#complete danny phantom rewriting

[furiarossa]

Danny Runner - Updates

Update #2 for the Danny Runner website! A lot of characters are still missing (there are a lot that we have to re-design and upload, yup), but we updated the info, a lot of links, some worldbuilding and... uh... there are a couple of technical issues, but you could start to enioy the site too!

Also, since we explore it through the screen of a laptop, if you have a tablet or a smartphone, could you please tell us if the stuff is visible and if links work? Thanks in advance!

[nosleeppotions]

(Been a while since I've written any Fool's Errand stuff)

Danny frowns, unconsciously floating upside down above his seat while in thought.

"If you keep frowning like that your face is gonna stay that way kid."

The Keeper of the Fool's Errand speaks up, putting a large glass of a glowing ectoplasmic based milkshake of sorts on the table for the new Ghost King.

"I'm not a kid-" the Ghost King starts to protest but the Keeper's eyes were just visible enough behind the mask to silence him. "Right you're almost as old as Clockwork.... That was actually part of the point I wanted to make." he turns himself upright again and lowers back into his seat.

"Oh? Do tell."

Danny is almost annoyed by the nearly amused tone the ancient being masquerading as something more human, as many ancient beings seem to tend to do for his benefit as if attempting to ease him into the fact that he too was slowly becoming more like them, had but he knew better than to snap at the man across from him so he doesn't comment on it.

"The Zone and places adjacent to it, like here, have all these... basically deities, pantheons, everything. But nobody came to help to stop Pariah Dark. Why?" Danny finally asks.

He expected annoyance or dismissal, but the Keeper nods lightly, tilting his head in quiet contemplation and acceptance. After all, he himself didn't show up despite being made aware of the news.

"Why indeed.... why did we leave you, a child at the time, alone to deal with it?"

Danny nods, a bit impatient but he was getting the hang of... if not accepting, at least tolerating the vagueness of Clockwork's kin. It's taken several years to reach this point though, at least unlike him they were much more patient.

"To put it simply Daniel, we're not heroes. But for once I'll actually give you an explanation, you're long overdue one, aren't you your majesty?" Despite saying this the Keeper goes quiet again for a few moments, mulling the words over.

"With time and power eventually comes.... apathy. Many of us were never Human, Daniel, we don't really care for them unless they are in our inner circle or a worshiper, sometimes not even then in many cases."

Danny's frown was once again deepening.

"Yes it sounds awful doesn't it, but it's the truth. Nobody came to help, because they either were so removed they were never informed, or did not care to to get involved. Clockwork sees the bigger picture, it's not in his nature to get involved so he can't be blamed. But the rest? Even to me it didn't matter. We're not heroes, some of us aren't even good people by your standards, it's not in our natures to come running in like shining knights and defeat evil. We're not... bothered, we just are and will be until we are no longer. Pariah Dark escaping was... inconvenient but trivial because he meant nothing to beings like us."

Danny doesn't look at his drink, eyes glowing brighter and hair becoming more wispy in unbridled... anger? no... that was too light a word.... rage? despair? He mumbles something.

"Pardon?"

"Is this what I'm going to be like?" Danny repeated.

The Keeper seems amused once more. "No. Simply put Daniel, you're better than all of us, you always were. Maybe not as strong or as wise, yet, but better. That's why your majesty, there is no better king to rule over the Ghost Zone." The Keeper says almost playfully as he drops a few sprinkles and a cherry on Danny's drink and leaves to check on a different table.

[emberdew]

Trans Danny Fic Recs 🏳️‍⚧️

Hi! For Pride Month I wanted to make a list of a bunch of fics that feature trans Danny that I like! Here we go:

One-shots

What are you going to do, fight the sun? by TheBadDragon || 1k One-shot. It's one of the few stories I've read where both Danny and Vlad are trans and I love it.

For Whom the Bell Tolls by @raaorqtpbpdy || 35k One-shot. This features a really interesting AU. I love that it deals with the question "if Danny is trans and he and Dani are siblings, do people think Danny named himself after his sister?"

Original by between || 4k One-shot. This is the only story I can think of where Danny comes out as trans to Dani. It is really sweet.

Pregaming is only distasteful if the deceased is actually dead and/or a good person. by @ficauthor || 14k One-shot. This story is so funny! It has great trans jokes (written by trans author).

Wrong Feeling by @gh0stzonedarchive || 2k One-shot. A nice nonbinary Danny coming out story.

Unpacking ALL of THAT. by @kawaiijohn || 6k One-shot. A nice story about Paulina saving Danny and then having a conversation while trapped in a box. It features trans (and bi) Danny and lesbian Paulina.

making it through by @robotbeowulf || 2k One-shot. A sweet story where Mr. Lancer helps Phantom and also comes out as trans to him.

Closet Space by @ecto-american || 2k One-shot. A sweet story where Danny and Sam are both trans and swap clothes.

oh, simple thing (breathing such harsh air) by Possiblyenjoyable || 3k One-shot. A really good story where Vlad may be a villain, but at least he's not transphobic.

Multichapter and Series

A Lot To Learn by @vampyra142001 || 21k Incomplete series. A nice Vlad redemption story. I really like how Danny being trans is incorporated into the story. Plus Vlad is ace.

Friends in Strange Places by @sunnys567 || 100k Complete multi-chap. This AU is really good and I love that Danny's friends learn about their own identities during Vlad's "coming out" trip.

Lightning by @tourettesdog || 21k Incomplete multi-chap. This is one of my favorite No One Knows AU stories and one of the few fics I can think of from Sam's POV. It features the iconic line: “Phantom’s trans— what an icon.” TourettesDog has several other fics with trans Danny that I like too, including Phantom at Pride.

Cognitive Dissonance by @secretly-an-automaton || 9k Complete multi-chap. A super sweet Gray Ghost revelation story! Danny being trans is a part of the reveal, which I think is a cool concept.

the haunting murders of bristol mansion by @antelabbitsghost || 8k Complete multi-chap. A really funny Buzzfeed Unsolved inspired story. Featuring Danny calling it transphobic when furniture falls on him lol.

Casper High’s New Nurse by @thewiltingdaisy || 55k Complete multi-chap. This story features one of my favorite tropes- an OC adult who helps struggling children with their problems. Danny is trans and the OC nurse character is nonbinary, which is cool!

Food as a Love Language by GooseJacket || 13k Incomplete series. Another fic where Danny and Vlad are both trans (and pan), which I appreciate despite it not coming up in the story much. I really love Danny and Kyle’s relationship in it though; they’re really cute together.

Mundane to Monstrous Ghost by @goliath-de-senfina-sango || 75k Complete multi-chap (part of an incomplete series, but ends in a nice place). This canon rewrite is really cool! Danny uses a wish from Desiree to magically transition, which is amazing.

DPxDC

Unearthed, Reborn by @queenofthequillandink || 62k Incomplete multi-chap. An amazing story featuring soft Eternal Trio with Jason as their teen half ghost son. In addition to Danny being trans, Dick Grayson also transes their gender. Plus there are trans puns!

Rooftop Express by @cheezygoddess || 89k Incomplete multi-chap. A really good Dead on Main story featuring trans Danny and trans Jason.

Wanted: Dead and Alive by @aster-draws || 121k Complete multi-chap. A very angsty vivisection fic with a happy ending. Danny is both trans and intersex. And of course, the GIW are transphobic.

Unlimited Love by @oliveofvanders || 10k Incomplete series. Some nice one-shots featuring trans Danny and the Death Defying (Danny/Dick) ship. I especially like the second fic about the pride parade.

Of All the Things My Hands Have Held by @disillusioneddanny || 17k Complete multi-chap. A cute Dead Serious story where Danny and Damian raise a baby together. I think it's funny that Talia gives them the baby partly because she doesn't know Danny is trans. DisillusionedDanny actually has a bunch of really good fics with trans Danny, including Eat The Acid and Love Like You.

Phantom in Gotham by @artemismoorea03 || 320k Incomplete series. This series is incredible! Poor Danny has to deal with some upsetting situations, but everyone in the Batfam who learns that Danny is trans is supportive which is sweet.

Liminal Familiarity by @isitcowboytimes || 70k Incomplete multi-chap. A nice angsty AU where Danny helps Jason after he becomes half ghost. There's a scene where Danny transforms back to human after being only Phantom for a while and he gets hit with gender dysphoria and being human dysphoria at the same time, oof.

Stalking Astronauts: Gotham's Latest Social Media Craze! by @tachvintlogic || 54k Complete multi-chap. This is a really interesting twist on the usual DPxDC adoption trope where Danny is afraid of being adopted, and he doesn't need to be because he's an adult and a successful astronaut. Unfortunately because of his facial masculinization surgery, everyone thinks he looks a Wayne.

Barely Surviving in a World Antithetical to My Existence by DomesticatedOpossum and Vampirenote13 || 67k Incomplete multi-chap. Danny gets isekaied to Gotham and helped by Constantine and the bats eventually. I like that both Danny and Tim are trans in this.

Better Halves (and other such falsehoods) by @astereaes || 132k Incomplete multi-chap. An amazing fake relationship Danny/Tim story! Tim doesn't know that Danny is trans for a while but he also doesn't know a lot of things about Danny lol.

I'll be updating this list as I read/remember other cool trans Danny fics, so feel free to send recs or promote your own fics! Last updated: 9/16/24.

[theplanetprince]

SCHRODINGER'S ADOLESCENT || CH 30

Fic: AO3 || FNN

Fandom: Danny Phantom

Rating: Teens and Up

Word Count as of update: 188k~

Relationships: Dash Baxter/Danny Fenton, Sam Manson/Tucker Foley, Ember Mcclain/Ghostwriter

Characters: Danny Fenton, Dash Baxter, Sam Manson, Tucker Foley, Cujo, Johnny 13, Ghostwriter, Sidney Poindexter, Mr Lancer  

Additional Tags: Slow Burn, Slow to Update, Canon Rewrite, Post-Reality Trip, High School Setting, Fake Dating (Kinda), Unrequited Love, It's requited but they're dumbasses, one-sided attraction, fluff, I know the content warning is extensive, but I promise there's fluff, tooth-rotting fluff, Danny Fenton has PTSD  

Content Warnings: High School Sex ED

Author's note: And now it's time for something completely different, Happy Valentine's Day, ya filthy animals. -Voorhees 💘

Credits: Thank you to @/ten0rreaper, @/galaxybeast, and, of course, @/the-storming-sea for being my ever-faithful soundboards! And a special thank you to @tired-all-the-time22 for the art addition to chapter 2! It was a wonderful experience collaborating!

Reblogs > Likes... thx

[britcision]

FRIENDS IT IS HERE. As promised even! We are technically just under 20k for this chapter, but still not small enough that cutting it in half has stopped it from brutally murdering the app, so…. We’ll see how this posts! 😅

I did myself a whole honkin’ reread on the whole thing too, refreshed my lil reminders of what I named things and all the lil threads I was playing with… and hot damn it’s a beast huh?

The good news is, although we are getting into plot, we are getting out of the heavy stuff, at least for the next little bit! Back to our silly happy fun times with the boys 🥰

And, y’know, dealing with Jason’s death and first transformation and all. Totally all fine! Nothing to worry about! 😇

Today’s chapter is a lil Bruce-heavy in this front half because the main thing stopping me was that I got most of the way through before I realized I needed to rewrite Jason’s entire first scene, but I’m a lot happier with it now 😁

First Chapter and AO3:

Previous Chapter:

——————————

The Finished Core part 1

When it finally happened, Jason’s core coming in was pretty anticlimactic. For all they’d worried it might trigger a transformation, rile up the pit, or even have a physical shockwave… the event itself was almost disappointing. Buried busily in some paperwork for the library, Jason himself hadn’t actually noticed.

He’d already started feeling what he thought might be his core over the past few days; like a vibrating ball of energy, usually in the middle of his chest (although it wandered in all directions). Which would make the knot of tension that sometimes sat in his gut and sometimes went as far up as his throat… probably Pitty.

Not fun having a distinct sensation that went along with everything else the Pit was. Did nothing at all to ease his worries about what the hell would happen when they were both actually completed.

But when the day finally came… yeah, nothing. The soft, warm glow in his chest when he thought about the project had grown steadily stronger over the week and a bit he’d known Danny at that point, so he hadn’t really paid enough attention to notice a change.

They’d still been seeing each other every day, although now that the new school semester had started up it had slowed down to a couple hours in the evening. Jason had dived headlong into his restoration project both on Frostbite’s advice, and to keep himself from counting the hours. Which, apparently, worked?

The biggest disruption was actually Danny blasting in through the wall not a minute later, invisible until he dived through one of Jason’s freshly legal goons and almost knocked the table over. Luckily there were no actual Red Hood links lying around - Catherine’s name was staying clean, which was for the best since Jason still hadn’t thought of a way to bring it up.

Even now, back from another appointment with Frostbite to confirm all was well, Jason didn’t actually feel any different? It was official though; both cores were complete, and now all they had to do was wait until the pit matured enough to actually leave Jason’s body and do its own thing.

Now that he didn’t have any choice but to confront it, he couldn’t have said what he’d expected anyway, but… well, surely there should have been something? More energy? More corruption? Hell, even increased ghost senses or some indication that the powers would be coming in.

According to Danny, intangibility usually came with the pit dropping out of your stomach and feeling floaty. Accidental floating came with a head rush or feeling like falling. Invisibility just fucking happened.

