmarks easily, it wasn't like FentonWorks was hard to find, but even if flying were in option it'd be a bad idea with Vlad and his stupid vultures flying around.

"Hey do you need help?"

Dani froze.

The stranger did not go away.

"Look if you're weak enough to crash without a fight I don't think you used invisibility to sneak away while I was talking to Plasmius, but he flew away already, the coast is clear."

"You know Vlad Masters is Plasmius?"

He scoffs, "Yeah, his and Phantom's secret IDs kinda hinge on the fact that no one would assume someone alive is a ghost. If you're willing to look past that they're really not that sneaky."

"Why did you send him away if you knew he was looking for me?"

He sighs, "well I guess it seemed like the right thing to do, and I mean, it's not like I've done anything too dangerous yet, you really didn't damage any of the infrastructure, and he is real easy to lie to if you flatter his ego." Crouching more of him comes into view, unimpressed green eyes assess her goopy form. "But I've got a feeling the part about not doing anything too dangerous is about to change. Do you need- What do you need me to do to help?"

"I need medical attention."

"Yeah I kinda figured. Don't imagine I can take you to an urgent care though."

"No. I- Danny- I need my cousin. But you just sent Vlad to him and I'm in no state to join a fight, so I need to hide until they're done, Danny will look for me after he and Vlad fight, and he'll know what to do."

"Cousin is the story the two of you went with? Does Fenton even have living cousins or are you just cashing in on the family resemblance?"

"What does that matter when I'm known as Phantom's family, not Fenton's? Is that really what you're stuck on?"

"Right, not the priority, I've got some good news then," he offers her a hand, Dani takes it tentatively and he helps her out of her hiding spot, "I don't know where Danny is."

Dani stumbles as she rights herself, falling hard into her good Samaritan, who supports her easily despite his lanky form. "You, what?" She asks, question ending up more directed at his side and arm than face.

"I lied to Plasmius. Told you, flatter his ego and there's nothing easier, but then he may question you more than he does me. But that does mean he'll be back sooner than you're expecting, we've got to get you to cover, I don't think he'll believe me again, not with your uh, blood on me."

Was she getting blood on him? Blinking her eyes into focus she sees that, yup, small drops now, but growing as she leans on him. "Sorry."

He scoffs in response, guiding her away from the playground, "don't mention it, hey I don't know how long it'll take him to figure out there's no one at the school, can I carry you? I think it'll be faster…"

She nods, he turns away from her, crouching down he lays her against his back, picking her up in a piggy back, and he walks much faster than she could have kept up with through the park.

Danielle has the disconnected realization that it's her first piggy back ride. Instead of thinking about that, her 'childhood' with Vlad, or sporadic time with Danny she points out, "you've definitely got my blood on you now."

"If you can keep it on me and not the ground where it'll leave a trail that'd be great."

Her laugh startles her, but his deadpan attitude reminded her of Danny, and she clutches his shoulders tightly. "Where are we going?"

"Grounds-keeper's storage shed."

"What?"

"Well I took the bus here, so I don't have a fast way to get you out of the park, but you said Danny will be looking for you?"

"Of course he will!"

"Woah hey, I didn't mean to doubt you, I'm just not trying to get you away, there's no point, just better hidden to wait for him. I don't know your history with Masters, but I don't think I liked his tone when he was looking for you."

Dani doesn't respond.

"Right, well, do me a favor?" Dani tenses, tries not to knowing he would be able to feel it, wondering what he would ask for, Danny would help her if she ended up owing him a favor but- "pretend you didn't see this." He approaches the storage shed from the side, opening the cover on a lockbox built into the wall, inputting a code and taking a key out of the box.

Dani snickered, "I have intangibility, when I'm not dying I won't need a key."

"Well lucky you, I've got the key code from my summer job helping out, and I'd like for them to not feel the need to change the code."

The shed is dusty, motes hanging in the air that leave Dani thankful she doesn't need to breath as a ghost. He sets her on a folding chair, set up by a rickety desk, surrounded by lawn care tools and supplies she has no name for, Vlad thought that stuff was beneath him, and she didn't need to know this stuff to imitate Danny.

"Do you know one of team Phantom's phone number?"

"What"

"Danny's number? Jazz's? Sam or Tucker? Look I don't have any of their numbers, but here." He hands her his phone after messing with it. "I just turned off the password. Say you snatched it from my backpack while I was playing basketball, Danny or whoever feels like lying can give it back to me at school, 'I must have dropped it somewhere' or he can use intangibility to hide it in my locker, or something."

She stares at the blank phone in her hand before looking back to the teen.

"Who even are you?" It's a question she should have asked earlier. Probably would have if she had more experience with people.

"Wes. Says so on the homescreen, along with a 'please contact if found' note with my brother's number and my email. Figure with the ghosts attacks lowering the normal crime rate, most times I'll lose my phone are when I've misplaced it, so being able to know whose it is will make it easier to get back."

"I guess?"

"It's the only reason I've got enough plausible deniability for this to work, so say that with more confidence yeah?"

She smiles, as Wes digs through a storage container, swapping his stained shirt for a practice jersey, "not going to ask me my name too?"

Wes tenses, turned away from her. Sighing, he turns around slowly. "If it's all the same I'd like as much plausible deniability as we can manage, I don't really want to be involved in all the ghost business. Besides, I heard Plasmius call you Danielle when he caught up to you in the park."

"Oh, right. Well, I prefer Dani? With an 'i'?"

"With an 'i'. Gotcha."

Turning back to the phone in her hands, Dani turns the screen on, seeing the message on the home page for herself. "Wait, Wes Weston? Aren't you the guy who keeps trying to out Danny as Phantom?"

"Really? That's the reputation that precedes me?" Voice rising in incredulity Wes begins pacing the small space, "not that I distract Mr Lancer when he needs to leave, or did almost the entirety of our geography project by myself, noooooo I'm just the conspiracy therapist who can't keep his mouth shut. You know Danny is really lucky that people aren't going to look at a ghost and try and guess his living alter ego. I'm the reason there are theories that Phantom is Fenton's dead uncle! Did team phantom think to spread a rumor that not only ties into the Fenton parents obsession, explains the resemblance, and helps with the secret identity! No! It was me! I-"

Wes cuts himself off, catching sight of Dani's smile, eyes full of mischief and voice full of teasing, "oh now you sound like the stories I've heard, I can almost see the conspiracy board behind you, newspaper clippings and red strings and all."

"…It's green string."

"What?"

"It fits the aesthetic better! Actually, I don't need to explain myself to you, I'm helping you."

"And thank you for that. But, can I ask for an explanation? If you're trying to help why tell people that Danny is phantom? Isn't that still a risk?"

For a moment Wes looks defensive, and Dani thinks he won't answer her, but he cracks under her puppy eyes just like Danny would, patheticness helped by her sorry state.

He sighs, full body and resigned. "You know, Danny doesn't know this, but my parents also moved to Amity for it's weirdness, like his did. But instead of 'ectoscience' they are more… spiritual. Did a whole bunch of charts and readings when my brother and I were born and everything. Real believing that gut feelings are messages from the universe and all that type of people. Didn't give it much weight myself until we became ghost central, but my parents have always made a big deal that if I had been born a girl, they would have named me Cassandra."

Dani stares uncomprehending for a long moment, then all at once she is overcome with laughter, "the prophet who was cursed by Apollo to never be believed?"

"That's the bitch. I'll admit it was a bit of a risk leaning into that, but like. I mean it's working. His mom gave me a whole lecture about the appropriateness of school gossip a couple weeks ago sooo."

"Mrs Fenton gave you a lecture about the rumour?" Dani leans forward, giddiness evaporating as she overbalances, nearly falling out of the chair before Wes catches her.

"Kid-"

"Don't call me kid."

"Alright 'with an i', a chance to calm down seems to have helped, but you need to call Danny. Text if you think he won't answer an unknown number, and I need to get out of here."

"Why?"

"What do you mean why? 'With an i', you're literally coming apart in gooey pieces, I've got bits of you staining my shirt again-"

"No. Why leave? You helped me, you're smart, good with people, and-"

"And what the hell am I going to do if Plasmius decides to target me? Right now I'm just a kid with bad information, I doubt he even knows my name. How well do you really think I'd be able to handle getting swept up with Phantom? I will do what I can to help. Please don't ask me for more than that."

They hold eye contact, and Dani believes with every part of her, even the parts she has left on the park and on Wes, that if she asked him to, he would stay. She wouldn't have to be alone while she waited for Danny.

She wants to take advantage of that. Feels the urge to put all of the pleading and tears she can muster into a desperate 'stay?'

She doesn't.

Swiping to the keypad she inputs the number Danny had drilled her on, more memorized pattern than phone number. She doesn't look at Wes as she says, "if you want your plausible deniability you should leave now."

Danny picks up after three rings, a tired "hello?" Coming through the phone.

"Danny? It's me, your cousin?"

"Dani? What's up? What number are you calling from?"

Wes' hand lands on her head, she looks up startled as he ruffles her hair, he mouths 'good luck' before leaving, locking the door behind him.

"Dani? Dani are you there? Shit if you can hear me don't hang up, I can have Tucker track the call-"

"I'm fine. I mean I'm not fine, I need help. But I'm here. Vlad he, I'm in the park, hiding in a grounds-keepers shed. Stole the phone from someone playing basketball."

"I'm on my way, just-"

