#*desperate to control Amity

[nostalgic-bee]

Something that I don’t think the TOH fandom explores enough is the oracle necklace that Amity breaks in Escaping Expulsion, at the beginning of this episode we see it being used and Amity almost seems so used to it, she’s not surprised by it so she must be used to hearing her mother communicate to her telepathically (and it’s a one way thing too, when Amity responds she responds out loud)

She’s also wearing the necklace in ‘Understanding Willow’ during the flashbacks, so she’s had it for years

It makes me wonder if even after breaking it, she would still occasionally hear her mother’s voice in her head, if sometimes she almost forgets that the necklace is broken because she can still hear mother.

Idk where I’m going with this, I just find it interesting and it’d be fascinating to explore it and how it affects Amity even after she breaks it.

[sunnysolaria]

He is. He IS desperate.

It's been three months of him avoiding the League's attempts to exorcise him. The damages slowly piling up, the peace of the city being disturbed and the sleepless nights of his vigilante life coming back once more.

Danny's patience is running out.

He looked up and down, close and far to find all the solutions he could find. But the human ways failed and so the magical ones came. In his half-asleep deranged mind the advise of one of the morally grey protector spirits to use the mind control, making them slaves, seems more suitable by the day. His patience is running out. And so does the time their stay in Amity welcome.

At first he outright flinched at the mention of it, the flashback of the Circus Gothica, and the thought was put far away but then...It took him two more months of trying to convince he's no villain, dodging their attacks, sleeping 3, at best 5, hours every day, the count of slightly injured civillians rising by the day (a grandma being tripped, a teen's black eye there, a girl's hair on fire, someone's child uncontrollably crying at their broken plush...) ...Yes, that's the right thing to do. He'll protect his citizens and he'll keep the League away restoring The Peace, YES!!

All is left to do is just as that spirit suggested...

Fic prompt #6

Dpxdc

Danny Phantom was slowly come to realizes that he became practically invincible

When he first became a ghost, he had no control over his powers, he didn’t understand them and made a lot an error, some terribly embarrassing.

But the more ghosts he fought the more simple it became.

Even then there were the ghosts tech of his parents, the blood blossoms and other things that could easily be used against him.

Three years after his death, he realized that it wasn’t the case anymore.

He had full control of his powers, he learned way to neutralize every sort of weapons that his parents, the GIW or even Vlad could create, and after a lot of study about magic and occult even the blood blossoms weren’t a problem anymore.

Plus the title of ghost king, that grant him political protection (ghost law were no joke), he couldn’t think of anything with the powers to hurt him.

Not that he wanted to be ended, or use his powers or position for evil, but still it wasn’t something to take lightly.

Nowadays Amity Park was peaceful, his parents and the GIW weren’t capable of doing him any more harm, and he had make peace with mostly of his rougue, so to said that he was surprised when the justice league arrived at his haunt was an understatement.

They also seem to think he was a villain that kept the town hidden to the world (it was the GIW’s fault)

They wanted to exorcise him

Which was absolutely ridiculous, he couldn’t literally be exorcised because he was half alive .

He tried many time explaining that they were being exploited and manipulated by the real villains (nowadays there wasn’t anyone that believed that ghosts were all evil)

There are been a lot of people who tried explaining that too, but that just add brainwashing the city to his crime

He was at his wits end with them, he literally could kill them with a single shot of ectoblast , but he wasn’t an assassin.

Truth to be told he was starting to think that become one wasn’t a bad thing.

In a month of their bullshit, the city was starting to take a toll . He never even attacked them, he just dodged and take the civilians out of the way.

They couldn’t hurt him, but there was always the possibility that they come to realize that he doesn’t wanted any harm on the citizens, and use them as hostages, the only reason the GIW haven’t done that was because they truly thought he couldn’t careless if they died (even if the proves say otherwise).

He tried searching for magical solutions because all the human one failed

He could make them his slave

In this way they would have to leave him alone, he didn’t even need to make anything ominous.

He would just convince their mind that the city was safe and to never disturb him again!!

It was perfect!!!

[corkinavoid]

DPxDC Al Ghul Twins, Only Not Really

I have this vague idea that I might or might not turn into a fic, but it's been in my head for weeks now.

So Bad Ending with Fentons happens, after which Danny is traumatized beyond repair. Sam and Tucker find him, and for the lack of any other possible solutions, yeet him in the Zone and destroy the portal. Clockwork finds him, and Danny, desperate for a safe place, time to rest and heal, and afraid of becoming Dan, asks him for help. Clockwork obliges and tells him he will take care of everything and for Danny to sleep and not worry about anything.

"It's going to be okay," Clockwork tells him, "You will wake up, and all this will feel like a distant dream."

So Danny sleeps. The trick is, he doesn't sleep for a day or two - Clockwork, together with Frostbite and Nocturn, put him into something equivalent to medical coma. And then, Clockwork finds a dimension where no one's ever heard of Danny, Amity Park, GIW, and everything else, and he hides Danny in there.

Danny sleeps for three centuries, in depth of the mountains where no one can find or bother him. Yet, his mere presence in the world causes some ectoplasm to start accumulating around him - he is the Ghost King, after all.

He sleeps under Nanda Parbat.

When he wakes, his past life with Fentons really does feel distant and foggy. He remembers it, but it's like a childhood memory: the details have faded away, the faces have become blurry, and it doesn't hurt anymore. He doesn't forget anything, but it becomes... less important. Less meaningful.

But the first thing he feels just a few minutes after he wakes is a soul. A soul of a child, crying in pain, and its lifeless body being submerged into Danny's ectoplasm (Lazarus Pits have all come from Danny's excess ecto over the years of his sleep, so he can feel them and he can control them to an extent, albeit Ra's has really badly polluted them over the years).

Danny is a hero, that didn't change even after his very long sleep. So he tries to help, but in the process, he accidentally gets roped into the Pit, since a) it's corrupted ecto, b) he has zero ide what he's doing, c) he is the Ghost King and he might put more power in it than he intended, d) he just woke up, cut him some slack.

Talia, who put Damian's body into the Pit, is very damn surprised when two Damians emerge, and that's putting it lightly.

At least they are both very much alive.

[stars-obsession-pit]

When strange white-suited figures with even stranger gadgets started to show up in Gotham City, the Bats were justifiably worried of a new rogue trying to claim territory. But the government authorization they provided did check out, so they decided to let them be.

And it turned out to be a quite beneficial decision.

Though perhaps a bit quick on the draw with their weapons, the agents proved instrumental in locating multiple Court of Owls bases and taking down their members for good. In the process, they also discovered a previously unknown Lazarus Pit and disposed of it. Hell, they even offered to perform a procedure to remove Red Hood’s pit rage!

After all that, was it any wonder Bruce was friendly with them?

Curled up invisibly on the roof above, Phantom began to cry as he felt his hopes shatter.

Things had grown increasingly desperate in Amity Park as the GIW’s anti-ghost tech had improved. Ever since he’d found the shattered remains of a ghost core in their labs, he’d known the situation was far out of his control, and had set off to beg the Justice League for help.

He was a fool. Of course the heroes fell for the lies of those monsters in the GIW, even the ones as paranoid as the Batman. Why should he have expected any different?

It seems they really were on their own.

[bet-on-me-13]

Desperate Villain Danny AU

(this is a 17 yr old danny)

It started out slowly.

First, a few of Danny's less active Rouges stopped showing up at all. He didn't really notice, and just assumed that they had finally had their Fill of their Obsession for a while and would simmer down for a bit.

Then, some more of his Rouges stopped showing up. No big deal, but he is getting a little concerned for them. They had definitely not had their fill of their Obsessions yet, why did they stop?

Then, the worst started happen. All of his actual Ghost Friends start to disappear. Ember, Kitty, Johnny, even Amorpho, they all start to not show up at all in the Living World.

He goes looking for them in Realms, but he can't find any of them whatsoever. He tries asking around, but everybody else noticed the disappearances much earlier than him and began to hide away from whatever was taking all of the strong Ghosts. He can't find anybody, and the ones he does find won't tell him anything (or don't know themselves)

It takes weeks of searching, but eventually he gets his answer.

The GIW show up in Amity again after a period of absolutely no activity. They have stepped up their operations HARD. Advanced Ghost Hunting Equipment, Much more Competent Agents, and most worrying of all, they seem to know that Phantom is friends with Sam, Tucker, and Danny Fenton.

The GIW comes to his house for a Meeting with his parents, where he overhears them offering his parents a position in their Organization as Head Scientists. While there they also manage to plant Bugs in Danny's room somehow. Although he finds them quickly enough and destroys them.

And then, one night during dinner while his parents are ranting about the GIWs Labs, they mention something that cinches it for Danny.

"And today we even got to Dissect one of the Spooks! It was that Mind Controlly one, you know the one with the blue firey hair stuff that sang a bunch! We're going back tomorrow to continue our Study, this time we'll see how long it'll pretend to experience pain before it decides to give up on tricking us!"

That night, Danny packed up all his things, destroyed the Ghost Portal alongside everything else in his parents Lab, and left his house.

He tracked down the GIW Base, saved Ember from her Cell, and decimated the surrounding Area. No survivors, none of the research is preserved, and he left the Site Director alive to question him.

Turns out, the GIW had managed to Reverse Engineer the Ghost Portal from that brief period of time where they had taken control of Fenton Works. They had been using their own Portal to kidnap any Ghost they could get their hands on. Using the research from those subjects, they perfected their Ghost Hunting Tech and started going after the bigger fish.

"But good luck finding it, Ecto Scum! The Portals location was hidden to everybody, even me!" He said.

"Where are the others!" Danny cried. He was losing control of his appearance by this point. After seeing what they had done to Ember, he was too angry to maintain his Humanoid Form successfully. Even now, with most of his control, he could hear the Static in the air around him, and see the Glitching of his hands as they clenched this Monsters clothes.

"Scattered!" He said with a crazed laugh, "We knew we couldn't contain all of them, so we send them to all of our sites across the Country! You'll never find them!"

Without another word, Danny plowed his arm through the man's chest.

He turned around, picking up Embers weakened Body, before beginning his long flight to Wisconsin. Vlad still owed him a few Favors after all, and honestly his mentorship offers seemed VERY Tempting right now.

(Why reject him if you don't care about keeping your dad alive anymore?)

...

The JLA had recently received a distress signal from somewhere in the middle of some random Forest in Illinois, but when they got to the location, all they found was a crater filled with the ruins of some kind of Military Base, and so so many Bodies.

They had managed to figure out that this was a Government Site owned by an organization called the GIW. A Paranormal Investigation Wing of the Government focused on the study and capture of Supernatural Beings called Ecto-Entities, otherwise referred to as Ghosts.

As it turns out, an Ecto-Entity that had been terrorizing the local town for a few years now had made a drastic change in normal behavior and had attacked the GIW Base that had been posted there.

They would have destroyed it years ago, but this one was unnaturally powerful. It had eluded their capture and terrorized the Town for years, but they had too much pride to contact the JLA and admit that they needed help. And honestly until now, they didn't really need it. The Entity had been entirely confined to the singular town, and had not strayed from that behavioral Pattern in the 3 years since it's inital sighting. They had made the difficult choice to leave it there, sacrificing one town in exchange for the rest of the country.

But now they did need their help. This Entity, this Phantom, was one of the most powerful beings that had ever recorded, maybe even The Most Powerful. The fact that it had left the Secluded town it usually frequented meant that it was loose to wreak havoc across the rest of the world.

The JLA Needed to Find this thing, and Fast.

[dcxdpdabbles]

Is there going to be more halfa Cass?