All he felt was weirdly normal? The fancy ecto ice was working, and his little ghost succulent - that or all the time with Danny; even Pitty’s flares of emotion were manageable. The green haze hadn’t come back since meeting Lady Gotham.

And okay, maybe he was pushing that by going right back to the manor the next day, but listen. Frostbite had reminded him to do calming tasks, since Pitty should start being more aware of their surroundings now.

Baking with Alfred was as calming and soothing as Jason could imagine, without stapling himself to Danny in classes. And sure, he’d helped with Danny’s homework the past couple nights, but the guy would get sick of him eventually. Faster if they stayed attached at the hip.

(And that had been another “fun” tidbit Frostbite had dropped on them; if they were actually making their own ghost baby, they’d have been able to trade the core off between them. Jason hadn’t thought anything could make that idea sound appealing, but if he coulda just stuffed Pitty into someone else… well, he probably wouldn’t actually wish its corruption and constant tantrums on anyone else, but having a break woulda been nice.)

Now that his core was done, technically the daily hanging out probably wasn’t as necessary. So long as Jason had some backup plans to keep himself calm and in control. Which should mean that they could go from hanging out as a necessary chore to just… friends.

And since no one in the city wound Jason up like Bruce, if he happened to also be at the manor he’d have a trial-by-fire for his shiny new core. He’d kept his word and tapped out of patrol since meeting Lady Gotham (and apparently Harley had taken the manor in fire and glory the night after and locked Bruce… somewhere for two full days), so he’d not heard from B since.

According to Tim, Constantine hadn’t returned to Gotham at all.

The thought of their names only stirred angry bubbles from Pitty, and Jason absolutely wasn’t self destructive or a masochist, so he was just testing to see how far that’d last. How careful he’d need to be, and how aware the little guy was.

So obviously he wasn’t even all the way into the manor before he ran into the man himself.

Stopping short, Jason’s fist clenched more from force of habit than any actual desire. Sucking in a deep breath, he thought of his ghost succulent (which had started glowing faintly blue a couple nights ago, which was hopefully a good thing?) and carefully unclenched. Nodded a little stiffly.

This would be the first time they’d been alone together since… shit, he didn’t even know. He hadn’t seen the guy without the buffer of at least one other bat in months.

“Bruce,” he said warily, half hoping the man could just… be normal. For once. Nod, say hi, fuck off about his own business. He couldn’t still be on his anti-Danny crusade, could he?

The man actually flinched, face twitching through a couple of expressions Jason couldn’t even guess at. A sudden urge between his shoulder blades did nothing to help, distracting him long enough for everything to be smoothed under the usual masks.

If Bruce just had a damn aura… okay, that’d be one change with the completed core. All of his attempts to reach out with his own aura before had basically involved his whole body actually leaning in the same direction.

That… urge, itch between his shoulders, if that had been his aura trying to reach out, felt more like an entirely new muscle group. Curiosity won and Jason focused, trying to follow the urge and reach out… and wasn’t sure it had worked at all.

Because all he could feel was sorrow and regret, and that didn’t sound like B. At all. His compartmentalizing was out the ass, sure, but what the hell would he actually feel sorry for?

“Jason?” And from the sound of it, not the first time he’d said his name. Great.

Shelving the apparently-faulty aura for now, Jason frowned back.

“I’m here to see Alfred.” It wasn’t exactly a warning. Wasn’t exactly a threat, although it carried the possibility. Meant that if B pissed him off enough to leave, he’d face some British disapproval.

Bruce’s shoulders sagged just a little, and then he drew himself up, his face firm and resolved. Jason tensed automatically; if he actually tried to bar him from seeing Danny face to face, would he still be able to walk away?

That was why he’d brought the glacierfrost. Slipping a hand into his back pocket, he crushed a crystal quickly before the man could open his mouth. Wintergreen mint burst across the back of his tongue, another brief flicker of distraction that, for some reason, came with another pang of sorrow.

“I’m sorry.”

Jason nearly stumbled, and he hadn’t even been moving. Bruce looked… tired, all of a sudden. More tired than he could remember ever seeing him.

“Wait… what?”

Bruce gave him a sad smile.

“It’s been brought to my attention… multiple times… that you should have heard that from me alone first. And then I kept adding more and more to be sorry for. And I know you don’t want to see me, so now seems like the best time to start.” It was jerky, and awkward, and probably the most uncomfortable Jason had ever seen Bruce in a conversation.

Which only served to confuse him further. Bruce overplanned everything; he never acted without at least two layers of backups. It was why he had a million plans for every possible micro-scenario. He didn’t do spontaneous.

“What are you even talking about?” He asked, half exasperated, and Bruce’s smile widened a fraction. That only made it more self deprecating.

“There are too many things to count, but… Jason, I’m sorry I sprung the apology on you at the gala. I thought having the world as my witnesses would show you I meant it, but I should have asked first. I should have apologized first, to you. Alone. I’m… aware what it says about me that I couldn’t.” He was almost wearing one of Brucie’s self-deprecating smiles now, but the edges were raw. Unpolished. Certainly not camera ready.

Real?

Jason’s mouth opened and closed a few times, his brain entirely short-circuited. Of all the things Bruce could have said to him… of all the things the man might apologize for, he’d honestly forgotten all about the damn gala speech.

Forcing himself to focus, he folded his arms and regarded his former father figure warily.

“Sure, that’s a place to start,” he agreed, more sarcastically than he’d meant to. But he couldn’t take it back.

There was another moment of stiffness, and then Bruce’s shoulders sagged as well as he breathed out, still looking… well, so much more human. More breakable, more fallible. Or was that just from hearing him admit he’d been wrong?

“I do mean it, Jason. I did mean it,” he said softly, piercing blue eyes unusually gentle as he looked him over, and suddenly Jason knew what was bothering him.

The mask. The iron mask of Batman, the bumbling shield of Brucie. B always had a mask, over every interaction. Every situation, every possible scene, B always had a character to play. And he played them well.

That was what looked wrong about him. He wasn’t… intentional. His posture was open and unthreatening, his face lax in a way it never was while he held every muscle in check.

This was just actual, sincere B.

Jason wasn’t completely sure why that made him want to run or cry, but it said a fuck of a lot about him too.

More that he just couldn’t bring himself to return it.

Sucking in a sharp breath, seriously considering grabbing for another crystal, he nodded sharply.

“Okay. Now what.” Because that was the thing; Jason had never wanted B to be sorry that he hadn’t come for Jason. That he finally hadn’t been on time to save him from himself.

He didn’t want the apology, he wanted things to change. To be better. For Bruce to accept that it had happened, and Jason was who he was now because he’d decided to be, not the pits or Tallia or the Joker.

He wanted so many things.

Bruce was searching his face, eyes sharp even as he consciously kept the rest of the expression open. Jason could see the tick of muscle in his cheek. Fuck, was it that hard for Bruce not to put on the act?

After a moment, he spread his hands. A gesture of peace? Not holding a weapon, not tensed for an attack?

“That’s all. For now. I just… wanted you to know. I’m sorry. And I’m…” the expression pulled a little, becoming pained, “I have been told I am overreacting to the news from Amity Park as well. I should trust your judgement. So I’m pulling myself from the case to focus on the Anti-Ecto Acts.”

This time Jason’s jaw just dropped. B… Bruce never. Never pulled himself from a case. Not for broken bones, ruptured organs, not even if he’d died.

It was almost worse than the rage; all of a sudden he was lost at sea, the one grounding, immovable rock in his life swept away. Part of him was even angry at that - at B suddenly deciding that now, this time he was going to be reasonable.

When all Jason expected from him was judgement, antagonism, stupid overbearing demands and being held at arm’s length, now all of a sudden the Bat was human.

It was too late to pretend the moment hadn’t happened, to completely hide his shock, but he also couldn’t stop the bluster from rising. Not the way his eyes narrowed suspiciously, even when every part of him that had been Robin desperately hoped this was real.

“And what the hell brought that on?” Not the accusation in his voice, although for once Bruce didn’t rise to it. He just chuckled dryly, like he’d been expecting Jason’s reaction.

“Because you were right.”

And now Jason was fully on edge again, scanning the man more closely for any signs of hypnotism, mind control, that this was a clone or a replacement. A trap or a trick. Because B… Bruce would never…

Bruce raised both hands quickly, possibly expecting Jason to just… jump him. Which, to be fair, would have been a more normal interaction.

“You were the one who brought the Amity Park situation to our attention. And you’re right, that I can’t expect your doctor or any other ghost to come here to help you until it is safe for them to do so,” he added quickly, and Jason rocked back onto his heels.

Of course, the caveat. That made sense, bitter in the back of his throat as it was. Just an inarguable set of facts.

Not like he’d ever actually admit that Jason’s judgement was reliable or anything. Folding his arms again (partly to stop his fists from clenching), he gave Bruce a sceptical look.

“Right, so what finally yanked your head out of your ass about it?” He asked sharply. Bruce gave him that same wry smile.

“Diana. And Harley. And Alfred. And Selena. I have been… extensively informed I had my head up my ass. So. I’m sorry for that too. I just wanted to tell you before I left, since I don’t know when we’ll see each other again.”

And it shouldn’t have been funny that he actually looked more pained talking about this, admitting a mistake, than he had when nursing broken ribs in the infirmary. Than he’d looked during any of their fights, than when Jason had all but grabbed his face and forced him to see that it really was him, that his dear little Robin came back wrong.

But dark humour was a refuge for all the bats, and if Jason didn’t laugh he had a horrible feeling he’d cry. All that tension, all those days he’d worried about what he’d say or do when they came face to face again… he’d never have imagined any of this.

Could imagine another bloody battle before imagining Bruce saying sorry.

All of a sudden he was just tired. Ha. Dead tired.

Nothing drained the life out of him like dealing with Bruce.

“Great. So where are you going?” It was almost a rhetorical question; he didn’t really expect an answer.

Should have, though. Obviously B had to stick his foot in it again.

“Amity Park. As Bruce Wayne, not Batman,” he added quickly when Jason’s head snapped up, glare sharpening, “it seems the logical place to begin work on the acts.”

And alright, Bruce didn’t sound defensive. He never did; just obstinate, which meant so many things that guessing when it meant what was a losing game.

Jason groaned loudly, raising both hands to scrub down across his face. Because of course all that weirdness hadn’t changed a damn thing. B was gonna B, creepy and intrusive and all.

“And look into Danny.” He said flatly, locking eyes with Bruce in time to see his expression twitch. Was he actually gonna lie?

Apparently not. Bruce sighed and nodded.

“My focus will be on establishing a connection between “Brucie” and the Anti-Ecto Acts, and investigating the GIW. Danny has been involved in both, and Zatanna has requested the elder Fentons provide me with protection,” he said like it was anything but a weak excuse.

Jason stared at him for a long moment, and then figured fuck it. Actually telling them before he left was technically still an improvement, and Danny and Jason were both well aware that there was gonna be some nosy bullshit.

He’d warned Danny this was gonna happen, and Danny had said it was fine. That he didn’t care about anything Batman might find… and knowing just how badly the Justice League had fucked up was going to eat the asshole alive. Which he could have avoided just by listening.

About to just walk away, Jason hesitated. There was actually one thing… technically not a necessary for a halfa, but fuck it. Might as well get B used to some ghostly etiquette early.

“Have you asked Danny?”

Bruce stilled, giving Jason a complicated look that mostly felt like judgement. Like Jason should know better than to ask.

“I was under the impression that removing the Anti-Ecto Acts is a priority?” He said stiffly, all awkward tension again.

Jason really did roll his eyes this time.

“Sure, but you’re going to his haunt. You text Superman before investigating in Metropolis.” Which technically hadn’t even been true when Jason was actually Robin, but B did text Clark before getting caught investigating in Metropolis. By anything but Kryptonian hearing.

The protocol basically only applied whenever another hero wanted to operate within Gotham because only Batman cared, but it was on the League’s books.

Bruce had picked up the wording though, because of course he had.

“His haunt?” He asked carefully, that tiny tick between his brows that meant he was processing starting up.

Jason rolled his eyes harder. For emphasis. Had JL Dark actually missed this part of the briefing? He was so not writing up Ghost Etiquette 101 for the league. No way.

But. It. Might be kinda cool. To have for himself. Especially since it was gonna be increasingly relevant.

“He’s a ghost hero, B. He died there, he protects the city. He’s like, the only one who’ll actually get your territorial crap, because in his case it’s part of his makeup.”

Actually, might be part of B’s too. Danny hadn’t said how liminal Bruce in particular was, but it really wouldn’t surprise Jason if claiming a haunt was part of it. Or if Lady Gotham had already picked out a spot for him.

That thought stung, so he dismissed it immediately and turned towards the kitchen. Hell with the brownies he’d been planning, he was gonna need something much more complicated to keep his mind off the latest wave of bullshit.

Alfred liked soufflés. Jason could activate the house defences to keep the little gremlins out until they were done.

“Just fucking text him, B. Entering a ghost’s haunt without permission is declaring intent to throw down, and that’s a fight none of us need.” No matter how much he might like to watch B go up against the ridiculous power-set Danny was packing.

Sure, the Bat went toe to toe with the gods, but that was with plans, tech, and often, backup. Apparently he still didn’t know shit about ghosts, so it’d be fun to watch him try and adapt on the fly… especially when even Danny wasn’t sure how many actual powers were on the table.

**

Bruce hesitated for a long moment, looking at Jason’s retreating back.

