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[phicphight]

CONGRATS!!!!! Team Human won this year! Thank you to everyone who participated this year! We wrote 1,150,867 words this year! The 2025 Prompts are now live for anyone to fill (for no points)

See you next year!

[phicphight]

Frigid, Chapter 5

Characters: Danny, Clockwork Words: 1583 Warnings: little bit of body horror

Danny didn't wake up. Waking up would imply he had lost consciousness. If anything, his awareness of his surroundings dimmed, fading from searing overwhelm to something softer, kinder. Like being wrapped in layers of blankets.

His brain felt scoured clean, like the sense of light and…and other things had stripped away several layers of gunk and some skin besides.

His core felt similarly bare.

Read the rest on AO3, or below the readmore:

For a good few seconds, Danny wondered who had hit him, and with what. Everything stung like fresh road rash, from his…

He couldn't feel his fingers. Or his toes.

He could feel other things. He could feel a lot. He was definitely alive, or at the very least existing. He would hurt less if he didn't exist. 

So. He existed.

Had his parents peeled him? Was this what the Fenton peeler felt like? If it was, Danny was turning that thing into scrap the first chance he got.

Something moved. His eyes were closed. There was no corner of his sight for movement to catch in. Instead, it felt like shadows shifting behind frosted glass, except rendered in memory and metaphor. 

His ghostly senses.

Danny swung his head in its direction, and was rewarded with the memory of brass, and glass, and cycles. The sense of machine oil lingered on his tongue, melting into memories of ticking clocks and asking Clockwork for help exhausting the endless well of cold inside.

Oh.

It was Clockwork. He would know what was happening. 

Danny asked. Instead of speaking, some part of him stretched. Another trembled. 

More of him curled in confusion. What was going on?

The memory of cycles redoubled, painting itself over a body part that Danny was starting to worry wasn't actually his head. The cycles tick-ticked by, steady. Certain. Soothing.

He didn't know what that meant. He wriggled, then winced. The scraped-bare sensation was already shifting into a deepening ache.

Danny suddenly found himself swaddled in the memory of clocks. There was a reminder of other things prickling across his tongue; candle wax and seawater, silver and burning rope, the song of tiny quartz crystal, vibrating in time with one another.

Was Clockwork hugging him? 

Danny wasn't in any shape to question the oddity. However odd the situation was, Clockwork comforting him was the least of it. He did his best to lean into the situation, and was rewarded when the sensations he associated with Clockwork intensified, softening around him until Danny's mind began to calm.

They drifted. (And how did he know what they were doing?)

Danny listened.

And beneath the clocks, beneath the brass and machine oil scent–beneath silver and seawater and the arc of stars–beneath that there was something quieter that he'd never felt before from Clockwork. It was fabric whispering against itself, like the baritone rumble of cloth drawn taut in the wind.

It felt like–

Like–

And Danny remembered unfolding.

He remembered space pouring into his veins, filling his lungs like a river bursting from its banks. Remembered it swirling in eddie currents just as strong as those pressing in from Europa's ocean…and then getting stronger.

He remembered it building like a tide within him, until it wasn't buttressing Danny against the pressure of Europa’s ocean but pushing him into it, seeping out of him through hairline cracks in his skin that flaked, that crumbled under the strain, taking pieces of him with it until the whole of him, newly him, had been swept free of his shell.

He remembered understanding. He remembered seeing, feeling the sun and other countless pinpricks in the cosmos, each of them larger by far than the delicate little dustlings that orbited them. 

He remembered the vast symphony of it all.

He remembered why he was keeping his eyes closed.

He trembled, shoved himself closer to Clockwork at the memory of the flood of formation, of sensation, and Clockwork folded around him in response.

The enormity of his memories was a tangible thing, their weight great enough to hold their own gravity.

He could not ignore them forever. 

But for now– for now, he could cling at the taste of brass and clocks and other human trappings, and ignore the murmur of eternity beneath it. Ignore the way it harmonized with the murmur in himself.

For now, he could keep his eyes shut and pretend he hadn't seen the shape of infinity, hadn't understood it. Hadn't found it within his core, hadn't become it.

Hadn't Become.

—

It was some time later that the sensation that was Clockwork began to push against Danny in some places while pulling at him in others. 

Curious and not a little exhausted, Danny let him.

Soon, Danny felt something come unstuck. It peeled from him in scraps and strips before the motion built, and the whole piece floated away. 

Except–except not quite. 

He could still feel it. It was still attached to him. For a moment he wondered if Clockwork was going to tear it the rest of the way off but instead there was another faint nudge, and another piece started peeling away from the rest of him. 

A steady buzz built in the skin (was it skin?) that was now only barely attached to the rest of him as it fell asleep. Pins and needles swept over it–and were replaced with something else. The entire area shivered with a sensation like the play of light, the wind in trees.

But it was different. Not wrong, but harsh. Desolate, like the Arizona desert.

Quiet.

And then, his senses brightened, bloomed across the flap attached to him. 

Danny froze.

Partway through pulling a second piece off of him, Clockwork froze too. Unlike Danny, his was a watchful sort of quiet, and when Danny’s worry began to buzz around him, Clockwork's aura pulled close again. For a few long minutes Danny was back in Long Now, nodding off on the couch Clockwork had never admitted was there for Danny. 

The familiar aura lingered, and only withdrew once the worry had, too. 

The message was clear: Danny was safe. This was expected. Everything's the way it's supposed to be. Danny shivered from head to tail, feeling it more than remembering Clockwork say it.

Clockwork's aura focused on another part of Danny and began prodding again. With a couple of pinches, Danny felt the leading edge of another piece of himself peel away. It felt–Danny twisted in Clockwork's grasp, trying to tug it loose faster. It felt like a hangnail, a loose tooth. Having it linger like this was uncomfortable.

Just when Danny decided to locate his hand so he could itch the thing loose properly, Clockwork interceded. A feeling like the hands of a clock caught under the flap and pulled, peeling it away like skin from leather. There was another starburst of sensation, light shivering along the surface of it followed by an increase in Danny's awareness of their surroundings. 

Relief. Danny relaxed.

The flaps, two of them now, floated around him like fabric in water: slow, graceful. Fragile. More like veils than flaps of skin. Danny twitched one and it was slow to respond, trailing after itself like a pennant in wind.

With each nudge, with each veil tugged open, Danny could feel a little bit more. But the veils protected him, too; they took the harsh reality glaring from his memory like an incoming train and diffused it, softened its razor edges until only a gauzy vision of it remained.

Like this, the stars felt familiar and kind. Like this, the distant dance of a binary star system as it whirled ever closer to kilonova was like the strain of a melody carried on wind.

It was violent. He knew it was violent, could see it playing out behind the eyes he still hadn't opened. The way the twin neutron stars spiraled together faster and faster, closer and closer until–

Most of the universe’s heavier elements were thought to be from kilonovas, rare as they were. Stars didn't make those elements unless they were dying, and certain elements simply couldn't be born from anything less violent. Not even supernovas were enough.

Kilonovas were.

But for now, the breathtaking destruction of the kilonova hadn't reached them yet. The light from it, and its gravity waves were still rippling towards him like waves in an ocean vast beyond comprehension.

The beat of it grew sharper; a horror movie chord growing more urgent.

He drew his attention to other things; the yawning black hole at the center of the galaxy, juggling solar systems in its orbit. A blue giant, large enough that the sun was a pinprick in comparison. The vast emptiness where no galaxies were–

He shied from that, reached instead for a scattering of newborn stars too close to be coincidental, caught in a diaphanous cradle of dust.

A nebula.

The horsehead nebula.

He remembered.

He remembered wondering if Clockwork visited the horsehead nebula in his free time, since he knew his tower could withstand what Danny could throw at it.

He remembered the workshop, and sitting on brass, and being so frightened, so cold.

He remembered the ice sheets of the Cryogenian, and of Europa above. He remembered the much smaller ice sheets of Antarctica in his own time, and visiting each of them.

Earth was so small, and he'd been smaller still.

Clockwork's presence was careful around him, and gentle. It pulled another veil loose, and another.

The universe crooned to him, and Danny knew: he was safe. He was home. 

[phicphight]

Frigid, Chapter 4

Characters: Danny, Clockwork Words: 1005 Warnings: Drowning and suffocation. Really trying to evoke a sense of smallness with this one

Dark. 

Black. 

If the ice had made them as giants wandering a field of singing stars, the ocean beneath transmuted them into motes of dust in a dense abyss. The darkness was deep, and suffocating, and endless.

Read the rest on AO3, or below the readmore:

The bubbles that had given their time in the ice a sense of scale, of motion were absent here, and so Clockwork became Danny's only point of reference. The rush of fluid against his face could have been from the speed of their travel. But it as easily could have been from some tide, or current. They could be flying through a river within an ocean, large enough to put the Amazon to shame. They could be skimming less than a mile beneath the ice, just out of sight. Or they could be lost, tumbling out of control in a vast churning, twin droplets in entire seas of water as they rose, boiled against the ice above, and sank again every minute.

Danny was intangible. Danny was intangible, but that did not make him untouchable. Even back home on Earth (on Earth!) he could hear things, see them while intangible. He could pick things up. And, even while intangible, he could feel it as he moved through walls. Or, less frequently, as walls moved through him. 

All this was to say: Danny was intangible. The water closing in around him with the strength of iron still affected him. It buffeted his face, tangled his fingers and hair in turbulence and wrapped him in an endless rush that drowned all other sounds before they could reach Danny's ears.

Ahead of him, Clockwork's form distorted in the flow, outline wavering as if through rain on a windscreen. His glow wavered, too; for long moments, the water turned cloudy, tinting Clockwork's blues and purples a more amber hue.

Danny closed his eyes and looked for Clockwork in other ways.

The dizzying texture of Clockwork's aura blazed across Danny's more ghostly senses. It was a thing of glass and glittering shards and it was full of cycles cast in brass marching around eternity, and focusing on it made Danny all the more aware of just how tiny they really were.

How tiny everything was. 

He thought about the bubbles in the ice, small enough to sparkle like the distant stars. He thought about the Sun.

He thought about Earth.

A pale blue dot, Danny thought, and remembered the picture Voyager had taken decades before. Suspended in a sunbeam.

Surrounded by black. Surrounded by everything and nothing at all. 

Earth was nothing.

Earth was everything. It was all Danny had ever known, all any human had ever known.

There was an idea, there. Something between yearning and revelation that was just begging to spread trembling wings.

He opened his eyes again, and looked ahead to Clockwork. Maybe…

Maybe, Earth was all any human ever would know. The only ghost who knew was flying through the water ahead of him, every line smoothed to a perfect curve.

Maybe…

The water shoved at Danny again, and instead of resisting it, this time he let it flow across his skin in an echo of the ice’s touch, carving away as it would. His body rippled, smoothed, drew long again and suddenly–

The rush parted. The water quieted.

And in the newfound silence, the echoes of a song.

Unlike what Danny heard at the surface of Europa, miles and daylight and a world ago, it didn't whip-crack into higher registers. This song wasn't even as high as Clockwork's song as they'd descended the last miles through the ice, deep as that had been.

No.

Whatever sang now resonated not in his ears, but in his body, in his bones. He felt it drum across the smooth torpedo he'd become. It beat against skin stretched taut over ribs and found purchase just behind them–against his heart. 

No, against his core.

It settled there, dark and ominous, and filled the rest of him with a restless kind of helplessness as he tumbled down, down into the abyss in Clockwork’s wake.

.

The iron grip of the water grew stronger. It wrapped itself around Danny like a boa constrictor made of the darkest black he'd ever known, and as eddies tore at his intangible body like enormous teeth it occurred to him that even the touch of starlight was miles distant. 

That by now, the closest source of natural light might be the magma of Europa’s straining mantle.

But they were lost within the–not night. Night had never been so dark as this. This was the abyss, yawning wide around them. 

Danny opened his eyes again, and saw Clockwork's faint outline. Only Clockwork's faint outline.

Everything else was nothing. 

A pale blue dot–

He had never felt farther from the stars than this. He had never felt so isolated. He thought back to the stars he'd cradled under his skin just minutes before.

The nameless idea strained again, wet wings trembling under the weight of potential.

The water-song swelled.

Its notes piled against one another, crowding against Danny until it was as intense as with the iron grip of the ocean, miles deep. It wrapped around his chest and squeezed, and it was all Danny could do to imagine elsewhere; the mantle beneath them, the stars outside Europa's eggshell surface, the stately weight of Jupiter nearby. 

His eyes were open. He wasn't seeing with them.

Danny's mind was elsewhere, anywhere, everywhere. He wasn't miles beneath an alien ocean, lost and tumbling and unsure of his surroundings.

He reached, and imagined he could feel steady heat beneath. Imagined he could feel the well of Jupiter's gravity, where it dipped deeper, deeper, keeping fragile Europa caught in its orbit, crushing it to keep it warm.

Danny imagined that he knew exactly where he was.

He imagined reaching for Ganymede and Io and scarred Callisto and

something–

–cracked.

For a solitary, suspended moment that stretched like taffy, Danny wondered if it was him. 

And then, he knew it was. 

.

And the idea’s wings unfurled.

[phicphight]

Bad Times at Pariah's Keep

Pariah Dark (who was never trapped in the Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep) captures the halfas in the hopes of figuring out how they tick, and perhaps taking their power for himself.

For the Prompts: Someone else (the likes of Circus Gothica, Ghost Writer, heck maybe a yeti) gets to do some dismemberment on the operating table. {from @videodromeda} The Ancients lost. Pariah Dark was never sealed in eternal sleep. {from @ghostlyhabato} What if Vlad’s ecto-acne was contagious? Soon after Vlad is rushed to the hospital in pain after his accident, Maddie and Jack start developing oddly similar symptoms as well… (a Halfa College Trio AU!) {from @coyotecrackers} and Tucker, Sam, and Danny all become halfas when the portal turns on. Turns out, it's a lot harder to hide three people gaining powers than it is to hide one. {from @aconfusedkitten}

Read Also on AO3

[Warnings for blood, gore, dissection/vivisection, dismemberment, pain, and just generally a bad time to be had all around]

"I've finally captured them all. Every halfa in existence. Here at my mercy."

The Ghost King was an imposing figure at the best of times, but never more so than now, standing over them all as they sat there, separated from each other, helpless, waiting for him to declare what he planned to do with them all.

—

Danny's parents were up in their room, brainstorming and troubleshooting, trying to figure out why their portal hadn't worked, and when he told Sam and Tucker about it, they all but begged him to let them see.

"A portal to another dimension, huh?" Tucker said, running his hand over the steel frame of the machine. "That's so cool."

"It would be if it worked," Danny told him. "Right now, it's just a big hole in the wall."

"We should go inside it," Sam suggested. "Come on, Danny, it looks so cool!"

"Why am I the only one of us with any sense?" Danny asked. "It's a science experiment. Do you have any idea how much electricity runs through this thing? It's dangerous!"

"Correction—it would be dangerous," Tucker said. "If it worked. Which it doesn't. Like you said, it's just a big hole in the wall. How dangerous could it be?"

"Exactly," agreed Sam. "We'll be in and out, just to say we did it. What other fourteen-year-olds could say they've been inside a portal to another dimension? Even a non-functional one?"

Reluctantly, Danny relented, but he insisted they put on protective jumpsuits, just in case. His friends rolled their eyes at him, and would later point out that the jumpsuits hadn't even protected them at all, but he stood by that choice. Ghost heroes wearing normal clothes would be lame.

—

Pariah Dark stood before their cages, sizing each of them up with his one green eye.

"How satisfying it is to have the only creatures who could ever stand up to me, know kneeling down," he said. "The only question now is: which one should we take apart first? What do you think doctor?"

He turned to his underling, a ghostly doctor who alternated between manic glee at the prospect of the experiments they were about to do, and trembling in fear at his lord and master the Ghost King. Currently, the former.

"Eldest to youngest perhaps," he suggested. "Or perhaps in descending order of height? Alphabetically is, of course, also an option."

Pariah hummed in thought, then grinned wickedly. "How about reverse-alphabetically?" he suggested. "Shall we begin with this... Vlad?"

"NO!" a chorus of shouts rang out from the other trapped halfas, but the king paid them no mind.

"An excellent decision, sire," the doctor agreed. "Let us begin."

—

Jack and Maddie hugged each other as the ambulance drove off with their best friend inside. They hadn't been allowed to accompany him to the hospital, so all they could do was watch and worry.

At least, that was all they could do at first. Then, just a few hours later, Jack developed a glowing green pimple right on the tip of his nose. An hour after that, Maddie noticed one on her chin. By the end of the day, there was no denying that the pair of them had been exposed to Vlad's ecto-acne and caught it themselves.

They rushed to the hospital, where they were placed in the same room as Vlad, under strict quarantine. All that time alone together, helping each other through their shared suffering, it brought them closer together.

They were subjected to a battery of tests and experimental cures, but in the end, it wasn't the doctors, but the three of them who managed to cure the ecto-acne. After all, they'd always said there was nothing they couldn't do together. Unfortunately, they failed to find a cure before they suffered permanent consequences from the ghostly illness.

—

The door of Vlad's cage was thrown open and Pariah grabbed him with one massive hand and forcibly pulled him out, pinning him to a faintly glowing exam table while the doctor, now trembling with cowardice, flitted around, strapping down his limbs.

"Vladdy, No!"

"Vlad!"

"It's alright, my loves," Vlad said, smiling sadly at Jack and Maddie. "Better me than either of you. Now you'll have more time to think of an escape while they're distracted with me. Let me do this for you." He tilted his head, trying to see Danny and his friends in the other cages, but they were too far out of view. "All I ask is please, avert your eyes. You don't need to see this."

"Oh, they'll see it just fine when it's their turn under the knife," Pariah Dark sneered. "Doctor! Begin the operation."

The doctor grinned wickedly, his fear gone again, replaced with sick enjoyment of what he was being asked to do. He raised a glowing green scalpel.

"Gladly, sire."

To his credit, Vlad never once screamed. It wasn't his first encounter with suffering, and though he nearly broke his teeth clenching them against the agony, he managed to keep quiet. He didn't know if his family had actually heeded his words and turned away, but they didn't hear him. That much he had assured.

Pariah dark growled in frustration. "He looks the same inside as any other ghost!" he shouted. "How am I to replicate his power if I cannot identify its source?!"

"Perhaps, when we examine the others, a pattern will become clear?" The doctor suggested, quivering, barely holding back tears.

He snarled and turned away. "The next, then. I believe Tucker was his name?"

"Please, no!" Maddie screamed. "I'm begging you, please spare the children. Take us first!"

"Silence!" Pariah ordered, and Maddie snapped her mouth shut and cried. "Doctor, clean up this one, and we'll begin on the next. The boy. Tucker."

—

As it turned out, hiding three people with recently acquired ghost powers they couldn't really control wasn't exactly easy. Sam's parents didn't notice a thing, but Tucker's were a lot more observant, and he lost count of the number of hurried excuses he had to make to keep them from getting suspicious, or make a quick getaway before they could notice he'd gone partially invisible.

As for Danny, well, difficult didn't begin to cover it. For starters, his friends only had two parents to hide their powers from, whereas Danny had three. Not to mention those parents were ghost experts. Then there was Jazz, the sibling complication. Uninterested in ghosts, but very observant. 

They managed to keep their altered biology a secret for a little over a month before Danny's parents cornered them and started asking about the ghost portal accident.

"We thought, since you didn't show any outward symptoms of ecto-acne, you would recover from the accident normally, and everything would be fine," Maddie said. "But that's not the case, is it?"

"Uh... we have no idea what you mean, Mrs. Fenton," Sam said.

"Yeah," Tucker agreed, "Everything's totally normal with us."

Danny kept his mouth shut. His dad could be pretty oblivious, and even his mother wasn't the best with social things, but his father Vlad could always tell when he was lying. 

"Daniel," Vlad said, a warning tone in his voice. "You're suspiciously quiet. Anything you'd like to add?"

Danny could feel the sweat dripping off him. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Sam and Tucker giving him intense 'keep your fucking mouth shut' looks. He swallowed. But in the end, he caved under his father's scrutiny.

"The portal gave us all ghost powers!" he confessed, the words tumbling out of him in a rush like water through a burst dam. "We're ghosts now. Please don't kill us."

"Kill you?" Maddie echoed. "Sweetie, we don't kill ghosts. Capture, certainly, when they're being troublesome and causing people harm, but never kill."

"I don't think you can kill a ghost, technically," Jack tacked on. "I mean, they're already dead, aren't they?"

"Jack dear, please leave this one to us," Vlad said. "That's really not what's important right now."

"No, what's important is that there's something we need to tell you kids," Maddie said. "We always planned to tell you eventually—well, tell Danny at least—but we didn't want to scare you. You see, the first time we tried to build a ghost portal was when we were in college, and it malfunctioned then, too." She placed a gentle hand on Vlad's upper arm. "Vlad got the brunt of the blast when the proto-portal failed, and was infected with a disease called ecto-acne, which got passed onto me and Jack."

"That accident changed us, all of us," Vlad said. "The same way the accident in the portal changed you three kids."

Maddie changed first, then Vlad, then Jack, revealing their ghost forms to the three children.

"We would never hurt you kids," Maddie reassured. "But if you are like us, then we can teach you about your new powers and how to control them."

"You don't have to do this alone," Vlad said.

"That's right!" Jack agreed enthusiastically. Agreeing with his partners couldn't possibly end up changing the subject, and thus he felt that the interjection was safe.

—

Vlad was weak, heavily bleeding ectoplasm, barely clinging to consciousness, but still alive when Pariah threw him back in his cage. 

Maddie was in the cage next to him, and reach out, only to get zapped by the bars for her efforts without even coming close to reaching him. 

The kids screamed out, trying to stop the king as he grabbed Tucker by the neck and flung him onto the operating table, knocking the wind out of him.

A flash of warm, yellow light surrounded Tucker as he instinctively went ghost to cope with the pain. He'd never been very good at dealing with pain, and now his friends had to watch on in horror as he went through what would no doubt be the most painful experience of his life, second only maybe to the portal accident that had halfway killed him.

"Doctor!"

"Yes, sire," the Doctor sputtered, strapping Tucker down to the table while he was too stunned to struggle. "Right away, sire."

Tucker did scream. He didn't have Vlad's restraint in the face of pain. He screamed until his voice gave out, and then kept screaming, barely audible, broken sounds as his limbs were removed one by one for examination as his friends looked on in horror, crying and begging for the perpetrators to have mercy.

"Nothing groundbreaking to speak of in this one either," Pariah growled at length. "Onto the next."

Tucker was tossed back into his cage, along with his severed limbs, and he trembled, tears pouring down his face as his ectoplasmic form slowly pulled itself back together. 

The doctor wiped down the table and then Sam was next. She struggled like a wild animal, gnashing at her teeth and swiping at the Ghost king with her long, false nails. She spat in his face as he held her down for the doctor to secure her to the operating table. She fought and squirmed, making it as difficult as she could for the doctor's horrible scalpel to find purchase on her skin.

It didn't save her.

If anything, it just made the whole thing worse for her.

—

Sam had gone missing first, then Maddie, then Jack. It wasn't anything concerning at first. Sometimes they went out on their own, and there was no reason to worry. At least not until it started to grow late.