"Stay on the phone." Dani finishes with him. "You too."

~~~

The tardy bell rings.

Wes doesn't even pretend to be rushing, haven given up being on time when his brother 'forgot' to wake him as well this morning, despite Wes having made a point to ask last night, knowing he wouldn't have his phone as an alarm, but he couldn't explain that and now Coach Tetslaff would have him running laps for the next week for missing morning practice. But it's whatever.

"Hey Wes!"

Or it was whatever.

Should be whatever.

Wes takes a deep breath and braces himself as he closes his locker, "Fenton. Aren't you late for class?"

Danny scoffs, "I think you mean we're late for class. But I found something of yours on a walk last night." He holds out Wes' phone.

The exact lie he had told Dani to tell them to use, how unoriginal. Wes had kinda hoped Phantom would ignore that and use ghost powers to sneak it into his locker or backpack. Would have avoided whatever conversation Fenton looks like he wants to have.

"Oh thanks," Wes takes his phone, notes the full charge, and hopes Tucker didn't do anything weird to it, "I had assumed I'd left it in the Athletics locker room after practice, thanks for giving it back."

Fenton blinks at him blankly, oh come on dude it can't be that surprising that I lied, you are also lying, we are lying together, play along.

When Fenton doesn't say anything, Wes says, not at all awkwardly, "well. We're late for Geometry. So."

Fenton begins walking alongside him, and oh why did they need to be going to the same class, and finally speaks, "about that. I was actually wondering if you've got a partner for the egg drop project coming up?"

"Aren't you just going to make your little triumvirate with Sam and Tucker?"

"We could, but Mr. Warner says he would prefer pairs, and I think it'll be easy, so if you don't already have a partner?"

"Easy? If the egg breaks when we drop it it's an automatic fail on the project!"

"And if it doesn't it's an automatic 100, I know. And I think it'll be easy." It clicks for Wes as Danny continues, "but then there's an odd number of people in the class, Sam, Tuck, and I could probably get dibs on being the group of three-" The Fentons are a family of engineers.

"Deal. Yes. Do we need to strategize? Make blueprints?"

"Dude. You're overthinking it. We're just gonna hot glue a fuck ton of toothpicks into little 'x's and then combine them."

"And that will work?!"

Danny rolls his eyes. "Yes, it'll work. It's more of a physics project than a geometry project, really."

"We're not supposed to take physics until junior year?!"

Danny shrugs, "I don't know man, I think Mr Warner just wants something easy to grade for a project. But it's not like it's a trick question, it's just like, the crumple zones in cars? We're doing that with toothpicks for the egg."

Danny explains more in depth on their way to class, clearly understanding the topic but not explaining succinctly, when Wes is struck by another realization.

Oh God.

Wes is going to get dragged into Team Phantom.

This is exactly what he was trying to avoid.

He feels his phone vibrate in his pocket. Checking it without thinking he sees a contact he knows he did not make.

With an I: an offering for the oracle =P

A moment later a picture follows the text, Wes recognizes the desk in the grounds-keeper's storage shed, placed on the center of the desk is a large zip lock bag presumably filled with the legend of every Amity Park bake sale, Fenton Family Fudge. Sharpie swirls and stars decorate the bag, surrounding a label that reads Wes W.

Wes smiles, and decides to ignore all signs, and not speak into existence his 'theory'.

Hate to trigger Cassandra's Curse after all.

[dragonsdomain]

Monster in the Woods

"The more people tell Danny he is a monster the more monsterous he becomes. Things that seem innocuous turn into physical manifestations as he starts to believe what people say about him."

A Phic Phight prompt by @burning-clutch

...

Jazz walked through the forest, decaying leaves crunching under her feet. Her phone rang hollowly. "You've reached... please leave a message." Jazz dialed Danny's number again, the action mechanical at this point.

She almost didn't notice when someone started calling her. "Hello? Oh, Mom? No... Yeah, I'll call you. I will, I promise."

Then the call was over. There were bugs or other creatures making sounds in the forest. She still wasn't sure if she should be grateful for how they disguised her footsteps or if she should be cursing their noise, calling out for her brother. He could be lost, repentant from his earlier rashness, more than ready to go home. With his phone out of power, and that's why he wasn't answering her calls. Or... he could still be hiding from her. And that uncertainty was what was keeping Jazz from calling out into the forest.

A Fenton Thermos was at her belt. It had already been there since before Danny had run off, but it haunted Jazz with how its purpose might have changed. Would it be wrong to use it on Danny if she had to, if he tried to run away? Was it more important that she give him the freedom to choose what he wanted, or to get him home safe? She wanted to get him home, to dismiss everything as him being not in his right mind, but that wasn't fair, she should have been better at this point at valuing his feelings.

But if the conclusion was that she shouldn't use the thermos, should she even be looking for Danny at all?

Jazz drew to a stop, then wondered if that'd been a mistake. Starting to walk again would be difficult. Her body was calling her to drop to the ground and curl up in the dirt. Maybe she'd wake up and it'd all be a bad dream.

A childish thought. She kept walking.

As it got darker, Jazz had to turn on the flashlight of her phone, sacrificing any attempt at stealth. She started calling out Danny's name. The trees, taller here and thicker, felt like they were eating up her voice, preventing it from travelling more than a few feet.

Her phone was running out of battery. She'd need to go home now or risk becoming lost in the woods herself.

She turned on the navigator app on her phone to guide her back to town, wondering if it counted as giving up if you hardly felt like you had a choice, or if it even mattered if you kept going.

The leaves kept crunching on her feet. Her flashlight made a column of reality in the deepening darkness.

A sound. Something about it caught her attention, and Jazz looked out to the left towards it, not sure exactly what it was she'd heard, hoping to hear it again. There it was, a shifting in leaves, a whistling breath with some hollow quality.

On a hunch, Jazz clicked off her flashlight. She waited a minute for her eyes to adjust, then peered into that darkness again and saw a slight glow. Strange, why was it so dim? It would be sharper if it was just a matter of distance.

Jazz crept carefully towards the hollow glow, holding her hands out in front of her in the dark. The leaf rot didn't help her stealth; Danny, if that's who she was drawing close to, would know she was there. That was probably a good thing. She didn't hear the sound retreating.

More and more of something grew visible as she passed each tree, vague shapes in the shadows. An arm? A wing? She rounded the last one and saw him, limbs stretched tall and long and donned with sharp claws and chimeric feathers and scales. She couldn't tell if Danny's face was unchanged atop his neck; he was curled up as low as he could get. His aura was dim, possibly on purpose, possibly because he was feeling unwell.

Jazz walked up to him, letting the leaves shuffle underfoot, and put a hand on his back. "Danny. Hey. I'm here."

A sorrowful, crooning noise came from him and he tried to curl farther in on himself.

Jazz leaned into him and started stroking a hand down his back. "It'll be okay. You'll be okay."

Danny let out a shaky breath, his muscles loosening a little under Jazz's arms. He started drooping. It was getting late, and she knew he hadn't been getting good sleep lately; after such a rough day, he was probably tired.

Jazz stayed hugging him. It was slow at first, such that she hardly noticed it, but Danny's body started to shrink down to something closer to its natural size. After some dozen minutes, he turned around to hug her back. Hugging her brother didn't usually feel like this, lukewarm as a corpse, slick feathers fluffed with emotion tickling her cheeks, but Jazz couldn't say it was uncomfortable. She liked how his chest was still rising and falling, how she could hear his heart beating sluggishly within it if she listened closely enough.

"Can you talk?" Jazz asked at length, not yet looking at Danny's face.

He breathed a little sigh, which Jazz was about to assume meant no, before he managed, "Gnnuh-a li'l."

Danny's neck was now within reach, and Jazz curled her arms around it to run her hands through his hair--or feathers in this case, interspersed with a few reptilian ridges. "I know you had a hard day. Do you want to talk about any of it?"

Danny gave a pained whine, then winced at how loud it was. "N-no."

"Okay."

The sounds of the forest were friendlier now, keeping the silence from becoming pervasive. Jazz sat quietly with her oversized brother, glad to no longer have to worry about where he was.

Jazz's phone buzzed with a phone call, and she and Danny both jumped. Jazz fumbled for the phone. "H-hi, Mom. I'm still looking.... Yeah, I'm going to stay out longer, my phone still has battery. ...Uh-huh. ...Yeah, I hope so too. ...He's probably okay, Mom, he'll be back. ...I will. You too. Love you."

Jazz hung up the phone. Danny was hanging his head like he was ashamed of something. Jazz looked at his face without thinking, and he flinched nervously even though he looked pretty normal at that point. Maybe it was the uncanny valley he was worried about. He did look a little strange at this point, but Jazz had seen worse.

"You really don't look that bad, you know. I'm not just saying that."

"Ugh..." A clawed hand buried Danny's face. "I'm making her worry... I made you all worry."

"Come on, no shaming, we've talking about this. That's not constructive." Jazz ruffled the feathers atop Danny's head. They felt thinner now, closer to hair.

"Ssorry," Danny muttered.

Jazz rolled her eyes, pulling Danny to her side for a hug again and some pats on the back. "It's okay. I know you're doing your best.

Danny was getting better. He was pretty close to normal size. Jazz glanced over him and was pleased to see much of his skin now visible, ghostly simulacrum of his hazmat suit returning in place of feathers and scales. "You feel almost ready to change back you think?"

"Yeah..." Danny's shoulders drooped. "What am I gonna tell Mom?"

"What are we gonna tell Mom, you mean." Jazz gave Danny's shoulder a squeeze. "I've got your back. You're not alone in this, okay?"

Danny took a deep breath, the last of his feathers disappearing. "Okay."

Jazz stood up, then offered Danny a hand. "Let's start walking. We can figure out a story as we go, then I'll call Mom when we're ready."

Danny took her hand and followed as Jazz started walking. "Is there maybe some normal-ish explanation for all this? I'd rather not stick with the story that I ran away. Maybe me and Sam were on a walk or something and my phone died and I lost track of her?"

"That's a good start. I could message Sam about the excuse. Is youre phone actually dead?"

"Well, yeah."

"That makes me feel better about you ignoring my calls."

"Sorry."

"Y'know, Danny?"

"Yeah?"

Jazz pulled him in for another quick hug as they walked. "I'm really glad you're coming home."

"Aww man, don't make it weirder than it has to be."

"Emotions aren't weird, little brother."

"You're weird."

"My sincerest apologies for being the weirdest member of the family. I hope you'll all still be able to love me."

"Aww man, Jazz."

[five-rivers]

providence 2

[Based on prompts by @ash-rabbit @lexiepiper and @kinglazrus! Big thank you to @jackdaw-sprite, Lexie, and @datawyrms for beta. Read the full fic here.]

“You should just ask him,” said Sam.  

Danny flipped over in the air to stare at her.  “No, I shouldn't!  I shouldn't have asked him what I did ask–”

“It doesn't sound like you asked him much of anything,” said Tucker. 

“--I mean, what if it's what killed him, and that's why he was hiding it?” 

“I thought your current theory was that other Danny merging with him somehow merged his scars with Clockwork's scars,” said Sam.  

“That was a theory,” corrected Danny.  A chill from his ghost sense passed through him, and he righted himself in time to gently guide a swarm of blob ghosts into the phase-proof mesh butterfly net he'd been gesturing with.  

Over the past few days, blob ghosts had started a sort of migration.  Most of them stayed in the Ghost Zone, moving in enormous clouds, but some slipped through the portal and got lost.  With ghost hunting back in full swing, Amity Park wasn't safe for even the most harmless of ghosts, so Team Phantom was trying to catch them first.  

Emphasis on trying.

Blob ghosts (this type, anyway, not whatever Skulker was) were weak and usually docile.  The problem was, there were so many of them that the thermos by itself wasn't enough.  Sure, the beam would scoop them up readily enough, but the rest of the swarm would scatter in all directions, often invisible and intangible, becoming nearly impossible to find, let alone catch.   

The nets, while they wouldn’t have worked for any other ghosts, didn’t scare the blobs, and once they were in the nets they were easy to scoop up in the thermos.  However, nets were a much closer-range tool than the thermos, and getting close was its own problem.  Sam, Tucker, and Jazz couldn’t fly.  The blob ghosts, obviously, could.

But blob ghosts were attracted to heightened emotions.  Which made sense.  All ghosts could feed on emotions.  Even Danny, although he, like other more complex ghosts, could feed on his own emotions.  Hence the purposefully emotional conversation.  

“He said it wasn’t your fault, though, didn’t he?” asked Tucker.  He and Sam were wearing an abbreviated set of ‘standard’ ghost hunting gear, goggles, gloves, belts, concealing anti-ecto medical masks, and hoodies, so that they could fake being normal ghost hunters, if they had to.

“But he also said that, uh, other Danny wasn’t me, and what he did wasn’t my fault, which sort of means that it is because of him, doesn’t it?  Which means that it is my fault.”  He collected the last of the blob ghost swarm and swooped down to Tucker, so he could suck them into the thermos.

