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phandomholidaytruce · 6 months ago

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One Giant Leap for a Ghost

Hello @charmingcritter so sorry I was late!! The days really got away from me. Anyway, happy truce! I chose to focus primarily on your space core prompt, though there are sprinkles of other prompts in here!

One Giant Leap for a Ghost Characters: Danny + his Mars crewmates (OCs for the plot) WC: 3275 Warnings: None

****

"I found you!" Danny yelled, springing out from the wall.

"God damnit, guys, Danny vented into the lab again," Mike Burlak, the crew's doctor, said from his place against the wall.

Tyron Cooper, the chemist, clicked his tongue. "Always knew that kid was the imposter."

"Yeah, you wish," Danny rolled his eyes and swooped around to see what sorts of mad scientist experiments Cooper was running today. "Between the two of us, you're definitely the imposter. I mean, who knows what kinds of poisons you're making with those."

"I'll have you know I'm completing my task, Fenton," Cooper said.

"That's what the imposter would want us to think. For all I know, you're sabotaging the mission."

"Pointing fingers now, aren't we? That's exactly what the imposter would do."

"I mean, Coop's right. You literally flew in from the air vent," Burlak said.

"Next to the air vent. Commander Stewart would have my head if I hung out in the air vent unnecessarily," Danny retorted.

"Fair point," Cooper said, returning his attention to the flasks on his lab bench. "What are you up to?"

"Gonna go do an EVA soon. It's a scheduled inspection." Despite trying to suppress it, Danny felt his aura intensify with the acknowledgment that he would get to go outside of the spaceship today, shimmering as a few hazy-looking planets threatened to form in the glow.

That moment was not lost on his crewmates, who both glanced at the faded green planets and twinkling stars around him. As much as he loved it, his core could be so predictable.

Cooper chuckled. "Well, it looks like you're ready to go."

Cool embarrassment prickled Danny's cheeks, but he couldn't fight off the smile that overtook his face as he said, "Yup!"

Burlak stepped off from the wall. "I'll be on standby, then."

Standby in case something happened that required Danny's immediate medical attention. Even though as a ghost, nothing in space could hurt him like it could to the rest of his human crew, NASA was taking no chances. Not that Danny could blame them. They didn't exactly have a plethora of ectoplasmic astronauts to pull data from.

"Let's head out! Commander Stewart's waiting."

Some days, it was difficult to believe he'd come so far. Danny remembered sitting in class in high school ready to give up on his dreams because he wasn't brilliant like Jazz and there was no way that a space agency like NASA would ever accept a half-dead teen in their program anyway. But then, his space obsession wouldn't let him throw that dream away.

Literally.

It wouldn't let him.

After all, he had a space core. His eyes reflected the stars in the Universe and his aura shone with constellations and planets. When he looked at the sky, he didn't just see the stars, but also their characteristics, distances, temperatures, and so much more.

He was born to be an astronaut.

Which is why, despite half-dying when he was fourteen, he couldn't let that dream go. And instead of wallowing in despair, he decided to do something about it.

****

"And how old are you again?" Hugo Davis, director of the Mars missions, asked.

Phantom straightened his spine as if gaining an extra inch would magically age him ten years. "Old enough to be here."

Davis's eyes swept over him, narrowing as he scratched his fingers over his scraggly mustache. Beside him, NASA's senior executive Director Moore sat with his hands clasped before him, his face as expressive as a sheet of paper.

"I received a recommendation from Wilson," Phantom explained, though Davis would have already known this. It was in his file after all.

"And you're applying because..." Davis's voice drifted off, the silence echoing off the cavernous white walls of the conference room.

The answer to that, too, was obvious. So obvious, that Phantom wasn't sure if he was supposed to answer the question. But it was an interview, so he responded as if he didn't notice the awkward air. "Yes, I'm applying for the Artemis program as an astronaut. Between my education and career experience, I believe I'm qualified to join the Mars mission."

Davis glanced at Moore, who decided now it was admissible to take over. "Yes, I think your qualifications are of no question. Of our applicants, you might be one of the most...uniquely qualified, I'll say, to join."

Anticipation jolted through Phantom's spine, but then Director Moore opened his mouth again, and any hope was squashed instantly.

"However," Moore said, "I think I speak for the whole of the space program when I say there are some rather apparent concerns we need to discuss."

Those concerns were ones that Phantom was perfectly ready for, he tried to convince himself as he refrained from squirming in his seat like he was back in high school sitting in the Vice Principal's office yet again for cutting class.

"Primarily, your...appearance." Moore swept a hand out before him.

"You mean the fact that I'm legally somewhat dead," Phantom filled in, glancing at the black, glowing jumpsuit he'd shown up to the interview wearing. Better to rip the bandaid off at the start, his father always had said.

Davis and Director Moore caught eyes once again.

"Well," Phantom continued, "technically, I'm not really dead. I'm also alive, you see, which is why I think I'm perfectly qualified for this job."

The two men remained silent at that.

"I mean, think about it. I don't need to breathe, so therefore I won't need a spacesuit. And I know how you all are about cutting costs. Well, that and less mass in the spaceship."

Director Moore scratched his chin. "Yes, cutting costs with the lack of an EVA suit is quite tempting."

"And since I can fly and wouldn't need a spacesuit, I can do repairs on the exterior of the ship far more easily than any of the human engineers could. Not to mention I can cover far more ground in a sol than any rover could. You’d have far more exploratory reach around your Martian base with me on the team."

The men nodded, lips pursed in deep contemplation. Phantom could tell that he was winning them over. He just needed one final push.

"And, if you needed any more convincing..." He flared his aura, pushing the power from the deepest part of his core into the men's visible spectrum. The white glow was replaced by the swirls of an aurora, and speckled stars shone out from the light, twinkling and grouping into constellations. "Well, I'm sure you've been filled in on my file, but it's all true. My powers really do let me locate any star or planet in the Universe. All I need is a name, and I can tell you its basic features, gravity, and coordinates."

"Do you mind if I test you?" Davis asked.

"Go ahead."

"Kepler-1b."

Phantom pointed his finger in the air, and an ecto-hologram of a black planet surrounded by the light of its sun formed above them. He closed his eyes, and the words appeared behind his lids like a textbook. "Kepler-1b, otherwise known as TrES 2b, is the darkest planet known to humankind and is located 750 light years away. It orbits around GSC 03549-02811, it's got a gravity of 1.4 g's, and its right ascension is 19:07:14.035 with a declination of +49:18:59.0." He opened his eyes and grinned at the two men who were currently looking at him like he'd grown a second head. "Will that suffice?"

"I'd heard the rumors, but I wasn't sure if they were true." Director Moore's shocked expression melted into an approving smile. "I think we got what we needed. That'll be all. We'll be in touch soon."

****

Space was silent.

Space was expansive.

Space was incredible.

Magnificent. Amazing. Utterly breathtaking, and every single other word that Danny could pull from his mental dictionary.

Space was beautiful. And it was his. Not in the sense where a ghost lair belonged to a ghost, because even Danny's space core recognized that no one could dare lay claim to such a beast, but when Danny closed his eyes and smelled the metallic particles that dusted around him, he knew that he was truly home.

They called it an EVA for the sake of consistency, but Danny was not wearing a spacesuit. He didn't need one. He was a ghost. Not just any ghost, but Phantom, the ghost that haunted Amity Park's observatory. He was born to do spacewalks.

Convincing NASA's top worrywarts that an EVA suit was unnecessary was a challenge in itself, but somehow, he managed to do it. And thank goodness for that because, without the suit, he could truly experience everything that outer space had to offer: the bone-setting cold, the lack of atmosphere, the lack of air.

His ghost core adored it. The feeling, the silence.

"Don't get lost out there," came the amused, tinny voice of Commander Stewart through his bone-conduction CCA earpiece.

"Sorry," Danny responded, squinting into the distance. "It's just that the sun looks so small from here." He twirled around and grinned at the approaching red planet before him. "And Mars looks so huge. It's hard to believe we're still so far away when it looks like I can reach out and touch it."

"Well, it's only half the size of Earth," said Burlak.

"I don't know if you knew this, but the Earth is pretty large," retorted Cooper.

"Oh, shut up."

"Boys." Commander Stewart's voice was sharp. There was a moment of muttering apologies before she took an audible breath and tried again. "Phantom, how is the inspection going?"