When his partners didn't return home, Vlad called the police to report them missing. He hated talking to police in general, and anyone about his relationship. Whenever he told anyone he was romantically involved with the Fentons, they would judge him, call him a homewrecker, and make no effort to understand the nature of the situation. More often, he said he was their business partner, and then people wondered why he seemed to care so much about them.

"Danny, you haven't seen your mom and dad around lately, have you?" Vlad asked when Danny came down from his room for a late-night glass of water.

"Not since I left for school this morning," Danny replied. "They haven't come home yet?"

"No," Vlad said. "I reported them missing to the police, but of course my concerns weren't taking seriously." He sneered. "Damn cops."

"You know, I haven't seen Sam since yesterday either," Danny said. "I thought she was just home sick from school or playing hooky, but she hasn't even called or texted."

"Three halfas missing in two days?" Vlad frowned and furrowed his brows. "This can't be good."

"I'm gonna call Tucker," Danny said.

His call received no answer. He hoped it was just because Tucker was asleep. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case.

When Danny left for school that morning, Vlad told him and Jazz that he was going to spend the day searching for Jack and Maddie and that he might be back late. 

Vlad did not return home, late or otherwise.

Finally, Danny himself was captured, snatched right out of his room by a pair of spectral skeletons with technology that stopped him from using his ghost powers. Denizens of the Ghost King's army, equipped to face him specifically.

This couldn't be good.

—

Sam was chucked back into her cage with a great amount of force that sent her slamming against the bars, giving her a nasty shock on top of the pain she'd already been subjected to. Her body was covered in deep, jagged cuts. Her skin was peeled back over some of them, exposing the muscle and even bone beneath.

She crossed her arms over her chest, holding the skin closed over her exposed ribs.

They hadn't known before today that halfa's had black bones.

They would have gladly gone their whole existences without learning that.

"The woman is next," Pariah sneered. "Is there any way to keep them from transforming? Perhaps we can gain more valuable information from studying them in their living forms."

"I can certainly try," the doctor agreed. "If you'll excuse me, sire, it will require some tools from my office."

"Go," Pariah allowed. "But be quick about it. I am not known for my patience."

Maddie couldn't hide the fear on her face when the doctor returned with a tray full of menacing-looking instruments. She made a choked sound as Pariah Dark grabbed her out of her cage, and with the help of the doctor, strapped her down to experiment. She didn't struggle, to afraid to even move a muscle.

Teal rings of light appears around her torso, but the Doctor stabbed one of his instruments through the front of her skull, directly into her brain, and the light sputtered out, leaving her very much human on the operating table.

"No, Mom!" Danny shouted. "You can't do that! She'll die!"

"Silence, wretch," Pariah ordered. "I am the King of all Ghosts. I can do whatever I want!"

But the creatures he had caged in this place were no ordinary ghosts. Their screams and shouts, insults and wails of distress filled the chamber, unceasing and very irritating. They were immune to his orders and could not be controlled. But that was what made them so powerful.

One way or another, he would have their power for his own. These wretched halfas would defy him no longer.

—

There were stories in the Ghost Zone, never told above a whisper. Stories of an uprising, centuries ago, when the ghosts of the Infinite Realms fought against Pariah Dark.

It wasn't easy for them. The Ghost King had absolute power over the citizens of his domain, and if he gave a ghost an order, they did not have the ability to defy it. They were fighting an uphill battle in the worst way, and though they fought anyway, many feared it was only a matter of time before the rebellion was expunged.

Then, six ghosts called the Ancients, the oldest ghosts in the realms, with power to rival even the king's, banded together, with the support of the rebellion, and attempted to seal Pariah Dark in an ancient ghostly relic known as the Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep.

But Pariah Dark had spies everywhere, and knew about their plan. When they came to him with the sarcophagus, he turned the relic against them, capturing the strongest of the Ancients in the Sarcophagus, and handily defeating the rest before sending them to the dungeon of his keep to rot for the rest of eternity. 

If only they'd succeeded. If only they'd ended the reign of this fearsome tyrant centuries ago. None of this would be happening now.

—

"Blood is much stickier than ectoplasm," Pariah Dark commented, wiping his bloodied hands on a rag. "More opaque, too. It's much harder to see what we're looking at in the human form."

"Not to mention all the extra organs," the Doctor agreed.

Maddie hadn't made even the slightest sound in a long time. The others held little hope that she was still alive.

Pariah growled once more in his frustration. "This was a waste. Humans are much too complicated and impossible to glean any valuable information from. Let's move on to the next."

"But... sire, there are only two more," the Doctor pointed out, his hands raised and trembling. "Are you sure you want to give up this quickly?"

"I said, prepare the table for the next subject," Pariah said. "Those that survived, we can always study a second time. Without more blood in the way."

He jerked the instrument out of Maddie's brain. The teal rings of her transformation flickered back on, the light wavering as it crossed over her, changing her back. She was still silent and motionless, but perhaps in her ghost form, she could still recover.

Jack was next, and he put up a fight, but though he was almost as big as the Ghost King himself, it was of no use, and he too was restrained to the table.

Danny couldn't watch. His father's screams of pain echoed in the chamber, but after the first four, it barely registered. All Danny could this was that he was next. There was no way out of here. No escape. 

When they were done with his dad, they would come for him. 

[phicphight]

Boxes and Nothing Else!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/65139457/chapters/167535091

This is the first chapter of my Phic Phight phic for the prompts:

After the accident, Danny stopped aging (either in both forms or just ghost form author's choice). He realized this years ago and has tried to accept it. But recently, he's noticed his voice starting to crack, his familiar clothes feeling a bit too tight. After all these years, Danny has started aging again. But why? What changed? by @dp-marvel94

and The Box Ghost opens a box themed pawn shop in Amity Park by Splax

The fic kinda ballooned, so it's broken into multiple chapters and probably won't be finished until after Phic Phight is done, but it will get done eventually!

___

It started with a job. Specifically, it started with Danny getting fired from a job. Again. He’d tried this time, he really had, but, at 25, people expected something better than a bathroom excuse for running off in the middle of a shift and there had been a swarm of ectopusses making a ruckus in a nearby park which was something he just couldn’t ignore. 

He couldn’t tell his manager that, though even if he had he didn’t think Aaron would care. He’d written a woman up three weeks ago because she had no-called no-showed after being hit by a car. She had been literally unconscious. Trying to keep people safe wasn’t something Danny thought Aaron would care about. 

It still sucked. It left him unemployed and still living with his parents like he was still a teenager.

He guessed it was time to apply for another job. He might get at least one person willing to hire someone with his track record if he sent out enough applications. There were at least a few places he hadn’t been fired from in Amity Park. 

He was still moping when he heard it. “BEWARE!” a very familiar voice shouted from a few streets over. Great. 

He ducked into an alley and transformed. It didn’t bring him the rush of exhilaration it once had. At one time, being Phantom felt like being on top of the world. Sometimes it still did. Sometimes, the fact that was able to fly could almost overshadow the fact his ghost form still looked fourteen. 

Danny took out the thermos as he flew towards the shout, more as a precaution than anything else. He’d finally started reasoning with the sapient ghosts who came through Amity Park instead of just fighting them five or six years ago. Some, like Skulker, had a specific, malicious goal and couldn’t be reasoned with. Most just wanted to hangout in the human world for a bit. Most of those would at least try to follow rules most of the time if he at least tried to work with them. 

The Box Ghost usually tried to follow the rules, but sometimes he got too worked up to remember and needed a reminder. Most of the time a verbal reminder was enough. Hopefully, the thermos wouldn’t be necessary, but the amount of shouting Danny could hear as he got closer wasn’t a good sign. 

As Danny rounded the corner, the Box Ghost came into view, waving his arms and shouting. A man in a business suit was shouting right back, possibly even louder. 

“BEWARE! FOR I AM THE BOX GHOST, CURATOR OF ALL THINGS BOXES!” the Box Ghost shouted. 

“I don’t care!” the man in the suit shouted back, “If you want to run a business, you need a license!”

“I HAVE THIS!” yelled the Box Ghost as he waved a yellowing, but official-looking sheet of paper in the man’s face, “I HAVE A LICENSE! I DO NOT NEED TO LISTEN TO YOU PATHETIC HUMAN!” 

“Of course you have to listen to me!!” the man roared, “ I’m with the government! And that’s the deed to the building, not a business license! Just owning the building doesn't cut it!” The man was getting red in the face. “All you ghosts are the same! You come in here thinking that just because–”

And that was Danny’s cue to step in. 

“What’s going on here?” Danny asked, adding a little glow to his aura as he approached the bickering duo.

The man whirled to face him. “What’s happening is that the spook over there is trying to operate a business without a license.”

Danny turned to the Box Ghost. “I AM THE BOX GHOST!” he shouted, “I DO NOT NEED A PIECE OF PAPER TO OPEN A BUSINESS!”

“You see!” The business man seethed, “He’s belligerent! You need to send him back to where he came from!”

“Well, you see,” Danny started, about to explain that, actually, most ghosts had at some point come from Earth and that it didn’t really matter anyway because–

“GHOST CHILD, I HAVE NOT BROKEN ANY OF THE RULES! I AM ALLOWED TO BE HERE!”

From what Danny could see, technically true, but “Box Ghost, first off, you have to follow all the rules to stay, not just mine. Secondly, ghost child is a little–”

“Ha!” The man shouted, “You see, the ghost kid agrees! You have to follow all the rules!” He turned to Danny, looking smug, “Go on, kid, arrest him, or put him in your thermos or whatever it is you do.”

Danny could feel his eyebrow twitch. Today was a nightmare. First, he had been fired. Then, he’d been dragged into this stupid confrontation where he’d been called a kid twice. Now, this guy, who was still calling him kid, was treating him like some sort of cop. Hell. No. Danny was not putting up with this. 

Danny crossed his arms, letting his eyes burn an icy blue and ectoplasm skitter across his suit like lightning. “No,” he told the man, “I’m not a cop. I don’t enforce human laws. Or ghost laws for that matter. All I do is try and keep the peace as much as possible.” He resisted pointing out that he was not a child. It would only undermine his point. 

“Now,” he continued before the man or the Box Ghost could butt in with another inane comment, “I don’t really care about business licenses, but it looks like you’re going to keep making trouble if this isn’t settled. Thankfully, there’s an easy solution.” Danny grinned. Both of the arguing parties took a step backwards. “We’re all going down to City Hall and getting Box Ghost’s business registered. That should satisfy everyone.” 

—

Three hours later, Danny walked out of city hall next to the Box Ghost, a dazed expression on his face. He really had just helped the Box Ghost register his business, called “Boxes and Nothing Else”, as a pawn shop because, apparently, the Box Ghost was trying to open a box themed pawn shop. And Danny had loaned him the money for the license because, despite being unemployed, Danny seemed to like throwing money away. 

He sighed and turned to the Box Ghost. “Do you need any help with the ‘Responsible Pawnbroker Training’?” Danny asked reluctantly. 

The Box Ghost hesitated. “I’ve never used a computer before,” he mumbled, or at least it was the Box Ghost equivalent of a mumble, really it was more of an average speaking volume. 

Danny sighed again. He’d sunk money into this. “You can borrow my laptop. I’ll swing by your store with it tomorrow.” Danny was mature enough not to grumble about not having anything else to do now that he’d lost yet another job. 

The Box Ghost stared at him. Danny stared back. It was awkward. “THANK YOU!” he shouted , then “BEWARE!” because this was still in fact the Box Ghost. With that he flew away. 

Danny decided he would spend the next few hours patrolling. There was no reason he couldn’t put off telling his parents he’d lost yet another job for at least a couple hours.

—

Danny got home a little after nine. He’d put off going home for a little longer than he’d meant to, but, in his defense, a natural portal had opened up in one of the parks and it had taken him a few hours to round-up all the non-sapient ghosts that had come through. Then he’d spent another hour talking down the very angry arborist ghost that had wandered through and promptly started yelling. Apparently the state of Amity Park’s trees were not up to his standards. It took promising to talk with the mayor about hiring more city arborists to get him to go away. Vlad probably wouldn’t do it, but the ghost didn’t know that and Danny had only promised to ask.

Danny took off his coat and then just stood in the entryway. The ghosts in the park really had delayed him, but he could admit in the safety of his own mind that he really had been putting it off.He could hear voices in the living room, which meant there was no avoiding his parents. 

He flinched a little when he heard his mom call “Danny, is that you?” Well, time to face the music. 

“Yeah, it’s me,” he called back and headed into the living room. 

Vlad was there. He was sitting in one of the armchairs across from his parents on the couch. Danny did not need this right now. He was already feeling childish and petty. He did not need Vlad poking at him. They’d come to a truce over the past few years, but the mutual mistrust and annoyance was still there.

The whole job conversation was not going to go well if Vlad was here. Danny decided that meant it was going to wait until morning. 

“I’m gonna head upstairs,” Danny said to the room at large, “I’ve had a long day.”

“Are you sure?” Vlad asked, voice deceptively concerned, “I heard you need a new job. I think I might have something if you're interested.”

“Danny!” his mom hissed, turning on him with an icy glare, “Did you lose your job again?”

Danny slumped and didn’t bother asking how Vlad already knew. Apparently this wasn’t waiting until tomorrow. “Yeah,” he confirmed, voice only a little tight, “Aaron decided that because he couldn’t find me for 20 minutes, I must have been ‘playing hooky’.” Danny emphasized the last bit with air quotes. He’d hadn’t appreciated the insinuation, even if he really had left work.

Maddie softened. Vlad looked smug. Danny tensed.

“Well, that doesn’t sound very reasonable,” Vlad started with false sympathy and a glimmer in his eye, “You know, at Dalv Co., we’re much more understanding about that sort of thing. I might be mayor now, but I still have quite a bit of sway. I could get you a position if you’d like.”

Danny was right to be tense. This was a trap. This was a trap Danny should have seen coming. Could Vlad actually get Danny a job where he was able to run off and be Phantom when he needed to? Probably. But it would also mean Vlad would have an unacceptable amount of leverage over him. 

He couldn’t say any of that in front of his parents.

Danny sighed and let his shoulders droop a little more. “I really appreciate it, Uncle Vlad,” he started, playing the role expected of him, “I just, I feel guilty getting a job at Dalv Co. just because I happen to know you.”

His dad laughed. “Don’t you worry, Danny, Vlad wouldn’t be offering you a job if he didn’t think you’d be good at it. He’s too good of a businessman for that, isn’t that right, Vladdy?”

Vlad grimaced. “Quite.” He cleared his throat. “However, Jack is right. I’m not just offering this to you out of the goodness of my heart, Daniel. I really do think you would be an asset to the company.”

Well that statement set off all the alarm bells. Not only was this a way to get leverage of some kind, Vlad was planning something. Danny… Danny didn’t actually want to know. He just needed to make sure he wasn’t drawn into whatever it was. 

Danny let himself hesitate on the stairway. “Would you let me think about it for a few days?” Danny asked, keeping the frustration out of his voice. 

Vlad leaned back in his armchair, looking smug. “Of course, Daniel, take a few days and think it over. I’m sure you’ll come to the right conclusion.”

Danny did not let his annoyance at the blatant condescension show. Instead, he smiled sheepishly. “Thanks, Uncle Vlad,” he said, then let his smile sharpen, “I’m going to head upstairs, but have fun talking with my parents. Has Dad told you about the new Fenton Ecto-proof Jello Mould? It’s really cool.”

The question did what Danny expected and set his dad off a tangent about his dullest new invention. Danny waited to laugh at Vlad’s pained expression until he had made it to the top of the stairs. 

—

The next morning, Danny headed off to the Box Ghost’s new pawnshop, laptop in hand, and told his parents he was going to browse job sites at the park for a change of scenery. They nodded indulgently, but Danny could tell that they really wanted him to just take Vlad’s job offer and be done with it. If he didn’t think of something quick, he was going to be stuck with it. 

Or he was going to have to share some secrets he’d been keeping for over a decade. Danny mulled it over as he flew. 

He wasn’t actually sure which would be the worse option. His parents were better, at least kind of. Like the rest of the town, they’d started getting used to the ghosts. He really didn’t think they’d start shooting at him as soon as he told them. They already knew he was ecto-contaminated; half the town was at this point. He thought they would accept the powers without much of a problem as long as he framed it right. 

Phantom was a different story. There was too much history. The first year, he probably could have gotten away with it. Technically, he could still tell them. They wouldn’t hurt him, but they would be horrified. They had chased him for years. They had targeted him and said terrible things. The fallout would be devastating. To make matters worse, Phantom had never aged. Danny had, but Phantom hadn’t. Danny wasn’t sure what to make of that; he was sure his parents would freak. 

But, he couldn’t work for Vlad. Vlad really had gotten better too, more or less. He’d stopped with the murder attempts on his dad at least and had stopped flirting with his mom after she finally had enough and went after him with the Fenton Anti-Creep stick. He was still creepy and obsessive, though. 

He’d never given up on the “mentorship” thing that Danny was pretty sure was just an attempt at controlling him. He was powerful and Vlad knew it, he’d known even when Danny was still fourteen. He wasn’t doing anything with that power and wasn't really interested in interfering with Vlad’s business until it became dangerous for people other than Vlad. 

Vlad didn’t really get that. The man was so absorbed in his own need to control that he couldn’t comprehend that someone else wouldn’t be interested in the same. At least that’s what Jazz said. She was usually right. 

Danny was so lost in his thoughts, that he would have missed the Box Ghost’s shop if he didn’t almost fly into the new sign. He didn’t, instead becoming intangible right as he was about to hit it, but it was a near miss. 

Danny examined the sign as he landed. Honestly, he was surprised he hadn’t seen it sooner, even lost in thought. The sign was both large and colorful, complete with the words “Boxes and Nothing Else” scrawled in cursive, clashing garishly with the cartoon picture of the Box Ghost popping out of an open cardboard box. If it had been there yesterday, Danny certainly hadn’t seen it and there was no way he would have missed this thing twice. The Box Ghost had been busy. 

Danny entered the shop, making sure there were no humans around before transforming mid-stride. There was no reason he should keep looking fourteen if he didn’t have to. 

The Box Ghost was organizing boxes on a series of shelves on the right of the shop next to the door. The order seemed purposeful somehow, but Danny didn’t really have the energy to figure out how so. He was here to help the box ghost through training. Then he could actually go job hunting. The sooner he got started, and more importantly got done, the better. The only way he could see out of his job predicament right now was to find something that was somehow better than Vlad’s offer. Or at least something that looked better to his parents. Danny thought anything would be better on principal. 

But, that could wait for later. Making sure the Box Ghost didn’t make a scene with new setup was the first priority. It didn’t matter if Danny got a job if he just got fired when he inevitably had to sort this out. Much better to deal with it now. 

“Hey, Box Ghost,” Danny greeted the still entranced ghost, “I brought my laptop.” 

Despite floating a few feet off the ground, the Box Ghost managed to stumble. Gaining his balance, he quickly turned to Danny, putting his arms above his head. “BEWARE!” he shouted. 

Danny blinked at him. The Box Ghost dropped his arms and awkwardly rubbed the back of his neck. 

Danny cleared his throat. “Right, so, Responsible Pawnbroker Training? I have it all set up on my laptop!”

“OF COURSE!” the Box Ghost yelled, “I WILL COMPLETE THIS HUMAN TRAINING AND THEN I WILL USE THE POWER OF THIS PAWNSHOP TO SPREAD THE GREATNESS OF BOXES TO ALL.”

Huh, Danny hadn’t really thought about what this was all about, but this was new. He hadn’t really thought that the Box Ghost would move from trying to hoard boxes to proselytizing for them. Well, as long as he didn’t have to leave whatever his next job was to sort it out, this was fine. 

“Cool,” Danny said, deciding not to address any of that with the Box Ghost, “Let’s go set up at your counter. I looked through it earlier, shouldn’t take more than an hour or so.”

–

It was coming up on three hours and Danny was still coaching the Box Ghost through both using the computer and the training itself. He was starting to wonder if all this was really worth it. 

Surely if he took fifteen minutes from his next job to deal with whatever fallout came from the Box Ghost not knowing what laws governed his new business wouldn’t be too bad, right? And really, he hadn’t sunk all that much money into this. 

Maybe there was even a chance that the Box Ghost would actually complete his training and not break Danny’s computer if Danny just left? Surely that was a possibility? 

Danny was contemplating phasing through the floor when he heard an all too familiar sound, the jingle of a bell as a door opened. There was a customer. 

Danny looked up, a young man, maybe a few years younger than himself was looking around in the fashion of slightly overwhelmed customers everywhere. Danny looked to the Box Ghost, it was after all his shop. 

The Box Ghost was frozen, like, well, like he had seen a ghost, eyes wide and panicked. The young man’s gaze finally settled on the Box Ghost, eye’s widening in turn. The Box Ghost ducked behind Danny’s laptop like that would somehow hide him. 

So, apparently, customer service was something else the Box Ghost needed a little help with. Danny should have seen this coming. 

Danny put on his best customer service smile. “Hi, welcome to Boxes and Nothing Else,” Danny said, giving the standard greeting of every store he had ever worked at, “Feel free to look around and let us know if you need any help.” 

The familiarity of the greeting seemed to break the young man’s trance. “Thanks, man,” he said and immediately turned to browsing.

Danny kept his smile for a couple of seconds before turning back to the Box Ghost, who had mostly come out of hiding. He held back a sigh and turned his attention back to the laptop. Pawnshop training first, customer service later. He’d invested money into this for some reason, Danny reminded himself as a last ditch effort to keep going. 

A few minutes later, the customer came back over, a box in hand. “How much for this?” he asked. 

Danny looked at the Box Ghost. The Box Ghost glared menacingly at the customer. The customer took a step back. 

“WHAT DO YOU PLAN ON DOING WITH THE BOX, HUMAN?” the Box Ghost yelled, well, asked, it was normal volume for him. 

“Um,” the customer stuttered, “It’s a box. I guess I’m going to put things in it?”

“YOU GUESS?” the Box Ghost interrogated, “A BOX LIKE THAT DESERVES BETTER THAN A GUESS.”

“Uh, well,” the customer stammered, looking ready to throw the box and run out of the store. Danny wouldn’t blame him. 

Time to step in. Danny really hoped this guy had a sense of humor. He leaned over the counter, meeting the man’s darting eyes. 

“Sorry about BG,” he said, a friendly smile on his face, “He gets a little protective over boxes.” 

He paused and looked the customer dead in the eye, face and tone becoming mock serious, “So, do you promise to take care of this box and give it the appreciation it deserves by putting cool stuff in it?” Danny threw in a smile and a wink at the end to add to the effect. 

It worked. The man visibly relaxed. He nodded. “I swear,” he said in his own mock serious tone. 

Danny looked back over to the Box Ghost before realizing that, actually, the ghost probably didn’t know anything about money. “That’ll be fifteen dollars,” he said, trying to name a reasonable price for a relatively nice looking box off the top of his head, “Cash only,” he gave a sheepish smile, “We’re still getting the point of sale system up and running.”

The guy smiled back. “No problem. Will a twenty work?”

“Sure,” Danny said and took the change out of his own wallet because apparently he was going to sink an unreasonable amount of time and money into a business that wasn’t his and was probably going to fail. 

“Thanks, man!” the customer said and walked out of the shop.

