#Just doing some random stuff and leaning on his elbows. chilling in a side split.

[zappedbyzabka]

I think Johnny is flexible enough to do every kind of split.

He should just gracefully (and with little effort to non) drop into one while he’s messing around on his phone or something, semi distracted, and see how a Daniel reacts

[kinglazrus]

For the prompt list thing any chance you wanna do random, #5?

Random #5 - “I would call you an imbecile but that’d be cruel as you wouldn’t be able to spell it.”

It Could be Weird

Danny’s life is weird. Everybody knows it. Even if they don’t know about his part-timejob of being dead, they know about his eccentric ghost-hunting parents, and his uptight psychology obsessed sister, and his own eternal fascination with space.

They know the food in his lunchbox is sometimes alive. They know the lump in his backpack’s water bottle holder isn’t a water bottle but a compact ectogun. They know Danny sleeps above a portal to another dimension.

But they don’t know the weirdest thing about Danny’s life which, amazingly enough,is not the fact that he’s half-dead. It’s that for the past five nights Danny has come home from ghost patrol to find Dash Baxter sitting in his living room, wearing glasses.

Tonight, Danny sneaks in through his bedroom window, phasing through the class. He dumpsthe thermos on his bed—he’ll empty it out later—shakes out the dust and dried ectoplasm from his hair and transforms. Snatching a hoodie off his chair, he fires a harmless ectoblast at his radio on his way out the door, cutting off the music he put on to make it seem like he was home.

He hops down the stairs, tugging the sleeves of his hoodie over his split knuckles, and pauses on his way to the kitchen. Just like yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that, Dash sits cross-legged in front of the coffee table. His homework is spread out before him, a textbook at his elbow, a pencil in his hand, and a frown on his face.

Jazz sits on the couch holding an identical textbook—Danny’s copy, he recognizes thebloodstain on the spine—and quietly talks Dash through a lesson on cellular development.

Despite coming home to a similar scene four days in a row, it’s still so bizarre thathe stares too long and Jazz catches him watching.

“Did you do your homework?” Jazz asks. The unspoken before ghost hunting lingers between them.

“No.”

“Liar.”

“Fine. I’m going to do it now,” he says.

“You’re still lying,” Jazz singsongs. She slips a page in Danny’s textbook and glances up at him. “You need to keep your grades up if you want to keep…”

She glances at Dash, who’s pencil has stopped moving and is sitting oddly still.

“… making friends. After school.”

“Making friends.” Danny raises an eyebrow at her. He wishes that’s what he was doing after school. It’d be a hell of a lot kinder on his bones.

Jazz flushes but refuses to be cowed. “Get your stuff, you’re working in here.”

Danny tips his head back, groaning, and heads back upstairs to get his backpack.

—

Danny hasn’t touched his homework in five minutes. He gnaws on the end of his pencil,the metal band squishing between his teeth, flicking the eraser with his tongue to make the pencil swing back and forth. Every few seconds, Jazz sends him an admonishing look over the top of Danny’s textbook.

“That’s not working,” she says.

“I’m contemplating the philosophic implications of my assignment,” Danny says.

Jazz doesn’t look impressed.

Danny doesn’t really blame her. His chin is resting on a math textbook.

“It’s important,” he says. “How can I figure out how many pounds of fudge Anabelle has leftover without first considering why she has it? Or where she got it from? Or what the hell a triangle has to do with it?”

Maybe she’s a distant relative of their father’s.

Jazz rolls her eyes and leans over Dash’s shoulder, scanning the questions he’s working on.

“This one’s wrong,” she says, pointing halfway down the page.

Dash huffs, scowling, and furiously erases his answer.

It fascinates Danny. He’s never seen Dash so focused on something that didn’t involve a football or beating Danny up. Not to mention the glasses. Since when does Dash have glasses? They’ve been in the same class since kindergarten and he’s never seen them before.