“Him saying that it isn’t your fault means that it is?” asked Tucker.

“Okay, maybe not my fault,” clarified Danny.  “The other thing. You know.   My responsibility.”

“But if that’s where it came from, Clockwork couldn’t have died from it, right?” asked Sam, reasonably.  “He was already a ghost when other Danny possessed him.”

“Okay, yeah, that’s why it’s my other theory.  I can have more than one theory.  It doesn’t matter if they’re contradictory.  I’ve just got to figure out how to test them and get rid of the ones that are disproven.  That’s science.”  His ghost sense went off again, and Danny flew upward to survey the surrounding streets.  

He thought he saw a flash of something round and green, but it disappeared as soon as he flew closer.  He sighed.  

“Nothing,” he said, returning. 

“I think you might have a skewed idea of what science is,” said Tucker.  

“And where it can be applied,” added Sam.  

“It can totally be applied here.  And my theories are completely valid.”

“I’m not sure I completely understand the one where you think it killed him?” said Tucker.  

“Okay, well,” said Danny, “when someone is hit in the head by lightning, they die.”

“Roy Sullivan didn’t,” said Tucker.  

“Who?”

“A guy who got hit by lightning seven times.  None of them killed him.  And he fought bears.”

“That’s not real,” said Sam.  “That’s not a real thing.”

“It is,” said Tucker.  “He’s the world record holder.”

“Usually getting hit in the head by lightning kills you,” said Danny.  “It’s electricity.  Electricity kills people.”

“But then why didn’t it look like a lightning scar the whole time?” asked Tucker, reasonably.  

“Because who’d want to look at a reminder of the thing that killed them every time they looked in a mirror?” asked Danny.  “He’s a shapeshifter.  He was hiding it.  And now that he’s– He’s hurt, or his power is gone, or whatever, he can’t hide it anymore.”

“His shapeshifting is pretty specific, though, isn’t it?”  Tucker’s eyes flicked down to his PDA.  “Incoming hunters.  Parsley and Overlook.”

Danny grabbed them under the arms and lifted off, turning intangible and passing through several buildings on the way to safer streets.  “Not Mom and Dad?”

“Nope.” 

“They’ll probably follow traffic laws, then.”  Danny set them down.  

“Yeah,” said Tucker, checking his PDA again.  “It’ll probably be a while before they start to look for us over here.  But I doubt we have much more than an hour before enough hunters are out that we won’t be able to avoid them.”

Danny made a face.  “There’s no way we’re going to catch all the blobs before then.”

“We can pretend to be hunters again,” said Sam.  They’d used the tactic a few times to get ghosts away from the new crop of hunters.  Most of them didn’t want to fight other people, even for the ‘rights’ to a ghost.  “That’s why we’re wearing this stuff.”

Danny nodded.  “I guess we’d better start again, then.”  He spread his arms wide and floated back.  “Hit me with your best shot?”

“You have any more theories, Wes Weston?” asked Tucker.  

“Ow,” said Danny.  “I mean, I guess it could be something else that’s happened since I’d last seen him, but that’d be a huge coincidence, wouldn’t it?”

“As opposed to the coincidences that somehow make it both your fault and a horrible imposition to Clockwork?” asked Sam.  “For all you know, it could be, like, ghost acne.”

“Just ghost acne?  You mean, the thing that half killed Vlad and put you in quarantine?”

“Bad analogy,” admitted Sam.  They started walking again.  “But it could be something normal that he’s just embarrassed about, or an attack from another ghost or something.  That he’s also embarrassed about.  Heck, it could just be a bad attempt at glamour makeup.”

“Pretty sure Clockwork doesn’t wear makeup,” said Danny.  

“That you know of.”

“Yeah,” chimed in Tucker.  “He could’ve just come from a drag show or something.”

“I– What?”

“It was the silliest thing I could think of,” said Tucker.  

“Okay,” said Danny, before darting off to catch another small swarm in his butterfly net.  “I’d just feel a lot better about all of it if I could help him.”

“So, why don’t you?” asked Sam.  

“I asked him if I could help, and he basically ignored it.  I don’t think he wants to see me.”

“Isn’t being able to get to his tower in the first place basically a standing invitation, because of the weird time stuff?”

“Maybe.  He might not be able to hide it anymore, with his powers damaged.  I didn’t ask.”

“Okay, well,” said Sam, “believe it or not, I actually got this advice from my parents, but a lot of people who need help don’t like to ask for it, so sometimes it’s better to just show up and find something to do, or with something to help.  It doesn’t have to be a big thing.  Like, when Mom was talking about this, it was about giving casseroles to widows.”

“Does that work?” asked Danny, dubiously.  

“We’re on patrol with you, aren’t we?” asked Sam.  “You said his place was full of rubble, right?  Maybe you could sweep that up.  It won’t solve any of the real problems with time, but it’d be a job he didn’t have to do, right?  And his house would be clean.  Cleaner.”

“That… might work,” said Danny.  “If I was careful not to touch any weird time stuff.”

“There you go, then.  Which means…”  She turned an evil grin on Tucker, “it’s your turn to have a heartfelt conversation.”

Tucker groaned.  “Come on, I don’t have nearly as much drama with my parental figures as you two do.”

“Then find some other drama,” said Sam, mercilessly as Danny sputtered that Clockwork was not his parental figure, “didn’t you try to ask Tiffanie out the other day?”

Tucker groaned again, and Danny’s ghost sense went off.  

.

Danny couldn’t visit Clockwork every day, or even on a regular day every week.  The timing of his trips to the Ghost Zone was based on opportunism.  He had to pick times when he wouldn’t be missed too much by his parents, when he wasn’t in school, and when Amity Park wasn’t under attack.  Plus, he still had to pass his classes, make sure no one was being dissected, hang out with Sam and Tucker, and sleep.

It was a lot.  

When he did get into the Ghost Zone, there was always a lot to do there, too.  Jazz wanted him to visit the Far Frozen more regularly, because Frostbite was a doctor who Danny could actually go to.  Johnny, Kitty, and Youngblood would derail any plans he had if he ran into them.  So would Walker, but for different reasons.  Danny wanted to track down Wulf at some point.  Also, Danny was still trying to map out the immediate area around the portal, which wasn’t exactly easy, since it moved.  

So, it was over a week before Danny could begin to put Sam’s advice into effect.  In that time he’d talked himself in and out of doing it multiple times.  Which was silly.  He hadn’t been this indecisive about anything since cheating on the CAT.  Clockwork liked him, or at least consistently tolerated him, and what was the worst that could happen, anyway?

His brain loyally conjured up half a dozen worst case scenarios.

Stupid brain.  

He floated outside the tower, eyeing the rubble.  He’d start here.  The stuff just floating around randomly outside probably wasn’t all that important, and dealing with it first would give Clockwork the chance to tell him to knock it off if he really didn’t want Danny’s help.  

First, he’d have to find places to put stuff.  He wasn’t sure if pushing things together into floating piles would work.  Maybe the bigger chunks would work like islands and have their own gravity?  He’d have to test that.  

Then, he’d have to start sorting.  He could see stuff that looked like chunks of masonry, bits of twisted metal, whole gears, fragments of glass, and splintery lengths of wood.  He absolutely wouldn’t throw anything out.  He’d learned that lesson from cleaning out the lab.  There was no way of telling if a particular slab of innocuous rock was secretly the power source for some doomsday device somewhere.

Once he had the skies clear out here, he’d move on into the entryway and the halls.  

That sounded like a plan.  

He got to work.  

It turned out that the bigger pieces of rubble would stick together, if only loosely, so Danny pushed a few of those out of what he considered to be the main paths around and to the tower, and used them as the nuclei of his piles.  He dumped armfuls of smaller rocks and other junk on them, and they got larger bit by bit.  

(It wasn’t, quite, accretion.  It wasn’t the way the planets formed.  But it was… adjacent.  Artificial accretion?  Was that a thing?)

But as he worked he started to feel like he was being watched.  It was an itch on the back of his head and in-between his shoulderblades, but every time he scanned the tower, hoping to find Clockwork in the shadows, he saw nothing.  The feeling persisted, and Danny decided that he must be watching through a time viewer or something similar.  Any of his enemies or ‘rogues’ would have made themselves known by now.  Even Vlad wasn’t all that subtle, unless he was using his little spy bugs (which hilariously didn’t work for more than thirty minutes in the Ghost Zone).  

It still made him uneasy.  

He dropped one more armload of rocks into the planet-pile, and surveyed his work.  It… wasn’t all that impressive, actually, but he’d been working on it for an hour, so… It’d have to do.  He wanted to say hi to Clockwork and make sure he was, well, aware of what Danny was doing. 

He definitely was, given the whole ‘I know what you’re doing before you do it’ thing he had going on, but Danny just wanted to check.  He flew down to the door, and almost ran into a strange ghost exiting.  

The ghost wasn’t large, by ghost standards, only a little longer than Danny himself, and their body plan seemed to be a fairly standard humanoid upper half with a ghostly tail.  However, instead of a normal head, a single giant eye rested on their sloped shoulders.  

They looked Danny up and down, their great eye narrowing slightly, but then they flew off without another word.  Danny watched them go for a minute, but then turned back to the doorway and slipped through.  

Only to run into Clockwork.  

“Augh!  Sorry,” said Danny, backing up and rubbing his nose.  He looked up.

Clockwork was wearing an eyepatch.  It didn’t cover the branching scar that now wound down his neck and up into his hairline.  

“So,” said Danny, “um.”  He hadn’t planned this conversation out at all, and most of his brainpower was occupied by not staring.  “Who was that, just now?  A friend?”

Clockwork made a complicated face, made all the more difficult to interpret because it was covered up.  “I can say nothing against them.”

In Clockwork language, that was basically equivalent to saying they were soulmates.  Clockwork took a lot of pride in his snark and he snarked about everything.  Not always in a straightforward way, sure, but where Danny was an apprentice in the art, Clockwork was a master.  

While Danny was still processing, Clockwork put his hand on Danny’s shoulder and squeezed lightly.  “All analogies have their limits,” he said.  “If time is a parade, then who are the marchers and marshals?  If it is a river, then why does it flow apart, and not together?  If it is a wheel, then why do events not repeat with regularity?”

He seemed to want an answer.  “Because it isn’t any of those things?”

Clockwork nodded, then drew Danny closer into a loose not-quite hug.  “Nor is it a lightning bolt.”  

Danny suppressed a shudder at the mention of electricity, and leaned his head against Clockwork’s chest.  He could hear it ticking, and the pendulum within the glass case flashed in the corner of his eye.  

“These things are still used,” stressed Clockwork.  “We all make the choices we can.”

The last bit was added quietly, as an afterthought, and Danny twisted to look up at him.  Clockwork looked… tired.  He was in his middle-aged form, but he looked older than Danny had ever seen him before.  

Clockwork pulled away with a sigh and patted Danny’s head.  “You are going to be late.”

“It’s the middle of the night?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

He’d probably wind up oversleeping, then.  It was awfully unlike Clockwork to warn him about that.  

“Goodbye, Daniel,” he said.  “Be… safe.”

Well, that was ominous.

.

Danny was being watched again.  This time, midway through his flight home, he was less certain that it was Clockwork.  He kept flying, anyway, unsure if he should try to confront whoever or whatever it was, or if he should try and pull a counter-ambush– Assuming the person watching him would attack.  

He realized he was slightly off course, and banked, correcting his path.  As he did so, a ghost, sheltering in the shadow of an island, came into sight.  The same ghost Danny had seen leaving Clockwork's tower.

That was strange.  

Danny stopped several meters away, cautious.  They might have been Clockwork’s friend or acquaintance or whatever, but most of Danny’s ghost friendships had started off with getting the crap beaten out of him.  “You want to eye-dentify yourself?”

So that was what an eyeball ghost looked like when they were annoyed.  Cool.  You learned something new every day.

“I,” said the eyeball ghost.  They paused, glaring, when Danny muffled a laugh.  

Yeah, Danny knew he shouldn’t do that, but it was how he interacted with ninety percent of other ghosts.  Sue him.  

“Members of my order do not use personal names,” said the ghost, rather pompously.  “I am an Observant, a watcher of time.  You are Phantom.”

Danny nodded in confirmation, even though that felt more like a statement than a question.

“You are… attempting to aid the timekeeper.”

“Yes?” said Danny, not at all sure where this was going.  

“He is a stubborn creature, unwilling to accept aid even from us, though we have long worked together.  But he accepts aid from you.”

“Sort of,” said Danny.  He hadn’t explicitly or implicitly rejected Danny’s help, anyway.

“We have an interest in maintaining the timeline, as he does.  But we are limited in what we may do.  Would you, Phantom, help us help him?”

[phantomphangphucker]

Phic Phight - The Core Cuddlers Confession

For: @rgbyshipper101 @jadenoryuu @lostlitany @underforeversgrace @jewishicequeen

Danny and Phantom have managed to keep things a secret for nearly four years, regardless of Danny’s parents making that progressively harder and harder. But maybe they, mostly Phantom, got a little too comfortable with the situation they’ve got going.