Danny let out a sigh of relief before turning to the Box Ghost. “Dude, if you want to run a business, you can’t interrogate customers like that.” 

The Box Ghost fidgeted. “I just wanted to make sure he was going to take care of the box,” he very nearly mumbled. 

Danny pinched the bridge of his nose. “That’s… you know what, okay, you want to make sure the boxes are taken care of. I get it. They’re important to you, but you can’t just yell at someone when they haven’t done anything wrong, especially a customer.”

“You got him to promise to take care of it,” the Box Ghost said, looking up at him. Danny didn’t like the look in his eyes. 

“Yeah, I did,” he said, “I’ve worked a lot of customer service jobs over the years.” He shrugged. “I picked up a few things.” Like how to deescalate a situation. 

“WHAT IF YOU KEPT DOING THAT?” the Box Ghost asked, back up at full volume. 

“What? Like stand here and convince people to promise to take care of boxes. Box Ghost, I need a job. I can’t get a job if I’m taking care of your customers.” 

“THEN I CAN GIVE YOU A JOB!” the Box Ghost shouted. 

“Box Ghost that’s–” Danny paused. Actually, this was a shop and if the Box Ghost actually managed to turn a profit, he could pay him. Was it a long shot, sure, but no worse than any of Danny’s other options. But was he really that desperate?

“You know what,” Danny said, deciding that, yes, he was that desperate, “sure, I want $16 an hour, fulltime, and benefits.” It was more than Danny would ask from literally anywhere else, but he just knew he was going to be putting up with a lot. 

“DEAL!” the Box Ghost yelled, then more quietly, “What are benefits?”

Danny didn’t sigh. Apparently, he was now talking to his boss. “We might need to find someone who knows a little more than me about how to set them up, but basically…”

As Danny explained benefits to the Box Ghost, his mind whirred. This could actually work. He was going to be working for a ghost; a ghost that, at least according to his parents, was untrustworthy and would need to be watched. He knew exactly how he could spin this. Would they object? Yes. Would they come around almost immediately? Also yes. He’d actually found a way out. Suck it, Vlad. 

[phicphight]

Escapement, Chapter 1

Characters: Danny, Clockwork (Cassius) Words: 949 Warnings: None A phill for @five-rivers' prompt:

In a human disguise, Clockwork buys an antique store in Amity Park and offers Danny (and possibly the rest of Team Phantom) an apprenticeship.

Danny hadn't been looking for a shop. He'd been following the chill of his ghost sense. But the chill that slipped out his mouth led to a door with peeling green paint and an open sign propped in the window next to it, so he pushed it open and stepped inside. Hopefully, whatever little ghost he'd sensed would be an easy catch, and he'd be on his way without the whoever ran the store even noticing.

And then he caught sight of the interior.

It was a cluttered mess. There was stuff; mountains of it. It was piled all the way to the ceiling on shelves arranged like dominoes. Just looking at it made Danny shrink in on himself to avoid knocking anything over.

…And there was a ghost somewhere in here.

Great.

Read the rest on AO3, or below the readmore:

Danny crept around the shelves, looking for a telltale glimmer. He searched past pots and pans, over nested coils of chains. One of the shelves had a collection of bowls with holes in the bottom. Another had old jam jars full of older nails, jammed next to teetering boxes of candles.

Danny caught a glimpse of the ghost’s tail flicking around a rack of incense.

There! He dove for it.

Several things happened in quick succession: his feet left the ground. His hands clapped closed around the little ghost just as its expression shifted from mischievous to shocked.

In the space between those two instants, Danny realized he was leaping at something in a very confined and cluttered space.

He also felt his foot catch on something.

And then he was on the floor, ghost wriggling in his fingers, boxes raining down on his head.

Oh no.

The little ghost slipped through his fingers like a bar of soap and fled through the floor with a squeal.

To round off the whole humiliating episode, there was the sound of something rolling, and Danny went intangible just in time for a jar to sail through his head and clatter on the floor before rolling off, visibly dented.

Intangible.

He could have gone intangible.

Danny let his head hit the floor with a thump.

“I'm an idiot,” he moaned into the musty carpet.

“I can't argue with that.”

Danny's stomach dropped, which was quite a feat since it was already on the floor. Of course. Of course some guy was here. The shop was open.

“You're also paying for anything you've broken.” The owner of the voice emerged from the back of the shop.

He was an old guy with a stoop, a sagging face, and a long, scraggly beard. What captured Danny's attention most, though, was the scar striking down the side of his face, straight across his eye.

What happened to this guy?

Said guy raised one bisected eyebrow, and Danny realized he hadn't responded.

“Um,” he said. “What?”

Wow. He was really showing off the Fenton genius today.

“You knocked things over in my shop,” explained the guy with clearly waning patience. “Which might have broken them. If it has, I can't sell them.”

“Oh, um. Right.” Danny grimaced. “How much is it?”

The guy told him.

“What?”

“You don't have that much.” said the guy. He didn't even do Danny the decency of making it a question. “Of course you don't. You're fourteen. Probably.”

“How much can this stuff cost? It's all junk.”

“Lots,” said the shopkeeper, wryly. “If you don't believe me, check the price tags.”

He rustled around behind the counter while Danny peeled himself off the floor. He wished he could do the same with his dignity. Mournfully, he set about picking up the boxes. There went his allowance for the next year. Maybe he could do Sam a favor?

“What's your parents’ phone number?”

Danny froze. Shame, fear, and a noxious soup of teenage embarrassment combined to conjure a vision in his mind's eye. His parents showing up at the shop. His Dad, barely fitting through the door.

His Dad, accidentally knocking over the shelves with an enthusiastic gesture. Each of them teetering like dominoes before slamming into the next one over.

The Fenton Ghost Finder going off.

Both of them pulling out weapons. His Mom leaping over the counter to hunt down the ghost…

Danny shuddered. “Can’t we settle this another way?” He pleaded. “I could give you my allowance money?”

The shopkeeper frowned. “Do you get an allowance?”

“Hey,” said Danny, even though he didn’t. “I could have.”

That got a sigh. “Look, kid. If you really don't want me to call your parents, I won't.”

“You won't?”

“If you show up here at two on Saturday to help me out. And give me their number. And your name.”

“But you just said–”

“In case you don't.”

“Oh.”

Briefly, Danny entertained saying he was Dash. But he really did feel bad.

The guy, who was apparently named Cassius of all things, Danny felt even more sorry for him now, raised both eyebrows when Danny said he was a Fenton.

Great. Danny didn't know what that meant, but he could guess. Hopefully his parents hadn't already wrecked this place or trampled his begonias or something. Cassius seemed like a guy who cared about his begonias. It was probably the purple shirt.

And then, he pulled out the phone book with a thump and checked that Danny's phone number was what he said it was. Right in front of him. While he watched. Which, wow.

And then Danny had a business card shoved into his hand before he was shoved back out into the street.

He blinked a few times at the sudden brightness, then scowled and slouched in the direction of Tucker's house. Suddenly, he had complaining to do.

[phicphight]

Escapement, Chapter 2

Characters: Sam, Tucker, Danny, Clockwork (Cassius) Words: 3409 (chapter length consistency? what's that?) Warnings: None

Still a fill for @five-rivers' prompt

In a human disguise, Clockwork buys an antique store in Amity Park and offers Danny (and possibly the rest of Team Phantom) an apprenticeship.

“You trashed his store and he gave you a job?” asked Sam, apparently skipping right past the part where Danny was suffering. 

“You never know,” said Tucker, fiddling around on his PDA. “It might not be a job. Maybe he's planning to get the money back by harvesting Danny's organs!”

“I didn't trash his store,” said Danny, though his heart wasn't in it. “And he gave me his business card. To give to Mom and Dad, I guess?”

“Maybe it's fake,” suggested Tucker, who really seemed awfully set on the idea of Danny getting murdered.

Read the rest on AO3, or below the readmore:

“Why are you so set on me getting murdered?” asked Danny. 

“It's a valid concern!” said Tucker.

Sam rolled her eyes. “He found a new horror MUD. He was telling me about it before you got here.”

Tucker brightened. “It's called After Daylight, and you can play as a werewolf!”

“Obviously a major selling point for Tucker.”

“Hey,” said Tucker. 

The conversation turned to the game after that. Later, when Tucker was fiddling with the character creation screen, Sam brought the store back up.

“Do you want us to come with you on Saturday? Or, like. I could pay for it.”

“Yeah,” said Tucker. “If he's a serial killer we could try and catch him in the act or something.” He started typing out the character’s description. Danny caught the phrase ‘chiseled muzzle.’

Sam's offer was tempting. But owing her a favor that big was bound to end with him dressed up as a goth. Or worse, attending poetry night at the Skulk & Lurk.

And Cassius didn't seem sketchy. Just, you know. Like a guy who had and cared about his begonias.

Also, Danny had superpowers. He could overpower just about any human.

As long as they weren't like Freakshow.

“Maybe hang out nearby and go in after a few minutes? It's by that ice cream place with the coffee.”

Tucker was scrolling through a list of starting equipment kits. He tapped ‘gunslinger.’ “What's the place called, anyway?”

“Uh,” said Danny.

“Wow,” said Sam. “You trashed a store and don't even know what it's called.”

“I wasn't expecting to trash it,” hissed Danny, aggrieved. “I get the jar, but why is incense so expensive, anyway?”

“It's not, usually.” Sam frowned.

“Ooh,” Tucker actually took his eyes off the screen. “Maybe he's laundering money!”

“The most expensive incense at Skulk & Lurk is like…$20. Max. How much was he charging?”

“...about that much.”

“Huh,” said Sam. 

Danny hunched his shoulders. “It adds up!”

“Maybe I'll buy something on Saturday,” she said. “Tucker, you should give that guy some holy water.”

“Why?”

“Aren't there vampires?”

“Yeah, but there are zombies, too...”

—

With midterms the week before, the final few days of the week were relatively light on schoolwork. Most of Danny's classes focused on reviewing parts of the material most people had gotten wrong on the test, and with so little new material, the days passed quickly. 

Or they would have, if Danny hadn't done worse than most on most of his midterms. He'd gotten a D in English. A D!

So he spent what time he could stressing out about failing sophomore year, when ghosts weren't on his case. 

Or when he wasn't on theirs. For whatever reason, fall seemed to be just the right time for a night on the town for what seemed like half the denizens of the ghost zone. He'd caught Johnny and Kitty twice in three days.

And then it was Saturday.

“I dunno,” said Danny, shuffling nervously on the corner. The faded letters spelling ANTIQUES loomed over the unassuming storefront across the street.

“Cheer up,” said Tucker. “If it turns out he's secretly a mad scientist, we'll help you escape.”

He gave Danny a pat on the back. It didn't feel very reassuring. 

“Thanks,” said Danny. Anxiety was chewing through his stomach–over his grades, over the ghosts, and now over this.

Maybe he should just tell his parents so they could settle the damages. What if a ghost attacked while he was working? Danny bit his lip.

But he'd gone off to his certain doom against Pariah Dark. A job was much less scary. No one even shot at you, probably. 

“I guess I should head over,” he mumbled. 

“Remember: we’ll come rescue you in 30 if he's a cannibal,” Tucker said with entirely too much cheer. 

“We won't even charge you a rescue fee,” added Sam, gravely. “Considering your finances.”

“Wow. Thanks,” said Danny, and crossed the street.

Behind him, Tucker said, “We could have charged him a rescue fee?”

And Danny pushed his way inside.

—

“Daniel,” Cassius’s voice greeted after the chime had sounded. “You're a few minutes early.”

Danny looked around for him.

“You can get started right away.” Cassius appeared through the door to the back room, apron in hand. “This is for you.”

While Danny figured out how to put it on, Cassius bustled back through the door. He reappeared moments later with a pair of boxes and a pen. “I'll show you around the store, and then you can start labeling things.”

Danny pocketed the offered supplies. “Haven't I seen most of it already?”

Cassius smiled. His teeth were straight and even, except a slight gap between his front two teeth.

Danny had not seen most of the store. As it turned out, the store was just as full of half-hidden doors to more rooms as it was with stuff. It seemed like behind every door was another room piled with curiosities and about half as much floorspace as Danny would prefer. Two rooms were packed with clocks; they sat three and four deep on the shelves, and more clocks papered the walls. 

Once, they circled around to a room they'd been in already and Danny was just figuring that out when Cassius slid past a chair straight out of a history painting and disappeared through another door Danny hadn't realized was there. 

The place was a warren, and Cassius moved through the aisles like he had never tripped in his life. 

Danny couldn't have said that even before his accident. He was starting to wonder how many times he'd trip into inventory before Cassius gave up on having him work the debt off and just called his parents to tell them about their son's destructive tendencies.

It was seeming like a better and better option. 

Three steps ahead of Danny, Cassius turned, dodged three porcelain figures with grace no one so old should have, stepped up a staircase marked ‘Employees only’ and gestured for Danny to follow.

Danny eyed it dubiously. The staircase was pulling double duty as a shelf for a series of eggshell-delicate knickknacks.

The staircase led to a work room with papers, clocks, and a few dark television screens. A set of the ubiquitous shelving units stood against a wall, unusually bare. A few foldable tables with peeling wood veneer occupied the center of the room. An electric kettle perched atop a filing cabinet tucked in the corner, along with a selection of painted teacups.

“Through the door, you'll find the entry room and front desk,” said Cassius. “Questions?”

Lots. Danny had lots. But one was more important than the others.

“Where's the bathroom?” he asked. He did have ghosts to worry about.

“You'll want to use the one next door,” said Cassius. 

“...The tax office?” Danny asked.

“We have an agreement. Just say you're working for me and they'll let you use it.”

“Okaaay,” said Danny. He tried imagining pulling his usual disappearing trick around a bunch of accountants.

…He was so screwed.

On the other hand, the worst thing Cassius could do when Danny inevitably vanished for a ghost fight was fire Danny, and Danny already kind of wanted that to happen. 

Just…not more than he didn't want his parents finding out he destroyed part of a store’s merchandise.

Cassius had apparently taken Danny's distraction to mean Danny didn't have any more questions, and was now examining a packet of yellowed paper. Was that cursive? 

“You didn't tell me what to do with the stuff,” said Danny. 

Cassius waved a hand. “I haven't finished pricing everything. Go through the shop and tag everything I haven't, so they'll be easy to find.”

Danny aborted a move for the door. “You haven't finished pricing everything?”

“No,” said Cassius, apparently seeing nothing wrong with having stuff out without a price. “It's a lot of inventory, and this way I won't have to check individual pieces for a price tag.”

And with that, he went back to the packet.

After another moment, Danny made his way out of the room. As promised, the door Cassius indicated led to the front of the shop, behind the counter. From this vantage point, Danny could see a horde of paper stuffed into shelves, lying in wait behind catalogs and massing on the work counter beside a till so ancient it looked like a typewriter.

He crept his way from behind the counter and into the floor before consulting the stuff in his apron pockets, which revealed itself to be day-glow orange paper tags and a box of elastic loops. 

Well. Even if he was worried about failing sophomore year, he was smart enough to figure that out.

He was tagging a vase a few minutes later when the bell chimed and Sam and Tucker piled in.

“Oh good, you're not murdered,” said Tucker. 

“You never know,” said Sam. “Maybe he's a ghost.”

Danny rolled his eyes, replacing the vase on the window sill. “Very funny. Yeah, I survived.”

Lower, he added. “The guy's a serious weirdo though. He's got two rooms that are just clocks and half this stuff isn't priced.”

Sam suppressed a laugh. “You don't visit many antique stores, do you?”

“No. Why?”

“Because,” said Cassius, “neither of those are unusual for an antique store.”

Danny’s stomach made a sudden lunge for the floor. He lurched around. 

Cassius stared down at him. One eyebrow raised. “Did you really think I was a murderer?”

“That was a joke!” said Sam from behind Danny.

“Really?” said Cassius. “If it wasn't, feel free to check in on him. As long as you don't distract him from his duties.”

He vanished. 

“How does he do that?” muttered Danny. 

Sam patted his shoulder. “It's something you pick up working in antique stores, I think. The old ladies who run the one Mom goes to can do the same thing.”

“Really?” asked Danny.

“Sure.” Sam shrugged. “I could show you sometime, so you don't start wondering if this place is cursed or haunted or something.”

Danny paused. “Sam. This is Amity Park.”

She rolled her eyes. “More haunted. You know what I mean.”

“Danny, are you planning to chat with your friends all afternoon?” called Cassius from somewhere in the depths of the shop.

Danny grimaced and grabbed another vase.

“Sorry,” said Sam. “We'll take a look around.”

“And be sure to tell you if we see any saw traps!” said Tucker. He gave Danny a thumbs up, and the two of them vanished around a corner.

“Wow,” Danny heard him ask Sam from the next room over. “How many of these do you think are cursed?”

“With Danny's luck? Loads.”

“Wow. Great.” Danny said under his breath.

Neither Sam or Tucker gave any indication of hearing him, and the clomps of Sam's boots grew quieter as they moved farther away. 

At least he could keep an ear out for them. Sam and Tucker made fun of his luck, but if anyone was getting cursed today, Danny hoped it was himself. The other two were fragile in ways that worried him.

Also, they knew how to snap him out of mind control.

The last three items in the window were all priced. Danny looked longingly at the door Sam and Tucker had vanished through.

Also, he was already bored.

…What if he just followed them through the store to keep an eye on them? He could check for prices while he did. 

—

Eventually, Sam and Tucker satisfied themselves that there wasn't anything obviously evil in the shop. On the way out, Sam brought a pair of skull themed candle holders to the counter to ring up. As Cassius explained the ancient till to Danny, Tucker said something.

“They're not evil, they’re goth. Memento Mori,” Sam was replying. “Remember that you will die.”

“Yeah,” said Tucker, “you've mentioned. Is there a thing for ‘Remember that you'll probably come back weird?’ That seems more relevant to us.”

“No,” said Sam.

“So we could totally make one up.”

There was a speculative pause as Cassius wrapped up Sam's purchase.

“We could use Technus’s face instead of skulls,” said Sam.

“We could use Plasmius’,” said Tucker, and the door chose then to fall shut behind them. Danny couldn't hear Sam's response. They walked past the window, leaving Danny behind.

Danny stared after them. He'd never wanted to be able to duplicate so badly in his life. Having to work and not participate in that conversation was going to kill him a second time. 

Cassius cleared his throat. “You kept a close eye on them.” 

“I was working,” said Danny quickly.

“I know.” Cassius paused. “Have you been cursed before?”

Danny froze.

“This is Amity Park,” said Cassius.

Danny unfroze. “Right. Yeah.” He frantically rifled through his memories for something Danny Fenton would have dealt with. “There was a necklace thing my Dad fished up that turned you into a dragon when you got angry.”

“Sounds difficult.”

“Yeah!” said Danny. “Phantom helped us, though.”

Cassius made a little hum at that. “I see,” he said, and set about tidying the counter.

As far as Danny could tell, this didn't actually have the effect of making the counter any neater. If anything, Cassius was just rearranging piles of papers.

“How do you find anything in all this?” he asked. 

“I cheat,” said Cassius. He smiled. 

“How?”

“I prefer to keep some mysteries to myself,” said Cassius. He wound past Danny, lingering in the door to the office. “You can leave at five, if you have the first three rooms done by then. You’ll be able to focus there, now that your friends are gone?”

Danny felt his cheeks pink. “Yeah.”

He turned to the first shelf, but his fingers  hovered over a stack of brass bowls. 

“Cassius?”

“Yes?”

“What if I don't get it done before five? Or I have to leave for something?”

“Get it done when you get back. I don't particularly care when they're done, as long as they're done by tomorrow.”

Huh. 

Danny picked up the first bowl in the stack and turned it over.

Danny didn't sense any ghosts as he made his way steadily through the first room. No, he felt something much worse: boredom. Even cleaning the lab was more interesting than this. That was because he needed to figure out what would and wouldn't hurt him if he touched it, and how to get around the stuff that hurt. But still. 

It was at least interesting. 

This was stuff.

Why did so many of these bowls have holes in them?

He wondered what Sam and Tucker were up to. He wondered if he'd meet back up with them in a couple of hours to discover them already selling Plasmius themed merchandise. Somehow. 

They really were scary fast sometimes. Danny smiled. He loved his friends.

There were about a dozen clocks lining the top of every room, and Danny looked at one now. Three thirty. 

Jazz would probably still be out of the house doing Jazz things. Who knew what his parents were up to. Hopefully, not ripping apart some poor ghost.

In the office, Cassius shuffled some papers. His chair scraped. Boots tapped across the floor.

Hurriedly, Danny turned the bowl he was holding over. The price tag on the bottom read $15 in smudged pen. 

“Would you like to see something interesting?”

Danny set the bowl back down and turned. Cassius stood in the doorway. He didn't look like a serial killer. Just a very eccentric old guy.

The last eccentric old guy he'd met had turned out to be obsessed with killing his Dad and marrying his Mom.

“What kind of interesting?” Danny asked.

“Just something you might not have seen before.”

Danny hesitated. “Okay.”

If Cassius was secretly a ghost and he was about to try killing Danny, he'd sure feel dumb. On the other hand, he wouldn't have to check for prices anymore. 

He was really bored. 

Cassius led him back to the office behind the counter and then to one of the folding tables, where a little metal cylinder sat. It was about the size of Danny's palm, an elaborate design cut into the top.

As Danny watched, Cassius pulled the top off and set it to the side, revealing a metal tray nestled just beneath, a winding design sliced all the way through it.

“Do you know what this is?” asked Cassius.

Danny frowned.

The design wasn't just winding. It formed a single line that wound around the entire plate. It reminded Danny of a complete game of Snake. It didn't really look like one of the ones, but Mr. Lancer had said mazes without dead ends were labyrinths, hadn't he? And this was winding, and had no branches. 

“A labyrinth?” he guessed. 

Cassius tilted his head. “Of a sort.”

He pulled the tray from the box, revealing another, similar design. He pulled that out as well, and then a final tray. That done, he pulled the entire top part off the box to reveal an empty compartment, and then a second time to reveal a bottom compartment with a weird little spoon the size of Danny's thumb, and a stamp.

“This is an incense clock. Ordinarily, this central compartment is filled with ash. The person who uses it tamps it down with this tamper,” he picked up the stamp, twisting it between long fingers so it caught the light. “And then they put one of these stencils on top of the ash, and fill it with incense. Remove the stencil, light the incense, and it will burn for hours.”

“Like a fuse on a cartoon bomb?” Danny asked.

Cassius smiled. “Yes.”

“Isn't it more of a timer, then? Like an hourglass?”

“If you use only the simplest setup, yes. But the night watchmen who used these would add different scents at specific points along the line. Since the line of incense burns at a predictable rate, they could use it to tell the time.”

“But it would need resetting, like a timer.”

“Most clocks throughout history have needed resetting. Even pendulum clocks and mechanical clocks require occasional intervention to keep their time. And quartz crystal clocks still need their batteries.”

“But that's different.”

“Why?” asked Cassius. Then he gestured to the door. “That's all I wanted to show you. You can get back to your checks, now. Think about it.”

Cassius was weird, Danny thought as he returned to the shelf Cassius had pulled him away from. In a lonely old man sort of way. At least it wasn't Vlad's lonely old man sort of way. It was just like he didn't talk to people much. Which he probably didn't, if he thought antique timekeeping systems made for fascinating conversation.