Not to mention, Dash hasn’t insulted Danny once since he sat down on the other side of the table. Maybe Dash got hit in the head by a stray ectoblast when Kitty showed up during gym class.

Danny spits his pencil out of his mouth, ignoring the disgusted look Jazz gives him,and says, “I thought you already proved you could tutor the ‘untutorable.’”

“I did,” Jazz says. Shaking her long sleeve out over her hand, she reaches out and swats Danny’s pencil back toward him. “I thought you were being philosophical about brownies.”

“Fudge,” Danny corrects her. “And I decided the Fenton appetite is beyond the comprehension of even the greatest philosophers.”

“Anabelle’s a Fenton now?”

“My favourite cousin.”

“Uh-huh.” Jazz closes her borrowed textbook and sets it down on the cushion beside her, folding her hands in her lap. “If you aren’t going to do your work you can just–”

“Jazz!” Their mother’s voice echoes up the basement stairs. “Can you come downhere for a moment?”

Jazz sighs but gets up without a fuss. She points at Danny before heading downstairsand says, “Be nice. Don’t distract my student.”

“Me? But he's­– wait, your student?”

Jazz turns away, leaving Danny sputtering and alone with Dash.

It takes Danny a moment to compose himself. When he does, he shoves his homeworkaside, slams his hand on the table, and leans across it into Dash’s personal space.

“Okay, what the hell, why do you keeping coming here?” Danny asks. “Are you hitting on my sister again? Because she already said no, don’t be a creep. I sent the last guy who messed with her to the Ghost Zone.”

Rather than leaning away, Dash gets in Danny’s face and sneers. “Chill out, Fenturd, don’t be an ass.”

“If you're–”

“I said chill out.” Dash shoves Danny’s face away. “You’re sister’s pretty smart, okay? And I need help with science.”

“You really think I’m gonna believe that?” Danny sits back and crosses his arms. Like hell. He remembers how gross Dash was hitting on his sister in ninth grade. Two years was not long enough to recover from that emotional travesty.

“I’m failing the class, okay?” Dash snaps, cheeks red. “I gotta pull my grade up to a C or else I’m off the football team.”

“Oh.” The fight goes out of Danny pretty quickly. He scratches his head and looksaway. “Okay, whatever. My grades aren’t that great either.”

“Yeah, but you’re a loser.”

“Seriously?” Danny glares across the table. “You can’t be civil for two seconds? I wastrying to be nice or whatever, but if you’re just gonna be an ass about it, fine. Wonder how you’re friends’d react to that.”

Dash wrinkles his nose. “What? They already know.”

“And they didn’t kick you out of your little club?” Danny asks flippantly.

“You think we’re that shallow?”

Danny stares at Dash. He can’t be serious. He can’t be that oblivious. All the A-listers care about are looks, money, and popularity, and Danny knows that firsthand.

“I bet Valerie does.”

Dash at least has the mind to look ashamed, and Danny feels a little vindicated at the sight of his downturned eyes.

“You guys were pretty damn cruel to her after she lost all her money. Are you telling me that wasn’t shallow?” Danny asks smugly.

“Like you’re so great, Fenton.”

“A hell of a lot better than you.”

Dash laughs. It’s loud and mocking, and he throws his head back as he does it. “Oh my god. You know how many times I’ve seen you brush off those friends of yours? Didn’t you, like, ditch them to go to a party freshman year? And you replaced them with robots once.”

“Hey, there was more going on there!” Danny defends himself. He doesn’t even know how Dash heard about the robots, but there was more to it, a ghost that could make you greedy.

Danny took care of it pretty quickly once he realized what was up, although that didn’t stop him from feeling like a massive jerk afterwards. But at least he didn’t mean it, and he knew he was a bad friend at that time.

“I don’t think you realize how much I don’t give a shit,” Dash says. “Just leave me alone, Fenton. And if you tell anyone besides my friends about this, I’ll shove you in so many lockers.”