That had gone… frankly he did not trust his own read on Jason enough to tell. Neither of them had yelled. He’d said what he was prepared to; he was still working on the appropriate format for the rest.

Jason… hadn’t reacted. Not with anger, which was a blessed relief, but not with anything else either. Except disbelief. Exasperation. Shock.

Not really any aggression, though. That had to be a decided improvement. And while part of Bruce suspected he’d been told to inform Danny so the boy could hide anything unsavoury….

He’d known that was likely to happen when he told Jason his plans. Jason would tell Danny; his allegiances there were firmly (and worryingly quickly) established.

Telling Danny himself… there was a chance that Jason had been serious about it being a matter of protocol. A formal request, for contact with an inter-dimensional entity.

Despite that entity being present and active in Bruce’s own city without so much as a nod to the Bat. But then, Batman was not a ghost, despite what the goons liked to suppose.

Firmly marshalling his own suspicions, Bruce pulled out his phone to message the youngest Fenton.

Stopped.

Bruce Wayne didn’t have the boy’s number. But Danny knew at least Nightwing’s identity; it was possible he knew them all.

He was going to Amity Park as Brucie Wayne, not Batman. But Brucie Wayne had no way to get the correct phone number. Unexpected contact from Batman was… well, expected, to an extent.

And his investigations would be handled and presented as Batman. Surely no one would challenge Brucie Wayne to a fight?

Mind made up, Bruce took his vigilante phone out and did a quick scan through his childrens’ updated contact lists. Most of them seemed to have been enjoying the company of the Amity Parkers; it wouldn’t be hard to get Danny’s contact information.

**

So. New year, new problems. Danny used to say it as a joke, but this year it was looking pretty darn literal.

Last year, for example, he hadn’t had to worry about his parents finding out about his supposed “love life” from a magazine (that Jazz must have sent them after they’d gone back to Amity Park, the traitor), and calling to hound him for details.

He’d managed to talk them out of driving the GAV straight to Gotham to threaten Jason into “treating him right”… which Jason thought was funny solely because he still didn’t actually know how large Jack Fenton was, nor how intense Maddie could be.

He still thought of them as civilians, and maybe a little less than competent, thanks to the database and their zero capture record.

Maybe Danny was cultivating that ignorance specifically so he could watch the moment of truth in person. Sue him, it was funny.

Unfortunately, since the magazine had also included that the gala they’d been “hooking up” at had been to celebrate Jason’s return from the dead, his mom had reached the halfa conclusion on her own. Danny had wanted to let Jason decide when to tell her, but that very first phone call the first words out of her mouth had been “Daniel James Fenton, have you met another halfa without telling us?”

And Danny had been so taken aback by them actually noticing anything (it was to do with ghosts, of course they’d noticed, he’d kicked himself for days after) that she’d taken his speechlessness as confirmation.

So.

They had that out of the way before they even said hi.

Despite Danny’s firm assurances that he and Jason weren’t actually dating, the papers were making the whole thing up (the photos hadn’t helped, but his dad seemed to buy that he’d been. Trying to help Jason fix his shirt. After the rogue attack, y’know), his parents had insisted on another call with Jason.

And Jazz. Because he had to introduce his sister to his new boyfriend too.

Jason had… taken it well? Hadn’t gotten much of a word in edgewise, around Jack Fenton’s boisterous laughter and insistence that he come around some time soon. He’d agreed with Danny that they definitely were not dating, which.

They weren’t.

They just weren’t.

They were just. Friends. Who hung out after classes in the evening. And texted all day. And told each other their deepest darkest soul secrets in like, a week after they’d met.

Danny’s mom had seemed a little more convinced by the end of the call, but still insisted Jason should come down to Amity Park anyway, to get to know the family.

Danny was still in denial about it being even a little bit helpful, but Jason had decided to drop the Fright Knight bomb right away. It was the actual real reason they were so close now, so it made sense as an explanation that wasn’t them being partners or whatever.

(Danny still hated it. Resented he couldn’t be trusted to just… have a friend. It always had to be something stupid and dramatic.

And he was totally offended by how immediately relieved his mom had been that he’d have someone “looking after him”. Like he wasn’t a whole ass adult for years already, and the king of a realm for longer than that.)

And now he was gonna have to call them back, and probably get a message to Fright Knight, because Danny’s newest problem was that Batman now had his phone number.

And was asking his permission to go to Amity Park to deal with the Anti-Ecto Acts.

(“Brucie Wayne” was officially the one going for the Acts, the message only said that Batman would be escorting the billionaire and gathering evidence separately, but Danny wasn’t fucking buying it.

And since Batman had his phone number and had used it, Tucker could technically get into Batman’s phone and prove it. Like Constantine showing up at Wayne Manor left a shadow of a doubt.

But noooo, Danny knew all about dramatics and billionaires and their sketchy underground labs. He could play along.)

Which, technically, might wind up solving one of his biggest problems.

It was also gonna completely ruin all the work he and Jason had done persuading the Fentons they weren’t dating; he could already hear his dad booming delightedly about meeting future in-laws. Because why else would Jason’s dad go to visit?

Not like there were actual laws on the books declaring Danny as a mandatory extermination target. Or like the Justice League might finally have gotten their thumbs out of their asses and want to check in.

Clearly Danny’s love life was the only thing that mattered.

At least he wouldn’t have to worry about that crap from Frighty; all the ghosts were gonna know all about Danny and Jason’s soul resonance (be still his beating fucking heart that was still ridiculous). He would have to let him know a superhero was gonna be in town though.

Actual ghosts weren’t likely to mistake Batman for one of their own and these days most of Danny’s rogue gallery was cool about not picking fights with humans without Fenton tech, but Danny figured better safe than sorry.

And.

Maybe.

Really wanted to see Batman and Fright Knight hang out. They were gonna totally love or totally hate each other, and either way he was a little sorry he was gonna miss it.

Unless he gave in and took time off class, kidnapped Jason from whatever work he did, and made the trip home… because he’d been direly warned that if he did show up without Jason, Jack Fenton would drive him back to Gotham personally. So, no. Nope. Not happening.

The long and the short of it was that instead of being blissfully free of his parents nagging him to visit until the summer, he was now fielding calls and texts demanding he come back home for March Break, at the latest. And bring Jason.

Mom wanted to “assess him”, which was fucking terrifying and the more Jason didn’t take it seriously the more Danny was tempted to actually make the trip. It would at least come with a defined end date. And force Jazz to take a break if she wanted to come too.

She at least had been less insistent on calling him every single day to bug him about it; probably because she was busy frying herself to death at university. She’d apologized for missing the group chat too, and the first family phone call, but it wasn’t a huge surprise.

Jazz had had the helicopter parent firmly knocked out of her by double majors, which Danny used to think was a good thing. Now he considered it might actually be a sign she was… not cracking under the pressure? But not taking care of herself.

Hopefully it wouldn’t return full force once she got some actual sleep and decent food in her.

Honestly, Danny wasn’t unaware that this was the most normal his problems had ever been. Just a few years ago he’d have done anything but wish to Desiree that his biggest problem would be “my parents think I’m dating one of my friends”.

Right now it was looking pretty good too, actually. Because at this precise second, Danny’s biggest problem was that he was running out of excuses not to talk to Nocturn.

***

Tim was beginning to think he had a bit of a crush on Tucker Foley. It was a surprise to him as much as anyone else; normally the kind of fawning adoration that tech geeks usually followed him with was an instant turn off. There was just… no point getting close to people who saw him as an idea, not a person.

And, frankly? The mere existence of Timblr probably would have been a red flag for anyone else. Sure, Tucker had closed it down, but it still existed - and Tucker Foley could have taken care of that easily.

The thing was… even under the hero worship he’d caught in Tucker’s eyes when they were first introduced… well, Tucker wasn’t exactly respectful to his heroes. That did tend to follow along with a friend in a teen hero career; everyone else was instantly less cool by association.

Tucker just plain wasn’t a good fanboy. He hung on Tim’s every word, right up until they started talking tech - the subject he most admired Tim for. Didn’t admire him enough not to cut him off half way through an explanation, call an idea “archaic”, or ask if Tim was serious.

(And okay, once or twice he hadn’t been; just testing his technical chops.)

The thing was, Tucker wasn’t only a genius with regular technology, he was a prodigy in an entirely new field of software and occult collusion, and he knew it. He was delighted to upgrade Tim’s systems (although Danny would still need to do the full ecto-infusions; Tucker could interface, but didn’t produce his own ectoplasm), and more than happy to point out everywhere they needed improving.

Tim genuinely respected his opinion, which wasn’t a distinction he gave to many people who’d never worn a cape; he’d already cc’d the other, Lucius Fox, into his and Tucker’s email chains. (Lucius was very enthusiastic about the oncoming apprenticeship - for him.)

And Tucker was funny, allergic to personal privacy, and… well, Tim was pretty sure he’d felt those first twinges when, as promised, he tagged Tucker in to help interrogate the Riddler.

Digitally, obviously. With Tucker’s classes starting back up and the New Years hangovers finally clearing the board, the next time they saw each other in person might be upsettingly far out. But Tucker had cheerfully hacked his way into Gotham PD’s systems and made himself comfortable while Red Robin and Batwoman waited for Riddler to be brought in.

Tim had so few pure pleasures in his life, but watching Kate try to keep a straight face when the interrogation room’s speakers began blasting what was essentially a stripper theme perfect for Eddie Nygma the second the door closed?

Riddler had been utterly baffled as well, talking over the beginning until they reached the chorus, where the singer practically spelled out his name. His stunned silence had given way to a burst of offended protest that was entirely undercut by the way his fingers kept time.

As the teen hero in the room, Red Robin was allowed to snicker at him, but Batwoman had to pretend to be an adult about it.

And when the first song ended, silence had fallen for what must have been a perfectly calculated fifteen seconds, and then the Jeopardy theme began playing.

Of course, soundtracking hadn’t been Tucker’s only contribution to the interrogation, just Tim’s favourite. Red Robin had the tablet from the gala back from evidence, from which Tucker had cheerfully admitted in Matrix style scrolling green text that he’d been the one back-hacking Nygma’s files… and locking him out of them.

And replacing every single link Nygma had clicked from the night of the gala to the day Batwoman hauled him in to a random page from Riddles.com, which Riddler had declared a new vendetta against every time anyone would listen. It was beautiful.

Robins were professionally annoying, it was part natural talent on all of their parts (except Damian) and part intensive training on how to disrupt thought patterns and push people into mistakes. Tucker could have led the class, and Tim had been overtaken by a powerful urge to kiss the smug grin he could feel through Tucker’s text straight off his face.

Of course, Tim had a boyfriend. And had been overtaken more than once by similar urges for almost every one of his friends, when they did something brilliant.

Steph called it oral fixation, Tim preferred positive reinforcement. Conner found the whole thing extremely funny, especially since Tucker still stumbled over his words if Conner was so much as looking at him.

Which made all of his siblings trying to tease him about Tucker’s “crush” on Tim look ridiculous, by the way. Tucker Foley was not a subtle man; he couldn’t even string a sentence together around someone he actually liked.

He could string plenty of sentences together around Tim, the two of them could finish each others’ half the time.

(He wasn’t upset about Tucker’s obvious interest in Conner either; Tim knew damn well his boyfriend was an incredible catch and he was lucky to have him. Tucker’s crush was just… peer review.)

Already he was counting down the days until March Break, when Tucker was going to visit in person again. Honestly, he might push to get a zeta put in nearer to MIT in the meantime.

It wasn’t like the institute was never targeted by supervillains, it would just be practical.

But Tim himself couldn’t suggest that now, because then all of his siblings would jump on the Tucker thing and he’d never hear the end of it. It was a dilemma… because even if Conner or Danny could just go and pick him up again, zeta was just faster.

It had nothing to do with missing time that Conner and Tucker were bonding, or being a puppy waiting for his master to come home, whatever Steph said.

(And honestly, Tucker Foley? Not exactly commanding “master” material. Until he was talking about his area of expertise. Then he was certain and confident and got this really attractive gleam in his eye…)

The quickest solution would be getting all of Team Phantom officially involved in the Justice League, of course. Then he wouldn’t even need to suggest it; close zeta access was vital for all of the heroes.

But Team Phantom couldn’t join the League until Phantom’s existence was no longer illegal. So they had to dismantle the Anti Ecto Acts. Bruce was investigating the GIW, and planning what he probably thought was a secret trip to Amity Park, but none of it was happening fast enough for Tim… because it probably wouldn’t be done by March Break. In two months.

He’d broken more than just the American government in two months; all it took was the right leverage. And a complete lack of self restraint.

So, y’know, Tim had a new side project in and around his other Gotham cases. All he needed was a house and then senate majority, and they could get those laws repealed the second the government came back from break.

Lois Lane was already working on the story, Clark would probably join Bruce in Amity Park (whether he knew Bruce was there or not) for interviews. There was only so much public pressure could do though, and that never worked fast enough either.

Not compared to Tim’s preferred methods. He liked the personal touch.

****

Fun fact, slower core formation? Had not meant slower ghost powers. Not in Jason’s case, anyway; not even a week after his core came in, a coffee cup had slipped straight through his hand and shattered on the floor.

He’d stopped handling Alfred’s good china that day, mindful of Danny’s many horror stories about the school lab’s glassware. Alfred hadn’t actually questioned it, although he’d gotten a couple of raised eyebrows when he slid a junk mug toward the kettle.