Still, Danny turned the idea over in his head. What was the difference between clocks and timers?

.

“It's how often you have to reset it,” said Danny, some time later. “If you have to do it every time you want to keep track of something, it's a timer. If you can let it run, it's a clock.”

“So it also depends on the length of time you're tracking?”

“I guess?”

Cassius hummed. “Remind me to show you the water clock next weekend.”

“But I'm free now?”

Cassius nodded. “You can keep the apron here.”

Danny was already halfway to the door. He pulled the apron off, hopped back to Cassius to leave it in his outstretched hand and bolted out the door with a “Seeyanextweek” before Cassius could change his mind.

The chime jangled. The door thunked shut, and then Danny was free. He jogged around the corner, and then behind a building. A flash of light later he was rocketing through the sky, wind fluttering his hair. 

He couldn't wait to see what Sam and Tucker had gotten up to. And tell them he hadn't had any disasters.

[phicphight]

The Woods

ao3

ffn

word count: 1935

prompts: lyrics to "the woods" by san fermin

and

There's a shallow grave in the woods. The only marker is a stone with the name "Danny" scratched into it. It's empty, but it hasn't been empty for long. @kinglazrus

hehehe

Danny laughed as he floated along the trail next to Dash. He pushed Dash’s shoulder. 

“Come on! Stop it!” Dash snickered at Danny. “No!” 

“What? You don’t want to dance?” Dash held a hand out to him. “We can party it up with the centipedes and ants and other bugs that live in the dirt.” 

Danny wrinkled his nose and grabbed Dash’s hand. “I don’t think the bugs would make for a good party. They’d crawl all over everyone.” 

Dash shrugged and dragged Danny through the air by his hand. “They just wiggle around. They’ve got some good dance moves.” 

Danny rolled his eyes. “Whatever you saw. I wouldn’t say wiggling around is good dancing.” 

“Oh yeah? I’ll prove you wrong.” Dash stopped in his place and started wiggling where he stood, shimmying his upper body back and forth. Danny laughed. 

“You just make it-” 

Danny stopped as he sensed something. He turned to look into the trees. It wasn’t a ghost, his ghost sense wasn’t going off. It felt like something else. 

“Phantom?”

Danny glanced at Dash before glancing back into the woods again. “Sorry. I can just- It feels like something is pulling me somewhere. Like I need to go find something.” 

Dash tilted his head at him. “Do you want to go find it? I’m down for a little exploring.” 

Danny smiled at him. “Sure. I don’t even know what it is we’re looking for though.”

Dash waved his comment off and walked to stand next to Phantom again. “Who cares about that? Lead the way.” 

Danny floated off the path and Dash followed behind him. They walked deeper into the woods and the feeling in Danny’s chest grew stronger. What could possibly be calling to him?

The leaves crunched beneath Dash’s feet and Danny could feel the tall grass brushing against him as he floated past it. 

He felt like his core was leading him somewhere. 

The feeling kept growing and he landed on the ground to walk the rest of the way. He put through the grass. 

They walked into a small clearing and it only took a moment for Danny to recognize where they were. Dash walked through the grass behind him and Danny’s heart fell. 

“This is a kind of cool clearing. It’s so deep in the woods though.” 

Danny’s eyes landed on the patch of dirt in front of them. There was a small stone with his name on it and the dirt had been turned as if something had crawled out of it. 

Dash looked at the ground in front of them. He frowned. 

“Phantom? What is this?” 

Danny swallowed and looked at the clearing around them. “A grave.” 

Danny could practically feel Dash’s anxiety rising as his eyes widened. Danny turned and looked the other way. 

“Okay, it’s a grave. Why do you look so worried?”

“Because it’s empty. And it hasn’t been empty for long.” 

Dash threw his hands up into the air and brought them back down, running his hands through his hair. 

“An empty grave? Why is it empty?”

Honestly, Danny didn’t know why it was empty. He had a bad feeling, and not just because someone had dug up his grave. 

“I don’t know.” Danny floated back up into the air. “You stay here. I’m gonna take a look around.”

“You’re gonna leave me here with the empty grave?!” Dash whisper shouted. 

Danny rolled his eyes and floated back through the grass. “It’s already empty. It’s not like something else is gonna crawl out of it.”

“That you know of!” 

“Just let me go check it out.” Danny turned to look back at Dash. “You’ll be fine.”

Before Dash could respond, Danny floated away. He had to find whatever was going on fast before Dash saw something he shouldn’t. 

He heard a twig snap and he stopped in place. He turned and looked around. He didn’t see anything. 

He broke into a fly instead and started scanning up and down the woods. So far nothing. But he could still feel that feeling in his core. Like something was near. 

This time a twig snapped directly behind Danny. He whipped around and saw a shadowy figure standing in the shadows ahead of him. Danny squinted at it. 

“Dash?” 

The figure chuckled and it sent a chill up Danny’s spine. He backed up as it walked out of the shadows and his eyes widened in horror. 

It was Danny. It was himself. 

“Don’t worry. We’ll get rid of it, Danny.” Sam said, her hands on his shoulders. “No one will ever find it.” 

Its skin was decaying. Falling apart, flaking away. Bone could be seen exposed in some parts. Its clothes looked charred, probably from the portal. 

They dug a hole in the ground. It was a shallow grave but it would have to do. It was getting dark and they had to get home. 

They began scooping dirt back onto the grave, covering the body in the ground. 

They should’ve dug a bigger grave. 

“What do we have here?” 

Sam pulled a stone out of her bag and placed it on the ground. It bore Danny’s name, a reminder of what they did here today.

This was his corpse.

Its voice crackled with disuse. It sent an unsettling feeling through Danny’s body. It didn’t sound right. It was his own voice but wrong.

“Oh, don’t look too happy to see me.” It said quietly. “We deserve a better reunion.”

Danny still didn’t understand what was happening. Why had his corpse come back to life? Was it even alive? He guessed the word would be undead. 

“How did this happen?” Danny gestured at his corpse. He flew back when the corpse took a step towards him. It shrugged. 

“I guess I just knew.”

Danny frowned at that. He didn’t like the sound of that, 

“Knew what?”

“That it’s time for you to join me.” 

Danny’s eyes widened and he flew back as his corpse jumped at him. It chuckled. 

“Oh, are you afraid to touch your own body? You must be. You couldn’t even be bothered to touch me when you guys buried me.”

Danny watched as Sam and Tucker dragged his body into the shallow grave. They were struggling with it but Danny couldn’t help. He didn’t want to touch it. Touching it meant acknowledging it was real. He didn’t want to do that. 

He looked away from it until they got it into the grave. Then he grabbed a shovel and started helping cover it up. 

“You’re not me.” Danny tried to say it with confidence but based on the grin on its face he wasn’t successful. It shrugged. 

“Maybe not anymore, but I was. You died and left me behind. You didn’t want to face me, but here we are now.” 

Danny backed away. How was he going to get this thing back in the ground? How was he going to fix this? 

He turned to fly away but he wasn’t fast enough. His corpse walked up to him and grabbed him. Dash called his name.

“Phantom? Where’d you go?” 

“Oh, what changed with him?” Danny could feel the smirk it was giving him. “Do you like him now?”

“Da-“ 

His corpse covered his mouth as he tried shouting Dash’s name.

“What is he going to do for you? Save you? How would you explain to him what he’d be seeing? He’d be terrified by what he’d see. He’d be terrified of you.” 

Danny shook his head, trying to dislodge its hand from over his mouth. 

He listened as Dash’s footsteps walked away from the clearing the grave was in. Danny struggled against his corpse’s hold, but for something that was decaying it had a scarily strong grip.

When Dash’s footsteps faded away his corpse started dragging him towards the clearing. He tried going intangible and his heart rate spiked when nothing happened besides his feet clipping into the ground.

“That doesn’t work on me.” It chuckled at him. ”There’s no getting out of this. It’s time to rest.” 

His corpse dragged him through the tall grass and across the clearing. Danny saw the turned dirt and tried to push his corpse’s arms off of him but it was to no avail. 

It stepped onto the grave and it started sinking, pulling Danny down with it. Finally, Danny had been able to get an arm free and he used it to pry the other one out of the corpse’s grip. It wrapped its arms around Danny’s waist instead and continued to pull him down. 

Danny tried to grip onto the ground as his corpse pulled him into the grave with it but his hands slipped on the freshly turned dirt. His fingers clawed at it but they could find no purchase. Soon his face was being dragged under and he couldn’t breathe. His hand felt around for something, anything to grab onto but there was nothing. 

His hand was almost in the dirt when something grabbed onto him. His corpse kept pulling and soon Danny was pulling the other hand into the dirt with him. 

He reached up and grabbed the wrist and started pulling himself up. He kicked his corpse in the chest and he could feel it lose its grip on him. Danny kicked at it again and his corpse let go and Danny could feel himself being pulled back up out of the dirt. 

His head popped free and he took a deep breath. A hand wrapped around his back while he coughed and yanked him the rest of the way free. 

“Fenton?” 

Danny paused. His bare hands still gripped the arm that pulled him free. He slowly looked up and Dash was staring down at him, a confused and horrified expression on his face. 

Why wasn’t he in his ghost form? What happened? 

“Fenton, why did I pull you out? Phantom’s hand was sticking out when I grabbed it.”

Danny didn’t answer Dash. He tried pulling at the feeling he normally had in his chest from his core. But there was nothing there. Not the cold feeling he would pull on to trigger his transformation or the feeling that was leading him to his grave. All he could feel was the normal rhythm of his heart. 

“Fenton.”

Danny could see the knowing look on Dash’s face, but he didn’t seem to want to admit it. 

Danny shook his head. “I don’t know what happened. It dragged me down there. I-“ He looked away from Dash. “I was in my ghost form when it dragged me down there. I don’t know what happened.”

Dash frowned. “What dragged you down there?”

Danny looked back up at him. 

“My corpse.” 

“Your corpse?” Dash looked over Danny’s shoulder at the grave behind him. “How was your corpse in there? You’re alive.” 

Danny shook his head. “It’s complicated. I had died and left a body behind, but I was still alive. I don’t know how it worked. But after it pulled me in there and you pulled me back out, I don’t have access to my ghost form anymore.”

“You can’t… Turn into Phantom anymore?” 

Danny shook his head. 

They sat there in silence. Dash glanced over Danny’s shoulder at the grave again. He shivered.

“I don’t know any of what’s going on.” Dash stood up and pulled Danny off the ground with him. “But I think we should head home.” 

Danny nodded and let Dash pull him along behind him. They left the grave and the clearing behind. 

Danny couldn’t feel as if he was missing a part of him.

[phicphight]

A Jazz and Danny fic for the Danny Phantom Phic Phight 2025

Jazz has been protecting Danny without him knowing, but now she's about to start college.

Also on AO3.

---

In the washed out gray-blue of night, Jazz sits on the floor of her room, leaning against the wall beside her—the wall that divides her room from her little brother’s room.

On the other side of the wall, Danny moans.

She knows he’s hurting. She can feel it, even through the wall. The pain resonates within her chest. Aches within her.

She presses a palm against the wall, hoping to siphon some of that pain from him.

Ghost hunting is taking a toll on him. It’s becoming too much for him—the battles with ghosts, the battles with ghost hunters. The battles with their own parents, unknowingly.

She sees signs of it during the day through his winces, and feels the soreness radiate through her own muscles and bones. She sees him startle, and feels the spike of fear through her own heart. She hears him at night as he struggles to get a good night’s sleep, due to both soreness and nightmares, and she’s left unable to drift off at all.

Proximity helps.

The closer she is to Danny, the more soothing relief he will feel. She sits pressed against their shared wall each night, hoping to give him rest, hoping she herself can close her eyes.

A packed suitcase sits beside her bedroom door.

Her top choice of university... she can still barely believe it. And a scholarship at that. Her parents are set to drive her to the airport tomorrow morning for the flight there. The university’s several hundred miles from Amity Park. Several hundred miles from Danny.

She doesn’t know what to do.

---

Danny's woken up by the sounds of stuff banging around. He knows it's his parents and Jazz, getting ready to leave in time for her flight.

He groans and tries using a pillow to block out the sounds.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work. He can't get back to sleep. So he goes ahead and gets dressed.

Maybe he'll say bye to her before she leaves.

As he walks down the stairs, he hears a conversation.

"I know it's short notice," Jazz says. "I can pay you back for the plane ticket."

"But Sweetie," his mom says, and Danny can now see them on the living room couch, his mom running a hand through Jazz's hair, "I thought you really liked this university."

Jazz sighs. "I do. But I think I'll take a year off. If I can't get the scholarship after that, then I'll go to a different university."

Danny frowns.

Something isn't right.

As Jazz starts back up the stairs with her suitcase, Danny invisibly slides partway through the wall to let her pass.

She pauses and looks to the side for a long moment, as though she can sense him somehow, before continuing to her room.

Danny follows her and knocks on the door. "Jazz?"

The door opens. "Danny?" She blinks at him, looking confused.

"We need to talk," he says and walks into the room. It's weird... being in the bright pink room seems to relax him. "What's going on? You've been talking nonstop about college for the past five years. There's no way you'd change your mind. So what happened?" He crosses his arms. Jazz is his sister, and whatever is bothering her, he's going to fix it. And get her on that plane.

Jazz stares at him. Her eyes seem to glow for a moment. Then she blinks and shakes her head with a sigh. "You really aren't going to let this feeling go, are you?"

Feeling?

"Danny..." She sits on the edge of her bed and gestures for him to sit as well.

Even after he sits, she doesn't start talking. He can see her face twitching and eyes shifting slightly, as though mentally sifting through what to tell him.

"Danny... Ghost appearances are up right now. I want to help— to be here to help. I can go to college anytime—"

Danny shakes his head. "No. You said you might not get the scholarship if you wait. I have Sam and Tucker to help me, it's fine. Plus there's Valerie, and Mom and Dad. They can catch ghosts, too."

She shakes her head. "You don't understand." Again, it looks like her eyes are glowing. "I can feel it. Fighting all these ghosts is overwhelming you right now."

He rolls his eyes. "Nothing's overwhelming me." He actually feels really good right now. The only thing bothering him is Jazz not getting on her plane.

Jazz grabs his hands. "Danny," she says urgently.

He can feel himself relaxing farther, her room is so nice and peaceful. If she will just get on the plane, everything will be perfect in life.

Jazz snatches her hands away as though burned. "No! Danny," she says again, like his name is a filler word for grasping her thoughts, "I... I have ghost powers, too." Then she continues, saying everything quickly, like the words are just spilling out, "It started some time ago, but then I really started to notice a few months ago when I could feel you through the wall, and I can feel everyone's emotions but you're the one who's always hurting and I can soothe that and take some of the ache and help you sleep and, and..." she takes a breath, and her eyes slide downward. She says softly, "And I can't do that if I'm not here."

Danny blinks as he tries to work out what she just said. She has ghost powers? She... can feel emotions? She can soothe...

Danny glances around her room, taking in the pink walls and large pink rug and pink pillows on her bed, and her teddy bear sitting there like it's listening to them.

It's not her room that feels so comforting—it's her.

That's why he feels so at peace right now. Jazz has weird psycho-powers. ...That's why he's been busier lately but hasn't felt a toll from it. Without Jazz... he might not be able to fight ghosts at the rate he's been doing lately.

"How sure are you that I would be overwhelmed without you here?" Danny checks. Maybe she's overreacting a little.

"...I haven't actually slept in three months."

"Oh."

"But I'm pretty sure sleep isn't a necessity with my version of ecto-contamination, since a normal human would start showing psychological symptoms after just two or three nights."

"Jazz, that's not really reassuring."

"...Yeah, I can tell," she says, eyebrows furrowing a little.

So Jazz has been staying up every night because of him? That was even more reason for her to go to college.

"Look. The problem's how many ghosts I've been having to fight lately, right?"

Jazz half nods, half tilts her head to the side; like trying to make a so-so gesture with her head. "Well... mostly."

"Then I'll ask for help."

Jazz's eyebrows wrinkle in confusion, her bottom lip pushing out slightly in the rare look she makes when she doesn't understand something. Apparently she can't actually read his thoughts, just his emotions.

"I'll tell Mom and Dad. Once they know, they can help take some of the weight off, and I can tell them what I know about different ghosts so they'll be able to catch them easier."

"But I thought you didn't want to tell them," Jazz asked. "If I'm influencing your decision..."

"It's not like that. I've wanted to tell them ever since the accident. But... I never find the right time, or I keep making excuses. I know they'll accept me. But," he shrugs, "I just can't seem to go through with it. But now, it would help if they know. And if you're with me steadying my nerves, and keeping an eye on Mom and Dad's feelings... I think I can do it now."

---

Jazz goes downstairs with Danny. Their parents feel confused at seeing them. And a little hopeful—they ask if she's changed her mind about college.

Jazz can feel Danny begin to get nervous, and she squeezes his hand, soothing away irrational fears, and letting them pool into her own stomach. She can feel confidence and determination take its place within Danny.

She's careful not to take any emotions other than Danny's nervousness. Their parents' reactions need to be true. Not prone to change once she leaves—if she decides to leave.

Their parents are shocked when he tells them, overwhelmed and concerned. There's horror and guilt, but also love and acceptance. Jazz is pretty sure the horror is about Danny getting hurt in the portal accident, and not about what Danny is.

She can't feel any revulsion or uncertainty in them. And she tells Danny this later.

"Did you cancel your flight?" Danny asks.

"Oh. It'd slipped my mind. I guess a refund isn't going to be possible."

"What time did you need to get there?"

Jazz looks at her watch. "The plane leaves in ten minutes. There's no way I can get there in time."

"I can take you. How much luggage do you have?" Danny asks and searches around her room.

She doesn't like the amount of confidence radiating from him.

"Danny, it takes thirty-five minutes to get to the airport. Even with Dad's driving, we wouldn't get there in time."

"No, seriously. I'll take you," Danny says. "Here." He hands her her suitcase. "What direction's the airport from here?"

"It's down route—"

Danny holds up a hand. "Never mind, I'll just ask Tucker for directions." He pushes a Fenton Phone into his ear. "Tucker?"

About a year back, Tucker hooked up the Fenton Phones to work together with cellphones, so that it was possible to call anyone's cell phone by voice command.

"Hey, Tuck, what direction's the Airport from Fenton Works?"

Danny walks over to her window and pulls it open.

She very much does not like this.

"Danny, what—" Jazz asks.

Danny grabs her around the waist and pulls her through the window and surrounding wall.

She screams as the roofs of buildings start to streak by beneath her.

---

I used these prompts:

from @echoghost1: "Jazz finds out the hard way that living with her parents lack of lab safety is starting to effect her physically."

from @lostlitany: "Jazz doesn’t know what to do. Her brother is hurting, she sees it in the winces, and flinches, she hears it in the hisses and groans on the other side of their shared bedroom wall. He says he’s fine. She’s not, though."

from @ashleyreyland: "It's time for Jazz to leave for college, but she's struggling to leave Danny alone with her parents. She doesn't want to put her future on hold, but she's not sure what to do."

from @bellsandmischief: "How does it feel to be helpless? How does it feel to know pain?"

from @rgbyshipper101: "Danny notices something is up with Jazz. He decides to find out what. Danny and Jazz bonding!"

from @lovelyunknown: "Jazz being a good older sister."

[phicphight]

Phic Phight - Milk Hair Scare Thilk Pair Share

For: @roundaboutnow @staira and Fuyu_FoxWriter

Of course one day Danny looking nearly identical in both forms was going to cause problems, especially when his dad goes and turns very much human-to-his-dad’s-knowledge Danny’s hair white. At least Danny manages to technically keep his secret? Even if Phantom’s ‘a Fenton’ now.

“Danny-boy! Catch!”.

Danny jerks at the table, dropping his cereal spoon and attempting to catch the weird metal pole thing his dad just threw at him. It bounces off of his fingers a couple of times and winds up in the cereal… because of course it does. Danny grabbing it out with two fingers and holding it up, watching milk dripping off of it before eyeing his dad, who’s hiding around the corner slightly. Danny glaring a little, for dad to be ‘hiding’ like that, “dad, stop using me to test for things reactions to ecto-contamination”.

Dad just eyes the pole thing before popping out from behind the wall laughing and grinning, “nonsense! It’s the easiest way and you know I only do it with stuff that’s supposed to be harmless!”.

“Still!”, Danny sighing and grumbling, “and now my cereal is wrecked”.

Dad scratching his head, “oh yeah, I probably wouldn’t drink that now. I don’t think the Powder Purity Puffer is water proof”.

“The what?”, Danny quirking an eyebrow, “um, what is it supposed to do?”. Purify ghosts out of existence? Purify ecto-contamination? Turn ghost ecto-blasts into powder? And what about this thing ‘puffs’?

“Oh nothing much! It’s a powdered version of the Fenton de-glow spray”.

“Then why isn’t it called de-glow powder?”.

Dad smirking, “the ghosts would expect that”. Danny thinks the ghosts don’t pay any attention to the names of his parents creations, all he was doing was confusing the people who live here… and anyone attempting to buy anything from them online. The online store was an utter nightmare. His dad nodding to himself, “and it should do more than that, getting rid of the less human-looking aspects of the ghost! That way we could totally figure out who the ghost used to be!”, tilting his head, “Vladdie brought up a good idea that eventually someone in this town was probably going to die and become a ghost. You know, because there’s so much latent ecto in the air!”.

Oh so Vlad was to blame for wrecking his cereal? Great. “So what? It’ll give them normal skin tones? Make fire hair not on fire? Jazz would say that would probably be traumatizing, or whatever, for the ghost”.

Dad waving him off, “oh pfft, you can’t traumatize a ghost, that’s just silly!”.

Danny just glares a little more before letting his dad take the pole thing, and getting up to dump out his cereal. Of course the sink literally pops out of the counter, sending his cereal bowl flying and onto his head, Danny glaring at the spring that’s attached to the bottom of the sink while the sink just bounces around midair, “why is the sink on a spring?”.

Dad laughing as he walks over, “ah sorry ‘bout that! The garbage disposal was having issues with breaking apart that pie that got contaminated, so figured I’d sup it up! The spring is for added tension”, grabbing the still slightly bouncing sink and forcing it back down and into the counter, “worked like a charm but looks like I’m gonna have to reinforce the counter!”.

“Yeah…”. Guess Danny’s not using the sink or garbage disposal for a while. Ugh. Grabbing the bowl off of his head and glaring at the few pieces of marshmallow still in it. You know… he’s hair doesn’t feel wet actually. Cautiously thumbing his fingers on some of his hair and eyeing his fingers, the milk got powderized! Blinking, “the milk turned to powder!”. Great, his dad made another thing that affects food. If it was safe to eat this could actually be really good for rations though.

Dad laughing, “neat! Let me sample that! Don’t wash it off!”.

Danny sighing as his dad runs off, putting his hands on his hips, “at least see if it’s still safe to eat! Could make better Fenton Rations! Ghost invasion survival supplies!”. Dad always needed a ghost related reason to motivate him properly.

Dad shouting up from the lab, “GOOD IDEA! DANNY! THEN THE SPOOKS WILL UNDERESTIMATE HOW LONG WE CAN LAST FOR! HA!”.