Danny rubs his forehead, glaring down at the homework in front of him, he doesn’t know why anyone would need calculus. Sure he knows why he needs it but still, Danny just didn’t want to have to take two more science classes. It was either he take two science classes or one math class, sure his dumbass didn’t clue in that that was because calculus was fucking hard. His teacher wasn’t happy, he wasn’t happy; but he got a goddamn spare. A spare that actually gave him some proper time to spend with his body buddy. His little ghostie. Normally he could just meet with a ‘trusted’ teacher or the class advisor about finding and thus needing at school time with his soulmate; an aid option pretty much all schools put in place for kids who either couldn’t or didn’t want their folks to know. But Danny gets the wonderful luck of his soul mate being literally dead. Guy just pops out of a portal and bam! Danny’s got his ‘other half’ and now they both literally need each other to be healthy… and happy for that matter. Not only does Danny think that Lancer -the only teacher he even mildly kinda trusted- wouldn’t go for ‘gotta let my spooky boo externally cuddly with me!’, but also frankly Danny doesn’t want to deal with the goddamn ‘necrophiliac’ jeering if Dash and co. found out. Ugh.

Everything was fine, perfectly peachy, before his parents figured out how to basically suck ecto-energy out of things to generate electricity and shit. And especially before they decided to make amplifiers for it in and around the school, you know, to solve the whole ‘Casper High is a ghost hot spot’ problem. Except that was a problem because Danny and thus Phantom were mostly there for seven hours a day! If he could leave school during lunch or skip class and leave then he’d have been fine, but no Vlad and his stupid teenagers should wear trackers because of all of the abductions rule.

Fucking jerk.

Even if he had a point. Still. JERK.

Danny letting his head fall down and thunk on the desk/papers, “ugh this isn’t helping anything”. At least if Phantom was here and not out throwing fisticuffs Danny could try to hash this shit out with him, not that Phantom was any better at goddamn calculus than Danny was. Guy was a sorta god, not a mathematician.

Didn’t help that Phantom seems tired, meaning Danny’s tired, thank you mom and dad for your crazy ass inventions and thank you ghosts for still wanting to spar in a town that’s using your presence for free energy. Stupid cores. Granted the other ghosts got a nice free pass back to the zone via the ‘Phantom Thermos Express’ but Phantom just got Danny. Sure technically Phantom could go to the zone too but the too frequent and too prolonged separation just drained both of them more. Been there tried that. At least Phantom sends him a little soothing ping, likely picking up on a bit of the annoyance; no human can hide their emotions from a ghost for shit, even more so when you’re soul mates apparently.

Scratching his head a little before jumping from a somewhat soft knock on his door… not soft enough to be Jazz and she’s at college anyways, but weirdly soft for his mom; definitely not his dad though. Danny lifting his head a little, “yeah?”.

“Sweetie? Are you busy at the moment?”.

Oh fuck, he’ll beat himself with his own text book and give himself a concussion that Phantom will have to fix, if there’s about to be an invasion and she wants him ‘safely in the dungeon’. “Not really no. I’m just sitting here deeply regretting my math related choices”.

She of course opens the door, laughing slightly, “you wanted a spare, mister”, and moves to sit down on his bed. Not a great sign, but definitely a sign that there wasn’t an invasion on the horizon. So no having to fling off a warning alarm ping down the currently strained emotional line and panic his spooky, yay.

Danny leaning back in his chair and quirking an eyebrow at her, “so, what is it?”.

His mom eyes him a little, concerning, “so…-”. That’s not a good start, last time she started a surprise conversation like that it was ‘cause there had been a whole ass blob ghost stuck in his hair. “-do we need to put spectral blockers in your room?”.

What? Okay he gets that his room is horribly contaminated, more than the rest of the house is even, but they know that’s just because of a mixture of the crap kept in this house and himself. And it’s not like she could have seen Phantom in here, since there wasn’t any cameras and Phantom never just hung out in Danny’s room alone. Why would the guy? It was a hunters house! And he’s pretty sure no other ghosts just chill in his room ever. That situation with Elle was a massive outlier. So he makes sure his eyebrow looks very dubious, “…why?”, blinking, “I’m pretty sure no ghost is barging in here trying to steal my model rocket ships or homework, they’re welcome to take the homework if they want to though, not gonna complain there”.

The look she cuts him is absolutely judgemental, he just smirks before dropping it and rubbing his neck when she frowns a little. Him sighing, “okay seriously, what is it?”.

He’s not sure whether or not to be thankful when she just cuts to the chase. “Why is Phantom sneaking into your room almost every night? Is It threatening you? You know you can tell us if a ghost is harassing you right?”.

Zone fucking damnit he’s told Phantom to stick to invisibility around his house! Sure that’s kinda hard when the guy is running low on energy, but still! Danny blurting out, “what ghost!? No ghost is entering my room!”. She stares at him.

“I’m not being threatened or anything, mom!”; what is he actually supposed to say though? Like really?! He can’t exactly easily explain away a well known town ghost just barging into his room all the damn time! Oh and his anxiety and shock is probably gonna make Phantom want to rush back to him, hopefully that doesn’t result in him taking a hit or something. But hey, at least Phantom���s not stupid enough to fly into his room with his mom right here… hopefully.

She’s obviously misunderstanding his not so mild panic, her furrowing her brows in worry, “are you sure? Me and your father are good hunters even if Phantom is a tough one”.

Ha yeah in no world would his parents be able to actually beat up Phantom unless he let them, which well, he might. Dumbass. Lovable dumbass but still. He glares a little, response less panicky this time, “no mom seriously”.

She does not look impressed with him, “well if that ghost isn’t harassing or threatening you then what is It doing coming into your room at all hours of the night?”, crossing her arms, “I know you teens are a lot more tolerant and even fond of that spook, but that’s still a ghost and I would hope you’re not giving It Fenton Tech”. He one hundred percent totally was. She sighs, “and even if that was what you’re doing, doing that here? If you’re going to be doing something you know we won’t like at least be smart about it. And at night? Please tell me you aren’t part of the ‘Phan club’ that’s romanticized Phantom”.

Danny absolutely can not help full body cringing at that, that whole club was so embarrassing in both his and Phantom’s opinion. Not to mention the amount of stalking it’s led to. Putting his face in his hands, “mooomm no, just no. Nothing is going on, I swear”.

“Do I need to instal motion sensors and a net trap and ask Phantom myself?”.

Danny -like a fellow dumbass. Phantom was clearly in good company- speaks before his brain can catch up with his mouth; an ability usually good and reserved for witty comebacks not digging Danny into a hole, “I mean I wouldn’t object to him being all tied up”…. By the time that comment catches up with him he’s very glad his hands are already over his face. Fucking hell he is a moron.

“Want to repeat that without mumbling it into your hands?”.

Danny’s, “…no?”, is a smidge actively pathetic. At least at this point Phantom shouldn’t be worried since he can probably pick up that whatever nerves and shit Danny’s giving off is embarrassment induced. He’s not looking forward to the pestering he’s gonna get from the ghost later though, stupid ghosts and their love of gossip.

“Danny from where I’m sitting and from what I’m hearing it sounds like you’ve been letting some teenage ghost sneak in and out of my house through your bedroom window, and like you absolutely are part of that fan club. And did you really think I wouldn’t notice the human-shaped blur zipping into the exact same window constantly?”.

Danny groans, she wasn’t going to drop this and, like, what can he even say? “I tell him to go invisible”.

He can feel her staring at him for a beat, “you… tell him to go invisible”.

Danny looking back up at her, “yeah…”.

She pinches the bridge of her nose and squeezes her eyes shut a little, “at least you’re not the one being stupid”.

“Um. Your welcome?”.

He’s not surprised to get glared at this time, him giving her a definitely nervous wobbly smile and a little chuckle. She stands up, making him crane his neck as she crosses her arms down at him, “I am not impressed and you need to give me even one good reason to not basically force a Spector deflector on you”. Oh that would be bad, he hated those things since they rather painfully forced Phantom out and kept him out; not to mean toon made it so Phantom couldn’t even touch him without being in pain. Combine that with tired and low on energy and Phantom’s ecto being sucked dry for free town energy, both of them would wind up mildly comatose and ClockWork would show up to lecture them again. Omnipresent in-laws were the worst.

Danny blinking and glaring a little right back, “shouldn’t ’I like him’ be enough?”.

“With a human, Danny. A human. Not a ghost. Why a ghost? I understand why you wouldn’t be interested in Tucker, but there’s tons of fit lean boys at school if that’s your type”.

“Oh zone, it’s not about a type!”. Though yes, Phantom was his type. The fluffy sparkly hair, the green freckles, lean and fit but not super muscular, the glowing eyes almost always filled with amusement, and the stupid little stars he’d make for Danny’s amusement.

“Then what Danny?!”.

Shit Danny distracted himself a little, and being tired wasn’t helping; his own core almost aching with it.

Then, because of goddamn course, Phantom thunks into the wall below the window, sticks an arm in and hoists his chin up onto the sil. Danny turning his head to stare at the ghost, “seriously?!”, getting up, completely knocking the chair over, grabs a blanket, and smashes the blanket down on the ghosts head, “you have got to be kidding me! what’s wrong with you!”.

Phantom flails slightly before just grabbing the blankets like a spider, baring his teeth a little, “I, am tired”, huffing while his form vibrates faintly, “and I want my space cadet”. To be fair to the guy, the pull was absolutely there; after all cores learned to adapt to the general needs and wants and likes of their soulmates.

Danny whining back a little bit, “I know but this is like the worst timing”. Phantom just scrunches up his face in response.

“Oh no you don’t”, his mom fists up the back of Danny’s shirt and yanks him and thus Phantom inside. Danny’s back basically smashing into his mom’s stomach, Phantom all but head butting his chest, and the blankets getting smushed between the two boys chests. Danny jolts away from his mom like she’s on fire and gets Phantom behind his back protectively, why the guy is still holding the blankets between them Danny has no freaking clue. Maybe it had to do with the urge to slip in and cuddle up with his mates (Danny’s) own core? Danny glancing at his ghost then looking back to his mom, “uh. Please don’t shoot?”.

“I don’t mean to cause trouble, Mrs. Fenton?”.

“You don’t mean to,” she glares at both of them, “and yet here you are, floating in my house, a hunters house, after entering via my son’s window. You see the problem, right? What the hell are your intentions with my son, ghost”.

At least they’re not getting shot at! Though if this was a few years back then they definitely would be. His parents weren’t great but they were better. Plus her giving him, giving Danny, a faintly worried look means this is legit more about Danny than ‘ghosts’. And hey, maybe Phantom will have a better way out of this conversation than Danny?

“There’s absolutely nothing suspicious about this”.

Saying THAT makes it sound like there is something suspicious, asshole. Danny kinda wants to hit him.

“Do you take me for a fool, Phantom?!?”.

“I’m just a little guy in another little guys comfy room. He has nice blankets!”.

Zone the guy’s just gonna piss his mom off at this point, and there is absolutely no getting out of this at this point, blurting out, “he’s my soul mate”.

Phantom sags in the air dramatically, finally drops the freaking blankets, and basically smushes his collar ‘bone’ and neck into Danny’s shoulders. Danny wants to melt into the touch more than a little bit, core vibrating happily; pushing his shoulder blades back automatically. Phantom groaning, “oh thank the Ancients, I thought you were never gonna do that and I did not wanna be the one to and I am very tired and would like to board my very lovely spaceship right now I got stabbed so many times”, looking at Danny’s mom, “please stop sapping my ecto to fuel your town, it is, like, so annoying and tiring. And unlike my fellow spookies my soul mate has yet to give his corpse the boot so no I will not be ‘fucking off’ to the Infinite Realm and that will not do anyone any good”.

Danny glaring at him slowly, “and I’m not dying anytime soon”.

Phantom grins stupidly, “oh I’m not complaining, it’s nice to feel a heart beat again”, pulling a couple faces, “the lack of emotion awareness is super annoying though, I’ve been trying to piece if you needed help for like half an hour”.

“Well excuse me for not being made partly of emotions”.

“You’re excused”.

Danny, and Phantom for that matter, jumping when Danny’s mom snaps, “what do you mean soul mate”.

Uh, well, hmm, well him and Phantom are touching so… man this was gonna be the only time Danny’s legit happy about that whole soul mates cores glow when they’re in contact with each other thing. Danny just kind of awkwardly grabbing the hem of his pj shirt and yanking it up, revealing the faint blue glow coming from inside his chest. Phantom glancing at it, chuckling, nodding to himself and just… phasing into Danny’s body aka fleeing this entire situation like an asshole. Danny wobbling slightly and dropping his shirt hem, glaring at where Phantom was, “really man?”.