It was just a good thing he’d already cut down patrolling; he’d been planning to take a step back anyway for a while. Just until he got the balance right between being Red Hood and the newly resurrected Jason Todd.

He’d had to stop entirely, at least until he got the intangibility under control. Sure, becoming temporarily impervious to weapons would be convenient when he got to choose when it switched off or on. Phasing various limbs half way through solid surfaces and getting stuck though?

No.

Not a chance in Hell. That was not an acceptable risk.

Invisibility had started not long after, which had definitely complicated his trips to the manor; all the bats were good, but vanishing completely out of the blue? That would raise comment.

The good news was that the glacierfrost seemed to be helping there too; either because of the ecto in the ice, or just keeping his emotions regulated, which kept the powers from acting up. Jason wasn’t taking unnecessary risks, but he’d noticed that for at least a couple hours after a hit, he was in more control.

Intentionally turning the powers on was still a struggle, but apparently that’d just get better with time. And probably fighting - that was the common denominator under all his ghost problems.

Ghost Fight Club was officially starting the second he’d got the transformation down, but how exactly they were going to try and trigger that in a controlled environment was still… less clear than Jason would like.

They’d have to work it out soon though; the only other ability that was likely to kick in before he could transform was flight, according to Danny. Time was a-tickin’.

And… alright. It wasn’t like Jason was sat at home every night; that was what he and Danny were doing after school now that they’d cut back to at least a couple days a week. A little practice on budding ghost powers, with backup.

“Surveying his haunt” was what Danny called it, but it basically meant Danny going ghost and Jason putting on a domino he claimed he borrowed from Dick, and the two of them bouncing around the Alley. And occasionally Danny pushing him off roofs to see if flight had kicked in yet.

(It hadn’t, but he still had his grapples, and refused to let Danny rescue him from his own bullshit.)

Sensing the city’s natural ecto had gotten much easier with his core fully developed, and Danny was teaching him how to mark it with his own. Pitty’s ongoing corruption was fucking it up though; it was still producing corrupted ectoplasm, and actually more of it now that they were both whole.

(Jason had started sleeping with Frostbite’s ghost succulent next to his pillow. That was how he’d noticed the new blue glow, which he still meant to ask about. It was still firm and strong, and it… didn’t feel sick?)

Corrupted ecto reeked so strongly of that corruption that it was completely useless for anything else, apparently. So until they finally finished purging Pitty, what all their little adventures actually amounted to was tagging.

Danny made them special ecto-spray-paint, and they spent the nights finding weirder and weirder corners to spray a little mark onto. Jason would have liked to use something to do with Red Hood, for the symmetry, but. Well. He hadn’t worked out how to have that conversation yet.

He’d been making do with little ghost doodles. It had been years since he’d done any real graffiti art, but it was like riding a bike, and the ecto sprayed really well. A cartoon ghost wasn’t all that hard anyway; an elongated little blob, occasionally with little fangs or unattached clawed hands.

He’d been going for something like an Among Us bean, but Danny had declared that he was drawing Pitty, and well… it stuck. Doodling little Pit ghosts was the order of the day, ranging from cute little Pittys (modelling good behaviour, Danny called it) or vicious little bastards, depending on how both Jason and Pitty had been that day.

Because that was definitely one piece of good news, in with all the bullshit new ghost powers was causing. Before he’d felt surges of rage, the moments where the Pit was reaching out and trying to affect him. Universally bad, aggressive, and violent, pre-Danny.

He could kinda feel it all the time now, like a heated scarf draped over his body, or the constant breathing of a dog just behind his ear. It was quiet mostly, and he was beginning to suspect it had cost more energy than he’d ever expected for it to reach out to him at all.

For all that he’d worried about it being too much like raising a kid, it… well, the nice way to say it was probably that it wasn’t that bright. It could talk to him in ghostspeak, kind of; most of what he actually heard felt like emotional reactions, closer to speaking through auras than words despite how much it’d felt like it was crawling up his throat.

The Pit could handle basic concepts, recognised Danny’s name, but other than that? It mostly seemed to follow Jason’s emotional lead… and then dial it up to eleven. Which, yeah, was exactly what he’d been scared of when he thought it might be like, a whole ass person. Toddlers were terrifying little sponges.

Jason’s experience of kids wasn’t exactly what he’d call normal, sure, but Pitty was reminding him less of a kid and more and more of some kind of small and bitey animal.

Which, y’know, was a relief. Sort of. It wasn’t like he could fuck up an animal in the same way as he could a kid. Nowhere near the same level of responsibility.

Just. When he thought about the pit rage, the idea of it being attached to something which literally had fangs and claws was not exactly reassuring. Even at the size of a chihuahua.

A little impromptu art therapy while they marked his haunt wasn’t exactly helping with that part, but it wasn’t hurting. And he was trying to explain that feeling bad was not actually dangerous or harmful… via spray paint.

He was only about 70% sure that Pitty could see.

But it got him out and about, kept him in shape at least for swinging from roof tops, and gave him an excuse to hang out with Danny. It did involve actively avoiding anything he’d normally investigate (at least until he had a reasonable explanation… or brought up the Red Hood thing)… but it felt good. It was soothing.

Even knowing full well he’d made plans, prepared extensively, still had his guys making sure the Alley was safe and all was well, he still found himself itching to patrol on the nights he stayed in.

He could only assume that was part of the whole Haunt thing; he had good people working under him, and a couple of bright lieutenants that while he’d never let them wear the hood, he was comfortable giving them some solo enforcement missions to keep the fear of Red Hood in everyone’s hearts. All relevant parties, anyway.

Luckily he still had the library project as a convenient excuse for the bats. It kept them off his ass, and Jason could admit that it probably wouldn’t have taken much to persuade him to take a night run.

And get his ass stuck half way through some fucking wall somewhere, or lose a foot to a rooftop, and need to break himself free or call Danny in the fucking suit. Nope.

(He’d been tempted to let his family think he was saving his nights for Danny, which wasn’t even completely untrue; Danny wasn’t over every night anymore, not with his school schedule, but if he wasn’t over they texted.

Jason had begun saving a meme folder just for things to show Danny, which had quickly absorbed his full folder for death jokes and just kept going. Danny was going to be a very supportive “father” for their fake pit-kid, and had clearly been stockpiling dad jokes to send back.)

Honestly though, Jason was just relieved he’d already planned to slow the vigilante side for a while in the wake of his official revival; there was a lot that had to be done to come back from the dead, and a lot more he could do with official Wayne backing for areas of Crime Alley that Hood couldn’t touch.

He’d even let some of the bats in on those plans before Danny showed up; it wasn’t a surprise that he wasn’t patrolling. They were mostly leaving him alone about it, although Dick had offered to pop his Red Hood gear on and run a couple of patrols if things got too rowdy.

Jason had told him to fuck off, then got his street kids spreading the rumour that Hood was gearing up for something big. Let people think that the momentary quiet was just the first rumbles for an oncoming storm.

Hell, let them think Hood was in cahoots with Jason Todd-Wayne; that or preparing to run him out of the Alley. Let both of his lives work together for a while. The rumours shut half the fucking low-level dealers up; no one was pushing anything within three blocks of his territory, in case Hood was planning an expansion.

That’d boil over after a while and bite him in the ass if he didn’t go and kick something down, but for now it worked. He had so much to do for the library, for the new shelters from the Wayne foundation, for the soup kitchens. He actually was pretty busy, even on his nights in.

Fuck, he’d even taken time to hang out with the actual Alley kids, as Jason and Hood. The mouthy little shits kept him grounded, and maybe he’d tried it as a trial run for Pitty, but since that wasn’t gonna be the same problem he’d kept it up as a test of his own patience.

Which had. Very abruptly. Become the cause of one of his biggest concerns. Because the biggest change since his core came in had actually taken him a couple more days to notice.

Because now, Jason could see the fingerprints of the new entity.

That hadn’t been fun to work out; he’d been intentionally taking it slow until his core formed. Part of him had been sorta hoping to be able to just avoid anything that might set them both off until the Pit was ready to pop out on its own. Nothing related to the new case he couldn’t start, nothing related to the Joker or pits or any of that shit.

So when some of the kids had been showing up with some weird shadowy smudge on their clothes, he’d assumed it was the usual Gotham grime. They claimed not to see it, he threw them at the laundry room and cussed them out, it always came off.

Now the Curse, the Curse was staying out of Crime Alley entirely. He’d seen it during the day once or twice, a shadow attached where it shouldn’t be, a flicker over Damian or Tim’s shoulder. He always knew when the Curse was around now, a frosty fog filled his lungs whenever it was close.

(Danny had called it his “ghost sense”, which was lame but Jason didn’t have a better idea.)

And those smudges didn’t have the same kind of ozone-aftertaste that the Curse left in his mouth.

And then one of his girls, maybe seven years old, had come in with that same kind of smeared shadow sticking through soft black hair. He’d had some sharp fucking words with the older kids about that, he didn’t expect them to stay pristine at all times, but for fucks sake it was clumping.

Basic hygiene fucking mattered on the street, none of them could afford a proper de-matting or even a decent razor to shave their heads, so Jason had instilled the importance of bare-minimum finger combing in every one of them years ago. You could live with a fucking rug dragging at your skull, but it made absolutely everything harder.

He’d sat the girl on a stool and washed her hair in a bucket himself, while repeating the same fucking lecture to the other girls. Noticed half way through that while the sticky shit was indeed washing out of her hair, it wasn’t being broken down by the soap.

It was clinging to him instead, seeping into the creases of his fingers and under his nails. He’d tried not to visibly react, giving her a last rinse and wrapping her hair in a towel-hat that she didn’t stop touching for the next forty minutes, fucking it up a dozen times.

The smudgy crap had washed off his hands eventually, but when he saw Danny the next day he’d visibly backed up a few steps, then given Jason about six shots of ecto because his was apparently rancid again. No prizes for spotting the connection, and from there it was obvious.

And then he’d seen Harley the next day, that same smudgy crap a handprint around her fucking throat, and he’d seen red. Hot, angry, blood red, and it not being green had startled the life out of him.

(Harley noticed. Duh. It was her thing. And while Jason couldn’t just tell her some malevolent fucking entity made from her shitty ex was crawling through the city, he’d been as honest as he could be.

Harley definitely couldn’t see the smudges. Danny hadn’t had any answers or way to make it stop fucking touching people.)

Hypothetically, this was all gonna be good in the end. It’d make things easier, being able to see and track this shitstain’s work.

It did not feature in his “don’t get pissed off or think about work” plan.

It was just faintly possible that obsession, self flagellation, and a desire to be personally responsible for fucking everything might be more than just Bruce’s problem. Could maybe be a family affair.

Jason made more pies. Occasionally narrating what he was doing aloud, half for Pitty’s benefit and half for Danny’s when the little shit was crashing on his couch.

It was fine. He was coping. Another couple weeks, Danny reckoned, and Pitty would be out of his body and he could get back to his fucking life.

With a pet Pit ghost in tow, apparently, but if the worst came to the worst he could fucking soup the thing once it was outside him.

(He was also going to teach Danny to make soup. Proper soup. On principle.)

**

Preparing for his trip to Amity Park had taken longer than Bruce had expected. Not least because Alfred had finally run out of patience, and sentenced him to bedrest for the next 12 hours after he returned from the Justice League meeting lest he unlock the tranquilizer guns and give his children free reign.

In the old days, when he’d just become Batman, Bruce had assumed Alfred would never be able to catch him anyway. He’d been cocky and confident in his skills, and often ignored Alfred’s demands.

And yet the man always seemed to know, raising a disapproving eyebrow at Bruce every time he’d slipped back into the room just before Alfred made his rounds.

And then Steph came into his life, and Bruce learned all too fast that Alfred had merely been waiting for appropriate safeguards. That was three kids along of course, but by now Bruce knew exactly why it had been Steph Alfred had waited for.

His relationship with Dick was too tumultuous. While Dick never feared Bruce and was perfectly happy to join Alfred in nagging and bossing him around, by the time Dick moved out Bruce had half expected to only see his son at Justice League meetings, if at all.

They were different men, and Dick had always had an anger in him that Bruce couldn’t fathom. He’d mastered it, his control very rarely slipping, but… Bruce had trained Dick himself, and he was one of a very short list of people that Bruce had no concrete backup plan for.

Nothing but hope to make him cocky with the first attack, and pray the second caught him off guard.

His relationship with Dick hadn’t improved until Tim came into his life… and helped him get his head out of his ass.

Jason? Jason had been an angel. A scruffy, beaten down angel with badly bruised wings when Bruce first picked him up, but he’d flourished in Wayne Manor. He’d taken to Robin with joy and enthusiasm, but had more devotion to his studies than any of Bruce’s kids before or since.

He’d even stay in to study for tests, and if things had been different… perhaps he’d have been the one to break Bruce’s obsession with his night life.

But Bruce had begun taking that good heart for granted, pushed when he should have listened, and sent Jason to his death.

Tim had a hard enough time keeping Bruce from killing himself, along with anyone who stood in the way of his mission. He was a solemn, serious little boy from the start, and though Dick took a more active role this time around and declared himself a big brother (possibly to spite Bruce)… well.

It had to be Steph.

Steph, who would vehemently deny being one of his from whoa to go, was just like all of his children; a feral little gremlin. But Steph had that one more element too, the one which young Dick had had in spades but pulled back from with Bruce years before.

Steph liked to have fun.