Danny just shakes his head as his mom pops in, “Danny have you- Phantom! What are you doing in here you spectral menace! Get out of my son’s clothes!”; and mom has a gun drawn at him, firing immediately.

Danny ducking and scrambling under the table, the shot feeling like it slightly singed his hair, “mom what the heck! I’m not a ghost!”.

She bends down, gun still pointed at him, him scowling and gesturing with his hands exaggeratedly, “do I look like I’m glowing and floating! And I get enough of the Phantom accusations from Wes!”.

She blinks at him, “oh that is true-”, then narrowing her eyes, “you could have stole our de-glow spray! Do not take me for a fool”.

“Oh my zone! Stop!”. This is totally because of the milk powder in his hair isn’t it? Ugh. He knows dad will be a little bummed but he’d rather not get shot! So he shakes his head like a wet dog, making a small cloud of white powder, “it’s powder! My hair is not white!”.

“A likely excuse!”.

“No it’s not!”.

“DANNY I’VE GOT THE SAMPLE KIT- hey where’d you go? IS THERE A GHOST UNDER THE TABLE!”.

“Dad make her stop!”.

Danny glaring at his dad as the man gets onto the ground to stare under at him. The man looks surprised then confused, “you’re hair’s white!”.

“The powder’s white! It was milk!”.

Dad blinking, “oh yeah good point”, and thankfully puts a hands on mom’s gun, laughing awkwardly, “that’s definitely Danny, Mads. Same clothing that he was just wearing and everything. The sink did dump a thing of powderized milk on his head”, beaming a little, “the Powder Purity Puffer can powderize milk apparently!”, titling his head, “can’t wait to see what else it can do that to”.

Mom looking to dad while gesturing a hand at Danny, “if that was just powder, Jack, it would still be black just with a layer of white, like really terrible dandruff”.

Dad blinking, “huh”, and eyes Danny curiously.

Oh shit, it wasn’t just the white powder. Great. He makes a point to grab at his hair, move it in front of his eyes some, and look confused by it, “huh?”.

His dad scratching his head before looking around at the shook off powder mess, “well that’s definitely the same milk powder, too bad it’s got floor and under table gunk on it now”.

“Mom was trying to shoot me!”.

Dad laughing awkwardly, “yeah I guess that’s fair”, and holds up the sample kit.

Danny glaring and sighing, just sitting cross legged in the floor, still under the table, putting an elbow on a knee and his chin in his hand, “yeah yeah, sample away”.

Dad beaming, looking at mom quickly, “see? That’s definitely our Danno, no way any spook would let a Fenton take samples willingly”, then crawls half under the table with Danny, having to lay on his stomach, and just starts taking hair and powder samples.

Mom frowning a little before retracting her gun, “sorry sweetie, but minus the glow, your hair does look just like Phantom’s”.

Danny rolling his eyes, “it’s fine”. It’s not like he wasn’t used to them shooting at him, she missed that’s what mattered. But come on, he’s wearing his clothing, the powder stuff is obviously something, he’s not glowing, and his eyes are -hopefully- blue! It should be obvious that he’s not Phantom… even if he actually is Phantom.

His dad wiggling himself back and out from under the table is honestly too silly not to laugh at, the beaming, “thanks son! Now I’m gonna go check this stuff out. I wonder if it’ll still have the same molecular structure as milk! Did any of your contamination get in! Did it make your hair white because it’s white!?! So many questions!”, and he bolts off down to the lab.

Mom smiling fondly and shaking her head before making come here motions at Danny, “alright you, get out from under there and I’ll see what I can do about your hair”.

Danny pretty desperately wants it to simply wash out, but with his luck? HA. Not gonna happen. Either way he does crawl out, stretching his back out as he stands back up right; then giving his head another good shake, you know, just in case.

His mom shaking her head at him a little, “you’re making a mess”.

He just kinda shrugs at her before grabbing a mixing bowl to fill up with water and try to wash all this stuff out. Dunking his head in and jumping a little when mom starts helping; he’s honestly a little surprised she didn’t go down to the lab but well, his parents could be decent parents sometimes. Him stilling when she hums, “well it’s not coming out or fading”. Oh fuck him entirely.

“HA! WOW!”. His dad throws the lab door open, resulting in Danny jerking his head back and out of the water; sending water splashing everywhere and making his mom yelp a little. Dad laughing, “oh sorry about the scare!”.

Danny glaring at him a little with dripping soaking wet and definitely still white hair based on the few pieces in front of his eyes. Danny blinking, “let me guess, my hair molecules, or whatever, have been messed with?”.

Dad scratching his head, “haha, yeah. Looks like the compounds interact a little too well with Kretin specifically?”, glancing around awkwardly, “nothing short of complete follicle regeneration therapy will reverse it, I think”,

“Oh gee thanks dad”.

“Jack”.

Dad puts his hands up, “hey in my defence, it was only supposed to change ghost’s colours, the colour of layers of ectoplasm”.

Danny crossing his arms, “you literally threw it at me to see if it would react to me”.

“And it didn’t! It reacted to the milk, all that calcium and vitamin d interfered with it”, dad snapping his fingers, “oh and definitely not edible”.

Danny shaking his head a little before running a hand through his hair, fingering it a bit, “so is it gonna grow out or?”; he is not shaving his head, partly because his hair literally has not grown at all since the whole dying thing. He refuses to spend the rest of his days bald, that or his hair will instantly regrow which he absolutely could not explain. But also because he seriously doubts he’s look good rocking a Mr. Lancer cut/shave. His dad just starts looking around like he’s trying to pretend Danny never even asked. Danny sighing, “alright. Cool. Guess Wes is just going to follow me around screaming and pointing at my hair for, like, a week”.

His mom starts drying his hair off with a towel, “as if you haven’t been actively encouraging that boy”, her frowning and humming a little, “though I would have definitely preferred any other colour. This is… far too similar to Phantom”.

Dad scratching his head, “yeah I thought the colour was because of the milk but nope!”, scratching his head, “the Powder Purity Puff is supposed to make ghosts look like their human self, so maybe it does the opposite with a human?”.

Danny would like to leave this conversation now! Instead he’s stuck here nervously wringing out a half damp towel, while his parents basically play hopscotch onto and off of his secret identity.

“That’s practically saying Danny would actually look just like Phantom, Jack. Ghosts just don’t look that similar”.

“A doppelgänger thing maybe?”.

“Ghost siblings often don’t even share skin colour, nonetheless hair colour”.

“Maybe Phantom did copy Danny boy?”.

“We’ve disproven that around eight times. Its form is much to consistent to be mere copying. It could be pure chance but that seems so odd”.

“Maybe Phantom used to have black hair?”.

“We can’t know that for sure, and I’m positive ghosts aren’t simply coloured the opposite of when they were alive. Otherwise Phantom would have died in a black and white jumpsuit”.

“Ghosts can have good fashion sense can’t they? Danny-boys suit is black and white too to go with his skin after all!”.

Oh Ancients, abort! Abort! Abort! He never ever brought up his ‘missing’ suit for a reason! Especially because both of them just… stop and start staring at him.

His dad tilting his head after a while, “come to think of it, hasn’t yours been missing for a while?”.

Fuck! Shit! Danny blinks owlishly, “uhhh, yes?”. Oh how is he supposed to deal with this! Obviously he has to get them off of his jumpsuit, there is no world in which he can actually explain that. The conversation of his hair… well he’s apparently stuck with it so no point trying to avoid ‘Danny Fenton has white hair now’ conversation.

Mom narrows her eyes a little at him, glancing up and down him and Danny is positive she’s trying to imagine him wearing his jumpsuit. He is so seriously hoping she forgot exactly how the thing looked! Then his dad smacks one fist into his other hand, “maybe Phantom stole it!”.

Mom looking at him like he’s lost it a little, “why would It do that, Jack? They’re lined with anti-ecto materials and ghosts tend to be pretty attached to their natural outer ectoplasmic layers. One covering theirs up with a hunters anti-ecto jumpsuit would be boarder-line suicidal and wildly abnormal, even if Phantom is a bizarre one”.

Oh Danny absolutely was very attached to his jumpsuit, even the idea of wearing a shirt over it rubs him the wrong way a little… unless it was for a good joke or was somehow helpful.

Dad grinning, “maybe Phantom just thinks they’re super cool, they are after all”.

“I really doubt that, hon”, her then going back to eyeing Danny, who is majorly struggling to not look extremely nervous and thus extremely suspicious. “You know, I could never tell with how dark your hair is- was, that you had that little messy swirl on the back of your head, or that your short sides looked that kinked and frizzy”.

Dad frowning slightly, “oh yeah, I see it… that’s also just like Phantom”.

Danny wants to cry a little, “wh-what? Really? Pfft, that’s crazy. Super bizarre coincidence”, and gives a little broken half laugh. He is so screwed here.

They stare at him and he stares owlishly back. What can he even say here? The Phantom stole his face thing was firmly disproven. His folks wouldn’t believe for a second that Phantom just happened to come into existence right next to him and that’s why they look a like; he tried that. Trying to spin something were Danny being near the portal when it was made left an impression on the ecto and just magically poofed Phantom into existence, wouldn’t work for shit; they still didn’t believe in the idea of Ancients and Zone native species, even though they’ve meet many of them. Could claim he was originally a twin and the twin just died before his mom ever got those ultra sound thingies? But knowing his mom she might have ultrasounded herself as soon as she knew, or maybe a dying fetus would leave lingering ecto for a little while, ecto his parents would have picked up on. Him getting caught lying would just make this actively worse. Cloning? He has actually been cloned but who the heck would have cloned fully human fourteen year old him? Like nowadays they’d buy someone cloning him due to his contamination… or just Vlad being creepy, in his mom’s case. But back then? Absolutely not.

Wait, back when he fucked up the time line ‘cause of Vlad’s dumbass -seriously, if the man had just legitimately asked for help, Danny would have helped. He doesn’t hate Vlad enough to want him dead dead via wildly unpleasant via ecto-acne. If Vlad fully dies Danny wants it to be purely because of the guys own personal fuck up- his parents pretty damn quickly believed he was their alternate timeline son. So… arguably, this timelines them could believe the same? And unless they somehow tracked down ClockWork, and believed they really were effectively the god of time, and asked them if this was true instead of shooting at them, and ClockWork actually answered them honestly, they would never be able to prove this shit wrong. Which, obviously all of that was never going to happen.

His mom puts her hands on her hips, “Danny is there something you need to tell us?”.

His dad nodding a little, “did you, like, make Phantom or something? Cool! But bad. Don’t secretly make ghosts”.

She glances at his dad, “I’m fairly certain that wouldn’t be possible, especially at fourteen”.

Ugh. Ah. Fuck. Nervously blurting out, “he’s from an alternate timeline where everyone in Amity died because of all the ghosts problems and the ghost armies thing and getting laid siege to and really didn’t like that and the zone can fuck with time and shit and now he’s here and totally definitely doesn’t want Amity blown up again because of ghosts and maybe sure yeah he totally took the jumpsuit cause of reminding of family and shit being a sentimental dumbass for like mass death trauma or something I don’t know and I might have tied him up one time and questioned the answers out of him because yeah the similarities are really goddamn weird oh my god he breaks into the house all the time to just kinda be here and like no one has ever claimed he’s smart C minus student at best which you know kinda tracks with me so like yeah”; and then wheezes.

He… he could have done better than that, but he panicked okay! And shit! He’s pretty sure he went way past what the human lung capacity can tolerate. Should he pretend to pass out?!? Shit no they might use that as an excuse to run tests on him or something, or they’ll come up with more of their own ideas that would be oh so much worse. So instead he just… wheezes a little bit more.

His dad blinks, “wow son, you got your old man’s lungs I guess”, then shakes his head out almost violently, “so… alternate timeline you? Where everyone died? What?”; and he blinks harshly again, looking dumbfounded. Which hey! Danny’s fine with that! If just confusing and shocking them gets them off of thinking this Danny specifically is Phantom then yay! His dad going wide eyed, “you tortured information out of a ghost! That’s awesome!”, the furrowing his brows, “but- wait. Not awesome? What?”. Oh no is Danny gonna give his dad an aneurism or something? Why was ‘hey Phantom is technically your other time line son’ so much easier to tell them in a different time line! Ugh!

Mom’s hand twitches a little before she brings them both up to her chest and leans forwards at him a little, “Phantom told you all that and you… believed it?”, humming and frowning, “I’ll admit, making up a lie like that would seem to be beyond a ghosts mental capacities. And alternate timelines are not only feasible but likely, as is them being connected to the Ghost Zone. So it’s not outlandish. But still”.

Danny blinks once, “uhhhh, his thumb print works on the portal lock?”. Either he is digging himself out of a hole or aggressively deeper into one, there is no in between.

His dad looks absolutely blown away while his mom stammers a little, “i-it does? And you didn’t mention this why?”.

The Zone does he say to that? “Uh, er, I’m, uh, I wasn’t super cool with mentioning that maybe leading to me coming home to a sorta me on a dissection table because I’m sure that would probably give me some very weird nightmares that I would very much like to avoid and y'all would definitely totally for sure feel super bad about breaking your own kind other world kid down molecule by molecule and Jazz would call that traumatic for everybody”; this time he forces himself to shut up, because he absolutely does not want to just go and dump his ‘dissection paranoia’ in his folks right here and now; maybe not ever actually holy shit.

His mom actually softens at that, “oh sweetie, we haven’t been interested in doing that to Phantom for a while now”.

His dad giving a truly pained and awkward laugh that’s closer to a wheeze, “the town does, uh, need the, er spook”, blinking, “but you’re for sure right”.

Mom frowning and nodding a little, looking to dad, “if Phantom really is our boy- other us’s boy, then yes. I doubt I could recovering from doing… that”. Dad just nodding immediately and vigorously.

Danny actually kinda wants to vomit out of sheer relief… and anxiety, mostly anxiety. Them just being concerned instead of angry actually just makes him feel guilty on top of nauseous. He is absolutely not backtracking shit all now though. Absolutely not. He is in too deep to this bullshit to yank on the bulls reigns and change course. He’s locked in on this dumbass idea now. Never back down never give up. Oh wait nope, yeah, yeah no, yeah… he’s almost definitely going to vomit here. Oh Ancients. If he fucking keels over and vomits he’s gonna worry them so nope, naw, swallow and bear it self, swallow and bear it.

Mom sighing at his dad before looking back to Danny, “so… Phantom came here, from another timeline, to… protect this Amity Park from getting destroyed by ghosts?”, humming and tapping her chin, staring at the floor, “perhaps the circumstances of Phantom’s death resulted in an Obsession focused around ensuring the survival of Amity Park?”.

Danny tries not to flinch at his Obsession getting wildly mislabeled, but eh, that was kinda? close? to protection? He’s absolutely not outing his Obsession properly, even thinking about that is making the nausea actively worse.

His dad humming to but looking up at the ceiling instead, “that’s be a pretty wide range Obsession, oh whatever”, snapping his head back down to Danny, “so, you believe the spook huh?”.

His dad doesn’t look mad, so he feels perfectly okay-ish saying, “uh, yeah? Yes”.

His dad nods really firmly at him actually before smacking a fist in palm again, “well if my boy believes it then so do I! And! There’s sorta kinda proof! And it explains so much”, gesturing a little ridiculously, “why the ghost is even in Amity so much! Being a sorta hunter because of course a Fenton fights ghosts! The weird familiarity with our tech! And that weird one time the spook called me dad!”. Ah fuck, he thought his dad had never actually noticed any of his little early days slip ups. Ugh.

Mom looking to his dad judgingly, “Phantom called you dad? And you didn’t question that? Jack!”. To be fair, Danny had also called mom ‘mom’ as Phantom, she just apparently didn’t notice. Huh. Weird. Usually it wasn’t his dad noticing something she completely misses.

Dad shrugs, “what? I just thought it was because I’m so dad shaped, you know?!”.

Mom sighing, “okay well”, looking back to Danny, “so Phantom, is you?”.

“From a different timeline and totally definitely not this one nope Definitely not that would be impossible ha ha his timeline was like totally really screwed think like everybody everybody died and stuff”.

The look she gives him absolutely makes his stomach do aggressive flip flops, but she sighs, “yes I could see if Amity went, all of the actually competent ghost hunters went first, there wouldn’t have been much else the rest of the world could have done against the likes of Vortex or that Pariah ghost”.

Danny wheeze, “ha ha yeah”. It was true though, everyone would have been so screwed.

His dad goes bugged eyed, “he’s an orphaned Fenton! I will not stand for that!”, and just… bolts out the goddamn door.

Is… is he going to try and find Phantom? To what? ADOPT THE GUY! Oh Ancients, yeah no. EuGH. Danny wheezes a little and then, “blegh”, vomit spilling out of his mouth, down his neck and shirt, and onto the floor a little. Maybe this was a bad plan.

His mom jumping a bit and grabbing the semi-dried towel out of his hands to basically clean him off for him. “The powder must have gotten into your system some”, her swallowing, “and I suppose this has become a slightly stressful conversation”, sighing, “I wi- would have liked if you hadn’t lied to us though”.

“Heh”. Danny swallowing harshly after a while, tonguing the gross texture off of his teeth a little, “so, uh, what’s dad doing?”.

“Probably force adopting you. Other you”, she tilts her head, “this is going to get confusing”, blinking, “it’s already confusing”.

Danny glaring and grumbling a little, “welcome to my life then I guess”, muttering quieter, “another me running round playing fisticuffs with stuff straight outta goddamn nightmares”; he’s got to sell this okay? It’s not his fault lots of ghosts look vaguely to highly like nightmare fuel.

… wait, his dad’s probably not even going to come home ‘till he ‘finds Phantom’, that or when he comes home he’ll be super bummed and Danny will feel bad. Whelp, at least he’s decent at duplication now? Right? Ugh, he wants to bash his face off of the table… or throw up again.

Danny sending off a currently invisible duplicate, while his mom rubs her forehead after having disposed of the towel, “how does that ghost have not a single spooky bone in Its- his body if he’s related to hunters? Expert ones at that? And he wasn’t even that good at ghost hunting at first either, how did that happen”; she.. she actually looks genuinely slightly offended.

Danny starts coughing immediately, “um, what? What does that mean?”.

She gives him a bit of a judgemental look, “sweetie, Phantom couldn’t scare a kitten. He faceplants into walls. You’re more capable than him, with him coming from a time full of ghost invasions he should have some skill”.

Well, uh, she is right, but she doesn’t have to be mean about it! “I, uh, I think, it was more running and basic survival than fighting?”.

She throws her hands up a little, “still!”, then furrowing her brows, “though wait, what happened to all the other Amity park citizens turned ghosts? Surely it wasn’t just you? Yes perhaps your contamination makes you more likely to become a ghost, but still”.

Danny absolutely one hundred percent has an excuse for this actually! “There were others but that whole ‘don’t remember their lives clearly’ thing? Phantom remembers just fine. No one else”. He thinks ClockWork did mention that Sam and Tuck become ghosts in Dan’s timeline, but followed normal ghost rules and effectively only had hazy memories of their living time.

His mom frowns a little, muttering, “because of the contamination”, before smiling slightly and eyeing Danny, “well, I think I like that answer actually”. Danny can only cough awkwardly.

Meanwhile… duplicate Danny, in Phantom form of course, finds his dad. Blinking at the man invisibly from around a building. How… how should he even do this? He can’t just approaching him! That would be suspicious. And there’s no ghosts currently for him to run off and fight, with his dad following right behind to confront him dramatically. Maybe he could coax Val into chasing Phantom’s hide around some? Er that would probably result in his dad outing Phantom as being Danny… a different Danny anyways. Val would see through that bullshit so fast, since she actually knew halfa’s existed.

He.. could just pretend? to follow his dad around? Hiding out of sight at the last second but not quite fast enough to avoid being seen? Yeah yeah, let’s go with that. So Danny commences operation ‘Suck at Sneak’, just actively being terrible at being a ghost.

Him sticking his very visible head over roof tops, around light poles, out of dumpsters, a mail box one time; while his dad just sort of… runs around Amity Park? Danny makes a point to look confused and worried, you know, make his dad think he’s concerned about his weird ass behaviour.

Of course his dad notices him all of once, gets over excited, and nearly rams into someone’s car. Danny made sure to pop out no where near any cars the next time, the last thing anyone needed was more money being added to the Fenton Tab.

Danny hiding around a billboard when his dad shouts, “you loved us and the town so much you ripped yourself into another time stream to protect us!”. Oh man he so doesn’t need his dad just shouting that crap around town! Wes was bad enough already and he didn’t need anyone taking that kid seriously.

So Danny pokes his head back out, over the billboard and gives a very awkward, “what do you mean, citizen?!”.

His dad beams like he just won the lottery or something, this… this was not how he imagined this going. Jogging over and huffing a little, “so my boy totally spilled the beans! You’re”, titling his head and laughing a little, “well him! But not him! But also him! But defiantly not him!”; and then scrunches his face up.

Danny making a point to chuckle, “um, don’t hurt yourself?”, shaking his head, “I have no idea what you could possibly mean, citizen”.

“Oh don’t be like that”, and then his dads got a gun out, great. Well, it’s not actually a gun, just the Jack o’ nine tails; Danny… Danny just lets it catch him honestly. He’s giving up.

Danny laying on the ground caught up in the thing, “really? I thought we were past this sort of thing?”.

His dad actually looks happier as he bounds over, “you didn’t even try to avoid it! Because you knew what it was and that it was totally non-harmful!”, tilting his head, “well sorta”, then grinning at Danny again, “you’re coming back to Fenton Works, back home, mister”.

“Uh. What? Why?”, Danny glaring, “is there gonna be an invasion”. Remember self, Phantom shouldn’t know why Jack Fenton wants Phantom to ‘come over’.

“Ha ha! Nope! I simply won’t stand for my kiddo being kinda homeless! Other world-y stuff or not”; and just starts dragging Danny off with him.

Back with original Danny and his mom, the two looking to the door when his dad bars he’s back in, hoisting ‘Phantom’ up like he’s a kitten. Phantom blinking, “I have so many questions”.

Mom puts her hands on her hips, “did you really just let a ghost hunter drag you to their home? ‘Cause, no offence Jack dear, I know Jack didn’t really explain”.

“Eh no worries Mads! But I totally did!”, dad looking to Phantom, “right Phantom-boy”, then frowning, “that doesn’t work nearly as well as Danny-boy, drats”.

Both Phantom and Danny cringe, he fully agrees. Phantom floating slightly away from dad, eyeing mom, “uh, yes?”, then glaring at Danny, “what’d you go telling them for? I told you not to do that, man!”.

“I panicked!”.

“Why?!?”.

Danny glaring at… well at himself really, “why do you think? Or are you blind now?”, and just gestures exaggeratedly at his fucking stupid ass white hair.

“Oh shit did you die?”.

“No!”.

Mom putting her hands on her hips, “language”. Phantom glancing around awkwardly like he was trying to pretend he did nothing wrong. She shakes her head, “an invention just messed with his hair colour, made it like yours and a few too many things click, mister”.

Danny holding up a hand like he’s in class, “like I said, I panicked”.

Phantom pouting, “well you coulda picked something else to say”.

Danny making a point to sound unimpressed, “dude”.