"It's...going."

"That's code for Space Ghost over here has spent the entire time ogling Mars again," the engineer, Merissa Chase, joked.

Well, could anyone blame him? Mars was just so pretty and red and...and...

"Finish the inspection and report back," Commander Stewart said.

Danny blinked, turning back to the huge spaceship in front of him. "Yes, Commander!"

****

Danny felt the edges of the folded paper pressing between his palms. Despite his best intentions, the paper was slightly wrinkled, a casualty of his tight grip. He loosened his fingers, took a deep breath, and began. "I need you all to sit down."

Jazz eyed him curiously, her red hair slipping off her shoulder. "You okay, Danny?"

"Yeah, dude, you look pale," Tucker agreed.

"I'm fine," Danny replied, perhaps more curtly than he'd intended. He took another breath, forcing his heart to slow. "I have something to tell you all."

"What is it, son?" Dad asked. "And why did you make us take off all our weapons earlier?"

Danny glanced away. "I just don't want you to be mad at me."

Maddie stopped before her seat, her instincts seemingly kicking into high gear before she had a chance to sit down. "What is it?"

Danny shrank back, then before he could list any of the nine-thousand reasons why this was a bad idea, he unfurled the letter and passed it to his mother.

"Dear Mr. Phantom," she began, her voice catching. "Mr. Phantom? As in the space-themed ghost?"

"Just keep reading."

"We at NASA are pleased to extend an offer of employment as an astronaut on the Mars Mission team. Despite the lack of ectoplasmic entities in our employment, we feel as though the unique skills you bring as an individual are unmatched by any human. Throughout the interview process, we have enjoyed getting to know you and appreciate you letting us test the advantages that your abilities offer. We were especially impressed by your navigational abilities as demonstrated in your interview, which is a power that we believe will put your team at a huge advantage when traversing through space. It is for these reasons and many more that we are extending this position to you."

Danny tasted the words on his lips, mouthing along subconsciously as he pictured the words in his mind that his eyes had hungrily soaked in hundreds of times since he'd received the letter in the mail.

"We are eager to begin discussing the details of your position with you soon. Should you choose to accept the offer, you will be expected to relocate to Houston where you will begin training. Your expected starting date is June fifth, and you will be asked to sign a confidentiality contract at the start of your employment. Please contact me if you have any questions in the meantime. Welcome to the NASA team."

His mother finished reading the letter, letting her final words hang in the air like dew on fresh-cut grass. Danny kept his eyes downturned, unable to bear to see the looks of confusion or—worse—realization from his parents.

This was it. This was the moment when he finally told his parents that he was a half-ghost.

"Wow, that's amazing!" Jazz said, breaking the silence. She jumped from her chair and swept him into a hug.

"Holy shit, you got the job?" Tucker asked.

"Yeah." Danny finally broke out in a grin.

"Congrats, Danny!" Sam cheered. "That's awesome!"

"I don't understand. Why is this addressed to Phantom?" Maddie asked.

The cheers died in the room, and Danny's stomach plummeted once again. He finally looked up to see the distress of his parents, and he knew that it was time. Finally, after years of avoidance, he had to stop running.

"Mom, Dad, I have something I need to tell you..."

And he began. He told them about the portal, about how in his last moments, he thought about the future he'd never have. How he woke up in Phantom's body with ectoplasmic planets swirling above him. How he tried to forget about it, pretend it never happened, but he couldn't because every time he'd look up at the night sky, all he wanted to do was transform and fly to the edges of the Universe. How he'd worked so hard all these years, doing all the right things, to set his career down this road. How despite being significantly younger than most of the applicants, he still pursued this path because he knew with all his steadfast heart that this mission, this legacy was one he was made to have.

And now, he was willing to risk it all. Applying for the Mars mission meant that he would need to reveal his secret to the world. And that was something he was ready to do.

When he finished speaking, his throat was sore with thirst. He hadn't realized how much there had been to say. And even still, he knew that was only barely scratching the surface of his life since his accident. He hadn't the confidence to meet his parents' eyes throughout his long-winded speech, but now he finally forced his head to lift, he forced himself to see the teary-eyed stares of his ghost-hunter parents before him.

But where he expected fear was nothing but love.

"Son," Jack said, his voice barely a whisper. "I'm so proud of you."

"We're both proud of you, honey," Maddie said.

"I can't believe it. My brother, Danny, a future astronaut." Jazz beamed. "Congratulations."

****

The descent vehicle slowed.

"Adjusted thirty kilometers east," the pilot, Parth Chadha, said.

"Right above target," Commander Stewart responded.

"Lowering now."

There was a jolt as the boosters switched off, and then they were descending again at speeds that would have had Danny's parents covering their eyes in fear. But not Danny. He was a ghost, after all, and these speeds were just another Tuesday for him.

"Slowing our descent."

Danny slammed into his seat as the boosters re-engaged, stopping their free-fall and slowing them until they reached Martian soil.

"And we've landed on Mars."

But Danny already knew that. He could feel it. And the moment they hit the ground, the air sparked with an electric anticipation that his core couldn't help but soak in like a sponge.

It took everything in him to not phase out of his seatbelt, shoot through the side of the descent vehicle, and take in the sights of Mars. But these missions had an unspoken etiquette, and so he waited. He waited for Chadha to turn off the descent vehicle, he waited for the rest of the crew to get out of their chairs, he waited and waited until he thought his core was going to explode.

"Alright, crew, this is it. Outside those doors is the Elysium Planitia, our home for the next two months. Our priority is setting up the Outpost. Fenton and Chase, you're both on solar panel duty."

"Gotcha, Commander," Merissa said. "We better hurry it up, though, because I think if we wait another minute, Danny over here is gonna have an aneurysm."

"Jeez, I've never seen him glow like that before," Cooper said.

"Sorry!" Danny said, though he really wasn't. Because he was finally here. He was on Mars.

"Alright, I guess we better get to it, then." Commander Stewart turned for the door. "Artemis crew? I'm ordering us off the descent vehicle."

Depressurizing took forever and a half. But finally, finally, the door swung open to reveal a sea of red dust and rocks below an orange sky. As is tradition, Commander Stewart stepped out to the soil first, and one by one, the crew followed.

And finally, it was Danny's turn.

Obeying the laws of gravity was typically a challenge in ghost form. But to obey the laws of a gravity only a third of Earth's while also battling the excitement of being on Mars was an entirely different level of challenge. But he forced his tail to form legs, and he forced his feet to descend the stairs of the descent vehicle because he wanted his first entrance on Mars to leave a real footprint. One that was his.

Nothing could have prepared him for the elation that could come from the Martian soil crunching beneath his boot. Nothing. It was pure, unfiltered joy. One that he didn't think he could replicate for as long as he lived.

His core took over, and green tinted his orange vision, sparkling and glittering with ectoplasmic constellations and energy. He shot into the air, laughing into his CCA system and not caring who heard because he'd made it! After all these years, all the nights of studying and gazing into the night sky and thinking and hoping and wishing that he could be up there, up here, and he was finally here!

He inhaled deeply. Mars's air was thin compared to Earth's and smelled sweet and dry like a desert. He took another breath, and hints of sulfur and chalk wafted through his nose. The smell was foreign compared to what he was used to in the sterile Artemis aircraft, but it spoke of an ancient planet, one untouched by the paws of humanity, and he couldn't help but breathe in again, and again, soaking up every inch of the air that his nose could handle.

The air was cold, too. Though, compared to the cold of outer space, it felt like Florida in July. But compared to Earth, it was frigid. Not that he cared. With his space core, he was able to handle any temperature thrown at him. So despite the fact that he'd previously reported surface temperatures to the team of -20C, to him, the air was perfect.

"Oh no, Fenton's lost it," Cooper joked.

"You wish," he responded, feeling a grin spread across his cheeks.

"Alright, come down here. We have to get to work setting up the outpost or else we'll all be sleeping in the MDV tonight," Commander Stewart said.

Danny scanned the distance once more, taking in the sights of red rock against the orange horizon. This was it. This was everything he'd worked for.

And it was so worth it.

"Now, Phantom."

"Coming!"

#phandom truce 2024 #gift #fic

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phandomholidaytruce · 6 months ago

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Backup gifters

If you said you might be interested as a backup gifter and are still down, let me know, I sent out some IMs but I am still looking for a few backup gifters!