Tim treated Bruce as a mission just as much as Gotham was Bruce’s, and Dick had never forgiven him for Jason. Or the fights that went before. Neither could pick up a Nerf gun and hunt him through the city in pure play in those days.

Until Steph gave them the guns, of course. Now any and every one of his children would happily take a tranq gun from Alfred and merrily stalk him through the manor and city at large, and even to the Watchtower if he tempted fate (and Tim).

Bruce was powerless against them, although pride warred with frustration every single time one of them managed to drug him to sleep. He’d trained them well. Well enough that they’d put what was right over what he wanted, that none of them were even a little afraid of him.

He’d planted the seeds of his own destruction.

So when he’d seen Duke and Dick hanging “casually” around the halls while Alfred escorted him to bed, he’d resigned himself to twelve hours of rest.

He’d slept for sixteen. And woke feeling much better, to his own chagrin. His head felt clearer, the migraine almost gone, and the sudden swoops of nausea had finally begun to pass.

He still had odd moments, especially when he’d been on the computer planning the trip to Amity Park for too long, but he’d reluctantly agreed with Alfred. He needed to fully recover from his concussion; that meant rest. And taking days and weeks instead of hours.

Amity Park would still be there, after all. He couldn’t get back the years they’d been late. He’d had to concede another two weeks.

Zatanna had also demanded an explanation for why he was suddenly interested in the town - luckily the Anti-Ecto Acts provided a sufficient cover. They were even most of the reason he was going.

She could also see the gravity of the situation, and offered to put him in touch with some local specialists who claimed to have tech that would keep him from being possessed. Specialists named “Fenton”. Because of course they were.

She’d offered him a ward as well, but mostly in jest. She knew how Bruce felt about magic, and had told him science was on the table almost immediately.

Bruce knew full well it wasn’t a coincidence. Formerly regarded as quacks, the Fentons had been featured prominently in all of their Amity Park news sources. Usually as menaces and a hazard to society, which aligned with what the Mansons had told him.

Still, their actions had nothing to do with the character of their son. Danny Phantom had been Amity Park’s protector for six years, although he’d not had many serious ghosts to fight for the last three.

As Foley had claimed, the ghosts seemed to have settled into a status of local nuisance that was oddly aligned with the Fentons senior; loud, intrusive, and often an inconvenience to your day, but not the threats to life, limb, or infrastructure that had characterised the first years after the portal opened.

Amity Park’s general consensus seemed to be that Danny Phantom had tamed the ghosts, won over the Fentons, and quite efficiently saved the day. He hadn’t been sighted there much in the past year, but that was because he’d been in Gotham.

In school. Finally being able to study and look towards his future.

His main heroic endeavours in the last three years of his career had involved the same GIW, the Ghost Investigation Ward that Foley had told Tim about. They unfortunately had not followed the general trend of de-escalation… although they had been rather subdued in the last year.

It felt different to Bruce, though. Incidents were less frequent, but those occurrences where they did find a ghost had become markedly more violent. The decreased frequency seemed to have lulled the townsfolk into believing they were also less of a threat, but the problem with pushing your enemies into a corner was how much more dangerous a cornered animal became.

There was something worrying happening with the GIW, that would have borne looking into even if he wasn’t also looking to understand Danny better. Preparing everything he’d need for the official investigation was most of what had slowed him down.

Of course, he was going to Amity Park as Brucie Wayne, not as Batman. Vlad Masters’ friendship was going to help him there; the man had been delighted to invite him down for the weekend when Bruce had reached out.

A little faked enthusiasm for football and interest in Vlad’s favourite team and he was a seemingly completely open book. He was more than happy to give Brucie the grand tour of his little town, and even promised a personal escort from the airport.

Bruce was beginning to suspect that getting away from the man might be more of a challenge, although he was another potentially useful source of information on the Amity Park situation.

Not that Masters was a particularly high priority source. But Bruce could admit he may have been hasty to dismiss his views on Danny as being biased, and as mayor he should know something about the GIW operations in his city… and given how many contracts with the agency could be traced back to his companies in the early days of the agency’s formations, he would be a much more serious subject for investigation than a source.

The good news was, everything was now in place. He had Danny’s permission and would be flying down to Amity Park in a matter of hours, and had already bought out the entire top floor of a local hotel, so he should have plenty of privacy to operate from.

With any luck, being able to set things in motion to repeal the Anti-Ecto Acts could also be a first step towards patching things up with Jason… and with Danny. No matter what conclusions Bruce came to in Amity Park, the Justice League owed Danny Phantom a serious apology, and the Infinite Realms some swift action.

Their negligence could have sparked an inter-dimensional war, and nearly had cost a young man his future. Bruce was self aware enough to admit that the guilt of that knowledge was a major factor in why he hadn’t spoken to Danny face to face again.

Yet.

At least Danny had given him permission to visit and explore his haunt. That had to count for something.

He was going to apologize. Probably after giving Jason the proper apology his son so richly deserved. Perhaps Jason would even be willing to help him work out how to properly apologize to Danny too; Bruce wasn’t good at apologies at the very best of times, but Harley had made it explicitly clear that he was going to be getting in a lot of practice.

**

Now, ya can call Harley Quinn a lot of things (and people definitely have), but one thing she ain’t despite the goofball act? Stupid.

Somethin’ was up in Gotham, somethin’ one heck of a lot weirder than all the weird shit that had marked her time in the city.

Oh, she’d gone an’ had another word with Brucie after Waylon told her how Jason’d had to leave through the roof after his talk with Constantine.

(She’d hunt Johnny-boy down later too, probably just after he decided she wasn’t gonna come for ‘im and stopped hiding, but odds on? Brucie’s fault, and Connie was just his unfortunate messenger.)

The thing was, he’d decided to sicc Johnny on poor Jason before they’d had their little talk, so by the time she caught him again he was already all downcast and shamefaced. Already admitting he done fucked up.

And it just wasn’t satisfyin’ to kick him while he was down, an’ while he was already tryin’. He’d even decided on his own to leave both boys alone for now, to let things cool down before tryin’ again.

Now, Mama Quinzel didn’t raise no dummy, she could see a million ways ol’ Brucie’s plan to go and try an’ fix Amity Park for Danny was gonna go wrong. But she wasn’t an expert at this ghost business, so she didn’t pretend to be.

She did exactly what she’d told Brucie to do; consulted an actual expert.

She asked Sammy and Jazzy, Danny’s big sis who was just a real darlin’, in their group chat (which had been popping off since Sammy was a lil sweetheart and set it up for ‘em; Jazzy-boo was of doin’ all kinds of neurological shit but she’d read some psych textbooks in her day, and Harley loved watching a self taught student grow). An’ then she hunted down Jason and Danny, to ask ‘em directly.

Which had been when she’d got her first clue that somethin’ was up; when Jason looked at her like she was still wearin’ a certain other clown’s paint, all stiff and locked up and full of anger.

See, that’d happened before. When they first met, him fresh outta the grave, her fresh outta Hell. When he’d asked if she and Joker were really through, an’ she’d told him hell yeah.

When he’d asked if she’d get in his way of killing the asshole.

That anger, all tight an’ tense an’ burstin’ had been wrapped around his throat then, chokin’ him on it. It was cooler now, more human, more like somethin’ the sweet lil sunshine child who could melt her heart with his tears could feel.

It still wasn’t, ya’know, in the vague vicinity of healthy, but she’d seen Jason Todd about to lose his shit before. An’ his hands shook when he touched her, when he asked what the hell she’d done to her neck.

Harley’d taken a good long look in several bathroom mirrors since. There was nothin’ she could see there, but Harley Quinn had been a short term guest in more than one Hell. There was plenty of shit she was all too happy not ta see.

Then there was ol’ Harvey. She’d run him down faster’n the bats, because she wasn’t also chasin’ Riddler, Great White Shark, at least three new plots from ol’ Pengy, or a suspiciously quiet and freshly escaped Scarecrow.

Two-Face had been all quiet an’ polite since his heist on the young Mr Todd’s party went tits up, so he’d flown under their radar.

Not hers.

Harley always made time for her old friends.

And Harvey had been weird too. Twitchy, on edge, jumpin’ at shadows. That happened if he thought the ol’ Bat was after ‘im, but he’d had no reason to think that. An’ for all he’d flipped his little coin and played up the bit, Harley knew when her friends were off.

Something had put Harvey on edge. Stuffed a bee up his ass and made him all snappy.

He’d even tried to pull a gun! On her! His sweet, darlin’, perfectly loveable and innocent Harleen!

So, ya’know, when she’d touched ground again an’ he’d run outta bullets, she’d knocked it outta his hands before he could reload and reminded him there were more than just Bats to fear. There was also her bat.

An’ by the time they were both all tired out and slumped against each other to order smoothies, he’d admitted he didn’t know why he’d decided to go fer young Jason. To attack their buddy Brucie’s boy.

Now, Harley wasn’t sure Harvey knew silly ol’ Brucie was the Big Bad Bat. She suspected he did, somewhere, in the part of him he hid from all the unpleasantness.

If he knew, he was repressin’ it real deep.

But he’d seen word of the gala, an’ something inside him went dark, and he’d flipped a coin. Got all sorts of plastic explosive of all things ready to really give Gotham a show they wouldn’t forget.

An’ then when it was time to roll out, nunna his cars’d start. An’ he’d flipped the coin again. And stayed home.

She snagged the detonators on his explosives on the way out, on principle. There were some rules after all, and while the Bats could certainly handle anythin’ ol’ Harvey could build, he shouldn’a shot at her.

Harley Quinn was officially out of the rogue game, but that had nothin’ ta do with shit disturbing. She was beginning to wonder though.

Somethin’ was weird in Gotham, a kinda energy in the streets that wasn’t the same black stubbornness she’d known and loved. Somethin’ that felt a little nastier. A little closer to biting.

Now, Harley Quinn was a lotta things. She also wasn’t a lotta the things everyone else thought she was.

She was no quitter. She was no fool. She was no coward to turn tail from some nasty vibes. She might still be a teensy weensy bit mentally disturbed, as you say, but she had her shit together.

An’ she knew when somethin’ else was tryin’ ta play with her head.

Much as she loved Gotham like a second home, she was beginnin’ ta wonder if she shouldn’t head back to Pammy an’ let their mystery of who was givin’ Coney Island a hard time sit with the Bats.

——————

The song Tucker’s playing for Tim and Nygma is here:

Tag List - @welcometosasakiworld @someonebored0100 @stealingyourbones @starkcravingmad @frostedthroughghost @akikkobara @rainbowbunny0159 @littlefeather345 @violet-catsarelife @serasvictoria02 @wolfjackle @blacksea21090 @secretdestinywerewolf @anime-hipster-the-amazing @undead-essence e @skitscratched @blackroserelina a @snoodly-boop @mayoota-blog @xysidhe @little-apricot-the-writer @chaoticmistake @the-legal-shipper @bun-fish @aroranorth-west @demon-cat-goes-woof @perfectwastelandcreation @onyxlightdragon @larks-and-katydids @peachesandcreamfemboy @jesus-camp-the-sequel @may-rbi @mothman-the-mothman87 @viyatrix @stargirl1331 @idfk-man10 @thedepressedrobin n @skulld3mort-1fan @rootsmudge @ravenshadow17 7 @cankoking @phantom-dc @mentalcarebear @magic-pincushion @redamancyardor @lyra689 @itsparadoxlacuna @alcorbearson n @asphyxia778 @why-must-i-be-like-this s @tkiesai @greenpyrowolf @frivolous-pastel @honeysuckletook @adorkable1291

IMPORTANT NOTE! Since about half the tag list no longer links to a blog, I will probably be retiring it for chapter 20, so either comment and let me know you still wanna be on it, or proceed on over to AO3 for alerts!

Part two:

[gyancastle]

spoilers of "the big work in progress"

This comic is a crossover between TMNT 2012 and Danny Phantom. After spending some time thinking, I decided to turn one of my fanfics into a comic, instead of posting it on AO3.

It will probably take me 2 or 3 months to finish drawing a chapter, and I was considering doing it in black and white, with some colors, but in the end I will do it completely in color.

I still have to finish doing all the concept art, because I don't like the idea of the characters wearing the same clothes throughout the comic, not to mention that I will rewrite a lot of things from the TMNT series, because (spoiler) everything will happen right after the first season.

versión en español 👇

Este comic es un crossover entre TMNT 2012 y Danny Phantom. Después de pasar un tiempo pensando, decidir convertir uno de mis fanfic en un comic, en lugar de publicarlo en AO3.

Probablemente me tome 2 o 3 meses terminar de dibujar un capitulo, y estuve considerando hacerlo en blanco y negro, con algunos colores, pero al final lo hare completamente a color.

Aún tengo que terminar de hacer todo el arte conceptual, por que no me gusta la idea de que los personajes utilicen la misma ropa durante todo el comic, sin mencionar que reescribiré muchas cosas de la serie de TMNT, porque (spoiler) todo ocurrirá justo después de la primera temporada.

[elzifelzi]

So after I'm done posting ben10 stuff I'm going to tackle Danny Phantom again but not this AU

Before this AU there was another DP AU that i had fully written and completed that i never did designs for

So I'm probably gonna do some small rewrites to that and then do designs for them

So I'm gonna do that

Some ghosts/characters appear in this AU may not have appeared in that AU so we'll see some all new character designs and some characters in this au look and behave very differently from the last one

Some characters off head that would look different are

Skulker

Vlad

Ember

So you know look forward to that whenever I decide to do that.

