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#Danny got to make up his own summoning rituals when he became king
spacedace · 1 year
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It was the final hour. Doomsday at their door, with only hours left before the world was consumed entirely and every last living thing was devoured right along with it.
Summoning the High King of the Infinite Realms was the only option left, and even then felt more like choosing a firing squad rather than a noose at the end of the day. Pariah Dark might - might - accept the task of destroying the foe they faced, but tmit would come at a cost that was near equal to doing nothing at all. Provided the tyrannical ruler simply didn't let them all die, an entire planet dead was an entire planet to add to his endless armies.
They had to try. Stupid and suicidal as it was.
Zantanna and John worked in silence as they created the summoning circle, hands shaking and stomachs cramping as they worked under the apprehensive eyes of the rest of the League. They all understood that no matter what happened, they would all likely end up dead by the end of it. That the best case scenario meant that death was only the beginning of their problems.
Candles were lit. Insense burned. Blood spilled. Words spoken.
Nothing.
Nothing.
It failed, not so much as a flicker of magic. Which was impossible, they'd checked and confirmed a dozen times that they had the right ritual, that they were following the steps, they had done everything right way wasn't it working? What had they done wr-
"Ugh, gross is that blood?"
Elle Phantom, fifteen minuted late to the site of the ritual with both the boys Super, the most murderous Robin and a sugary abomination of an iced coffee from Starbucks, scrunched her nose in disgust as she looked at the summoning circle.
"This ritual is so out of date, where did you even find it? Wait is that Latin? Who tries to summon someone from the Ghost Zone in Latin?"
John had burned through every drop of alcohol and cigarette he owned hours ago while trying to find this bloody damn ritual and was very much not in the mood for the little hellspawn's color commentary on the process.
"I don't bloody well seeing you providing with any alternatives for summoning the Ghost King." He swore, turning away from the gremlin to tear through the ancient book he and Zantanna had discovered with the ritual inside.
There was a loud slurping noise as the undead hero sucked the last remnants of her drink through the straw. John's brow twitched, even Zantanna - who usually seemed endeared by the chaos goblin - looked at the end of her rope.
Then - "Oh, is that who you wanted to summon? Why didn't you say so?" She drifted over, handing her empty drink off to a disgruntled looking Batman, and began rummaging through the unused magival supplies left over from the - failed - summoning circle. "Here, give me like, five minutes."
John was fairly certain his head was about to explode.
"You know how to summon the Ghost King? You?"
Phantom rolled her eyes at him. "Duh, obviously."
"Obviously." Zantanna repeated, looking like she was half a moment away from having a breakdown. She didn't try to stop the ghostly girl, though, and to be fair neither was John. They were already fucked, might as well let the gremlin try her hand at it.
It took less than the five minutes Phantom had claimed she needed.
When she was done there was a significantly smaller circle on the ground. At the cardinal directions of the circle, written clockwise she'd drawn not any magical runes but instead what appeared to be the Roman Numerals for one, then two, then something akin to a sideways T with an additional mark rising upward from the long horizontal bar, then the letter L.
It had to have some kind of ancient magical significance John didn't know as Shazam made a noise like a dying goose and squeaked out the word Loss like it was a question. Phantom gave the Champion of Magic a sharp toothed grin before adding some words in a language John didn't know before she finally allowed gravity to pull her back to earth and plant her feet on the ground.
She wiped her hands together a bit dramatically, looking pleased with herself, but at that point John didn't care. He could feel the building magic, heavy and oppressive as she had begun her task. Unlike the circle he and Zantanna had attempted, this one was working.
He couldn't help thr nervous swallow he gave as Phantom then declared, with a strange amount of seriousness. "All that’s left are the words."
She took a deep breath, eyes closing for a moment, and the world went utterly silent around them. This, John could feel, this was the real deal. Fuck him sideways the hellspawn was actually doing it.
Phantom's eyes opened, glowing with that bright eerie green light of her power. Another deep breath and then -
"You are my dad! You're my dad!" He watched, any scraps of hope she'd instilled in him dying an undignified death as she gave a terrible little wiggle dance while she sang(?) Off key, "Boogie woogie woogie!"
Every last person on Earth was going to die and one of John's last moments was going to be spent watching the little undead shit do the Macarena. Well fuck him, he guessed.
Then there was the sound of the veil between the world's tearing in two and the fucking Ghost King was standing in Phantom's summoning circle screaming in a screeching falsetto:
"When will you learn? When will you learn that your actions have consequences!"