‘I am not kidding about being tired. Walker showed up and was being such an ass’

Ah okay that made even more sense, Walker always gave Phantom the run around and also made him do a shit ton of damage control.

‘Exactly! So now space wants his squishy little space ship’

Geez stupid needy ghosts.

‘Hey!’

His mom jerking forward and putting a hand tentatively on Danny’s shoulder, and basically staring at his eyes, “what was that? What did Phantom do? Are you okay? Soul mates, Danny?”.

Danny makes a point to stare back at her, so that she one hundred percent can see that his eyes are not green, and if Phantom decides to be a funny guy and flash his eyes over Danny’s, then Danny’s gonna zap him one.

‘Boo. You’re no fun’

Danny thinks Phantom can just deal with it and not make this situation worse or more awkward, thank you very much.

‘Hmpf’

Danny clears his throat awkwardly and puts a hand on his mom’s wrist, “I’m fine, mom. He’s just resting from getting into brawls for the past however many hours”, swallowing, “and, ah, yeah. Soulmates”. She saw his chest, his core, it’s not like he can fake that shit. Everyone’s cores glowed when they were with their soulmate, that’s just how shit worked. Like the universe was trying to make sure people didn’t miss their person once they found them. He still thinks it’s weird that people in the past didn’t even have cores, ghosts might be annoying sometimes and gossiping asses but the world being more spiritual, more connected to the zone, was worth it to have cores. She glances down at his chest and pulls her hand away from him, so he lifts his shirt up again. The glow was brighter this time, because of fucking course it was, their cores were literally melded together right now or over lapping each other, however exactly it worked. Plus there was two cores there now. She blinks, “it’s… brighter”.

Danny nodding awkwardly, “er, yeah. Two cores and, uh, his is, like, all, um, cuddled up with mine now”. Ghost cores were a hell of a lot more intimate and active than human ones were. Cores were an addition to human bodies, while a ghosts body was an extension of their core. A bodies soul manifesting in a more physical state, and a soul manifesting a body in a more physical state. Him swallowing, “ghosts, interact, with things with their cores remember? Including each other”. Sometimes Danny felt a little bad he couldn’t really do anything with his core back beyond tugging on their bond or zapping Phantom’s core when they were in contact like this, but Phantom didn’t really seem to mind.

‘A living core can’t play at fighting for dominance, and I like my dominance’

Oh geez there’s absolutely no way to stop himself from blushing a little at that; Phantom, of course, laughing at him immediately. He absolutely drops his shirt because now he one hundred precent feels over exposed. Almost blurting, “he’s not hurting me I swear”, sagging a little because he might as well just be goddamn honest at this point, “kind of the opposite actually”. Again with the whole ghosts cores were more active thing.

She stops staring at his chest to eye his face, “are you sure, Danny? And what do you mean the opposite? And what about It- about Phantom resting?”. He can appreciate the sorta correction.

Danny looking to his bed and then back to her, “I’m sure, but could we, maybe, sit down if this is going to be a whole conversation?”. She blinks once before nodding and awkwardly following him to sit on the edge of his bed. Danny rubbing the back of his neck and mildly trying to ignore the way she’s still staring at him, “ghost cores interact a lot more, they actually communicate. I don’t just get or give faint pleased purrs and hums or hints of my persons emotions and them hints of mine. I’m pretty much an emotional open book to him and I get specific emotional replies back from him some. There’s words and specific tones, pulls and pressures”, shrugging a little, “stuff a living core isn’t really, you know, normally meant for. So mine kinda expels energy more, hence the whole I’m a contaminant thing”, and chuckles a little awkwardly.

“So you’ve known the why for that the whole time?”.

Danny cringing a little and glancing around, “yeah, sorry”, clearing his throat and looking back to her, “and ghost cores are more, ah, needy? of each other so all of everything is more draining than normal when we’re apart”. Normally human soul mates just got emotional, grumpy, bummed out, and unmotivated when apart too long. While ghosts could and would outright de-manifest their physical forms back into their cores, but that was extreme since ghosts cores could actively connect and communicate across the ectoplasmic atmosphere of the zone and shit. That even sorta worked in Amity! Before his parents started sucking the town dry of its free floating ecto anyway. Grumbling a little, “especially with the lack of free floating ecto in town now”.

She blinks at him before putting her elbows on her knees and knitting her fingers over her mouth, staring at forwards, “is… is that why you’ve seemed more tired lately?”.

‘Oh so they have noticed’

Okay there’s no reason to be an ass, there was no reason for them to think too heavily that had anything to do with him being tired. He was in his senior year of high school, of course he was more tired! School was harder, university was a looming threat; adulthood neigh! His friends were more stressed, he was more stressed; it made sense his folks would think it was school and nothing else. Clearing his throat, “part of it for sure, yeah. Phantom wouldn’t really get all that tired fighting, since he could just replenish from the free floating stuff and nothing else was draining him. And he could just send his own energy through the portal and all the free floating stuff at me when he was in the zone for a while”. Sighing, “and the amplifiers at school plus the stupid trackers, I really hate those things, makes it difficult for me to get any good physical touch in during the day since he gets drained so much if he leaves my body, my core, and stays inside the school. The spare’s nice but the amplifiers drain him, so he needs a good core cuddling after”; what ever the amplifiers did manage to suck from Phantom through Danny’s skin the guy just replenished easily due to their cores close contact making the self generation easy for the guy.

She looks back to him, eyeing his chest with a small amused glint in her eyes, which is legit relieving to see honestly. “So Phantom is… hmm, ‘core cuddling’ you right now?”. Danny, of course, blushing instantly, because as cute as it was it was also absolutely embarrassing to be called out on. Sam and Tuck teased both of them enough as it was! And ClockWork’s silent amusement wasn’t much better!

‘I’ll take amusement over Clocky’s judgmental stares any day!’

Oh so would Danny. If ClockWork decided to stare judgmentally they absolutely could and would follow you around and do just that for multiple hours. After all, time was merely an optional concept to them. Phantom’s told him the tale of ClockWork doing that for three days to him once!

‘Never again’

It was very effective.

Danny glancing around, “he needs to rest and replenish”, grumbling a little, “and fine, it’s nice”. Sure sometimes Phantom tried to interact with his core way beyond what a human core was capable of, making Danny’s wires get jumbled up or crossed or whatever, but eh it was usually an accident or something the guy tried not to do more than once or twice. Like when the guy tried to poke at what Danny’s Obsession was, something humans don’t have and that ghosts have a hard time grasping humans not having. Phantom was still pretty insistent that Danny’s would be space though, Danny’s not gonna argue on that.

His mom sighing and rubbing her forehead some, “and that ‘rest’ is needed partly because of the Fenton Ecto Sifter?”, sighing again, “somehow everything we make seems to wind up hurting you somehow”.

‘Whelp. Now I feel like an Ass’

Danny giving what he can of a feeling of a supportive pat to the guys core, it vibrates back in a way that rattles his chest a little, him shrugging, “I mean, I’m always either connected to or housing a ghost so”, rubbing his neck, “and we both know you guys mean well. You’re trying to help the town with its weird level of ghost problems and sure there’s some bigotry, but like, less than there used to be”.

Her eyeing him, glancing at his chest and back up, again, she was going to be doing that a lot for the next while, wasn’t she? “If it wasn’t for your core I’d have a hard time believing you aren’t being manipulated here. Even then I still want to ask if you really like Phantom, like a ghost. Natural instinctual attraction or not”, shaking her head, “I know the answer yes, of course. Same as it was a yes every time Vlad asked if I really liked your dad”.

Danny really doesn’t get how Vlad’s still so interested in going after his mom when the guys got Plasmius. Like really dude. Sure sometimes people dated outside of their soul mates even after they found said soul mate, but that was usually with all parties being a-okay with it. Or, you know, people just being asshole cheating douche bags who seemingly didn’t give a shit about hurting others or themselves. Phantom was definitely not in the ‘willing to share’ category.

‘Ha ha. No’

Yeah neither was Danny himself.

Danny chuckling a little, “mom, I’d have to be blind and deaf to think you and dad don’t love each other”.

“Exactly”.

Danny nodding and swallowing, “yeah. So, uh, obviously I like like Phantom, and he’s pretty jazzed about me. But it’s, uh, not like we both aren’t aware that it’s weird”. One of them was alive! The other was dead! One was a mostly average space crazy wannabe astronaut and the other a freaking death god. One had ghost hunter parents and the other had literal time god for a parent. Frankly it was a good thing both of them were already slightly weirdos beforehand.

“And he… actually feels that same way about you? Likes you like that?”.

Danny can’t help but glare at her, “yes mom, if anyone can attest to ghosts having emotions it’s the guy who can freaking feel them. Especially when Phantom can be a sappy corny shit head”.

‘Oh you love it’

Sure, maybe he does, doesn’t make it any less corny though.

She blinks, “language”, shaking her head, “and they feel the same? They feel just like human emotions?”, blinking again and tilting her head a little, “I can’t imagine how that would be possible?”.

Part of him wants to brush this off as bigotry but he’s mature enough now to know at least some of it is just pure genuine confusion. Genuinely not getting how it’s possible. So he doesn’t give her too much of a hard time, “if anything his emotions are more. Ghosts are always feeling something, there’s always emotions, and they always hear and feel and pick up on them too. Humans don’t. Hence his little comment about my lack of emotion awareness making it hard to tell what’s up earlier. Ghosts seem to communicate with raw emotion a lot, even with people who aren’t their soulmate”, rubbing his neck, “I’ve learned how to a little, with Phantom any way. But eh. And I definitely think he comes off ‘more human’ because of learning stuff from me”.

‘Oh yeah you living guys are terrible for misinterpreting things and fall for bullshit. Your lack of purpose and odd ways of bonding’.

Rude! But yeah propaganda didn’t really work with ghosts for a reason. “Like ghosts literally have a ‘manipulative’ emotion, they can tell when another ghost is being manipulative so ghosts never hide when they’re being like that, so he was always confused by ya’ll accusing him of being manipulative when he wasn’t. Ghosts don’t know that humans can’t just tell”, shrugging, “lots of things like that”.

She hums, nodding a little, “I guess I’ll just have to take you word for it”, looking at his face, “but how long has this been going on? You and… and Phantom? How long have you known?”.

Danny flushing almost immediately, he knows damn well she wasn’t going to like the answer to that, “uh, since the beginning? The portal opened up and he just kind of came out of it crashing into me, and we both just got bashed into the wall by the impact. Then, well, you know how it works”, coughing awkwardly, “the tingling and core purring and feeling like you just got dunked in an ice bath. Like a card being jammed in a card slot”, furrowing his brows, “also different though, like my core was trying to dissolve my insides to soup. Phantom actually got gooey and, uh, scared the crap outta me by dissolving into ecto on top of me”, rubbing at his chest a little because he had absolutely freaked out when that had happened. He had found his person and they had gone and dissolved into goo on him! “That’s uh, the first time he went, uh, inside me. His core basically ramming into mine, which yeah wasn’t great. He knows how to not be too much now”, chuckling awkwardly, “living cores aren’t really meant for direct contact like that, you know”.

“Alright I’m not impressed this has been going on that long, but-”, sighing, “-I understand you not telling us, especially back then. With how close-minded and firm we were”. Danny just nods a little so she continues, “and I would have freaked out if your dad had dissolved on me too, so that I completely get. You not saying anything because you were focused on It-him. I’m guessing Phantom, entering you, didn’t freak you out too much purely due to his core touching yours and how that felt?”.

Danny clearing his throat and nodding slightly, “yeah, it basically blitzed me out and made me feel like a sensitive over exposed live wire that was constantly being grabbed at, pretty sure I saw some colours that don’t exist. Like rubbing up against a cold sun filled with static, flickering thoughts and feelings I definitely couldn’t make sense of. He freaked a little over me being a limp ragdoll on the floor for, like, an hour or two”.

She cringes, “I’m glad Phantom is gentler now”.

Yeah so is Danny.

‘I just think of your core like it’s an egg! Easy to crack or break but holding something lovely’.

Danny putting a hand over his chest, over his core, when Phantom sort of swirls or twists around it like a cat. Purrs get exchanged of course, while Danny nods at his mom, “yeah. And just to make it clear, I didn’t have to ask him to be nicer, he just did that on his own. Don’t think I need to point out that he’s the protective type. No ones allowed to hurt me, including him”. It was really really obvious.