Danny tugged an island behind him, this one with various fruits that he used to eat in his childhood, dragging the large piece of land with a visible control over its gravity. It took him years to figure out how to turn his ectoplasma into something that could control the cosmos.

They were not quite the same - the strawberries were indigo, the blueberries were bright pink, and there were some glowing blackberries that he definitely needed to test. Still, many people would be happy to see something so familiar.

And for some, the kids born after the shift, it would be a first time. They had ice cream, but their resources were lacking many sweet things now, and Danny often found himself missing simple things like eating freshly picked berries from Mrs. Sandigo's garden.

She was a sweet old woman who allowed all the neighborhood kids to eat from her garden. Fruit or vegetables. She used to grow them for fun and saw it as a way to connect with the community.

She died in the third year of them being trapped. Lack of her heart medication.

Ever since his town was taken seven years ago, Danny had been desperate to find a way to take them all back. But forces he could not name, let alone defeat, were stopping humans from crossing over.

The only exceptions were Danny and Dani- Dan had escaped Clockwork and attempted to take over the town again, but Danny was having none of that, especially back then. They didn't even have a food source! So they tied Dan to the Keep, forcing him to be a guardian forever.

It was a bit tough at first, but Dan eventually calmed down enough to live peacefully with humans again. (Turns out the ghost regained his sanity when his mother yelled at him.)

Danny still felt horrible to watch his people nearly starve to death, and would go out into the human world to bring back as much food as possible from the local stores. He attempted to leave Amity Park's borders to request relief efforts, only to discover that he could no longer leave the town.

Amity Park's people were trapped in the Ghost Zone, and Danny was trapped in Amity Park. He could fly wherever he wanted in the Zone, but in the living world, he could only travel over the ruins of his once home.

Unlike before, Danny realized he had a time limit on how long he could be in the Living world, too. Since there were no humans to provide living energy in that town, there was nothing to help stabilize his core and allow his ectoplasm to solofied. Shifting into a human while in the Living World only resulted in Danny being zapped right back to the Ghost Zone, as all the human residents were trapped, including Danny Fenton.

Danny Phantom was the only one allowed to cross over.

He consulted multiple allies in the Ghost Zone- Clockwork, Frostbite, Pandora- but all told him the same. King Pariah had taken the humans, and only he could release them. As far as the Ghost Zone was concerned, they had been claimed as spoils of war, even though Danny won in the end, King Pariah wasn't defeated or killed.

He was merely put to sleep. Until Danny was strong enough to defeat him properly, none of the King's war spoils could be transferred to Danny, and thus he could not free them.

But it wasn't like Danny could beat King Pariah. If he attempted to release the madman, who's to say his luck would help him again? Even Clockwork admitted that he never once stood a chance against King Pariah Dark, and in nearly every timeline he peeked into, Danny always lost to Pariah.

Clockwork could not answer when, or if, the residents of Amity Park would ever be able to see the Living World again. It was the Zone twisting around them, clouding their futures in a way that not even time could tell what would happen.

Danny felt sick to know it was because they were no longer considered people. They were spoils. Property. As crucial to fate as King Pairah's office rug.

That's why Danny did what he did. He bent cosmos, he tugged islands together, he fought off invaders, he provided resources and hope so that one day he could let his people go home.

Danny welcomed other ghosts, but there had been times when those ghosts thought of the humans as property, too, and had to be escorted off his lands. Humans were seen as lesser in this world - a source of food at best - and his parents' attitude towards ghosts had shifted once they realized they spoke about the residents of the Ghost Zone in the same way.

Around the four-year mark, fractions began to appear among the Amity Park residents. The first were the ones who believed they would go home- they fought to live as closely as they did back on Earth, including using the same currency.

The second fraction was the ones who accepted they were never going home. They operated more on trade, shifting skills and manual labor, struggling to get everyone to adapt to the new laws and rules of Phantom's Keep.

The third were the ones who treated Danny's family like a monarchy. At first, the people fought against their control of the town, but it soon got out that Danny Fenton was Danny Phantom and that he literally ruled over the park island. He willed a castle into existence and houses for everyone. He could build and construct, and soon, with everything Danny tried to provide, he was given a more ruler-like role.

Not to mention the rest of the Fentons, that let their intelligence shine, putting society back in order and providing solutions for problems. They were the main reason everything didn't fall apart, and that the humans didn't tear each other apart to survive.

Eventually, Phantom was spoken to with the same respect as King, and they decided to let him determine what happened to them. Here or the Living world. Danny wasn't sure he was the right person to make that call.

The people need a hero. It's not fair, but it has to be you. We won't survive this if we lose what a hero gives us. We need hope. Jazz had told him at Mrs. Sandigo's funeral. The factions were fighting over how to properly set her to rest. Fraction 1 wanted to bury her in the park with a proper grave.

Still, Fraction 2 claimed that it would risk them turning the minimal living space into a worthless cemetery, and they couldn't risk the corpse affecting the land they were attempting to grow food on. Fraction 3 shouted that Phantom made the choice

He had her burned, and her ashes were put in a glass Urn under a statue of Freedom in the town's center, so no one forgot her in the Zone when they left. Over the seven years, more urns were lined up around her. It was a hauntingly beautiful sight when the few beams of light hit them, making the whole thing glow with multiple colors.

The Fractions were all comfortable with the solution. Still, Danny counted the urns day after day, unsatisfied, knowing his failure in defeating Pariah Dark had them dying away from their proper resting place.

"Dano!" His Dad called, flying alongside him inside a Fenton Hunting Jet once Danny had entered the very edge of his property. He had expanded the area that fell under Phantom's Keep fifty miles away from where humans lived.

It was an attempt to give them more space before he pulled the islands. The only ones it worked for, however, were the Fentons, as members of his bloodline.

"Hi Dad!" He cheers, waving a hand that wasn't wrapped around the ectopasm rope. "Look, I found fruit! Do you think you and Mom can test it for safe consumption?"

"Of course! I can test it alongside this." Jack responds with a grin, throwing his thumb to the back of the ship. Danny leans into the window to glance back, blinking at the hulking, dead boar ghost that his father had hunted.

If the meat was safe, they would eat well for at least a week or two. All of them. That thing was huge, bigger than the front draw bridge of their castle.

How did his Father beat it?!

"Wow! Great job, Dad!" He praises watching his father puff out his chest in pride. The image is ruined by the apparent exhaustion on his father's face, the years catching up to him. Although he has recently gained muscle, his frame still shook.

Jack always waited for his family to eat first back in those early days, when food was never a guarantee. He was much smaller than Danny ever remembered him being.

Danny was twenty-one now, and he was slowly watching his father lose the Superman strength he once wielded so easily as he wasted away, trapped in the Ghost Zone. A tickle of panic wrapped around his heart as the thought settled in the back of his head.

"Thank you, Danny." Jack laughs, his breath coming in short bursts as if he were running out, and Danny's heart leaped a little in fear before his dad managed to get it under control. "We best get back and make sure we can have a feast tonight."

"Is it a special occasion?"

"Yes. Your sister sent a message. Get this- Dan's brought a girl home! If things go well, I might have an in-law soon! Oh, can you imagine the wedding?"

Danny's smile becomes strained. If his brother is settling down here, then he will join the rest that have given up hope, and that's a bitter pill to swallow. He doesn't say it, though. Instead, he tugs more on the island with a fake laugh, "Then we best get back!"

He ignored the ache in his core as the Island slowly groaned, moving across his property line and towards the other linked-up islands. A series of ice-hot pain shot through his body, making him flatter a little, but thankfully, his father didn't notice, as he turned the jet towards the castle.

Danny was going to get everyone home. Even if it killed him.

[demonic0angel]

What if, instead of becoming a halfa, the portal accident gave Danny the magic of necromancy?

Ooh, I definitely think the context of the show would be very different. Somethings that I think would change from the original:

+ Instead of being one of the dead, Danny gains the ability to control it, so Vlad probably wouldn’t be his main enemy. Instead, it would probably be Freakshow. I don’t think he’d raise the dead bc like… tbh how are we sure that the ghosts all lived in Amity Park before they died…

+ The GIW probably would want to take him in. It would probably similar to the original show, but they wouldn’t be extremely hostile or violent about it. Instead, they would try to convince him to come with them slowly and gaslight him into joining their cause to get rid of all ghosts.

+ He probably feels differently from the show (where he feels like it’s his duty to protect Amity Park bc he accidentally opened the Portal, but still helps and befriends ghosts bc he is also one). In this AU, he’d consider him and ghosts different species. Whether he has a fully antagonistic relationship with ghosts where he controls them carelessly until he becomes drunk with power and learns his lesson in an episode, OR he has a sympathetic relationship with ghosts where he learns his lesson and becomes friends with them in order to unlock his true necromancy potential, idk

+ No ice core, but he definitely still finds a way to beat Pariah Dark and become the Ghost King (quite literally)

+ I think Jazz would be a tad more disturbed by Danny in this AU, since he can control and manipulate ghosts/people. In this AU, it’s easier for him to go rogue and evil since there are less people in his lives who want to kill him, so he has less self-control.

+ Dan is not the same as the original show and Dani probably doesn’t exist?? Unless it’s Vlad’s desperate attempt to get a necromancer on his side and that’s why he clones Danny again

[evilminji]

A Moral Dilemma! Question!

Let's say there is a trucker. An average man. Kind enough, did okay in school, loves his wife and misses her like you wouldn't believe every time he has to go. Misses his little girl even more. HATES he's missing the early years of her life. First day to school, getting her up and brushing her hair into pigtails, making pancakes like his Pa used to make. The works.

But the economy is shit. Him and his wife have to work. Make ends meet. They're DESPERATE to get out of Gotham. Move somewhere boring. Safe.

But... well, places like that cost money. Kids cost money. And he did OKAY in school. Not a lot of jobs out there for "Okay" guys from Gotham.

His cousin finds him a route though. A solid job. Really pulled through when push came to shove and things were looking bad. Like he might have to take up that offer to Goon. Now he's a trucker.

And his route? Well the half way point is Amity Park. He stops to stay the night every time. Never really STAYS, has heard they got themselves a Cape and such, but? It is what it is. He's from Gotham. He minds his business. Parks on the outskirts of town to avoid getting hit.

Doesn't realize, he's getting SOAKED in Ectoplasm every time he's in town.

And this trucker? Not the healthiest man. He wishes he could be. But life on the road is not exactly conducive to fresh fruit and leafy greens. He eats more grease and sugar then his doctor would EVER recommend. In fact, has specifically warned him not too.

But some days you just need a warm meal. You miss your kid, your wife, your bed. And you know it'll be days before you can see any of them. But at least there is pancakes.

You can pretend you're eating with your family. Or at least, let the coffee be warm enough for the two of you. God, but the poor man is tired.

And as he gets close to Gotham?

Breaking News!

The Joker. AGAIN. The trucker cringes, horror filling him. What poor soul has that mad man hurt NOW? When will it end? Him and his wife are so close to getting the hell out. Thinking Kansas. His wife has been joking about pie baking competit-

No.

Oh God No.

There, on the screen, tears streaming down her beautiful face? Is the love of his life. His best friend. His EVERYTHING. And in her arms, trying so, so hard to be quiet. To muffle her terror born sobs... is his little girl. One pigtail torn from its srunchie, blood on her tiny face.

The trucker knows how this story ends.

Batman will try. He ALWAYS tries. And sometimes... sometimes that's enough. But he knows the odds here. His family are in front. Stars of this sick show. The trucker can't breathe. His heart is pounding, too hard for a man of his health.