You know what actually at this point John would rather the apocalypse kill him.
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sylph-feather · 3 years
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Summary: Danny had known the rules— that being beaten would lead to transfer of the crown, instructed to him by their ominous guardians— but he hadn’t exactly considered all the implications of that.
For: @ghost-strawberry
Prompt: (Danny is ghost king hc) Danny loses a fight with Sam and the title of ghost king is transferred to her, despite Sam not being a ghost.
Words: 3,344
“Haha!” Sam barked triumphantly, standing over her defeated enemy in a display of dominance while stomping a scary combat boot, “I won.” 
Danny let out nothing but a low keening sound, slumping on the Nasty Burger table and leaving his arm in its defeated position. 
“Darn,” Tucker chimed in, “I thought that with all the ghost fighting and workouts you’ve been doing, Sam finally would stop being the reigning arm wrestling champ.” He paused, melodramatically draping a hand over his forehead and intoning, “alas.” 
Danny only repeated the same mournful noise, all the sentiment of my arm is going to bruise and Sam will never let this go packed into a drawn out moan. 
Before Danny could construct his complaints into something that took the form of language, there was a great burst of green fire that ensconced their cheap, plastic table. In the time it took to flinch, the ghostly flames had already washed over the group— and… done… nothing? 
No, that wasn’t right— it hadn’t hurt them, to be more accurate. Their table, and the tile around it, looked like someone had carved a circle into the floor, taken everything within that circle (read: the trio, several overly greasy foodstuffs, and three shakes) and dropped it right into the Ghost Zone, if the swirling green abyss was anything to go by. 
(Back in the human realm, the patrons of the Nasty Burger were left with their own overly greasy foodstuffs visible in their mouths held ajar as they stared at the smoldering circle that once held three teens and cheap fast food chain restaurant seating— horribly cheap plastic booths on a table that maybe had the suggestion of meeting bare-minimum sanitary requirements. A lone green flame died out, and acrid smoke wafted away. Same shit every day, a tired cashier thought). 
Before them: the Coroners. Dark-colored ghosts with a litany of dark colors with glowing green antlers that twisted into the suggestion of the shape of a crown, and gnarled hands that all had the same mark of a skull on each knuckle. Between the name and the appearance, they were very ominous, to say the least. 
Danny recognized them from the last time he met them: his own coronation. 
Sam and Tucker, who were not there for that ritual because it occured after the fight with Pariah, were just as confused and scared as Danny was the first time. “It’s ok!” he yelped at his friends who were readying their on-hand Fenton weaponry. “I know them. They’re the Coroners.”
Sam shot him a look that said that is anything but encouraging, and Danny winced. 
“They… do… the coron-ing,” Danny said slowly, because he didn’t know how else to phrase it. “Like, the monarchy ruler stuff.” 
“Down with the monarchy,” Sam intoned almost instinctively, but still pocketed the lipstick laser once again, settling down and taking a more casual sip of her strawberry shake. 
Tucker, meanwhile, just kept his shaky hands locked around the box of fries, determinedly not looking at the wraith-like creatures that had deer skulls sticking out of dark garb. 
Sam paused in her slurping, considering the Coroner’s job in her mind more thoroughly. “I guess it makes sense, ‘cuz the Ghost Zone doesn’t have a pope to do it,” she admitted. 
Tucker relaxed, and snorted. “Ghost pope.” The idea (mixed with the special breed of hysterical comedy that comes with  stress) elicited great humor. 
Fear abandoned, now they just looked confused. Danny was too— because, “why are you here?” He frowned down at himself. “Are you, uh, rebelling? Or do you have an important message? Or…?”
That was one-third of the Coroner’s jobs: rebellion. Or, more accurately, inciting rebellion. To understand, one must understand two-thirds of their job: the second third was that someone had to pass down the Ring of Rage and Crown of Fire. After the defeat of Parkah, the ancient ghosts were very grateful that Danny had taken it from Pariah Dark after his reign of tyranny, given that he had destroyed them… because of the first third of their job. See, the Coroners were also supposed to act as some representative electoral body of ghost-kind in deciding who passed a somewhat okay-ish ruler, and if that didn’t work out, they usually incited rebellion against said tyrant, or inevitably did so when a once kind ruler became glutted with greed and violence. 