Danny scowls. “Fine. Don’t flirt with my sister though.”

“No problems there. I’m not into girls.”

It takes Danny a second to process that. “Huh.”

“You got a problem with that?”

“What? No. Like, pretty much everyone I’m friends with is in the queer community,myself included. I thought you liked Paulina. And, you know, you flirted with my sister? And pretty much every single cheerleader.” Danny thinks back, trying to remember if there were any hints. Dash used to flirt with girls a lot, but he can’t actually remember him hitting on anyone in the past year. “You know what that is? Growth.”

“Don’t quote gifs at me, loser.” There’s less bite in Dash’s insult and more resignation. The sound of a man who will put up with what he hates for something he needs.

Danny almost smiles. Almost. Dash is still a massive dick, but Danny hates him a little less than usual right now, if only because he isn’t trying to get with Jazz after all.

They fall silent, Dash returning to his work while Danny just sits there and thinks. He glances toward the stairs once, wondering what’s taking Jazz so long, but doesn’t totally mind it. Being alone with Dash isn’t as horrible as he thought it’d be.

He gets bored pretty damn quickly though.

“Okay, the glasses, you have to tell me,” Danny says.

Dash groans, closing his notebook. “They’re glasses. I wear them and stuff gets less blurry. Fascinating.”

“Yeah, but I mean!” Danny waves his arms in a meaningless gesture. “Since when do you have them?”

“Since I got them.”

“Oh my god, I hate you.”

“Feeling’s mutual.”

“I’d call you a sap, but I think you’d punch me for it,” Danny quips, unable to resist.

“I’d call you a loser, but it’s redundant.”

“I can’t believe you know what redundant means.”

Dash glares at Danny. Normally that look makes Danny nervous, because it’s usually followed by a punch to the got or some other, equally painful retribution, but right now Danny’s actually enjoying himself and Dash doesn’t look like he’s about to snap.

“Quick, write the word down before you forget it,” Danny says, tapping Dash’s notebook.

“Shut up, you moron.” Dash swats Danny’s hand with his pencil.

“Oh no, you’re backsliding. Write it fast.”

“Shut up!”

“Want some help? Here, r-e-t-”

“You are such a fucking idiot.”

Danny beams. “I’d call you an imbecile, but I think that’d be cruel since you probably can’t spell it.”

“I swear to god, Fenton.”

“Hey, don’t be mean to my brother!”

Danny ducks his head to hide the shit-eating grin on his face as Jazz returns. She’s glaring at Dash, who sputters as he tries to defend himself, and Danny silently vows to join them for tomorrow’s study session, too, if this is what it’s going to be like.

[missfay49]

Secret Santa 2019: fan fic

Preface: this excerpt is from a story I’m working on with the Sides in a fantasy setting with the working title of, “Right Time, Wrong Vision”.  They did not all grow up together.  Creativity never split in twain.  Team Survival consists of Deceit the Charlatan, Virgil the elf Rogue, and Wrath the Monk.  Team Dreamers is Romulus the Conjurer, Patton the lizardfolk Healer, and Logan the Inventor.

Content Warnings: battle, violence, explosions, injury, blood, crying, gore, body horror, sympathetic Deceit, singular Creativity, buried creature, deformed creatures, burns, cursing, conjured creature death, hurt/no comfort

Ships: none, all relationships are platonic

Set-up: Romulus is an owl aarakocra seer who has convinced everyone that he is blind, a common stereotype among seers.  His unusual-looking eyes helped to sell it, but that lie is about to be revealed…

Story below the cut vvv

Bonus: Mood Board!

               We’re losing the war.  Virgil squinted, glancing around the battlefield and tallying the chaos.  Bricks were still sliding in miniature avalanches down the side of the building hit by the last explosion.  Bystanders ran through the streets, ducking behind awnings and door frames only to burst out again to run to the next house.  

There was Deceit, trying to guide a few terrified people around the more dangerous bits of terrain. Virgil called over the debris.  

