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[coldbronzemoon]

Danny Fenton, Totally Mortal Hero Consultant (DPxDC)

Snippet for an AU I'll probably never fully write where Danny takes a job as a consultant for the Justice League to help with ghost and demon bullshit. It's a pretty good cash flow to help him with college, after all, and very flexible hours.

He just claims all his knowledge comes from his parents. Unfortunately, the JL has caught word of the elusive yet active hero Phantom, and want Danny to help them meet and assess him. Whoops.

Over the phone, Tucker sighed. “Good Christ, Danny, why do you keep doing this?”

“I’m not doing anything,” Danny said immediately. He winced at the vague sound of screaming below. Demons sucked. “I didn’t know the JL thing was gonna have me finding Phantom. How would I? They were talking about tracking down powerful ghosts, I was assuming Ancients!”

Tucker sighed again, which was really quite unfair of him. “Mhm. Well, Fenton Catcher?”

“Probably not. They know me pretty well at this point, and unlike what Sam says I can be professional. I’d confuse them with the… uh…”

“Stoner shtick?”

There was more screaming happening, but judging from the pitch it was a demon screaming this time. Danny checked the situation. Yep, demon getting their ass kicked. He didn’t need to get involved with a blaster. Yet.

Instead, he scowled at his phone. “Stop calling it that.”

“You’re gonna tell me flanny Danny wasn’t a pitch-perfect stoner, huh? With the chill vibing and the dopey look?”

“I hate you.”

“Love you too, bud.” 

The sound of a clacking keyboard that had underlined their conversation stopped. “But seriously, Danny, what the hell are you gonna do with this?”

“Uh, lie, probably,” Danny said, because it was very likely.

“Alright, smartass, what are you going to do when that lie backfires on you like literally every other one does?”

“That’s when I start gaslighting, gatekeeping, and girlbossing, babe.”

He had a hard time hearing Tucker’s distant groan of “Why am I still your friend?” on account of the sudden explosion. Danny checked again. Hm. Demon dude had a nasty fire thing going on.

Danny switched on his Fenton water gun—holy water included!-- and shot the demon in the face. They let out a cracking hiss of rage, but dropped the fire spell thing. He waited for them to stop looking around wildly for the culprit for a moment. 

He went back to the call. “‘Cause you loooove me, Tuck. From the bottom of your twice-dead heart.”

“Unfortunately,” Tucker deadpanned.

Danny just cackled. It was lost amongst the sound of supernatural bullshit below.

“Anyway, I’m still figuring out my plan A, honestly. Might bring in gray-man?”

“Amorpho’s an asshole, though. He’ll ruin the whole thing by taking the opportunity to shift into a JL member for a bit.”

Hm. True.

“Yeah, but he’s the main guy I know with that power set.”

“Ask after Desiree?” He could hear the immediate distaste in Tucker’s voice. “Ugh, pretend I didn’t say that. That’s worse than Amorpho.”

“It’s awful,” Danny agreed easily. 

Desiree was actually pretty alright nowadays, mostly on account of Danny remembering the last couple minutes of Aladdin and wishing she could refuse wishes she didn’t want to grant. That had made her happy enough to stop actively picking fights. 

Unfortunately, spending the entirety of one’s afterlife twisting the wording of wishes to their worst form made it hard to stop being an asshole. Who knew! So getting Desiree to split him in two for like a week had a 50/50 chance of fucking up his work relationship with the literal league of superheroes irrevocably. And this was his main cash flow right now.

So, no Desiree, no siree.

“Come up with something better then, asshole.”

Danny hummed and, since the heroes below were focused on the demon, lifted up a little and did a thoughtful back flip. What to do, what to do…?

Oh!

“My cousin!” he exclaimed.

“What cous—? Oh, Ellie.”

“Yeah, Ellie, Tuck. Which other cousins do I have?”

Tucker scoffed. “You literally have that whole Nightingale thing going on through your dad?”

Danny couldn’t help the face he made. The remaining Nightingales were worse than his parents somehow. “The Nightingales don’t count.”

“You can’t just say they don’t count.”

