#and one of the least misunderstood characters in the danny phantom fandom

[ectoentity]

Quality Time

Fandom: Danny Phantom, Batman

Rating: G

Category: Gen

Characters: Danny Fenton, Jason Todd

Tags: Danny and Jason are siblings, Summer Vacation, Family fluff

The life of a vigilante crime lord made it hard to schedule family time. When Jason wasn’t dealing with someone trying to muscle in on his turf or some supervillain nonsense, he was having to juggle the logistics of keeping his little criminal organization on track. He barely had a day to himself, let alone one to spend with anyone else.

The fact remained that Danny had asked to go to a water park months ago.

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The life of a vigilante crime lord made it hard to schedule family time. When Jason wasn’t dealing with someone trying to muscle in on his turf or some supervillain nonsense, he was having to juggle the logistics of keeping his little criminal empire on track. He barely had a day to himself, let alone one to spend with anyone else.

Danny was painfully understanding. It helped that he was a vigilante, too. He knew that sometimes an emergency came up and Jason didn’t have a choice but to respond to it. The fact remained that Danny had asked to go to a water park months ago. Soon it was going to close for the season. So Jason had moved things around to make room for one day out with his little brother.

They arrived at the water park right as it was opening. Jason meant to get there sooner, but traffic from Gotham to Atlantic City was a bitch and a half even early in the morning. At least it meant that Danny got to sleep in the car a bit.

“Ready to go?” Jason asked, shaking his little brother awake. Danny blinked the sleep from his eyes and grumbled for a moment before shooting up with a grin.

“Heck, yeah!”

They piled out of the car and raced toward the entrance. Then Danny stopped short. The line already stretched out an unreasonable length under the August sun. Jason groaned internally. It looked like a lot of people had had the same idea today. It might take an hour just to get a ticket. Jason could flash some money and get them in faster, but Danny wouldn’t approve. He had too many hang-ups about morals and fairness.

“Maybe this was a bad idea,” Danny said, shoulders slumped.

Jason clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry, it’s just a bit of a wait. I’ll get you an ice cream or something once we get in.”

“I’m holding you to that,” Danny promised. He was smiling again, so Jason took it as a win.

The wait was awful. They made small talk, but they were surrounded by civilians and couldn’t really talk openly. Jason entertained himself by looking around the crowd and trying to determine which of the people were involved in the criminal world. Danny had his phone.

Things got a little better once they were inside the park. Danny gaped up at the massive slides like he didn’t regularly fly up to the stratosphere for fun. True to his word, Jason got him a massive vanilla ice cream cone. No one else noticed the tiny bit of ghost energy that Danny used to keep it cold long enough that it didn’t melt at all.

“Which one do you wanna go on first?” Jason asked.

“The Double Trouble,” Danny said instantly, looking up at the centerpiece of the park. It was two slides that followed the same path, twisting around each other in a blue and red helix.

“You sure? Thought you’d wanna save the best for last.”

“Nah, I wanna get through the line before it gets worse.” Danny snapped up the last bite of his ice cream. “Whoever reaches the pool first picks the next ride?”

“Oh, you’re on.”

The line was just as awful this time. In some ways, it was even worse. The line extended above them, as well as below. Some part of Danny’s ghost instincts seemed to have decided this was a problem, because the air around him was about five degrees cooler than ambient temperature. Jason tried to distract him by talking about some random space stuff he’d seen in the news. Danny spent half the walk up to the top complaining about all the things that either Jason or the reporter had misunderstood about the actual scientific paper, which he had already read. Jason only gave him a little bit of grief about being a total nerd.

They were almost at the top when Danny shuddered, ever so slightly, and breathed out a wisp of fog.

Danny groaned. “Please be nothing,” he muttered. He started looking around. Jason followed his lead, but his eyes weren’t quite as sharp or as practiced at picking out the signs of a ghost. Turns out they didn’t really need to be. In seconds, a glowing form lifted out of the wave pool far below them. It looked like a sea serpent with legs, and it had to be at least twenty feet tall. Swimmers were stuck inside of its watery body. People on the ground began to scream and run in panic.

Well, shit. There went a nice day. Jason couldn’t do much against some kind of water spirit, especially since all he had on him were his keys and wallet.

Danny ducked behind Jason enough that hopefully no one would notice that he promptly popped out of existence. Phantom went rocketing towards the water monster a few seconds later with a quip on his tongue.

The fight took a while, mostly because Danny took the time to make sure all the people stuck inside the watery beast were safe before he started the fight in earnest. Most of the park managed to evacuate by the time he finished freezing the creature solid and shoved it through a portal back to the Infinite Realms. Jason waited nearby to watch. Not close enough to become a liability, but close enough that he could see the time the monster slammed Danny into the concrete ground. That was bound to hurt, even with super healing.

Sure enough, when Danny popped up next to him in human form, there was a nasty bruise forming over half of his torso.Jason couldn’t help but wince in sympathy.

“I guess they’re closing the park for the rest of the day,” Danny said, looking sadly at the destruction the spirit monster had caused. Discarded towels and pool floats are scattered everywhere, as are lounge chairs and a few splintered tables. One of the massive slides is leaning precariously where the monster had smashed one of its supports.

“Looks like,” Jason agreed. “I’m sorry, kid. I hoped we’d get a couple rides in before something came up.”

Danny rolled his eyes. “You couldn’t have known there was an angry river spirit trapped in the wave pool, Jay.” He grabbed Jason’s arm and pulled him through the fence out to the parking lot. They were in a shaded area off to the side of the park, so no one would have been able to see them pass through. Most of the parking lot was abandoned. In the distance, Jason could hear some sirens that were probably on their way here.

Jason sighed. He’d just wanted to have a nice day out with his brother.

Danny elbowed him in the side. “Stop moping, would you? The day’s not over yet. I bet I can kick your butt at Mario Kart.”

“Oh, you’re on,” Jason said, smiling a bit. Sure, the park was a bust. But the whole point was spending the day with his family, wasn’t it? He ruffled Danny’s hair and led them back to the car.