“Do you see him?”

Deceit shook his head, turning to look farther down the street and pointing.  Wrath was two blocks down, throwing another of the crime syndicate’s mercenaries through a window.  A shrill scream followed and a woman dragging her child leapt out the door together. Wrath’s face turned to embarrassment and he waved awkwardly at them before moving on to the next merc, who promptly squeaked in a very undignified manner and fled.  The trio regrouped.  

“Literally, your one job was to keep track of the bad guy,” Virgil accused Deceit.  The three of them stood in the middle of the home’s small garden as the dust settled.

“Well, I literally am not as fast as a horse-drawn carriage, so-”

“Where’s your horse-”

“Kindly go fu-”  

“Heeeeey!” A familiar shout interrupted their bickering.

“Do you guys need heeeelp?” Just down a side street, Patton was running toward them, waving a dark leather bag in the air with one scaley-green arm.  Logan jogged behind, trying to keep up but sorely out of shape and weighed down by a lumpy package on his back.  Bits of glinting metal stuck out in several directions.

“What are they doing here?”  Virgil hissed.  “It’s too dangerous!”  Wrath just shrugged, smiling.  Virgil raised his voice to reach them, only just then spotting that infernal blind seer even farther back, meandering through the wreckage.

“Get out of the road!”  He started running to meet them, the others close behind.  As if on cue, movement on the rooftops caught his eye.  Robes… a blue light… that’s-  He drew in a breath and leaned into a full sprint.  He could feel electricity building in the air.

~~~

Logan watched as the rogue dashing full speed right at them glanced up.  Following Virgil’s line of sight, he spotted the danger above them. He jerked his head back to Patton who was happily clambering over a large rock, oblivious.  

Virgil was still paces away.  Too far.  Suddenly full of energy, Logan took two more bounding steps and dove over the boulder, tackling Patton and throwing them both to the ground as a crackling sound was joined by strange words chanting in the breeze.  

~~~

Seeing the pair fall into a pile of rubble ahead of him, Virgil slowed and turned to the others. Deceit slammed into him, not expecting the change.  Virgil grabbed his shoulders, shouting-  

“We need cover, now!”  Wrath scooped them both up and kept running, veering toward a gap under a slab of concrete, but-