#mun speaks #phandom truce 2024

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phandomholidaytruce · 6 months ago

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This is my Holiday Truce fill for @noxposting! I filled "Trio in the Ghost Zone" and "Jazz POV" for the prompts. I tried to incorporate some angst and the carnivalesque vibe, but I'm not sure if I succeeded. I hope you like it!

Jazz had never visited the Ghost Zone before, not really. Even if you counted Amity Park being dragged in, which she didn’t, she’d never explored. She’d stared through the portal, wondering what it was like. She’d talked to Danny about it once, listening to him describe creepy, ever-changing structures, floating doors, and islands that moved in currents.

That conversation had taken place months ago, when Danny had been in a particularly sharing mood. It didn’t happen often and Jazz had more or less resigned herself to only hearing about snippets. Then, Danny had invited her on a trip to a “Winter Truce” Market along with Sam and Tucker. She’d jumped at the chance: a chance to learn about ghosts and the Ghost Zone, a chance to see sights she’d never seen before, a chance to hang out with her little brother for once. And Jazz was glad she had taken that chance.

The Winter Truce Market was a sight to behold. Booths full of trinkets and wonders spread to the very edges of the island the market was being held on. Each booth was occupied by a ghost. Some were displaying the normal things one would expect at a Holiday Market with hand carved wooden birdhouses, knit hats, and hand-thrown pottery all making appearances. Some ghosts were showing off items that were a little… less ordinary.

“Are they expecting to sell that?” Jazz asked Danny as they walked past a booth full of taxidermied spiders.

Danny laughed, his voice clear and crisp with very little of the static it usually held in ghost form. Jazz suspected it was because of the Ghost Zone’s atmosphere, but she couldn’t be sure.

“I don’t think any ghost here is expecting to sell anything, really,” he said, “Some of them are hoping to give away their work for other ghosts to give as truce gifts. Others are just showing off.” Danny shrugged. “Money is pretty localized in the zone anyway and the Truce Markets are just too big to try and make it work.”

“Really?” Jazz asked, more than a little skeptical, “Then how do the ghosts who are trying to give away their wares decide who to give them to?”

“You have to ask,” Tucker said, walking up beside her and opening up his messenger bag. It was straining on the sides, clearly stuffed to the brim with something. Jazz hadn’t asked on the way over, not wanting to get sucked into one of Tucker’s infamous get rich quick schemes or whatever the Ghost Zone equivalent would be. It looked like she might not be able to avoid it.

“You see,” Tucker continued, “All of these ghosts have infinite time on their hands and enough resources that they never have to think about bartering. They can just focus on doing what they want with their unlives unlike us poor humans. And they're very proud of what they produce, so you have to convince them that you’re going to be doing something they approve of with whatever they give you.” He pulled out his PDA with what looked like a flashlight attached to it and gestured to it with his other hand.

“Now, one of the problems with trying to convince ghosts to give you things is that a lot of them don’t speak English and a lot of Ghostspeak actually uses nonverbal core pulses to–”

“Wait, core?” Jazz interrupted.

“It’s the literal core of a ghost,” Sam interjected from where she was looking at the taxidermied spider stand, “and why Danny glows. Apparently, they also use it to speak.”

Tucker sniffed and pretended to ignore them. “Please, no more interruptions until after the presentation.” He cleared his throat. “The point is that this should allow me to actually talk to ghosts. Think of it like the Ghost Gabber 2.0, but it actually allows me to talk to ghosts instead of just identifying them and then saying ‘Fear me!’,” Tucker rolled his eyes as he said the last bit, derision clear.

“Bravo,” Sam said, voice dripping with sarcasm and clapping slowly as she finally turned to face them, “Wonderful pitch, the sharks are sure to invest.”

“To demonstrate, I’m going to go over and ask the ghost at the booth with the spider lace weaving for a shawl for my mother,” Tucker said, voice still the haughty, professional tone of his “presentation” even as he threw a heated glare Sam’s way.

“Uh, Tuck–” Danny started, but Tucker was already making his way through the crowd towards the weaver.

Danny stepped forward, but Sam stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “Let him go,” she said, “He has to learn somehow.”

Danny looked hesitant, but stayed put.

“What does he need to learn exactly?” Jazz asked, “A version of the ghost gabber that actually communicates sounds pretty cool.”

Tucker had made it to the ghost in the weaving booth. As they stepped forward, Jazz realized that they truly were a weaver, a massive, partially humanoid spider with mandibles where a more humanoid ghost’s mouth would have been. She wasn’t sure if it was even possible for a ghost like this to speak English, could they even form the sounds?

“The problem is that he’s so focused on Ghostspeak and his technology that he doesn’t take into account all the other ways ghosts communicate,” Sam explained.

“Like what?”

By this point, Tucker had gotten out his Ghost Gabber 2.0 and had seemed to successfully start a conversation. At least, Jazz could hear some strange combinations of vowels and consonants drift over the crowd and the ghost’s glow seemed to be pulsing meaningfully. In turn, Tucker was making similar sounds and his flashlight was pulsing and changing color.

Sam ground her teeth. “Like the fact that a significant portion of Ghostspeak does have a verbal component. Yeah, you can’t really fully communicate without the core aspect, but you can’t really communicate without the verbal aspect either. Tucker’s accent is terrible. He barely puts any effort into it since he thinks the technology will make up for it.

“Also, ghosts have body language like any other being. Do you see how the ghost Tucker is talking to is shifting their weight and looking around?”

And, yeah, Jazz could kind of see that. It was a little harder to tell since the ghost was far more spider-like than human-like, but Jazz could definitely feel the discomfort.

Before she could say so, Sam continued, “They’re definitely confused. And I don’t blame them because there’s another very obvious way ghosts communicate that Tucker missed.”

“What’s that?” Jazz asked.

Before Sam could answer the weaving ghost let out a chittering shout and took a step forward on one of its many legs. Tucker took a step back, his lips moving quickly and his light flashing faster.

“Writing,” Sam said, now looking a bit nervous, “There’s a sign on that booth that says ‘Showcasing, not gifting’. They weren’t open to being asked.” She glanced at Danny. “I, uh, thought he would figure it out before it got to this point.”

Tucker’s light flashed in what Jazz could only interpret as a stutter and Danny winced. The ghost Tucker was talking to seemed to grow, it’s aura flaring into what Jazz could only describe as menacing.

“He, uh, also doesn’t match what he’s saying with equipment to what he’s actually feeling,” Danny said, eyes-widening. The ghost grew more, both in size and agitation.

“I need to go deal with this,” Danny said, hurriedly dashing off towards the stall.

“Is he going to be okay?” Jazz asked as her little brother put himself between Tucker and an increasingly aggravated spider-ghost.

Sam nodded, her posture slowly relaxing as Danny began to speak and the weaving ghost started to deflate. “They should be fine. Danny knows what he’s doing.” The spider-ghost shrieked something unintelligible at Danny. Sam winced. “Mostly.”

“What did your friend do to that woman to get her so angry?” A deep voice asked from behind them.

Jazz jumped. She knew that voice. That was that was the ghost that kept talking about skinning Danny and mounting his pelt on a wall. Jazz slowly turned, her entire body tense. Sure enough, the metal ghost towered behind them, his hair flaming green and flickering in the non-existent wind.

Jazz reached towards the blaster on her hip. This ghost was a hunter. He thrived on chasing prey. Most hunters didn’t like it when their prey fought back. Maybe she could–

Sam put a hand on Jazz’s arm. Jazz looked to her. Sam shook her head. “Truce, remember,” she murmured before turning her full attention to the ghost in front of them.

“He didn’t read the sign,” Sam said, casually, like they weren’t in any danger. Jazz knew the truce meant peace. She knew that ghosts didn’t attack each other during the truce; Danny had explained that much.

She and Sam weren’t ghosts.

The ghost looked befuddled. “He didn’t read the sign?” he asked, looking lost, “This is a Truce Market. You always read the sign. Otherwise…” Skulker gestured towards the commotion at the weaving ghost’s stall. Danny was… carefully crafting an ice sculpture? Since when could he do that? Were ice powers just a thing Danny had now on top of everything else?