So Pariah trapped them, which (admittedly) was a rather sensible plan, and (also admittedly) a major design flaw in the ring and the crown. After all, given the requirement for the initial rights to ring and crown were to battle and defeat its previous user to gain access (it could be peacefully passed, but that option had never happened), and really, nothing of the Coroner’s judgement would make an impact outside of someone saying no— that is to say, the ring and crown wouldn’t just poof. Thus, it seemed reasonable to assume that the battler would continue, well, battling for that power. 
The last third of their job is significantly less exciting— as Danny put it: messaging. It simply was to act as ghostly servants; knights, mailmen, whatever the King and the ghosts that needed the King may require. Danny largely told them to use their own discretion in solving conflicts, because he was just one teen barely keeping his grades above Cs, and then left them to it. 
So yes, Danny was kind of worried that somehow, such a dramatic summons would be some kind of ominous warning on the way he was being a king— which, to be fair, he was barely being a king at all— due to the aforementioned second-third of their job.
The largest one with the most elaborately twisted antlers pointed a long, bony finger at Sam. Its voice, which sounded both grand and incredibly spooky, boomed thusly: “this human has bested you in battle. Thusly, according to the sacred laws of the Ring of Rage and the Crown of Fire, she shall be bequeathed the title of ghostly monarch. Ye, Danny Phantom, halfa, who have bested Pariah Dark, have lost to Sam Manson, human, and cede your title as ruler.” 
In a circle, the thirteen wraiths whispered, “and the cycle continues.” It was murmured slightly out of sync, but it gave less of an impression of untidiness or lack of professionalism, and more of an ominous feeling, like there were many more voices than just thirteen. 
Danny was slightly less freaked out than Sam and Tucker by it, given they had said a similar thing when he was coronated, but with far less spooky fanfare, and more normal, excited fanfare. Mostly, Danng was spooked more by the suddenness of the thing, and the prospect of it. 
In the hands of the largest one that was clearly the leader, the Ring of Rage and the Crown of Fire appeared in a dramatic swooshing of green flame. 
Danny’s eyes widened. “She.” He paused, because he couldn’t really argue with that. It was— technically, sort of— a battle. And in the Ghost Zone, might made right and all that. Still. 
Sam and Tucker stared, jaws agape. Between all the new info and now this revelation, their brains essentially bluescreened. 
Danny, even though he was previously initiated, wasn’t in a much better state— all he managed to get out aloud was an incredulous, “it was arm wrestling?”  
One of the smaller wraiths, its crown of horns barely nubs, drifted forwards to their Nasty Burger island that was adrift in the Ghost Zone, and asked in its voice of crackling dead leaves, “is this the manner in which you were beaten?” 
Sam, herself, recovered from the mental “404” page, and her first reaction was to release a huge guffaw of laughter. 
Danny slid forwards onto the table, thoroughly spent between embarrassment and confusion. All he articulated was a very, very long groan. 
“May we, uh,” Danny said slowly, turning towards the head wraith and looking at the glowing points set in the skull’s sockets, “have a moment to discuss?” 
Tucker made a vague noise between worry and agreement. 
“So long as the queen wishes,” it bowed to her, deeply reverent. 
“Wait,” Sam ordered, smile growing on her face. “If I were queen,” she said slowly, “would I be able to get rid of this monarchy?” 
“Tis not a monarchy, my lady,” one of the thirteen said, antler crown bobbing. 
The whole table of teens processed this for a moment. 
Tucker burst into incredulity first: “you literally called her a monarch just a few seconds ago!” 
“A title, nothing more,” a Coroner corrected. “Nay, you do not hold much sway over them, rather, it is they who hold sway over you, sending message to help resolve conflicts, be they fullscale fights or quarrels.” 
Danny groaned, suppressed memories bubbling up: the many times the Coroners had come to him with arguments regarding ghost territories, many attempting to use Danny as a weapon or a diplomat or bodyguard or— so on. 
Thus far, a handful of months into his kinghood, Danny had stopped one “fullscale fight” that bordered on a war. (...This was also related to territory, however). 
Either way, that was a long way to say: the statement that it was just a title held up. The ring and crown didn’t actually really get him any political leeway with the ghosts— it was more of an… intimidation tactic that some ghosts fled from, because the ring and the crown were no more than power boosters. 
Asides from that, all he got were updates on all the troubles in the Zone that supposedly needed him (most of which actually didn’t). The Ghost Zone was a lawless place, so a title of king was not worth much outside of sheer power display. 