The last thing Virgil saw was Romulus, still some twenty feet away.  He faced them head-on, unmoving, eyes like circles.  With a blink, the owl dropped to the ground and slammed both taloned hands on the cobbles.  The earth began to shake and churn, adding its own roar to the crackling just as a flash of light blinded them all.

~~~

Darkness.  

Romulus found himself laying in the street.  Fatigue hit like a truck and he blinked the dust out of his eyes.  A metal cylinder with knobs protruding at right angles stared back at him, water gushing out three sides.

“Oh, no.”

Artificial rain fell.  He looked up at the building where the attacker had stood.  Or, he would have if that building were still up there.  Now, it was all around them in pieces, wood timbers cracked and leaning out of the structure like spears.  Something large must have hit it.  Or, many smaller somethings...

In fact, unnamed items were still pouring out of the ground, covering the area around them. The angle pointed them to where the roof had once been, but they were quickly losing the energy needed to go that high.  They fell back to the earth.  In seconds, the stream came to a stop and all was quiet.  

Gravel flying, a hand shot straight up.  Wrath was climbing out of the rubble, then reaching back to drag Virgil and Deceit out after him. A little dinged up, but nothing too bad. From their shelter, Logan cautiously lifted his head followed by Patton asking, “Is it safe?”  

Logan wordlessly helped Patton to his feet, getting their balance on the uneven terrain together. His bag had ripped and the equipment for the prosthetics scattered.  He didn’t notice it, everyone’s safety was more important.  There was a loud ringing in his ears.  

While Deceit was preoccupied in a futile effort to remove all dust from his clothing, Virgil tried to find something that looked familiar to get his bearings on.  But nothing here looked familiar.

Where once there had been a residential side street of dirt and cobbles, was now completely littered with stuff.  Several of the items were charred and smoking.  Pillows of all shapes and sizes and colors, a few chairs, whole couches even! Maybe they had come from inside the building, but they all seemed too… new.

There were even things he had never seen before.  Like, what was that discus-shaped contraption and why did it have so many metal legs?  

But most fascinating were the cubes.  There was no better word for them; they were perfect cubes, strewn about at random.  They must have been heavy.  Where other items tumbled down the side of the rubble, they stayed put and let the debris flow around them.  Moving images flashed across each side.  Virgil moved closer, watching one cube carefully as images of the attacker flashed across it over and over.  Could he still be near?

A muffled sound below him made Virgil jump.  Leaning back in, he could hear scraping within the rubble.  

“Wrath, gimme a hand.”  The pair starting digging and the sounds immediately got louder.  Deceit picked his way over to peer between their shoulders.  A few painfully long seconds of digging revealed a struggling arm covered in a dull black shirt-sleeve.  Deceit squinted as Wrath hurried to get the person out.  

“Wha…” Virgil breathed out, pulling away from the hole.  

“What is it?” Deceit didn’t register that Virgil never responded, catching sight of the thing as he moved out of the way.  Wrath had uncovered another arm, smaller and just under the first.  A third even smaller arm, this time without so much as an elbow.  The body they were attached to was covered in blood. A pure white rib cage existed partially outside of the body, as if it had grown that way.  The person struggled to free themselves.  

With one more helpful push from Wrath, the person reared up, falling backward onto the debris. Deceit stumbled back with a gasp. Even Wrath stood up, but Virgil appeared to be frozen in place.  Dirty-blonde hair straggled over a burnt, soot-covered scalp.  It gurgled up at them, features melting into each other.  

“Patton, he-aarGH!” Deceit turned to get the healer but stopped short.  Another deformed creature laid between them, moving toward Deceit.  Familiar green scales were its only recognizable trait.  Bones were just a memory for this one, as it inched worm-like across the cobbles and left a dark trail in its wake.  

~~~

Hearing a scream, Romulus pulled himself up.  Deceit and Patton were staring at something on the ground.  

“Oh, don’t- don’t touch that. Hang on!"  

He made to move closer to see, but a groan gave him pause.  Cowering behind another cube, an orange and yellow pattern swirled on a hidden creature.

“Shit, shit, shit,” he whispered as he crouched by the being, putting both hands on one psychedelic limb and willing the creation back into the realm of nightmares.  It mewled, drawing Patton’s attention just before it vanished into the earth.

“Wait!  We can fix it, you said-” Patton cried out to the seer.

"Sorry!”  Romulus interrupted him.  Just gotta take care of this real quick.”

Deceit looked between them, speechless for once, then back to the monstrosity on the ground.  His thoughts seemed to move in slow motion.  The creatures… they’re dressed like us.

Behind him, Virgil continued to stare transfixed at the being crawling out of the rubble.  Wrath had stopped digging and, seeing the reaction his oldest friend was having to it, he stood up and started tugging on Virgil’s arm to pull him up.  The rogue seemed to shake off the stupor then but refused to get up.  His eyes remained locked on the creature.

Patton pulled out of Logan’s grip and chased after Romulus, begging him.  

“You said you wouldn’t do it again!  You said you wouldn’t!  You can’t kill them!  I can help them, heal them!”  He tried to grab the seer, but the man threw him off. 

“They shouldn’t even exist! I-” Romulus stood still for only a moment.  It was enough time for Patton to see the fear on his face.  Romulus raced away to the nearest abomination.  

"Stop it..." Patton cried again, softly this time.  He'd come to a stop, squeezing his eyes shut and just standing in the debris.  The rain from that… thing was slowly soaking through his clothes.  He put both his hands over his mouth and his whole body shook.  A chill ran through him.