The ghost at the stall seemed relatively pleased at least. It had shrunk down again and Tucker was no longer cowering behind Danny. The other ghosts were pointedly ignoring all of it. Jazz supposed that was probably wise. In her experience, it was harder to get drawn into a conflict you refused to acknowledge.

Sam shrugged. “He got caught up in his new tech. For a genius, he can be a complete moron.”

Skulker got a pained look on his face. At least, that was what Jazz thought it looked like through all the metal. “I am learning to relate. I drew Technus in the Truce exchange this year.”

Jazz was officially lost, but Sam just nodded. “Did you manage to find anything good?”

Skulker gave them what Jazz was sure was meant to be a grin. It had far too many teeth and technically the metal of his face didn’t bend like that, but that was all she could think of. “You’ll see at the Truce party tonight with the rest of them.” His grin dropped and he hesitated. “You are coming, right?”

Jazz blinked. What? There was no way she heard that right. Yes, this was the Ghost Zone and yes it was Christmas Eve and Danny was planning on going to a Truce party after this. But, the plan was for Jazz to go home with Sam and Tucker. The Truce wasn’t for humans… was it?

She looked at Sam. Sam had been to the Ghost Zone before. Sam had interacted with ghosts outside of fights. Sam looked as blindsided as she was.

“You know we’re human, right?” Jazz asked, really hoping she wasn’t bringing attention to something that would get them in trouble.

Skulker shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal. “We’ve engaged in combat. That counts for the truce.”

Jazz squinted trying to tell if he was hiding something. Also, did her flailing and getting in Danny’s way really count? It didn’t seem like it should, but the ghost seemed genuine.

And now that she thought about it, they were already at a Truce Market, was going to a Truce Party really any different? Of course, here they were surrounded by mostly neutral ghosts who just wanted to show off and give away their crafts. At the Truce Party Skulker was inviting them to, they would be surrounded by ghosts that had all gone after humans at one point or another.

“Will everyone else hold the truce with them, Skulker? Or just you?” Danny. Jazz looked over to see her brother hovering at her shoulder, arms crossed and eyes glowing bright. Tucker shifted beside him looking more than a little sheepish.

Skulker held his hands up, clearly indicating that he wasn’t looking for a fight. “Peace, Ghost Child. I assumed you brought them here for the party.”

Danny’s eyes turned icy. “That doesn’t answer my question.”

“The truce holds for all ghosts, and even the ones that these three haven’t fought know that they’re close enough to count!” Skulker seemed defensive, but it seemed like the explanation was good enough for Danny. He landed between Jazz and Sam, eyes returning to a normal green glow.

Skulker cleared his throat, despite being in a metal body suit. Jazz had no idea how that worked. “I hope to see you all at the Truce party. Rest assured, I will resume my hunt after the celebrations are over.”

Danny relaxed, glancing at Sam and Jazz. “Yeah, I’m looking forward to it.” He grinned, a glint of mischief in his eye. “I got Walker for the exchange this year and I am not missing out on giving him his gift.”

“Should I be worried?” Skulker asked, brow creasing.

Danny shrugged. “It’s Truce. I’m not going to worry about the consequences for at least a day and a half.”

“That is not reassuring, whelp.”

Danny laughed, bright and echoing, as he turned to leave. “It’ll be fine,” he said as he started to walk away, Sam and Tucker already following.

Jazz turned to follow too, before stopping. “It was nice to see you, Ghost-X,” she said, cheerfully.

Skulker sighed, looking pained. “My name is Skulker. The Ghost Child just called me Skulker. You were there.”

Jazz’s grin widened. “And when you start calling my brother by his name, I’ll call you by yours.” She turned and followed Danny before the ghost had a chance to respond.

As she rejoined the group, Sam slapped her on the back. “That was awesome!” she chuckled, “Sometimes I don’t think the ghosts around here even know Danny has a name.”

Danny shrugged. “I’m just glad he only called me whelp once.”

“By the way,” Tucker said, leaning around Danny to look him in the eye, “What did you get Walker? How bad is two-days-from-now going to be exactly?”

Danny’s smile was sharper than any human’s had a right to be. “It’s an annotated book with all of the Amity Park city laws and ordinances along with sentencing regulations.”

“Nice,” Tucker said, his own smile sharper than Jazz personally though was reasonable.

Sam chuckled, eye’s sparkling maliciously. “He’s going to hate that.”

Jazz looked between her brother and his friends, more than a little confused. The Amity Park laws and ordinances mostly concerned building permits and parking regulations. “Why is he going to hate this?” she asked.

Danny seemed almost giddy. “You remember that incident when Vlad tried to use Vortex to bolster his popularity?”

Jazz nodded. “And it went horribly and you ended up with weather powers? Yeah, I remember.” It wasn’t a fond memory, either, especially since the heatwave just reappeared as soon as the ghost was locked away again.

“Well, the city council decided to pass a law about encouraging ghosts to enter Amity Park. It also limits using ghosts to disturb the peace.” Danny said, looking smug.

Jazz raised an eyebrow. “Vlad let that pass?”

Danny shrugged again. “I think he’s going to try and use it against Dad at some point with the whole ghost portal situation, but I’m not going to worry about that for now.” Danny grinned again. “For now, I’m using it to keep Walker out of Amity Park. He can’t come in and disturb the peace, even my peace. It’s against the rules.”

“Uh huh,” Jazz said, more than a little wary “And you don’t think he’s going to try and find a way around it? Or retaliate against you here?”

Danny’s face screwed up in what Jazz knew as his “don’t bring logic into this” expression. She braced herself for what she was sure was going to be a snarky retort about the fun police.

It never came.

“Great One!” A voice called out. Jazz spun to see a massive ghost covered in course, white fur. Crystalline horns jutted out from his head in angry lines. One of his arms was made of ice with simplified bones running through the center.

That did not like a ghost she wanted to mess with. Jazz glanced to Danny, preparing to run if need be.

Danny was grinning widely and floating high to wave back at the ghost. “Frostbite!” he yelled back, pure joy in his voice.

“Great One!” the ghost repeated, “Happy Truce! It is good to see you!” He turned to Sam and Tucker. “You too, young ones, it has been too long.”

So, this was apparently a ghost that Jazz had never so much as seen that was not only on good terms with Danny, but Sam and Tucker as well. Jazz knew they spent time in the Ghost Zone, but this suggested far more than hanging out just inside the portal for shooting practice.

Danny turned to her, still grinning. “Jazz, this is Frostbite,” he introduced, “Frostbite taught me how to control my ice powers when they were on the fritz and he’s been helping me to learn more sense.” He turned back to Frostbite. “Frostbite, this is Jazz, my big sister.”

Again, there were those ice powers, the ones that Jazz hadn’t known about before today. She knew Danny had asked her to back off, that ghost hunting was his thing and she needed to respect that. Now she was wondering if she had backed off too far. She felt like she barely knew anything about his life.

“It’s an honor to meet a relative of the great one,” the ghost said. “We were lucky to be at the same Truce market today! Usually, we go to one closer to home, but the Carnivorous Canyon had drifted directly in the path and going around it actually made this market closer.”

“Really? I didn’t know it could move like that.”

“Yes. When—”

Jazz jumped as Sam slung an arm around her shoulder. “If you’re wondering why Frostbite is calling Danny ‘Great One’, it’s because of the whole Pariah Dark thing. The yetis were really thrilled that he got pushed back in his sarcophagus. It’s not anything weird.”

To Jazz, that was still pretty weird. She knew about the Pariah Dark incident and she knew that Danny took the suit, but she’d never really learned what happened afterwards. Apparently, it was impressive enough to get a bunch of yetis to call her little brother “Great One”.

Sam looked like she was about to say more, but something in Danny’s conversation with Frostbite seemed to have caught her attention because she snapped her head in their direction.

“I actually have to go to the Portal-Zone Truce party this year, but maybe Sam, Tuc–”

“I think what Danny means is that we’re all going to the Portal-Zone Truce Party tonight, but maybe next year we can make some different plans?” Sam interrupted.

Frostbite nodded, seemingly unperturbed by the sudden interruption and correction. “Next year we will make sure to invite you first then! After all, I couldn’t ask you to back out of a truce party so near to your own lair. Why don’t you come near the new year for some training? We could–”

Jazz turned towards Sam with a raised eyebrow as the conversation drifted out of her understanding again.