He's not young. Should be on blood pressure meds he simply cant afford. Is panicked by a terror few should ever suffer. And? What runs in his family, strikes true. It feels so far away, the pain in his chest. He... No, he can't.

He can't.

His family.

He can't die. Leave them. They're in danger! They can't die like this. So close to freedom. Happiness. They... the..y.. ca..n..t...

.

.

THEY WON'T. HE REFUSES.

~~~

So! Here in comes the QUESTION! As you sit, watching this terrified child call for her father, ripped from her begging mothers arms, you see a green opaque man full body tackle the Joker.

You watch his eyes visible glow and change color, fight a visible STRUGGLE, like jeckle and Hyde, for control of his body. Between the monster known as Joker and what seems to be? The little girl's newly Meta father.

The Father wins.

You watch the Bat arrive with the police. Thank the man and say he can release Joker into custody. See the EXACT moment the Meta realizes something. Turns to look at his daughter, then his wife. Looks back at the commissioner.

Says "No".

Is he right to do this? To Possess the Joker, as a life sentence, to insure the safety of others? He is perfectly will to sit that life in a jail cell. Knows he will never be allowed to roam free again. But! The Joker is contained.

Is this Right? Or merely emotionally satisfying?

Discuss :3

@hypewinter @hdgnj @the-witchhunter @ailithnight @nerdpoe

[write-or-run]

Danny Phantom in YJ but its ALL of team phantom

so this idea assumes DP is set in the DC verse and Danny's identity is revealed to the town during Reign Storm. His parents accept him like in the series finale, and the town, grateful for being saved from Pariah Dark, has an unspoken rule not to sell out Danny's secret identity to outsiders (mainly the GIW).

All the Amity Park vigilantes are working together at this point, but the public dosent really know it. Now that they're no longer hunting their son's alter ego the Fenton parents continue doing their thing, but now they make gear specifically for their ghost son to use without it backfiring on him (mostly). Jazz gets some of the ghosts to do interviews and eventually branches out into ghost psychology, something that her parents had neglected to study before now.

Danny, Sam, and Tucker continue ghost wrangling, but the supervision of the Fentons proves to be surprisingly helpful and the trio finds that they have more time to pursue other things (space, eco-witchcraft, and tech respectively). Tucker and Sam's parents are on the fence about their friendship with Danny. Angela and Maurice Foley are talked down from their worries after Tucker points out that the dangerous ghost stuff will happen regardless, so he might as well have the local vigilante on speed dial. Jeremy and Pamela Manson are harder to convince. They're used to having to pick their battles when it comes to Sam's goth, ultra recyclo vegetarian lifestyle, but on this they're not budging. They try to restrict Sam's contact with her friends and even go so far as to get a restraining order. Sam is increasingly fed up with their controlling behavior and, inspired by the Infi-Map, Sam breaks into the ghost zone in search of an artifact that would give her power so that she would never be trapped. Obviously Danny goes in after her, but then Sam's parents storm the Fenton house to take back their daughter and accidentally fall into the ghost portal, so Tucker takes the Specter Speeder and goes in after them. By the time the Fenton Parents return home everyone is back and the Manson's have given in to Sam's determination.

Valerie Gray initially continues to operate on her own. She maintains a frenemy status with Team Phantom due to her mixed feelings on Danny's civilian and ghostly personas, between that and the revelation of Vlad's villainous career Valerie's worldview is really shaken. She throws herself into vigilantism and hers dad gets really concerned when Valerie starts running herself ragged. In a last ditch effort to make her stop Damon Grey goes to the towns ghost hunting experts and begs them for an intervention. The Fenton parents agree and the three of them sit down with her for a talk about safe ghost hunting practices. This fails to stop her, but the Fentons refuse to give up on the 'Junior Ghost Hunter' and start inviting themselves on her patrols .Things come to a head when Dark Danny travels back in time to ensure his creation. Seeing how desperate Danny is to avoid becoming evil, and fighting alongside the Fentons convinces Valerie that its okay to count on others and slow down and take care of herself. (and also the Fentons are low-key inescapable)

Pariah Dark's incursion through Amity Park was the last straw needed for the Infinity Realms to start really breaking into reality. There was already some leakage (see lazarus pits) but this was the last straw for a problem that has been brewing for thousands of years now. Life in Amity Park continues normally, because to them ghost stuff is normal, but for the rest of the world its a different matter.

The Justice League is going around dealing with the sudden influx of supernatural nonsense. The ghost attacks range from minor nuisance to city-wide threat. The magic leaugers are trying to find the source, but it's Batman who identifies Amity Park as 'Ground Zero' for ghostly nonsense.

also something something Amanda Waller and the GIW either team up or become rivals.

I'm literally writing this while waiting to board my flight so I'll try and flesh out this AU later

[phantoms-world-and-more]

Damian and Danny are brothers, but not twins (Danny is a year older). While Talia isn't a great mother she does love her children in her own way. So when Ra chose Damian to be the heir he had no need for Danny. Ra told Damian to kill him in a final test to become the heir. Damian hated his older brother and was always in competition with him so he didn't hesitate. Talia made it look like Damian killed him (even Damian thinks he did), but she whisked him away. She gave/hid him with the Fentons, she and Maddie had trained together.

-Danny knows Bruce Wayne/Batman is his father but sees no point of contacting him especially after Damian shows up on the scene (also him being a billionaire, they are all fruitloops with too much money and power). He never wants to be in the same room with Damian ever again. Besides he loves is new parents Jack and Maddie.

-Talia has become more of a cool aunt figure/then mother figure who sometimes swings through town leaving interesting gifts

-Jack and Maddie are good parents, and would do anything for their children. Especially anything to keep them safe. They even do a 180 after Danny reveals to be Phantom and drive the GIW out of town.

-It somehow gets out to the BatFam that Damian was not the only child of Talia and Bruce. They trace Danny to Amity Park and try to force a reconciliation. It does not go well.

-Jason knew about Danny, he helped Talia discreetly whisk Danny away to the Fentons. He gets why and supports Danny's position of not wanting to be near Damian.

-Danny refuses to see Damian and claims Jazz and Ellie are his only siblings. Even if Damian has changed, it's within his rights not wanting to be around someone who hurt him badly. While he may at some point forgive Damian for what he did, that does not mean he has to forget and from a relationship with him.

-Danny's family supports his decision. Jazz especially when one of the BatFam makes a remark that he is too young to make such a final decision. She goes off on all them and psychoanalysis them.

Hahaha I love this!

Damian can go two ways

A) he feels guilty and is desperately trying to make things better, getting increasingly desperate and trying anything and everything to get his forgiveness

B) he relapses in his progress and still hates Danny, him being a reminder of when he was under Ras's control, and fearing that Danny will attempt to replace him as the blood son, reminder that Danny dosen't want or care about being blood son falls on deaf ears

The batfam all have different reactions from completely siding with Danny about not wanting to have a relationship with them (Jason) to wanting a relationship but accepting that he might not want a relationship (dick) to complete denial about Danny not caring about them (Bruce)

[radiance1]

So, I have a thought.

Sam is a witch, one with a lot of magically raw power and a thirst for knowledge of the Occult.

Dan Phantom, is the fusion between her best friend and his godfather who destroyed the world and is just an overall evil son of a bitch and the only survivor of his erased timeline.

Now, here is the idea.

Sam has lost everything. Her friends, her family, her home and everyone and thing she knew.

How?

Dan Phantom.

He escaped his containment, offed Danny, offed Tucker, offed Jazz, offed the Fentons, etc, etc. He didn't kill Sam, couldn't kill her actually. He underestimated her, thinking that no amount of petty little magic tricks she could come up with would ever hope to stop him.

Which is funny, because that confidence led him to being sealed away by her. Never underestimate the power of an emotionally desperate witch it seems!

Where has he been sealed? Weeell, I'mma take a lil design from some of my previous posts and say that he's sealed in the Philosopher's Stone sitting nice and pretty in the middle of her chest. Which is, admittedly, not the best place but she wasn't picky when someone who destroyed the world in his timeline was trying to, you know, kill her like he killed her friends.

So, after Amity Park has been, mostly, wiped off the map and only her castle left standing she uh. Well, she became a hermit basically. She didn't leave her castle, consumed with grief and hatred for the entity that caused her so much harm and Dan?

Well, Dan is straight up trying to free him, either by killing or taking control of her.

Luckily, he has had no success with doing anything of that sort. So, he could only grumble in her mind, either taunting her or raging at her whichever he feels like in the moment.

About 1 or 2 months after all of this Sam decides to leave the ruins of Amity Park and go... well. Who actually knows where really, she doesn't, like, at all.

I'm also thinking that Dan can like, manifest himself out of the Philosopher's Stone kinda? Like, either chibi or adult is up to you but I like to think that invisible chains bind him to Sam and whenever he steps out of line, she just tightens those chains or something.

Now I'm thinking about combining this with that one au where a speedster or somebody comes back to the past to either stop Danny from turning to Dan or stop Dan before he could destroy the entire world an allat.

I wonder how they would feel knowing that they were too late, Amity Park was destroyed, Dan is nowhere to be found, no on seemed to have survived and very obvious signs of a struggle.

Only to then find out, sometime later, that said world destroying threat from the future is there, they couldn't stop him from forming, but he's bound to a teenage witch who lost everything because of Dan and is basically his 'vessel' now.

[v-writes]

Unexpected Help

Phic Phight 2025

Prompt: Danielle needs a place to crash and recover from Vlad’s latest attempt to turn her into goop and finds refuge with someone (human or ghost!) completely unexpected

Prompt by: @spacemomnephmoreau

Word Count: 3517

Read on Ao3

"Shit, shit, shit."

Danielle was crashing.

Denial about the fact, white lies she could tell herself about flying low to make herself less of a target, using the cityscape as cover, squashed as she blinked, and upon opening her eyes no longer saw the horizon in the distance but the ground, raising up to meet her as she rapidly lost altitude.

And then abruptly Danielle had crashed.

Impact rough, her destabilizing form refusing her attempts to brace for the collision she leaves a burning gash in the city park. Ignoring the burn in her arms, in her everything, Danielle props herself on one elbow, her knees collapse under her when she tries to stand, but she forces herself to move, crawling away from the glaring target that is the crater she was in.

Flying was out of the picture apparently.

She needed to get to Danny, needed to find cover, starts for the nearby pavilion, she needs to - fuck she was tired.

Vlad may have misjudged her ability to control her destabilizing form, allowing her to slip her binding, but she had misjudged how useful that would be if she couldn't get to Danny.

She feels her ghost sense rise in her chest, swallowing around it she forces a burst of speed and shoves herself under a playground structure hoping the shift of the pebble ground will cover any ecto she is dripping, while the climbing gym hides her from the air.

"Tsk, tsk, tsk, Danielle if you're longing for some Father/Daughter bonding you could have just said so, no need to make things difficult."

Why couldn't Vlad just leave her alone?

She tracks Vlad's movements as best she can while staying hidden herself, studying the graffiti above her head and littering the underside of the climbing ramp in a desperate bid not to panic, to not make any noise, her eyes lock onto a familiar logo, flaming 'D' with a break in the bottom, creating a 'P' in the negative space.

She sees the reflection of the flash from a transformation, and the itch in her ghost sense allowing her some idea of where her creator was vanished.