"Don’t look!"  Romulus pushed himself in front of Patton, trying to shield him from what getting ‘rid’ of it would look like.  He knelt and put a hand on the thing.  The creation screeched as it sank out of existence.

Deceit blinked.

"How... did you know we were looking at it?"  He asked over the sobs still coming from Patton, over the gasps escaping the seer.  Patton blinked up at Deceit through his claws, then back to Romulus’ shuddering back, confused.  

"Uh-" Romulus’ speckled eyes darted around.  He dramatically turned to face very definitively not in Deceit's direction, brow furrowed.  Something dripped from his talons.  "I saw it in a vision, of course!"  

His voice was trembling.  Tears rolled off his cheek feathers.  His head twitched this way and that, almost as if...

"No, you didn't," Deceit said.  A strangled sound escaped Romulus as he finally spotted the creation half buried in front of Virgil struggling to crawl through the debris.  

"Just a second, dear, " he called back to Deceit, running over to disapparate the pitiful thing.

Patton was muttering to himself, the same thing over and over.  "You can't.  You can't.  You just-"

"You're looking at it right now!"  Deceit shouted.  "You're looking at things!"  

"Aaagh, I'm-" Romulus sniffled, "kinda busy here, Dee." Again, he glanced around the chaos, falling to his knees beside the creation.  He reached out both hands.  "Maybe we can, hhhng-"

A sob cut him off.  He choked, trying to hold in another as he pushed gently on the creation, pushing it out of reality.  This one was sticky.  It looked up at him with too many eyes.  

Wrath stared at each of them in turn, then back at the ground where Virgil continued to grasp fistfuls of rocks.  A low whine was coming out of him.

Logan was still just standing there taking in his surroundings, hands stretched out like another earthquake might strike at any moment.  What was Deceit yelling?  Were they still in danger?  He felt something warm at his hip.  Pulling aside his jacket, the fabric caught on something.  He looked down and saw one of the steel rods from his kit sticking at a rather unexpected angle out of his right side just above the belt.  A dark circle was spreading across the material around it.  

“Oops,” he gasped softly.  No one heard him.

“I'm sorry,” cried Romulus. Tears fell into the mud where the last creation had been.  His talons pressed hard on the ground, and he leaned down until his face touched the stone, shaking.  He whispered into it.  

“I'm sorry.  I'm so sorry.”

~~~

Sneak Preview:

               Virgil placed another stick on the fire and leaned back.  The rest of the party was dotted around the campfire, fast-asleep deep in their various accoutrements.

               “One o-clock and aaall’s weeell,” he sang quietly to himself into the clear night.  His breath made a tiny cloud of vapor in the chill.

With a deep breath, Romulus awoke, eyes fluttering open on some instinct.  Virgil hadn't realized he'd been staring at the man while he waited out his shift.  He tilted his head, whispering.

"Another nightmare?"

"A vision," Romulus murmured, or thought he did.  "I dreamt of a goddess.  She wept for centuries, and cast herself upon the Rock, dying so she could try again." His words tumbled out haphazardly, galaxy eyes wide and searching, as if he could still see it all in his mind.  “The pieces fell from the sky, they… where did they go?”  

Virgil tried to keep the skepticism from showing up in his voice.  

"Huh.  Okay, well... try to get some rest.  We've still got days of travel left to..."  He trailed off.  Further explanation was apparently unnecessary as Romulus gave the smallest of quick nods and burrowed back into the blankets without another word.

~~~

Virgil recalled that night now, as relentless winds swirled through the mountains, pelting them with hail and debris.  Logan and Deceit were taking shelter beneath a tree, leaves already ripped away, the whole thing threatening to uproot.  Wrath hung on to Patton’s petite lizard frame, little claws digging into his arm; he’d nearly been carried away by the sudden storm.

Virgil, eyes locked on the dangerous sky, shouted over the gale, "You never said "VISION"!"