Dad pouting a little right back at Phantom, “but then we wouldn’t know. I have a new, or another however it works, son to embarrass now!”.

Phantom screwing up his face, “Dear Ancients no!”, turning on mom desperately, “please stop him!”.

She quirks an eye at him, “I’ll think about it”, softening a little, “only if you explain why you didn’t just tell us yourself. We’re your parents, surely you’d know we’d accept you, other timeline situation or not”.

Dad holding up a finger, “technically we’re not legally his parents”, and just open mouth grins at them all.

Danny blinking, “oh Vlad will cry”, if his folks actually put in adoption papers, or whatever, for Phantom, ol’ Vladdie will give himself a migraine for sure. Phantom’s grinning matching quickly, “oh my zone, yes”.

Mom shaking her head, “well I have no doubts now”; making both boys blush; or one boy really? Man maintaining a second body like this was legit kinda confusing. Mom looking to his dad, “but yes I suppose we can simply officially adopt Phantom, Vlad is nearly as familiar with ghosts as us, so it’s unlikely he’ll find the idea of alternate timelines bizarre”.

Dad cheering immediately, throwing his hands up, “YES!”. Both Danny’s facepalming and groaning.

Like yes, he doesn’t feel nauseous anymore, or even nervous really, this pretty much couldn’t have gone better. But still! This was just embarrassing!

Phantom smiles a little, before looking awkwardly at mom, “as for the, well, why? I’m a ghost, that’s really all there is to it. You guys hunt ghosts and gives peaches about how evil and dangerous they are and how they can’t possibly ever be trusted and I had no reason. To think you’d actually believe me. It just wasn’t worth the risk, um, sorry?”, and tilts his head a little at her.

Her frowning sadly, “I’m… I’m sorry we made you feel that way. Your previous us or this current us. But I understand, especially because you’re still a kid, were still a kid”. And… and his mom ruffles both him’s hair. Danny just eyeing her with annoyance while Phantom acts nervous and eyeballs her hand. Dad bounding off to do paper work that didn’t involve prototyping for a change. Her humming, “the… glow changes the colour quite a bit up close like this and your hair does move differently”, dropping her hands and giving Danny an apologetic look, “guess accusing you of being Phantom was a little absurd then”.

Phantom looking to Danny and quirking an eyebrow, “really?”. Danny just shrugging back at himself.

Mom giving Phantom a look, “to be fair, technically, you are him, sort of”, her brows furrowing a little, “an impression at least, it’s close enough”.

Phantom wincing a little, because Danny absolutely wants to get across that he so does not like the ‘less than humans’ way his parents saw ghosts. Phantom looking away and glancing around the inside of the house like he was inspecting it, “so, uh? What’s happening with this”, twirling his hand just kind of generally around, “whatever thing, Jack dragged me here for?”.

“THAT’S DAD KIDDO!”.

Phantom wincing again, “not in public!”, then grumbling, “and I’ve kinda gotten used to the first names”.

Mom shaking her head, “well you shouldn’t have. It’s mom and dad. In public too”, and nods curtly to herself, “the town can just believe that we’ve changed our turn on you and decided to take you under our wings as a little hunter, ghosts or no”.

Danny blinks harshly, “Wes is going to loose it so bad”.

Mom scoffing, “oh he can deal with it, it’s a miracle that boy hasn’t given himself a stroke”.

Both Danny and Phantom chuckle and speak in unison, gotta sell the ‘same person but not literally’ thing, “too true”.

His mom blinking before shaking her head, “yeah okay, I guess that’s bound to happen”. Both him’s shrug, hey at least there was no reason to not just… act entirely like himself around his folks as Phantom now though. She eyes Phantom some more, “so tell me, where have you been staying? How have you been replenishing your ecto? You better be doing it enough since I know someone-”, glaring at Danny then looking back to Phantom, “-forgets to eat a lot”.

Danny grumbling to himself incoherently while Phantom fidgets, “oh you know, here and there? Around?”. There was nothing like basically telling your parent that hey! I’m homeless! And also maybe sometimes hiding in your attic/rafters… or ops centre in this case. She doesn’t exactly look impressed. Phantom rubbing his neck, “and Amity has a really solid supply of free floating ecto so”.

She sighs, “now yes, but before? You’ve been here nearly since the portal first opened”. Phantom just shrugs at that. Making her sigh again.

Dad jogging back over, papers in hand, “I’m gonna go give these to V-man!”.

“Jack no, they have to be filed properly, give them here”.

The man pouts a little but does as he’s told, looking at Phantom and Danny, “wow we really should have guessed other time kid a while ago, ha!”. No, not really. Since that was bullshit. Dad tilting his head at Phantom, “did you know where our portal was going to open so that’s how you showed up so fast? Did it open to the same spot in your timeline!”; he looks a little jazzed by the entire idea.

Phantom just nods rapidly, pretty sure there was no other way he could possibly explain it.

Dad grinning a little more, “oh man I can’t wait to hear more about your timeline, what kind of cool stuff we came up with!”. Mom shaking her head at him then looking at the Danny’s, “it might actually be good if you know what, well, what your us’s did to combat the stronger ghosts, ghost invasions, what did and clearly didn’t work”, and smiles a little sadly at Phantom specifically.

Phantom speaking monotoned, because why the heck would he liked to talk about how ‘things went wrong’ or be even reminded of that? “Amity didn’t last long enough to see singular really strong ghosts. Skulker, Desiree, Spectra, Aragon, those vulture guys; are a lot more dangerous that you guys give them credit for”, frowning, “and the FrightKnight, Pariah, they weren't survival-able”, rubbing his neck and muttering, “still surprised I survived that”.

Really, Skulker was pretty much only ‘non-dangerous’ because he focused all his time in Amity on Danny, the guy spent his entire life and death hunting, trapping, and killing/ending things. Desiree nearly destroyed Amity as it was and only stayed away cause she didn’t like Danny. Spectra also hated Danny now, and he doesn’t want to know where every teenager being severely depressed would have ended up. Aragon would actively still be a major threat if it wasn’t for Dora. And Vlad’s vultures goal from the start had been to literally kill his dad, they only stopped because Vlad discovered Danny’s halfa status. The FrightKnighr Danny mostly beat by dumb luck, nowadays it was strength too but eh. And Pariah… Danny really shouldn’t have remotely vaguely won that shit. He wouldn’t be surprised if ClockWork had twisted things around for him or something.

Mom frowns, “you didn’t expect to win?”.

Phantom fiddling with his fingers while Danny shakes his head at his mom, “it was a very very stupid suicide mission”. He had told his friends he’d be fine, but uh, yeah no he wasn’t stupid. Nowadays he’s got the kind of power to kick just about anything’s ass at least, a round two against Pariah would still be awful and only vaguely survivable.

Both of his parents, unsurprisingly, yelling, “Phantom!”, chastisingly. Mom shaking her head, frowning at him, “was that situation really that bad”, sighing, “I know we didn’t really have much of a plan at the time but surely-”.

“Pariah is borderline the strongest ghost in existence a thirty on the ecto scale with a death toll well into the trillions Amity was a mild annoyance and just a stepping stone to him there’s nothing you could’ve made or done nothing anyone really could have even the ghosts are terrified of that guy for a reason the ghosts literally in mass locked him in a coma just to save their own existences and they’re way more durable and strong than living folks”. He… honestly sometimes still had nightmares about what that man could have done.

Danny covering Phantom’s mouth to ‘stop’ him rambling, really sell how bad things could’ve been or gotten and were. Danny eyeing his parents awkwardly, “people who don’t need to breath can ramble for hours”, and has Phantom glare at Danny, before floating back away from the hand and sticking out his tongue at Danny. Lightening the mood? Check. Hopefully.

They both stare, mom licking her lips a little, “how did you survive”. Dad scratching his head very stiffly, “glad you did tho”; mom nodding immediately.

Phantom blinking owlishly, “uh, mix of other ghosts helping, like Skulker and such, luck, the whole stealing your strength enhancing suit since that didn’t exist in my time, and maybe the concept of time playing favourites?”.

Both of them blink and say, “the concept of time?”.

Danny chuckling a little, “this guy who controls the fabric of time keeps an eye on Phantom and has a soft spot for him”.

Phantom rubbing his neck, “to be fair, I am totally in the wrong time stream sooooo”. Dan was literally ClockWork’s ‘responsibility’ because of the same thing after all, so technically if this bullshit was actually true then ClockWork would be keeping an eye on another timeline Danny.

Dad tapping his chin, “well I suppose there would be a ghost with a thing for time, since the zone can connect to different times”, shaking his head, “must be a powerful fella”.

Phantom grumbling, “yeah you try fighting someone who can make you stop moving or undo your movements”. Danny isn’t remotely surprised Phantom gets whacked one, honestly the only reason ClockWork didn’t whack the real Danny was probably because it would mess something up. That something probably being this entire lie thing. Phantom spinning around in the air and rubbing his head, “hey ow! You jerk!”.

Phantom continuing to grumble at thin air while his folks eye Danny expectantly, at least they’ve seemed to just assume Danny knows Phantom well without questioning that, “like I said, keeps an eye on him”. His dad lifting up a gun and giving him a little ‘please?’ smile. “Dad no. No fighting concepts”.

Dad gesturing at Phantom, whining a little, “but he fights so called ‘concepts’?!”.

Phantom spinning back around and blinking, “but I’m already dead”. Dad just waving him off like that doesn’t even matter. “Please don’t, Ja- uh dad?”.

Annnnnnd yup! That totally works to distract the man. Dad beaming, “dad is right, Phanny!”, frowning, “that doesn’t work either”. Everyone had cringed. “P-boy?”.

That gets everyone shouting, “NO!”.

“Phant-o?”.

Danny shrugging, “that’s… better”. Phantom scratching his hair, “sounds like Fanta with an o, but I guess?”.

“Phant-o it is then!”.

Both Danny’s just groan.

Mom shaking her head before moving to grab Phantom’s wrist, “anyways, let’s get you a room set up”, eyeing said wrist, “and maybe you can explain how you inverted this Danny’s jumpsuit and made it safe for you to wear”.

Phantom blinking nervously, “what oh you don’t need to-”.

Mom glaring a little and basically tugging the ghost through the air to the stairs, “don’t even think about refusing, our kids live under our roof, and we expect you to at least be here for supper every day, and I will expect an explanation if you’re not”.

Danny laughing at the groaning Phantom while following them up, dad bounding after, Danny smirking, “just accept it, man. You know as well as I do, literally, there’s no point”. But how the heck is he going to maintain this! He’s going to have to spend so much time ‘supporting’ a duplicate. If this was years ago he’d be so screwed.

Phantom grumbling incoherently for a bit but does help get the spare rooms door unjammed, “boo”, sighing a little, “and, uh, mom, I just… pushed my energy into the suit and it worked, same as I did with the thermos and other random Fenton Tech”.

Dad vibrates a little, “you have Fenton Tech specific powers! So cool!”. Oh man there is no world where that’s not an embarrassing idea, he’s pretty sure that’s not the case either. Danny groaning and Phantom blushing furiously.

Phantom coughing, pointing at Danny, “is he stuck like that?”.

Danny flips Phantom off when his folks aren’t looking. Dad laughing awkwardly while starting to shove stuff around, “ah yeah, whoops?”.

Danny sighing, “it’s fine I guess, school’s going to be hell but whatever”. Dad just shrugging apologetically at him. Sure Danny could just dye his hair but who knows how that’ll interact with all the ecto in his hair, not to mention the maintenance.

Phantom shrugging, “well no one there will be accusing you of being me at least, since no one wants to look like Wes”. Both Danny’s snickering at that.

Mom shaking her head a little, “I’m sure no one will think anything of it after a while, now come and help move things, all Phantom should be doing is telling all of us where he’d like everything”.

Phantom muttering quietly, “this is so weird”, before shaking his head. Sort of following after the real Danny as he ‘helps’… helps set up a second goddamn room for himself basically. For a himself that his parents do think is this himself. Ugh.

This… this was going to bite him in the ass one day.

End.

Prompts: Invention gone wrong, changes him on a physical level The Fentons manage to adopt Phantom- without revealing his identity, how does Danny deal with this? Danny's hair somehow (by ghostly or humanly means) becomes permanently white and he struggles, but ultimately succeeds, in keeping his secret identity as Phantom.

[phicphight]

Moments in Time #2: Cracked

Synopsis: Danny arrives in the Clocktower one day to find Clockwork with green eyes. It turns out that ghosts also enjoy a few mortal delights.

About my Moments in Time series.

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This gem was written for Phic Phight 2025, for @reading-wanderer's prompt:

"Are you high right now?" Danny demanded. "Frankly, I'm not sure why you thought I'd do this sober."

I've been wanting to write this one since two weeks before Phic Phight even started, when Wanderer sparked this utterly cracked-out idea. Hope you and the #dissec crew enjoy!

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Danny came to the Clocktower for some reason. There was definitely A Reason; he wouldn't have subjected himself to Clockwork's cryptic maxims and knowing smirks otherwise. But the problem is that his brain, already addled by the shackles of sleep deprivation and puberty, underwent a full factory reset the moment he rounded the corner and saw Clockwork with green eyes.

The two of them are currently in something of a standoff. On one side is Danny, frozen in a state of Lovecraftian horror, and on the other is Clockwork, smirking that stupid knowing smirk that Danny knew he'd be forced to see.

Clockwork breaks it first. "Danny," he sings, "it's good to see you—"

"Your eyes," Danny interrupts, his voice somewhere within the octave of just saw a murder in real life. "Why are they green?!"

"Oh yeah, about that. You see those pipes over there?" Clockwork gestures toward a rack that Danny has somehow never noticed, which is full of what looks like tobacco pipes. "Mind lighting one of those up?"

Danny looks at the pipes. And then at Clockwork. And then at the pipes. And then at Clockwork. This cycle repeats itself a few more times until Clockwork, barely holding back laughter, takes pity on him.

"Do be punctual. Even the Master of Time prefers some things to be done promptly."

Danny's legs drag him unwittingly over to the rack. He picks one pipe up at random and turns it over in his hands a few times. It's quite pretty, despite the absurdity of the situation; it's white and has been etched with motifs of mountains and snow. The rest of the pipes are decorated in a similar fashion, sporting different types of scenery.

Feeling unsure of himself, he casts a glance over his shoulder at Clockwork. The smarmy bastard looks like this is the most entertaining program to have debuted on Ghost Zone TV in the past decade. Danny grimaces and gets to work figuring this whole disaster out.

He fumbles open an ornate box and finds what looks like tea leaves inside. He has no idea what he's doing — no one in the Fenton family smokes — but it can't be that difficult, right? He fills the pipe with what looks like a reasonable amount of leaves and then looks around for something to light it with. There's a device nearby that seems like it could be a lighter, but it also seems like it could be from the 22nd century, and despite his best efforts, he can't figure out how to get it to work.

He casts another glance at Clockwork. Throughout all of this, the ghost's "most entertaining program on Ghost Zone TV" look hasn't faltered. If anything, he has gotten closer to devolving into ugly guffaws with each second. Now, he's practically on the brink.

Danny's cheeks go frigid with the chill of his ectoplasmic blush. He opts to light the pipe with his own powers to save himself from further embarrassment.

Thankfully, by the time he brings the haphazard concoction over to him, Clockwork seems to have gotten a rein on his laughter. He wipes his mouth — probably trying to wipe the smile off his face — and then takes a puff.

Danny can't help but be enchanted by his behavior in the moments that follow. Clockwork closes his eyes and leans his head back, and the wrinkles and worry lines seem to erase themselves from his skin — and not because his body is moving backward through time. Once the last of the stress ebbs away, he releases the smoke through his nose and opens his eyes.

And, to Danny's shock, his eyes are red again.

He sputters. He wants to say something about this bizarre transformation, but somewhere between his brain and his mouth, the words get twisted, and what comes out is, "Are you high right now?!"

"Frankly, I'm not sure why you thought I would do this sober." Clockwork idly flips through timelines in one of his looking-glasses.

Danny's still sputtering. "But— but you— you're Master of— you watch— timelines—"

Clockwork unleashes a great sigh and pats Danny heavily on the shoulder. "You'd be high all the time too if you had to be at the Observants' beck and call." He takes another puff.

Danny's mouth is hanging open, but he can't find it in himself to close it. "Do they know?"

Clockwork blows a smoke ring. "Of course they do, but they know better than to complain. It's either this Timekeeper or no Timekeeper at all."

Danny has no idea what to do with this information, so he spends the next few moments in a stunned silence. After a bit, Clockwork breaks it with, "Oh, and you should know that red eyes aren't natural in the ghostly world. Any time you see a ghost with red eyes, they're high, too."

Danny's brow furrows as, with growing horror, he mentally checks off the list of ghosts who have red eyes. He doesn't always pay attention to those sorts of details in the heat of a fight, but he thinks he may have seen red eyes on the Lunch Lady… and Princess Dorathea… and Skulker… and Spectra… probably Technus, too, if he were to remove the shades.

Oh. Oh no.

He lowers himself to the floor, at once too overwhelmed to continue standing. In a daze, he asks, "What is it you're smoking, anyway?"

Clockwork's eyes twinkle. "I'll keep that to myself. It wouldn't do for me to poison the mind of an impressionable youth."

Later, when Danny is heading home, definitely having not fulfilled whatever purpose brought him to the Clocktower in the first place, it occurs to him that his encounters with the Box Ghost are about to make a lot more sense.

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Don't mind me, just gonna slide a last-minute Phic Phight submission right in there--

[phicphight]

Phic Phight - The Royal, The Abducted, And The Baffled

For: @armed-with-knitting-needles @phantoms14 @ventisettestars and library_of_Cronos and the_crownless_queen and warvik

The FrightKnight has zero chill, Amity Parker’s -specially the A-Listers- have all the chill, and Danny just wants tochill but everyone is making that very hard to do. Anyway, he’s the high ghost king now and the biggest problem his goddamn bullies have with that is that his castle looks like shit.

Danny’s walking forwards steadily, stomping his feet a little and glaring ahead in annoyance. The FrightKnight spent nearly all of yesterday chasing him around and shouting about how he needed to ‘vanquish’ Pariah once and for and all and claim his ‘rightful place’, multiple people saw, Danny was not impressed. Especially because one of the people who saw that shit was Dash, hence why Dash and co have been following him around for the past half hour pestering him about ‘being so bad at being a Fenton that he couldn’t get a single ghost to leave him alone’. Which hey! Danny did get the guy to shove off, you know, by angrily stomping into Phantom’s Keep aka his current ghost zone lair, tearing open the sarcophagus, and just ramming the shit out of Pariah’s entire chest area with multiple weapons, of varying types, and sizes. The guy was ended, over, done with; not Danny’s problem anymore, or anyone else’s for that matter. Now the FrightKnight could shut the fuck up and leave Danny the fuck alone for, like, ten minutes at least.

But what does he get instead of peace? Why Dash of course! That’s what his luck is like. Ugh.

Dash snorting, “I bet the ghost of fear was following Fentailbone because he was just so fed up with how not scary he is even though he’s got spooky powers!”.

Kwan chuckling, “yeah! Even the Box Ghost can be scarier! You know, like that one time”.

How dare!

Paulina and Star snickering to each other. Paulina sounding sickly sweet, “or maybe he was trying to teach the boy how to dress, that ghost does know a thing or two about fashion clearly”, sounding like she’s talking to Star now, “like girl, have you seen how shiny his armour is? I would love if I could get my hair to have that kind of sheen”.

Dash snorting, “the only sheen Fenton’s got is coked up Charlie Sheen chic”.

Okay yes Danny’s fashion sense is dumpster inspired but RUDE!

Kwan groaning, “man that drama was so good, right?”. Everyone else in their stupid little group voicing their agreeances, which fine even Danny agrees that had being very interesting drama and sue him, he’s just as much of a gossip as any other self respecting ghost is.

Then, because of course, a ghost portal just opens up right beneath Danny’s feet, and the A-listers are close enough to him to get sucked in as well. Fun.

All of them landing on the hard tiled floor with an intricately well designed, but beaten down, red rug underneath them. Oh hey! This looks like the inside of his keep! That can’t possibly mean anything? Could it? COULD IT! Danny was going to end Frighty. Danny grumbling as he stands up and brushes off his pants, “I’m going to find you, you spooky motherfucker, and piss in your stupid little silly helmet”.

Everyone else groaning a little as they all scramble up, they’re not nearly as surprised or freaked out as a non-Amity Parker would expect them to be, after getting magicked into a weird beaten down castle and all. Amity Parker’s just weren’t weak like that, nowadays. Paulina holding her hands up to her chest and poking at the floor with one foot, “oh ew, this place is so totally run down. Why couldn’t I have fallen into a castle place that was pretty and sparkly?”. Star grabbing Paulina’s arm, “I know girl, look at all the weird creepy statues!”.

Dash grunting, smacking Kwan one on the back, “oh whatever, let’s just find this ghost whoever and beat the the shit outta them”, glaring at Danny, “ you just stay here, ya damn twink, and let the real men handle this”.

Danny turning to them slightly and glaring, “fuck you”. This place was technically Danny’s home so, no. He doesn’t feel like getting beaten up today, and Pariah was too stabbed through for anyone to be going and beating him up. Like, there is a such thing as over kill at a certain point.

Then the goddamn FrightKnight appears in a puff of spooky, ominous purple smoke. Everyone behind Danny yelping while the ghost bellows, “I HATH RETRIEVED YOUR GREATNESS, OH ALL MIGHTY KINGSBANE! IT IS TIME TO CLAIM YOUR THRONE! MY KING!”, and swings his sword to basically point it directly in between Danny’s eyes.

Danny… Danny wants to flying kick him square in the face. Immediately.

Dash sputtering a bit, “why are you shouting that at Fenturd?! Me or Paulina I’d get!”, turning on Danny, “who died and made you king!”.

Danny is passed the point of goddamn caring anymore. Fuck all of this. Fuck all of them. Fuck the FrightKnight’s hard on for making Danny more powerful and more kingly. Fuck this shitty ass ugly ass building. Fuck secret identities because this asshole just does not understand the concept, clearly. And also? Fuck subtlety.

Danny starts smacking at the ghosts sword wildly with both arms and hands. “Dude you suck, how do you have the worst situational awareness in all of existence, holy shit”, grumbling and aggressively stomping over to the Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep, grabbing the edges, and violently tearing off the front; yeeting the front half into a wall dramatically. Danny gestures at Pariah’s spectral corpse, still littered with multiple different knives, and spears, and swords, and axes, some pencils, a butter knife or two, there’s even a tv remote Danny sharpened with some ecto-fire and an edge. Danny grinning manically and growling, “this motherfucker did, shit head”.

The group actually looks slightly freak out, the FrightKnight seeing that, gives Danny a little cheery thumbs up. Danny scowling at the ghost, “Frighty, I am so goddamn close to just busting into your area, eating all of your flooring, and cramming you back into your goddamn pumpkin. I’ll rename it the fucking timeout pumpkin!”.

The FrightKnight putting a hand to his chest, “but your majesty, I must stay by your side and they should know and fear your greatness!”.

“I’m not Pariah! I don’t actually want people terrified of me, man!”.

“All ghosts need fear, your highness!”.