Straining to hear anything from a man as silent as the dead Danielle does not startle when a new voice calls out, but it's a near thing.

"Mayor Masters! Hello! What are you doing out here?"

"I'm on an evening walk young man, what are you doing out this late?"

"Free throw practice, sir, basketball season is starting soon."

"Of course, go ravens, might I suggest you call your practice early? I think there is a ghost in this area?"

"Oh that crash mark? That's from a fight from yesterday, your clean up program assessed it earlier, there's no damage to any of the piping stuff underground so it's not going to be fixed until Monday."

"Are you sure? It looks rather recent."

"I don't know man, ectoplasm makes shit act weird, but it was here when I got here and I've been here most of the afternoon. I'm just glad the programs you put in place are helping amity so much in the wake of all these ghost attacks."

"I'm so glad to see our young people so well apprised of the civil service programs, I certainly hope that support translates to your vote in a few years."

"I mean, who is going to run against you and be worth voting for? Jack Fenton?" The eyeroll is almost audible from where Dani is hiding. "I'll leave the park if a ghost does show up, but avoiding ghosts is the entire reason I'm practicing here and not at the school with most of the team, I do not understand most of the teams obsession with Phantom, and with him hanging out above the school he is sure to attract ghost trouble eventually."

"Above the school you say? I'll go contact some people, we can have clean up crews ready for assessment and reconstruction should he turn violent, or if any fight should breakout if another trouble making ghost find him."

"Thank you for all your hard work, Mayor Masters."

She didn't recognize the voice, or know why he had redirected the fucking fruitloop, there's no way anybody practicing in the park wouldn't know her crash was recent, but he had sent Vlad straight to Danny. Danny could handle him, right? Vlad wasn't trying to kill him, and if Vlad made it clear what, who, he was looking then Danny would know to look for her, so now she just had to hold out for him to find her first. If she could just close her eyes for a moment, catch her breath before finding Danny herself, she could manage. Why didn't she bother to learn the layout of Amity Park better? It wasn't a problem from the air, the ghost eye view meant she could see all of the landmarks easily, it wasn't like FentonWorks was hard to find, but even if flying were in option it'd be a bad idea with Vlad and his stupid vultures flying around.

"Hey do you need help?"

Dani froze.

The stranger did not go away.

"Look if you're weak enough to crash without a fight I don't think you used invisibility to sneak away while I was talking to Plasmius, but he flew away already, the coast is clear."

"You know Vlad Masters is Plasmius?"

He scoffs, "Yeah, his and Phantom's secret IDs kinda hinge on the fact that no one would assume someone alive is a ghost. If you're willing to look past that they're really not that sneaky."

"Why did you send him away if you knew he was looking for me?"

He sighs, "well I guess it seemed like the right thing to do, and I mean, it's not like I've done anything too dangerous yet, you really didn't damage any of the infrastructure, and he is real easy to lie to if you flatter his ego." Crouching more of him comes into view, unimpressed green eyes assess her goopy form. "But I've got a feeling the part about not doing anything too dangerous is about to change. Do you need- What do you need me to do to help?"

"I need medical attention."

"Yeah I kinda figured. Don't imagine I can take you to an urgent care though."

"No. I- Danny- I need my cousin. But you just sent Vlad to him and I'm in no state to join a fight, so I need to hide until they're done, Danny will look for me after he and Vlad fight, and he'll know what to do."

"Cousin is the story the two of you went with? Does Fenton even have living cousins or are you just cashing in on the family resemblance?"

"What does that matter when I'm known as Phantom's family, not Fenton's? Is that really what you're stuck on?"

"Right, not the priority, I've got some good news then," he offers her a hand, Dani takes it tentatively and he helps her out of her hiding spot, "I don't know where Danny is."

Dani stumbles as she rights herself, falling hard into her good Samaritan, who supports her easily despite his lanky form. "You, what?" She asks, question ending up more directed at his side and arm than face.

"I lied to Plasmius. Told you, flatter his ego and there's nothing easier, but then he may question you more than he does me. But that does mean he'll be back sooner than you're expecting, we've got to get you to cover, I don't think he'll believe me again, not with your uh, blood on me."

Was she getting blood on him? Blinking her eyes into focus she sees that, yup, small drops now, but growing as she leans on him. "Sorry."

He scoffs in response, guiding her away from the playground, "don't mention it, hey I don't know how long it'll take him to figure out there's no one at the school, can I carry you? I think it'll be faster…"

She nods, he turns away from her, crouching down he lays her against his back, picking her up in a piggy back, and he walks much faster than she could have kept up with through the park.

Danielle has the disconnected realization that it's her first piggy back ride. Instead of thinking about that, her 'childhood' with Vlad, or sporadic time with Danny she points out, "you've definitely got my blood on you now."

"If you can keep it on me and not the ground where it'll leave a trail that'd be great."

Her laugh startles her, but his deadpan attitude reminded her of Danny, and she clutches his shoulders tightly. "Where are we going?"

"Grounds-keeper's storage shed."

"What?"

"Well I took the bus here, so I don't have a fast way to get you out of the park, but you said Danny will be looking for you?"

"Of course he will!"

"Woah hey, I didn't mean to doubt you, I'm just not trying to get you away, there's no point, just better hidden to wait for him. I don't know your history with Masters, but I don't think I liked his tone when he was looking for you."

Dani doesn't respond.

"Right, well, do me a favor?" Dani tenses, tries not to knowing he would be able to feel it, wondering what he would ask for, Danny would help her if she ended up owing him a favor but- "pretend you didn't see this." He approaches the storage shed from the side, opening the cover on a lockbox built into the wall, inputting a code and taking a key out of the box.

Dani snickered, "I have intangibility, when I'm not dying I won't need a key."

"Well lucky you, I've got the key code from my summer job helping out, and I'd like for them to not feel the need to change the code."

The shed is dusty, motes hanging in the air that leave Dani thankful she doesn't need to breath as a ghost. He sets her on a folding chair, set up by a rickety desk, surrounded by lawn care tools and supplies she has no name for, Vlad thought that stuff was beneath him, and she didn't need to know this stuff to imitate Danny.

"Do you know one of team Phantom's phone number?"

"What"

"Danny's number? Jazz's? Sam or Tucker? Look I don't have any of their numbers, but here." He hands her his phone after messing with it. "I just turned off the password. Say you snatched it from my backpack while I was playing basketball, Danny or whoever feels like lying can give it back to me at school, 'I must have dropped it somewhere' or he can use intangibility to hide it in my locker, or something."

She stares at the blank phone in her hand before looking back to the teen.

"Who even are you?" It's a question she should have asked earlier. Probably would have if she had more experience with people.

"Wes. Says so on the homescreen, along with a 'please contact if found' note with my brother's number and my email. Figure with the ghosts attacks lowering the normal crime rate, most times I'll lose my phone are when I've misplaced it, so being able to know whose it is will make it easier to get back."

"I guess?"

"It's the only reason I've got enough plausible deniability for this to work, so say that with more confidence yeah?"

She smiles, as Wes digs through a storage container, swapping his stained shirt for a practice jersey, "not going to ask me my name too?"

Wes tenses, turned away from her. Sighing, he turns around slowly. "If it's all the same I'd like as much plausible deniability as we can manage, I don't really want to be involved in all the ghost business. Besides, I heard Plasmius call you Danielle when he caught up to you in the park."

"Oh, right. Well, I prefer Dani? With an 'i'?"

"With an 'i'. Gotcha."

Turning back to the phone in her hands, Dani turns the screen on, seeing the message on the home page for herself. "Wait, Wes Weston? Aren't you the guy who keeps trying to out Danny as Phantom?"

"Really? That's the reputation that precedes me?" Voice rising in incredulity Wes begins pacing the small space, "not that I distract Mr Lancer when he needs to leave, or did almost the entirety of our geography project by myself, noooooo I'm just the conspiracy therapist who can't keep his mouth shut. You know Danny is really lucky that people aren't going to look at a ghost and try and guess his living alter ego. I'm the reason there are theories that Phantom is Fenton's dead uncle! Did team phantom think to spread a rumor that not only ties into the Fenton parents obsession, explains the resemblance, and helps with the secret identity! No! It was me! I-"

Wes cuts himself off, catching sight of Dani's smile, eyes full of mischief and voice full of teasing, "oh now you sound like the stories I've heard, I can almost see the conspiracy board behind you, newspaper clippings and red strings and all."

"…It's green string."

"What?"

"It fits the aesthetic better! Actually, I don't need to explain myself to you, I'm helping you."

"And thank you for that. But, can I ask for an explanation? If you're trying to help why tell people that Danny is phantom? Isn't that still a risk?"

For a moment Wes looks defensive, and Dani thinks he won't answer her, but he cracks under her puppy eyes just like Danny would, patheticness helped by her sorry state.

He sighs, full body and resigned. "You know, Danny doesn't know this, but my parents also moved to Amity for it's weirdness, like his did. But instead of 'ectoscience' they are more… spiritual. Did a whole bunch of charts and readings when my brother and I were born and everything. Real believing that gut feelings are messages from the universe and all that type of people. Didn't give it much weight myself until we became ghost central, but my parents have always made a big deal that if I had been born a girl, they would have named me Cassandra."

Dani stares uncomprehending for a long moment, then all at once she is overcome with laughter, "the prophet who was cursed by Apollo to never be believed?"

"That's the bitch. I'll admit it was a bit of a risk leaning into that, but like. I mean it's working. His mom gave me a whole lecture about the appropriateness of school gossip a couple weeks ago sooo."

"Mrs Fenton gave you a lecture about the rumour?" Dani leans forward, giddiness evaporating as she overbalances, nearly falling out of the chair before Wes catches her.

"Kid-"

"Don't call me kid."

"Alright 'with an i', a chance to calm down seems to have helped, but you need to call Danny. Text if you think he won't answer an unknown number, and I need to get out of here."

"Why?"

"What do you mean why? 'With an i', you're literally coming apart in gooey pieces, I've got bits of you staining my shirt again-"

"No. Why leave? You helped me, you're smart, good with people, and-"

"And what the hell am I going to do if Plasmius decides to target me? Right now I'm just a kid with bad information, I doubt he even knows my name. How well do you really think I'd be able to handle getting swept up with Phantom? I will do what I can to help. Please don't ask me for more than that."

They hold eye contact, and Dani believes with every part of her, even the parts she has left on the park and on Wes, that if she asked him to, he would stay. She wouldn't have to be alone while she waited for Danny.

She wants to take advantage of that. Feels the urge to put all of the pleading and tears she can muster into a desperate 'stay?'

She doesn't.

Swiping to the keypad she inputs the number Danny had drilled her on, more memorized pattern than phone number. She doesn't look at Wes as she says, "if you want your plausible deniability you should leave now."

Danny picks up after three rings, a tired "hello?" Coming through the phone.

"Danny? It's me, your cousin?"

"Dani? What's up? What number are you calling from?"

Wes' hand lands on her head, she looks up startled as he ruffles her hair, he mouths 'good luck' before leaving, locking the door behind him.

"Dani? Dani are you there? Shit if you can hear me don't hang up, I can have Tucker track the call-"

"I'm fine. I mean I'm not fine, I need help. But I'm here. Vlad he, I'm in the park, hiding in a grounds-keepers shed. Stole the phone from someone playing basketball."

"I'm on my way, just-"

"Stay on the phone." Dani finishes with him. "You too."