[kattythingz]

Tag Game: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six

Rules: Give us the links to your fics with the most hits, second most kudos, third most comments, fourth most bookmarks, fifth most words, and fic with the fewest words.

Took me a hot second to get to this, but thank you for the tag husband dear <33 @hijinks-n-lowjinks

Let's see...

◆ Most hits - A Crown with Gems and Gold, fma established edling canon rewrite (135k, ongoing)

◆ Second most kudos - What Sort of Imminent Threat, epic the musical astyanax lives au (17k, complete)

◆ Third most comments - What Sort of Imminent Threat again lol

◆ Fourth most bookmarks - Apple of Your Eye, sk8 the infinity eve!reki canon rewrite (31k, complete)

◆ Fifth most words - O' Midas, Rich King Midas, fma edgreed banana fish au (29k, complete)

◆ Fewest words - Sweet Unscheduled Surprise, yugioh rivalshipping post-dsod one-shot (1.4k, complete)

Oof, that last one is OLD. No wonder it's so short lmao. THREE CHEERS TO CROWN FINALLY BEATING MY OLD DANNY PHANTOM FIC IN HITS THO!!!

Poking @kaethefangirl @kiingleoturtles @sirchenchen @puppetmaster55 @lunalovestowrite @squishlythic if y'all wanna join in

[thedannyphantomcookbook]

The Ghost Boy (working title)

Hello!

So I have hit some hard financial times and the cookbook is being put on hold because it's hard to afford to buy ingredients. In the mean time, I need something to occupy my mind since I'm not in the kitchen as much anymore to distract me from my intrusive thoughts. So I decided to finally try my hand at writing Danny Phantom Fanfiction. I've had this idea for a long time that what if instead of a human boy becoming part ghost...what if Danny had been a ghost first that became human? It's one part rewrite, and one part AU, this is the prologue chapter to that fic. It's a little rough to read, because it is the first chapter I've written of anything in YEARS. And despite being an English major in college, I was a B average student, I wasn't THAT good haha. So, if I actually manage to complete the fic in it's entirety - because I usually will stop writing if I get to a block that I can't think my way out of - I am hoping to find beta readers or bounce ideas off of someone to help me develop this retelling of Danny Phantom. If you like it, give me a thumbs up, reblog, message me, you know the drill. Enjoy!

As Ryan headed out for his third EMT emergency response call for the night, he thought to himself he’d never feel dry ever again.

It was nearly one a.m. A rainstorm was blowing through Amity Park, bringing torrential downpours. Flash flood warnings had been issued and people were asked to stay off the streets, since the rain and the August heat created thick humidity that made visibility low and driving dangerous. Ryan had been an EMT long enough though to know that despite the weather and warnings, people were still going to be out on the roads. 

As he donned his heavy rain jacket, which wasn’t any drier from the last run, he heard the dispatcher over the intercom. 

“20 year old female driver injured. Possible pedestrian injury, mental health crisis. Assumed juvenile teen male.”

Ryan groaned. His mind started going through all the possibilities. Mental health crisis’ were one thing. But when it was a kid…it’d made these calls much harder to get through. If there were parents involved, they could be hysterical, which would make it harder to give the child treatment. Or if the parents weren’t involved, that added an entire different layer of difficulty to wade through. The parents could be substance abusers, neglecting their child over a needle or a pill. Or instead of abusing drugs, they were abusing the child, which would explain why a child would be out in this kind of weather. Arrests would be made, paperwork would have to be filled out, and CPS would be called. Hopefully the child would have family to care for him, but if not, he’d be entered into the foster care system, moving from one home to another and left alone to process the trauma from that night. The child might even already be in the foster care system, and ran away. Ryan has seen a lot of those cases over the years. Either way, this wasn’t going to be an easy night.  

When they arrived, police had already gone to work setting up a detour. Blue and red emergency lights and bright work lights lit up the scene. A car had veered off to the side of the road and struck a telephone pole which had fallen over the sedan. The driver side door was open, its driver sitting with her legs hanging over the side. There was a large gash in her forehead that was being treated by the Firehouse EMTs who had arrived first. To the left of the car, the Firehouse Ambulance sat with its back doors open. A small figure sitting on the gurney inside, wrapped in a blanket. 

A police officer walked up to him. Ryan recognized him and narrowed his eyes. It was Darrel, his least favorite police officer on the force, who was the least compassionate and cared more about how shiny his badge was than any actual good he could be doing. 

Darrel jabbed a thumb towards the driver and started talking, skipping over basic greetings. “Chick over there is a fucking mess. I gotta get a statement from her but I can’t understand her between the sobs and this fucking rain.” He swiped a hand across his face, wiping rainwater out of his eyes. “Can you try talking to the kid? I doubt we’ll get anything out of him though. He’s a little psycho.” 

Darrel didn’t bother to wait for a response and walked away. Ryan watched him walk away, glaring. Of course, Darrel would sum up a traumatized kid as “psycho.” 

Ryan shook off his frustration and headed to the ambulance. A Firehouse EMT saw him approach and hopped out of the vehicle. Ryan glanced at her badge and read her name was Bethany.

“The kid doesn’t appear to have been hit at all,” the Bethany shouted over the rain. “There are no marks anywhere on his body, no bruises or scratches. We scanned his scalps for bumps. Kid seems to be clean. You should probably still get an MRI scan on him at the hospital.”

Ryan peeked around the EMT’s shoulder. The child was wrapped in a thick gray blanket, shaggy black hair hiding his face. He was shivering, despite the hot, humid night.

“What’s his name?” Ryan asked. “Have parents been notified?” 

Bethany shook her head. “He won’t talk. Possible symptoms of shock, but there’s probably something else going on. He was found naked.” 

Ryan grimaced. Again, that could mean any number of things. For now, he would treat the situation as a psychotic breakdown.

“Let me try talking to him,” Ryan offered. “Just me and the kid.” 

Bethany shrugged. “Suit yourself.” She waved to the other EMT sitting in the truck with the kid. “Let us know if you need help.” They walked off to check in with the driver.

Ryan climbed into the ambulance and sat across from the kid. He took a few moments to study him. He was a pale, skinny kid with long limbs. Wide, electric blue eyes stared back at him, and was definitely scared. Ryan put him at around maybe 14 years old.

“Hey there,” The EMT gave a soft smile. “My name is Ryan. I’m here to help. Can you tell me your name?” 

The kid blinked at him, not answering. He continued to shiver at him, hands tucked underneath his arms. He left it open in the center, exposing his naked frame. 

“Here.” Ryan reached on either side of the kid. He recoiled sharply. 

“It’s okay,” Ryan reassured gently, moving slow. “I just want to get you warm.” He folded the blanket over him more tightly. “You can hold on to it if you like.” 

Hesitantly, the boy untucked one of his hands and grasped at the blanket, his knuckles turning white with effort. 

“Better?” 

The boy looked away, and then jerkily nodded.

Ryan leaned back. “Good. Now how about that name?” 

He remained silent. His hand clenched and unclenched at the blanket. Ryan waited, quiet and patient. Rain pounded on the roof of the ambulance above them. From outside, Ryan could hear the broken sobs from the driver.

“H-he c-came out of n-nowhere, I s-s-swear,” the girl wailed. “I promise I wasn’t s-speeding. Oh, god I h-h-HATE driving in the rain at night, my b-boss wouldn’t let me go home early.”

“Miss, take some deep breaths for me, okay?” Darrel said, without a hint of compassion in his tone. “No one is in trouble yet. We’re just trying to figure out what happened.” 

“D-did I hit him? Is he okay? Everything h-happened so f-f-fast,” she stuttered. “Oh, god I’m s-so s-s-sorry.” 

“He is being looked at now by the medical team,” the police officer answered, then added, “He appears to be awake and alert.” 

More sobbing echoed across the street. 

Ryan watched the boy in front him, who still shivered with his head tucked in, breathing quiet rapid breaths. As the silence stretched on, he wondered if the kid was non verbal. He seemed to at least understand English, so he could rule out any kind of language barrier or deafness. 

“Are you in any pain?” Ryan tried again. “Any discomfort anywhere?”

The boy shook his head. 

“What about family? Anyone we can call for you?” 

The boy remained silent. 

Ryan sighed. “Okay, kid. No worries. We’ll get you taken care of.” The kid may not even remember who his family is, if he was indeed having a psychotic episode.

“I’m going to start taking your vitals now,” Ryan stated, pulling out a pulse oximeter. “Can I see your hand?” 

The boy looked up at him. Looked down at the oximeter and back at Ryan, uncertainty etched across his face.

“It doesn’t hurt, I promise.” Ryan demonstrated on his own hand and wiggled his fingers. “See?” 

Another long moment passed. Then, slowly, the boy let go of the blanket and held out a trembling hand. Ryan felt a quiet relief. He was starting to get through to the kid. As gently as he could, Ryan clamped the oximeter onto the boy’s finger. The boy flinched, but only slightly.

“See? Not so bad.” He pointed to the little digital screen, which was displaying the number 120 beats. “This reads your pulse and tells me how fast your heart is beating.”

“Heart…beat,” The boy whispered, surprising Ryan. The kid stared at the little device, almost wondrous.

“Yeah,” Ryan smiled. “You’re alive, kiddo.” 

______________________________________________________________

He was a John Doe. There were no hospital records of him. No dental or fingerprint records. It’s as if he had never existed until a few days ago. 

Jazz quietly watched the boy through the little window into the hospital room as her parents talked with the CPS agent. The boy sat upright in bed, watching the TV that hung across the room. The hospital gown swallowed his thin frame, making him look smaller than he actually was. It had been three days since he was found at the car accident. His photograph had been shared all over the major news channel, asking the public if anyone recognized him. So far, no one has come forward. 

“Thank you so much again for doing this Jack and Maddie,” Judy, the CPS agent said. “I understand that you stopped fostering years ago, but I’ve called everyone else in the area. No one else had the room.”

“How could we have said no?” Maddie touched a hand to her heart. “The poor child. Someone must be missing him. He looks so sweet.” She looked over at him and frowned, sympathetic. 

Judy shrugged and shook her head.. “I can’t imagine either, but you know how these things can be.” 

Jack clasped a hand on Maddie’s shoulder.”Well until then, we’ll give that kid the best home he’s ever known. He doesn’t know how good my Famous Fenton Fudge is!” He patted his belly. “He’ll never want to leave.” 

As they went over the details and paperwork, Jazz thought about her role as a big foster sister. She had been little when her parents housed the last foster kid. She didn’t have too many memories of that time period. Just older kids using the second bedroom in their house, some of them taking time to play with her, some of them wanting nothing to do with her. She remembered how weird and confusing it was, especially when her friends in kindergarten had siblings that actually stayed and lived at the house with them. 

Before she was born, her parents had a hard time conceiving, and decided to foster kids in hopes that they could nurture young minds into becoming scientists like them. Unfortunately, their specific focus turned heads away more often than inspired them. 

Jazz’s parents were ghost hunters. They believed not only that ghosts existed, but that there was an entirely separate dimension in which these ghosts existed. They also believed ghosts held unique properties that could propel the world decades into the future. It could change medicine, become a different source of electricity, help create new inventions for anything from cars to televisions and more.The opportunities could potentially be endless. 

The only problem is there was no proof ghosts exist. Just a pile of conspiracy theories and hoax videos from online, and some texts theorizing their existence. Technically and literally speaking, ghosts were not real. 

It was always embarrassing having to tell people what her parents did for work. Jazz had learned by now that as long as she changed the subject quick enough after saying her parents were “scientists conducting independent research,” there wouldn’t be any follow up questions. Her parents were also why Jazz wanted to go into neuroscience when she graduated high school. For one, the brain was actually real and for two, there was so much about the brain that was yet to be discovered. How the brain changes its own chemistry overtime due to outside circumstances, circumstances that don’t physically touch the brain at all. How can a single moment alter the way we think, feel, see, and hear? To Jazz, there was no stranger phenomenon.

It’s also why she was so excited to meet her new foster brother. She had eavesdropped on her parents’ conversation with Judy earlier that day. A boy found with no memories of who he is, where he had come from, or who he belonged to. It was sad, of course and scary, not knowing anything about who you are. But what events led to this? Will there be weird behavior patterns that will be linked to the trauma his brain buried deep within his mind? And just maybe, Jazz could help identify what disorder or mental illness he has, get one step closer to treatment, and one step closer to finding himself and his real family. The idea that Jazz could figure out what was wrong with the boy, before the doctors, thrilled her to her core.

“Would you like to meet him?” The voice startled Jazz from her thoughts. She looked around and found Judy beside her.

“I think he might benefit from meeting someone close to his age,” she explained. “Make a friend.”

“Oh.” Of course, that would make sense. He would need someone to connect to, to rely on, and confide in. Jazz could certainly be that person. Her chest rose a bit. “Absolutely.” 

Judy smiled. “Wonderful.” She knocked on the boy’s door and poked her head in. “Hey there, kiddo. Do you remember me? I’m Judy.” 

The boy’s gaze broke away from the TV to look at her. “Yes. Hello, Judy.” His voice sounded young, like it hadn’t hit that drop growing older would bring.

“I want you to meet Jasmine Fenton. You’ll be living with her for a bit.”

Jazz stepped around Judy. She waved. “Hi, I’m Jazz.”

“Hello, Jazz,” he said evenly, neither friendly or aggressive. 