“I can say that, actually, and I will. They’re, like, cousins through my great-great-great-grandpa anyway.”

“Isn’t there a fight going on over there? Should you be shooting someone?”

 “Yeah, probably.”

He peaked down through the window once more. The heroes must have gotten the first demon to leave while he was talking, because the horned demon fighting them now was a truly unfortunate shade of yellow-green instead of purple. Or maybe it had transformed for some reason? They had it about as in-hand as the other one, though, so Danny definitely didn’t need to go down there. He shot the maybe-new demon in the face real quick.

“Anyway, Ellie can totally help out, she’s been practicing with changing up her looks. She’s also more, uh, malleable than me, what with her situation and all. Looking fully like Phantom shouldn’t be hard.”

Tucker hummed. “She’d try to embarrass you though.”

“Yeah, that’s a problem.” Danny spun in place. “I could bribe her?”

“With what? Her life doesn’t involve needing much cash.”

“She doesn’t get out to the Zone very much. Not many of the inhabited places, anyway. I can promise her the weird apple things Dora’s been growing with Sam’s help, she loved those.”

“If you think that’ll work…” Tucker trailed off dubiously.

Danny laughed. “She’s annoying sometimes, but she’s not gonna fuck over my job if I ask her not to. I’ll just bribe her extra hard for resisting the temptation to mock me.”

“Fair enough.” The clacking of keys resumed. “I’ve really gotta pay attention now, someone’s trying to stop me from getting into this database. Someone half-decent, actually, did they upgrade? Hm. Make sure no one died, yeah?”

“They’re alive. Bye, Tuck,” Danny said, and ended the call.

He shoved his phone back into his jacket pocket and made his way down the stairs. The fight outside he had been stationed for was basically over—Captain Marvel and Green Lantern (Danny was pretty sure he had accidentally learned the dude’s actual name at some point, but hell if he could remember)—had pulled out the magic restraints one of the other consultants had handed out.

That had probably been Constantine. Ugh. Constantine. Dude could stand to lighten up a little; skulking and smoking all the time wasn’t the base state of someone enjoyable to be around. Then again, Danny knew he annoyed the shit out of some of the league with his own attitude, so he maybe shouldn’t talk. But at least he was annoying with a smile!

Case in point: Danny grinned at the heroes. “Got it handled?”

“Suppose so,” said the Green Lantern, “though a little more help would have been nice.”

Captain Marvel was too busy getting in a minor tussle with the demon to say anything either way.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m like, pretty mortal,” Danny said. “I’m not fucking with demons right where they can hit me. And I did shoot him!”

Green Lantern rolled his eyes, but admitted the point. Danny cheerfully flipped him off anyway.

“I’ll be heading out, then, the hellmouth this guy crawled out of is like three miles away.” Captain Marvel said, hauling the handcuffed demon over his shoulders like a very angry backpack.

“Oh, one more for the road!” 

Danny hit the demon with a final water gun shot. Hissing and scrunching their face like a cat, the demon tried to lunge at him. It wasn’t very successful. Weirdly non-verbal for a demon, who usually had to talk to make deals and steal mortal souls, but Danny wouldn’t judge. Might be a minor demon. A really basic imp? Who knew.

“Stop being a little bitch and you won’t get spray-bottled, asshole,” Danny chided.

With a loud laugh, Captain Marvel sped away.

[coldbronzemoon]

I'm a big fan of having the Fentons opening up a portal to hell in their basement having some consequences that aren't just the ghosts coming through to mess with Amity Park.

Amity Park has to be drenched in ectoplasm by now. And mysterious ghostly substances can and should cause some side effects for both the town and its inhabitants.

Meaning: Danny is split half and half, both and neither, but he's not the only one toeing the line between ghost and human. he's just the most concentrated version of it.