She blinks but actually smiles a little after a beat, “ah so Phantom started playing at protecting the town because of you then”.

“I wouldn’t say he’s ‘playing at’ any thing. He’s legit protecting mom, whether you guys like to see it that way or not. And sure fine, me living here is definitely part of it”. It was literally the guys Obsession after all, not that Danny would be saying that. You don’t out a ghosts Obsessions.

‘I would take over your mouth if you tried anyway’

Danny mildly hates that the first thing that brings to mind is ‘kinky’ and he is ignoring the mild smirk emotion thing he’s getting from Phantom.

She doesn’t look like she really believes him but she’s not outright saying he’s lying either so… eh it’s something. “Alright. Okay”, sighing heavily before nodding and smiling at him, “well, a soulmate is a soulmate, regardless of it being odd and me not being super happy about it”. What a way to both accept and not accept it. “Though I am happy knowing that someone capable has been looking out for you with all this ghost madness, besides just me and your dad. But I’m going to insist that Phantom at least tries to go about this in the human way. We’re human, you’re human. It- he comes over for supper, eating or not. Me and your dad judge the ghosts worthiness, while both of us work to ignore the ghost part”, sighing again and scratching her head, “maybe it’ll become less ignore and more okay with eventually, I don’t know Danny”.

Danny looking away and shrugging, “I, uh, never really expected okay. And I didn’t want it to be a big deal or cause issues. I wanted to just keep on keeping on, you know? And fine, I’m protective of him”. Which was working somewhat okay for him! He’d have liked to keep doing that! But if they do wind up becoming okay with this, with ghosts as a whole even maybe, then it’d be amazing.

“I can’t say I blame you, your aunt Alicia did the same with your grandparents”, giving Danny a bit of a look, “though I’m glad you didn’t have a fake marriage with someone just to continue to lie to us”.

Danny can’t help snorting at that a little, “I mean Sam and Tuck would totally go for that but no”. Sam would be on board purely to piss off her parents and Tuck was a weirdo who’d go along with just about anything.

She laughs a little too, good, “and I do want you at least talking to Mr. Lancer about this because, sweetie, you’re not cut out for calculus”.

Cut deep why don’t you.

‘Ha’.

Oh shut up. “And what? Tell him I’m mated to a ghost? Like sure, now I don’t have to worry about him calling you guys about that kind of statement but still”, glaring a little, “and that still wouldn’t solve the issue with the amplifier or me not being able to get out of said amplifiers range without a tracker going off”.

His mom looks suddenly a lot more awkward, “we could… code the Sifter to ignore his specific signature, the amplifier wouldn’t matter then. We’ve… had complaints over not already doing that”.

Okay that slightly ticks him off just a little bit, “you deserve to get complaints over that if you’ve been able to just do that this whole time”, groaning and putting his head in his hands, “your guy’s Phantom hate is really annoying, and not just because of the mate situation. That too but, ugh, you know what I mean”. Then he gets that fizzing sensation behind his eyes and can feel the little pricks of annoyance from Phantom, guy clearly had a thing or two he wanted to say. Sighing into his hands, “Phantom also has an annoyed thing or two to say about that“.

“We… we thought we were doing what was best for the town and by that do you mean, overshadow you? Instead of… coming? out?”.

Danny, still talking into his hands, “he’s still recuperating”. The eye fizzles gets a little more persistent, but hey at least he sorta asks now unless someone really pisses him off or he got over protective of Danny… Dropping his hands to look at her, quirking an eyebrow.

She sighs slightly, readjusts to be sitting up a little straighter, and nods at him, “alright, but Phantom better not get up and start puppeting your body around”.

That’s fair enough he supposes. And Phantom, the guy who is definitely not known for self restraint in this relationship, promptly flares his green eyes over Danny’s. Phantom crossing Danny’s arms at her and laying into her immediately, “I get that you guys have this whole ‘we’re ghost hunters and we don’t like ghosts’ thing going and that yeah this town has some bizarre ghost issues”, rolling Danny’s eyes, “how you guys keep attracting gods I do not know”, glaring at her again, “but being actively and knowingly malicious towards me is just kinda dumb since y’all do need me because again with the whole attracting gods thing-”. Okay Danny knows they don’t actually believe in the whole gods are ghosts thing. “-whether you believe they’re gods or not-”. Oh hey look Phantom’s valuing his input. “-oh shut up you, I always value your input”. Way to go making himself look crazy in front of Danny’s parents. At least all Phantom does that time is glare at nothing and give Danny’s core a little bit of an internal smack.

His mom blinking at Danny/Phantom, “is, is Danny still aware in there?”; she was very clearly tense but trying not to show it.

Phantom rolling Danny’s eyes, clearly not impressed that that was the part she was choosing to comment on, “I’m not actually over shadowing him. Just using a couple of things, with permission”. Sure the guy could do that without permission too but that wasn’t important right now; and it wasn’t something he was wholly opposed to either. “Enthusiastic permission sometimes”. Oh zone he did not need to say that! And Danny was gonna fight for his mouth back if the guy says something like that again.

At least Danny’s not the only one that found that statement embarrassing, his mom flushing a little and coughing, “right…”, clearing her throat, “maybe me and Jack have let our, opinions, cloud our judgment slightly-”. Danny seriously doubts she realizes how surprising that is to actually hear her say even if he’s heard it multiple times in the past year. “-but not having a way to at least weaken a clearly strong ghost is far more foolish. And frankly, the only reason I’m rethinking that, with you, is because of my son being your soulmate”.

And Phantom… Phantom sticks Danny’s tongue out her and makes a, “bleh”, sound. The fizzing fading as Phantom just gives Danny back his full control. Danny blinking a couple times before shaking your head, “that was real mature”.

‘She hasn’t earned my maturity’

Oh for fucks sake.

“You okay sweetie?”.

Danny sighing and making a point to give his mom a small smile, “I’m fine, he’s just being pouty”, shaking his head and frowning a little at her, “and mom, I get where you’re coming from with the strong thing but seriously, the town likes and has accepted Phantom, it’s way past time you guys did too”.

Her sighing and sagging a little, “I’ll… try, but as for accepting you two together, I stand by having suppers together”.

“Ah technically-”.

“I don’t care about technically’s, mister. Suppers without this, body sharing situation”.

“Yeah yeah yeah”.

“And I’ll call Mr. Lancer if you don’t”.

“Mom!”.

She smiles a little and shakes her head, “no buts. You can’t not have physical time with It- him, with him, and I’m sure the school will let you have a private library room for forty minutes”, narrowing her eyes a little, “just to hang out of course”, then sighing, “because yes, I… don’t think this relationship should be made public”. Danny absolutely can’t help flinching at that. It’s not surprising that she wouldn’t want anyone or, forbid, the whole town knowing about the Fenton son having a ghost for a soulmate. She winces, “I don’t mean it like that, I don’t mean it negatively. Just that, well, Phantom has that Phan club I accused you of being in, and I’ve seen the mobbing chasing videos”.

Danny blinking and cringing, rubbing his neck, right yeah, that. “Heh. Yeah. If it’s anything, he doesn’t like all that either and fine yeah that would make me trying to finish school a lot more difficult”.

“Yes, it would. Just like you not telling Mr. Lancer currently is”, her shaking her head slightly, “I’m not saying you have to tell him which ghost, but if you do I highly doubt he, of all people, would go harassing you about it”.

Okay that was fair, Lancer was pretty chill like that. And it wasn’t like a guy who side hustled as a drag queen was gonna give a crap about Danny being gay af, “oh I know he won’t, I’m just, not great at telling people things like this?”.

“Clearly”.

Danny wincing, “hah, yeah, sorry, again”, swallowing, “but you are going to Phantom proof the Sifter? Like, actually do that? Because yeah, that’s definitely not helping”, gesturing around a little, “makes him tired, and me tired, it’s messing with our communication, he can’t be in the zone for a long time, has to spend more time in me, yadayada”.

And she… she actually ruffles up his hair for the first time in this entire conversation, “yes, Danny, I meant what I said. Especially if it really is causing that many issues. Even if I did fully oppose this, which I do not, trying to break up soulmates is pointless, cruel, and never works. Like it or not, Phantom’s your soulmate; you have proof of it. And knowing your father he’ll act like he never ever once even had a problem with Phantom’s entire existence”, smirking, “he’ll probably even whip out the baby photos”.

Danny sputtering a bit, “what- no. Uh, he’s, um, probably already seen them anyways so there’s no point totally no point”.

‘Oh I definitely haven’t’

Danny blinking, blurting out, “wait you haven’t?”. That's weird, Danny would have thought ClockWork would have just shown the guy purely to mess with both of them.

‘Naw, Clocky says that’s totally your parents job. I will have so much fun with that’

What no! Ghost baby photos weren’t nearly as bad as human baby photos! Ugh!

“Do I want to know why you’re blushing? And what would make you think he’s seen them already?”, levelling Danny with a bit of a glare, “that ghost better not be snooping through our personal things. Our weapons are a different matter, he’s a ghost I expect that kind of snooping”.

Well he’s glad she can acknowledge that a ghost going through ghost hunter weapons was reasonable. “Uh, he’s just bugging me about the, baby photos comment”, and rubs his neck, “and his parent has a weird power set”.

She blinks at him, “his… parent”.

Danny quirking an eyebrow, “yeah?”. And wait shit right his folks still don’t believe that ghosts can reproduce or that adoption is a thing. “Uh, Phantom was literally never alive. A born ghost”.

She blinks harsher this time, “I… I think I’m going to want to revisit that later”, and then mutters, “that shouldn’t be possible”, to herself. Danny should probably refrain from giving her any more world shattering news today.

‘Like her son’s parent in law being the literal manifestation of time and older than the universe itself?’

Yeah! Like that!

‘Or like her son’s soulmate being the literal manifestation of death?’

That too. Definitely that too.

‘Then there’s also that you’ll probably be some kinda Ancient too when you finally kick it. Probably space. Eh definitely space’

Oh fuck him so much.

‘Who knows! Maybe you’re already an Ancient and just the Ancient of life! And that’s part of why we’re soulmates!’

That’s a massive mental plot bunny and an existential crisis that he doesn’t need to deal with right now… or ever possibly.

Danny shaking his head out, “uh yeah, probably a good idea”, pouting slightly, “but please get dad to at least spare me for a little while?”.

She still looks a little too wide-eyed but she does smile at him a bit meanly, “oh I don’t know mister, you’ve avoided it for almost four years already”.

“Moooommm”.

“I’ll hold him off for two diners, just two, but only if you tell him yourself about this”.

Oh zone. Was that worth it? Because yeah… dad, dad absolutely would just pull out the photo albums immediately. Especially once he found out they were soul mates and not ‘just a couple’ and that Danny and Phantom had been a thing for multiple years. And those ‘two dinners’ would give his dad some time to take shit in and calm the fuck down… damnit. At least an omniscient parent in-law didn’t need time to adjust to things!!! Danny sagging a little, groaning, “fine”.

She smirks at him, “good because he’s home and waiting”.

“Wait what!”.

“Do you really think I’d see Phantom going into your room all the time and not talk to your dad about that?”, she ruffles his hair again, sighing, “I convinced him to let me ask you about it alone, since he can be so, well, excitable”.

Okay… that was fair he thinks. His dad could be worse than FrostBite and Pandora, which was saying something.

‘Pandora only gets super excited about you because you can use weapons weirdly good’

Danny thinks Phantom is just jealous. Danny nodding a little at his mom, “yeah that’s true”, glancing at his desk, that shit was so not getting done tonight or ever possibly. Clapping his legs and pushing himself to stand up, “well I guess there’s no point in not just bitting the bullet now, huh?”.

She giggles at him faintly, “not really no. But are you sure you don’t need to lay down or sleep with Phantom ‘resting’?”.

Danny blinking, slightly confused, “no? I was tired and he’s still resting but I’m not tired now because he’s got some rest. That and I’m not being drained now from the, you know, connection picking up on him getting drained and hurt and stuff. And core contact is still physical contact so that helps too”.

She eyes him like she’s trying to sus out if he’s being honest or not, “hmm, okay”, getting up and walking with him to his door, “he’s probably worry tinkering with the toaster, again”.

Danny glaring as they head down, “I hate that stupid toaster”.

“But your dad loves it and that’s what matters”.

His mom gesturing him into the kitchen, “well go on”. Startling the hell outta his dad, who sends a couple pieces of toaster or random tech maybe, flying, “Danny-boy!”, tilting his head at Danny, “Mad’s talk to you about that darn spook?”.

Danny whines a little, shifting on his feet. Beating around the bush with his dad wasn’t only pointless but also dumb, “uh, yeah. About that-”.