For the most part, the things had just served to place a target on his back, specifically, because any lost battle would mean they were his no more, and that the power would be passed to the victor. 
Sam, seemingly on the same line of thought as he, hummed, “would ghosts know I was the… Ghost Queen?” At declaring herself monarch (even if it was apparently in name only), her face did a bit of an involuntary, complicated twisting motion. 
Danny picked himself up from his pathetic slump, and aimed an intrigued-but-confused look at Sam. 
Tucker caught on a bit faster— “so if the ghosts think Danny’s still the king, they fight him— but there’s no risk involved in him losing.” 
Sam nodded, smiling a little sappily. 
Danny just made a mushy “aw,” sound, seeming to consider it. 
It was hard to read the expressions of the ghosts that surrounded the trio’s private, floating chunk of the Nasty Burger establishment, because said ghosts wore skulls… but they seemed baffled, though reluctantly accepting. It was all in the tilt of their heads and the pause of their voice as they said, “great Queen, whatever thou shall ask of us.” 
Sam nodded again, then paused. Her face cracked into an eager grin— a dangerous grin. “Do I get cool powers from this?” 
After receiving the crown, Danny had gotten a boost in his own powers; nothing new, just everything that was there was doubled. Double the size, the intensity, the spookiness, the everything. Needless to say, being goth and being active in fights as she was, Sam was excited for ghost powers. She was momentarily lost in visions of a sweeping gothic outfit, one of pure black with smokey edges, decked out in spikes, etcetera— in other words, “edgy.” 
Tuck, meanwhile, had a far more practical askance: “hold on. She’s a human, right?” 
Of course, it wouldn’t be the first instance of humans vaguely receiving or being influenced by ghost powers in some way; Undergrowth had done it, there had been that time with ghost mosquitos, and the one with that Egyptian staff, and the whole incident with the dragon-rage amulet… not to mention the halfas themselves, obviously. Still, it was not all that hope-inspiring to consider that all of them save for the halfas were essentially some degree of possession (or, at the least, something infectious and negative). 
Aloud, Tucker continued to contemplate. “It’s not exactly reassuring to call them ghost powers, with uh, death. Involved.” It was a choppy sentence, but it got the point across; Danny was a special case, but even a half death wasn’t exactly desirable. 
The glowing eyes of the coroners seemed to wink in amusement, insomuch as points of light could display emotion. “Ghost powers , says the queen.” 
“Ghost powers,” the others echo— not ominous this time, because they are chortling, seeming to be one step away from elbowing one another. 
Sam flushes a bit. “What’s so funny about that?” she grunts, offended. 
The coroners all bow deeply. “We meant no offense,” speaks one from the crowd, and it is followed by a wave of nodding before any of the trio can tell which one was even talking. “We simply find hilarity on your naivete.” 
“Elaborate,” she ordered with extremely thin patience.
“We were hasty in calling you the monarch yet,” the largest explained in its ancient, crackling voice, slow and thoughtful— annoyingly so. 
Sam pinches her nose, understanding with perfect clarity why Danny had complained dealing with these pretentious, cryptic weirdos. “Elaborate,” she commanded once again. 
“You are not the monarch yet, because you have not died,” it informed with great solemnity. 
The Nasty Burger chunk floated in stunned silence as the trio absorbed that. 
“Die?!” Tucker yelled, banging the table, upsetting both the fries and the silence. 
“You have a fascinating and naive way of phrasing it, but perhaps ghost powers is not so far from the truth,” one of the antlered creatures mused, not really addressing the obvious tension or concern. “For indeed, the ring and the crown do power the spiritual energy—“ 
“They’re just ghost batteries!” Danny interrupted, baffled and surprised. 
Sam herself then interrupted the interruption with a scoff, creating a horrible stack of domino-ing interruptions. “All this pizazz over just a power source that I can’t even use?” 
“You are incapable of using it as you are now,” a coroner pointed out. Something in all their eyes glinted ominously, and their antlers seemed to shine with ethereal light. “You are disconnected while living,” one said. As a group, they began encircling the private bit of Nasty Burger, wraith-like cloaks brushing against disgusting tile that was glossy with grease of burgers long past. “But we will fix that,” the coroners intoned as one. 