Valarie and Jazz are first. The former has a full suit of ghost technology embedded into her body and the latter grew up in a house where safety protocols were enough of a joke that pure ectoplasm was stored in the fridge right next to dinner and it contaminated everything. Tucker and Sam are next: they were there when the Portal Incident happened and even though they weren't in the portal, they must have absorbed some of the backlash from it ripping a hole in space to the Infinite Realms, and they were further exposed from helping Danny fight ghosts.

everyone in the town is a little contaminated at the least. everyone is also a little more focused and obsessive than the average person. everyone's got a hobby or a craft or a couple causes that call to them. this goes unnoticed. Amity Park is just a passionate place, you know? Amity Park has some quirks– and the ghosts are 83 of them– but this is their town and they're not leaving for anything. It's the way of things, it's placing a live frog in cold water and slowly cranking the heat up to boiling. No one sees what they're becoming because the changes are so slow and they're affecting all of them. There's no outsider looking in alert people to how different their bodies, their priorities, their community are in comparison. It's a small town far enough away from anything important to be beneath notice. It's isolated enough that when change comes, no one recognizes it at their doorstep. It's small and unimportant enough that their neighboring towns, their state, and the rest of the nation call the ghosts attacking their town a hoax: a way to draw tourists in. (the claim to ghosts do not draw tourists in. the only "tourists" that go to Amity are the ones that have a wild spark in their eye and not much to lose. they end up staying more often than not.)

time + isolation = a new culture, or at least room for cultural shifts. The word "wish" is treated as taboo as the most vulgar curses. The parks bear an unusual amount of fruit (and who even planted those fruit trees? what even is this fruit?) are wild enough to count as small forests. Crows talk and old ladies think it charming. There's always live music going on somewhere, played by band kids and musicians that are... particularly strange. Some pets die and come back for dinner. The library has never before been hosting so many events, for groups of knitters, artists, hobby biologists, and college students showing off the powerpoints they made for fun. Every month a guy who really likes birds shows off his rescued parrots to starry-eyed kids. Seasonal decorations get... intense.

It's the way Amity Park is. The way it's always been, right?

[coldbronzemoon]

dumb kid banter is one of my favorite things in the world

[coldbronzemoon]

Stringing Electricity

Danny died in one quick second, brutal, agonizing, fast. There was no time to panic, to fear, to scream. The portal formed. Danny Fenton died. The end.

His friends were standing just outside the rip across planes. They wore no protections, had no time to turn away from the powerful blast of energy and emotion that had just swallowed their friend whole. The whole lab was green and burning bright; a localized explosion of power.

Of course such close proximity would have consequences. The prototype of two decades past did, and it was barely a speck of dust compared to the strength of the newest dimensional portal. It would be a miracle, escaping change when standing in the nearest radius of harm.

Sam and Tucker didn’t think of it at the time. How could they? They were a bit busy screaming at the sight of Danny’s collapsed, smoking body, and then busy screaming at him getting back up. It was a trying night. It was the most trying, terrible night any of them had ever experienced.

So, that had to be why Sam felt sick, her hands shaking and her heart in her throat. That had to be why when Tucker breathed in the air felt ragged, burning, like gasping after choking, why his muscles twitched and jumped. That’s why his head hurt like something had been stabbed through his temple. They were scared. They were worried.

Their best friend had just died and stood back up. Now wasn’t the time for them to wallow in their own feelings.

Hauling his shaky body up the stairs two times was hard. Danny gasped and heaved and cried. He was cold, so cold, and shocking to the touch. His eyes gleamed in the low light of a quiet house. He clung to them like a lifeline, his fingers stiff and grip unyielding.

(“I’m going to call—” Tucker had started, hushed, eyes wet and bright.

“Please don’t,” whispered Danny, His voice was distant, echoing. “Please don’t, please, please, please—”

Tucker didn’t call the Fenton parents. He didn’t call 911. He didn’t call anyone.)

They dropped him on the bed, took pajamas from his closet, and told him to try to change out of the HAZMAT suit. Terrible fucking suit, Tucker thought, since it didn’t even protect him. There wasn’t a suit in the world that could have protected Danny, and he knew that. He couldn’t help the anger, sharp and crackling, that sat in his chest.

While Tucker stood at the door, angry, afraid, Sam went down to the kitchen. Her combat boots didn’t thud on the stairs like they should. She was too busy firmly not crying to notice. She was too busy being angry, so angry, too angry. With grasping reach, she tried to find a place to put the anger. Nothing felt right.