“Is It breaking in!? Do I need to fight It!?! Did you manage to befriend a spook somehow!?! Does Phantom like space things and that’s why It’s busting into your room!?! Did you dare It to repeated duels for the Fenton family honour!?!”.

Oh goddamnit dad. “You don’t need to fist fight my freaking soulmate, he’s had enough of that tonight!”.

‘I mean, I’m not that tired now’.

Danny thinks Mr combative can chill out and not offer to fist fight Danny’s dad; especially since said dad would definitely say yes and probably eagerly.

His dad stills and blinks, “your soulmate!?! YOU FOUND YOUR SOULMATE!?!”, and suddenly Danny’s being bodily lifted up and swung around, “that’s amazing Danny boy! And he’s a ghost hunter!”, pausing and lowering Danny a little, not enough for Danny’s feet to actually be touching the ground but enough for his head to stop spinning a little, “a ghost ghost hunter. But still!”, and then continues swinging Danny around a couple more times. Eventually putting Danny down, his mom steading him while his dad chuckles awkwardly, “sorry ‘bout that kiddo! But a soulmate! Wow!”.

Danny shaking himself off violently, “uh, yeah. Zinged and everything”.

His dad laughing a little again, “ah I remember when me and your mom zinged”, then frowning a little and bending slightly to be just a little bit more on Danny’s level, “but why was your soulmate trespassing in the dead of night like on some sitcom? You could have dragged him in through the front door?”; rubbing his neck, “you know, when I imagined meeting my son’s soulmate, I pictured a barbecue. Handshakes. Possibly a back breaking hug. Not espionage!”.

‘Not espionage, he’s says. As if I’m not literally a ghost busting into a ghost hunters home’

Oh Phantom’s clearly a bit offended that the sneaking around might not have been super needed with Danny’s dad, at least now anyways. “Dad. He’s a ghost. One you’ve actively talked about dissecting in front of me???”.

His mom flinching while his dad goes wide-eyed, “oh”.

“Yeah. Oh is right”.

His mom sighing and putting a hand on Danny’s shoulder, “obviously that’s not happening, not now and not ever”. His dad nodding immediately, “I, uh, that hasn’t even been on the table for at least a year, and it never would have been if I’d know, that’s for sure”.

“Good?”. What is Danny even supposed to say to that? If either of his parents was actively cool with trying to chop Phantom up now he’d start throwing fists himself!

‘I’d totally be your cheerleader. I’d rock the outfit and everything’.

That was a mental image that Danny doesn’t know what to do with.

“So how long have you known?! Did he rescue you like a princess? Or did you bump into each other on the Nasty Burger roof? Was it a meet cute!”.

“What?!? No! Oh my zone dad”, Danny groaning and putting his head in his hands immediately. Ugh why are his parents so embarrassing??? Danny, at feeling his eyes fizz up again, just gives up. Let Phantom say whatever dumb shit he clearly wants to. Phantom not moving Danny’s hands from his face, snickers, “I yelled catch before body slamming him into a wall when your portal yeeted me out at him”. Yup. Stupid.

It almost sounds like his mom jumped, “P-Phantom! A little warning, both of you!”.

Phantom moving one of Danny’s fingers to peek a green eye out and smirk at Danny’s parents, “I will not apologize”.

Danny’s dad blinking at the green eye, “I’m confused and don’t want to jump to conclusions”. His mom sighing and turning to the man but keeping an eye on Danny/Phantom, “Phantom being a ghost and Danny being a human has apparently made things a bit weird”, sighing, “and we need to make the Echo Sifter Phantom tolerant”.

The man laughs, rubbing his neck and straightening back up fully, “ah yeah, I guess draining the ecto out of Danny boys soulmate would be pretty rude of us”.

Phantom fully dropping Danny’s hands and eyeing the large man, “ya think? I’m strong so I don’t care that much but it’s still annoying as fuck”. Dude can’t just be swearing at his parents!

Danny’s mom chastising him immediately, “language”; his dad doesn’t look super impressed either.

“You literally shot at me last week I think I can swear a little, as treat”.

Okay no Phantom can shut up now. At least the guy doesn’t fight him on giving him back control when he pushes for it. Danny shaking his head out, “don’t be a dick”.

“Danny!”.

Danny pouts at her and shakes his head again, eyeing his dad, “uh, ghosts are more involved with their cores so he kinda just, um, cuddles up with mine and recovers after fights and sh- stuff. And you know, the whole doctor recommended physical contact”, rubbing his neck, “explained it to mom”, and nods his head at her.

She nods at his dad herself, “it’s just part of being soulmates with them. So yes, Phantom is around, under Danny’s skin, a lot. Most of the time probably”, and looks back to Danny questioningly.

Danny wiggling his hand back and forth in the air, “eh? It depends, he was away more pre-Sifter, since we could still be connected via all that free floating ecto-”.

He’s legit not surprised when his dad interrupts him, “-so we need to stop depleting the town quite so much?”.

“That’d be nice yeah”.

His mom giving him a bit of a judging eyebrow, “only enough that what you guys are doing works again though, this town does not need to be contaminated enough to start growing ecto-plants”.

‘I for one don’t see the issue with that’

Of course he doesn’t, he’s a ghost. Granted Danny doesn’t take much issue with it either but that’s because Danny was firmly ‘ghost friendly’ and had been around ghost flora and fauna plenty enough. “Yeah yeah, okay”.

Both of them nod firmly at him, his dad going wide-eyed seconds later, “wait if he’s here then that means I can get the photo albums!”.

No no no no, Danny looking, panicked, at his mom immediately; trying to beg with his eyes. She smirks at him a little before turning to his dad, “Jack hon, no. We’re having some proper suppers with his soulmate first”.

“But he’s had supper with us?”.

“We didn’t know Phantom was there and Phantom wasn’t even out with us. Those don’t count”.

His dad deflates a little, “ah I guess you’re right”.

She nods strongly, “and they’re soulmate meet and greet suppers, not a research chance”.

“Aw but-”.

Danny can’t help but chuckle a little over how his dad shuts up immediately at her glaring. These ‘suppers’ were going to be weird and awkward as shit though. And he still had to talk to Lancer, ugh. Because yeah, fuck Calculus.

End.

Prompts: Maddie has been noticing the ghost boy actively going into her son’s room. What could the ghost boy want with her son? (Could be halfa Danny or split Danny) Soulmates AU (can be platonic/romantic/familiar/nuanced) Drs Maddie and Jack Fenton have created a new source of green energy that feeds on the ambient ectoplasm in Amity to simultaneously generate power and weaken those pesky spooks. Good dad Jack reveal! Anything involving Danny and Maddie's relationship. Fluff or hurt/comfort, good parent Maddie

[torscrawls]

Paved With Good Intentions and Bad Acting Skills

Summary:

The A-listers are all acting strange. Well, more strange than usual at least, and Danny doesn't want to know why. Too bad he doesn't get a choice in the matter. - Paulina cleared her throat and then proceeded to not clear up anything as she said, “We just really think you should let Danny go to the bathroom.” “Yes, I got that,” Mr. Lancer said with a troubled expression, “I just want to know why.” Kwan scoffed. “Because that’s where you go when you have to pee, Mr. Lancer. Or don’t you know that?”

Words: 2,211

Can be read on AO3!

For @ashes3333! Thanks for the great prompt. I hope you enjoy

----

Danny raised his hand high, trying to not let his desperation show as he silently begged Mr. Lancer to notice. His ghost sense had just gone off and if he didn’t leave and change into Phantom in the next few seconds then things might get messy.

It felt like forever as Danny waved his hand in the air before Mr. Lancer’s eyes finally landed on him. But instead of the quick permission he was expecting, he just got a sigh and a, “Not again Mr. Fenton. You can’t leave every class and I’m about to go through the test for next week.”

“But I really have to---”

Mr. Lancer cut him off, “No. You can wait five minutes.”

Danny slowly lowered his hand. Fuck. What was he supposed to do now?! He didn’t have five minutes! The ghost would be here any second.

Before he had time to do more than consider the repercussions of simply running out the classroom—and whether his suffering attendance record would survive it—he saw Mr. Lancer look back up at something over Danny’s shoulder and heave an even deeper sigh. “Really?”

Danny spun around in his chair and saw Paulina, Dash, Kwan, and Star, all with their hands in the air.

Danny bit back a frustrated groan. What were the A-listers up to now? He didn’t have time for this!

Mr. Lancer gestured for Star to talk. She didn’t waste any time before boldly stating, “Mr. Lancer! You really should let Danny go to the toilet.”

Danny blinked in surprise. That… was not what he’d been expecting.

“Yeah! He…” Paulina agreed and then trailed off with the look of someone who was desperately trying to come up with a good excuse.

Dash jumped in with a loud, “He really has to go though!”

Paulina swore under her breath. “God damn it, Dash.”

“He’s not a child,” Mr. Lancer said very primly considering the topic of conversation.

Danny stayed half-turned in his seat and just stared. What was going on…?

Kwan almost got up from his seat as he said, “Do you want him to go in here?!”

Star gasped in clearly fake outrage. “Mr. Lancer! How could you?!”

Mr. Lancer seemed just as confused as he looked between all the A-listers. Then he turned his attention back to Danny, “Okay, what’s going on here?

Danny raised both his hands in the air this time, fighting the blush on his face as he registered what exactly they had been saying. “I have no idea.”

Maybe this was some new form of bullying they were trying out? If so; it was scarily effective.

Paulina cleared her throat and then proceeded to not clear up anything as she said, “We just really think you should let Danny go to the bathroom.”

“Yes, I got that,” Mr. Lancer said with a troubled expression, “I just want to know why.”

Kwan scoffed. “Because that’s where you go when you have to pee, Mr. Lancer. Or don’t you know that?”

Danny desperately wished to sink through the floor. Or turn invisible. Or die again. He wasn’t picky. Tucker and Sam were absolutely not helping; Sam stifling a laugh behind her hand and Tucker bringing out his phone to record the whole thing.

And for some reason all of the A-listers were sending him increasingly panicked looks as well as scanning the whole classroom as if looking for something. Which did remind Danny that he really had to get out of there, and soon.

But then, as if things couldn’t get any worse, Dash suddenly stood up and almost screamed, “He’s got really bad diarrhea!”

“Yeah!” Kwan nodded.” Why do you think he leaves all the time? You should see the bathroom.”

Star shook her head intently. “Or don’t! Don’t go with him!”

Mr. Lancer was starting to look horrified. “Okay, that’s enough of whatever this—”

And that was the moment Skulker burst through the outer wall of the classroom. Danny was almost grateful.

But now he really needed to get out of there.

“It's okay!” Kwan shouted over his shoulder in Danny’s general direction. “We’ll hold him off!” Which didn’t make any sense, but he didn’t have time to figure out what was going on with the A-listers.

He exchanged a quick look with Sam and Tucker before diving out of the classroom and into the hallway just in time with the ghost-alarm going off. He managed to change into Phantom just in time before all the classroom doors burst open and the hallway was flooded with students and teachers alike.

Danny turned intangible, ignored the gaping stares around him, and flew back into his classroom. He was expecting Sam and Tucker to have kept Skulker occupied but was shocked when he got back in the room only to find half his class still there and worse yet; involved in the fight.

Dash perked up as soon as Danny entered, screaming, “We’ll help you, Danny!” and tackling right through Skulker and into a wall.

“Phantom!” Star exclaimed with a big smile from where she was hiding behind an overturned desk.

Kwan pumped his fist in glee and said, “Phantom Danny! Shit. Danny Phantom!”

“Good save!” Paulina praised a she continuously fired off a small ectogun, missing every shot.

Sam and Tucker were in the back, still filming. Which probably meant that Skulker hadn’t really come here to fight seriously. Which was confirmed when he turned to Danny when he entered the room and frowned. “I don’t know what these puny humans think they’re doing but I’m the greatest hunter in all the realms! I demand a fair fight!”

Which was almost the same as asking nicely for a ghost.

But first he had something to clear up. “What are you guys doing?!”

“Helping!” Star exclaimed unhelpfully.

Danny was so tired of whatever had gotten into them by now, but he still didn’t want them to get hurt. “Get out of here!”

“But we're helping!” Dash said from where he lay on the floor and Danny had never thought the day would come where he’d see Dash pout.

Danny shook his head and fired off an ectoblast at Skulker. “You're really not!”

Skulker grinned. “Ah, so now the real fight starts!”

“We’ll get him, Danny!” Dash screamed as he got back on his feet.

Star jumped up from behind the table. “He means Phantom!”

“Yeah!” Dash immediately agreed. “Phantom!”

If they refused to leave the room, then Danny would. And. Well. Danny wasn’t in any hurry to go back to his class after what had just happened. He looked around the room. Was still happening? He sent the A-listers one last confused look and then took off through the wall with Skulker in hot pursuit.

---

Danny opened the door to the classroom fifteen minutes later, back to human and trying to hide a slight limp as he quietly made his way into the room.

And he thought he had gotten away with it too, but then all the A-listers sat up straight in their chairs and stared right at Danny with wide grins. As if they were proud of something. Of course, this drew Mr. Lancer’s attention and he turned to see Danny halfway in the door.

“Mr. Fenton! Where were you?”

Once again, before Danny could answer himself, the A-listers jumped in. Dash loudly said, “Finally back from the bathroom, huh? You… Fenturd!”