~~~

The tardy bell rings.

Wes doesn't even pretend to be rushing, haven given up being on time when his brother 'forgot' to wake him as well this morning, despite Wes having made a point to ask last night, knowing he wouldn't have his phone as an alarm, but he couldn't explain that and now Coach Tetslaff would have him running laps for the next week for missing morning practice. But it's whatever.

"Hey Wes!"

Or it was whatever.

Should be whatever.

Wes takes a deep breath and braces himself as he closes his locker, "Fenton. Aren't you late for class?"

Danny scoffs, "I think you mean we're late for class. But I found something of yours on a walk last night." He holds out Wes' phone.

The exact lie he had told Dani to tell them to use, how unoriginal. Wes had kinda hoped Phantom would ignore that and use ghost powers to sneak it into his locker or backpack. Would have avoided whatever conversation Fenton looks like he wants to have.

"Oh thanks," Wes takes his phone, notes the full charge, and hopes Tucker didn't do anything weird to it, "I had assumed I'd left it in the Athletics locker room after practice, thanks for giving it back."

Fenton blinks at him blankly, oh come on dude it can't be that surprising that I lied, you are also lying, we are lying together, play along.

When Fenton doesn't say anything, Wes says, not at all awkwardly, "well. We're late for Geometry. So."

Fenton begins walking alongside him, and oh why did they need to be going to the same class, and finally speaks, "about that. I was actually wondering if you've got a partner for the egg drop project coming up?"

"Aren't you just going to make your little triumvirate with Sam and Tucker?"

"We could, but Mr. Warner says he would prefer pairs, and I think it'll be easy, so if you don't already have a partner?"

"Easy? If the egg breaks when we drop it it's an automatic fail on the project!"

"And if it doesn't it's an automatic 100, I know. And I think it'll be easy." It clicks for Wes as Danny continues, "but then there's an odd number of people in the class, Sam, Tuck, and I could probably get dibs on being the group of three-" The Fentons are a family of engineers.

"Deal. Yes. Do we need to strategize? Make blueprints?"

"Dude. You're overthinking it. We're just gonna hot glue a fuck ton of toothpicks into little 'x's and then combine them."

"And that will work?!"

Danny rolls his eyes. "Yes, it'll work. It's more of a physics project than a geometry project, really."

"We're not supposed to take physics until junior year?!"

Danny shrugs, "I don't know man, I think Mr Warner just wants something easy to grade for a project. But it's not like it's a trick question, it's just like, the crumple zones in cars? We're doing that with toothpicks for the egg."

Danny explains more in depth on their way to class, clearly understanding the topic but not explaining succinctly, when Wes is struck by another realization.

Oh God.

Wes is going to get dragged into Team Phantom.

This is exactly what he was trying to avoid.

He feels his phone vibrate in his pocket. Checking it without thinking he sees a contact he knows he did not make.

With an I: an offering for the oracle =P

A moment later a picture follows the text, Wes recognizes the desk in the grounds-keeper's storage shed, placed on the center of the desk is a large zip lock bag presumably filled with the legend of every Amity Park bake sale, Fenton Family Fudge. Sharpie swirls and stars decorate the bag, surrounding a label that reads Wes W.

Wes smiles, and decides to ignore all signs, and not speak into existence his 'theory'.

Hate to trigger Cassandra's Curse after all.

[megamindsupremacy]

Hii!

You've been reblogging posts about Danny Phantom lately and it made me interested in reading fics about it :D Do you have any recommendations? Thank you!

Hello! just to start out, here's the list of my previous DP rec lists, but some of them are more into fandom lore than others. This post is me trying to put together some of the more classic fics I can think of, that spawned tropes and headcanons of their own. Also, the phandom is... a bit more gorey than you'd expect going into it, so mind all of the tags. Hope you enjoy!

-

No One Knows AU by DarkNymfa

Not for the first time, Danny cursed himself for never telling anyone about his extra-curricular activities. And now, far more injured than he could fix himself, Danny desperately wished that he had told just one person.

An AU in which, instead of having his friends Tucker and Sam to support him, Danny has to deal with Being A Ghost all by himself.

-

Something's Wrong with Danny Fenton by Ghostly_Cabbage

Danny Fenton. The enigma of Casper High. It's the first day of the winter semester when she notices him. She notices him for what feels like the first time. Maybe because at this point he's the only alternative kid other than her.

Or maybe because boom, there he is: the locker next to hers.

A No One Knows AU where Danny transfers from a different school to Casper during Junior year and ends up befriending Sam and Tucker. Written for Invisobang 2021!

Another Nobody Knows AU

-

Corpse AU by DarkNymfa

In the stress of the events that followed the Accident, as Danny struggled to control his new-found ghost powers and as ghosts started attacking Amity Park, the trio completely forgot about the body that they had buried in the woods.

Until someone found it.

Another one that was (according to Ao3 timestamps) started by DarkNymfa! What if, every time Danny turned into a ghost, he left a dead body lying around?

-

Dead, Not Mourned by Sergeant_Tears

Danny Phantom is caught off-guard by the press and ends up saying a few things that he didn't mean to say. Whoopsies. At least the town is sorta being nicer to him, right?

-

Exhumed by Marsalias

Agreeing to an interview with the detectives is probably a bad idea.

He's still going to do it, though.

Another early, fan favorite corpse AU series

-

Morge by lexosaurus

It was a beautiful day outside. The birds were singing, the flowers were blooming...a corpse was found in the woods.

Or, Amity Park's local cadaver dog trainer was walking her dog in the woods when they discovered a little surprise waiting for them six feet under.

another corpse AU!

-

a home for charon by kkachis

Now all he feels is anticipation for impending relief. He’s so close. She needs to come home with him. She needs to rest. The Other Side is eternally patient, but eternally yearning. This, Danny knows better than any other.

Psychopomp Danny AU!

-

omnis immunde spiritus by aloneintherain

Danny’s eyes were fixed on the locker, never-moving, as though he could see straight through the wall and over to the other side. For a split second, Kwan could have even sworn that Danny’s eyes shone silver, like the eyes of a deer, glowing under headlights.

What the fuck, he thought.

-

Would You Like Some Bullets With That, Sir? by GothMoth

Vlad would absolutely have a few people who want him extra dead and maybe one or two actually willing to try. Too bad that doesn’t really work when the guy’s already half-dead. In fact, it does pretty well nothing other than provide mild amusement. Danny gets more of a kick out of it than the billionaire does though.

-

Mortified by Marsaliais

Danny had actually been looking forward to Casper High's ghost safety assembly, but, between a ghost attack and his parents' newest weapon, things go wrong very quickly. Now Danny will have to fight not only ghosts and hunters but his own instincts to get everyone back home safely. If at all.

it is (as I have been told) an absolute classic but uh. to be absolutely clear i still havent read it because it's very long. I've heard it's really good though lol.

-

And He Was Dead by uaigneach

They didn’t talk about it.

Regardless of their opinion on him, no one talked about how young Phantom was, how he was dressed in a hazmat suit like some sort of lab rat. They didn’t want to think about the one time anyone gained a peak under his suit, they saw a patchwork of scars and bruises.

They didn’t want to think about the one time parents were mentioned in his presence, he flinched. They didn’t want to think about how Phantom died.

(AKA everyone in town has a theory of how Phantom came to be. It isn’t pleasant.)

-

Some big tropes that I know of in the Phandom but couldn't find/didn't remember a core fic spawning are the Ghost Core AU (specifically ice core and dual core ideas), Ghost King AU, Wes Weston like, as a concept (my love), Ghost Hunger AU, and definitely a dozen more I can't remember off the top of my head. If anyone wants to add fics in the notes, either their faves or to remind me of an AU i forgot, I'd love to see it!

[claitea]

an au i've been messing with for quite a while now :) alto as a plasma leader + post-plasma! originally for a little swap au where n would have been a ranger (tbh its not developed at all, it was just an excuse to think about ranger n lmao), though with @jaredthebc we also made a whole thing with his oc jay hehe

ALRIGHT SO TRYING TO KEEP IT SHORT. we call this the replacement leader au. when ghetsis caught wind of a harmonia child being abandoned in the woods, he planned to get him for his plans as normal. however, he accidentally takes a 5 year old alto instead. when he realizes his mistake and finds the real n, he can't just toss out alto since he'd already introduced her to the rest of team plasma as the future queen. he keeps them around to keep up appearances, but also as a backup in case anything goes awry with n. alto's goal as plasma's leader is to make unova more like their homeregion fiore as opposed to complete liberation

they dont get to be they/them yet by the way. sorry. she/her and gender dysphoria be upon ye, alto. they get called A, or Lady A, but since reading just the letter A in text was hard, we also call them Alt. they never get called that in-universe, its literally just for us HJDHDHFH

so that n is assured that he is the true king, he's never made aware of alt's existence, but alt admires him greatly and works to support him from the shadows. when jay is discovered by ghetsis, since he can also talk to pokemon having been to the mystery dungeon universe, alt is once again pushed down the royal procession. at this point, they're so used to being looked over they fully accept this without question and pledge as much loyalty to jay as they do to n.

we liked the thing the manga did where in literally just one scene and never again, n's necklace is used as a phone. so ghetsis gives all three their necklaces to keep tabs on them all. jay and alt accidentally end up calling each other on them, initially unaware exactly Who they're calling. they keep this up for a while, since both are lonely as plasma's backup leaders who arent nearly as important as n yet. when they find out, alt is horrified thinking they've broken so many rules treating their superior so informally, but jay tells them he wants them to stick around. they end up sneaking off to each others rooms, and since they're so desperate for company they try a romantic relationship. its not exactly... the best?? they genuinely love each other but alt is constantly worried about the fact this is totally not allowed, jay worries alt is just "following orders" by being with him. they feel that all they have is each other though

in bw1 n loses and leaves unova as normal, so for bw2, ghetsis puts jay in charge with alt as his right hand. jared's oc Amity replaces the usual protag. the game proceeds basically as normal, up until the giant chasm, where ghetsis attempts to glaciate amity and n returns to save her. knowing kyurem did this only because it was being controlled, jay defends it, as do n and amity. alt, scared out of their mind having just seen ghetsis reveal his true colors, as well as watching jay and n, the only people left they could trust, defend a pokemon that almost killed a kid, alt runs away.

jay and n search for them for a month, and find them back in the ruins of the old plasma castle, injured from an ursaring attack they suffered on the run. they realize how harsh they'd been at the chasm and finally try to make up with both of them. it takes a while because they all have their own issues to sort out but jay and alt do get back together with a lot more healthy framing of that relationship :) n is also there bc these ocs were already n kissers. we had to alright. its in our nature

alt never actually interacted with many pokemon in their time with plasma so their main experiences are The Kyurem Thing and The Ursaring Thing so they develop a fear of pokemon for a while. the shiny smoliv in their second ref is their emotional support helping them get used to pokemon again. their name is Olive because alt still sucks at names, they were a rescue jay got from the plasma safehouse, and because of an inside joke they know wood hammer even though smoliv cant learn that

[fangirlwriting-stories]

First Blood

Summary: No One Knows AU Part 1, Danny should have expected that he wouldn't be able to do this ghost fighting thing by himself forever. Though admittedly, he didn't expect things to go quite like this.

Author's Note:

My brain: Hey you should write a Danny Phantom AU

Me: Wtf? Why?

My brain: I wanna

Me:

Anyway I do partly blame this fic on AO3 by artistfingers for giving me the inspiration.

…

He’d meant to tell them, was the thing.  It was entirely a coincidence that they weren’t there when it happened in the first place.

Sam had been the one to first have the idea of checking out the ghost zone, even if Danny had been desperately curious before that too.  But she’d been the one to convince him to try it, and he’d even gotten into the suit his parents had designated for this purpose (thankfully with a thought from Sam to pull his Dad’s face off his chest), but before he could actually go in the portal and turn it on, Sam’s parents showed up and dragged her and Tucker home.

They had never been the biggest fans of Danny or his parents, and weren’t super happy when they learned Sam was there.  Tucker had tried to protest against getting dragged along, but Sam’s parents kind of had a presence you couldn’t stand up to for very long, so they’d both left eventually.