She took a cup from the cupboard. It nearly slipped and fell from her trembling fingers. Shock, Sam thought, and nearly let out a hysterical laugh at the thought of the lightning at the edges of the portal. The cup didn’t slip. She filled it with tap water and kept her grip the whole way back upstairs.

Sam didn’t scream when Tucker’s eyes flashed towards her in the dark. It was a trick of the light from the moon out the window. Sometimes people’s eyes looked different, in different lighting. Tucker’s eyes were fine. They were blue, not gold. Unbeknownst to her, Tucker thought the same things about purple eyes gleaming pink.

There was nothing wrong with either of them. There couldn’t be. They were too busy with Danny.

(If they had tried to turn on the lights at any point, they would have found nothing happened. Blackout. Power surges like a horrifyingly complex portal could create often resulted in such. It never occurred to them to try in the first place. The darkness was right, for this moment. This wasn’t a matter to grapple with in artificial daylight. Darkness was quiet, and cold, and held its secrets.)

Tucker cracked open the door and listened for a whispered assurance. It came, so he let Sam shuffle in and followed after, putting his hand in one of his cargo pants’ pockets. He pulled out a granola bar just as Sam sternly ordered Danny to drink the whole cup.

Danny said he wasn’t thirsty. He said he wasn’t hungry, after Tucker dropped the bar in his other hand. Tucker sympathized, but started Danny down with Sam all the same.

There was more they should be doing. Danny had been shocked bad enough to collapse, heartbeat weak and faltering in his chest. Heartbeat gone, for a few terror-filled seconds. Neither Tucker and Sam had any idea what else they could do. They were just fourteen.

Danny drank the water and ate the granola bar. He wrapped his comforter around himself so tightly it was a wonder he could still breath. There were no complaints from him when Sam, still shaking, and Tucker, still twitching, thumped onto the bed alongside him. They were warm, much warmer than him.

He didn’t want to talk. He didn’t want to listen to them talk. So Danny shoved his face in his pillows, ignored how cold he was, how hot he felt, and tried to go to sleep.

Somehow, he managed, and his friends followed after him.

(When Sam wakes up with the dawn as she always does, her breath stutters in her chest, and she feels like there is something in her torso, something in her ribs, shifting and jolting. She feels all at once too light and heavy as lead. Her eyes burn, and burn, and burn, and when she opens them after pressing the heels of her palm against them, she expects more than the plain colors of the bedroom she sees. She does not remember her dreams, fracturing and slow and prophetic as they are.

When Tucker wakes up after her, due to her shifting frame, his headache is still there, dull and pulsing. He feels hot, but that heat feels right, like the familiar sun beating down on his head. Phantom grain and grit scrape against his skin, where underneath his body buzzes like a livewire. He does not remember his dreams—his memories—of sunbaked sand and glinting jewels, of work and order and divine purpose. He will never recall the rituals held after his first death, begging that their ruler hold inhuman power in the next world as he did in the old one. He might curse his once-followers if he did. Or he might not.

When Danny wakes up last, hours after Sam and Tucker had gone downstairs to lie to the distracted Drs Fenton, he wakes up slowly. He is cold, and breathless, and floating two inches off of his own bed. The only reason he doesn’t scream is that sudden intangibility robs the air from his lungs. He turns solid, drops on the bed, and resolves that it was a hallucination. The taught string between him and his best friends, his confidants, the only people who could understand— that should be a hallucination too. He lets himself believe it’s real, because he can’t imagine such a thing being wrong. He does not remember his nightmares.

The three of them were always going to make it through this night, through the following years, together. There was no other option. (There were thousands of options.) But the power running through them, the bond tying them together like beads on a cord, helped in many ways. They were stronger together, smarter together, unstoppable together. A weight distributed to many hands was a light weight to carry.

Sam and Tucker did not have the pleasure of instant death. It would take weeks. It would be painful. At the end, there would be three more of an extraordinary species in the world.

Good things always come in threes.

ao3: them and you and me (stringing electricity)