“I thought you two might like to chat, and get to know each other.” Judy suggested. “You’ll also be going to school with her.” 

They decided they were going to enroll him in at Casper High School as a freshmen. The doctors hoped that by giving him a normal environment might help jog some of his memories.

“That’s right,” Jazz jumped in. “I can show you around the school, introduce you to your teachers, help you with homework after,” she rattled off. The boy just blinked at her and Jazz wondered if he understood any of what she was saying. 

“I gotta go finish up some paperwork,” Judy said. “Be back in a few.” She left Jazz and the boy alone. 

They stared at each other for a moment, quietly taking one another in. The boy didn’t fidget. If anything he was eerily calm. 

“So…” Jazz started. “How have they been treating you here?” 

“Fine,” the boy stated simply.

“I’m sure it’s been weird, with all these people visiting you.” She crossed the room to sit in the chair beside his bed. 

“Yes,” the boy agreed. “They bring me food and ask me questions I don’t know the answer to.” He looked down at his lap, as if he were disappointed.

“That’s okay. You don’t have to know them yet.” Jazz told him.

“I don’t?” he asked, as if that had never occurred to him before. Had no one told him it was perfectly okay to not know everything about himself yet?

“Of course not,” Jazz shook her head. “Sometimes things happen and because of those things, we forget stuff. Like who we are.” 

“Oh.” He thought about that for a moment before saying, “Do you forget who you are sometimes?”

Jazz laughed. “Oh no, not quite like that. I mean, I forget to do things like take out the trash, but it’s because I’m focused on doing other things like reading. I just meant more like, sometimes a big event happens, like that girl in the car from the accident. It upset her so much that her brain might make her forget the details of the night to protect her.” 

The boy frowned. “Protect her…how?” 

“Sometimes the things we know and remember cause a lot of emotional stress,” Jazz tried to explain, secretly happy she was getting to describe psychology to him. “It upsets us so we don’t remember it. But eventually, and with help, we can remember it so that it doesn’t upset us anymore.” 

The boy thought about it. “Do you think something upsetting happened to me? Is that why I can’t remember things?”

“It is possible, yeah.” Jazz felt a little guilty just then. This wasn’t how she wanted the conversation to go. They were supposed to be getting to know each other, not play psychologist and patient. She looked around the room to change the subject and noticed he was watching an old Batman movie.

“So…you like superheroes?”

The boy shrugged. “I guess. I like this Batman show.” On the screen, the villain The Penguin was at his mayoral rally and everyone had just heard his own recorded voice saying he played the citizens of Gotham city. The penguin bared his decaying, pointed teeth at the crowd as they all booed at him.

Jazz chuckled lightly. “Yeah, I wasn’t a fan of Danny DeVito in this one.”

“Who?” The boy asked quizzically. 

“Danny DeVito. He’s the actor that plays the Penguin.” 

“Oh. Who plays Batman?”

“Michael Keaton.”

Together they watched the movie. The Penguin was pelted by rotten food before turning his armored umbrella upon the crowd, screaming.

“I feel bad for the Penguin,” the boy suddenly spoke up. 

Jazz looked over at him, curious. “How so?” 

“At the beginning of the movie, he just wanted to find his parents,” The boy fidgeted with the remote in his lap. “He was raised by…penguins.” He wrinkled his nose.

“Yeah.” Jazz shifted in her seat to face him a little more. “It is kind of a silly idea, being raised by penguins.” 

“But it’s not just that, he…” he trailed off, and then said quietly, “he just wanted to know who he was.” 

Jazz understood how he felt connected to The Penguin, at least from that point of view. “It was a part of his villain arc. He was mad that his parents abandoned him, so he blamed the city.” She paused thoughtfully before saying, “do you think your parents did that? Abandoned you?”

“I don’t know.” His shoulders slumped, and he seemed to curl into himself. “They aren’t here.” 

She regretted asking that question, feeling like she was doing a bad job at this, playing psychologist. She thought she’d be better at this. She wanted to be better at this. There was so much unspoken hurt in the boy, and so much not known about him, and no one was coming forward to claim him.

On screen, the Penguin had returned to the sewers and was yelling at his clown like henchmen to not call him Oswald anymore and that he no longer considered himself a human being, but a cold blooded animal. The henchmen stood around him, uncertain of what to do.

“I don’t even know my name,” the boy said, softly. 

Jazz’s heart ached for him. Suddenly an idea popped into her mind. “You could come up with your own name.”

He paused for a moment. “My own name?” 

“Yeah! I mean, why not?” Jazz grew excited with the idea. “You don’t want to go around being called ‘John Doe.’”

“I guess not.” He thought about it, sitting up a little straighter. “Oswald?”

Jazz bursted out laughing. The boy was startled and then flushed with embarrassment. 

“No, I’m sorry,” Jazz giggled, and then immediately felt guilty. “No one actually uses that name. You don’t want people to call you that, trust me. It’s super lame.”

“Oh. Okay.” He was quiet for one more moment. “What about Danny?”

“Danny?” He was thinking of Danny DeVito. Jazz wanted to giggle again, but fought against. No one needed to know he got his name from the comedic actor. “That’s not a bad one. It’s good, actually.” 

“Is it?” he asked, doubt still lingering in his voice.

“It is.” Jazz affirmed. She stuck her hand to shake and smiled. The boy looked at it before extending his own. Jazz grasped it warmly.

“It’s to meet you, Danny Fenton.” 

And for the first time since he had been discovered, Danny smiled back.

[furiarossa]

Aaand finally we decided to post one of our stories in Italian AND in English at the same time, so you too can read it!

Let's start the adventure with something... familiar? There's a kid named Danny, in a homemade laboratory, and there's a father that wears an hazmat suit... what happens next? That could surprise you.

We're writing this one both on Wattpad and A03!

And both in English and Italian ;)

[weshney]

Portal Panic Ch. 19:

A Stereotypical Training Montage

DP x BNHA | Ao3

---------

Fanart from last chapter by the lovely @mha-stuff-i-guess!!!

We did another collab! I did color and they did lines. Find both versions on their tumblr post. Ahhhhhh it turned out so good!!!

Tags:

Mystery, Angst and Humor, Misunderstandings, No Romance, Swearing, Slow Build, Rare Characters, Like 5 Different Major Interwoven Plots At This Point

College Age Danny (20), Danny's Clones Are Little Shits To Him Exclusively, Meddling Clockwork, Ghost Obsessions Are Just Hyper-Fixation, Valerie Jack & Maddie Know Danny's Secret, Supportive Jazz Jack and Maddie, Dyslexic Jack, Phantom Planet Who?

Mineta Minoru Doesn't Exist, Pre-Overhaul Arc, Midoriya Inko is a Ray of Sunshine, Bakugou Katsuki Needs a Hug, Eventual Happy Ending, Kirishima Eijirou is a Good Friend, One Main OC Needed For PlotTM, Protective Aizawa Shouta, Loosely Follows BNHA Canon, But Completely Original Storyline

Excerpts From Ch. 19:

A KachiKachi? Someone still used that ridiculous app? It was on the verge of death when Aizawa was still in school. How did the investigation team even find this video? #daytrip? #newpants? #best jeanist’s gonna be jello? What the fuck was this? Who tagged like that? When it finally loaded, Aizawa groaned. Of course it was a fifty-something-year-old man. Six legs aside, this had to be related to that stupid, self-repairing denim. As the guy bent over in front of Detnerat, making sexy poses in his new jeans and sporting a plumber’s crack wider than the Ryuokyo Canyon, Aizawa’s nose crinkled. 

--------

Ancients. He was a professional, but her looks were criminal. And really, a nurse?

Obsidian silk surrounded a face of rich, olive skin framed by thick, manicured eyebrows, irises of bright green and a delicate, pointed nose. Her full lips moved, and Danny couldn’t help but stare at the striking black paint covering them as she groaned, “Oh, what fresh torment is this?”

He couldn’t help himself, he really couldn’t. 

“Dunno, looks like a dream to me,” he cheesed with an award-winning smile.

So much for being a professional.

--------

A strangely tattered black curtain fluttered off the drone’s camera, revealing a dimly lit, nearly six hundred square meter room with a signature underground chill. Rows upon rows of uniformed granite benches sloped steeply downward to its center, giving the acoustics an amphitheater effect. As the Scout zipped high in the air toward the ceiling, it got a better view of where it'd entered. Two-thirds into the recessed floor were several stairs leading to a small, slab stage, upon which was a second, smaller dais occupied by a crumbling, veiled arch. 

The room itself wasn’t all that concerning, but the villainous climax scene playing out inside? Yeah. That prickled Toru’s spine.

“Why? Why is it always cults?” Danny hissed, sending Tucker into an uncomfortable chuckle beside them both, until he offered up a dry, “Murphy.” 

News: Portal Panic Rewrite started, no longer doing audiobook recordings until the story is fully written, and discontinuing cross-posting.

[tismothmansjester]

skybound Thoughts

sooo uh, im thinking about doing a rewrite of ninjago skybound.

im currently rewatching it because of this, and in case i never get around to actually writing anything, im gonna word-vomit onto this hellsite (affectionate) cuz im having Thoughts.

quick tangent though, skybound seems very similar to danny phantom (at least in how the fandom treats it) in the sense that, when you actually watch it, it's pretty tame and honestly kinda shit. but then you dig deeper. and you see the Implications and Possibilities, and suddenly it has you by the throat with all the ways this could have gone if it wasn't a kids show.

like, in skybound you get genuine torture and creepy implications on nadakhan's part (seriously, get away from jay and nya you fucking creep), and while it's never really explored since, y'know, kids show, it makes nadakhan one of the best and most terrifying villains i personally have watched in ninjago.

anyway, here are a couple of things i've been toying with in terms of a possible rewrite:

one thing im thinking about taking from various other fics i've seen (i think its mainly shown in bending but never breaking, which is an absolutely amazing fic and you should go read it but MIND THE TAGS AND TRIGGER WARNINGS PLEASE) is jay learning to use the electricity in his body, though obviously not painlessly

bonus points for his elemental power getting royally fucked up once/if the vengestone is removed, but in the sense of suddenly he is completely overwhelmed and his power is so much stronger and its a danger to both himself and others

queerplatonic jaya: i think in this season especially, nya felt very aroace coded (i might just be projecting as i myself am aroace, but that's the vibe i got) and so for a skybound rewrite nya and jay would have a serious conversation about how nya doesn't feel that way for anyone, even if she *does* really like jay

just general angst and torture

id rewrite jays obsession with nya, specifically his first wish (if i dont just jump right into him being on misfortunes keep)

i think id like to do something more with delara than just her being some dead girlfriend. i.e.: i'd make her fucking unhinged and the kind of person that would fall in love with and support nadakhan.

i really liked @cotidianoseeder's idea for canary!jay, so possibly something in that direction

i also really like it when people keep serpentine aspects in jays character, so some of that as well

fuck it, make him inhuman, y'know?

i'd age everyone up i think (i dunno how old they are in skybound, but a 17 minimum would be in my rewrite)

OH! i'd put bruiseshipping as a romantic relationship cuz i love them

nya would make the final wish, since a big part of her character would be forging her own story and taking control of her own life

zanes falcon would survive cuz i love that fucking bird

echo would be taken off the island post-rewind

what do y'all think??? i keep having more ideas, i might post them

[ghosttrolls]

I mean with all the talk about who should be cast for Danny Phantom, we know literally nothing about the movie so far. All we know is a guy who has previously been blocked from making new official content with the IP in the past is telling people what he would do, which doesn't guarantee anything. For all we know they could completely rewrite Danny's backstory, or set it in the future after the show where he's an adult, or base the story off the comics they've been making. We could actually see a thought out exploration of the accident on screen. I know a lot of people are reluctant to expect good things to come from a live action movie which is understandable, but but before we get pessimistic let's remember all we know for sure is "there will be a Danny phantom movie, at some point in the future, probably"

Now I'm just spending time thinking about what you could do with a Danny phantom movie. Forget what bad choices you expect them to make, let's think about the fun stuff that could happen

[petitprincess1]

Antis saying Hazbin is bad writing when in reality, they think it's bad writing because none of their ideas is presented. Why do you think so many rewrites completely changes everything?

Yeah, I've said this before many times. Like, don't get me wrong, there are some shows out there where the fans have written fics better than the actual show. *cough* S3 of Danny Phantom *cough*. But that doesn't necessarily mean that their writing would benefit the show. Even well-written movies/shows/games have had well-written fics.

I think a lot of ppl, including myself, tend to get swept away with headcanons too often. It'd be to the point where we forget that things WILL differ in canon. Like ppl like to hc Alastor's mom being in Heaven, while his father is in Hell. For all we know, they both can be in Heaven. We don't know.

Again, disappointment is perfectly fine and, possibly, expected. You don't have to enjoy everything that gets played out in Hazbin or Helluva. But, at some point, you have to stop and think if what you're complaining about is truly bad writing or if you're just upset that what you wanted didn't happen.

Ofc, I'm not a beacon of maturity. I have said that I would be really hurt if Lilith turns out to be a villain. And I still stick by that, but I would never bad-mouth the entire show bc of that lol x3

[rayofmisfortune]

WOOOO A DP WIP THAT I MAY OR MAY NOT FINISH BUT DON'T WANT IT TO ROT IN MY NOTES APP AND WILL PROBABLY REGRET POSTING LATER!