Sam shrugged. “Danny was being overprotective. He thought that us going to Frostbite’s Truce would somehow be safer.” She frowned and rolled her eyes. “I think he forgot that we can’t go to the Far Frozen without cold weather gear again.” Sam grinned. “Also, I am not missing out on Walker’s reaction to Danny’s ‘gift’. That’s going to be epic.”

Jazz grinned back. Yeah, there was a lot she didn’t know about her brother and his life, but spending time with him was the best way to learn. Also, Sam was right; watching Walker get a book of rules as a gift would be epic.

In the meantime, she would enjoy the Truce Market… and try not to worry about all the parts of her brother’s life that she didn’t know about.

—

They left the Truce Market after a few more hours of browsing. Tucker did end up getting his mother a scarf from a different vendor whose sign he actually read. Sam got a cool new set of spider earrings. Danny got a map that showed the stars as they were 10,000 years ago. Jazz smiled and watched and learned.

Then, there was the actual party. It was tamer than Jazz was expecting, especially considering it was being hosted in a clearing on Skulker’s island. There weren’t any insults or fights. All the ghosts came with a gift for their assigned giftee. Everyone even honored the rules for all the party games. It was altogether far more civil than she’d come to expect from ghosts.

Sam had been right about Walker's reaction to Danny’s present. He seemed both furious and impressed when Danny pointed out the laws on disturbing the peace, but was quick to point out that those were laws that Danny regularly broke himself. Danny just shrugged, not even bothering with a witty retort, which made Walker seethe and the other ghosts laugh.

Jazz also learned that there was aspects of her brother’s life she had been oblivious to.. She learned that he was stronger than she had known. He was more respected too. She learned that he knew far more about the ghosts in the zone than he let on. He knew what to say to get the Lunch Lady talking and laughing about her favorite foods. He knew how to relate to Sidney Pointdexter and push him into a conversation with Dora about dealing with new technology and ideas. He definitely knew what Johnny and Kitty’s latest fight was about and was doing his best to avoid getting drawn in.

In turn, the ghosts knew more about him than Jazz would have thought. Ember knew him well enough to give him the latest Dumpty Humpty album he’d been wanting. The Box Ghost knew him well enough to give him a model rocket box*. It was just the box, there was no rocket inside, and the Box Ghost asked for it back afterwards, but he still knew Danny well enough to know what kind of box he’d be interested in. Technus teased him about his score in Doomed. Jazz wasn’t sure how the ghost even had access to that. She was pretty sure there wasn’t any internet in the Ghost Zone.

Still, the ghosts treated him like he was one of their own, despite their constant fights around town. Jazz was pretty sure those were real and exactly as vicious as they looked. It was just… when they weren’t fighting over something, it was like they were almost friends.

Even Sam and Tucker were drawn into it. The ghosts cheered when Sam beat Skulker in a shooting contest. Tucker and Technus had talked about the Ghost Gabber 2.0 software that Tucker had tried back at the market for almost an hour. They knew these ghosts almost as well as Danny did.

It made Jazz feel… alone.

No one was purposefully excluding her, she was sure of it. She just didn’t really know anyone except for Danny, Sam, Tucker, and kinda Skulker she guessed? She wasn’t sure if accidentally letting him know where the ecto-converter was once and insulting him earlier today counted as knowing him. Probably not. So, she was at a party where she didn’t know anyone except for the people she came with and parties weren’t really her thing to begin with.

Still, this was a good thing, she thought as she watched Danny and Johnny start to set up for a race around the island. It was good to see humans and ghosts interacting without violence. It was good to see Danny having fun.

He and Johnny seemed to have some kind of banter building as they prepared. Jazz couldn’t hear it, but from the way Danny grinned, from the way Johnny was leaning casually against his bike, from the way the other ghosts were placing bets, she knew it was friendly. That was good. Danny could use more friends, more than Sam and Tucker who he was bonded to so tightly that they were closer to family. Casual friendships were good. Normal. Danny was acting like a normal teenager.

There was a thump as someone plopped down beside her. Jazz looked over expecting to see one of her more human companions. She wouldn’t have even been surprised by a friendlier ghost like Ember, Kitty, or Technus. Instead, she came face to face with Penelope Spectra.

Jazz didn’t scream. That was a good first step. This was Truce after all.

Spectra did nothing. She kept doing nothing for almost a minute. It got to the point where Jazz wondered if the ghost actually realized she was there.

“This isn’t normal, you know,” Spectra suddenly said. Her tone was completely neutral to the point where it was almost unnatural.

“What?” Jazz asked, taken aback. Surely, Spectra couldn’t have read her thoughts early. She was sure that wasn’t one of the ghost’s powers. Right?

“Sure, the Truce is mostly normal, everyone behaving themselves and keeping fights to a minimum” Spectra said, either answering Jazz’s question or ignoring her completely, “but that’s between ghosts. All this intermingling is just weird.” She said intermingling like it was something she was trying to scrape off the bottom of her shoe.

Jazz shrugged, not looking at Spectra directly. “Everyone seems to be having fun,” she said, matching Spectra’s original neutrality as they watched the party-goers cheer on the race between Danny and Johnny as it finally started.

“Fun,” Spectra sneered, “Oh sure, they’re all definitely having fun. Ghosts and humans aren’t supposed to have fun together.”

Jazz wanted to ask “Why not?”, but Spectra kept going before she could.

“Phantom and his two little friends are freaks. Sure, Phantom was pretty obvious from the get go, a little weirdo made in a lab accident. The other two, though? They practically chose to become freaks.”

Jazz turned to glare at Spectra, to defend Danny and his friends, but she couldn’t find the words to interrupt.

“They’ve been exposed to so much ectoplasm that they’re practically developing cores. Did you notice that translator thing? The kid doesn’t even need to use it to understand who he’s talking to, he can just understand Ghostspeak. The girl, too, I bet. I wouldn’t be surprised if they started developing powers.” She sneered again. “They’re going to end up creepy little freaks just like Phantom, isolated from their world and from ours.”

Jazz felt a wave of anger wash over her and then a wave of dread. She’d noticed that today, too, just how comfortable Sam and Tucker were with ghosts. Sam could read Ghostpeak, Tucker was trying to learn to speak it. Neither of them had so much as flinched when Skulker, a ghost that had attacked them multiple times, showed up suddenly. They were perfectly comfortable in the Ghost Zone, far more so than Jazz was. What was that going to do to them in the long run? What did it mean for a human to become ecto-contaminated?

Humans feared ghosts. It was a fact of life. A ghost tale was a synonym for a scary story. And how many times had her parents gone on about how dangerous ghosts were? What would the world do with humans that were too ghostly? She worried about her brother’s future enough, how much did she have to worry about his friends? Jazz felt like she was on the verge of panic.

Wait. That wasn’t right. Those were the worries she’d addressed them ages ago with Danny or at least about Danny. Danny was happy and healthy. He got along with people. He wasn’t rejected now any more than he was before the accident. There was no reason to think somehow Sam and Tucker would be any different. That panic was induced.

Jazz glared at Spectra. “I thought the Truce meant you wouldn’t attack me,” she seethed. Jazz did not appreciate being played like that.

Spectra laughed, shrill and cruel. “I never was able to influence you the way I should have. You and your brother were always such a pain.” She took a flask of some kind out of, well, somewhere and stared at it. “He got angry instead of depressed. I had to resort to humiliation and lying to get him where I wanted. You just shook everything off.”

Jazz remembered Spirit Week. She remembered how depressed everyone was, how angry and hurt Danny had been. She remembered finding out about his secret. She remembered him saving her after Spectra had tried to blow her up. She didn’t remember Spectra trying to manipulate her like she did the rest of the student body.

“You never tried to get to me like you did everyone else,” Jazz said, sounding more confident than she felt.

Spectra laughed again. “Of course I did. I wasn’t going to turn down a meal and you only had to be remembered as a cheerful young lady with a bright future for the school to mourn you, you didn’t actually have to be cheerful. But, you just kept brushing me off.” Her face twisted into something dark. “Then you blew away my body with that stupid peeler and everything got worse. By the time I was healed enough to return to the human world and start feeding again, everything had gotten harder.

“When I first went to Casper High, it was just you and your brother that were resistant to my influence.” Spectra took a swig of something, Jazz thought may have been the ghost-nip wine some of the other ghosts had been talking about earlier. “When I went back a year later, just about everyone in your stupid, little town could shake me off.” She made a face. “Trying to get even a little youth was so messy.”