But Danny was only more desperately curious after almost going in, and he couldn’t know when his parents would both be out like this again.  So, he’d gone back an hour later and turned the portal on.  And then…

Well.

Then he’d started trying to come up with a way to say “hey guys I’m sort of half ghost now” without sounding like a total lunatic.

And then the ghost fights had started, and Danny Phantom became well known before Danny Fenton could come up with a way to explain it to them.  And then he didn’t want them to get hurt.  The fights were hard enough on him, and he had superpowers.

He’s… definitely regretting that decision now.  He should have known eventually he’d come across something he couldn’t defeat on his own, for one reason or another.  But he’d always assumed if that came up it would be a ghost that was just too powerful, and he could ask someone for help.  Hard to do that when the problem is an evil but human ringmaster with a ghost-controlling crystal ball.  Admittedly, he hadn’t thought that far ahead.

He’s not quite sure what’s going on when he comes to, but the crystal ball is shattered in pieces at his feet and the other ghosts he’s become familiar with are blinking in the space across from him.  Freakshow himself is in between them all, staring at the crystal ball like he’s trying to process what’s happening.

Danny’s doing the same thing.  This isn’t Amity Park, that’s clear enough, but he doesn’t know where he is.  He doesn’t know what’s just happened, though he has a vague memory of an overwhelming sense of anger giving him enough force to throw the crystal ball to the ground.

“You know,” Freakshow says, looking up with a terrified grin.  “When I called you, uh, ‘minions,’ it was really a term of endearment, like, ‘Oh, I love my minions!’”

Danny scoffs, meets eyes with the other ghosts, and finds them in agreement.

They drag Freakshow to the haul he’s made them all put together, call the cops, and fly off into the night.

But while the three of them go who-knows-where, Danny changes forms and heads for a grocery store or a gas station, any place where he can find a newspaper and hopefully figure out the date or his location.  Preferably both.

…It’s been weeks.  It’s been weeks and he’s halfway across the country.

Danny sits on the ground outside of the gas station and drops his head in his hands.  The homework alone is going to be a nightmare.

His stomach growls.  He’s been in his ghost form for who knows how long, and it’s probably been just as long since he ate, but he doesn’t have any money on him.

So, in a move he’s not exactly proud of, he steals a couple apples and bags of chips from the gas station and practically inhales them.  He sits on a bench for another hour or so before he realizes he probably can’t put off the inevitable anymore.

He switches forms again and starts flying home.

He’s pretty fast at this point, so it takes him no more than a couple hours to get there, but he has no idea what he’ll find when he arrives.  The past couple weeks get blurrier the closer the time gets to the present, but he has the feeling he’s done some bad stuff.  He doesn’t know what his public image in Amity Park is anymore, but he has an inkling it’s not exactly great.

And that’s just the Phantom side of things.  He’s going to have to deal with the Fenton side first, and that almost sounds worse.

First, however, he’s exhausted, and still hungry, and he can’t deal with this tonight.  So he resigns himself to worrying everyone for one more night, grabs some stuff from the fridge, and flies silently up to his bedroom.  He eats handfuls of whatever food he grabbed with his back to the door, and then leans back against it and breathes, taking in the feeling of at least being home.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem he’s going to get even a night of reprieve, because the next second someone bangs on the door he’s leaning against, and he splays forward on the ground with a surprised yelp.

He turns to see Jazz forcing the door open.  She freezes when she sees Danny, and for a couple seconds, they stare at each other.

“Uh,” Danny says.  “Hi?”

Jazz blinks.  “Hi?”

Danny swallows.  “Yeah?”

Jazz balls her hands into fists and glares at him.  “Where have you been?”

“Um.”

Jazz buries her hands in her hair and pulls on it, giving a frustrated scream.  “Danny!  Do you have any idea how worried we’ve been?”

“Sorry,” Danny mutters, not sure what else to say.  He still has no idea what’s happened the past few weeks.

Jazz runs her hands over her hair, smoothing it down, and takes a deep breath.  Then she kneels down and pulls Danny into a crushing hug.

“Why would you run away like that?” Jazz says, but there’s something else in her voice, like she’s trying to get at something.  “Are you okay?  Are you hurt?  Do you want to—” she pulls back, and looks Danny in the eyes with a very pointed expression.  “Do you want to talk about it?” she asks, her voice suddenly very soft and gentle.

Danny stares at her for a second, not sure where the sudden shifting emotions from her came from.  Either way, he shakes his head.  He doesn’t even know what he’d say.  He’s going to have to come up with some kind of story, but how is he supposed to do that without contradicting something he doesn’t remember happening?

“Are you sure?” Jazz says, still looking at him intentionally, and Danny does not understand what she’s trying to say.  He’ll blame the exhaustion and brain fog.

Jazz sighs, and pulls him back into a hug.  “Okay.  But you’re going to have to explain to Mom and Dad why you’ve been missing for weeks.  Uh… for exactly three weeks and four days, as we both know very well of course.  And you’ll also have to explain why no one knows anything at all about where you’ve been or what you’ve been doing— as far as I know that is.”

Danny pulls back and gives her a baffled look.  “Why are you talking like that?”

“Excuse me!  You’re the one who runs away for, just to reiterate, exactly three weeks and four days to an unknown location, and you’re asking me why I’m being weird?”

Danny stares at her.  “Uh, I mean I kind of am now?”

“I can’t believe you!” Jazz exclaims, waving her arms up without actually looking that exasperated.  Then she leans forward and wraps her arms around Danny again.

“I’m really glad you’re okay,” she whispers, with a suspicious sniff that Danny doesn’t acknowledge.  “Please don’t scare me like that again.”

Danny reaches up and wraps his arms weakly around her.  “I’m sorry,” he murmurs, which is all he can say, because he can’t exactly guarantee that nothing like this will happen again, can he?

For a minute, they both just sit there, and Danny tries to ignore how good it feels to be hugged by his sister, because that’s a totally lame realization to have, and he doesn’t need any more reasons for people to beat him up.

But then another familiar voice comes from behind them.

“Jazz?  What are you doing up—”

Danny jerks around and meets eyes with his mother, who stares wide-eyed back at him.

After a second, she turns and screams, “JACK!” then rushes forward and pulls Danny towards her.

“Are you okay?  Are you hurt?”  She takes his face in her hands, turning it back and forth.  “What were you thinking, you’re grounded for a month!  You look terrible, when did you eat last?  When did you shower?  Do you have any idea how worried sick we were?  I’m never letting you out of my sight again!  Was it ghosts?  What can you tell us about them?”

Danny laughs despite himself.  His mom is being so incredibly normal (well, normal by her standards) that it immediately brushes away quite a few of his worries.

Then he remembers what his best option for a cover story is, and his smile fades.  His dad shows up in the doorway a second later, looking half-asleep.

“It… it wasn’t ghosts, Mom,” he says, and at least that part is true, if misleading.  “I just… I’m sorry.”

His mom presses a hand to her forehead, looking like Danny’s taken about ten years off her life.  “You’re grounded for two months,” she amends.  “What were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t,” Danny says, which is also true, if… also misleading.

“You got that right,” his dad said, putting his hands on his hips in what looked like his best impression of a stern father.  “You’re grounded for three months, mister.”

“That’s just going to keep going up, isn’t it,” Danny says with a sigh.

Jazz reaches over and gives him a side hug and a sympathetic smile, and Danny really isn’t sure what’s going on with her right now.

But honestly, for the moment, he’s just glad to be home.

…

Danny still isn’t quite sure how he manages to get out of giving any details to the police, but he does it.  He’s given back to his parents to decide his punishment, meaning he’s confined to house arrest for the next five months (it did keep going up).  That’s going to make ghost hunting a little bit difficult, but he’ll burn that bridge when he gets to it.

The one exception to grounding, obviously, is school, which Danny is equal parts dreading and looking forward to.  It was a Saturday when he got back, and of course Sam and Tucker know he’s returned, but he hasn’t gotten to see either of them.  He doubts he’ll be able to see them much outside of school or the occasional study party.

Stupid Freakshow.  This is going to ruin his life until Christmas.

Either way, Monday comes.  And Danny walks into the school and over to his locker and tries to ignore everyone staring at him.

A loud bang at his left causes him to jump and turn to see Sam leaning against the lockers, looking none too pleased.

“So,” she says.  “Have you finally decided the rest of us are worthy of your presence again?”

“Come on, Sam,” Tucker says, walking up behind her.  “You said you weren’t gonna be like that.”

“Sorry, he just screws off to nowhere and you expect me to not be upset?” Sam asks with a glare at Tucker before turning back around.  “Honestly Danny, you know I’m all for escaping awful parents, but you didn’t even tell us where you were going!  We didn’t know if you were okay!”

“My parents aren’t awful,” Danny mutters as he looks down at his feet, all he can think to say.

“Then why did you leave?” Sam snaps, leaning into his face.

Danny winces, leaning back.  “Do we have to do this out here in the hallway?”

Sam huffs, standing up straight and glaring away.  “Fine.  Whatever.  I’m going to class.”  She stalks off without another word.

Danny sighs and turns to his locker so he can put the textbooks he needs into his backpack.  It’s not his fault, and he knows that, but he still feels like the worst person on the face of the planet for making them worry.

“So…” Tucker says slowly, leaning back against the locker much less angrily than Sam.  “Why did you leave?”

Danny closes his locker and swings his bag over his shoulder.  “Doesn’t matter.  I’m back, aren’t I?”

“Yeah, except it kind of does, though?  Dude, if you feel like leaving again, I want to help you.”

Danny turns to look at him and sees nothing but honest concern in Tucker’s eyes.

He wishes it was that easy.

“You can’t,” he says.

“Why not?”

“It’s not—” Danny sighs, looking around to make sure no one’s listening.

Everyone is listening.

“Not here,” he says, turning back to Tucker.  “And not now.”

Tucker looks at him for another second.  “Okay,” he says finally.  “But don’t think I’m letting up on this.”

Danny smiles just a little bit.  “I know you’re not,” he says.

The warning bell rings.

“I have to go,” Danny says.  “If I cut first period on my first day back after running away, I think my parents will actually kill me.”

Tucker smirks.  “Sounds like you brought that one on yourself, dude,” he says.  “But sure.  See ya at lunch.”

“See ya,” Danny says, and turns to walk the other way.

The day is about what he expects.  Mocking and socks in the stomach from Dash, dry remarks and glares along with piles of makeup work from teachers.  He’s exhausted, but he deals with all of it and prepares to work through it until things are at least marginally back to normal.

He can’t wait for Sam and Tucker to not be mad at him.  That would help a ton.

There doesn’t seem to be much of a chance of that when lunch arrives, however, because Sam starts glaring at him the second he sits down, and Tucker just gives him that same concerned look that Danny is pretty sure he can’t make go away without spilling his guts.

…Well, not that “hey Tucker I was actually being mind controlled by that ringmaster from Circus Gothica” would make him less concerned.  If he believed him in the first place, that is.

Danny doesn’t know what to say to break the awkward silence, but apparently Sam has that covered.

“So, Tucker,” she says, very loudly.  “Are we still on for Nasty Burger after school?”

Ouch.  Fair enough.

“Uh,” Tucker says, rubbing the back of his neck.  “Maybe that’s not such a great idea anymore?”

“Why?  Are we supposed to drop our plans the second Danny decides to stop being childish?”

“Okay,” Danny says, turning to face her.  He’s positive he doesn’t have the energy to deal with an angry Sam for the weeks it takes her to forgive him.  “What do you want me to say to you, Sam?”