Mr. Lancer immediately turned his attention to dash with an outraged, “Mr. Baxter!”

Kwan nudged Dash’s shoulder before loudly whispering, “Good one, Dash!”

Were they… trying to actually help him?

Danny sat back in his seat, more disturbed by this possibility than the undead hunter that had just tried to skin him alive.

In fact, he was so distracted that after class he accidentally jammed his hand intangibly through his locker door. He froze with his arm enclosed in metal up to the elbow and then pulled it out as soon as his brain had registered what he’d been doing. He cast around in the corridor to make sure no one had seen his little slip up and met the gazes of four wide-eyed A-listers across the hall.

Star smiled wide enough to show all her teeth. The worst part was that it looked genuine. “We didn’t see anything.”

“No,” Dash agreed, hesitating slightly before adding, “Only three nerds!”

Kwan nodded and nudged Dash’s side. “Nice one.”

Okay, this was going from weird to worrying. If not even Dash’s bullying felt natural, something was definitely up.

Danny tilted his head and addressed his old tormentor. “Are you okay, Dash?”

This made him blink in confusion. “What?”

Danny shook his head. “It just doesn't feel like your heart’s in it, you know?”

“You want me to bully you… With more heart?”

“I mean… If you have to do it, you can at least do it right? Now it’s just weird.”

“Shit,” Dash cursed, leaning towards his three friends and whispering in a voice loud enough for Danny to clearly hear, “We’re being weird!”

Paulina flipped her hair over her shoulder and raised her nose in the air. “Come on guys. No use hanging around these losers.”

And then she walked off with an air of indifference. It would almost have worked if Star didn’t send him another genuine smile, Kwan mimed a sorry and Paulina kept glancing over her shoulder at him as they walked away.

Danny was left alone in the hallway for all of three seconds, staring dumbly after the departing sources of his recent confusion, before Sam and Tucker sidled up next to him with barely restrained mirth.

“Okay,” Danny said as he leveled his friends with an accusatory glare. “You guys know what’s going on.”

It wasn’t a question. Tucker blinked his eyes in a facsimile of innocence. “Maybe?”

“We just want to see how long it takes for you to figure it out,” Sam said, completely unrepentant. 

“That's unfair!” Danny complained. 

Tucker patted him condescendingly on the shoulder. “Yeah. You are pretty slow.”

Danny slapped him off and groused. “Let's just go eat.”

On the way to the cafeteria he saw the A-listers further down the hallway, crowding in around Mikey and pushing him around. But then Kwan's eyes landed on Danny and he paused, said something to the others, and then they all stopped to smile awkwardly at Danny and patting Mikey on the shoulder as if they wanted Danny’s approval. Like they respected him.

“Why are they…?” Danny stopped dead. He'd only seen them act like this towards Phantom. The thought made all the A-listers weird actions of the day make perfect sense and he groaned. “They know, don't they?”

Tucker pumped his fist. “Yes! He got there!”

“What made you realize?” Sam asked as they started walking towards the cafeteria again.

Danny shrugged. “They treat me like a human. Which, ironically, they only do when I'm a ghost.”

Sam raised an eyebrow. “That's what makes you realize they know??”

“That's so sad,” Tucker said while shaking his head.

Danny groaned. “But I can't believe they know! Wait,” he paused as he turned to face his two friends. “How did you know that they know?!”

Tucker whistled innocently as Sam rolled her eyes and said, “You're welcome. We’ve already threatened them into silence.”

Tucker laughed. “Not that we would have needed to. They were falling over themselves to help.” he nudged Danny’s side. “I think you have some new best friends.”

Danny wrinkled his nose. “Gross.”

They passed the A-listers in the corridor and Sam called out, “Hey guys! The gig is up!”

“You only lasted half a day!” Tucker added with a wide smile, hand outstretched. “Pay up.”

“You bet on me?!” Danny asked in outrage as Paulina handed over a small bundle of bills to Tucker.

“At least you’re good for something,” Sam shrugged and ignored Danny’s outraged, “Hey!”

“So now we don’t ave to pretend anymore, right?!” Dash asked with the same enthusiasm as Cujo showed for a new toy.

Danny took a small step back. “How did you even figure me out…?”

Kwan laughed. “Dude. The alley behind the Nasty Burger is not really private.” 

Danny groaned. He always tried to be so careful! Well, except when he changed in the middle of the school corridor half an hour ago, or when he did it outside behind Sam or Tucker because he didn’t have time, or, yeah, when he did it behind the Nasty Burger because he wanted to drink the last of his shake, or—Alright. Maybe he should be more careful. But that didn’t explain why they had been there. So he frowned and asked, “Why were you behind the Nasty Burger…?”

“Don't ask!” Tucker cut in, voice panicked.

The whole group of A-listers turned bright red and Danny decided he really didn’t want to know. “As long as we’re good?”

Star immediately jumped in with a very energetic, “We won’t tell anyone!”

“Yeah!” Kwan agreed. “We’ll help!”

Danny thought back to the disaster of the day so far and only managed a weak, “Please don't.”

Dash slapped his back. “We’ve got your back, Phantom!” Paulina cleared her throat and Dash immediately pivoted to, “Danny! We’ve got your back, Danny!”

Danny groaned. “Oh joy.”

[uniasus]

I am determined to post the next chapter of The Band That Plays Together, Fights Together today. (why did I make the title so long?!)

-------------------

“It won’t work.” Danny swallows, watching the cultists climb the stage. The one up front with the Fenton Finder locks eyes with Danny. “They can track me.”

“Track you? Is your head full of bees? Why would such weirdos want to track you…”

Skulker’s voice dies as Danny triggers his transformation. 

“Long live the king!” the cultists chant.

“Ancients,” Skulker curses.

What had Clockwork wanted him to do? Accept not just the Crown, but everything that it entailed. Don’t just wear it, but step into the role. 

What did kings do?

Command. 

Danny summons his crown, the ring of ice around his head weighing down his now floating hair. In the Realms, compared to that odd space outside time, he can feel the power of it act up, sending green sparks skating along the ice. Sparks for the electricity that killed him, cold for the ice core in his chest linked to the chilling expanse of his space obsession. 

[archivedstory]

For @kinglazrus !! Super excited abt this one! I love corpse aus so I just had to do this one.

AO3 Link

"There's a shallow grave in the woods. The only marker is a stone with the name "Danny" scratched into it. Judging by the fresh-turned soil, it hasn't been empty for long."

The call came in from a hiker early in the morning.

She'd been going on her daily hike when she decided to go on a route that was different from her normal route.

When she tripped over the rock, she should have known that there was something wrong. At first, she started to walk past, and continue on her hike.

It was on her way back that she really noticed the issue.

The rock she had tripped over had writing that she didn't notice the first time.

It was a simple engraving, probably done with another rock or a different sharp tool, definitely not professionally done.

There was one word.

A name.

'DANNY'

It was at that point that she realized that the dirt path seemed to be disturbed near the edges, as if someone had gone digging.

Oh god, someone had been digging .

As she looked at the disturbed dirt, she saw something odd. It was an odd color, looking as if it had been burned or melted, blackened.

It was a bone.

A charred, dirty, old bone, covered in a material that had melted and fused to it.

It was like one of those horror stories, of certain toys made from plastic materials melting onto skin if exposed to too much heat.

She called the police station the second she was in range of a cell tower.

All the operator at the call center heard was, "God, the bones , they're black, they're burned. There's bones in the woods ."

The CSI left the station immediately.

.

..

...

"She wasn't kidding, these bones were definitely burned, but they're weird. It's more reminiscent of electrical burns. What could output enough power to burn a body so thoroughly by electrocution?" The lead CSI said. She was wearing gloves and slowly unburying the body.

The more they uncovered, the more horrified they were.

"This is a kid," A member of the team said, "Either a kid or a small person. The size of the bones indicate that the owner of this body was under 5 ft. Maybe a small kid? What name did the stone say?"

"Danny, I think, it's a little hard to read, but that looks like the right name."

"Wait, wasn't there a kid that went missing a year ago from Amity named Danny?"

"Yeah, but I thought the parents were under suspicion, with that weird lab in their basement."

"Didn't the sister call it in?" The one handling the bones said.

The case they were talking about was the case of Daniel Fenton. He had gone missing four weeks before his freshman year, except he was only reported missing when his sister came back from a college summer camp. Two weeks after he supposedly went missing.

Because of this, nobody actually figured out when he went missing. The police had searched the entire Fenton home, which had uncovered the lab in the basement of the home.

The Fentons had a portal. An interdimensional portal to some place they called the Ghost Zone, and it had corresponded with sightings of weird, translucent, flying people that had been sighted in the city.

They had been taken into custody, but then later released due to a lack of evidence. His sister was still advocating for missing children, especially kids who weren't reported until long after they vanished.

"But this body is too decomposed for only a few months. Maybe the burns accelerated it?"

"I mean, if this is the Fenton kid-"

"Don't start being a conspiracy theorist now, Sean." The lead investigator said, shaking her head.

"You never know!"

.

..

...

The coroner's office was cold. The autopsy room was colder.

The body on the table was small, a kid, wearing a plastic material that had seemed to fuse with the bones it was covering.

The bones, God the bones. They were blackened, covered in a dark material, flesh that had been burnt to a blackened crisp.

The coroner looked at the body in front of him and sighed.

The only thing he could easily use for identification that wasn't fingerprints or DNA were dental records. Luckily, while the corpse was completely desecrated, the bones were somehow intact.

He was able to take a scan of the teeth and send them off to be compared with all local dentist offices within a 50 mile radius.

It was a few minutes later when he got the ping.

There's a match.

"Shit."

.

..

...

The Fentons were in their lab when they got a phone call.

"Hello, this is Jack Fenton of Fentonworks, how can I help you?" The burly man said into the receiver.

"Hello, Mr. Fenton. This is the Briggersdale Police Department, calling you to inform you that a few days ago, we found a body in the woods. This body has been identified as the body of your son, Daniel." The voice on the other end said to him.

"What?" Jack stood with the phone in hand in shock. Maddie chose that moment to walk into the room.

"Are you okay, Jack?"

Jack thanked the officer and hung up. "They... found a body."

"A body? Why did they contact you? Where was this?"

"The next town over. The body was identified. It was Danny's."

A sharp intake of breath could be heard from Maddie. "We need to call Jazz."

"She isn't speaking to us, she'd just ignore anything we have to say to her."

"She'll listen, it's about Danny."

.

..

...

Jazz Fenton had been having a good day. She had only one class that morning, her favorite introduction to developmental psychology course, and she had just finished speaking with her roommate about their date next weekend with their longtime girlfriend. She was happy for them. She was having a good time, reading one of her favorite books at her desk.

It was a good day, until she got the phone call.

It was from her parents.

She refused the call at first. This was the third time that week her parents had tried to contact her, and the third time she refused their call.

Usually they stopped trying to call her, and just left her a few texts after she refused their call, but this time was different.

She should have known something was wrong.

"What is it? I thought I told you guys to never contact me again." Jazz spoke before either of her parents could even get one word out.

"Jazz... They found it."

"What, what did they find?" Jazz stood up. She was really getting annoyed now, with them being all cryptic towards her.

"His body. Jazz, they found Danny's body."

Jazz's phone slipped out of her hands.

What?

They found his body. They found his body.

Oh god, he was actually dead.

Jazz knew after the first few days she realized her brother was missing that the chances of finding him again were slim to none, and after the first two weeks, she knew that she would probably sooner see a body bag than see her brother alive again.

But this? This made it real.

He was dead.

He was gone .

She was never going to see him again.

Oh god, this was real .

She stared in front of her. She stared at the wall.

Her knees gave out and she slumped to the ground.

She could feel her eyes well up with tears.

She could hear her roommate shouting her name and kneeling in front of her as she sobbed, crying and trying to say anything, but no words would come out of her mouth.

Oh god, she had to tell Sam and Tucker.

No way would her parents even know that he had them as his friends, and they were always the first people that she gave updates to, even before her parents. They deserved to know he was... dead. That they had found his body.

.

..

...

Sam and Tucker were hanging out at Tucker's house when Sam's phone rang.

She picked it up, recognizing the number as Jazz's.

Tucker watched as emotions crossed her face, beginning with worry, and ending in dread.

"Oh my god. Tucker. They found it."

“Shit.” He said.

“Shit.” She nodded in agreement.