“You turned me into a floating head,” Jazz said, trying to keep her voice level.

“Like I said, messy.” Her lips curled in disgust. “All the effort I put into that stupid, convoluted plan to regain a body and it didn’t even work.” She took another swig out of her flask.

Jazz felt little sympathy. “There has to be another way for you to get what you want, one that doesn’t involve killing teenagers,” Jazz said. For some reason, she was positive she was right.

Spectra’s nostrils flared. “Of course there is,” she said, bitter and condescending, “But misery is the way I prefer. Making teens miserable is so much easier than making them happy or inspired. Well, usually.” Her aura flared. “That town is getting so contaminated that all the humans are being ruined. Just like your parents' experiments ruined you and your brother.”

Jazz knew she should ignore that, but several pieces suddenly slotted into place. She’d been exposed to ectoplasm for as long as she could remember. She rarely went into the ghost zone, but how much did that matter when you were eating contaminated food? Spectra had barely affected her, even way back when she was just learning about her brother's secret. She wasn’t afraid of ghosts, she fought back, even if it meant she got in the way sometimes. She hadn’t run, seriously run, since Danny and their mom had taken that vacation to Florida.

And, she understood ghosts. She wasn’t fluent in Ghostspeak or even trying to learn it like Sam and Tucker, but she could feel bits and pieces. She’d been doing it all day, looking at a ghost's body language, their aura, understanding what they were feeling or if they were telling the truth even when she shouldn’t have been able to. She shouldn’t be able to read a metal face or one that looked like a spider for that matter. She shouldn’t be able to say with absolute confidence that Spectra was telling the truth, or her version of the truth, even if it was clearly manipulative. But she was confident.

The ghosts knew it, too, that they were like this. Skulker invited them for a reason. He outright said they were “close enough”. Maybe he was right.

Did Danny know?

He had to, at least to some extent. Right? Though her little brother could be pretty oblivious, so maybe not. He didn’t exactly have a lot of people to talk to outside of Sam and Tucker and it was hard to see something happening to yourself or people you were around every day.

If only Jazz knew more. More in general. More about ghosts. More about Danny. She’d pulled too far away. She’d only be trying to give him space, to recognize his autonomy, but now she didn’t know what she didn’t know. They’d agreed ghost hunting was his thing, but she’d promised to help in other ways. Had she even been doing that much? Could she? There was terror in that thought.

Jazz caught Spectra smiling into her flask. Nope. She was not playing into that. Spectra was being sneakier, grabbing at insecurities that had been nagging at her all day, but Jazz was not allowing that woman to feed on her.

Jazz breathed and thought about all the books she had read on communication. She could do this.

And, actually, that was the thing, she could deal with this. This situation was fixable. Not the ghostliness issue, Jazz was pretty sure that was something that didn’t need to be fixed, but how little she knew about her brother. She needed to change course, not reverse because she didn’t want to go back to annoying him and getting in his way. She definitely didn’t want to go back to accidentally souping him every night.

No, that wasn’t what she wanted. She needed to initiate more conversations and ask more questions. She needed to pay attention to what he was doing and ask about it. She could ask about what he was doing when he was going to the Ghost Zone. She could ask if he’d had any interesting fights. She could ask if he’d learned anything interesting. She needed to have the confidence to ask questions without worrying that Danny would take it the wrong way. She needed to push a little without pushing too far.

She could do this. It would be hard and there would probably be plenty of misunderstandings, but Jazz could do this. She was going to talk to her brother and she was going to learn about ghosts and she was going to figure out what it meant to be ghostly enough to be invited to ghost parties. She could do this.

Jazz looked towards Spectra and smiled brightly. Spectra glowered in return, obviously realizing that trying to manipulate her into panic and misery wasn’t going to work. Jazz didn’t care. The woman had given her perspective. And hope.

“Thanks, Spectra,” Jazz said, “You’ve really given me a lot to think about.”

Spectra looked ready to spit acid. “Damn Fentons,” she muttered, drinking from her flask, “You lot are all freaks.”

As she was saying that, Danny and Johnny were swooping around towards the finish-line, neck and neck. Jazz stood, craning to see. In the last few meters, Danny pulled ahead, finishing first, but barely. The crowd cheered, and Jazz cheered with them, ignoring the angry woman next to her spilling her drink.

Danny and Johnny shook hands before Johnny ruffled Danny’s hair good naturedly. Jazz smiled. This was good. Tucker and Sam were excitedly talking over each other about something, probably how cool the race was. Some of the ghosts were exchanging whatever they had been betting. This was all good.

Jazz’s smile grew. She had a lot to learn about her little brother. She had a lot to learn about herself. That was fine. She had time to do that. For now, she was going to congratulate her brother and maybe socialize a bit. She wasn’t going to learn anything if she didn’t ask.

* In case anyone was wondering why Danny got two Truce gifts its because the box ghost is no longer allowed to be part of the gift exchange since he always ends up giving someone an empty box and then trying to take it back. He does not know this. Every year someone gets assigned to receive an empty box from him and someone else is assigned to give him an empty box so that he feels included.

Notes:

* It wasn't mentioned in the fic, but Skulker got Technus a bunch of broken electrical components that Vlad threw away. Technus loved it.

#phandom truce 2024 #gift #fic

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phandomholidaytruce · 6 months ago

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Truce 2024

@charcoalhawk Happy Truce! Technically, I have not finished editing, but I didn't want to make you wait too much longer, so enjoy the first third of the fic! I will update this post with the full fic and an AO3 link when I finish editing tomorrow.

Prompt: Danny finds out that ghosts can have (non-blood blossom) food allergies

AO3 link to be added

—

Danny winces when the flash goes off, and rubs his eye as Sam’s camera spits out the photo. It will take a few minutes for the instant film to develop. Thirty seconds before they can make out basic shapes. A minute after that for the colours to settle in, and then one more until it’s at full contrast. But Sam plucks the photo from the ejection slot, raises her eyebrows at the still-white square, and tuts.

“You ruined it,” she says.

“Did not!”

“Yeah, I can feel it.”

Danny leans forward to snatch the photo out of her hands, but Sam scuttles backward across her carpet to escape. He could give chase, but it’s not really worth the effort, especially when Sam ends up in the far corner by her tipped over box of scrapbook supplies. Too much ammunition at her disposal.

Danny twists around to face Sam’s bed, where Tucker sprawls with one hand on a comic book and the other digging through a bowl of popcorn. “Come on, Tuck. Back me up.”

Tucker’s stare skips from Danny to Sam before sliding back to his comic, and he says, “I bet you blinked.”

Traitor.

Danny’s wounded noise is punctuated by Sam’s sharp laugh, and she keeps snickering under her breath as she grabs a marker. It takes less than thirty seconds for Sam to mark the photo with the date, select a handful—literally, she sticks them to her palm first—of ghost-themed stickers with complementary shapes and colours, and add the photo to the next empty page in her scrapbook with the stickers as a border. She even finds that empty page in a single flip. Danny has seen Sam’s mother attack a floral arrangement with the same precision, but wisely decides not to mention it.

Sam then scoops all the supplies back into the box with a single sweep of her arm and zero organization. (This, too, is like her mother, who has a drawer of trimmers and flower food and floral wire all in a jumble that Danny glimpsed once two years ago, and he’s still not certain it was real.)

“It’s fine,” Sam says as she shoves the box under her bed. “It’s as good as we’re going to get.”

“That’s not actually reassuring.”

“Here, look.” She shuffles back across the room, holding the scrapbook out to Danny and Tucker.

The colours haven’t finished developing, but the image is clear. Sam’s room with its purples and blacks and the occasional splash of red. Her curtains in the background, with deep shadows in the folds where the light can’t touch. The candles on her bedside table in the foreground, with their perfect little flames, or as perfect as a Polaroid camera can capture.

And Danny, sat cross-legged in the middle of her carpet, the air around him fuzzy and dotted with static, eyes wide, one pupil stretched and pinched in the middle, the iris around it a bit too green for his human form.

“Huh,” Tucker says. He’s holding the scrapbook now, though Danny didn’t notice him taking it, or even realize he was off the bed until that moment. “Should we be worried about that?”