Idk where to go with it atp so uhhh... yea lol. I love fics where Danny gets stuck as Phanton so- that's what this was supposed to be. May end up rewriting it completely at some point but I just don't want it to rot and catch dust like all my other fic wips hehe.

This was my first time ever writing any of the dp characters so they may be ooc?

Cw for panic, dissection talk (it's the Fentons, come on), dehumanization (unsure if that applies but, just in case)

This was bad. This was really, really bad.

Danny was hiding out in an inconspicuous alleyway. A... hopefully enough out of the way alleyway that certain ghost hunters, aka his parents, wouldn't find him in in the matter of a few minutes.

Considering his streak of luck this day, his hopes of having more than a few minutes of respite were close to zilch.

They shot him! And now he's stuck as Phantom. He can't turn back and they're after him and he can't escape can't hide can't do anything-

The Fentons have been chasing after Danny almost the whole night. Always hot on his tail, no matter where the half-ghost went. Unable to turn back to his flashy sleep deprived teenager self. His parents had proudly showcased their upgraded ghost tracking technology that morning. The excuses he had to make to them when the Specter Tracker snapped in his direction the moment his Mom turned it on were... awkward at best, unbelievable at worst.

'Must be the ectocontamination messing with the, the um… tracker!' Ignore the fact that if that were the case it would also hone in on you, please please please

'Fenton Specter Tracker, Danny-o!'

'... with the Fenton Specter Tracker.' Aaaand totally not because I'm the thing you're tracking down ahah. That would be crazy, right?

That was this morning. (Or was it yesterday morning now?) This was now.

And right now?

He's stuck in ghost mode. After being shot by his parents! His bad luck probably started right that very morning (yesterday morning?), not just with the Specter Tracker fiasco, but with the fact his parents didn't bother to share a very important tidbit of information! They managed to upgrade the Ecto-Stoppo-Power-Erfier (TM pending). The one he was shot by that one time in the lab? Yeah, that very one. It's pocket size now!

... if the pockets could fit a microwave... NOT IMPORTANT!

Danny had been out on patrol, because of course he had to go on patrol before an important English test that could shift his final grade from an F to a D. Not that he could've known this would happen, but he should've at least had enough common sense to figure something may screw up his already fucked up sleep schedule.

And of course he had to leave his phone at home. So he can't contact Tucker, Sam or Jazz to help him out of this honestly sad situation.

Calling this sad is an understatement. Terrible, horrifying, nightmare come to life would be more accurate if Danny's being honest with himself.

Yeah, sure, he could prooobably risk it and fly all the way home from the other side of Amity Park, crash land into Jazz's room, give her a heart attack and hope she maybe had some ideas as to how to get him back to (his usual) normal.

One itty bitty problem with that one. Danny's pretty sure the tracker his parents made is honed in on his specific ecto signature, so the second he moves, they're on their way. Fenton Blasters loaded and at the ready. Also, the whole thing with his powers slowly stopping to work? Yeah, that as well.

Fun, so much fun. This was definitely how he wanted to spend his evening/night/early morning, when he should be catching up on his sleep debt. Sarcasm by the way, if it wasn't obvious enough.

The roar of an engine snaps Danny out of his swirling thoughts. The roar of a <em>very</em> familiar engine.

The GAV.

He's out of time.

Danny scrambles back up to his feet from where he was leaning against a dumpster. Yuck. The half-ghost shudders at the prospect of being found so soon after escaping within an inch of his not-life.

He pressed his back against the alley's wall, his core hammering away in his chest, and willed himself with everything he had to go intangible before it's too late. The all too familiar sensation crawls through his body, slower than usually, but he's phased through the wall just in time before the GAV screeches to a stop at the entrance to the alley.

Danny stays invisible and intangible, all the while his parents' feet landed on the pavement of the night streets. He listens with bated breath (he doesn't need to breathe) as Fenton Blasters are loaded, safety off, ready to shoot anything that moves. The Fentons slowly creep into the alley Danny had just been in. He can't see them, hidden in the wall as he is, but he can just about picture Mom making silent gestures to his Dad.

But of course, his Dad was never one to stay silent. "I can't wait to rip that ghost fiend apart molecule by molecule, Maddie!"

A soft sigh from his Mom, too close to the wall, too close too close. He's done for. They'll get him. "Honey, we have to run experiments on it before we do that."

"Oh, right." The sound of his Dad clearing his throat. "I can't wait to run experiments on the ghost fiend and rip it apart molecule by molecule once we're done, Maddie!" Then, more silently. "Was that better?"

His Mom chuckled warmly. "Yes, Jack." Too close too close too close

[pokelolmc]

The Ultimate Enemy is a Disappointment (and How I'd Fix It) (Part 1)

A couple years back, I started analysing a list of DP episodes I thought had missed potential--and my analysis on TUE got SO big I made it its own thing. I rewrote it to death and could never settle on something concise enough, so I abandoned it. But I'm BACK baby. I can't remember where it is now, but I came across a poll on whether Reign Storm or TUE is the better special and the discourse reignited my passion for this analysis, and gave me motivation to trim off some of the fat.

Don't get me wrong, at the end of the day I do like this episode--or at least its ideas. I really liked the episode the less I thought about it, but now I see issue after issue in its execution. Hence, the "disappointment": it could've been great, but it missed the mark. This won't just be a one-sided roast of TUE, though. I have a ton of cool ideas for how to rewrite plot holes or fill in the gaps. The best roasts are constructive! (Though I would be rewriting it in a more mature fashion compared to canon's writing--keep that in mind).

Part 2 is now up: you can find it here.

So here we go: Part 1--the general plot contrivances/contradictions unrelated to Dan's character or the time travel system.

The episode introduced taking off the Time Medallions as a way to immediately return to one’s native time period, but then forgot this late into the second act.

Technically this plot hole involves time travel devices, but I'm counting it as a plot hole by character decisions.

The episode gives no explicit rules on lag time between removing the medallion and returning home, but it takes only one to two seconds to return Skulktech to the future after they dropped theirs, and it had to have been instant for Sam and Tucker to return to the past in time to escape rubble falling from FentonWorks (which was only roughly two to three stories high, not counting the Ops Centre).

Danny should’ve been sent back almost instantly when Dan took his medallion off—which would’ve completely defeated the purpose of Dan’s attempt to trap Danny there in the first place.

If they wanted to keep the plot point, they could’ve just had Dan grab the medallion and turn it intangible while it’s still around Danny’s neck…and that’s assuming that making it intangible while Danny’s still tangible doesn’t count as “removal”. That’s it. He never needed to remove it to begin with.

2. The Nasty Sauce explosion just…sucks. In my opinion, it’s too silly for the tone the episode’s trying to go for (and as a cause of major character death), and it wrecks the worldbuilding.

I tried to put it in way more verbose ways in my previous drafts, but I found another post somewhere on tumblr that did what I couldn’t—say it in three words:

“It’s just stupid.”

Assuming that semi-realistic laws exist in-place in the Danny Phantom universe (so it’s BASICALLY similar to ours) the Nasty Burger shouldn’t have been able to stay in business without a LOT of red tape, cover-ups and NDA’s. They had an explosive substance on premises, being taken care of by unqualified, minimum-wage part-timers instead of trained chemical safety specialists. Forget handling it, they shouldn’t have even had it in the first place! If they got it by going UNDER the law and covering everything up, then one of their employees shouldn’t have been able to just CONFESS to it at a public school assembly.

It also sounds ridiculous that a “certain combination of secret herbs and spices” could catastrophically combust in the first place. They could’ve made the explosion ghost-powered/altered; they could’ve made it not the sauce itself, but a pressure issue with its containment vats; they could’ve made it a gas leak or malfunction of cooking equipment starting a fire, or something. They could’ve made the explosion a Fenton invention at their home (where the whole family had reason to be at once, and Mr Lancer could hold the parent-teacher conference there like in Teacher of the Year). They've used more serious threats of explosion in previous episodes (like the Ecto-Filtrator in Million Dollar Ghost).

And instead they decided “Yep! This commonly sold and digested sauce is a dangerous explosive, and even a small handout serving is enough to blow clean through a wall when it’s heated up!” This is how we're going to kill all of the main characters' loved ones to send him on a villain arc!

Like what?

Nowhere else after TUE did the show acknowledge the Nasty Sauce in worldbuilding. There were no consequences of its risk being publicly revealed, nor did it ever pose a hazard again. It’s understandable, given the show’s episodic nature. Bu at least in The Ultimate Enemy itself, they should've thought about how it affected most of the previous episodes.

During his fight with Boxed Lunch, one of Danny's ectoblasts to a sauce packet demolishes an entire section of wall in the Nasty Burger. So how hadn’t any ghost fights ignited any Nasty Sauce before—or damaged the main vat, god forbid—and caused an explosion already?

If the sauce was always a part of the Nasty Burger’s recipe, then the entire restaurant was a ticking time bomb waiting to go off since season one, and nothing short of a miracle could explain why it hadn’t happened before.

3. This episode committed character assassination of Mr Lancer, for the sake of setting up stakes in the plot. And contradicted his personality changes in previous episodes (such as “Teacher of the Year”).

Mr Lancer, in my opinion, is the character done the single dirtiest in the episode. It warps his entire character around the plot, and turns him into a contrived mouthpiece for how important the CAT is. It leaves him even more malicious and mean-spirited than his behaviour in the first episode of the entire show—leaving him even worse than he started.

He didn’t have much character development, but there were some more positive changes happening in his personality as later episodes occurred. He started out as a selfish, corrupt authority figure (think Mystery Meat, Fright Night and other S1 episodes where he deliberately lets the jocks off the hook for their behaviour), but unwittingly acts in favour of the main characters in “Fanning the Flames”—although ineffective and easily taken down by Ember.

By the time of “Teacher of the Year”, we finally got a glimpse into his (albeit scant) ideology as a teacher around helping his students succeed, and his concern for Danny’s failing grades.

It even revealed his personal interest in Doomed, which gave him more in common with Danny and Tucker and humanised him in way a few other episodes hadn’t. Season two even demonstrated his (albeit brief) willingness to stand up and defend his students from a ghost attack in “Memory Blank”. Lancer, for a brief period of time, became more than just his job, book title swears and his frustration with rebellious students.  

We're talking about the teacher who, in the early 2000s, kept a picture of himself crossdressing at school to convince his students to try their best with a "story about his sister".

The Ultimate Enemy, however, took Mr Lancer’s humanity towards the students—particularly Danny—and flipped it all on its head. It turned him into an elitist, mean-spirited asshole who verbally attacked his students (past and present) based on their performances on this single. Fucking. Test.

They made Mr. “there is no cheat code in school, or in life” Lancer into a cruel enforcer of the hamfisted and childish importance of the CAT. Actual “get rich vs dead-end, minimum-wage job” propaganda.

(Teacher of the Year)

And... one season later:

(that sure sounds like a cheat code in life to me)

To add insult to injury, TUE used Lancer’s death as the butt of a joke directly after spending the majority treating him like a total asshole—following up character assassination with literal assassination , and excluding him from the rest of the explosion victims in their memorial.

It feels to me, that it'd make more sense for Mr Lancer to be sceptical of the importance of the CAT based on TOTY. Replace him in the assembly with Principal Ishiyama or something. A stickler-for-the-rules school administrator looking to boost the school's image by pressuring kids on a standardised test? That ABSOLUTELY makes sense.

Mr Lancer could still be seen as a threat (or someone Danny can't reach out to for help), but in the department of simply being an authority figure Danny's used to dodging around with his ghost activities. Someone who'd still enforce consequences for Danny getting caught cheating. Someone who'd get his parents involved. He's the closest thing Danny could have to any level of support at Casper High, and Danny could think he's even lost THAT.

4. The way Danny got the CAT answers was contrived, and broke the previously established rules of ghost intangibility.

To cut a long story short, Boxed Lunch’s fight with Danny shouldn’t have gotten the test answers stuck to Danny’s back. Danny immediately turned intangible in anticipation of the explosion, and was thrown outside the Nasty Burger and through Mr. Lancer’s briefcase before turning tangible again.

That didn’t make sense; the series previously established that ghosts (in this case, halfas) were physically unaffected by explosions when intangible. “Million-Dollar Ghost” even demonstrated it when Vlad escaped his castle’s explosion in the same manner, and was left completely unmoved from his position at ground zero. The sauce packet explosion shouldn’t have even moved Danny out of place, let alone flung him out of the building (especially not compared to Vlad and an Ecto-filtrator explosion).

On top of that, the test answers couldn’t have gotten stuck to his back while he passed through the suitcase, as Danny was intangible and the answers sheet was solid. Even if it were possible for already intangible ghosts to grab onto tangible objects and bring them into intangibility, that’d certainly require conscious intention that Danny didn’t have in the episode.  The test answers got stuck to his back by sheer accident on his part. Bringing other objects into tangibility always previously involved a tangible ghost grabbing hold of other tangible people/objects and consciously willing them intangible together. Ergo, he should’ve simply passed through the suitcase and its contents all at once—go to the other side, pass go, do not collect CAT cheat sheet.

The solution for this one is pretty simple—just remove the scene entirely. Not only does it break the lore, but it’s entirely pointless and redundant (more on that later when I talk about Clockwork—giving Danny the answers was his idea, and it was a terrible one). Instead, it would’ve been much more compelling if Danny stole the answers on purpose with his ghost powers—being put under so much pressure to succeed that he felt like he had to forgo his morals and use his powers to cheat.