“The flavour of fear that I like is the kind that comes from chaos and confusion, not terror!”, crossing his arms and huffing, “which to be fair”, nodding his head at the A-Listers who are all in varying stages of freaking out, “this is doing a fantastic job of causing so much confusion”. At the FrightKnight perking up and his hair fire waving more happily. “No, bad. Do not yank random people into my goddamn throne room! I don’t care if it makes the ‘good fear’! Go set a random stop sign on fire or get the head Observant drunk during a hearing or something, instead!”.

Dash throws his hands up, “what the Zone, Fenton!”, sticking his hands out at Danny and at the sarcophagus, “are you seriously trying to say, that you busted in here at some random point and stabbed goddamn Pariah fucking Dark in the core a bunch of times with random pointy shit! How did that happen?!?”, dropping his arms and blinking, sounding way calmer, “no really, how?”.

Kwan looking at Dash nodding, then Danny, “cool though, I guess”.

“No Kwan man, that’s Fenton, once a loser always a loser”.

Paulina actually shoves Dash a little, “king, or whatever, is automatically cool, Dash”.

“Heh, yeah I guess. I am the football king after all, and I’m the coolest”.

Danny blinking at them, speaking monotoned, “I like to take the speeder on random little zone trips sometimes, found this place, got creative”. Weak ass excuse but he does not care even slightly.

Star putting a hand on her hip, “well if you’re this places king or whatever why haven’t you spruced it up? This place looks dreadful”. Paulina going wide-eyed before instantly nodding, “dios mio! Definitely”, she immediately moves to stalk up to Danny, grab his arm, and start dragging him off, “if you’re going to be cool now then we are fixing this travesty”.

Danny just sputters disbelievingly while the entire A-lister group starts basically tearing the place apart. Trimming the frayed curtains, dumping water on overly dusty shit (he neither asks nor cares where they got the water from), shouting at him to fix his ‘ugly ass rugs’, Paulina even starts smacking the FrightKnight to get him to clean the super high up massive windows and tapestries.

Danny shouting, “HA!”, at the FrightKnight -who is just leaking tangy spicy confusion-based fear- while the ghost is forced by Star to rearrange the dinning hall to be symmetrical, her ranting the entire time about Pariah having the worst room design sense in the world.

Kwan’s off pointing at an accent stair step, utterly baffled why anyone would have that in their house or place or castle. He acquired a hammer at some point, Danny left him to that.

Dash was now raiding a random storage room for ‘more manly’ statues, while calling Pariah’s skull and bat statues tacky and thus pathetic. He even called The FrightKnight pathetic when the guy tried to defend the aesthetics of bats.

Star set what Danny assumed used to be Pariah’s bed on fire because it was a ‘travesty to all ghost kind’. Which yeah, thing was really ugly, lion themed for some reason, and shaped like a comma. Danny had to spend the next half hour making a new rocket ship themed bed out of ecto-constructs. Star deemed it childish but acceptable because of his ‘weird love of space’.

Then Paulina went and forced everyone to stitch tiny little stars into the bottoms of all of the tapestries. Danny bitched that he could have just made ecto-construct ones or something and she called him lazy. The A-listers nearly spent more time relentlessly mocking the FrightKnight for sucking at using a thread and needle. The guy was in armour, Danny doubted he could sew sweet dick all with armour covered fingers.

By the time Danny had managed to drag the group of humans to and through the little ghost portal connected to his Fenton Works bedroom that he had, the FrightKnight was left just standing, half sagged over, and physically shaking from bafflement and sheer concern. The guy looking at Danny, “there, there is something deeply wrong with your citizens”.

“Oh I’m well aware, Frighty, well aware”, snorting and crossing his arms, “honestly? These days I get more of that sweet sweet confused fear from the ghosts than the humans”. Everyone did just kinda go ‘ah not this shit again’ nowadays, rather than screaming in terror or fleeing like their lives depended on it.

The FrightKnight slightly shakes himself off, “well I’m glad to be of service and to your tastes, your highness”.

“Ew, you could have phrased that better”.

The ghost just gestures at the throne, so Danny sighs and does the thing that the goddamn personification of fear abducted him to do. Takes his rightful place on the High Ghost Kings throne; Frighty being more than eager to give him his crown.

Danny will bet money that if Dash and his buddies even tell anyone about this, whoever will just blink, then go ‘huh that’s neat. Guess Fenton’s cool now’, and go back to eating a sandwich or something. But hey, at least his lair looked nice now? Maybe that’ll get him to actually spend more time in the place…

End.

Prompts: Dash really shouldn't ask the question "Who died and made you king?" to Danny Fenton without knowing there's an actual answer to that. Reveal gone right. Everyone knows Danny has ghost powers. No one (or only the people who know in the show) knows he's Phantom After Danny defeats Pariah Dark, Fright Knight becomes loyal to him, and the knight doesn’t seem to grasp the concept of a secret identity. Shenanigans and ghost politics ensue Ghosts feed on fear produced by the living. Some ghosts arent picky about the flavor, some are. Danny is not exempt despite his halfa status. And it might not bother him all that much. (Horror and/or fluff encouraged) Danny surprisingly gets good advice from an unlikely source

[phicphight]

What a Night

Internet-famous musician Danny Phantom is doing a collab with Ember McLain! Six weeks, twelve concerts, twelve cities across the American Midwest. Go online and buy your tickets today!

The performer Danny Phantom has teamed up with Ember for a legendary album. Their first show is overwhelmed with cultists looking for the ghost king. {from @iwillhissatyou} Valerie Gray and Sidney Poindexter have finally met and…oh boy. {from @silverwing013} and Danny is tired of keeping secrets from his parents, but he still doesn’t know how to actually break the news to them, so instead of actually figuring something out like he probably should, Danny goes “fuck it” and proceeds to have some fun with it. Also, no Jazz, he’s definitely not coping with humor. {from @neutralgoodhyena}

Read Also on AO3

[Warnings for anxiety and mentions of cults]

Today was the day of the long-awaited Ember McLain/Danny Phantom collab concert in Amity Park, and it looked like the whole town had turned up for it, and a good number of out-of-towners as well. It would be the first in a series of six twelve concerts in 6 weeks across the Midwest, and the whole region had been talking about the highly anticipated team up for months leading up to it, and the day it was to begin had finally arrived. 

To say Danny was excited for it would be a massive understatement. To say he was nervous would be even more of an understatement.

"You'll do fine, Babypop," Ember reassured him, sensing his anxiety as he set up his keyboard and triple-checked all the settings. "It's not like you haven't performed before."

"Yeah, in front of a camera," Danny replied. "YouTube fame is totally different from sold-out concert fame. The biggest real audience I've performed in front of was, like, thirty people at a café with open mic. nights. This is a big step-up from that."

"Your most popular video has, like, 3 million views, today's audience is less than 3 thousand. You may not have been able to see them all, but you've effectively performed in front of 10 times as many people as you will today. Plus, with the stage lights and the visual effects, you'll barely be able to see any of them anyway."

Danny nodded. "You're... you're right, yeah."

"Danny!"

He perked up and furrowed his eyebrows in confusion when he heard a familiar voice calling his name from a distance.

"Will you tell your stupid manager to let me backstage already!"

"Excuse me a minute," he told Ember, hurrying toward the backstage entrance.

"It's cool, Sid, she's with me," Danny said, taking Valerie by the hand and leading her toward the performer areas.

"Well how was I suppose to know when she did have a back-stage pass?" Poindexter huffed, crossing his arms and scowling. 

Danny hadn't regretted his decision to appoint Sidney Poindexter as his manager for live performances yet, but he'd never had the chance to introduce him to his girlfriend before, and clearly he should have made the time because Valerie was pissed.

"Sorry about him, Valerie," Danny said. "Poindexter's a good guy, really, he's just super serious about his job and maybe he goes a little mad with power when he has a clipboard in his hands. I'll make sure to get you a special girlfriend backstage pass for the rest of my concerts."

"You'd better," Valerie said curtly.

She eyed him up and down, apprising his look for the concert, and he took a step back, opened his arms, and gave a slow turn so she could see it better. Her scowl slowly morphed into a small smile and she nodded her approval.

"Looks good," she said at length. "I see Ember's make-up artists really had their way with you, but the dark makeup creates a cool contrast with the white hair. You're wearing the accessories I picked out for you. You look good."

"Glad I have your seal of approval," Danny said. "There's another half-hour 'til the show starts. Want some snacks? The venue set up a whole complimentary spread, even though we're ghosts and don't need to eat. Guess they were just really excited to have us."

"Don't mind if I do," Valerie said, traipsing over to the buffet table and helping herself to some mini blueberry muffins and mini quiches. 

Most of the food was miniature versions of normally larger foods for some reason. Danny was partial to the mini pig-in-a-blankets... or would it be pigs-in-a-blanket? Pigs-in-blankets? What parts of that hyphenated phrase had to be pluralized?

He mulled over the conundrum with Valerie, but they didn't come to a satisfactory conclusion before Poindexter came rushing into the room with a wild-eyed expression.

"We've got a problem, Danny," he said. "The venue is filling up with cultists."

"What? What do you mean cultists?" Danny demanded.

"I don't know, they'd all got black robes and strange tattoos," the ghost continued. "Security stopped some of them, and told me they said they're looking for the ghost king, but they can't kick 'em out 'cause they've all got tickets, and they technically haven't done anything wrong. What should we do?"

"Woah, slow down, Sid," Danny held out his hands. "What do you mean ghost king?"

"He means you."

He turned around to see Ember standing behind him. She approached the buffet table and popped a mini eclair in her mouth. Just because ghosts didn't need to eat, didn't mean those eclairs weren't damn good.

"Me? What are you talking about?"

"You defeated the old king in single combat," she said through a mouthful before swallowing. "You possess the royal artifacts."

"Yeah, in a shoe box full of junk in the bottom of my closet," Danny argued. "I'm no king."

"Well, duh," she said. "I mean, not in the practical sense. The Ghost Zone is pretty much self-governing anyway, so it's not like we ever needed a king, but magic is as magic does, so from a technical standpoint..." she trailed off, making a so-so motion with her hand.

"You are the king," Poindexter said. "We ghosts may not need one, but the Ghost Zone needs a vessel or it becomes too weird and unstable to be habitable, and right now, that's you."

"Why am I the only one who didn't know about this?"

"Uh, hello?" Valerie raised her hand, her face a mask of surprise and confusion.

"Okay, why am I the only ghost who didn't know about this?"

"Not our fault you never bothered to learn about ghostly culture," Ember said with a shrug.

"Does this make me the ghost queen?" Valerie asked.

Ember snorted a laugh, "You become a ghost some time since we last talked?" she asked sarcastically.

Valerie glared and her hand instinctively went to her thigh for her ecto-gun, even though she wasn't wearing her ghost hunting suit and she'd promised not to hunt ghosts anymore ever since she learned the truth about Danny and the rest of them—that they weren't really evil, just trying to act on their ghostly .

"Ember's just razzin' you," Poindexter said flippantly. "There's only one royal position in the ghost zone, so even if you were both a ghost and married to Danny, that would be it. You'd just be the king's wife and nothing else."

Valerie scowled at him, as if he even had the presence of mind to intend that as a personal slight against her. 

Poindexter barrelled on, not even noticing her irritation, which of course only pissed her off more. "But the semantics of royal titles aren't nearly as important as the fact that there are literally hundreds of cultists out there looking for Danny and they won't say what for, or what they plan to do if they find him. I hate to suggest cancelling the show, but—"

"We can't cancel the show," Ember cut him off severely. "Not this last-minute. Double security around the stage and tell them to watch out for any movement on the part of the cultists. If they see anything weird and suspicious, like artifacts, glowing tattoos, weird chanting, have them tell the lighting crew to flash the stage-front lights red three times. That'll be the signal for Danny to get the hell outta dodge. With any luck, they're just here for the music, but even if they're not, the show must go on, right Danny?"

"Red three times. I'm on it!" Poindexter said, then vanished to attend to spreading the updated procedures.

"Uh... right," Danny agreed. He was not expecting Ember to be so on top of the situation.

"Valerie, I know you were looking forward to seeing your boytoy perform live, but if you wouldn't mind gearing up and providing some extra security—"

"Say no more; you got it," Valerie said. "I'm not about to let a bunch of creepy cultists run off with my man. I'll catch you after the show, babe." She gave Danny a peck on the cheek before darting out of the backstage area.

Danny followed her with his eyes until she was out of sight then turned to Ember with a frown. "I'm not her boytoy."

"Sure you're not," Ember said. "Ten minutes to curtain. Time for last minute sound checks and staging."

As if Danny's anxiety wasn't already through the roof, now it was amped up even higher.

Ten minutes felt like an eternity, until their names were announced over the loudspeakers and the curtains rose.

If it weren't for all those hours of practice, Danny was sure he would have choked, but as Ember hyped up the crowd and they started in on their first song, Danny's fingers danced across his keyboard as if on autopilot.

Ember was right about the stage lights and the crowd. It was so bright he could barely see a thing, let alone make out individual faces, though he did not swaths of black robes in the crowd—cultists grouped together. Plus, between just those two factors, the heat onstage was stifling, and Danny's ice-powers kicked in instinctually to cool him off, creating an unplanned mist effect across the stage.

He looked up with wide-eyes, checking for reactions from Ember and her band, but they just rolled with it and kept playing, so unperturbed as to make the audience think it was intentional, made with dry ice or something. They were so professional, it made Danny feel like he really had to step up his game to deserve his spot on this stage with them.

When his part of their duet came up, Danny sang his heart out, belting the words with more emotion than in any of their rehearsals and really giving it his all. But all the while, he kept glancing at the stage-front lights, waiting for them to start flashing red, telling him to run.

Ancients how he wished he could see what was going on in the crowd. This anxiety was killing him all over again.

Danny was on edge the whole time, but the concert ended without him having to run offstage in a hurry.

He got to take his bows alongside Ember and her band and then walk off just as planned. As soon as they got the the green room, Hawk, Riff, and Thump (Ember's bassist, rhythm guitarist, and drummer respectively) collapsed on the sofa pretty much simultaneously and Ember laughed.

"They always do that," she said. "It's like a post-concert ritual for them. Flop down on the couch in the green room and not move for ten full minutes."

"Can you blame us?" Thump asked, rubbing his forearms. 

Danny guessed that banging on a drum set for nearly two hours straight took its toll, even for a ghost. He knew his own fingers were starting to tremble after that long playing keyboard.

"Thump, you were sitting the whole time," Ember pointed out.

"Yeah, but me and Riff weren't," Hawk pointed out. "My dogs are barkin'."

"At least it wasn't as hot as it usually is," Riff commented. "Thanks for that, Phantom. It kinda caught me by surprise at first, but we done concerts with smoke machines before, so not that big a deal."

"Oh, I'm with Riff on that one, big time," Hawk agreed, and Thump nodded as well.

"You should do that at every concert," Riff said.

"I don't know if I can help it," Danny said. "With my ice core, the second I started to overheat, it just kinda happened."

"Well, no complaints here," Ember said.

"Amen," her band chorused in agreement.

The five performers rested up in the green room while the roadies packed up their equipment to transport it to the next venue. Ghosts didn't really have the same travel time as most vehicles, so their stuff traveled without them, and they met it there the day of the concert.

After a few minutes, Valerie came in, dressed in her ghost hunting gear and looking like she'd barely escaped an explosion. Her hair, which was normally well kept, was frizzing, and she had soot marks all over her suit.

"Hey babe!" she greeted, sidling up to Danny and sitting on the arm of his chair. "You were great out there."

"You too, I assume," Danny replied, looking her up and down. "What happened? I couldn't really see anything with the stage lights in my face."

"Oh, just a little scuffle with the cultists. Security and I handled it. No big deal."

"Val, you're awesome."

"I know it," she said. "We're gon' have words about your manager though, he tried to stop me from coming back here again after the show."

"I promise I will get a pass for you before the next show," Danny said. "He'd just trying to do his job."

Valerie huffed in irritation, but didn't argue the point further. Danny could sense that her beef with Poindexter wasn't about to end any time soon. This was gonna be a long summer.

That night, Danny went home on cloud nine. He couldn't wait to tell his parents how well the concert had gone. He'd been scrolling through social media in the green room, and people were raving about the show. They thought Valerie fighting the cultists was part of the act, and they ate it up. It couldn't have gone better.

His hand was on the doorknob when he remembered that he couldn't tell his parents. They still didn't know he was a ghost.

Ancients, this was getting frustrating. All the accomplishments he was most proud of had to do with his ghost side, and he couldn't share any of them with his parents. He was so tired of keeping secrets from them. Maybe now was the time to finally loop them in.

He walked in the front door. The concert had gone on until one in the morning, and after that he'd hung out with Ember, Val and the guys until the after-party, which went on until not long ago. He'd been out all night, but since it was summer, he didn't have to worry about his curfew.

His mom was in the kitchen making pancakes for breakfast, and his dad was half asleep at the kitchen table while Jazz sat beside him reading a book. The table had already been set. 

As Danny sat down at the table, he thought that he should probably come up with some kind of plan for how to tell his parents he was half ghost. But at the same time, he also thought "fuck it", and it had been a long night, so after almost no deliberation, "fuck it" won out.

"Welcome home, sweetie," his mom greeted. "How was your night? You went to a concert right?"

"It went great! I almost got attacked by cultists and it was so hot onstage that I accidentally iced it over, but the audience seemed to think all that was planned, so all in all, I can't complain. Plus my band mates seemed to appreciate the cool-off."

Jazz looked at him over her book with a look of complete shock and borderline fear.

"That's nice, Danny," his mother said. "Do you want chocolate chips or blueberries in your panca—wait what the hell do you mean you were almost attacked by cultists?"

His father, who'd been pretty much asleep by that point jerked awake at the sound of his wife yelling. "What? Who's a cultist? Attack?"

"Yeah," Danny said. "I guess I'm, like, the ghost king or something. It was news to me too, but I had a concert to put on, so I just let security deal with them. Also, I'd love some blueberries, please."

The number of shocked expressions in the kitchen tripled.

"Put on?" his mother repeated. "I thought you were attending a concert."

"No, I had to perform that big collab concert with Ember and her band last night."

"But... but wasn't that... wait are you...?"

Danny nodded.

"You're Danny Phantom?!" His mother all but screamed. "Why didn't you tell us sooner?!"

"I didn't?" Danny asked with an exaggerated tone of surprise. "Well gee I could've sworn I told you guys. Remember that accident in the ghost portal back in freshman year? Ever since then, I've been half ghost. I thought you knew." He gave him his best expression of mock innocence. 

It was clear that he absolutely knew this was the first time he was telling them, but he was also clearly having fun with it. His parents, on the other hand....

"You're half ghost?!" they shouted in unison.

"Did you die?" his mother asked. "How can you say that so casually?"

"He's just coping with humor like he always does," Jazz said dismissively, finally getting over her shock at her brother's sudden honesty and looking back at her book.

"I am not!" Danny refuted aghast. "I would never do such a thing! Name one time that I have ever used humor to cope?"

"Is that a serious question?" Jazz asked sardonically, raising an eyebrow. "Because I could give you an itemized list. Would you like it chronologically or alphabetically?"

"Ugh. I'm good thanks," Danny said, rolling his eyes. "And no, I'm not dead. Or... I guess you could say I'm half-dead? I'm not sure, really. I can transform between a human and ghost form, and I use my ghost powers, along with the ghost hunting training you guys gave me, to keep Amity Park safe from ghostly threats, and more recently to become a YouTube famous musician and get a concert deal with Ember McLain."

His parents obviously had no idea how to respond to all this new information at once. Honestly, Danny didn't even know how he wanted them to respond. As long as they didn't try to capture or kill him, he'd be happy.

"Uh... congratulations?" his mother said finally.

"Thanks!"

Yeah. That worked.

[phicphight]

A Mr. Lancer ficlet for the Danny Phantom Phic Phight 2025

---

After Mr. Lancer’s stroke, the substitute had the class create a get-well card as a group project.

Danny had signed his name, and drew a smiley face beside it. It wasn’t as nice as Sam’s vining purple flowers along the border of the poster-sized card, or Paulina’s Sayonara Pussycat stickers, but it was all Danny could think to contribute.

When Mr. Lancer returned one morning with his usual optimistic smile, the class cheered. Like during a football game. Though Danny was pretty sure Dash and the other jocks just wanted to make as much noise as possible for the fun of it when they started letting out ear-piercing whistles and stomping their feet.

Lancer actually sniffed and used a finger to wipe away a tear, before asking the class to quiet down.

He thanked everyone for the card and well-wishes, and said he was feeling much better and was eager to get back to teaching them all.

Then he turned to write on the chalkboard.

As he filled the board with writing, the class started whispering. And once he was done, and turned around to tell the class that the page numbers and questions to answer were on the board; Star had hesitantly raised her hand and delicately told him that none of the class could read it.

It took a few minutes for Lancer to be convinced that the class truly couldn’t make out his writing. Then he paled. And went back to the hospital.

He didn't come to school the next day, but did return the day after.

Each time he picked up the chalk to write something on the board, he paused, and then put the chalk back down.

Even Lancer’s notes on their returned assignments were unreadable to the class. But, as the weeks passed, people stopped mentioning it.

The thing was... Danny could read it.

For the rest of the class, Lancer’s writing was nothing but odd squiggles—a lingering side-effect of his stroke; maybe brain damage to the language part of his brain, or nerve damage in his hand messing up his fine motor skills. But to Danny, Lancer’s writing was as clear as day.

Lancer was writing in Ghost Script.

---

He, Mr. Lancer, glanced around, pulling the collar of his coat a bit higher around his face, before entering the door to the old warehouse.

He couldn’t let anyone from Casper High know about his extracurricular activities. About his secret double life after dark.

---

When Danny got an invite from the Ghost Writer to join a book club, his first impulse was to shred the invitation.

But he managed to keep from destroying it—barely.

The last time he’d destroyed something of the Ghost Writer’s and mocked the guy, he’d stuck him inside a story. Danny thought he’d never get out of those rhymes!

So, Danny, with gritted teeth, took the invitation politely, and thanked him for the invite.

If the Ghost Writer saw Danny’s eye twitching, he said nothing.

---

After a week of his eyes randomly landing on the invitation sitting on his dresser, Danny decided to go and see what that book club was like.

Even if he didn’t particularly like reading.

When Danny got to the rusted door, he double-checked the address.

Was that a 6, or a 9 that got loose and flipped upside down?

No, it really was a 6.

Danny tried the doorknob, but, though it turned, the door wouldn’t budge. When he shoved his shoulder against it, he heard a little rust falling, but that was all that happened.

Eventually, he sighed and went intangible through the door.

He’d gone to the address as Fenton, not wanting to draw attention by going as Danny Phantom, so he’d of preferred not to need ghost powers. But it did look like an abandoned part of town, so it probably didn’t matter.

Entering the warehouse, and letting his eyes adjust for a moment, he looked around and saw the Ghost Writer and several other ghosts sitting in midair in a circle, glowing books in their hands.

Then Danny squinted at a ghost he didn’t instantly remember. His back was to Danny, and Danny traced his eyes across the ghost’s pointed ears and bald head, and his maroon shirt.

Johnny called out to Danny, grabbing his attention for a moment, and all the other ghosts turned their heads to see Danny as well, waving or welcoming him to the club.

The mystery ghost looked over his shoulder, and Danny’s eyes widened. “Mr. Lancer?”