Sam turns her glare on him.  “I want you to tell me why on earth you left with no notice of when you’d be back or whether or not you were okay or why you were leaving,” she snaps.  “Why the fuck would you do that to us?”

“I wasn’t trying to,” Danny says, looking down as guilt stabs him in the chest.  “I’m sorry.”

“What do you mean you weren’t trying to?  What were you trying to do?”

“I don’t know,” Danny says, because it’s true.  He doesn’t really remember the exact specifics of when and where and why he left Amity Park with Freakshow.  He is pretty sure he wasn’t around as Danny Fenton for at least a couple days before that, though, meaning Jazz’s random ‘three weeks and four days’ comment was probably more accurate than the one he’d worked out from the newspaper.

“I really don’t know what I was thinking,” he reiterates, forcing himself to turn and look at Sam.  “I don’t know what else to say.  I’m sorry.”

He watches anger and concern and something else war on Sam’s face for a second before she scoffs and glares away.  “You’re really not going to tell us what happened?” she asks.

“I… don’t know if you’d believe me,” Danny says quietly, looking down at his awful school lunch that is leagues better than the almost nothing he’s probably eaten the past couple weeks.

Sam gives a bitter laugh, shaking her head.  “Oh my god.”

“Sam,” Tucker says, narrowing his eyes at her.

“What?” Sam asks, turning her glare to him again.  “Are you trying to pretend you haven’t spent the last three weeks terrified out of your mind too?”

Danny fights to not hunch over on himself.

“I’m sorry,” he says instead, turning to look at Sam.  “I really am.  I didn’t want to scare you.  I’m sorry.”

Sam looks at him firmly for a long second, and she must see something in his face that makes her believe him, because she stabs at the limp broccoli on her tray without looking at it and says, “You gonna do it again?”

Danny shakes his head and prays to whatever’s out there listening that he’s not lying right now.  If Desiree was around, he might even make a wish on it.

Sam seems to accept that at least a little bit.  She turns and takes a bite of her vegetables.  “If you do I’ll murder you,” she says.

You’re a couple months late for that, Danny doesn’t say.  Instead he just nods.

“So,” Tucker says, drawing both of their attentions with a much more easygoing smile on his face.  “I imagine you’ve got a lot of homework to make up, Danny.  You want to move our hangouts to after school while you’re doing that at least?”

Danny smiles gratefully at him, and Sam sighs and mutters, “Yeah, sure, whatever.”

So that’s where they end up, and Danny immediately appreciates how almost-normal it feels.  One of the last clear memories he has before things start getting fuzzy is studying in the same library with Sam and Tucker, so in a way it feels like picking up where he left off— with some unwelcome tension added to the air.

Danny spends the first half hour or so doing homework while Tucker and Sam talk idly next to him about things they’ve done in the past three weeks that he’s apparently missed out on.  Unlike lunch, there’s no anger involved, just awkwardness and hesitation, which is… better, he supposes.

Finally after an hour, when he’s only finished a tiny bit of homework for one of his classes, he sits back in his chair and massages his temples.  “This is gonna take me a month.”

“Well, you did miss almost a month of work,” Sam says, with a not-very-sympathetic smile.  “You don’t really have anyone to blame but yourself.”

“I’m gonna get so tired of that sentiment,” Danny says, dropping his head into an open textbook.

“It’s true.”

“I know,” Danny mutters without lifting his head.

“Did you at least have fun while you were on your runaway vacation?” Tucker asks.

Danny pulls his head up and finds Tucker now leaning on the table in front of him.

“No,” he says, because he’s sick of lying.

Tucker winces.  “Ouch.”

Sam snorts.  “Serves you right.”

“Sam,” Tucker says, at the same time Danny waves her off with “I know, I know, I get it.”

Sam sighs, and pushes herself up on the table.  “Alright, look.  You should probably lie low for the first month or two.  But when your parents eventually stop watching you closer I can help you sneak out for a little fun from time to time.”

Danny gives her a grateful smile.  “Thanks, Sam.”

“Yeah, yeah.  You owe me one.”

“I already owe you one,” Danny says.

“You got that right,” Sam says, crossing her arms with a smirk.  She probably thinks he means her forgiving him so quickly.  He doesn’t.

They don’t stay much longer, because the hour after school in the library is the only time his parents gave him before he has to go home.

As soon as he gets a free moment, when his parents are busy making dinner, he sneaks downstairs and looks up Danny Phantom on the computer.

Just as he expected, it’s not great.  Most of the things it lists Phantom as doing are robberies and property damage, about what he expects.  But there’s also quite a few mentions of him being cruel to the other ghosts in Freakshow’s circus, and he… cannot figure out how he feels about that.

Fighting ghosts is nothing new, obviously.  But the ghosts in Freakshow’s circus didn’t choose to be there.  He didn’t choose to hurt them either, but he still feels kind of uncomfortable with it, with the idea that it happened and he doesn’t even remember it.

“Danny?”

Danny yelps and closes the window on the computer, spinning around to see Jazz standing there.

“Jazz,” he says weakly.  “I uh, I didn’t hear you come down here.”

“Dinner’s ready,” Jazz says, giving him a look he can’t read.

She looks at the computer, and it’s way too obvious she saw what he was looking at.

“You know,” she says, turning back to him.  “Unless you’re just catching up on the ghost fighting from the past couple weeks, I wouldn’t put too much thought into Phantom.”

Danny blinks.  “Uh, why?”

Jazz rolls her eyes.  “He was so obviously under the control of that Freakshow guy,” she says.  “Don’t you think?”

“What?” Danny stares at her.  “How would you know that?”

Jazz gives him a soft smile and leans forward to kiss the top of his head.  “Just a hunch I have,” she says.

“Gross, get off me,” Danny says, though he can’t put any real bite into it and he’s pretty sure Jazz can tell.

“I pay attention, you know,” Jazz says, stepping back.

Danny swallows.  “Yeah?  How much?”

“Enough to know that robbery and property damage isn’t Phantom’s MO,” Jazz says with a roll of her eyes.  “And that those reports aren’t gonna say anything about what he’s actually like.”  She pauses and looks at Danny for a minute, then clears her throat and looks away.  “You know, just in case you’re curious about that kind of thing.  You should find better sources.”

“And what are you, a journalist?” Danny asks.

“I’m just… concerned,” Jazz says hesitantly.  “I hope that… wherever Phantom is, he’s doing okay.  I hope he knows it’s not his fault.”

Danny doesn’t say anything, and he and Jazz stare at each other for a minute.

They’re interrupted by their mom calling from upstairs, “Kids, are you coming or not?”

“We’re coming Mom!” Jazz calls back.  She looks back at Danny and nods her head up the steps, and Danny shuts off the computer and follows her up.

…

He’s not that shocked when he gets nightmares about Freakshow, but it’s definitely inconvenient.  If he can think of one thing that won’t help with getting things back to normal, it’s being consistently sleep deprived.

The worst part is that he can’t really be sure which of the nightmares are his brain throwing his worries back in his face, and which parts are actually his brain putting together things that have happened that he can’t remember right.

Honestly, maybe it doesn’t matter that much.  Either way, he doesn’t get a full night of sleep once for the first week he’s back.  He can tell Jazz notices, though he’s pretty sure his parents aren’t picking up on anything, and none of them say anything.  He tries his hardest to pay attention at school, because he really can’t afford to fall behind due to falling asleep in class.

Unfortunately, between trying to act normal around his family and pay attention during school, that means he usually spends the first half hour with Sam and Tucker passed out asleep on top of his textbooks.

“Dude,” Tucker says, after the fifth school day in a row of waking him up so he can do at least some of the homework he’s missed.  “What time are you going to bed?”

“Yeah Danny, I never thought I’d be the one to say this, but maybe you need to go to sleep a little bit earlier,” Sam says, raising an eyebrow.

“You act like I’m not trying that,” Danny mutters, rubbing at his eyes.

“What’s stopping you?” Sam asks.

“Uh,” Danny says, not having thought that far ahead.

“Danny, seriously, on top of being the only time you can get your homework done, this is also the only time we get to hang out with you for a while,” Sam says.  “I’d appreciate it if you could stay awake for all of it.”

“I’m trying, honestly,” Danny says, leaning back in his chair.  “It’s not like I don’t care.  I do.”

“Then what’s going on, Danny?” Tucker asks.  “You know you can still talk to us, right?  You can always talk to us.”

Danny winces.

Well, maybe he can start small.

“I… I’ve had a couple nightmares,” he admits, running a hand through his hair as he sits up.  He pulls his homework closer so he doesn’t have to look either of them in the eyes.  “It’s not a big deal.”

“Nightmares about what?” Sam asks, giving him a look he can feel without looking back.  “Did something happen?”

“I really don’t want to talk about it,” Danny says.  “Can we just acknowledge it and move on?”

“Uh, no?” Sam says, reaching forward and pulling the homework away from him.

“Hey!” Danny says, turning to her.

“You can’t just say something like that and not expect followup questions,” Sam says, crossing her arms.  “Nightmares about what happened while you were gone?”

Danny sighs.  “Maybe.”

“What happened?” Tucker asks, obvious concern in his voice and on his face.

Danny looks up at him, not having a clue what to say.  Should he explain the one about blasting all of the other ghosts into the concrete hard enough to cause a dent, or the one about terrorizing a small child and her mother to get them away from the paintings they were trying to steal?

Neither of those sound like they’ll come without follow up questions.

Danny reaches over and pulls his homework back over in front of him.  “There just wasn’t a lot of food going around,” he says, settling on the one human experience he can reliably count on.

There’s a couple seconds of silence, and then Tucker gives a long sigh.  “Dude,” he says.  “Why did it take you so long to come back?”

“I need to get this science homework done,” Danny says in lieu of a reply.

Neither of them say anything back to him.

Strangely enough, the first one who comes up with something that’s actually helpful in regards to the nightmares is Jazz.  And she seems to do it unintentionally, like she’s been doing a lot lately.  She very casually at dinner one night brings up an article she’s read about how rewriting the endings of nightmares can sometimes be a good way for someone to calm down after having them, then starts discussing the science of dreams and sleep and how both of them are important and how to make sure both of them are going as smoothly as they can.

…Okay, maybe this time it’s a little more intentional than she wants to let on.

That doesn’t mean her ideas aren’t worth trying, though, so Danny gets a notebook to keep on the nightstand for alternate endings to write down.  (He’ll destroy the pages every morning for privacy purposes, but he draws the line at getting a night light.)

It ends up being helpful enough that he can at least fall back asleep, which is a big improvement, if the ideas he writes down seem a little unrealistic, with how hard it actually was to break out of Freakshow’s control.  Either way, he’s not so tired, and despite how loathe he is to admit it, he has Jazz to thank for that.

Not that he’ll ever tell her that, of course.

…

It’s a week and a half after he returns that things change in a meaningful way.  He hasn’t had any ghost fighting to do since getting back, but that changes during lunch on Monday.  Not anything he can’t handle, just a quick eye roll with the Box Ghost, but it apparently means something very different to the rest of Amity Park, and, more important to him personally, to Sam and Tucker.

“I mean honestly,” Sam is saying when Danny shows up at the library after school.  She’s pacing back and forth across the library, and though Tucker waves at him when he notices him, Sam continues marching angrily in front of the table.

“Who does he think he is, showing up like nothing’s different?  First of all, he ruined Circus Gothica, and then he just shows up expecting everyone to still see him as the hero?  That’s not how that works!”

“Hey Danny,” Tucker says as he approaches.  “Don’t mind Sam, she’s pissed off about the ghost fight today.”

“Why?” Danny asks, setting his bag down on the table.  “I didn’t think that was really your scene.”