Danny finally took some initiative, fluidly erupting from his seat and transforming into Phantom in a singular motion. It felt just a tad ridiculous to he hovering over a Nasty Burger table that was ridiculously out of place in the abyssal green of the Ghost Zone, but that only graced his mind for a moment. Instead, the primary thought was one he voiced aloud: “are you going to kill her?” Danny may have been a C student, but regarding threats he was not slow on the uptake— he’d been in enough fights to get a good instinct. For their part, Tuck and Sam took it too— partially cowering behind Danny while brandishing their own Fenton brand lasers. 
The dark spirits jolted to a stop, and tilting their many skull-heads quizzically— a nonverbal askance of why fight? All their minds were whirring, and the first theory from the group of coroners was this: “are you hungry for this power once again?” The group around chortled, a veritable cacophony like many dead leaves being kicked around by whistling wind. It was a taunt, clearly. “This is the natural order of things, halfa. You cannot deny it. You have lost. She has won, won spiritual power, power we take from you.” An enormous pressure of dread emanated from the threatening beings, seeming to push at Danny’s chest— it threw him off kilter in the emotional sense, but also the literal given that he was midair. “If you desire it returned to you, then beat her as she did you, as is the rites of the Ring and the Crown.” 
“I’m more upset she’s gonna die!” Danny barked, a little sarcastic and a lot tense, gesticulating wildly as though that could free his limbs from the lead of supernatural fear. As he did so, his hands became enveloped in his own charging ectoplasm— like a snowball dragged through snow to gather more icy slush to its mass, so too did Danny draw the pure ectoplasm from his surroundings. 
“I would like not to die,” Sam agreed quickly. 
“If it counts, I’m thirding that motion,” Tucker put in as well. 
The coroners pulled back, seemingly startled. “You… do not want this power. But you do not get to choose. ” Their antlers still held an ominous and powerful glow, which spoke to the fact that they had already made their choice in regards to the whole death thing. 
Sam drew in a breath, preparing her “hell no” tirade— when Danny exploded into motion, wrapping a gloved hand around Sam’s hand that didn’t have a lipstick laser in it, and propped them sloppily on the Nasty Burger table. He held his elbow on the table and their chained hands up. Before she could process what on earth he was doing, he painfully but desperately slammed their linked hands down against the table. 
Everyone was staring at Danny, ghosts and humans alike. Silence reigned— utterly baffled, confused silence. It was though a massive, unspoken huh? has slammed down onto the area. 
“There,” he said, reedy desperation coloring his voice. “I won the arm wrestle match.” 
Sam cottoned on pretty quickly— “oh no,” she groaned, “Danny, you beat me. You won .” 
Tucker shot her a look— the emphasis was a bit hammy— but said nothing, only watched hopefully as the coroners seemed to enter something of a loading state as they processed the turn of events. 
Then, startlingly, they quickly and fluidly bowed simultaneously. “Long live our shortest reigning queen,” they said with great solemnity, “and welcome back, our halfa King. Long may he reign.” 
Needless to say, the trio’s sigh of relief was about unparalleled. 
“If I am to reign,” Danny said slowly, recovering but still trying to sound poncy and official (rather than yell at them as he desired), “may we, in the future… discredit joking competitions?” It was delicately phrased, awkward pauses as he deliberately chose fancy phrasing, but it at least got the point across (even if Danny could swear that despite having skull faces and only pinpricks of light for eyes, the coroners were making faces at him). 
The coroners stares at each other, cloaks rustling but no sound passing between them. 
“Yes,” the largest said suddenly, “such a request is reasonable, for a half-human teenager.” With exasperation, it added: “you already were an exceptional case in your ruling.” 
“And in general,” a smaller one piped up snarkily from the back, to be shushed by what was likely a superior. 
“Right,” Danny clapped his hands together and huffed, relieved but still tense. 
“Now, how do we get out of here…?” Tucker questioned, trailing off and looking at the abyss. He traced his fingers on the table, then his face lit up— “uh, can I keep this? It’s authentic Nasty Burger merch, technically, and it’s nor like they’re really gonna need it when it’s been diverged from this reality, let alone their store—“
Before he could continue, there was a snap from one of the coroner’s gnarled hands, and a great bout of green flames engulfed said hunk of Nasty Burger— for the second time that day. 
When a very stunned Danny Fenton, Sam Manson, Tucker Foley, and smoldering, partially aflame  with emerald Nasty Burger chunk snapped back into place within the mortal realm, a certain cashier stared balefully at the fused tiles and remnant ghost flame, thought same shit every day once again, and promptly asked: “do you want more to order?” 
And thus, the status quo was restored, for better or for worse. 
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