Lancer’s mouth dropped open.

Then the Box Ghost asked, “The teacher often found at your school?”

The Lunch Lady said, sweetly, “The one who took all the meat from the poor students?”

“The one who keeps hiding the boxes?” The Box Ghost added.

“The one who tried to give me detention for riding my motorcycle in the halls?” Johnny asked boredly.

Lancer glanced around, wide-eyed, at the ghosts in front of him, and at Danny Fenton.

“Fuck!”

---

I used these prompts:

@pennerjones "Mr. Lancer returns to school about a week after suffering an apparent stroke and needing to be rushed to the hospital. He's feeling much better and is ready to get back to teaching...only, when he tries to write anything on the chalkboard, all he can seem to write is a series of odd squiggles. --- Only Danny realizes that Mr. Lancer is now writing exclusively in ghost script"

@higgidigs "Mr. Lancer has a secret double life that nobody else knows about."

@ecto-mochi "All the ghosts decide to make a book club. To their surprise, Lancer shows up!"

@finwe77 "The incident that gets Mr Lancer to use actual curses instead of just book titles."

[phicphight]

Phic Phight - They’re Gonna Be Ghost Fist Fighting

For: @hannahmanderr

A bunch of fellow teens deciding they want to start fighting or hunting ghosts is something Danny honestly should have seen coming. Well, at least he doesn’t really mind all that much.

Danny blinks, “let me get this straight”, quirking an eyebrow at about thirteen other teens, “you guys want me to teach you all how to fight ghosts? How to fight and ghost hunt and shit?”, blinking, “why?”.

Mikey shifting on his feet a little, “none of us are all that strong and stuff, and you did really amazing fighting on the ghost pirate ship that one time”.

James scoffing, “yeah I think everyone who’ve gotten their asses kicked if you hadn’t basically told everyone what to do”.

Emily nodding, “we really can’t keep relying on just Phantom or your honestly super dangerous parents. It makes way more sense for someone actually capable to make us capable enough to deal with all the ghosts instead”.

Danny scratching his head, “okay you know what? That’s actually pretty fair”, humming, “and I guess I could actually do that”, shrugging, “eh alright, try not to hurt yourselves though”, and gestures for them to follow after him. He’s got a spare, he’s got time to at least teach them a little bit of hand to hand, maybe how to make an emergency shiv eventually. And if this does turn into him basically creating a team of ghost hunters, then he’s going to have to drag Sam and Tucker into the whole mess.

Danny makes everyone stand like solders outside, walking back and forth like a Sargent, “okay shit heads, everyone in this dumb town is contaminated enough to actually be able to punch a ghost and hurt them, so ya’ll are gonna learn to throw a bunch, at the air but whatever”.

Dale leaning at Charles, “why are we out here like we’re in the army”,

Danny pointing at him, “so that if the teachers look outside they will get nervous and deeply concerned by what we’re doing and planing. We’re tormenting a few teachers”; that earns him more than a few laughs. Then he points at James, “you, try to beat the shit outta me”.

“Uh, really?”.

Danny rolling his eyes, “yes really. You’d have a better chance at punching yourself than me, but go and try”.

James screwing up his face, “oh screw you”, and lunges at Danny. Danny just side steps him, grabs his wrist, and flips him on to the ground. James tries three more times, Danny just throwing him back on the ground again and again.

Danny snickering at the guy when he shoves himself up, Danny putting a hand on his waist and pointing at him, “if you really want to go and fight ghosts, at least try like you want to really end them. Don’t tuck your thumb in, you’ll break your thumb. And you’re better off trying to hit with your palm, not your fist”, snapping his fingers and pointing at the rest of the group, “and even though it doesn’t actually hurt, ghosts will flinch back if you aim for the nuts, take those cheep shots”.

James immediately aims for the nuts, Danny knocking the kids legs out from underneath him, “not me, asshole”. Danny looking around at all of them, “everyone beat up everyone else like you’re in a mosh pit. Honestly, just doing that will teach you how to hit without hurting yourself and how to not get hit”.

Everyone shrugs and actually starts doing that. Leaving Danny staring at all of them trying to beat each other up in a big pile; he’s very smug.

Mr. Lancer stopping by a window, eyeing everyone, opening the window, and shouting out, “Daniel! What are you doing now!?!”.

Danny tries to make himself look outright evil, “making child soldiers! Taking the first steps into making this towns teens my personally weapons!”.

Mr. Lancer looks extremely unimpressed at him.

Emily shouting, “I’m fully in favour of that!”, while trying to kick Charles in the face.

Danny turning to her, “bite! My wannabe minion! Bite!”. And then snickers to himself when Mr. Lancer shakes his head and closes the window back up. No one bites anyone though, very reasonable honestly.

Kyle huffing on the ground, “you know we want you to actually lead us to fight ghosts, right?”.

Danny shrugging, “eh, being some leader of a ghost hunter team is really not my style, but I’ll do it sometimes or if another situation where we have to band together to fight some ghosts happens again”.

Lilly shoving James over, “oh that’s fine enough then”. Danny just giving her a thumps up while Mikey manages to land a solid cheek punch.

James tries to kick Danny this time, Danny basically slapping the guy on the shoulders to give himself enough leverage to flip overtop of him. Danny putting his hands in his pockets as he kicks the guy in the back. “Ha. Try again”. James just grumbling incoherently.

“BEWARE! I- what are you all doing?”.

Danny snaps his head to the side, eyes the Box Ghost a little, and then grins meanly. Pointing at him, “everyone charge!”.

The Box Ghost sputtering before yelping as everyone eagerly and very cruelly lunges onto the ghost. Flailing as everyone kicks, punches, grabs, flips around, and head buts him. “WHY! WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS! DO THIS TO ME!”.

Danny merely cackles, kicking the Box Ghost one in the face, “well apparently a bunch of fellow teens want to start beating the shit outta ghosts who cause problems”, grinning widely, “you know, like you!”. And kicks the ghost one again.

The Box Ghost cries a little. Danny doesn’t feel an ounce of pity for the incredibly obnoxious ghost.

End.

Prompts: The kids of Casper High have taken notice of Danny Fenton's uncanny leadership abilities after the events of "Pirate Radio." Needless to say, he is taken by surprise when they come to him asking him to lead a student ghost hunting group.

[phicphight]

Chapters: 4/4 Fandom: Danny Phantom Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Danny Fenton, Clockwork (Danny Phantom), Original Ghost Character(s) (Danny Phantom), Original Characters Additional Tags: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Phic Phight 2025 (Danny Phantom), Phic Phight: Team Ghost (Danny Phantom) Series: Part 1 of Phic Phight 5, Part 1 of The Phic Phight Saga Summary:

Back again with the few fic snippets I have for this year’s phic phight! 

@kawaiijohn @thesilentbard @mystyrust @phantoms14 I know they’re short but I hope you enjoy! I added a bit more of my original ideas in the notes as well!

[phicphight]

Phic Phight - I’m Not Gay! I’m DEAD! (But Also A Little You Know💅🏻)

For: @hannahmanderr @q-gorgeous and sillysugargliders

Dash overhears the Fenton kid stressin’ about maybe possibly revealing something kinda specific sounding to his parents. The gay vibes are strong, gay vibes he matches but can’t tell anyone else about.

“Okay… okay, you can do this. You have to do this. You can’t keep lying to them. It’s just- Zone, what if they freak out? What if they yell? Or worse… What if they decide to shoot me?”.

Dash blinks, stopping by the janitors closet. That sounded like Fenton?

"And it’s not like they haven’t used weapons on me or Jazz before, but usually it’s not, like, meant to hurt us. And their faces when they talks about, like, ‘those kinds of things’? Like they’re a disease or monsters. And like a Fenton would never be one of ‘those things’”.

Dash grimacing this… this sounded a lot like the things he himself had thought. About his dad mostly, the man was just so macho, so ‘man like woman. Only woman. Want woman’. His dad could be the type to… hit things if he didn’t like them or they weren’t cooperating. And he knows his dad won’t like that certain thing about him.

“But this is me. This is who I am. And I’m tired, so goddamn tired, of hiding it. Of pretending when they ask about that. Of flinching every time they walk by and I worry they’ve figured it out”.

Dash… Dash was damn tired too honestly. It always felt weird acting like he ‘liked liked’ Paulina, but at least since she was considered the hottest girl in school and he was ‘the football king’ it meant his parents only ever asked when he was going to finally get her to hook up with him. They assumed it was her ‘being a prude’, that that’s why he didn’t have her as a girlfriend yet. Totally wasn’t, not that she knew that. Paulina was refusing to date him to maintain her ‘innocent beauty’. He’s perfectly fine with that, he’s pretty sure he absolutely couldn’t force himself to put up with dating any girl.

But at least Dash never had to worry about someone thinking he was gay, he was a tough manly jock after all; while Fenton was a little twink boy.

“Still… what if they don’t love me after this? What if they say I’m disgusting? Or kick me out? I mean… where would I go? I could stay with Tuck for a bit, I guess. He’s always said he’s got my back no matter what. But…”.

Oh yeah the weirdo trio was freakishly close, Dash definitely wished his friend group was close like that. They were basically only friends because they were all on the football team or one of the cheerleaders, officially ‘cool’. The second someone wasn’t ’cool enough’ or someone ‘cooler’ came around then the lowest on the rung go the boot. Dash could never confide in any of them, not even Kwan. He’d be ruined. Fenton’s lucky that way… But Fenton’s definitely got it worse parents wise, those weirdos would be so embarrassing to have… and they literally make weapons and shoot at ghosts and stuff. If they did decide to hurt Fenton, not only would they have guns around but also they’d have the willingness to use them.

“Ancients. What if Mom cries? What if she says I’ve ruined everything? I don’t want to hurt them. But I’m already hurting. I can’t keep being half of myself around them”.

Dash personally doesn’t care what his own parents think of him too much, he just wants to make sure he can still get them to pay for college and shit. Once he leaves them, he’s going no contact with at least his dad. Fenton did seem to actually care about his parents though, and they did treat him better than Dash’s dad treated him. Dash only really wanted to tell his parents so that he could maybe date and shit, try that long distance thing with occasionally inviting whoever over. His mom was pretty big on monitoring his laptop and phone and stuff so currently he can’t even do that much. Messing around in vr chat really wasn’t the same, even if that’s what made him sure of things.

“I keep thinking maybe I’m just being dramatic. Like… like maybe it won’t be that bad. Maybe they’ll just get quiet and weird for a while. But then… I hear mom talking to aunt Alicia while the tv’s on, her going on about how ‘those things deserve it’, and I feel this knot in my chest like I’m already being erased”.

Dash cringing a bit, yeah that? That definitely sounded like the guy shouldn’t tell his parents. Sure he doesn’t know exactly what things on tv the guys mom was talking about but… that definitely sounds pretty pro-homophobic culling or whatever the right word was. Kid might actually get himself killed or something here. Should he totally punch Fenton’s mom? No way he could punch Mr. Fenton, guy was a giant brick shit house. Pretty sure he’s seen that guy throw that weird suv tank thing the Fenton’s drove.

“What if they say I’ve just been ‘made this way’ by some ghost? Or that I’m actually just possessed? Even though that’s just not possible, and I’ve been this way since I was fourteen for sure. I’ve just been hiding it like it’s some dirty secret because I didn’t want to lose them or get shot at”.

Oh yeah totally tracks that the crazy weirdo Fenton’s would blame ghosts for their son being some kinda queer or for being any kind of way they don’t like. They blamed ghosts for just about anything. Like the lack of birds last spring? Ghosts. The school got a paint job over the summer and he’s pretty sure he remembers hearing Mr. Fenton shouting about the ghosts ‘slobbering’ on it because some of the paint was green.

“But every time I stay quiet, every time I laugh when they expect me to, or nod when they make a joke or threat about ‘those things’… I feel like I’m losing a little more of myself”.

Dash felt like that a lot with Kwan too, and his mom a little. Like he was being mean to them just by hiding himself. Like he was separat from them and not really there or something. Like he was messing his muscles up by stuffing himself into a too tight jacket.

“I used to dream I wasn’t like this. I used to beg at night, actually beg, that something would just change in me. That I’d wake up and suddenly be ‘normal’. But I don’t do that anymore. Haven’t in a long time. Not because I don’t still get scared, but because I finally stopped believing I’m broken”.

Goddamn twinks gonna make him teary eyed at this point… should he like? go in? He doesn’t give a shit about eavesdropping, but like they were samesies or something. Both at least some kinda queer. Fenton could vent to him kinda, and Dash could maybe actually tell someone for once.

“I like who I am. I like who I’m becoming. And now I’m legit thinking about gambling that, on the hope that my folks won’t just pull a gun on me. Or worse… stare at me all the time looking like they don’t know me anymore or like they hate the fact that I exist”.

Flushing a little, Dash definitely wouldn’t gamble with having a place to live, or his college fund, or his social standing. Really weird Fenton actually being tougher than him like that, to even consider risking that shit.

“I don’t know how they’ll react. Maybe I’m giving them too little credit. But… maybe I’m not. That’s the part that eats at me. The not knowing. Not being able to predict if it would end in a hug and apologies for making me feel unsafe, or in me having to flee in the dead or the night. Maybe I should just write a letter? When I’m far far away? So if it goes bad, I don’t have to see it or get attacked?”.

Now what was that about Fenton being remotely stronger than him in any way? If this loser weirdo was gonna try at being a tough little shit, he might as well actually be tough about it! Unbelievable. Oh he is definitely going in there.

Dash shoving the door open, making Fenton nearly launch himself into the ceiling. Dash pointing at the little guy, “don’t be a pussy, bitch. You might be a weird little twink, but man up. If you’re gonna spill your guts or whatever, at least have the guts to do it fully yourself. Like with football, the aggressive ones who run in head first are the coolest and best on the field”.

“I- what- Dash? Uh, ah”, Fenton starts rubbing his neck, “I- I totally don’t know what you could possibly be talking about. Heh”.

Dash putting his hands on his hips, huffing down at the boy, “don’t be stupid, moron. I’ve been listening to you bitch and moan for, like, ten minutes or some shit. Grow a pair of balls if you feel that strongly about not wanting to hide yourself”.

Fenton yelping, “wh- what do you mean?!”, shaking his head and standing up right more so, “what the hell would you know, Dash-”.

Dash rolling his eyes, “oh my dad is way worse than your parents are, with all his macho tough guy shit and punching tvs when they don’t work”.

“Mine have literally shot me before, you ass”.

“Why the Hell would you want to tell them anything then, you dumbass!”.

“Because they’re mostly well meaning and I wanna be my damn well self, not like you should care about that. With me being all ‘freaky Fenton’ and all. What? You want an excuse to pelt me with stuff or something?”.

“No! But you’re sure making me want to hit you!”, Dash huffing and crossing his arms, he’s not just gonna start beating the hell out of the one person he might actually be able to confide in, holy shit, “I definitely love beating the shit outta you but I’m not nearly self hating enough, or whatever, to beat you up just for being some type of gay”.

Fenton’s eye twitches, then he looks like someone just punched him in the face -a look Dash is more than familiar with- and like nasa just announced aliens were visiting earth. Fenton just stares for a while before gesturing his hands around wildly, “what are you even talking about?! I’m not gay, I’m dead!”, sputtering grossly, “and self hating?”, going wide eyed, “bloody Ancients are you gay?????”. Then he somehow goes more wide-eyed and like he’s gonna throw up or some shit, “forget I said all of that oh no”.

Dash flushing a little, “I mean yes? And wait what? What… what do you mean dead”; and puts his hands on the sides of his face, “oh oh he’s not queer, I totally fucked up”, then pointing at Danny aggressively, “you better not tell anyone! You- I will really give you the beating of a life time if you even think about screwing me over like that, Fenturd”.

Fenton practically shrieking, “so long as you don’t tell anyone that I’m dead! Oh zone I can not believe I said that!”, smacking his forehead a couple of times, “stupid Danny! Stupid stupid Danny”.

Dash gesturing wildly at the freak, “you can’t believe you told me? I! Can’t believe I told you!”.

Fenton bending over and wheezing, “oh Ancients, ugh”, makes a little gagging sound but thankfully doesn’t actually throw up, ew, “if it’s anything I do not care, Dash. Be as gay as you wanna be, run around in a bondage nipple harness and gay pride boxers for all I care”, giving Dash a weak thumbs up, “and if there’s anything I know, it’s how to keep a damn secret, normally anyways, ugh”, and lifts his head up to glare up at Dash like he expects something from Dash or some shit.

Dash blinking harshly, “I’m… not gonna tell people you’re dead. What the fuck though, really?”, scrunching up his eyebrows. That… that actually made a lot more sense, freaks parents were literally ghost hunters! Of course he’d be worried they’d try to shoot him! They probably would! Blinking, “and yeah no, they’d shoot you, man. They still shoot Phantom and he’s clearly a good guy. Like, duh, you moron”.

Fenton aggressively flips him off, before straightening up and rubbing his neck, “yeah… I know”, narrowing his eyes at Dash then shaking his head and sighing, “but a guy can talk to himself about what he’d like to do, can’t he? And sometimes they seem better”.

Dash scratching his head and actually coming fully inside of the janitors closet, closing the door behind him and leaning against it, “I mean, same? But ha, no”.

Fenton blinking, “okay so clearly you don’t trust or like your parents as much as I do. Which fair, if your dad beats the shit out of tv’s”; rubbing his neck and grumbling, “at least my folks actually think they’re ’doing the right thing’”.

Dash scoffing, “right, because attacking the town hero is the right thing. Your parents suck, mine just suck more”, shrugging, “and yeah I guess I don’t really care what they know about it, but I’d like to actually date someone”.

Fenton sneering, “oh must be so tough, well I’d like to not get shot at by my own houses defences systems”.

Alright, Dash can admit that’s messed up. “That’s mess up, dude”.

“No fucking shit, Dash”.

Dash blinking, “so… you’re, like, totally dead dead?”.

“Oh fuck off”.

Dash sticking his hands out, “hey! You have an identity secret thing, I have an identity secret thing! Stop being a butt hurt little baby”.

“I’m gonna be as butt hurt as I wanna be, you jerk”, Fenton growling a little, “why would I even want to talk to you about anything frankly? Geez”.

Dash glaring, “because I’m here and blocking the only exit”. Fenton… sticks his arm THROUGH THE WALL! Oh wow, “okay that’s cool”, shaking his head, “because you're less of an ass than I am and you’d feel bad not talking to me after I spilled my crap because of your crap?”.

Fenton sputters, “I- wow”, shaking his head and smirking, “I’m actually impressed by how mentally manipulative that was, congrats on not just using your fists to get what you want, Dash”.

This time it’s Dash who flips Fenton off.

Fenton sighing after a while of the two staring at each other; daring the other to either speak or leave. “Ugh what’s even the point in bullshiting him?”. Dash won the staring match! Ha! Then Fenton suddenly had this ring thin- and HOLY SHIT FENTON IS PHANTOM! Dash passes out to Fenton shouting, “oh come on! Seriously!”.

Dash comes to to Phantom blowing cold air at his face, sputtering and trying to smack away the cold, “what the zone, why! Ack!”, sitting up and staring at his literal biggest crush and the town hero just crouched down in front of him, arms on his knees, and head titled. Dash blinking harshly, “I can’t believe Fenturd is Phanturd”.

And… and Phantom starts laughing, putting his head in one hand, “is that just always what you say when you discover my shit? Wow”.

Dash has no clue what he means by that, “uh”.

Phantom waving him off, “it’s fine it’s fine”, then giving that stupid dumb smirk that makes Dash’s chest squeeze and do weird little flips, “and I can’t believe you freaking passed out, very smooth, you are such a fanboy”.

Dash very stupidly blurting out, “it’s a lie! I don’t have a crush on you!”.

Phantom going wide-eyed slowly, cheeks turning faintly green, “that… that makes a lot more sense”, then screwing up his face and laughing, “oh ha, you’re a total monster fucker”.

Look, okay, Phantom is lean, he’s bloody well sculpted. The hair was totally stunning. Piercing playful eyes. The stupid glow. “I- you’re very fit- and okay yeah totally”.

Phantom snorts, “eh not like I can judge, I’ve made out with someone with a beak before”.

“O- okay?”. What is Dash supposed to do with that information? “I have one of those beak face masks that move with your mouth when you talk?”.

Phantom wheezing and flopping back onto the floor, “dude, beaks are not my type, what the fuck. I just like people who can beat the shit out of me”.

“Uh”. Dash is people who can beat the shit out of Fenton! Do beat the shit out of Fenton!

Then there’s a flash of light, and it’s Fenton’s pale ungloved hands that moves to be behind the guy’s head, “I can’t believe you actually have a crush on me, that me. Wow”.

Dash stuttering a little, “o- oh shut up”, before flopping back down to lay down too, “and this doesn’t even change it”. Is… is that weird? Has he just secretly liked Fenton this entire time????? Is that the real reason why the freak was his favourite to wail on?

Fenton snorting, “that is not a compliment”, Fenton hitting Dash one on the leg, “are you really a real life version of that ‘he hits you because he likes you’ line? That’s messed up. Would expect it out of a ghost though”. Dash just groans so Fenton continues mildly torturing him, “aw, is Dashie mad I’m mocking his little crush?”. Dash kicks him that time. Fenton snorting, “ahh right back to beating me, nice”.

Dash putting his hands over his face, “you suck, Fenton”.

“You want to suc-”.

Dash jerks up and starts smacking at his stupid asshole face, “oh shut up!”. Fenton immediately starts smacking back… weakly because holy shit if Phantom hit him full strength Dash would lose an arm or his head. The two basically devolving into a slap fight for a little while.

… They both just wind up laughing at each other after a while. Dash shaking his head, sitting cross legged, “I really can’t believe I told the school freak and my, uh, crush that I’m gay”.

Fenton snorting, also cross legged, “and I can’t believe I told my personal bully who actually just has a crush, that I’m dead and the town hero”.

Dash blinking, “so…”, shaking his head, “I totally still think you shouldn’t tell your parents this, they literally shot you”.

Fenton sighing, “and I agree that you shouldn’t tell yours”, running his neck, “and that you’re probably right about my folks”.

“Damn right I am”. Fenton just sticks his tongue out at him so Dash coughs a little awkwardly, “now about that crush”; hey Dash might as well shot his shot here alright? Plus, guy could be invisible, he could totally come over without Dash’s parents noticing.

Fenton gives him an unamused look before rolling his eyes, “I mean, I’m not gay but I am pan. And I’m definitely only into people who can beat me up”.

“I will start choking you right here and now”.

“Kinky”.

Dash sputtering a little, “I- uh”, clearing his throat, “that’s the point”.

Fenton snorting, “yeah it is”.

Dash stares at Fenton, Fenton stares at Dash. Fenton snickering after a while, “who’s the pussy now, bitch”.

That’s it, Dash is killing this damn twink. Dash lunging at Fenton immediately.

The impact is explicitly gay.

End.

Prompts: Dash Baxter has a major secret. Somehow, the only person in which he can confide is Danny Fenton. Identity reveal. Dash finds out Danny is Phantom. What happens? Could be swagger bishie or not, either or is okay. Dash overhears Danny talking about coming out as a ghost to his parents, and comes to the wrong conclusion.