“Not until that Invis-o-Bill idiot made it personal by messing with my circus,” Sam says, rolling her eyes with obvious anger.  “And then expects everything he’s done in the past couple weeks to just be brushed off.”

Danny sighs, reaching inside his backpack for his homework.  “Yeah, that figures.”

“What figures?” Tucker asks in confusion.

“Math figures,” Danny says, dropping his notebook on the table.  “Gonna try and knock out a lot of the math homework today.”

“Uh, fair enough?” Tucker says, still sounding confused.  “But honestly Sam, at least he seems to have gotten over whatever’s been going on and isn't actively being malicious anymore.”

“Great, so we’re supposed to reward him for the bare minimum?”

“Do we have to talk about this right now?” Danny asks, looking up with what he hopes comes off as annoyance.  “I get enough of ghosts from my parents, I was kind of appreciating you guys actually being a break from all of that.”

“Look, you don’t get it,” Sam says.  “I don’t imagine you’ve been following ghost news for the past couple weeks, but he’s—”

“I don’t want to talk about him,” Danny snaps, giving Sam as firm a glare as he dares to right now.

Sam raises her eyebrows.  “Excuse me?”

“Sam, honestly, I’ll let you be as mad at me as you need for as long as you want,” Danny says.  “But please, can you back off with the ghosts?  My parents already think I was kidnapped by them or something, I don’t want to talk about them during the only time of the day I can actually relax for a little bit.  Okay?”

Thankfully, Sam and Tucker both go quiet.  Now he’ll just have to hope that neither of them actually ask his parents about that excuse and realize he already told them that’s not what happened.

But apparently he’s misjudged their silence, because after a minute Tucker taps his textbook with a pencil, drawing his attention.

He looks up and finds Tucker and Sam both looking at him like they’re trying to come up with the right way to say something.

He blinks.  “What?”

“Danny,” Tucker says slowly.  “If I ask you something, can you promise not to freak out?”

“No,” Danny says honestly.

Tucker considers this for a second.  “Fair.  I’m gonna ask anyway.  Did you actually run away of your own free will?”

Danny goes stiller than, well, a dead person.  “What?”

“Did you actually run away?”

Danny looks back and forth between him, and then Sam, and then back.  “Why are you asking me that?”

“Dude,” Tucker says, leaning closer.  “You’re not acting like yourself.  Even ‘just made a huge mistake and now everyone’s mad at you’ yourself.  You’re having nightmares, and you don’t want to talk about what’s causing them.  Did you actually run away?”

Danny opens his mouth, shuts it, and looks down at his math textbook.

“…Danny,” Sam says, sounding baffled and angry but also more concerned than he’s heard from her since he got back.  “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Because that’s something you just say in the middle of the hallway,” Danny snaps despite himself.

“Danny, come on,” Sam says.  “Why are you just letting everyone be mad at you then?  You need to tell someone—”

“No,” Danny says.

“What?  Dude,” Tucker says, leaning forward with obvious worry.  “They could go after someone else, or come after you again—”

“He won’t.”

“You can’t know that!”

“Yeah, well, I do,” Danny says, keeping his gaze very firmly on his math homework.  “And I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You know what?  Fine,” Sam snaps, pushing her chair back and grabbing her bag.  “Because you’re being ridiculous.”

With that, she turns and marches out of the library.

Danny doesn’t say anything in protest and starts working on the first math problem on the sheet.

“You know,” Tucker says quietly.  “She was really really scared when you weren’t here.”

Danny keeps writing.

“She was worried something was gonna happen to you and she’d never see you again,” Tucker continues.  “I…” there’s a pause, and then he sighs.

“I’m not gonna make you talk about anything you don’t want to, dude,” he says.  “Just… know that she’s not actually mad at you.  She’s just still scared.”

Danny sighs and puts his pencil down.  “Yeah,” he says.  “I know.”

Tucker reaches out and puts a hand on Danny’s shoulder, in a way that should feel really awkward but somehow doesn’t.  “You know you can tell me anything,” he says.  “Right?”

Danny looks away.

“Okay,” Tucker sighs.  “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He picks up his stuff and leaves.

…

Danny spends the night laying on his bed tossing a ball up in the air and trying to catch it.  He has to get up and chase it down more often than he’d like, he’s not exactly the most athletic person out there.

He ignores his growing stomach and skips dinner, telling his mom he’s not feeling well.  He can always go down and grab something after everyone else falls asleep.

After dinner, however, he hears a knock on his  door.

“What?”

“Can I come in?” Jazz asks.

Danny pauses in tossing the ball in the air and considers for a moment.  “Yeah.”

The door opens as Danny resumes tossing the ball.  Jazz walks in, then closes the door behind her and heads over towards the bed, already looking concerned. 

“Are you doing okay?” she asks.  “You were upset about something when I came to pick you up, and now you’ve been up here for hours.”

Danny manages to actually catch the ball and sits up, setting it down next to him.  “Okay, what is with you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve been acting like, aggressively supportive since I got back,” Danny says.  “Sam is angrier at me than you.  Mom and Dad are angrier at me than you.”

“I’m your sister,” Jazz says.  “It’s not my job to get angry at you.  It’s my job to support you.”

“No, you’re my sister,” Danny says.  “It’s your job to tease me relentlessly and make my life way harder.”

Jazz gives him a look.  “You really don’t need that right now.”

“And why should you care?” Danny snaps.  “I brought this on myself, remember?”

Jazz doesn’t say anything.

“I just, I’m trying to understand what your deal is,” Danny says.  “Do you want something?  Are you trying to butter me up for some reason?  What are you getting out of this?”

Jazz gives him what almost seems like a sad look, then reaches forward and squeezes Danny’s hand.  “I’m worried about you,” she says quietly.

“Why?” Danny says, pulling his hand away.

Jazz sighs, looking down at the bed.  “Because we both know you didn’t run away, Danny.”

Danny throws his hands up.  “This again?  I’m fine.  No one died, no one hurt me, I didn’t have to hurt— people, so I’m fine!”

Jazz gives him a look.  “That is in no way how that works.”

Danny shakes his head, glaring down at the covers.

Jazz nudges him gently in the side.  “I’m not going to make you say something you’re not ready to,” she says.  “Just know that you can tell me anything, Danny.”

With that, she stands and starts to walk out, and Danny feels a weight press down on his chest, one he’s barely sure he can take anymore.

“Jazz, wait,” he says, reaching out and catching her arm.

Jazz pauses and turns back around.  “Yeah?”

“I—” Danny says, and stops.  Nerves start to crawl up his throat.  He half expects his ghost sense to go off, but it’s not that kind of anxiety.

He takes a deep breath.  “If I tell you something,” he says.  “Can you promise to let me explain everything before you make any kind of judgment?”

Jazz smiles at him.  “I promise,” she says with a nod.

Danny takes a shaky breath.  “I, um.”  He stops.

“Yeah?” Jazz probes gently.

“Sorry,” he mutters, looking down and clenching his hands around his blankets.  “I don’t think I’ve ever actually said it out loud before.”

Jazz reaches out and puts her hand over his.  ���You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” she says.  “I… already know.”

Danny jerks his head up.  “What?”

By the look on her face, he can tell they both mean exactly the same thing.

“You…” Danny says weakly.  “How long?”

“Uh, since the Spectra thing,” Jazz says, rubbing the back of her neck with a sheepish smile.  “I wanted to give you a chance to tell me yourself.”

Danny gapes at her for a second, Jazz gives him a soft smile.

“And you…” he says finally.  “You don’t care?”

“Of course I care,” Jazz says, crossing her arms.  “I care that you’re safe.  I care that if you don’t want someone to know, they don’t find out.  I care that you’re my brother and you’ve been trying to do this all alone.  I care that some jerk ran off with you and has been forcing you to do things you clearly don’t want to do for the past month.”

Danny winces and looks down.

“Are you okay?” Jazz says, sitting down on the bed next to him.

“Not… really,” Danny says.

Jazz wraps her arms around him and pulls him over towards her, and this time he doesn’t pull away.

“I don’t like watching you do this all by yourself,” Jazz says.  “Can I help you?”

Now Danny does pull away, if just to stare at her in bafflement.  “You want to help?”

“Of course I want to help,” Jazz says, like that’s obvious.  “If anything, the past month is a clear sign that you shouldn’t be doing this by yourself.”

Well, he can’t exactly argue with her there.  Still…

“It’s dangerous, Jazz,” he says.

Jazz raises her eyebrows.  “All the more reason I don’t want you rushing into danger without backup.”

“I can handle it,” he says.  “That’s what the ghost powers are for.”

“Danny.”  Jazz leans forward, giving him a pointed look.  “I want to help you.  Okay?”

Danny looks at her for a minute.  He takes a breath.  “Okay.”

Jazz leans forward and pulls him into another hug, and for once, Danny can know she means it.  His brain can’t make any arguments about how she wouldn’t be doing this if she knew, because she does know.

And, well.

He could get used to that.

[ace-s-fav-dp-posts]

Something I'm finding pretty frustraiting about a lot of people who write dp crossover fics, but have never seen the actual Danny Phantom cartoon, is that they tend to make Danielle the exact same as Danny but weaker when it comes to power.

Even though it's not really like that in canon.

For one Dani has far, far better control and easier use of her powers while in human form, than Danny does for the majority of the series.

Not to mention at the end of her introductory episode, Kindred Spirits, it's evident that Dani has mastered overshadowing, far more than Danny ever does in the show. When Dani overshadows someone, she's able to use the voice of the person she's overshadowing. While when Danny overshadows someone it's always his own voice coming out of the person's mouth.

People keep making her, "Danny but less powerful," in fics, even though Dani isn't Danny in miniature, that was Vlad's whole problem with her in canon.

Dani has different strengths, weaknesses, and skills than Danny does when it comes to powers, just like how Danny has different strengths, weaknesses, and skills than Vlad when it comes to powers.

All three of them are halfas, so all of them have a large number of the exact same powers, but they all use those exact same powers completely differently.

Danny hardly ever used ectoplasm to make things like shields or weapons, until after he meets Vlad who uses that power constantly.

I especially dislike it when they give Dani powers that are unique to Danny even among other ghosts like the Ghostly Wail or even his ice powers.

Ghost powers tend to reflect who a ghost is, or what their greatest driving force is, or in Danny's case whatever power he desperately needs to manifest soon in order to be able to defeat the bad guy.

Give Dani her own special abilities that Danny doesn't have.

Dani's greatest driving force is traveling the world, and discovering who she is beyond Danny's clone. And the obsticals she'd need to overcome while doing that, are completely different from the ones Danny faces in his day to day life.

Heck, give her the fanon ability you guys keep giving Danny, where he just can instantly understand any language like a rip-off version of Allspeak from Marvel.

That seems far more likely to manifest in globe trotting Dani, than it is in Danny who hardly ever leaves Amity Park, and when he does he comes straight back as soon as possible.

I think it'd be a funny but sad reflection of her situation if Dani gained the power to just summon food from elsewhere. Like we see her stealing from a fruit stall in canon, have her develop powers that make that easier.

"Dani is her own unique individual who is distinct from Danny" you all say as you have her develop/manifest the exact same powers as Danny, when a large part of being an individual as a ghost is having powers that set you apart from the crowd.

And not every ghost power needs to be of the kicking ass variety.

Wulf's is that he can tear open portals at will, Youngblood's is that he can't be seen by adults, Spectra can manifest a form so similar to a real human body that she is indistinguishable from a real human.

All you guys are so focused on potential combat ability, that you all completely ignore all the ghost powers that have nothing to do with fighting at all.