Tucker turns to the previous page. This photo is dated a week prior, taken at Tucker’s house. Danny slouches on a beanbag chair, attention fixed on the monitor across from him. His pupil is normal, but the static remains. It’s in the photo before this one, too, and the one before that, and the one before that, all of them taken about a week apart. It takes a good ten photos for Danny to realize the field of static is growing smaller as they go back.

“So, I noticed something weird,” Sam says.

Danny glares at her. “Wow, really?”

“Just, look. Remember that extra credit project you did for biology?” Sam swats Danny’s hand away and turns the scrapbook to the very first page, revealing a picture of him and Tucker cuddling at the zoo. “It was only a few weeks after the accident. I didn’t even see it at the time, but a few days later I was going through my photos and spotted this.”

Sam taps Danny’s figure. It takes a few seconds of squinting before he sees it—a faint speckling around his body, little flecks that could be mistaken for damage if the photo weren’t only a few months old. The photo next to it is dated almost a month later, and the speckling is much more pronounced.

“I’ve taken a picture of you every week for the past few months to keep track, since I noticed it was growing stronger. I didn’t really think anything else would happen until your eye changed last month. And the pupils are new.”

“Oh, well, thank goodness for that. At least there’s something new,” Danny says.

“And you didn’t blink,” Tucker offers.

“This is bad, right? It seems bad.”

“We already knew you don’t photograph well.”

“I think digital files of me getting corrupted is a bit different than this, Tucker!” Danny flaps his hands at the scrapbook. This is great. Perfect! Just what he needs! A stock of evidence that could expose him if anyone found it. Not that Danny doesn’t trust Sam to keep the scrapbook safe—she did retrieve it from a box under her bed in the first place. But Sam isn’t the only person in the world who owns an instant camera.

It was fine when, a few days after the accident, they discovered Danny couldn’t be photographed by typical means anymore. No matter how many times Tucker tried it on a dozen different devices, the image was always corrupted, becoming a wash of static. But Sam’s Polaroid still worked, and so did the digital camera his parents made. He nearly panicked the first time his dad took a family photo after the accident, but apparently the Fenton camera’s ability to “capture a ghost in its truest form” means Danny looks normal in either form. No corruptions, no distortion. Just Fenton or Phantom.

How long will it be until that camera doesn’t work, either?

Danny wraps his arms around his head and groans.

“It might not be as bad as you think,” Sam says. “Before the eyes, I thought it was just your ghostly aura. But your powers are a lot stronger than they were a few months ago, and I think some of that is bleeding through in the pictures.”

“You think that sounds good? I don’t want to be more of a ghost.”

“Do you feel like more of a ghost?”

Would he even notice? He opens his mouth snap back, but Sam’s questioning look stops him.

“You don’t look any different,” Tucker says. “No fangs or pointy ears.”

“I don’t have those as a ghost.”

“You don’t have them as a ghost yet.”

Sam snaps the scrapbook shut. “Tucker, that’s not helping. But I have a theory. In more traditional ghost hunting, people use photography to capture what they can’t see with their naked eye. I don’t think you’re becoming more of a ghost, but as you get stronger, your ghostly aspects show up more on film. Your digital camera still works, right?”

Danny nods. They use it often enough that he would have noticed something by now.

“Then this”—Sam pokes Danny in the chest—“is still your ‘true’ form. But if you’re worried, we can always keep an eye out for pointy ears or fangs.”

Danny wants to pick through the scrapbook again, check every photo for something Sam might have missed. But she holds it tight in her lap and keeps looking at Danny like she knows exactly what he’s thinking. He’s so focused on the scrapbook that he doesn’t notice Tucker leaning in and making a peace sign until a shutter goes off.

Tucker lowers his phone and turns it around, his smile falling when he sees static. Squinting, Danny can only just make out what might be Tucker’s peace sign, and two brighter spots that are probably his own eyes.

“Aw, man,” Tucker says.

“Dude, what else did you expect?”

“I thought it might be different now since Sam’s pictures are. I still don’t get why that works but my stuff doesn’t.”

“Isn’t it some superstition that analogue technology works better around ghosts?” Danny asks.

“Your parents don’t use analogue!”

“My parents specifically design their gear to function around ghosts.”

“So unfair.”

Sam shrugs. “Those superstitions have to come from somewhere. Ghosts have probably been around as long as humans have. There has to be some truth to all those old stories. Like the blood blossoms.”

Sam isn’t looking at Danny when she says it. She’s turned away, returning her scrapbook to its place under her bed, so she misses the way Danny freezes for a second.

But Tucker doesn’t. “You okay?”

Danny forces himself to move, leaning back against Sam’s bed and folding his arms behind his head. “Yeah.”

It’s impressive how Tucker manages to say, “Dude, are you stupid? I know you better than that,” with nothing more than raised eyebrows. It’s also a bit rude.

Danny sticks his tongue out in return, but Tucker’s eyebrows don’t get any lower, and he has to look away or else he might crack. It’s stupid, getting worked up at just the mention of blood blossoms. It’s a flower. A couple petals on a stalk. Thinking of them shouldn’t make his skin hot and his chest tight and his tongue prickle.

He grips his knees and takes a deep breath, Tucker’s stare boring into him all the while. After a few seconds, Tucker says, “Okay,” and presses his leg against Danny’s. The warmth grounds him, and by the time Sam comes up from under her bed, his breathing has evened out.

“Think a salt line could stop him?” Tucker asks. He reaches up to the bed and grabs his popcorn. “Ooooooh, the great ghost boy, stopped by salty deliciousness.

“you said salt line, not salt...whatever this would be. Besides, popcorn would never betray me like that, no matter what Jazz thinks.” To prove his point, Danny grabs a handful and shoves it in his mouth. Buttery, salty, delicious popcorn. “I love you,” he says to it.

Tucker snickers. “Is Jazz still making your parents do that healthy diet thing?”

“Oh my God, yes, I hate it.” He sits up and puts on his best Jazz impression. “‘You need to take care of your body to care for your mind.’ It’s nice that she knows my secret, but I don’t think she realizes she doesn’t need to find ways to be useful. Just having her helps.”

“Maybe say that to her?” Sam says. “She probably feels bad that she didn’t mesh with the team. I get it. We’d be pretty upset if we couldn’t help you, right, Tuck?”

“Hm?” Tucker, as focused on the popcorn as Danny is, blinks. “Oh, yeah.”

“Okay, sure, but Sam. Please. She doesn’t let them buy chips. I haven’t eaten popcorn with salt and butter in a month.” Oh, how Danny has missed it.

“I bet there’s fudge,” Sam says.”

“Yeah, try and get my mom to stop making fudge. Or my dad to stop eating it. Jazz knows when to pick her battles.”

“And her enemy is popcorn.”

Danny nods solemnly. “It’s popcorn.”

#phandom truce 2024 #gift #art

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phandomholidaytruce · 6 months ago

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Happy late Truce! Im so sorry @mysterious-ink-slime for being behind! I hope you like it regardless!

#phandom truce 2024 #gift #art

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phandomholidaytruce · 6 months ago

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this is my @phandomholidaytruce gift for @armed-with-knitting-needles !! This is actually the second time we've been paired for a phandom event, and I hope I delivered.

I filled their Sam and Star being friends prompt, with a style swap! I decided to update their styles by taking their original aesthetics and adapting it to today's version. So Star's wearing a gothic lolita coord and Sam has Star's lularoe leggings on lol

#phandom truce 2024 #gift #art

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phandomholidaytruce · 6 months ago

Text

Stardust

On Ao3 as The_Cinderninja

Holiday Truce gift for @astatia-ghast

The house is quiet now. Quieter than I can remember it ever being. There’s the hum of the refrigerator, the creak of the foundation shifting as the house breathes, the muffled sounds of life outside the old window panes and the even older, thinner glass. But the spaces between these sounds stretch long now. They ache in a way they never did when I was alive.

At night, when they sleep, I drift through empty rooms. The kitchen where I’d steal snacks and argue with Jazz over the last slice of pizza. The living room where I’d sit, my legs thrown over the arm of the couch while Mom tried to make me sit properly. My room, where the silence is comforting and suffocating all the same.

I drift down the hallway where my sister used to chase me, red faced, shrieking my name and threatening violent retribution for whatever crimes I had committed against her books, her dolls, her hair. Now she shuffles to her room, her shoulders rounded, her face pale and hollowed. She doesn’t slam her door the way she used to.

I wish she would.

My room is the same, but it isn’t. They haven’t touched much - my books still lean haphazardly on the shelf, my posters still cling to the walls, curling at the corners. My glow stars remain in the places they were glued ten years ago when we first moved in, when we first painted the walls robin’s egg blue, when my four year old self stood perched on the headboard dictating the placement of each star, in each constellation, until my ceiling was - to me - a perfect mimicry of the night sky. But it smells wrong now. Stale. Like absence.

Mom walks by sometimes and pauses at the doorway, her hand brushing the frame as though she wants to step in but can’t. Sometimes I think she’s trying to conjure the courage to push the door open. Other times I think she feels me there, and is trying to tell herself she does not.

Dad hasn’t set foot in my room since the day he cleared out my laundry. He keeps busy fixing things around the house - things that don’t need fixing. I watch him through the window as he tends the garden he never used to care about. Our yard was nothing but half-yellowed grass for as long as I could remember. A storage space for spillover junk, spare parts, odds and ends that didn’t have a home in the house or garage.

Now the old kiddie pool is gone, and in its place are neat rows of pepper, cucumber, and tomato.

I’ve never seen Dad spend so much time outside before. Now I know where Jazz and I get our freckles from.

It’s Jazz I follow the most. She’s the one I worry about. She stays locked in her room, staring at the ceiling. She doesn’t read anymore. Sometimes, she talks to me. Her voice cracks when she says my name, but she talks.

“I miss you, you know,” she whispered yesterday. “Even if you were annoying.”

I wanted to tell her I miss her too. I wanted to tell her I wasn’t gone, but I didn’t. (I couldn’t).

Would it help?

Mom and Dad have always been firm: Ghosts don’t rest. Ghosts are what’s left when you cling too tightly to a life already ended. “They suffer,” Mom said once, years ago, when Jazz asked if Grandma had become a ghost. “It’s not a fate you should wish on your loved ones. It’s a hollow, selfish comfort to wish for.”

Would knowing I’m still here bring comfort? Or would it break something already fragile?

I don’t know.

Today, Jazz sits on her carpeted floor, her back to the door, her shoulders shaking. I reach out, knowing I can’t touch her, but wishing I could.

“Please…” she says, so softly I almost miss it. “I feel crazy, but… I swear…” She trails off. “Please, don’t be gone.”

I shouldn’t. I know I shouldn’t.

What good could it do her? Knowing I’m still here? Mom’s words play on a loop in my mind: Ghosts don’t rest. They suffer.

But I’m so tired of being alone. Tired of watching them grieve while I’m still here. My fingers curl around the nothingness that’s left of my life, and something inside of me feels angry at the unfairness, of how wrong it all is.

How none of this should have happened in the first place if our parents had paid more attention to their own children than to ghost stories. In a way, they’d always loved ghosts more than me, hadn’t they?

I… don’t know where that thought came from. I know it isn’t correct, but… it feels true in a way I can’t shake.

I stretch out, and it takes every ounce of will I have to brush my hand against the photo frame on her bookshelf. A photo of her and me - her and I? - from some family trip I was too young to still remember. It is a candid photo, neither one of us are smiling. I don’t know what was so special about that day that she chose to frame it and keep it all these years. Now, I’ll never be able to ask.

The photo frame shifts. Not enough to topple over, not enough to fall from the shelf. But it shifts.

Jazz freezes.

Her voice trembles. “It’s just the wind,” she murmurs. Her eyes dart to her closed window.

I watch her try to convince herself as her heart thunders in her chest. But then she swallows hard, her jaw setting with fragile determination.

“If you’re here,” she says, louder this time, “do it again.”

I hesitate, but only for a moment. I nudge it again, anger forgotten but this time fuelled by adrenaline - or whatever the ghostly equivalent is in my non-existent endocrine system - tipping it forward until it clatters softly against the wood.

Her breath hitches and stops.. “Oh my god,” she whispers. “Oh my god, oh my god.” She stands up, backing away until her knees hit the edge of the bed.

She’s afraid. My chest tightens with the wrongness of it, but I can’t stop now.

“It’s not real,” she mutters to herself. “Coincidence. It’s just - coincidence.” Her voice cracks. “Do it again.”

I flick her lamp off, plunging us into darkness. She gasps, stumbling back onto the bed.

For a moment, silence. And then -

“I knew it.” Her voice is soft, shaking.

She sinks onto the mattress, her face in her hands. Her breath comes fast, ragged, and then the dam breaks and emotions spill out, flooding the room.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I’m so, so sorry. For everything. For every stupid fight. Every time I yelled at you. Every time I wasn’t fair, or kind, or-” Her voice shatters. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you needed me.”

Her sobs shake me, filling the room, and the air, and my soul like wine overfilling a cup, liquid starlight, and I feel like I’ve been hollowed out and refilled with luminiferous aether. I reach toward her, instinctively wanting to offer comfort, but my hand falls short of her shoulder. The space between us is immeasurable. Her room is small but the quintessence contained between its four corners is vast.

How do I tell her she has nothing to apologize for? That she was everything a sister was supposed to be? We bickered because we cared. We fought because we trusted each other to survive the fallout. It was always us against everything else. Her and me against the world.

And now she’s crying, and it sounds like a sky of stardust.

“I miss you,” she whispers into the darkness. “I miss you so much.”

I want to tell her I’m sorry too. Sorry I can’t be the brother she needs anymore. Sorry I can’t protect her from this hollow grief.

I thought I could comfort her. Thought I could soothe my own loneliness by showing here I’m still here. Instead, I’ve torn open wounds that were barely beginning to scab over.

I want to reach out, to tell her that none of this was her fault. That there’s nothing to apologize for. That every fight, every shout, every frustrated sigh was just a part of us. Part of what it meant to be her little brother.

But I have no voice.

Instead, I watch as my silence - the only answer I can give - drags her deeper into the shallow grave of grief that’s already swallowing her whole.

Mom and Dad’s voices echo in my mind. Ghosts suffer. They make others suffer.

I didn’t believe it then. I didn’t think about it much at all, really. Ghosts were just another bedtime story, another way to make sense of the unknown. My parents’ weird obsession. But now...

The house is hollow, and I’m the thing rattling around inside it. This place is too big for the people left inside it, but too small for me. I can’t move without brushing against memories.

Jazz is still crying in her room. Every instinct I have screams to stay, to do something, but what’s the point? I’ve already hurt her more than I ever did in life. Mom and Dad were right - ghosts are no comfort.

I leave her there and drift into the kitchen. It’s empty, dark but for the faint green glow from the stove clock. The hum of the refrigerator fills the space, steady and indifferent, the sound of life continuing without me, underscored by the air conditioner kicking on.

There’s no hum of electricity coursing through the walls like blood through veins. No blinking red light from the primed security system. The crash of metal-on-metal, of tools and machinery, of hands and minds at work behind the basement door - those sounds are gone.

All of it buried behind the heavy steel door. Locked away, dismantled, abandoned.

This house was a living thing once, but now it feels almost as dead as I am.

Mom and Dad sit in silence at every meal. They don’t say anything, don’t even look at each other. The long pauses between words have become whole dinners, their work abandoned like old habits. Dad’s hands no longer twitch toward his tools. Mom’s gaze no longer lingers on the basement door. They’ve boarded up the pieces of themselves that once defined them.

Mom and Dad have lost so much. Not just me - they’ve lost their purpose, the drive that once filled this house with noise and light and endless activity.

They don’t speak of ghosts anymore.

I wonder if they sense me pacing the rooms I used to fill. Haunting them. Do they know I’m still here? Do they hope I’m still here? Or do they pray to all of the gods they’ve never believed in that I’m not? Maybe they sit across from each other at night, heads bowed, praying that I’ve found peace.

I don’t know.

The silence is loud.

They were right all along about ghosts. Ghosts carry their unfinished lives like anchors. Ghosts suffer. And they make the living suffer with them.

I don’t want to be that. I don’t want to be the reason my family fractures any further than they already have.

But here I am.

I know that it’s selfish to stay, but I don’t want to leave.

The hum of the refrigerator. The creak of brick and beam. Their mercurial grief flooding the house with quicksilver.

I don’t want to leave.

#phandom truce 2024 #gift #fic

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